posted
I was just browsing through the TNG scrips when I happened across this line.
quote: PICARD I cannot justify readjusting history on the basis of saving lives in war... shall I return to Sarajevo and stop the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand... or go back to warn Station-Salem Four of the Bel-zon raid...
Aside from the fact it mentions another Salem Station being devistated, it caught my attention because I've never heard of this species before. Did I miss something, or was this line just cut from the episode? What is it about these Salem stations anyway? They always seam to get attacked and have lines refering to them cut.
For those of you who might not know of the other Salem reference.
quote:
PICARD (acknowledges) We must measure the response carefully, Number One. Or history may remember Galorndon Core alongside Pearl Harbor and Station Salem-One... as the stage for a bloody preamble to war.
Supposedly an early draft of 'Encounter at Farpoint' mentioned that an ancestor of Crusher was present for one of these attacks. Not sure which though.
posted
"...or go back to warn Station-Salem Four of the Bel-zon raid..."
A defective can of Raid bug-spray (for killing Bel-Zon ants) exploded in the airlock resultingso in the death of the Federation President of that era. Conspiracy theories abound of how the "magic nozzle" was able to pierce the President's head and torso....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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1) The Salem stations are whipping boys and everybody seems to attack them.
2) In the rush to get Yesterday's Enterprise written, the writing team misremembered the earlier reference to Salem One (the most likely choice, it seems to me).
3) In the altered timeline, the attack which started the war was on Salem Four, and the unnamed species which attacked Salem One in the main timeline was the Bel-Zon (nothing to back this up, I admit, but of the three choices I've named I think it's the most fun).
-------------------- The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.
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posted
The Bel-Zon could also be some kind of splinter cell extremists (Romulan or Klingon)out to start trouble like the Circle was. No need to make them a race unto themselves. The Salem bases could be outposts along the Neutral Zone and would be prone to occasional skirmishes from just about everyone. Even the Tholians have no problen testing the Federation's resolve from time to time so anything goes.... Soon the Pakleds will be slaughtering Fed citizens for kicks too!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
"The Bel-Zon could also be some kind of splinter cell extremists (Romulan or Klingon)out to start trouble..."
If S-Four was really S-One in disguise and its destruction led to war (as Picard hints at), then no, they couldn't be.
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posted
An ancestor of Crusher's was supposed to have been present on Salem-One. I can't remember that line being spoken in Yesterday's Ent. though,. I'm thinking it must have been cut. But it's good enough reason for me to go back and watch that ep again tonight.
I would also bet that, assuming this line is present, it's a misremember of the Salem One reference.
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posted
It's possible that both references are correct, and both are referring to the same event. "Salem" may be a location, and it has at least four stations around it. Maybe Salem-4 was actually the first one attacked (thus, a time-traveller would want to warn them, not Salem-1), but Salem-1 is the one that's remembered like Pearl Harbor, because it's where the main standoff took place, or something.
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posted
The other reference to Salem 1 was in "Family".
Jack Crusher: We named you after Richard Wesley Crusher, my grandfather, who gave me my first flying lesson as a boy. You come from a fine family... of scholars, explorers, artists... your great-great grandfather was a painter whose work once hung in the Prado... We've had a skeleton or two in our closet... someday, I'll tell you about the Crusher who was a horse thief on Nimbus Three... but we also had our share of family heroes... a Crusher fought for the Confederacy at Bull Run. One died at Station Salem One. It's a proud heritage, Wesley.
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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posted
A horse thief on Nimbus Three? That's interesting.
quote:2) In the rush to get Yesterday's Enterprise written, the writing team misremembered the earlier reference to Salem One (the most likely choice, it seems to me).
That seams the most likely explanation to me. Still someone obviously had a particular history in mind to try and slip this reference in on at least three seperate occasions, I'd like to know what it was about. I know that some people on this board are occasionally intouch with Okuda, perhaps he knows, or at least knows someone who knows about this.
I suppose the Bel-Zon War (assuming there was one) could be anything from a pre-fed Earth conflict, to the war that made Garth of Izar so famous, culminating with the Battle of Axanar...actually I quite like that idea.
posted
*chuckle* Little pointer to Ron Moore. Bull Run was the Union/Northern name for the battle/location. The Confederates called it by its proper name, Manassas. Given his pride in his family history, Jack wouldn't have screwed that up.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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posted
Well, history being written by the victors and all, it may be that, by the 2300s, "Bull Run" is the accepted name, and "Manassas" is something only historians specializing in nineteenth-century North America would know about.
After all, Starfleet can't be too big on US Civil War history, or they would have ships called Monitor and Virginia, not Monitor and Merrimac(k).
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