posted
Oh god...for Pete's sake, it's a TV show, not a religion. Let everyone have their own views on what they personally consider canon.
Why don't we drop our phasers at the door, and forget about all this, and let this thread fall down on the thread list, to be necroed someday a year or two from now?
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Vanguard: Since when does self-righteous and confrontational equal heretic?? It equals jackass. I don't care what you think about Trek. I care that you think everyone else is wrong and you want to yell at them when they ask you why you're right.
Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Vanguard: I don't mind if someone is going to disagree on the tech stuff. I mind if they're being prats about it, and insisting on 'rightthink'.
But don't you see? You walked in here 'prattily' making fun of "targetemployee" who simply quoted the canon figure -- "Next you'll tell me that Riker really DID serve aboard the USS Lollipop". Then when someone joked that it was a good ship, you went on all by yourself, continuing the attack on those who might dare disagree, noting the "pet peeve of mine about the Canonistas. Every line of dialog in every show MUST be taken literally {...}". Hence my initial response about straw men and name-calling.
What you claim to resist, you have become.
This is not an attack on my part, mind you, but a hopefully-helpful observation. I have fallen into the same trap at times (probably lots of times).
It is clear that you have argued with people over canon quite a bit. I have, too (which is why I know that the writer's bibles are not canon "by definition"). As a result, I get potshots taken at me by every fandom-loving person who comes across the site or my posts. Tack that on to the potshots from every kid who thinks a Star Destroyer is cooler than any Enterprise and that it is evil to believe otherwise, and you can imagine that I have become a far less patient individual.
But that's one of the exact effects that one ought to wish to avoid. We've all gotta watch that resisting->becoming thing.
quote:Besides, the guy wrote an article on his web-page about how obviously stupid I was {...}
My Volumetrics page, written in 2003, and its The 190,000 Tonne Fallacy section, written in 2005, are not about you.
However, you did help me expand the section, and I thanked you accordingly. That expansion, however, is also not about you.
You may be a "jackass" (I'm one too, fear not), but that can change. It should be possible for us to have great fun, given our mutual interests of Trek tech and canon issues and wild disagreements thereon. Care to try again? Or do you prefer the hostility?
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Look, to me a 'Canonista' isn't someone who worships the canon, but someone who worships his view of canon as a weapon against fellow fans. You have to subscribe to his 'rightthink' or you're really not a fan and should just shut up. And that's clearly what you and Daniel did.
I disagree in this case with the assertion of 'canon' about the mass, for several reasons. One, it's not the writer's guide's numbers. It's from Scotty who is prone to exaggeration. It's in a line of dialog that includes several OTHER major errors in it. Simple enough, nae?
And, almost all of the time, it doesn't even matter. But since I am working on 'tech' stuff, I have to use the most consistant of sources, and this line of dialog is the outlier. So I toss it.
It is impossible to take all of Trek as a literal canon. You simply cannot do it, and that's without adding the novels, comics, and so on. There's just way too much in conflict. I personally think it's a fool's errand to try to declare the 'one true Canon' and then expect to be able to 'bully' other fans into it as if it were a religious view.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Vanguard I repeat: Since when does self-righteous and confrontational equal heretic?? It equals jackass. I don't care what you think about Trek. I care that you think everyone else is wrong and you want to yell at them when they ask you why you're right.
See what I did there? I pointed out that you're using your worship of your own personal 'canon' as a weapon against other fans, and we're not really fans if we don't subscribe to your 'rightthink.' Vanguard unbellyfeel irony.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I see what you did there, you continue to insist to personally insult me not REALLY because I'm "pushing my view of canon" as a canonista.. but because I'm not agreeing with you on yours.
And, yes, you implied I was a heretic because, as you put it, I was 'offputting on my Trek beliefs' as if it were a religion.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
That's not what heretic means. You're off-putting because you're insisting you're right and being an ass about it.
Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Vanguard: Look, to me a 'Canonista' isn't someone who worships the canon, but someone who worships his view of canon as a weapon against fellow fans. You have to subscribe to his 'rightthink' or you're really not a fan and should just shut up. And that's clearly what you and Daniel did.
I only waded into the thread after your weaponization of your anti-canon views.
But whatever . . . I tried the olive branch last post.
quote: I disagree in this case with the assertion of 'canon' about the mass, for several reasons. One, it's not the writer's guide's numbers.
It supercedes the writer's guide numbers, by definition. A writer's guide is a vague blueprint of characters and setting, nothing more. It is not intended as a constraint, but a guide. Hence the name "guide".
And as we see in this instance along with so many others, the writer's guide figure was ignored.
This occurred in a script based on a story by Gene Roddenberry, with teleplay by Roddenberry, John D.F. Black, and Stephen Kandel, and which Roddenberry wanted to charge Desilu for "polishing".
So the contradicts-the-writer's-guide argument is trash.
quote:It's from Scotty who is prone to exaggeration.
This is also a trash argument. I have provided the clip . . . there is no evidence in favor of exaggeration on his part.
We've seen the crystals, for instance . . . they're about fist-sized.
But please, feel free to find us scenes (sufficient in number to produce a pattern of behavior as you are suggesting) where Scotty calmly exaggerates the hell out of something. Please also note that a counterargument could be made that Scotty was prone to calm understatement . . . remember the "wee bit of trouble" he got into on Argelius?
quote:It's in a line of dialog that includes several OTHER major errors in it.
Like what? The use of the term "lithium"? That was hardly an error at the time . . . dilithium became the term only later, to escape the shortcomings of using a known element. Many simply assume that, in-universe, an unspoken "di-" occurs, like calling gasoline "gas". In any case, a conscious choice was made.
However, there was no later similar change to the mass of the ship.
Elsewhere, you've argued that the figure would make the ship too dense for you to accept. Beyond the fact that this is mere personal incredulity and is thus to be ignored, there is the fact that you've also claimed this would make the ship "nearly a solid chunk of very heavy metals".
This, too, is wrong. The ship would be half as dense as solid iron, and about as dense as the much lower density titanium. Many denser metals exist, including lead, copper, cobalt, nickel, platinum, plutonium, silver, gold, tungsten, uranium, and others less common. The range of metals mentioned extends up to over twice the density of iron, and over four times the density of titanium. That doesn't even begin to consider the extraordinary elements available to Trek species.
Solid iron a mile thick was considered very good armor in the 23rd Century. And while no starship could hope to match that level of protection, must you insist that they are papier-mâché through and through?
quote:Simple enough, nae?
Your argument is simple.
It is, however, entirely too simple, because it ignores the writing process, creates exaggeration where none exists, and attempts to condemn via guilt by association with a claimed error that, while being a bad choice later changed, was not in fact erroneous at the time of production. Last but not least, it ignores the context of Trek (and real) engineering.
You can go on believing whatever figure you wish in your own little personal happy-place canon, but you're going to have to learn not to freak out whenever fans of the show quote facts from the show. It is what it is, and no amount of whining changes that.
Good day. You're finished, and I'm through with you.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
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