Should The Horta make an appearance?
- Thread starter PR109
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the Enterprise episode with the Tribble was on H&I last night. Phlox tells Hoshi that they are very rare and difficult to acquire because they are outlawed on most worlds. Then he feeds it to one of his many creatures. They were simply unknown to Kirk’s crew.
But something like the Horta was pretty clearly a first contact situation.
But something like the Horta was pretty clearly a first contact situation.
What was modified by Edward may have not been fully known, or there were further changes due to the breeding on a planet. TAS has a different varient as well.
That was clearly a horta egg with a full body toupet.
Tribbles have no heads, so toupee is misleading. No known heads, eyes teeth, etc.
We can reasonably infer mouths, buttholes, and probably some kind of genitalia.
It's probably wearing a merkin.
Needs of the plot....creating the tribbles we've seen in TOS and DS9
why would bones have to study something that's in the library computer already?
So are they like some birds? Is that why they are a danger is they eat everything but also consume rocks to digest things?
The tribbles are much easier to explain. First of all they are basically pets (or pests if you're a Klingon 
). So it might not be as surprising if the crew of the Enterprise was mostly unaware.
The Horta would be much more problematic. I think it's pretty clear in "The Devil in the Dark" that nobody has encountered them before. And Dr. McCoy says straight up that he thought Spock was fantasizing. A silicone based life form would obviously be huge news. Spock was reluctant to even present the theory at first because it seemed unlikely. He wanted more proof. If someone had encountered the Horta before you can bet Spock would have known about them, and probably Dr. McCoy too. Despite his country background, he does know his job and is an excellent exobiologist in his own right.
). So it might not be as surprising if the crew of the Enterprise was mostly unaware. The Horta would be much more problematic. I think it's pretty clear in "The Devil in the Dark" that nobody has encountered them before. And Dr. McCoy says straight up that he thought Spock was fantasizing. A silicone based life form would obviously be huge news. Spock was reluctant to even present the theory at first because it seemed unlikely. He wanted more proof. If someone had encountered the Horta before you can bet Spock would have known about them, and probably Dr. McCoy too. Despite his country background, he does know his job and is an excellent exobiologist in his own right.
Well, silicone-based livings, anyway.
The problem with TOS in general is that some ideas that are treated there as innovative or unheard of then are old hat now. Scientific thinking has moved on, and in many areas like AI is far more specifically familiar to most people, so that TOS no longer takes place in the future - it takes place in some past world. And there's nothing that can be done about that, other than to either change it if you want to use that time period or resign yourself to a shrinking audience who will tolerate the continual anachronisms out of old fondness.
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and how does that apply to silicon-based life?
that was jones.
not needed since they are born pregnant.
On the contrary, tribbles are like the lilies of the valley: neither do they spin, nor do they toil.
Logic, on the other hand, is like a bird.
Leslie Charteris wrote about fantastic helicopters and outrageous submarines only to those invented shortly after his fantasies were published. What he had to say in the preface to Saint Overboard applies to our fascination with maintaining anachronisity:
Similarly...not long ago I read the complete series of Travis McGee novels. They were published between roughly 1965-1985.
A lot of things in the books were somewhat startling - mores, attitudes and values of the time - but what would pull me out of a book a little, every so often, was when MacDonald would have a plot point turn on some "Popular Mechanics" detail or invention that was the rage at the time. In one there was an electrical device that produced deep sleep that could not be interrupted. I looked it up and, yeah, there was a sort of thing at the time...that didn't turn out to work nearly as well as he thought it did, and is long forgotten now.
A lot of things in the books were somewhat startling - mores, attitudes and values of the time - but what would pull me out of a book a little, every so often, was when MacDonald would have a plot point turn on some "Popular Mechanics" detail or invention that was the rage at the time. In one there was an electrical device that produced deep sleep that could not be interrupted. I looked it up and, yeah, there was a sort of thing at the time...that didn't turn out to work nearly as well as he thought it did, and is long forgotten now.
What's funny is my brain finds little things like this way more distracting than say the John Carter novels where everything about Mars is completely wrong.
Hortas in SNW, no.
Hortas in post-season-2 DSC, or PIC, or LD, or PRD, yes. In fact, let's make Diane Duane's "Naraht" a canonical admiral.
And as to that Short Trek involving tribbles, I would classify it as the biggest crock of bovine scat I've ever seen. And rather reminiscent of Zelazny building a whole novel around ". . . then the fit hit the Shan."
Hortas in post-season-2 DSC, or PIC, or LD, or PRD, yes. In fact, let's make Diane Duane's "Naraht" a canonical admiral.
And as to that Short Trek involving tribbles, I would classify it as the biggest crock of bovine scat I've ever seen. And rather reminiscent of Zelazny building a whole novel around ". . . then the fit hit the Shan."
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