The actual Star Trek producers like jamming pop culture references into actual Star Trek. I think what Cryptic is doing here is trying to be playful like that.
False. Saying does not make it so. Pure PWE apologism.
"The actual Star Trek producers" can't be talked about as a lot because they are in fact so diverse. But amongst all of them they've never done that. This has been established.
Well, let's be fair. It's not PWE apologism because this was the idea of the devs and not PWE - but the fact is that it is a faulty attitude on the part of the devs for the reasons examined above.
False. Saying does not make it so. Pure PWE apologism.
"The actual Star Trek producers" can't be talked about as a lot because they are in fact so diverse. But amongst all of them they've never done that. This has been established.
Well, let's be fair. It's not PWE apologism because this was the idea of the devs and not PWE - but the fact is that it is a faulty attitude on the part of the devs for the reasons examined above.
Actually, they did do a Doc Brown reference. I haven't caught a Bill and Ted reference but I'm still trying to place the bartender with the last name Zombie, which I'm sure is a time travel reference.
I'm not sure what the OP is upset about. Sci-Fi has a long tradition of paying homage to the genre. Heck, R2D2 is in the JJ-Trek movie. There's Dr. Who/Star Trek crossover comics, etc. The new Timeships have an Omega 13 device from Galaxy Quest and my Klingon uses a lightsab... er, bat'leth from the holiday event. Just saying.
Quite so. The Oscillation Overthruster has appeared on screen in Star Trek multiple times. (From the Buckaroo Banzai movie for those note not knowing the reference). You have to really hunt for it, but it's there.
And Star Trek in genral has made dozens and dozens of pop culture references. Just take a look.
Star Trek simply does not do crossovers. These doffs are singular in that respect. It looks like you are grasping at some pretty fine straws to justify a viewpoint that doesn't stand impartial examination.
Except for this exact crossover having already been done, in comics, which makes it not at all singular.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
(and I dont need to point out that Bill and Ted's excellent adventure was pretty much a Doctor Who reference, do I?)
You really shouldn't have pointed that out, because it's simply not true. You see, when they originally story boarded Bill and Ted, they used a metal van. You know the kind that you can paint and make out in, or let it get rusty and paint "free candy" on the side and get everybody to shoo their kids away from it.
Anyway the producers decided that having a metal van that travels through time would be too much of a reference to Back to the Future. So they went with a phone booth instead, thinking that they were safe from making references to anything else. They apparently had never watched Doctor Who.
I can see how you came to the conclusion, but if you actually looked up the history of the movie, it was entirely unintentional. It's one of those "nothing new under the sun" cases. Anything you can think of, even if you thought of it entirely on your own, somebody else has already thought of it first. I used to think it was a Doctor Who reference myself, but then I went and looked it up.
I unlocked a temporal lock box. Inside was a time traveling DOFF. I used it to unlock the DOFF. Out popped a purple quality DOFF named Martha Jones Smith, who happens to be a doctor, of african descent, and of course female.
Seriously Cryptic? I probably find it as hilarious as you but, did you have to be that blatant about it?
Before anybody thinks I'm going off about minorities in the medical profession, here's a link to explain to anybody who doesn't watch Doctor Who. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Jones
The icon for Martha Jones Smith even looks like she has the same hairstyle as in the wikipedia article for the Doctor Who character.
I may start playing the game before series 7 is released just for this. I wonder if there's an Amelia Williams out there somewhere?
Anyone found any Quantum Leap references? That would be awesome.
I'm still convinced that the entire Enterprise series was one giant Leap for Sam. So anytime Archer is mentioned, there is your Quantum Leap referense! LOL I wouldn't be surprised if there was one in the new box, that just hasn't been seen by anyone on the boards yet.
False. Saying does not make it so. Pure PWE apologism.
"The actual Star Trek producers" can't be talked about as a lot because they are in fact so diverse. But amongst all of them they've never done that. This has been established.
Well, let's be fair. It's not PWE apologism because this was the idea of the devs and not PWE - but the fact is that it is a faulty attitude on the part of the devs for the reasons examined above.
One of the most widely known and popular aspects of Star Trek was lifted almost directly from a Robert Heinlein novel: Tribbles.
Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" had critters called flat cats which Roddenberry admitted were where tribbles came from. The only differences between flat cats and tribbles is that flat cats have three eyes and lay out flat (though they curl into balls when hybernating). In every other aspect, they are identical.
There was no creativity or originality in Roddenberry's use of tribbles. It wasn't a "nod", it was a fairly direct but good-natured swipe.
One of the most widely known and popular aspects of Star Trek was lifted almost directly from a Robert Heinlein novel: Tribbles.
Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" had critters called flat cats which Roddenberry admitted were where tribbles came from. The only differences between flat cats and tribbles is that flat cats have three eyes and lay out flat (though they curl into balls when hybernating). In every other aspect, they are identical.
There was no creativity or originality in Roddenberry's use of tribbles. It wasn't a "nod", it was a fairly direct but good-natured swipe.
Why even bother with the debate? He's going to believe whatever he wants to believe. The simple truth is that Trek is rife with such little stolen tidbits. Heck, both Enterprise and TNG make reference to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems - stolen from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Everyone in the Sci-Fi industry plays around with others' toys just to be humorous. It certainly didn't start with the STO Devs. They're just carrying on the tradition of having some fun.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
A similarity between Voth and Silurians does not equate to a reference or a swipe. As I pointed out before, Bill and Ted use a telephone booth for time travel, not as a reference to Doctor Who, but to avoid referencing Back to the Future with the original metal van idea. The producers of Bill and Ted were ignorant of Doctor Who. Infact, more than half of all Americans still are ignorant of it. I even saw one person say it's a rip off of Bill and Ted after I showed it to them.
More humanoid dinosaurs, this time a hypothetical species from the real world. Considering the American origin of the following "sapient dinosuar" and the Voyager series, I always thought the Voth were a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapient_dinosaur#Russell_.281982.29 Especially given that these things are a hypothetical projection of a possible sapient dinosaur evolved from Troodon. There's a Star Trek book (First Frontier) featuring this EXACT hypothetical species, in which they call themselves "Clan Ru." Although the Voth are descended from the Hadrosaur, not the Troodon. It's still far more likely a reference to Clan Ru and the Sapient Dinosaur than the Silurians.
One thing I'd like to squash is this whole "But look at X, it has all these differences but it OBVIOUSLY came from here." So? At least they changed it substantially. Just as an example (this argument applies to any and ALL similar instances), tribbles look nothing like flat cats and they aren't called flat cats either. The only differences between Mather Jones Smith and Martha Jones is that they took the last name of the Doctor's most common pseudonym (Smith from John Smith) and affixed it to her last name. That's it, everything else is the same. They even have a quote from her out of the show in the bio.
It's not references that's the problem, it's how obvious they are about it. You could take Martha Jones Smith exactly as she is in STO, drop her back into Doctor Who and the Doctor would be like "Smith? Your last name is smith? I thought it was jones" and she would say "actually one my middle name is Jones." and then they'd get on with their lives as if the incident never happened. That's how much of a direct and obvious lift it is. I prefer subtle references (tribbles), not blunt (Dr Martha Jones Smith) in my Star Trek.
There's subtle (tribbles are a far more subtle reference to flat cats), and there's obvious (Dr Martha Jones, and Dr Martha Jones Smith). The former has no physical traits or shared name. The latter shares appearance, name, personality, everything. As I said before, it's no better than lifting the 11th Doctor entirely, sticking him and the TARDIS on the bridge of the Enterprise D, having him steal a uniform, and declare "spandex is cool now."
However, if such a thing were to occur, I would laugh my TRIBBLE off, just to see Picard's reaction. He'd probably start cursing out Q. Q would appear on the bridge and say "don't blame me, this isn't my fault, or even the fault of anyone in the Q continuum" and then vanish. How 11 would respond to Q showing flashing in, saying that, and then flashing out... I have no clue.
If it happened, I'd hope they'd have the approval of both CBS and BBC first.
STO already contains subtle references and you don't see me complaining. The Ferasans are obviously Kzinti. Big freaking teeth, grumpy, telepathic... The only thing wrong with them being kzinti are they're blue, not called Kzinti, and the females are sentient (though they could be from Ring World which would explain all 3 problems quite nicely).
A similarity between Voth and Silurians does not equate to a reference or a swipe. As I pointed out before, Bill and Ted use a telephone booth for time travel, not as a reference to Doctor Who, but to avoid referencing Back to the Future with the original metal van idea. The producers of Bill and Ted were ignorant of Doctor Who. Infact, more than half of all Americans still are ignorant of it. I even saw one person say it's a rip off of Bill and Ted after I showed it to them.
One thing I'd like to squash is this whole "But look at X, it has all these differences but it OBVIOUSLY came from here." So? At least they changed it substantially. Just as an example (this argument applies to any and ALL similar instances), tribbles look nothing like flat cats and they aren't called flat cats either. The only differences between Mather Jones Smith and Martha Jones is that they took the last name of the Doctor's most common pseudonym (Smith from John Smith) and affixed it to her last name. That's it, everything else is the same. They even have a quote from her out of the show in the bio.
It's not references that's the problem, it's how obvious they are about it. You could take Martha Jones Smith exactly as she is in STO, drop her back into Doctor Who and the Doctor would be like "Smith? Your last name is smith? I thought it was jones" and she would say "actually one my middle name is Jones." and then they'd get on with their lives as if the incident never happened. That's how much of a direct and obvious lift it is. I prefer subtle references (tribbles), not blunt (Dr Martha Jones Smith) in my Star Trek.
There's subtle (tribbles are a far more subtle reference to flat cats), and there's obvious (Dr Martha Jones, and Dr Martha Jones Smith). The former has no physical traits or shared name. The latter shares appearance, name, personality, everything. As I said before, it's no better than lifting the 11th Doctor entirely, sticking him and the TARDIS on the bridge of the Enterprise D, having him steal a uniform, and declare "spandex is cool now."
However, if such a thing were to occur, I would laugh my TRIBBLE off, just to see Picard's reaction. He'd probably start cursing out Q. Q would appear on the bridge and say "don't blame me, this isn't my fault, or even the fault of anyone in the Q continuum" and then vanish. How 11 would respond to Q showing flashing in, saying that, and then flashing out... I have no clue.
If it happened, I'd hope they'd have the approval of both CBS and BBC first.
STO already contains subtle references and you don't see me complaining. The Ferasans are obviously Kzinti. Big freaking teeth, grumpy, telepathic... The only thing wrong with them being kzinti are they're blue, not called Kzinti, and the females are sentient (though they could be from Ring World which would explain all 3 problems quite nicely).
the main similarity between Voth and Silurians is the backstory. Any superficial similarities aren't enough to count as a rip or even an homage.
The Martha Jones Doff doesn't look much like the Dr. Who char. Both have medical skills which makes sense, but the actual appearance of the Doff isn't the same. Besides.... the Dr. Who char is Martha Smith-Jones.
the main similarity between Voth and Silurians is the backstory. Any superficial similarities aren't enough to count as a rip or even an homage.
The Martha Jones Doff doesn't look much like the Dr. Who char. Both have medical skills which makes sense, but the actual appearance of the Doff isn't the same. Besides.... the Dr. Who char is Martha Smith-Jones.
Ok, so the both made exodus when the asteroid was coming (turns out there were two asteroids btw, 300k years apart from each other, but that's neither here nor there). Big deal. There's older stories where humans leave the planet when they would have been doomed if they didn't. I don't see a problem here. I find the similarities between the Voth and the Silurians to be entirely superficial, as you put it.
Also, I find the similarities in the appearance to be remarkably spot on. Especially when you look at the wikipedia article on Martha Jones. They're both look in the same direction, wearing the same color jacket, and they both have their hair up. For Martha Jones Smith it's in a bun, for the real Martha Jones her hair is probably too brittle after all the straightener in her hair to put into a proper bun so it's fanned out. Big deal, the portraits are made with the character creator, not by sketch. So it's as close as you can get it. Close enough for me.
A similarity between Voth and Silurians does not equate to a reference or a swipe...
One thing I'd like to squash is this whole "But look at X, it has all these differences but it OBVIOUSLY came from here." So? At least they changed it substantially. Just as an example (this argument applies to any and ALL similar instances), tribbles look nothing like flat cats and they aren't called flat cats either. The only differences between Mather Jones Smith and Martha Jones is that they took the last name of the Doctor's most common pseudonym (Smith from John Smith) and affixed it to her last name. That's it, everything else is the same. They even have a quote from her out of the show in the bio.
It's not references that's the problem, it's how obvious they are about it. You could take Martha Jones Smith exactly as she is in STO, drop her back into Doctor Who and the Doctor would be like "Smith? Your last name is smith? I thought it was jones" and she would say "actually one my middle name is Jones." and then they'd get on with their lives as if the incident never happened. That's how much of a direct and obvious lift it is. I prefer subtle references (tribbles), not blunt (Dr Martha Jones Smith) in my Star Trek...
...Q would appear on the bridge and say "don't blame me, this isn't my fault, or even the fault of anyone in the Q continuum" and then vanish. How 11 would respond to Q showing flashing in, saying that, and then flashing out... I have no clue.
If it happened, I'd hope they'd have the approval of both CBS and BBC first.
STO already contains subtle references and you don't see me complaining...
Just that. Borrowing is not crossover.
Artists have been borrowing from each other since the beginning of time. Ars gratia artis, as they say. That is how the field is advanced. Crossovers are something else, unimaginative appropriation and contrary to internal consistency.
Shakespeare borrowed basically every character and plot he ever wrote, and as with Star Trek, he made contemporary political commentary. He did not insert characters copypaste from other works and have them interact seamlessly with discrete fictional worlds. To do so would have made his works unfunny and disjointed.
And as has been said many times but there are those who refuse to acknowledge it - the common theme is that the crossover/pop reference nonsense is rife in MMOs today. Not Star Trek. The contemporary MMO field. In all things (e.g., lockboxes) STO is an MMO first, Star Trek second.
Artists have been borrowing from each other since the beginning of time. Ars gratia artis, as they say. That is how the field is advanced. Crossovers are something else, unimaginative appropriation and contrary to internal consistency.
Shakespeare borrowed basically every character and plot he ever wrote, and as with Star Trek, he made contemporary political commentary. He did not insert characters copypaste from other works and have them interact seamlessly with discrete fictional worlds. To do so would have made his works unfunny and disjointed.
And as has been said many times but there are those who refuse to acknowledge it - the common theme is that the crossover/pop reference nonsense is rife in MMOs today. Not Star Trek. The contemporary MMO field. In all things (e.g., lockboxes) STO is an MMO first, Star Trek second.
Sorry um... Do you mean Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, William Stanley, or some other Shakespeare?
Martha Jones is lifted straight out of Doctor Who, thrust onto my ship, and is interacting seemlessly with my crew and any Star Trek characters I send her on a doff mission to work with. So I hardly see how your point is relevant.
Also, are you seriously calling doffs "art"? Being a game developer myself, I do consider games to be an art (especially certain games), but really? doffs? art?
Martha Jones is lifted straight out of Doctor Who, thrust onto my ship, and is interacting seemlessly with my crew and any Star Trek characters I send her on a doff mission to work with. So I hardly see how your point is relevant.
Then you do not grasp my point. We are talking about plot/setting, not game mechanics. I could make a Mickey Mouse doff and it would still "interact seamlessly".
Also, are you seriously calling doffs "art"? Being a game developer myself, I do consider games to be an art (especially certain games), but really? doffs? art?
I don't understand the intent of your sarcasm. Are you saying you disagree with my claim that Shakespeare borrowed most of his characters and plots?
Then you do not grasp my point. We are talking about plot/setting, not game mechanics. I could make a Mickey Mouse doff and it would still "interact seamlessly".
Hamburgers are food but buns are not?
I wasn't being sarcastic. I was simply asking which of the authors that called themselves "Shakespeare" during that time you're referring to. There's a quite a few people who used that name to avoid persecution due to Queen Elizabeth I's hatred of the theater. Quite a few playwrights were dragged before the Star Chamber during those days.
There's also no solid evidence that a real Shakespeare ever lived. Take his will for instance, it's signed several times, each time in different handwriting. And why would a man that supposedly mastered all the knowledge of Europe at the time, and the most prolific playwright of the era die not leaving a single book in his will? I find that rather hard to believe. Books were worth their weight in gold back then, and he was supposed to be the mot prolific author of the time and the most famous author of all time. Surely he would have left at least a manuscript in his will. While he was supposedly out traveling the world and learning, who was holding the horses back at the theater? All that exists for him is this large canon of historians surmising about Shakespeare and writing it down as if it were fact. There's absolutely zero contemporary evidence that he ever lived.
As for your remark about Mickey Mouse, I don't see how what you said changes any of my points here. For that matter, it seems to me that you're trying to apply a double standard. "Can have seemless integration of copypasted characters from other franchises here, but you can't have them there."
You are talking way beyond your knowledge - and it shows. Probably from nonsense you heard on History Channel.
There is no serious question as to the historical veracity of the man we know as William Shakespeare. Of course there are stupid 'what-ifs' on TV about how maybe Jesus or Moses or Columbus or anyone else wasn't 'real'. Those kinds of arguments sound plausible only when the few facts that support them (the poorly documented "dark period" in his life) are emphasized while disregarding the mountains of facts that hard-counter them (e.g., the letters of Shakespeare and his rivals and his being singled out by name in those letters and in lists of citizens and officers of towns he lived in).
To even make such an argument is like suggesting the fictionality of the moon landing then presuming to be an expert on aerospace. It removes any pretense of knowledge or credibility.
QE1 was a highly literate patron of the arts and attended theatre regularly; your claim that she was inherently hostile to it because of the turbulent political times corroborates this impression.
Shakespeare's will was itself (perhaps fittingly) a satire, and like many creative geniuses he died bitter and alone, alienated from his wife and family. Shakespeare, like most British, always felt oppressed by crass pecuniary needs and how that affected his work. His will probably reflected that too.
The rest of your response is obstinate. You are refusing to engage what I said because it hard counters the specious claims you made. The fact that a Mickey Mouse doff is technically feasible in no way means that such a doff would be appropriate or internally consistent. That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts does not undermine the contribution of the parts to the whole; doffs are a component of the game and make it what is as much as anything else.
Anyway, this is a gross digression. Bottom line is that crossovers and crass pop culture references are a contemporary fad in MMOs. If you doubt this go try out some others. STO doesn't exist in a vacuum, but like every other franchise its PR people like to pretend it does.
I wasn't being sarcastic. I was simply asking which of the authors that called themselves "Shakespeare" during that time you're referring to. There's a quite a few people who used that name to avoid persecution due to Queen Elizabeth I's hatred of the theater. Quite a few playwrights were dragged before the Star Chamber during those days.
I agree with you on the idea that STO's references aren't clever or adapted enough most of the time.
I can't say I do on Shakespeare. That's a load of tawdry aristocratic nonsense, conspiracy theories used to sell poorly done investigative accounts. However, the theory that multiple fake Shakespeares shared the pseudonym is a new turn on an old loaf of baloney.
There is no more compelling evidence that Shakespeare was a pseudonym than that George Washington was a French speaking Somalian. All it shows is that if enough aristocrats and aristocratic sympathizers invent the right questions, anything can become a mystery... or a conspiracy.
William Shakespeare was a flesh and blood man. I'd stake my life on that fact.
Shakespeare's will was itself (perhaps fittingly) a satire, and like many creative geniuses he died bitter and alone, alienated from his wife and family. Shakespeare, like most British, always felt oppressed by crass pecuniary needs and how that affected his work. His will probably reflected that too.
I thought he was drinking with his friends the night before?
I can't say I do on Shakespeare. That's a load of tawdry aristocratic nonsense, conspiracy theories used to sell poorly done investigative accounts. However, the theory that multiple fake Shakespeares shared the pseudonym is a new turn on an old loaf of baloney.
You are talking way beyond your knowledge - and it shows. Probably from nonsense you heard on History Channel.
Actually, no. I don't even own a TV, there's nothing but garbage on there. Thank you both, however, for completely dismissing it out of hand rather than looking into it.
There is no more compelling evidence that Shakespeare was a pseudonym than that George Washington was a French speaking Somalian. All it shows is that if enough aristocrats and aristocratic sympathizers invent the right questions, anything can become a mystery... or a conspiracy.
We are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not, however, entitled to our own facts. There's plenty of evidence, including linguistic... seeing as how "to shake a spear" was once a phrase used to describe an act of protest . Then there's the fact that statistical analysis of the plays reveals that there is too much of a deviation in writing style from play to play. There's also this huge selection of other plays that's not normally included in the "works of shakespeare" but are also attributed to him. They're left out because they've been conclusively identified as having come from people using the name as a pseudonym.
I fail to see how this is aristocratic when 1: I am not an aristocrat. 2: I already pointed out that the whole reason someone would do such a thing is to avoid persecution since the aristocracy was hostile to playwrights at the time. The entire argument is anti-aristocratic if anything else, nor is it a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. It's just people believing what they've been told, uncritically.
William Shakespeare was a flesh and blood man. I'd stake my life on that fact.
Yeah... You go ahead and do that. Me, I'll stake my life on things I can know for certain.
But this is getting derailed... I don't see how duty officers are even remotely comparable to Shakespeare, whether he was really Bacon and Marlowe trying to avoid the gallows or not.
These doffs are singular in that respect. It looks like you are grasping at some pretty fine straws to justify a viewpoint that doesn't stand impartial examination.
Ok, now I recognize your name from in-game chat.
Really, I don't view the doffs as a 'crossover'. It's funny that they have the same name, and even when they say things that remind you of those characters. But whether it's 'really' the same person is left to our imagination. Anyone who really doesn't want 'crossovers' is as free to disregard the similarities as someone who adamantly wants BTTF to be canon. In the end, it's all in our minds. Internal consistency remains, because the only person trying to connect both universes is the person who takes it too literally.
Take a look at my Foundry missions! Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
Seriously, the state of the game currently and your worried about a DOFF name and appearance. I could imagine your pain if the game was canon, but its not.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
DISCLAIMER: If any of my opinions or what I say hurt/offend you. TOUGH. Either deal with it or go cry like the whiny keyboard warrior you probably are.
Actually, no. I don't even own a TV, there's nothing but garbage on there. Thank you both, however, for completely dismissing it out of hand rather than looking into it.
We are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not, however, entitled to our own facts. There's plenty of evidence, including linguistic... seeing as how "to shake a spear" was once a phrase used to describe an act of protest . Then there's the fact that statistical analysis of the plays reveals that there is too much of a deviation in writing style from play to play.
Oh, but we are most definitely entitled to our own facts - after all, we cannot all agree on what ARE facts, now can we?
"To shake a spear" was most definitely a symbol of protest since ancient times, long before the time of Shakespeare. The spear is a symbol of pride in many discrete cultures. In Roman culture, for example, wars were traditionally initiated by ceremonially stating grievances then hurling a single spear into enemy soil. There is something in the human character that makes the act of hurling or shaking spears viscerally emotional. It's neither ambiguous nor uniquely British.
Idiomatic names are ubiquitous in England. Names like Smith, Hall, Butcher, Hill, Hunter, House, Skinner, etc, are common. To use the fact of this man's name as a basis for such an argument is an example of exactly what I described: cherry-picking the odd facts that support the fallacious argument while disregarding the mountains of evidence (i.e., the countless historical incidences of the name linked with this specific man) that hard-counter it.
The writing style argument means nothing because Shakespeare was highly flexible, invented a lot of words and wrote in many different cadences, from tragedy to prose to satire to polemic to farce. It's a far-left-field subjective claim, not a fact. Not to by any means flatter myself by way of comparison, but I consider myself a good writer, and I can modulate my style dramatically depending on my intent. Many other factors such as mood, time and interest play a role. Such is true of all writers and proves nothing.
There's also this huge selection of other plays that's not normally included in the "works of shakespeare" but are also attributed to him. They're left out because they've been conclusively identified as having come from people using the name as a pseudonym.
This is a good example of something else I made reference to: the sort of faulty argument that betrays 'talking beyond one's knowledge'. This kind of reasoning seems plausible to you because it was introduced to you, narrowly married to this particular argument and discrete from a broader understanding of the topic of literary history (i.e., 30-minute TV special).
For if you understood the topic you are discussing you would know that almost every great artist has a host of pretenders that try to appropriate the greatness of the name to aggrandize their own inferior works. Such works are called apocryphal. Do we say Julius Caesar was not a real person because we have additional books that were written under his name but clearly not in his pen?
I fail to see how this is aristocratic when 1: I am not an aristocrat. 2: I already pointed out that the whole reason someone would do such a thing is to avoid persecution since the aristocracy was hostile to playwrights at the time. The entire argument is anti-aristocratic if anything else, nor is it a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. It's just people believing what they've been told, uncritically.
The argument was propounded by aristocrats who are a political lobby like any other. England is a class society. It was in Shakespeare's time, and it is today. England as a class society is arguably the single most defining characteristic of the British culture.
Every culture has its ancient grudges. This contemporary controversy about someone insulting an Islamic prophet does not seem so strange when we watch Virginians still get worked up about Antietam, or Britons insisting they could have won WW2 without American help, or Mexicans still sensitive about the Mexican-American War. Go tell a Jew that monotheism was invented by the Zoroastrians. Go tell a Frenchman that Italy was at least as important to medieval culture as his own country. See how impartially they define what is or is not a 'fact'.
All those topics are ancient history and pure academia but some people still take them very seriously. To those who are outsiders, it's...trivia. But to them it is serious business and they will bend over backwards, make all kinds of specious arguments and posit wild speculation as fact to support their world view.
Strange as it seems to us, the social issues Shakespeare explored are still passionate topics today. Take Hamlet - when the protagonist looks down disdainfully at the raucous drunkeness of his aristocratic family. To us Americans, it's a trivial scene. To the Britons of the time, it was a serious insult to the nobility of the nobles. And today Britons still are bitterly divided about the class system - whether it promotes excellence or apathy and vain self-indulgence.
So it should not seem strange to us that both sides are still busy at work inventing facts to support their world view about a man who did die 600 years ago.
But this is getting derailed... I don't see how duty officers are even remotely comparable to Shakespeare, whether he was really Bacon and Marlowe trying to avoid the gallows or not.
Ars gratia artis.
But allow me to clear the air...
Honestly I thought about it more. I really don't have a problem with novelty crossover doffs (or even world NPCs) in an MMO.
To me, the proper analogy is...a big bowl of whipped cream.
When what you want is a chocolate sundae, with some whipped cream on top.
In this analogy, the chocolate sundae is the lore, the content, the good stuff, and the whipped cream is a whimsical flourish. Now, some people like filling their mouths with whipped cream. It's gross, and it offers little in the way of satisfaction to anyone who isn't a pig. And by the same token there are a lot of hacks who write TRIBBLE like the mostly pretty bad fanfics and comic books set in the Star Trek universe, or the eye-rolling Rambo/Leonidas/MChief-style bios most players create about their characters in-game.
The trend I identified in MMOs, of which this is a single example, of unimaginative crossovers and pasting Star Wars and Dr Who quotes everywhere, is the result of a creativity deficit. We forgive the occasional whimsicality in Star Trek shows because they were for the most part original, instant classics. When that whimsicality becomes the whole of the content, the difference is a picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue and Adam Sandler doing the same.
People have often observed that for his interesting balance of merits and faults, Heretic did manage to maintain an open dialogue with the playerbase. Perhaps he wishes he hadn't. I admit I often wonder if he shares digs at me with his new co-worker Malgayne. Borticus is trying, awkwardly, to do the same.
Anyway, a great deal of my animosity towards this issue is not actually the issue itself but what I see as the patronizingly indirect manner in which the devs have chosen to defend it. Take PokeWoW, for example. A lot of people would have felt better about it if the devs just said, "We thought pokemon is cool and wanted to introduce a clone to our MMO," rather than stand on the stage and BS then forum ban anyone who disagrees.
By the same token, rather than sockpuppeting, or having a mod give lame excuses, the devs ought to have just said, "Well, we thought it was cool. Sorry if you don't agree. We'll try to add more original content." The creativity deficit I identified is inextricable from the gutlessness of MMO firms in dealing with their communities.
And I believe that the community can help by demanding MORE.
(This is a very long post but for those who skipped to the last line I assure you it is worth reading =D)
Comments
False. Saying does not make it so. Pure PWE apologism.
"The actual Star Trek producers" can't be talked about as a lot because they are in fact so diverse. But amongst all of them they've never done that. This has been established.
Well, let's be fair. It's not PWE apologism because this was the idea of the devs and not PWE - but the fact is that it is a faulty attitude on the part of the devs for the reasons examined above.
His quote is "as my father would say: Great scott!".
I lol'ed....
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Here ya go:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Popular_culture_references_in_Star_Trek
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Elmer_Fudd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94%22 is the only reference I can find in google to Zombies and time travel... and the narrator is a Bartender... so +1
My character Tsin'xing
Quite so. The Oscillation Overthruster has appeared on screen in Star Trek multiple times. (From the Buckaroo Banzai movie for those note not knowing the reference). You have to really hunt for it, but it's there.
And Star Trek in genral has made dozens and dozens of pop culture references. Just take a look.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Popular_culture_references_in_Star_Trek
Except for this exact crossover having already been done, in comics, which makes it not at all singular.
You really shouldn't have pointed that out, because it's simply not true. You see, when they originally story boarded Bill and Ted, they used a metal van. You know the kind that you can paint and make out in, or let it get rusty and paint "free candy" on the side and get everybody to shoo their kids away from it.
Anyway the producers decided that having a metal van that travels through time would be too much of a reference to Back to the Future. So they went with a phone booth instead, thinking that they were safe from making references to anything else. They apparently had never watched Doctor Who.
I can see how you came to the conclusion, but if you actually looked up the history of the movie, it was entirely unintentional. It's one of those "nothing new under the sun" cases. Anything you can think of, even if you thought of it entirely on your own, somebody else has already thought of it first. I used to think it was a Doctor Who reference myself, but then I went and looked it up.
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I may start playing the game before series 7 is released just for this. I wonder if there's an Amelia Williams out there somewhere?
I'm still convinced that the entire Enterprise series was one giant Leap for Sam. So anytime Archer is mentioned, there is your Quantum Leap referense! LOL I wouldn't be surprised if there was one in the new box, that just hasn't been seen by anyone on the boards yet.
One of the most widely known and popular aspects of Star Trek was lifted almost directly from a Robert Heinlein novel: Tribbles.
Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" had critters called flat cats which Roddenberry admitted were where tribbles came from. The only differences between flat cats and tribbles is that flat cats have three eyes and lay out flat (though they curl into balls when hybernating). In every other aspect, they are identical.
There was no creativity or originality in Roddenberry's use of tribbles. It wasn't a "nod", it was a fairly direct but good-natured swipe.
My character Tsin'xing
A similarity between Voth and Silurians does not equate to a reference or a swipe. As I pointed out before, Bill and Ted use a telephone booth for time travel, not as a reference to Doctor Who, but to avoid referencing Back to the Future with the original metal van idea. The producers of Bill and Ted were ignorant of Doctor Who. Infact, more than half of all Americans still are ignorant of it. I even saw one person say it's a rip off of Bill and Ted after I showed it to them.
More humanoid dinosaurs, this time a hypothetical species from the real world. Considering the American origin of the following "sapient dinosuar" and the Voyager series, I always thought the Voth were a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapient_dinosaur#Russell_.281982.29 Especially given that these things are a hypothetical projection of a possible sapient dinosaur evolved from Troodon. There's a Star Trek book (First Frontier) featuring this EXACT hypothetical species, in which they call themselves "Clan Ru." Although the Voth are descended from the Hadrosaur, not the Troodon. It's still far more likely a reference to Clan Ru and the Sapient Dinosaur than the Silurians.
One thing I'd like to squash is this whole "But look at X, it has all these differences but it OBVIOUSLY came from here." So? At least they changed it substantially. Just as an example (this argument applies to any and ALL similar instances), tribbles look nothing like flat cats and they aren't called flat cats either. The only differences between Mather Jones Smith and Martha Jones is that they took the last name of the Doctor's most common pseudonym (Smith from John Smith) and affixed it to her last name. That's it, everything else is the same. They even have a quote from her out of the show in the bio.
It's not references that's the problem, it's how obvious they are about it. You could take Martha Jones Smith exactly as she is in STO, drop her back into Doctor Who and the Doctor would be like "Smith? Your last name is smith? I thought it was jones" and she would say "actually one my middle name is Jones." and then they'd get on with their lives as if the incident never happened. That's how much of a direct and obvious lift it is. I prefer subtle references (tribbles), not blunt (Dr Martha Jones Smith) in my Star Trek.
There's subtle (tribbles are a far more subtle reference to flat cats), and there's obvious (Dr Martha Jones, and Dr Martha Jones Smith). The former has no physical traits or shared name. The latter shares appearance, name, personality, everything. As I said before, it's no better than lifting the 11th Doctor entirely, sticking him and the TARDIS on the bridge of the Enterprise D, having him steal a uniform, and declare "spandex is cool now."
However, if such a thing were to occur, I would laugh my TRIBBLE off, just to see Picard's reaction. He'd probably start cursing out Q. Q would appear on the bridge and say "don't blame me, this isn't my fault, or even the fault of anyone in the Q continuum" and then vanish. How 11 would respond to Q showing flashing in, saying that, and then flashing out... I have no clue.
If it happened, I'd hope they'd have the approval of both CBS and BBC first.
STO already contains subtle references and you don't see me complaining. The Ferasans are obviously Kzinti. Big freaking teeth, grumpy, telepathic... The only thing wrong with them being kzinti are they're blue, not called Kzinti, and the females are sentient (though they could be from Ring World which would explain all 3 problems quite nicely).
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The Martha Jones Doff doesn't look much like the Dr. Who char. Both have medical skills which makes sense, but the actual appearance of the Doff isn't the same. Besides.... the Dr. Who char is Martha Smith-Jones.
My character Tsin'xing
Ok, so the both made exodus when the asteroid was coming (turns out there were two asteroids btw, 300k years apart from each other, but that's neither here nor there). Big deal. There's older stories where humans leave the planet when they would have been doomed if they didn't. I don't see a problem here. I find the similarities between the Voth and the Silurians to be entirely superficial, as you put it.
Also, I find the similarities in the appearance to be remarkably spot on. Especially when you look at the wikipedia article on Martha Jones. They're both look in the same direction, wearing the same color jacket, and they both have their hair up. For Martha Jones Smith it's in a bun, for the real Martha Jones her hair is probably too brittle after all the straightener in her hair to put into a proper bun so it's fanned out. Big deal, the portraits are made with the character creator, not by sketch. So it's as close as you can get it. Close enough for me.
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Just that. Borrowing is not crossover.
Artists have been borrowing from each other since the beginning of time. Ars gratia artis, as they say. That is how the field is advanced. Crossovers are something else, unimaginative appropriation and contrary to internal consistency.
Shakespeare borrowed basically every character and plot he ever wrote, and as with Star Trek, he made contemporary political commentary. He did not insert characters copypaste from other works and have them interact seamlessly with discrete fictional worlds. To do so would have made his works unfunny and disjointed.
And as has been said many times but there are those who refuse to acknowledge it - the common theme is that the crossover/pop reference nonsense is rife in MMOs today. Not Star Trek. The contemporary MMO field. In all things (e.g., lockboxes) STO is an MMO first, Star Trek second.
Sorry um... Do you mean Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, William Stanley, or some other Shakespeare?
Martha Jones is lifted straight out of Doctor Who, thrust onto my ship, and is interacting seemlessly with my crew and any Star Trek characters I send her on a doff mission to work with. So I hardly see how your point is relevant.
Also, are you seriously calling doffs "art"? Being a game developer myself, I do consider games to be an art (especially certain games), but really? doffs? art?
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I don't understand the intent of your sarcasm. Are you saying you disagree with my claim that Shakespeare borrowed most of his characters and plots?
Then you do not grasp my point. We are talking about plot/setting, not game mechanics. I could make a Mickey Mouse doff and it would still "interact seamlessly".
Hamburgers are food but buns are not?
I wasn't being sarcastic. I was simply asking which of the authors that called themselves "Shakespeare" during that time you're referring to. There's a quite a few people who used that name to avoid persecution due to Queen Elizabeth I's hatred of the theater. Quite a few playwrights were dragged before the Star Chamber during those days.
There's also no solid evidence that a real Shakespeare ever lived. Take his will for instance, it's signed several times, each time in different handwriting. And why would a man that supposedly mastered all the knowledge of Europe at the time, and the most prolific playwright of the era die not leaving a single book in his will? I find that rather hard to believe. Books were worth their weight in gold back then, and he was supposed to be the mot prolific author of the time and the most famous author of all time. Surely he would have left at least a manuscript in his will. While he was supposedly out traveling the world and learning, who was holding the horses back at the theater? All that exists for him is this large canon of historians surmising about Shakespeare and writing it down as if it were fact. There's absolutely zero contemporary evidence that he ever lived.
As for your remark about Mickey Mouse, I don't see how what you said changes any of my points here. For that matter, it seems to me that you're trying to apply a double standard. "Can have seemless integration of copypasted characters from other franchises here, but you can't have them there."
Hamburgers? Buns? What are you going on about?
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There is no serious question as to the historical veracity of the man we know as William Shakespeare. Of course there are stupid 'what-ifs' on TV about how maybe Jesus or Moses or Columbus or anyone else wasn't 'real'. Those kinds of arguments sound plausible only when the few facts that support them (the poorly documented "dark period" in his life) are emphasized while disregarding the mountains of facts that hard-counter them (e.g., the letters of Shakespeare and his rivals and his being singled out by name in those letters and in lists of citizens and officers of towns he lived in).
To even make such an argument is like suggesting the fictionality of the moon landing then presuming to be an expert on aerospace. It removes any pretense of knowledge or credibility.
QE1 was a highly literate patron of the arts and attended theatre regularly; your claim that she was inherently hostile to it because of the turbulent political times corroborates this impression.
Shakespeare's will was itself (perhaps fittingly) a satire, and like many creative geniuses he died bitter and alone, alienated from his wife and family. Shakespeare, like most British, always felt oppressed by crass pecuniary needs and how that affected his work. His will probably reflected that too.
The rest of your response is obstinate. You are refusing to engage what I said because it hard counters the specious claims you made. The fact that a Mickey Mouse doff is technically feasible in no way means that such a doff would be appropriate or internally consistent. That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts does not undermine the contribution of the parts to the whole; doffs are a component of the game and make it what is as much as anything else.
Anyway, this is a gross digression. Bottom line is that crossovers and crass pop culture references are a contemporary fad in MMOs. If you doubt this go try out some others. STO doesn't exist in a vacuum, but like every other franchise its PR people like to pretend it does.
I agree with you on the idea that STO's references aren't clever or adapted enough most of the time.
I can't say I do on Shakespeare. That's a load of tawdry aristocratic nonsense, conspiracy theories used to sell poorly done investigative accounts. However, the theory that multiple fake Shakespeares shared the pseudonym is a new turn on an old loaf of baloney.
There is no more compelling evidence that Shakespeare was a pseudonym than that George Washington was a French speaking Somalian. All it shows is that if enough aristocrats and aristocratic sympathizers invent the right questions, anything can become a mystery... or a conspiracy.
William Shakespeare was a flesh and blood man. I'd stake my life on that fact.
I thought he was drinking with his friends the night before?
Actually, no. I don't even own a TV, there's nothing but garbage on there. Thank you both, however, for completely dismissing it out of hand rather than looking into it.
We are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not, however, entitled to our own facts. There's plenty of evidence, including linguistic... seeing as how "to shake a spear" was once a phrase used to describe an act of protest . Then there's the fact that statistical analysis of the plays reveals that there is too much of a deviation in writing style from play to play. There's also this huge selection of other plays that's not normally included in the "works of shakespeare" but are also attributed to him. They're left out because they've been conclusively identified as having come from people using the name as a pseudonym.
I fail to see how this is aristocratic when 1: I am not an aristocrat. 2: I already pointed out that the whole reason someone would do such a thing is to avoid persecution since the aristocracy was hostile to playwrights at the time. The entire argument is anti-aristocratic if anything else, nor is it a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. It's just people believing what they've been told, uncritically.
Yeah... You go ahead and do that. Me, I'll stake my life on things I can know for certain.
But this is getting derailed... I don't see how duty officers are even remotely comparable to Shakespeare, whether he was really Bacon and Marlowe trying to avoid the gallows or not.
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Ok, now I recognize your name from in-game chat.
Really, I don't view the doffs as a 'crossover'. It's funny that they have the same name, and even when they say things that remind you of those characters. But whether it's 'really' the same person is left to our imagination. Anyone who really doesn't want 'crossovers' is as free to disregard the similarities as someone who adamantly wants BTTF to be canon. In the end, it's all in our minds. Internal consistency remains, because the only person trying to connect both universes is the person who takes it too literally.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Four words for you....
Millenium
Falcon
First
Contact
Seriously, the state of the game currently and your worried about a DOFF name and appearance. I could imagine your pain if the game was canon, but its not.
DISCLAIMER: If any of my opinions or what I say hurt/offend you. TOUGH. Either deal with it or go cry like the whiny keyboard warrior you probably are.
Then where did you get this idea? Be specific.
Oh, but we are most definitely entitled to our own facts - after all, we cannot all agree on what ARE facts, now can we?
"To shake a spear" was most definitely a symbol of protest since ancient times, long before the time of Shakespeare. The spear is a symbol of pride in many discrete cultures. In Roman culture, for example, wars were traditionally initiated by ceremonially stating grievances then hurling a single spear into enemy soil. There is something in the human character that makes the act of hurling or shaking spears viscerally emotional. It's neither ambiguous nor uniquely British.
Idiomatic names are ubiquitous in England. Names like Smith, Hall, Butcher, Hill, Hunter, House, Skinner, etc, are common. To use the fact of this man's name as a basis for such an argument is an example of exactly what I described: cherry-picking the odd facts that support the fallacious argument while disregarding the mountains of evidence (i.e., the countless historical incidences of the name linked with this specific man) that hard-counter it.
The writing style argument means nothing because Shakespeare was highly flexible, invented a lot of words and wrote in many different cadences, from tragedy to prose to satire to polemic to farce. It's a far-left-field subjective claim, not a fact. Not to by any means flatter myself by way of comparison, but I consider myself a good writer, and I can modulate my style dramatically depending on my intent. Many other factors such as mood, time and interest play a role. Such is true of all writers and proves nothing.
This is a good example of something else I made reference to: the sort of faulty argument that betrays 'talking beyond one's knowledge'. This kind of reasoning seems plausible to you because it was introduced to you, narrowly married to this particular argument and discrete from a broader understanding of the topic of literary history (i.e., 30-minute TV special).
For if you understood the topic you are discussing you would know that almost every great artist has a host of pretenders that try to appropriate the greatness of the name to aggrandize their own inferior works. Such works are called apocryphal. Do we say Julius Caesar was not a real person because we have additional books that were written under his name but clearly not in his pen?
The argument was propounded by aristocrats who are a political lobby like any other. England is a class society. It was in Shakespeare's time, and it is today. England as a class society is arguably the single most defining characteristic of the British culture.
Every culture has its ancient grudges. This contemporary controversy about someone insulting an Islamic prophet does not seem so strange when we watch Virginians still get worked up about Antietam, or Britons insisting they could have won WW2 without American help, or Mexicans still sensitive about the Mexican-American War. Go tell a Jew that monotheism was invented by the Zoroastrians. Go tell a Frenchman that Italy was at least as important to medieval culture as his own country. See how impartially they define what is or is not a 'fact'.
All those topics are ancient history and pure academia but some people still take them very seriously. To those who are outsiders, it's...trivia. But to them it is serious business and they will bend over backwards, make all kinds of specious arguments and posit wild speculation as fact to support their world view.
Strange as it seems to us, the social issues Shakespeare explored are still passionate topics today. Take Hamlet - when the protagonist looks down disdainfully at the raucous drunkeness of his aristocratic family. To us Americans, it's a trivial scene. To the Britons of the time, it was a serious insult to the nobility of the nobles. And today Britons still are bitterly divided about the class system - whether it promotes excellence or apathy and vain self-indulgence.
So it should not seem strange to us that both sides are still busy at work inventing facts to support their world view about a man who did die 600 years ago.
Ars gratia artis.
But allow me to clear the air...
Honestly I thought about it more. I really don't have a problem with novelty crossover doffs (or even world NPCs) in an MMO.
To me, the proper analogy is...a big bowl of whipped cream.
When what you want is a chocolate sundae, with some whipped cream on top.
In this analogy, the chocolate sundae is the lore, the content, the good stuff, and the whipped cream is a whimsical flourish. Now, some people like filling their mouths with whipped cream. It's gross, and it offers little in the way of satisfaction to anyone who isn't a pig. And by the same token there are a lot of hacks who write TRIBBLE like the mostly pretty bad fanfics and comic books set in the Star Trek universe, or the eye-rolling Rambo/Leonidas/MChief-style bios most players create about their characters in-game.
The trend I identified in MMOs, of which this is a single example, of unimaginative crossovers and pasting Star Wars and Dr Who quotes everywhere, is the result of a creativity deficit. We forgive the occasional whimsicality in Star Trek shows because they were for the most part original, instant classics. When that whimsicality becomes the whole of the content, the difference is a picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue and Adam Sandler doing the same.
People have often observed that for his interesting balance of merits and faults, Heretic did manage to maintain an open dialogue with the playerbase. Perhaps he wishes he hadn't. I admit I often wonder if he shares digs at me with his new co-worker Malgayne. Borticus is trying, awkwardly, to do the same.
Anyway, a great deal of my animosity towards this issue is not actually the issue itself but what I see as the patronizingly indirect manner in which the devs have chosen to defend it. Take PokeWoW, for example. A lot of people would have felt better about it if the devs just said, "We thought pokemon is cool and wanted to introduce a clone to our MMO," rather than stand on the stage and BS then forum ban anyone who disagrees.
By the same token, rather than sockpuppeting, or having a mod give lame excuses, the devs ought to have just said, "Well, we thought it was cool. Sorry if you don't agree. We'll try to add more original content." The creativity deficit I identified is inextricable from the gutlessness of MMO firms in dealing with their communities.
And I believe that the community can help by demanding MORE.
(This is a very long post but for those who skipped to the last line I assure you it is worth reading =D)