As a Scotsman I should be insulted but I always play a dwarf in D&D so I’ll allow it
OP did Wil Wheaton wrong.
OP didnt do Wil Wheaton wrong, the writers that came up with Wesley Crusher were the ones who did Wil Wheaton wrong.
Wesley certainly is annoying for his first couple appearances, but I don’t really think we should hold season 1 against any TNG character. He has good moments later, and The First Duty is a straight up excellent episode.
On the other hand, hobbits aren’t annoying either. They didn’t ask to get roped into all that nonsense. Elves are the annoying ones in LotR.
“I will take the ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way.” - Frodo
(I know, he didn’t have much of a choice, but I had to lol)Ya got me. But he did at least try to unload it on Gandalf and Galadriel.
The human one made me chortle.
Could have said “space horny (human)”
Isn’t the “orc” an uruk-hai and the “goblin” the actual orc? I like the movies, but I’m no expert. Perhaps it’s on purpose and part of the joke?
This is also doing hobbits dirty.Correct. The goblins we see in LotR are in Moria.
Also the goblin king’s lair in The Hobbit.
uruk-hai are born from dead elves, twisted by suramans magic, goblins and orcs are seperate species. basically they are reanimated soldiers(akin to frankesteins monster), or Kull warriors of sg1.
Uh, two towers made it pretty clear the Uruk-hai were cross bred- orcs with humans. This made them larger, more disciplined and more tolerant of sunlight.
Silmarillion says that the original orcs came from elves who were corrupted by Morgoth, way back when. (Morgoth is to Sauron as the Valar are to Gandalf. Sauron, Gandalf and Saurumon were all Maia;)
Scotty might be a space dwarf, but O’Brien is a space hobbit through and through.
Keiko is Gollum
This makes Keiko being a teacher even funnier.
I’d have picked Tom Bombadill over Gandalf to line up against Q
I’d have made Quark a space dwarf (loves gold pressedlatinum, short in stature) and I’d have made romulans space goblins (descended from space elves, evil).
Romulans could also line up against the Black Numenoreans, fits the split from the good line of Numenoreans, Vulcans. Either is good though
I can see the Quark thing, especially with the Dwavern rings enhancing their lover of material things
I just figured I tend to like epic quests with funny looking people.
Both hobbit and space hobbit defy all odds to inexplicably save the day. It’s apt.
I would argue that overt mysticism is what, largely, separates fantasy from science fiction. So something like Star Wars would, in my mind, be far more space fantasy than Star Trek.
Mind melds, Q magic, and the Prophets from DS9 are all overt magic. Like why can only Vulcans do mind melds? If it were science you’d be able to create a technology that would be able to do it. But nah in Star Trek, they don’t even try to develop technology to do mind melds because it’s something everyone knows only Vulcans can do… because it’s magic.
When Q was temporarily human, he mentioned being able to change physics constants. Geordi wasn’t like “holy shit that totally changes how we think about science” he’s just like “we can’t do that because we aren’t Q.”
The powers that aliens have in Star Trek is treated as being magic by the people in the universe. Some aliens just have magical abilities and nobody questions it.
Meanwhile in Star Wars, all of the powers the Jedi have are explained by microscopic organisms that can be measured with a device. Sure nobody likes that, because we actually do want Star Wars to be fantasy and not science fiction. But (for better or worse) Star Wars is more science fiction and Star Trek is more space fantasy.
There are human telepaths in Star Trek, too, Miranda Jones comes to mind.
There’s also Landru, who built a telepathic computer that controlled the entire population.
Pretty sure the universal translator and combadges all work off telepathy, but that could just be my head cannon.
I do agree it’s all basically space-magic; though.
Also, the engineering in Star Trek is largely more likely than in Star Trek. (For example, warp drive violates causality,)
Vulcans are telepathic and there are technologies in the Star Trek cannon that can allow mind reading or inhibit telepathic ability.
The Q and the Prophets are higher dimensional beings.
These powers are never treated as magic just not currently achievable. In fact there are whole episodes of each series (TNG’s Who Watches the Watchers is one) that deal with the idea that not understanding technology doesn’t make it magic. Most of the crew of Deep Space 9 refer to the Prophets as ‘Wormhole Aliens’ specifically because they don’t believe their powers are magic or godly.
they arnt using magic lol, Q and prophets are multidimensional beings that can alter reality/change dimensions. its equivalent to a higher tier civilization like type 6-7 ish. also explains some of them like the prophets, organians, douwd are beings that were original organic but evolved to beings of pure energy and thought. star wars on the other hand uses actual magic, look at night sisters.
They’re both space operas, but Star Wars is pretty much pure “science fantasy” where Star Trek is soft science fiction, based in the idea of speculation and morality.
Every true Scotsman knows about space
Dwarf =? Scotsman
That is correct.
the Dwarfs in the original fairy tale lore of western Europe were just regular elves who liked mountains and mining.
dark elves of norse legends would romulans.
Aye, lad.
Side rant, Lord Of The rings Orcs are problematically categorized as evil yet are sentient and at least in the movies (I haven’t read the books) that is never examined beyond providing the heroes cannon fodder and evil army to pillage the hero’s home.
Klingons on the otherhand have been immensely fleshed out as a vibrant complex species with many subcultures that still exhibit a capacity and willingness to engage in violence that feels decidedly inhuman (but also of course quintessentially human too) and Star Trek subverts and confirms the stereotype of Klingons in a confusing way that only truly subversive storytelling bothers to.
Klingons could “just” have been Lord Of The Rings Space Orcs, but the writers of Star Trek have consistently chosen more interesting possibilities to expand behind the initial facade of who Klingons appear to be at first glance. For one humans don’t win against the space orcs, they find other ways to end the war/wars that leverage an understanding of Klingons and making political gestures that are salient to their culture.
I don’t mean this as a huge takedown or critique I just think the juxtaposition is interesting.
Same thing with the ferengi at least in DS9.
So, orcs were corrupted elves, by Morgoth (who was Sauron’s boss,)
Which is why Sauron doesn’t have complete control over them- though Morgoth would have.
never read the book
ARRRGGGGG!!!
dies inside
OK, yes in the films the Orcs make little to no sense and are nothing outside of comic relief cannon fodder, but in the books they aren’t like that at all. In the books almost everything “evil” is an artificial or evil magic version of something else as a way to counter it, like the Nazgul were an attempt to fight against Eagles. Orc were actually the first elves to come into existence, and the evil bad guy who was Sauron’s boss corrupted and tortured them until they were orcs. They are meant to be a counter to elves, but making people out of evil motives and discordant thinking isn’t that great an idea, so they aren’t very good at this. but they do have their own language and family units, not weird birthing pits, and make their own choices, there’s a few longer parts in the books where you’re just following the orcs along. after the war the orc’s are pretty pissed they got roped into the whole evil army thing, and vow to never follow “big bosses” again. Also Aragorn gives them their own lands. The humans and other beings that fought for Sauron were all roped into it with his lies and cunning, and were pretty upset when they found out all the horrible shit Sauron was up to, in the books no one’s really THAT evil, and the orc’s and goblins can be pretty goofy, but also very normal humanoid type of things.
Fairly sure that the orcs were able to be compelled of Sauron focused on them and wanted them to do something; as a result of morgoth’s corruption.
After the war, they were freed and could now make their own choices.
ok cool good to know some more lore!
Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War actually explore orcish culture and morality, the latter game more than the former. Ultimately, they’ve spent all their lives in a Morgoth and/or Sauron cult. The ones that don’t buy into it are more chill, and some show signs that they could be decent or even heroic in different circumstances. Eltariel is able to make some progress deprogramming a couple, but siding with Talion, Celebrimbor, or even Eltariel mostly just has the orcs cast them as their new Dark Lord. It’s probably possible to get the bulk of the orc population into a better place, but it would take many generations of concerted effort at a massive scale. They’d have to replace their entire belief system and most of their way of life just to leave the cult. Additionally, even when not following a Dark Lord, the orcs culturally favor bloodshed to settle conflicts. This isn’t too big of a problem with other orcs since they can take shockingly large amounts of punishment without dying, but it’s a huge problem when interacting with anyone else. And even that’s probably solvable without wholesale destruction of orcish culture, but everything would take so damn long that it’s well beyond the scope of LOTR.
To be fair, Klingons were “just” Space Russians in the TOS era. It wasn’t until after after Praxis/Chernobyl when the Soviet allegory ceased being topical, that they had to find other themes for them to embody.
Even in TOS the Klingons weren’t as flat as orcs are in LOTR.
Roddenberry always tried to make sure their motivations made them “heroes in their own story”, while Tolkien wrote orcs as evil by nature.
Yeah but they didn’t stay that way, DS9 had a Klingon restaurant on it!
Same thing with the ferengi at least in DS9.
I dunno about LOTR goblins specifically, but the general mythology of them is pretty similar to Ferenghi culture. But I bet they allow their women to work and wear clothes.
Idk, goblins in other fantasy maybe but in the LOTR movies they are just ugly evil creatures to fear and kill.
The ferengi are very complex despite their initial comically campy hyperbolic space alien shtick of being hypercapitalist.
Humans are the real space orcs
Would make more sense to compare LOTR to Star Wars because it’s usually given the space opera fantasy title. Star Trek is just regular science fiction.
Only Star Trek fans that think it being science fiction makes it better than space fantasy keep saying that. But really both Star Trek and Star Wars are space fantasy, with Star Trek being more fantasy than Star Wars. It’s basically Homer’s Odyssey but with space ships. They’re constantly meeting magical beings that put them into moral quandries.
In Star Wars there’s only one magic, and in canon it’s the result microscopic organisms that can be measured with technology. Yes it’s treated as a religion, but science fiction is about how things affect a society, and people having mind powers probably would be considered like a religion. It’s actually strange that (other than the Bajorans) nobody in Star Trek develops religions around the magical powers ever other alien race has.
star trek is star wars but with more stem relevancy/ potential theoretical future application, while star wars is sci fi with drama and has Magic/ metaphysics, not the same, which scifi abhors using in thier drama. star wars is more closer to MCU/dcu(where there is magi-tech, a little of unexplainable science plus the christian god themes) than star trek actually.
Star Wars does have more than one sorta mystical religions too. It’s not just relegated to the force or mideochloreans. The Nightsisters of Dathomir have their own magic (makes them force sensitive as well) they get from the planet itself; is a good example of this.
*hot space elf
