He is closer now and the search is on

[austin_dern]

I am, without shame even given the last movie and TV series, a Star Trek fan, and for the most part it's fun. It sometimes leads me into some great stupid arguments, though. I left one forum entirely after a stupid argument about ocean-going boats in the 24th century. (Not Usenet, incidentally; Usenet's Trek newsgroups are horribly shrunk, but what's left is high-quality.) Sometimes the dumb argument turns into a deep question, in this case: when does it stop being a typo and become an alternate spelling?

Somewhere in the past of the Next Generation episode ``The Defector'' either Earth or the Federation fought the Battle of Cheron with the Romulans, which was a humiliating defeat the Romulans still haven't forgotten. Some folks, who like the Trek universe to be as small and tightly-bound as possible, say this is merely an alternate spelling to Pluto's largest moon, Charon. I've always sided with the ``universe is really big and it's a wild coincidence when two things line up'' model; so I point out that if it was supposed to be Charon they would have said Charon.

Unfortunately here a weird bit of Trek folklore messes up things: the idea the ``Battle of Cheron'' was named in the original Star Trek episode that introduced the Romulans, and it's not fair to hold as a substantial difference an error in one letter in naming a body which wouldn't be noticed in the real solar system for another dozen years. That's appealing, but nothing in the Original Series names a single battle of the Earth-Romulan War, nor where the war took place -- near Earth, near Romulus, in-between, wherever. There was an Original Series episode naming a planet Cheron -- it's where the half-white, half-black people came from -- but there's no obvious reason it would be fought over between the Federation and Romulus. (Apart from its being a highly industrialized -- if needing repair -- yet unpopulated planet.)

Where things last stood: I was advancing the theory that Cheron was not meant to be Charon since by the time ``The Defector'' was made in 1990 the production teams knew of the existence of Charon and could have made it that if it was supposed to be. (Admittedly, this assumes the production team knows the major bodies of the solar system.) The counter-argument: there's lots of web pages listing ``Pluto'' with ``Cheron'', so that's just an alternate spelling. My counter-argument: That's (per Google) 485,000 for ``Pluto Charon'', versus 1200 for ``Pluto Cheron'' and 685 for ``Pluto Cheron Charon'', indicating ``Cheron'' is just a typo. When I bailed out of the thread I saw a four-paragraph explanation that Charon is a mythological name from a very long time ago and many myths aren't written down. I'm sure this is addressing a point important to my opponent, but it is not to me. Fun trip while it lasted, though.

Trivia: Charon was the largest moon discovered since Neptune's moon Triton was found in 1846. Source: Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System, Mark Littmann.

Currently Reading: Vectors, Charles Sheffield. Good old 1970s hard-flavored science fiction in a non-gloomy future except for the bit about a billion people murdered.

Comments

[billfl.livejournal.com]

It's actually the Battle of Chevron. It happened when a Warbird cut in front of Captain Pike and just got out of hand.

No (Green) Blood for Oil-Based Life Forms!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hey, that finally starts to make sense of it all. Thanks!

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Apart from its being a highly industrialized -- if needing repair -- yet unpopulated planet.

But wasn't the Enterprise taken to visit Cheron? If they ended up in the Solar System, you'd think they'd remark about that fact in some way. So at least that Cheron isn't Charon.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Enterprise is taken to Cheron, which is a Class M world, and it would be very hard to square that with the actual solar system Charon without much more advanced terraforming than we have evidence for in the Original Series. (Admittedly, details of that are scanty.) But they certainly would have mentioned if they were in Earth's star system, since we never saw them on-screen near contemporary-Earth, only the 20th century version.

The half-black, half-white Cheron is in the ``southernmost'' part of the galaxy, which causes great merriment among people who want to pick nits and who are unaware that a galactic north and south are in fact used in real life to make it easier to describe relative directions.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

While I understand that they could have alternately spelled or, perhaps, typoed 'Charon'.. and hey, someone in a galaxy of all those star *someone* is going to double-name them somehow. Charon would work just fine for a star system as well as a moon of a planet that's been downclassified. "What, you Earthlings have a Charon too? How quaint!"

However, I'd expect that given TNG writers did occasionally like to write in references to the old series, and that one with Frank Gorshin is certainly among the best-loved/best-known episodes.. I'd side with you.

Apparently, so does an official listing (http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/places/article/69483.html).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Coincidence of names is quite inevitable and plausible if you want something to have the feel of real life. The trouble is this causes all sorts of trouble in the ``small universe'' versus ``big universe'' camps, since it's hard to argue that two drops of the same name should be different references when there isn't any on-screen claim that they are different references. So you get stupid arguments like ``why does Kirk's girlfriend like eating Ktarian eggs when the Ktarians were the evil people from `The Game' on Next Generation who wanted to take over the Enterprise using mind-controlling video games with Amiga video toaster gramophone speakers on a chessboard?'' Or pointing out that Tuvok's wife had to be that Romulan spy uncovered in ``Data's Day''.

Mercifully, nobody's tried to explain why there are about 900 species with names fitting the pattern T[]r[]llian.

I'm fine with there being multiple places with the same name in the Trek universe, but then I was also fine with there being whole species that were famous in the time of Archer and never spoken of in the time of Kirk, at least in principle.

The episode was written, as it happens, by Ronald Moore, an unquestioned fan of the Original Series, but also one who demonstrated a weird inability to comprehend casual jokes in the episode where Scotty was put on the Enterprise-D. Still, it's an odd place to put in a cute little reference since the line was a substantial plot point. Usually the cute asides are for the ``bread crumb'' dialogue where it doesn't matter what's said but they need something there for authenticity.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Agreed that there should indeed be attempts to keep names usually unique and divergent within a created world, unless you're attempting to show connections. But There should be some acceptance of duplication of name, but as you've said, it will lead to quibbling.

If Cheron B&W was where the Battle of Cheron was fought.. that seems kind of neat to me, so I'll go with that.

And at some point I need to make a Cherongoose morph, left and right, and see if people will get the joke.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's certainly good form in a fictional universe to keep names as separate as possible except where you do want ambiguity or parallels for dramatic symmetry, or when you want the confusion of names to show how big a universe it is.

But given the circumstances in which the Trek production was made -- over the course of forty years by dozens of completely separate teams with, generally, only a slight ability to cross-check names, and the need for made-up names to be reasonably short and not too silly nor too tricky for the poor overworked actors to say -- it's amazing there aren't more confusing overlaps, the T[]r[]llians notwithstanding.

Did anyone ever get your viverrid lunari joke who wasn't told it first? Of course, more people speak Star Trek than Latin anymore.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Herpestes lunarii, technically, but I'm impressed you noticed and remembered it. And I think once, perhaps twice, people have- but not from reading it from the @desc. One of them- I think it was SKippy/Smucker- promptly dubbed me 'moon-goose'.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Moongoose wasn't the origin for coming up with a prefix of lunarii? Huh.

And a genus of herpestes for select mongoose branches sees like someone was having a bit of a sick joke on things. You could see it in a Chuck Jones cartoon ... ``Mongoose (herpestes yum-yum)''.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

*chucklechuckles* Well, yes, but I'd never used the term 'moongoose' to anyone.

As for 'Herpestes', well. 'Snake-eater' for mongooses is pretty dang good as a descriptor goes. And it's better than Genuses of Atilax, Bdeogale, Crossarchus, Cynictis, Dologale, Galerella, Liberiictus, Mungotictis, Paracynictis, Rhynchogale or Suricata, though I'll give Helogale, Ichneumia, and Mungos good points.

(There are. A lot. Of mongoose species.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Clearly a case of a runaway marketing department. While you want to distinguish between substantially different markets, it just confuses the consumer when the classifications aren't obvious. Much better the way the procyonids have sorted out the top-of-the-line models: raccoon, crab-eating raccoon, and coati, and then a few niche products like for Cozumel Island.