Darmok
The Enterprise goes to a place where they heard the Children of Tama. The Tamarians are on screen and seem to be saying a jumble of words. The translator is working they are speaking English. Just a bunch of meaningless words. “Shaka. When the walls fell. Darmok? Darmok. Rai and Jiri at Lungha.” This miscommunication with the Tarmarians begins to get intense when Captian Picard is transported with the captain of the alien ship, down to the planet. They can’t go and get him because the atmosphere of the planet is too thick. They send Worf with an away team to go and get him with the shuttle, but the Tamarians fire on the shuttlecraft and injure it just enough to make them turn back. It seems the Children of Tama want the two captains to remain there. Picard is trying to figure out what the Tamairan is saying, but in the meantime, there is a creature that puzzles Data, that they need to kill. Picard figures out that Darmok is a metaphor for a person that relates to the situation. Troi and Data figure this out as well aboard the ship. Troi says “like we would say Juliet at her balcony. To conjure an image of love” but as Dr. Crusher points out we don’t know the story. Just before the creature strikes Picard, Gordi and O’Brian transport him back on the ship. But not before the Tamarian captain dies. Picard steps in and saves the day with his new skills at communicating before the ship is destroyed by the Tamarians. Why are they attacking? That is lost on me. To the captain of the Tamarians, the change of connection and understanding was more important to him than his own life, as Picard says. This reminds me of when I was on the Camino, and I was just about to get onto a bus for the first time when a man who barely spoke English said to me “Take picture of you?”. With his gesturing I immediately got it, he didn’t want me in the picture, he wanted me to take a picture for him! Just like Jean-Luc, I took in what was said but also thought about what made sense and looked at body language. I implored that strategy for the rest of the Camino, and communication-wise I had an easy time. Talking to people that you don’t know 100% of their language is fine, you can get by. I had dinner with a man from Portugal that barely spoke English or Spanish, and a Taxi driver named Jesus that taught me Galician words. This episode makes me wonder what it was like to contact remote tribes for the first time?
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