There was a Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock and a bunch of the others went to this planet and found a
huge rock shaped like a lumpy doughnut. It was a gateway to eternity and a repository of infinite knowledge, and it was called
the Guardian of Forever.
That was the one where McCoy freaked out on some space heroin and went back in time and then Kirk and Spock had to go
back and fix the stuff he screwed up. It was all very convoluted and fourth dimensional. Joan Collins got hit by a truck at
the end.
Good times.
Anyway I've been thinking a lot about that today. Not the episode or the stuff that happened, but just about the big
rock doughnut that talked and sent them through time.
Kirk and Spock used to meet beings with infinite power practically every week. It's interesting to me that these infinitely
powerful, almost god-like beings almost always tried to kill them.
I mean, Kirk loved to go around talking about how much mankind had progressed. Not quite as much as Picard did, but still.
He was always talking about how mankind had conquered war and hunger and poverty and how they'd outgrown their infancy and
blah blah blah. And yet everyone who was more advanced than them tried to kill them.
You'd think that people who were that great would at least get some little recognition, or at least one of those infinitely
powerful beings would say "Good going, ya'll, keep up the good work and we'll see you out here in about ten billion years."
But usually they were just "punished for their arrogance". And face it, if arrogance is a crime, then Kirk was Charles Manson.
The Guardian of Forever was different. Different than all the ones that wanted to kill them, anyway. It just kind of
sat there, answered their questions, and opened portals through time. They'd say "Show me the Spanish Civil War" or "Let me
see Amadeaus being presented to the court of Louis XIV" or whatever, and it not only would show it, it would open a portal
to it so you could jump through and be right there. Or just sit and watch. I guess what they really needed was a big chair
and cooler of beer and they'd be set.
|
| Guardian....show us the smartest man in the universe! |
They said it was so far advanced that them just even standing there trying to understand it was like a flea trying to
understand us. First of all, I don't know how they reached that conclusion just from sitting there talking to it, when all
it did was just what they told it to. To me it doesn't seem much more advanced than a regular old time machine, but with voice
activation software. Second, I think it's a dumb comparison because anything that far below us wouldn't be a flea, it would
be dirt or something that wasn't even alive, or at least not have a mind that could even try to understand anything.
In this case I'm not sure I buy the infinite knowledge thing, either. You'd think that anything with access to that much
information would think of a better name for itself than the Guardian of Forever. It sounds like something a thirteen year
old made up. I mean a really dorky thirteen year old who makes up his own really bad science fiction stories and dreams that
one day other dorky thirteen year olds will buy action figures of his Space Rangers. And anyway, what is it supposed to be
guarding? The timeline? If so, it's doing a pretty crappy job, because all you have to do is ask it to send you somewhere
and it does. The Guardian of Forever should be like one of those bouncers at nightclubs who won't let you in unless you're
cool enough. There's no way Kirk's lime green velour shirt with gold spangles would have gotten past him then.
I hate stupid names. It's just dumb and lazy. I especially hate when people give their kids names like that, like the
name is supposed to associate them with some lame image. Like how some Southern boy will be names Beauregard Owlowicious,
just because some general who's not even kin to them was named that in the Civil War. That's kind of how I feel about calling
something "The Guardian of Forever". Like it's supposed to fill us with awe.
I'll tell you what a good name is. Indiana Jones. So is Clint Eastwood. They just have a kind of ring to them. On Star
Trek there's a guy named Q. That's cool. Anything but Guardian of Forever.
