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From: Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: Re: MT VOID, 11/01/24 -- Vol. 43, No. 18, Whole Number 2352
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2024 11:22:59 -0500
Organization: Mad Scientists' Union
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On 11/3/24 10:36 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
> 
> STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES: "Bread and Circuses" has a lot of
> Roman tropes, but is ultimately a really bad episode.  (This is my
> opinion, not Aldrete's, as is much of what follows here.)  The
> premise is that there is a planet very similar that has a Roman
> Empire, where people and concepts have Roman names, there is a
> Roman political structure, and it is in fact Rome with a
> technology level of 20th century earth (including internal
> combustion engine cars that look just like out cars).  And
> everyone speaks English.  This is a stupid idea, probably even
> worse than having planets named Romulus and Vulcan.  And they get
> it wrong anyway: there is a new religion that the Enterprise crew
> thinks worships the "sun", but it turns out it's really the "son"
> [of God], and the crew thinks it with replace Imperial Rome just
> as it did before.  Except that Christianity did not replace Rome,
> Rather, Imperial Rome absorbed Christianity and lasted until 1453.
> The crew also claims there was no sun worship in Rome; this was
> absolutely not true.

I figured the natives of the planet spoke Latin or a Latin-derived 
language (it makes as much sense as any of the other Roman analogues), 
and the universal translator rendered the words for "sun" and "son" as 
homophones, creating an ambiguity which the locals weren't aware of.

I haven't been posting much lately because my connection to Eternal 
September is so glitchy. Hopefully this post will show up.
-- 
Gary McGath    http://www.mcgath.com