star trek darmok

Shaka, When the Walls Fell

In one fascinating episode, Star Trek: The Next Generation traced the limits of human communication as we know it—and suggested a new, truer way of talking about the universe.

On stardate 45047.2, Jean-Luc Picard leads the crew of the Enterprise in pursuit of a transmission beacon from the El-Adrel system, where a Tamarian vessel has been broadcasting a mathematical signal for weeks. The aliens, also known as the Children of Tama, are an apparently peaceable and technologically advanced race with which the Federation nevertheless has failed to forge diplomatic relations. The obstacle, as Commander Data puts it: “Communication was not possible.”

Picard exudes optimism as his starship courses through subspace. “In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination,” he beams to his senior staff. “I would like to believe that these are qualities which we have in sufficient measure.” But after hailing the alien ship upon arrival, contact with Children of Tama proves more difficult than Picard imagined:

DATHON, the Tamarian captain: Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Umbaya. Umbaya of crossed roads. At Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray. (no response from Enterprise, looks at First Officer in frustration) (slowly, deliberately) Rai and Jiri. At Lungha.

In the Star Trek universe, a “universal translator” automatically interprets between any alien language instantly and fluently. Unlike today’s machine-translation methods, the universal translator requires no previous experience with another language in order to make sense of it. Such is the case with Tamarian, at least on the surface, as the Enterprise crew is able to comprehend the basic syntax and semantics of Tamarian utterances. “The Tamarian seems to be stating the proper names of individuals and locations,” offers Data, stating the obvious. But Picard quickly sums up the problem, “Yes, but what does it all mean?”

Picard’s reply to the Tamarians sounds especially staid to the viewer’s ears after having heard the aliens’ exotic prose: “Would you be prepared to consider the creation of a mutual nonaggression pact between our two peoples? Possibly leading to a trade agreement and cultural interchange. Does this sound like a reasonable course of action to you?” His questions cause the Tamarians as much befuddlement as their litany of names and places does the Federation crew. The Tamarian first officer offers the only honest reaction of the lot, a scornful scoff, but he is quickly silenced by his captain:

FIRST OFFICER (laughing): Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. DATHON: The river Temarc. The officers immediately stop their laughter—as if ordered to. DATHON (continuing; for emphasis): In winter. DATHON: Darmok.             The First Officer looks very concerned—objects. FIRST OFFICER: Darmok? Rai and Jiri at Lungha. DATHON (shrugs): Shaka. When the walls fell … FIRST OFFICER: Zima at Anzo. Zima and Bakor. DATHON (firm) Darkmok at Tanagra. FIRST OFFICER: Shaka! (indicating situation) Mirab, his sails unfurled. DATHON: Darmok.

At this point, the Tamarian ship transports its captain, Dathon, along with Picard down to the surface of El-Adrel IV. Dathon has brought along two Tamarian daggers; the bridge scene suggests they carry some ceremonial significance. The Enterprise attempts to retrieve Picard, but the Tamarians have already created a particle-scattering field in the planet’s ionosphere, making teleportation impossible.

On the surface, Dathon tosses one of the daggers to Picard, who misunderstands, thinking he’s being incited to fight. Meanwhile, First Officer Riker makes the same error up in orbit. He attempts to contact his Tamarian counterpart only to be reminded: “Darmok at Tanagra.” “Your action could be interpreted as an act of war,” enjoins Riker. His counterpart laments to his colleagues, “Kiteo, his eyes closed,” before responding to Riker, “Chenza, at court. The court of silence.” He closes the channel.

As night falls on the surface, Picard fails to make a fire while Dathon lounges comfortably around his roaring blaze. Dathon throws Picard a torch, incanting, “Temba.” After first misunderstanding that Temba might mean fire , Dathon clarifies, “Temba, his arms wide.” And Picard begins to fit the pieces together, “Temba is a person. His arms wide … because he’s … he’s holding them apart. In, in … generosity. In giving. In taking. Thank you.”

As morning breaks, Dathon rouses Picard. “Darmok! Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” he entreats, but Picard still doesn’t know what to make of it. An ominous roar is heard from afar, and Picard finally accepts the weapon Dathon had been offering earlier. Picard wants to run (Dathon interprets this gesture with a phrase we’ve already heard, “Mirab, with sails unfurled”) but Dathon shakes his head. “Shaka, when the walls fell.” Picard makes another tentative discovery, “Shaka. You said that before. When I was trying to build a fire. Is that a failure? An inability to do something?”

As the unseen creature nears, Dathon attempts to take control of the situation.

DATHON: Uzani, his army at Lashmir.
 PICARD: At Lashmir? Was it like this at Lashmir? A similar situation to the one we’re facing here? DATHON: Uzani, his army with fists open. PICARD: A strategy? With fists open? DATHON: His army, with fists closed. PICARD: With fists closed. An army, with fists open, to lure the enemy … with fists closed, to attack? That’s how you communicate, isn’t it? By citing example, by metaphor! (demonstrates that he understands) Uzani’s army, with fists open. DATHON: Sokath! His eyes uncovered!

The two proceed with this plan, but just as Picard is about to distract the monster so that Dathon can attack, the Enterprise executes an attempt to retrieve their captain, having found a way to disrupt the ionospheric interference temporarily. Absent Picard’s foil, the strategy fails and the creature pounces upon Dathon, badly injuring him. The transporter effort fails anyway, and Picard rematerializes on the planet’s surface. He runs to Dathon who struggles in pain, “Shaka,” he begins, and this time Picard completes the thought, “when the walls fell.”

While Riker and Laforge attempt to find a way to disrupt the Tamarian polarity coil responsible for the particle beam, Counselor Troi and Commander Data make some progress unpacking Tamarian communications:

RIKER: I’d prefer to find a peaceful solution. If we can talk our way out of this—so much the better. TROI: Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. RIKER: What have you found? TROI: The Tamarian ego structure does not seem to allow what we normally think of as self-identity. Their ability to abstract is highly unusual. They seem to communicate through narrative imagery—by reference to the individuals and places which appear in their mytho-historical accounts. TROI: It’s as if I were to say to you “Juliet. On her balcony.” BEVERLY: An image of romance. TROI: Exactly. Image is everything to the Tamarians.

As their conversation continues, Troi, Crusher, and Data observe that even with this new structural understanding, without a knowledge of the mythical origins of the figures that compose the Tamarian language they have little hope of understanding the sense of their speech. But on the planet’s surface, Picard has the good fortune of a firsthand account that fills in some of the blanks.

PICARD: Our situation is similar to theirs. I understand that. But I need to know more, you must tell me more, about Darmok and Jalad. Tell me, you used the words Temba, his arms wide when you gave me the knife and the fire. Could that mean give ?
 (makes arm motions) Temba ? His arms wide. Darmok. Give me more about Darmok. DATHON: Darmok. On the ocean. PICARD: Darmok on the ocean. A metaphor, for being alone, isolated. Darmok, on the ocean. DATHON: (cries out in pain)
 PICARD: Are you alright? DATHON: (waves him off) Kiazi’s children. Their faces wet. Ughhh. PICARD: Temba, his arms open. Give me more about Darmok on the ocean. DATHON: Tanagra, on the ocean. Darmok at Tanagra. PICARD: At Tanagra. A country? Tanagra on the ocean, an island! Temba, his arms wide. DATHON: Jalad on the ocean. Jalad at Tanagra. PICARD: Jalad at Tanagra. He went to the same island as Darmok. Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra. DATHON: The beast at Tanagra.
 PICARD: The beast? There was a creature at Tanagra? Darmok and Jalad, the beast at Tanagra. They arrive separately, they struggled together against a common foe, the beast at Tanagra, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. DATHON: Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. PICARD: They left together. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. DATHON: The ocean. (then, in pain as Picard comes closer) Zinda! His face black, his eyes red! (then, shooing Picard away) Kalimash, at Bahar. PICARD: You hoped that something like this would happen, didn’t you? You knew there was a dangerous creature on this planet and you knew, from the Tale of Darmok, that a danger shared, might sometimes bring two people together. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. You and me, here, at El-Adrel.

As Dathon succumbs to his injuries, Picard returns the favor by recounting the earthly tale of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, doing his best to frame their similar tale in Tamarian syntax, “Gilgamesh and Enkidu. At Uruk.” As Dathon breathes his last, the Enterprise crew finally retrieves Picard, although they had to attack the Tamarian ship to do so, which has retaliated in force. As red alert sounds, Picard enters the bridge and consummates his new linguistic expertise. It’s a scene no fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation will soon forget.

PICARD (as he moves): Hail the Tamarian vessel. WORF (touches controls): Aye, Captain. TAMARIAN FIRST OFFICER: Zinda! His face black. His eyes red— PICARD: —Temarc! The river Temarc. In winter. FIRST OFFICER: Darmok? PICARD: … and Jalad. At Tanagra. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. FIRST OFFICER (to others, amazed): Sokath! His eyes open! PICARD (continuing): The beast of Tanagra. Uzani. His army. (shaking his head) Shaka, when the walls fell.             The aliens again face Picard. Picard takes the small             book—the Tamarian captain’s “diary”—and holds             it out in his hand.             The Tamarian First Officer glances at one of his             officers, who touches a console. The book is             immediately DEMATERIALIZED, MATERIALIZING next to the             alien First Officer. He picks it up, showing it to             Picard. FIRST OFFICER: Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. FIRST OFFICER: Mirab. With sails unfurled.             Picard extends the Tamarian dagger toward the First             Officer, offering it back to him. PICARD: Temba. His arms open. FIRST OFFICER: Temba at rest. PICARD (almost to himself): Thank you …

Shaka, when the walls fell is a likeness of failure for the Children of Tama. It’s also not a bad alternative title for the “Darmok” episode, for the Federation never really grasps Tamarian communication, despite their declared success in making contact with the race and forging a path to future relations.

Picard calls it metaphor , and Troi calls it image . For the Federation crew, the Tamarians cite examples that guide their understanding of and approach to the various problems they encounter on a day-to-day basis: as Picard puts it, by citing “a situation similar to this one.” Science fiction often plays with alternate methods of linguistic understanding, and this is familiar territory: The alien is incomprehensible, but in a way that can be overcome through reason and technology.

But there’s a problem: Metaphor and image are not accurate descriptions of the Tamarian language’s logic. A metaphor takes one thing as a symbol for something else: Juliet’s balcony acts as a figure for romance, Darmok and Jalad as a figure for communion through shared struggle. Even though Troi means image as a synonym for metaphor when she says “Image is everything for the Tamarians,” she also implies vanity in Tamarian speech. From the perspective of her declarative speech, the Tamarians are putting on pretenses, covering over a fundamental thing with a decorative one.

The Federation’s desire to see Tamarian speech as a process of copying one form into another is a uniquely earthly one, even when sieved through Star Trek ’s historical futurism. As Troi and her crewmates see it, Tamarian verbalisms depict the world through images and figures, which distort their “real” referents. Troi and Picard can’t help but interpret Tamarian through their (and our) cultural obsession with mimicry: Metaphorical language operates not by signification, but as poetry, by transforming the real in a symbolic mirror.

But for the Tamarians, something far weirder is going on, precisely because their language is not a curiosity for them as it is for the Federation (and for us television viewers). Calling Tamarian language “metaphor” preserves our familiar denotative speech methods and sets the more curious Tamarian moves off against them. But if we take the show’s science-fictional aspirations seriously and to their logical conclusion, then the Children of Tama possess no method of denotative communication whatsoever. Their language simply prevents them from distinguishing between an object or event and what we would call its figurative representation.

Allegory might have been a better term for explaining Tamarian. While metaphor represents one subject as similar to another object, allegory replaces one with another entirely. Allegory’s veiled language is powerful, because allegories effectively freeze time, making a historical or fictional scenario immortal. Allegory is what makes it possible for us to continue to derive lessons from the Old and New Testaments, week after week, homily after homily.

The 20th-century literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin lamented this property of Baroque allegory in particular, suggesting that it swaps out historical myth for present-day concerns. As Benjamin puts it, “Evil as such exists only in allegory … and means something other than it is. It means in fact precisely the nonexistence of what it presents. The absolute vices, as exemplified by tyrants and intriguers are allegories. They are not real.” When we talk about evil in the allegorical sense—the serpent of the Garden of Eden, or Sauron’s eye in Mordor—we do so as a replacement for addressing the more ambiguous, palpable instances of evildoing in the present. For Benjamin, the allegorist rejects the world in order to embrace allegory, and in so doing it strips art of politics.

But the Tamarians’ version of allegory, if that’s indeed the right name for it, cuts both ways. On the one hand, it fetishizes myth in the manner of allegory, but on the other hand it musters that myth in the interest of serious sociopolitical action, as evidenced by Dathon’s willingness literally to die in the name of myth. So Benjamin’s concerns about the abandonment of the present don’t seem to apply to the Tamarian situation, offering further doubt that allegory is the best way to describe their communication process.

Despite the episode’s popularity, the Star Trek fan community (being a science-fiction fan community, after all) has issued numerous gripes about “Darmok.” The most interesting of these is a general disbelief in the technological prowess of the Tamarians. How could a race that thinks in allegory ever accomplish faster-than-light space travel? Just imagine the day-to-day work of designing, constructing, or maintaining a complicated machine like a starship. The Tamarians seem to be incapable of saying something like, “Hey Bob, can you hand me the three-quarter-inch socket wrench.” Given this inability to discourse pragmatically, why should we suspend disbelief in the first place?

Yet, if we take the episode at its word, not only is the Tamarians’ technology on parity with that of the Federation, but it might even be more advanced. The Tamarians were able to scramble transport signals across El-Adrel IV’s ionosphere, and their ship was clearly capable of destroying the Enterprise at the end of the episode had Picard not restored diplomatic relations just in time.

But what if the Tamarians abstract worldview is precisely what facilitates advanced technological and social practice, rather than limiting it? Watching the episode carefully, the “Darmok” approach appears to be an afterthought, a new idea that strikes Dathon as he realizes the planned diplomatic approach, Rai and Jiri at Lungha, would gain no purchase with the Federation. Likewise, the first officer’s objections to Darmok are both earnest and unrehearsed—he knows exactly what Dathon is talking about, and he doesn’t like it. But once the captain has asserted his authority (“The river Temarc, in winter”), no further instruction was necessary. The crew transports the two captains to the surface, erects the particle field in the planet’s ionosphere, and fends off the eventual Enterprise retaliation.

The skeptic might point out that these omissions in the teleplay are necessary given the compressed structure of the 45-minute television episode, and that just because we don’t see further instructions take place doesn’t mean they haven’t done. It’s equally possible that the Tamarians had already gone over the Darmok approach during their weeks-long orbit above El-Adrel IV, and that the first officer’s objections are rehearsals of an earlier argument that goes unseen during the action depicted on screen.

Given an absence of evidence either way, why not choose the more aggressive interpretation: Everything that takes place on the bridge of the Tamarian vessel during the episode is encapsulated into the single move, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.” So dense and rich is Tamarian speech that these five words are sufficient to direct a whole crew to carry out an entire stratagem over two days’ time, and not by following a script, but by embracing it as a guiding abstraction.

As Troi explained, the Tamarians’ possess a sophisticated aptitude for abstraction. This capacity responds to fans’ skepticism at the Tamarian’s technological prowess. The Children of Tama would not be delayed by their inability to speak directly because they seem to have no need whatsoever for explicit, low-level discourse like instructions and requests. They’d just not bother talking about the socket wrench, instead proceeding to the actual work of building or maintaining the vessel.

By contrast, consider how the Enterprise engineering crew attempts to overcome the Tamarian particle interference field in their attempt to retrieve Picard from the surface of El-Adrel IV:

GEORDI: Matrix levels. LEFLER: Annular convergence holding at four three nine point two oh five. Confinement resolution at point five two seven. GEORDI: That isn’t gonna do it. Increase thermal input coefficient to 150 percent. LEFLER (working console): Increasing now … … GEORDI: Shunt the overload to the phase transition sequencers in transporter one. LEFLER: Yes, sir.

While the episode doesn’t provide a Tamarian mythical equivalent, we can speculate on how the Tamarians would handle a similar situation. While I suppose the explicit directive to adjust thermal input by a specified amount might be rendered allegorically (some Tamarian speech is narrower than others), it’s equally likely that the entire exchange would be unnecessary, subsumed into some larger operation, say, “Baby Jessica, in her well.” The rest is just details.

While his declaration that they speak and think in metaphor is most memorable, Picard offers another account of Tamarian during his encounter on the surface. Before encountering the beast, Dathon makes the recommendation, “Uzani. His army. With fist open.” Picard reacts, “A strategy? With fist open …”

“Strategy” is perhaps the best metaphor of all for the Tamarian phenomenon the Federation misnames metaphor. A strategy is a plan of action, an approach or even, at the most abstract, a logic. Such a name reveals what’s lacking in both metaphor and allegory alike as accounts for Tamarian culture. To be truly allegorical, Tamarian speech would have to represent something other than what it says. But for the Children of Tama, there is nothing left over in each speech act. The logic of Darmok or Shaka or Uzani is not depicted as image , but invoked or instantiated as logic in specific situations. In some cases, apparently, this invocation takes place with limited transformation, such as in the application of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra depicted in the episode’s main plotline. In other cases, those logics are used in situations with more play, as when Dathon reassures Picard after the former’s injury, “Kiazi’s children. Their faces wet.”

Here we might distinguish between the invocation of a particular logic and the simulation of a creature, thing, or idea by replicating its image. The simulation of life in art often concerns the reproduction of surfaces: in painting, the appearance of form, perspective, or the rendition of light; in literature the appearance of character or event; in photography and cinema the rendition of the world as it appears through optical element and upon emulsion or sensor; in theater the rendition of the behavior of a character or situation.

While all these examples “simulate” to various extents, they do so by a process of rendering . For example, the writer might simulate a convincing verbal intercourse by producing a credibility that allows the reader to take it as reality. Likewise, the actor might render a visible behavior or intonation that is suggestive of a particular emotion, event, or history that the theatrical or cinematic viewer takes as evidence for some unseen motivation.

A logic is also a behavior, but it is a behavior unlike the behavior of the literary or theatrical character, for whom behaving involves producing an outward sign of some deeper but abstracted motivation, understanding, or desire. By contrast logics are pure behaviors. They are abstract and intangible and yet also real.

If we pretend that “Shaka, when the walls fell” is a signifier, then its signified is not the fictional mythological character Shaka, nor the myth that contains whatever calamity caused the walls to fall, but the logic by which the situation itself came about. Tamarian language isn’t really language at all, but machinery.

Because we don’t know very much about Tamarian history and culture, it’s hard to say much about how their conceptual machinery works. But we do have an earthly metaphor by which we might understand it: computation .

When we think about the kind of representation that computers enact, we typically commit our own Shaka, when the walls fell error. Computational media are generally seen as an extension or acceleration of existing mimetic methods. Take computer graphics as an example. We see computer images as extensions of photographic or filmic representation. In both Hollywood digital video effects (which are offline rendered to achieve high resolution and detail) and in computer games (which are real-time rendered to facilitate player interaction), a variety of algorithms produce two-dimensional depictions of three-dimensional scenes that, at their best, reach a level of credibility that can be mistaken for reality.

This take on computational representation sees the computer as a new method for producing appearances , the images that fascinate the Enterprise crew in “Darmok,” and that fascinate us by means of their broadcast as television. But we err in taking visual appearance as a primary replacement for reality.

In CG films, we don’t notice this problem—computer images just become yet more frames of film. But in computer games, realism is always more than just a visual affair. In a 3-D game, movement through a real-time rendered world can produce a sense of place, not just an image. Yet, the thoughtful player will quickly find an enormous chasm between visual realism and other sorts of realism in computer games. For example, the appearance and sensation of being in Grand Theft Auto ’s Liberty City initially suggests enormous verisimilitude, until the player attempts to enter a building that turns out just to be a Potemkin stand-up, or to interact with a non-player character whose verbal and physical actions amount to a few repeatable lines of stock dialog and a pathfinding algorithm that helps steer her around the player’s avatar.

So, while we think that computer graphics represent the world “as it appears,” instead they mimic the logics of visual verisimilitude themselves more than they do the logics of the real world. The method of producing 3-D computer graphics known as ray tracing works by carrying out linear perspective painting in reverse, rendering light from back to front and hiding areas where that light will not meet the position of the virtual camera due to obstacles. Ray-tracing algorithms produce the rationale of Renaissance perspective, to exact mathematical specification. Computation doesn’t represent the world so much as logics from the world, just like the Tamarian language doesn’t reproduce the figures so much as the processes of its cultural history.

Take SimCity as a parallel example. There have been many editions of this city-construction-and-management-simulation game, but all of them share the same features: tools to zone and construct infrastructure in a physical environment, including roads and rail; housing, commercial, and industrial sectors; electrical and other infrastructure; and services like police and fire, along with taxation, advising, and management tools to run the city on an ongoing basis. Playing the game involves a combination of construction and operation, a dynamic that led its creator Will Wright to compare the experience to gardening.

What city does SimCity represent? Not New York or London or Valenciennes or Albany, for re-creating particular cities proves difficult in the game. Nor does the game simulate the role of mayor (even if its interfaces and paratexts sometimes refer to the player as a mayor), because no mayor has the arbitrary power to create and destroy as the SimCity player does. Nor is it the Platonic ideal of a “city,” because some types of cities are more and less feasible within the SimCity simulation. New urbanist mixed development is impossible, social welfare-style taxation policy is impossible, and rail-based mass transit always leads to faster growth than road-and-freeway automobile transit. In this sense, even though large SimCity cities may “look like” credible urban environments, they don’t bear much resemblance to any actual city. Dense, modernist cities demand mixed-use development and increased infrastructure and services; sprawling middle-American metroplexes rely on slow, historical growth in suburbs that draw commercial activity away from and then back to city centers; neither type of city is possible in the game.

If it mimics anything, SimCity characterizes a particular logic of urban planning, one that most closely resembles the urban dynamics model of Jay Forrester, an inspiration Wright has himself acknowledged. Urban dynamics emerged out of Forrester’s post-war research at MIT in system dynamics, an approach to the interactions between industrial systems and social systems in large organizations. Originally a project integrating management and engineering, by the late 1960s Forrester had the accident of sharing an office with former Boston mayor John Collins.

As a result of this encounter, in 1969 Forrester published Urban Dynamics , a controversial account of urban policy that took the form of a model that Forrester and his students also implemented in computational form. (One example of its controversy: While low-income housing might seem to offer succor to the poor, Forrester’s model suggests that such development creates a poverty trap that stagnates an urban district, forcing it deeper into poverty rather than leading it toward prosperity.) While Forrester’s computational design goals entailed prediction intended to drive policy, Wright’s adaptation of Forrester’s urban dynamics was mostly a matter of convenience: It offered a formal logic for urban behavior that could be abstracted and implemented in the form of a creative work.

Unlike a painting or an actor’s performance, the game does not re-create outward appearances (crime, high rises, property values, and so forth), but the logics that then produce those appearances. Rather than translating logics into descriptions or depictions, computational representation like that of SimCity translates logics into logics . It embodies a particular take on how cities work through a computer program that makes them work that way. In my book Persuasive Games I call this technique “procedural rhetoric”—the use of computational processes to depict worldly processes.

“Darmok” gives us one vision of a future in which procedural rhetoric takes precedence over verbal and visual rhetoric, indeed in which the logic of logics subsume the logics of description, appearances, and even of narrative—that preeminent form that even Troi mistakes as paramount to the Children of Tama. The Tamarian’s media ecosystem is the opposite of ours, one in which behaviors are taken as primary, and descriptions as secondary, almost incidental. The Children of Tama are less interesting as aliens than they are as counterfactual versions of us, if we preferred logic over image or description.

At the end of “Darmok,” Riker finds Captain Picard sitting in his ready room, reading from an ancient book rather than off a tablet. “Greek, sir?” Riker asks. “The Homeric Hymns,” Picard responds, one of the root metaphors of our own culture. “For the next time we encounter the Tamarians …” suggests the first officer. To which his captain replies, “More familiarity with our own mythology might help us relate to theirs.” A charming sentiment, and a move that always works for Star Trek —the juxtaposition of classical antiquity and science-fictional futurism. But Picard gets it wrong one last time. To represent the world as systems of interdependent logics we need not elevate those logics to the level of myth, nor focus on the logics of our myths. Instead, we would have to meditate on the logics in everything , to see the world as one built of weird, rusty machines whose gears squeal as they grind against one another, rather than as stories into which we might write ourselves as possible characters.

It’s an understandable mistake, but one that rings louder when heard from the vantage point of the 24th century. For even then, stories and images take center stage, and logics and processes wait in the wings as curiosities, accessories. Perhaps one day we will learn this lesson of the Tamarians: that understanding how the world works is a more promising approach to intervention within it than mere description or depiction. Until then, well: Shaka, when the walls fell.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E2 "Darmok" » Recap

Original air date: September 30, 1991

The Enterprise arrives at the uninhabited El-Adrel system to meet with an enigmatic race of people called the Children of Tama. This is not a First Contact situation; the Tamarians have been contacted before, but the records indicate that previous diplomats found it impossible to communicate with them. The crew of the Enterprise is hoping that they can do it better. When they make contact, the problem the previous teams faced becomes crystal clear: the language of the Tamarians is bizarre gibberish that none of the crew can make any sense of. The translators are double-checked and found to be in perfect working order. The problem is that nearly everything the Tamarians say is a proper noun; the names of people and places without any context that would let the translators (or crew) guess at the meanings being alluded to. Picard makes a futile attempt to establish an alliance with them, but the conversation goes nowhere. Equally flummoxed, the Tamarians have an argument amongst themselves, evidently about the best way to proceed. Then the captain of their vessel holds up two knives, announces, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," and beams himself and Picard to the surface of a nearby planet. The Tamarians’ ship intentionally blocks the Enterprise from beaming Picard back or communicating with him.

The Tamarian captain offers one of his knives to Picard. Assuming he wants a fight, Picard refuses it. At an impasse, the two captains make camp for the night. The Tamarian shows no further signs of hostility, but Picard still can’t understand a word he’s saying so it’s impossible to tell if he can be trusted or not. When Picard fails to get a fire going, the Tamarian offers some of his, with the words, "Temba, his arms wide." Picard vaguely understands that these words carry the meaning of accepting a gift, and the Tamarian smiles, seeing that at least the beginning of a connection is forming.

Worf takes a shuttlecraft toward the planet, gambling that the Tamarians are unwilling to take any violent action to stop them. They appear to have gambled wrong, as the Tamarians fire on the shuttlecraft, but only with enough force to cause minor damage that forces them to abort the rescue attempt. Geordi comes up with a way to scatter the Tamarian interference, but says it will take an entire day to implement, and it’s not at all clear whether Picard will be safe for that long. Worf proposes attacking the Tamarian ship, but Riker rejects that, preferring to save it as a last resort. He orders Data and Troi to try to find a way to decode their language so they can somehow talk things out.

Picard wakes up the next morning to find that the Tamarian captain has wandered away. He soon comes running back, again trying to give one of his knives to Picard. Picard refuses to take it at first, but then he hears a noise that sounds like a large animal, and he realizes that the Tamarian wants help in fighting the creature. He takes the knife, and the two square off against the creature, which has formidable skill at camouflage. The Tamarian keeps trying to give Picard instructions, and Picard slowly catches on to what he’s trying to say.

Dathon: Uzani, his army with fists open. Picard: A… strategy, with fists open? With fists open? Dathon: His army with fists closed. Picard: With fists closed. An army with fists open… to lure the enemy. With fists closed… to attack? That’s how you communicate, isn’t it, by citing example, by metaphor !

The ship’s sensors show that Picard is being attacked, so Riker tells Geordi to rush his field-scattering beam and get Picard out of there. He tries, but ultimately fails, and the attempt at transporting prevents Picard from protecting the Tamarian, who gets badly injured by the creature. Nevertheless, the creature runs off. They set up camp again, and Picard asks to know more about Darmok. The Tamarian tells the story: Darmok was a hunter who met another man named Jalad at the island of Tenagra. They fought the beast and left the island together. That was the idea of coming to the planet—to help them come together by facing danger together. The Tamarian asks for a tale in return, and Picard recounts a bit of The Epic of Gilgamesh , a story in much the same vein… except for the fact that in that one, one of the heroes dies.

Tropes featured in "Darmok" include:

• Alien Blood : Tamarians have white blood
• Anthropic Principle : The writers have admitted that the Tamarian language would not be practical for such an advanced society (science, medicine, and a whole lot of other disciplines would be nearly impossible to discuss), but without it, this episode could not have been written, and the consensus is that it's one of the better episodes of the franchise.
• Arc Number : The library computer has 47 entries related to the name Darmok.
• Attack Pattern Alpha : Evasive Maneuver Sequence Delta
• Big "NO!" : Picard screams this when he starts to be beamed away just as the beast mauls Dathon.
• Big "YES!" : Once it finally dawns on Picard just what Dathon is up to, the Tamarian captain doesn't even try to contain his joy. Dathon: Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
• Bittersweet Ending : Picard becomes friends with Dathon, picks up the basics of his language, and establishes the foundation of a trusting relationship with the Tamarians, but Dathon succumbs to his wounds from the battle with the predator on El-Adrel. In the end, the Enterprise and Tamarian part ways, not as allies as the Federation wanted, but at least with the beginnings of understanding and friendship.
• Call-Back : Data describes their trouble speaking to the Tamarians as "analogous to understanding the grammar of a language but none of the vocabulary" note  Knowing what a noun is and where it belongs in a sentence, without knowing any nouns , essentially , which was similar to how Spock detailed the trouble speaking to the probe threatening Earth in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home : Kirk: Spock, could the humpback's answer to this call be simulated? Spock: The sounds, but not the language. We would be responding in gibberish.
• Chekhov's Gunman : One officer assisting Geordi in Engineering is Ensign Robin Lefler, who'll play a bigger role later this season in " The Game ".
• Clothing Damage : Picard gets a slash across his chest from the monster, through apparently not close enough to draw blood.
• "Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra": To cooperate
• "Shaka, when the walls fell": To fail, or to misunderstand
• "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red": Used as a threat, as well in describing pain
• "Kailash, when it rises": Acceptable losses
• "Temba, his arms wide": To offer in friendship
• "Temba, at rest": In response to the above, to politely decline
• "Uzani, his army with fists open": To lure an enemy into an ambush
• "Uzani, his army with fists closed": To ambush an enemy after luring them in
• "Sokath, his eyes uncovered / opened": To understand
• "The river Temarc, in winter": To be silent. May be shortened to just "Temarc!", which can be translated as " Shut up! "
• "Picard and Dathon at El-Ardel": A new term introduced at the episode's end, signifying successful first contact and new friendship
• Dramatically Missing the Point : Worf assumes the alien captain intends a Combat by Champion . Picard assumes the same when Dathon tosses one of his knives to him.
• Picard also does this when he takes Dathon's journal and gives it back to the Tamarians with "Temba, his arms wide". The Tamarians take it (by transporter), and Picard holds up the knife that Dathon gave him as well, repeating "Temba, his arms wide." The second in command instead uses a term we have not heard before: " Temba, at peace ."
• Early-Bird Cameo : Lefler only has about 10 seconds of screen-time and doesn't even get a first name yet. She gets a more formal introduction with a much more substantive role a few episodes later in " The Game ".
• Early-Installment Weirdness : This is the debut episode of Picard's jacket and the only episode in which it has leather shoulders.
• Enemy Mine : An unusually apt example, since the premise here is very similar to the movie Enemy Mine . Here, it's also invoked , as the meaning of "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is a combination of this and Fire-Forged Friends , and Dathon successfully uses both tropes.
• "Eureka!" Moment : Picard finally figures out that the Tamarians communicate purely through metaphor. The Tamarians use the expression "Sokath, his eyes uncovered!" to refer to realization or understanding.
• Famed In-Story : Picard and Dathon become part of the next Tamarian legend.
• Fire-Forged Friends : This is the Tamarians' diplomatic strategy when casual conversation fails: force the two captains together in a life-or-death struggle as a way of building trust and understanding, inspired by the eponymous Darmok and Jalad of Tamarian lore. Picard shares a similar tale from Earth mythology— Gilgamesh and Enkidu —except in that story, one of the heroes was slain .
• Hard-to-Light Fire : Picard gets a fire going by the rubbing sticks method, only for it to go out again. Dathon, watching nearby from his successfully lit fire, finds it amusing, but on seeing Picard shivering in the cold, tosses him a burning stick from his fire. The gesture starts the ball rolling, teaching Picard his term for either "giving" or "generosity".
• Higher-Tech Species : The Tamarian ship rather casually defeats the Enterprise when the two ships finally come to blows. It can also beam through shields and prevent the Enterprise from using the transporter at all.
• Idiot Ball : At one point, Riker hails the Tamarians and demands them to lower the field, even though he knows that they can't understand their language. This is more acceptable than it seems, as there seems to be no problem with the Tamarians understanding the crew, just the other way; although Riker has no way of knowing this, it could be that he's hoping that something will get through.
• Invisible Monster : The creature on the planet has this ability. Picard and Dathon can only see it by the occasional Invisibility Flicker .
• Let's Split Up, Gang! : Invoked; Dathon wanders off during the night, presumably to draw the creature close . He then gets Picard to stand apart from him to lure the creature into attacking, so they can strike at it from opposite directions.
• Lost in Translation : Invoked in the episode: the Tamarians speak entirely in allegories referencing their people's mythology. The universal translator can translate the words of their speech, but without the context behind their phrases, actual communication proves difficult.
• Milking the Giant Cow : Both Dathon and Picard do this, plus Translation by Volume . Justified given the difficulty and frustration they have with trying to get their message across to the other, leading to a tendency for both parties to ham it up.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : The first attempt to beam Picard out only makes the situation worse, with the creature mauling Dathon while Picard, trapped in the transport beam, is unable to come to his aid.
• Non-Uniform Uniform : This episode introduces Picard's "captain's alternate" uniform, comprised of a jacket in command colors that he'd wear over a gray shirt. In this episode, the jacket has padded leather shoulders, whereas later episodes gave the jacket suede shoulders . It was made both to help Picard stand out from the rest of the crew and also addressing complaints Patrick Stewart had about how uncomfortable the standard uniforms were.
• One-Word Title
• Our Monsters Are Weird : A... glowing styracosaurus-man?
• Peaceful in Death : As Dathon is dying he smiles and calls Picard "Gilgamesh" letting him know their mission to form an understanding between the two of them was successful.
• Planet of Hats : The Tamarians are a Planet of TVTropers .
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure : Picard has to deal with aliens who communicate by exchanging (their) pop-culture references—none of which Picard has heard of.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning : The first officer invokes it when angry: "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red!"
• Simple Solution Won't Work : After the Enterprise crew figures out the general idea of how the Tamarians speak, Riker asks "If we know how they think, shouldn't we be able to get something across to them?". Data says that they can't because "The situation is analogous to understanding the grammar of a language but none of the vocabulary.", and without the proper context of expressions like "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra", they'd simply mutter gibberish back to them.
• Sdrawkcab Name : "Darmok" is (sort of) "comrade" spelled backwards.
• Picard tells the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh .
• In the end, Picard reads the Homeric Hymns .
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare : Brought up when the bridge crew is discussing how the Tamarian language works, and Counselor Troi suggests " Juliet on her balcony " as an analogous example; humans would generally know the underlying story of who Juliet was and what she was doing on the balcony, and thus realise that this reference was intended to suggest a romantic encounter, but it wouldn't make sense to an outsider who lacked that context.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker : The Tamarians are an entire civilization of these. Forget subject-verb-object in any order, the language consists almost exclusively of "proper noun, prepositional phrase."
• Teleport Interdiction : The Tamarians scatter any attempt to use the transporter to rescue Picard.
• Translation by Volume : Used by both Picard and Dathon during their initial attempts at communication. Riker keeps calling the Tamarian ship and trying this throughout the episode, yet it's ambiguous if he's grasped (or cares) that his opposite number doesn't understand him.
• Translation: "Yes" : Some of the Tamarian phrases, though not to a parodic degree. "Shaka, when the walls fell" has the general meaning of "failure," for example. It goes the other way too; for instance, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" packs a hell of a lot of meaning into five words.
• Translator Microbes : A standard Star Trek trope, which this episode deconstructs by introducing a language composed entirely of cultural metaphors. The crew's translators are working fine, but they still can't understand the Tamarians because half their words are proper nouns that mean nothing to them.
• Undying Loyalty : The Tamarian first officer makes it clear he thinks attempting to communicate with the Enterprise is a waste of time and they should leave. However, when Dathon begins the trial with Picard, he does his utmost to ensure they are uninterrupted because it's what his captain wanted.
• Unwanted Rescue : The Enterprise manages to lock on to Picard while he and Dathon are fighting the beast, and without Picard's help, Dathon gets mortally injured.
• This is pretty much a Star Trek version of Enemy Mine .
• Another instance occurs as an Invoked Trope . This is Dathon's plan, recreating the story of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. It also seems to be a massive advantage of the Tamarian language; he gets across the entire multi-day plan to his crew just by saying the title.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me : Riker bets the Tamarians won't go as far as shooting down a shuttle, so sends Worf down with an away team. They take out a nacelle with a precision shot, forcing the shuttle to return to Enterprise.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S4E26 S5E1 "Redemption"
• Recap/Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E3 "Ensign Ro"

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Published Sep 30, 2016

"Darmok" Turns 25 Today

Many memorable episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series are turning 50 this year, but they're not the only hours we'll be celebrating in the coming weeks and months here at StarTrek.com . Some of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's best installments will turn 25 years old this year. Case in point, " Darmok ," which debuted on September 30, 1991 and which tends to always land in the top 10, or often the top 5, of TNG Best-of lists.

Some facts, figures and anecdotes about "Darmok."

"Darmok" was the second episode of TNG 's fifth season. Winrich Kolbe directed it based on a script by Joe Menosky and a story by Menosky and Philip LeZebnik.

According to Memory Alpha , "'Darmok" was filmed between Thursday July 18, 1991 and Friday July 26, 1991 on Paramount Stage 8, 9 and 16, as well as on location at Bronson Canyon."

"Shaka, when the walls fell," spoken by both Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Dathon (Paul Winfield), rates as one of the most-memorable lines in all of Star Trek .

We also loved Picard's reply to Riker, when the latter asked, "New friends, captain?" Picard answered, "I can't say, Number One. But at least they're not new enemies."

What did you think of the new captain's uniform, which made its debut in this episode?

Winfield was no stranger to Star Trek , as he'd played Captain Terrell in The Wrath of Khan . The actor, an Oscar nominee and Emmy winner, died of a heart attack in 2002.

Ashley Judd, in "Darmok," made the first of her two appearances as Ensign Robin Lefler. She also played the character in " The Game ."

According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion , producer Michael Piller deemed "Darmok" to have had the longest gestation period of any episode made during his tenure: two years.

Blooper time: phaser fire comes out of the forward photon torpedo launcher.

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Darmok was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that aired in 1991 . It featured Captain Jean-Luc Picard meeting an alien whose language consisted of metaphors and references. Joel Mintz considered it to be a "total classic". ( PROSE : Return of the Living Dad )

When Bernice Summerfield first saw it airing in 1994 , she thought it was a documentary . ( PROSE : The Left-Handed Hummingbird )

Behind the scenes [ ]

The basic synopsis of a hero trapped on a planet with an alien who can only speak in metaphors and references was an inspiration for Russell T Davies ' episode Midnight :

"I've seen lots of Star Trek: The Next Generation , I think it's a lovely show – but there's one episode, the billing for which is so fascinating I've actively avoided ever seeing it. I love the idea so much, I'd rather think about it. Forever. The episode is called 'Darmok,' and the synopsis simply says that Captain Picard is trapped on a planet with an alien who can only talk in metaphors. Wow. That sounds brilliant. How does that work? What happens? How does it end? I've got no idea – not seen it! But it keeps resonating with me. In 2008, I wrote a Doctor Who episode called 'Midnight.' Is it like 'Darmok'? I don't know. But stripped down to its essentials, it's a story about a hero, an alien, and words. That's practically the same billing. Maybe the two shows are profoundly different, but I know for a fact that all those years of wondering about 'Darmok' led me to that script." Russell T Davies [1]

Footnotes [ ]

• ↑ SFX (200) p. 140
• 2 The Toymaker
• 3 Ruby Sunday

Darmok: A failure to communicate

Tng: s05e02.

Written by: Engage Featured Image by: Adventure

Imagine a client staring blankly at your presentation without a clue what you’re trying to say. A marketing nightmare for us, a diplomatic nightmare for the Star Trek crew who meet a species whose language is incomprehensible. On Friday, September 3rd, PD’s Friducation Star Trek-scapade went where no linguist has gone before, exploring how much we take for granted in our basic communication.

This episode reminds us that real extraterrestrials won’t merely sound like us with foreign accents.

It’s only words, and words are all we have…

Darmok (TNG, S5E2) is themed around the question: how do we open a dialogue with a species whose language is based on an entirely different structure than ours?

Darmok has become one of Star Trek: Next Generation ’s most popular episodes because its invented alien language is filled with so many evocative, quotable lines. “Shaka, when the walls fell” and “Mirab with sails unfurled” don’t make sense, but once you get it, they do.

The episode begins with the Enterprise en route to the planet El-Adrel to rendezvous with a Tamarian ship. Previous encounters with the Tamarians have described them as an “Enigmatic” species, as nobody has been able to decipher their language.

Star Trek, when the words fell

Captain Picard’s first attempt at dialogue is no more successful. The Tamarian Captain appears onscreen with a string of words that sounds like it was run through a bad Google Translate: “Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Lowani under two moons” . Even with the universal translator, the phrases make no sense.

Picard responds: “Would you be prepared to consider the creation of a mutual non-aggression pact between our two peoples, possibly leading to a trade agreement and cultural interchange” , leaving the Tamarians with a blank look.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to talk to each other, the alien Captain consults with his First-Officer and appears to arrive at a decision, uttering the word “Darmok” . His First-Officer shakes his head and replies, “Rai and Jiri at Lungha!” . The two are obviously disagreeing over something, but when the Captain emphatically states, “Darmok at Tanagra” , the debate is clearly over.

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel

A moment later, Picard is beamed off the bridge and transported to the planet below, where he’s met by the Tamarian Captain, Dathon, who is holding up two daggers. A dual? Dathon tosses Picard one of the daggers, but he refuses to pick it up. “I certainly didn’t come here to start a war…” .

Night falls, Picard tries unsuccessfully to light a fire to keep warm. Dathon chuckles, tosses Picard a lit branch from his roaring fire and says, “Temba” .

Picard: “What does that mean? Fire?”

Dathon: “Temba, his arms wide.”

Picard grasps the basic meaning. “Temba is a person. His arms wide … because he’s … he’s holding them apart. In… generosity. In giving. In taking. Thank you.” A first glimmer into Tamarian communication.

The next morning, Picard is woken by an agitated Dathon. “Darmok! Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!” A loud growl is heard from a distance. Picard finally accepts the dagger Dathon had offered the day before. The growl is getting closer. As the two captains team together to face the approaching predator, Picard begins to piece together the actions and their association with the Tamarian words.

Dathon: Uzani, his army at Lashmir.


Picard: At Lashmir? Was it like this at Lashmir? A similar situation to the one we’re facing here?

Dathon: Uzani, his army with fists open.

Picard: A strategy? With fists open?

Dathon: His army, with fists closed.

Picard: With fists closed. An army, with fists open, to lure the enemy … with fists closed, to attack? That’s how you communicate, isn’t it? By citing example, by metaphor! Uzani’s army, with fists open.

Dathon: Sokath! His eyes uncovered!

Communication has finally been bridged, however the epiphany is short-lived. The beast materializes and attacks, wounding both Picard and Dathon.

At that moment, Picard is unceremoniously transporter-jacked for the second time in the episode, this time by his own ship. While he and Dathan had been engaged in their unique team-building exercise, the Enterprise crew had been trying to solve the Tamarians’ particle scattering field, which had blocked attempts to retrieve Picard. However, enveloping Picard in a transporter beam just as he and Dathan had established communication. The beam doesn’t hold, Picard rematerializes in the same spot on the planet, but it’s too late, the beast is gone and Dathan is left badly wounded.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, at Uruk

As night falls, this time it’s Picard building a fire to keep his new ally comfortable. Understanding now that Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra was a metaphor for their current situation, Picard is able to share his thoughts with the weakening Tamarian Captain.

“You hoped that something like this would happen, didn’t you? You knew there was a dangerous creature on this planet and you knew, from the tale of Darmok, that a danger shared might sometimes bring two people together.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

You and me, here, at El-Adrel.”

In a touching scene, as Picard cares for the dying Tamarian Captain he translates the tale of Gilgamesh into metaphor-based images, sharing some of Earth’s history with his new ally.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered

The Tamarian Captain dies from his injuries as the beast is approaching again, the Enterprise disables the Tamarian ship’s particle field and beams Picard back onboard. The rescue is seen as a hostile act. The Tamarians fire back, abandoning diplomacy and engaging in battle.

But before the superior Tamarian weaponry can overpower the Enterprise, Picard bursts onto the bridge. Addressing the opposing First-Officer, Picard flexes his new Tamarian linguistic skills with a stream of metaphors that explain what took place on the planet, and how their Captain met a noble end. The First-Officer bows his head in acknowledgment. Picard holds up Dathan’s log, brought back from the planet. It’s beamed to the Tamarian bridge, where its story of “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel” will now be inscribed into Tamarian lore.

In a final act of respect, Picard holds up the ceremonial dagger as an offering. “ Tembo. His arms open.”

The First Officer defers, “Tembo. At rest.”

“Thank you.”

The meaning behind the meaning

Because of its unusual approach to linguistics, Darmok has been a source of debate among Star Trek fans. One interpretation questions the claim that the Tamarians speak in metaphors. Perhaps a more accurate description is that Tamarians speak in strategies, which would be far more efficient. If Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra was simply a poetic image it would have very limited use. However, if those words were a complete instruction manual for what to do in a specific situation, then it’s possible to put in motion complex actions with the details already understood, like a set play in football. The short bursts of Tamarian imagery could pack hundreds of granular details, learned over time.

The other interesting note is that although Tamarian grammar is different, they use the same mathematics. Their speech includes numerical references ( “Lowani under two moons” ), suggesting that math is the universal language.

Perhaps that’s more analysis than the episode deserves, but the best Star Trek episodes are self-contained parables that lend themselves to discussion. Darmok is neither the most exciting nor the best written episode in the series, however there’s something compelling about ‘Firsts’.

Darmok, Jalad, and PD, at Friducation

One last thought about our own communications. Here at Pixel Dreams our team is eclectic, from different places of origin, with various first languages. But through our company culture, shared values, collective purpose, and mandatory reading assignments, we are meeting on the same playing field and developing our own company language. The results speak for themselves.

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You are visiting Compassion , a one-page fansite for the celebrated Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok" (S5E2).

As a Star Trek fan since I was eight years old, this is my favorite Star Trek episode of all time; as an educator in primarily language and literature fields, I'll explore why this episode is not only a touching story, but a wonderful teaching tool. It shows us how we create and use language to connect with others, how vital that connection is for us, and how compassion makes communication so much better.

First Encounter

On Stardate 45047.2, the Enterprise is traveling to the unpopulated system called El-Adrel, which Picard notes is near the territory of the Children of Tama. Some Tamarians have been in this system before the Federation got there, and have been sending a mathematical series of numbers toward Federation space since. Picard judges that this must be an attempt to communicate with the Federation.

However, even though there have been many attempts to connect with the Tamarians over the years, none have been successful. The notes don't go much beyond describing their language as "incomprehensible," leaving the crew to puzzle out exactly why. As usual, Worf assumes that the species may be threatening, while Counselor Troi believes their motives are more peace-oriented. Picard then says, "Are they truly incomprehensible? In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure."

Soon they rendezvous with the Tamarian ship...and are stunned. The apparent captain of the ship greets them with the phrase "Rai and Jiri at Lungha;" he looks friendly enough, but the words mean nothing to the Enterprise crew. Befuddled, Picard tries to communicate in regular English, but the Tamarians don't seem to understand him, either. One of the Tamarian crew, possibly the first officer, laughs and says "Kadir beneath Mo Moteh," but the Tamarian captain cuts him off with a swift "The River Temarc! In winter."

Clearly the Tamarians' references mean something, but the Bridge crew is at a loss, even as they attempt further communication; Riker and Picard confer, but still cannot make sense of anything. After a few moments, the Tamarian captain rises, saying "Shaka, when the walls fell," in a tone of mixed hopelessness and disgust. Then, inspiration apparently strikes--he exclaims, "Darmok at Tanagra!"

None of the Enterprise Bridge crew know how to react, but the Tamarian first officer visibly objects to this idea. He argues with his captain in their language, offering several other apparent suggestions ("Zima at Anzo", "Zima and Bakar", "Mirab, his sails unfurled"). The Tamarian captain, however, will not be moved from his original idea, and he silences his first officer with another "The River Temarc!." He removes a dagger from one of his officers' uniforms, faces the viewscreen, and holds up his own dagger and the officer's dagger, saying in formal tones, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra." Then Picard vanishes--teleported by the Tamarian ship down onto the nearby planet of El-Adrel.

Immediately the Bridge crew reacts, but it's too late; Picard is already on the surface, as is the Tamarian captain, and the Tamarian ship is producing a particle scattering field to prevent transporting Picard back up. On the planet's surface, Picard and the Tamarian captain meet in an open field of grass and shrubs...and the Tamarian is holding two daggers up.

Attempting Communication

On the Enterprise, Riker is desperately trying to figure out what's happening and what will be the best way forward. Worf offers that perhaps there's a "contest of champions" happening on the surface, and though Riker does not openly agree, he worries aloud that because the Tamarian captain armed himself before beaming down, Picard is now in serious danger.

Meanwhile, on the planet, the Tamarian captain walks toward Picard, extending one of his two daggers toward Picard as if to give it to him. Picard thinks as Worf does, that he's being challenged to a fight--he didn't want to start a war, but apparently neither does the Tamarian. Instead, the Tamarian tries to explain again--"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," with an expression of patience, but Picard just isn't getting it. Finally the Tamarian captain tosses the dagger toward Picard, though not aggressively, as if trying to get him to pick it up. Picard, utterly uncertain of everything at this point, does pick it up, but tosses it back toward the other captain, not wanting to start a fight. The Tamarian gives up at this point, saying "Shaka, when the walls fell," as he picks the dagger back up and walks away.

On the Enterprise, Data is keeping track of both captains' general health and location on the planet's surface. Riker hails the Tamarian ship again, but can't get much out of the Tamarian first officer besides "Darmok at Tanagra," "Kiteo, his eyes closed," and "Chenza at court, the court of silence." They close the channel with nothing gained. Thus, Riker orders Worf to take a security team down to the planet by shuttle. Data warns him that the Tamarians can stop a shuttle, but Riker answers, shrewdly, that the Tamarians are not likely to fire on a shuttle unless they truly want to start a war between themselves and the Federation.

First Glimmers of Understanding

Down on the planet, night has fallen, and so have the temperatures; Picard is trying to start a fire some distance away from the Tamarian captain, because he is still unsure of the other captain's motives. The Tamarian has a good campfire going, since the fire is close to a cliff face, but Picard can't get one started because of strong wind. The Tamarian captain points this out, laughing--"Shaka, when the walls fell..." Picard agrees, and wonders aloud if the Tamarian will attack him in his sleep, or if he'll freeze to death first.

After a moment, the Tamarian gets up and says "Darmok of Kenza. Jalad at the Kiteo?" His posture and tone is patient, as if trying to explain as simply as possible. Picard wants so badly to understand, but can come up with nothing; instead, in exasperation with himself and the situation, he answers with "Picard of the Federation, of the starship Enterprise, of the planet Earth." Now it is the Tamarian captain's turn not to understand, and after a few more rounds of this, he mutters "Kadir beneath Mo Moteh" and turns back to his campsite. Picard sits near his ill-fated fire again, hugging his arms close to himself...until he notices the Tamarian captain tossing a set of small metallic objects down to his feet a few times, as if casting runes . After three repetitions, the Tamarian moves around the four points of his small campsite, laying one of the small objects at each point as if to consecrate the campsite or secure it. Then he makes a strange salute, touching the metal of his dagger and then touching his forehead. Once that is done, he lies down and attempts to sleep (with the dagger tucked under his arm).

Unfortunately, Picard still can't get his own fire started, and the Tamarian lies in his own campsite for a little bit, listening to Picard struggle. Finally the other captain gets up, lights a large stick from his own fire, and tosses it Picard's way, saying "Temba" and "Temba, his arms wide." Picard tries to puzzle out what that means--does it mean the Tamarian is giving him something, or expecting something in return? The Tamarian answers with the same line, patiently, and seems to have no malice. Picard takes the fire-bearing stick gratefully, and thanks the other captain--and though the Tamarian doesn't apparently understand the words "thank you," he smiles, as if to say "I think we're finally getting somewhere."

During a Standoff, Progress

As this is happening on the surface, Riker sends the shuttle out, with Lieutenant Worf and a security team onboard. The Tamarian ship makes no move to stop them until they get close to the D region of the ionosphere (the area with the scattering field). Then, the Tamarian ship fires a beam of green plasma energy at the shuttle...but instead of destroying the ship, it only targets the starboard nacelle and thrusters. Riker realizes that this has been done deliberately, as if the Tamarians are just trying to stop them interfering. He recalls the shuttle, and remarks that the Tamarians made a "nice shot."

In a senior crew meeting, LaForge mentions that he is working on a way to get the transporter beam through the particle scattering field, but it'll take a full day to do it. Troi worries Picard could be dead by then; Worf is assured, however, that Picard has a good "warrior's ability," and further advises Riker to fire on the Tamarians to shut off their scattering field. Riker, however, doesn't want to do anything that would incite a war. Instead, he instructs Data and Troi to start studying the Tamarian language.

Down on the planet, it's day again, and Picard has awoken, stirring the cooling embers of his fire. The Tamarian captain is no longer at his own campsite, so Picard enters the campsite to try to learn anything about the man or his culture. He finds the Tamarian's fire pit still smoldering, and the bits of metal still arranged around the campsite; he investigates, not sure what he's holding. He also finds a flat metal-covered object of some sort--he opens it, and it looks like a journal, possibly a good source of information for the language.

Back on the ship, Data and Troi are going through the logs of their communications with the Tamarians; they first try to puzzle out what "Darmok" means. Troi understands the recorded conversation between the Tamarian captain and first officer to be a disagreement over a serious issue. Considering this, she then has the computer search for the word "Darmok" in local linguistic databases. Data reads off the results: there are 47 instances of "darmok" as a word in this sector alone, including a frozen dessert, a colony name, a 7th dynasty emperor, and a mytho-historical hunter, all on different planets and places. Troi laments, "All of our experience with other cultures, and we can't even say hello to the Tamarians." It's hard to know which of the instances could be correct.

Then Data looks up the word "Tanagra," coming up with another innumerable list of entries...but one comes from the planet Shantil III, the same one mentioned by one of the "Darmok" entries. Troi has the computer cross-reference the two searches, and realizes that Shantil III is quite possibly the jumping-off point, as it contains both a mytho-historical hunter named Darmok and an island called Tanagra!

Fighting Together, Torn Apart

On the planet, Picard is looking through the Tamarian's metal-covered journal, but it's full of indecipherable diagrams rather than words. Just then, the Tamarian comes running up to the campsite, calling "Darmok!" in a distressed tone. He tries to get Picard to take the second dagger again, but Picard refuses it, thinking the captain is challenging him to fight. Then there's a loud roar, like some kind of large animal is nearby on the mountain. Now it's become a little clearer: the Tamarian captain needs Picard to help fight whatever it is. The other captain repeats "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," as if he's saying "Well, we have to work together and I don't even know if you'll have my back." Then he offers Picard the dagger one last time as the roaring gets closer, and this time Picard takes it gratefully, watching the mountainside.

On board the Enterprise, Worf picks up an electromagnetic presence moving toward Picard, and analyzes it as a lifeform. Riker wants to use the transporter to get Picard out of there, but LaForge is still working on making it strong enough to pierce through the scattering field. After a few moments, Riker decides to chance using the teleporter anyway.

On the planet, the monstrous life form finally appears and approaches; Picard backs up, and the Tamarian looks at him incredulously, saying "Mirab, his sails unfurled?", like "Are you really running from this?" Picard keeps backing up, and the Tamarian captain says scornfully, "Shaka, when the walls fell!" Then the creature vanishes, so the two of them can't catch it. The Tamarian captain repeats, with exasperation: "Shaka, when the walls fell."

Despite their failure at fighting the creature, Picard realizes he may be able to understand what the Tamarian is saying. In response to his speech, the Tamarian asks "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra?" as if he's asking "Do you get it? Do you get that we have to work together?"

While the crew of the Enterprise works to teleport Picard off the ship, Picard and the Tamarian advance slowly through the landscape. The life form appears again, and the Tamarian captain shoves Picard a little further from him, saying "Uzani, his army at Lashmir!" Picard starts to work it out: "was it like this at Lashmir? A similar situation to the one we're facing here?"

The other captain answers him patiently, using gestures as if explaining to a child: "Uzani, his army with fist--open. Uzani, his army with fists--closed." Then and only then, Picard gets it, and he says, "This is how you communicate, by citing example--by metaphor!" So Picard suggests "Uzani, his army with fists...open!" In exultation, the Tamarian shouts "Sokath, his eyes uncovered!", which needs no translation!

At that moment, the life form appears again; Picard strikes it once with his dagger, but the blade glances off. The creature rushes the Tamarian captain, and Picard tries to strike at its back, but it turns and slashes at him, throwing him backwards. Then the creature pins the Tamarian down and begins to strike him over and over. Picard tries to defend the Tamarian...but just then the Enterprise transporter goes into effect, freezing him in place, unable to help while the Tamarian captain suffers blow after blow.

Despite all the Engineering crew's work, the transporter cannot pull Picard back to the ship; Riker hails the Tamarian ship again in desperation, but all the Tamarian first officer will say is "Kailash, when it rises." Finally the transporter beam lets Picard go, and he goes to help the Tamarian captain, who is badly wounded and weak. "Shaka, when the walls fell" is a very fitting statement indeed.

The Last Conversation

On the Enterprise, Riker is holding another senior crew meeting to determine what to do next. He is impatient; Picard is fine for the moment, but they can also tell that the Tamarian is injured, and the Enterprise cannot attack the Tamarian ship's field generator without starting a battle. He worries that Picard may soon be facing the entity alone, and decides that they will try to use the Enterprise's phasers to target the Tamarian ship's amplifiers instead.

Next, Data and Troi report on their language findings, and quickly outline how abstract language can be, using the example of narrative imagery; Dr. Crusher makes the connection when Troi uses the example "Juliet on her balcony," answering "an image of romance." But, Troi explains, if one doesn't know the character of Juliet or the plot of Romeo and Juliet , the image is useless--it needs its context, as does "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra." All they know is that Darmok was a hunter and Tanagra was an island.

On the planet, night has fallen again, and Picard has brought the Tamarian captain back to the campsite, trying to stabilize him. The other captain repeats, weakly, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," then follows it up with "Darmok on the ocean." Picard tries to understand this single new image as a metaphor for being alone. Before he can explain more, the Tamarian suffers an attack of pain, but when Picard tries to help, he waves it off, saying "Kiazi's children, their faces wet."

Despite the remaining difficulties in translations, Picard is piecing the story together, with the help of a drawn map on the ground and a rock as a prop. The Tamarian continues to tell the story: "Darmok on the ocean, Tanagra on the ocean...Jalad on the ocean, Jalad at Tanagra." Slowly the story becomes clearer: Darmok and Jalad arrived at the same place, an island called Tanagra, and faced "the beast at Tanagra." When Picard says "They arrive separately, struggle against a common foe...", the Tamarian finishes, reverently, "Darmok and Jalad...on the ocean." Picard smiles with understanding. "They left together." He finally understands the story and why the Tamarian worked so hard to do this.

As Picard has this realization, the Tamarian captain struggles with pain again, apparently worse than before--he sobs, "Zinda! His face black, his eyes red!" When it passes, he relaxes against the stones, saying "Callimas at Bahar" and making calming gestures toward Picard, as if to say "don't worry about me." Now Picard says aloud what he's been thinking: the Tamarian captain planned this interaction, knowing that there was a "beast" on El-Adrel, figuring that common adversity would bring the two captains together (as indeed it did).

Though the Tamarian does not understand Picard's speech, he understands enough to want to hear from Picard now; he says, "Kira at Bashi. Temba, his arms wide." The meaning, to Picard, is quite clear: "I've talked enough, I want to listen--your turn!" So, a little hesitantly, Picard begins to tell a simplified version of The Epic of Gilgamesh , making sure to stop and emphasize certain phrases that the Tamarian would latch onto, such as "Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk" (an image of unlikely friends). The Tamarian listens and responds, but is clearly growing weaker, and his eyes begin to close. When Picard reaches the end of the story, where Enkidu dies, he quotes Gilgamesh, saying, "He who was my companion through adventure and hardship is gone forever." As he speaks these words, the Tamarian gently passes away.

Peace and Connection at Last

On the Enterprise, Riker is readying to fire on the Tamarian ship when they learn that the Tamarian captain appears dead on scans. Not only that, Picard is now threatened by the monstrous entity, even as he is attempting to honor the Tamarian captain's body in death. Riker gives the order to fire phasers only on the Tamarian ship's particle scatterers, just enough to enable transporters so they can get Picard off the planet. While this is successful, the Tamarian ship fires back--but again, not to destroy, only to render the Enterprise stationary. But Riker has had enough, and a volley of shots flies between both ships. Shields on the Enterprise fail, and it looks like this will finally end in war...

...and then Picard enters the bridge from the elevator, saying "Hail the Tamarian vessel." When the viewscreen comes up, the Tamarian first officer seethes at them, saying "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red!" Picard responds with a "River Temarc" command, and the first officer replies, dubiously, "Darmok...?" as if to say, "Did this crazy plan actually work?" Picard continues: "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra; Darmok and Jalad on the ocean."

Jubilant, the Tamarian first officer cries to his crewmates, "Sokath, his eyes open!" Then Picard continues: "The beast at Tanagra? Uzani, his army. Shaka, when the walls fell." Picard's tone alone tells the Tamarian crew of their captain's death, and they react with great sorrow.

Then Picard holds up the captain's journal, and the Tamarians transport it back. The Tamarian first officer holds the journal as if it is sacred, and speaks in solemn and formal tones, "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel," as if to say, "We see your efforts and we honor them." Then he commands, "Mirab, with sails unfurled." Before they can leave, Picard attempts to give Dathon's dagger back, saying "Temba, his arms open?" The Tamarian first officer holds up a hand, smiles, and says "Temba, at rest." Then the Tamarian ship departs. Riker asks, "New friends, Captain?" "I can't say, Number One," Picard replies, and then studies the dagger. "But at least they're not new enemies."

Later, Picard is reading the Homeric Hymns in his ready room when Riker comes in to give his damage report. They talk briefly of the stories of Earth, and Picard says, "More familiarity with our own mythology might help us to relate to theirs. The Tamarian was willing to risk all of us for the hope of communication...connection. Now the door is open between our peoples. That commitment meant more to him than his own life."

When Riker departs, Picard picks up Dathon's dagger and studies it as he walks to the window of his ready room...then, while looking out at the stars passing by, he makes the slow, solemn salute that Dathon made at the campsite, touching the metal and then touching his forehead.

Why This Matters

This is my absolute favorite Star Trek episode, and I find it poignant and important on many different levels:

Character Development: Picard

We see Picard a bit out of his element as a leader, struggling to make peaceful contact while having absolutely no basis of translation from which to work. For all the Federation's technology, all their universal translators, this is one linguistic problem he has to dig his way through just as we do in real life--piece by piece, learning from each encounter, wanting to communicate so badly and not being able to make much headway at first.

He also learns in this episode that even though he was not completely successful in bridging the gap between the Federation and the Children of Tama, his honest, compassionate attempt was honorable in itself . The Tamarians will likely carry home the story of "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" and incorporate it into their society, an example of two people coming together and doing their best, making great strides forward even at great personal risk.

Importance of Non-Verbal Communication

This episode shows the importance of non-verbal communication in order to understand intent. It's lucky that the Tamarians see smiles as friendly, for instance, when they could easily see them as aggressive. We often perform and understand body language, gestures, tone of voice, and facial expressions without much conscious thought, and so these things underpin our words and assist with social interactions. Because Picard and Dathon can both read each other in non-verbal ways, their communication is made much smoother, because they both quickly learn they can trust each other.

Not only does this show how the characters in the story rely on non-verbal communication, it also illustrates the craft of acting most beautifully. Each of the actors playing Tamarians, plus Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, have to act with non-verbal communication alone--I mean, how do you create your character and deliver dialogue well when your words seem like nonsense? While I am not an actor and can't answer that question, I see how their skill helps to produce this beautiful episode, in which communication without actual words is key.

• APA.org: Nonverbal Communication
• VeryWellMind: Types of Non-Verbal Communication

Teaching Language (and Culture) Through Story

The story takes a little time to deconstruct how language is made--we see Troi and Data working through mythology and history to piece together the strange references being made. As I watched, I also began to examine how so many of my language choices come from the same kinds of references; I basically talk in historical and mythological memes . (Many like-minded people on the Internet have commented on this phenomenon--see the links just below this section!)

This demonstrates the creation and evolution of linguistics/culture in a more approachable way, and it becomes something like a puzzle to solve rather than an esoteric concept only reserved for textbooks. (I am also fascinated by the rich culture and mythology we see in the brief flashes of Tamarian dialogue, and would love to see this expounded upon!)

• MemoryAlpha: The Children of Tama
• AllThingsLinguistic: Discussion on Tamarian Language
• TwinCitiesGeek: How Star Trek: TNG Predicted Meme Culture
• Medium: Shaka, When the Memes Rose
• r/startrek: Is the Tamarian language simply memes?

Well-Written Character Responses

I appreciate how each of the Enterprise characters has a matching response to the unique crisis, showing a deep understanding of each character and their background.

For instance, Worf moves right into battle mode and assumes the Tamarians wish to make war, which, given his life experience and culture, makes perfect sense. Data , however, approaches the language issue as a problem to be solved, as is logical for an android with more neutral thinking patterns. The unusual work pairing of Counselor Troi and Data in a few scenes is a particularly brilliant writing decision-- Troi's expertise with the human condition, emotions, psychology, and stories complements Data's expertise with patterns, reasoning, logic, and systems of information, and together they begin to crack the Tamarian code.

We also see that Riker reacts similarly to Worf, but with more restraint; he's concerned with Picard's safety and the ship's safety above all, but he also doesn't want to start a war if he can help it. His character experiences a little growth here as well as he finds his own footing as temporary leader of the crew. And Picard meets this most personal of crises with the investigator's mind and diplomatic skill that helps him throughout the series, while also learning that the emotional sensibilities necessary for leading people also helps him uncover meaning when communicating with the Tamarian captain. All of the characters react as naturally and three-dimensionally as we would expect, given their strengths, cultures, and personalities, and I find that helps the story itself feel more realistic as a result.

Beauty and Triumph of Learning

I love the Tamarian's exclamation of "Sokath, his eyes uncovered!" because there are so many of these moments in teaching--when someone finally understands, there's exhilaration and joy, a bond that forms there almost instantly, and more learning can take place after that first burst of understanding.

In many ways, this is a teaching experience between two compassionate leaders , both willing to do anything to build this bridge between their peoples, and for once, Picard is the one who is learning instead of teaching as he so often does in the series. I've been drawn to these sorts of moments since I was a child--excerpts from The Miracle Worker were some of my favorite reading as a child, especially the moment when Anne Sullivan finally helps the blind and deaf Helen Keller understand the word "water" through demonstration and finger-spelling . (The scene depicted in the linked video clip is a joyful "Sokath" moment, indeed!) Even though the path to learning may be difficult and non-linear, it is rewarding, as this episode teaches us.

Communication as Connection

This episode's emotional arc is about connection--about that most basic social need of all humans--and it shows that without patience, compassion, trial and error, and forgiveness (for both self and others), connection just won't happen. It takes a person continuing to reach out time and again, realizing the other person is probably struggling just as much, and being okay with failing a lot (and maybe never really succeeding).

In our current global culture made possible by the Internet, we need this kind of thoughtful communication more than ever, but it's also harder than ever; this episode of Star Trek: TNG illustrates the skills of connection so beautifully and simply that it's inspirational. Even though Picard and Dathon do not solve the communication difficulty between their two species in one encounter, the groundwork is still laid for further development, so it cannot be called a failure. So many things in life begin this way--as not quite a success but not a failure --and normalizing this is important to mental health AND our continued connections with one another.

Translations

As I watched the episode, I found myself able to piece together some approximate meanings of each Tamarian phrase, and I have sorted them here according to story, along with an overall interpretation of each story as a whole. Some phrases are defined within the episodes and are marked with a *, but all others are my interpretations only.

Rai and Jiri | Darmok and Jalad | Uzani | Zima | Other Snippets

Rai and Jiri

Rai and jiri at lungha.

Opening greeting; image of friendly meeting of unfamiliar parties.

Rai of Lowani

One of the meeting parties.

Lowani under two moons

Given context, the "two moons" in this phrase indicate two equals coming together, like Rai and Jiri. Perhaps the Rai character, being from Lowani, sees this meeting as more friendly, whereas the Jiri character may not be as certain or on as stable a footing.

Jiri of Ubaya

the other meeting party; a stranger, likely foreign to Rai.

Ubaya of crossed roads at Lungha

the Jiri character may be fearful, distrustful, or confused (drawing from the image of crossed roads)

Lungha, her sky gray

An image of uncertainty but also cautious hope, since the sky is gray but not raining.

Overall Interpretation

Taking all these together with nonverbal communication and tone of voice, the Tamarian captain appears to be saying:

"We are the Children of Tama. We would like to officially join the Federation, but I understand that past efforts have not been successful due to our language barrier. We are a peaceful people and want to build relations with you. Would this be possible?"

Darmok and Jalad

Darmok/darmok at tanagra *.

one person going to a strange new place

Darmok and Jalad on the ocean *

two people, once strangers or enemies, leaving together in one accord

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra *

a friendship achieved through a common struggle.

Darmok of Kanza

more granular explanation of one character in the story, just to see if Picard recognizes ANYTHING about this story. We cannot guess much about Darmok from this line, but Kanza appears to be a place very different from Jalad's place of origin (see below).

Darmok on the ocean *

interpreted first as isolation; a closer meaning might be solitary.

Jalad at the Kiteo

further explanation of the other character in the story. Given that Kiteo is mentioned later as a person ("his eyes closed"), while this one indicates Kiteo is a place, it makes me think that "Kiteo" may be a religious site, perhaps with a personage similar to the Oracle of Delphi .

Kiteo, his eyes closed

image of lacking comprehension.

"We could fight the creature on the planet! It worked for Darmok and Jalad, why not us? We've tried everything else, we've tried for so many years...why not put both of us down there and see if we can understand each other? We'll be no worse off if this fails."

Uzani, his army at Lashmir *

strategizing

Uzani, his army with fists closed *

attacking the enemy

Uzani, his army with fist open *

luring the enemy

This story is explained in the episode as a simple strategy for outwitting and conquering the enemy, which Picard can understand because it doesn't require as much knowledge of the characters.

Zima at Anzo

possibly a diplomat, given the context of the Tamarian first officer suggesting it as another course of action. The first officer is clearly concerned for the safety of the crew and appears to feel that his captain's actions are too reckless. Something about this makes me think Zima communicated more in writing than by direct contact.

Zima and Bakar

possibly a formal diplomatic communication; given the context of the earlier definition, it may be a letter sent from Zima to Bakar, or it could be a secured meeting.

Based on nonverbal cues alone, I can gather that the Tamarian first officer might be saying:

"Sir! You shouldn't do this, you'll be in danger! Write them a letter, meet them in person with a security detail...honestly, we could just leave! Just don't go down to that planet!"

Other Snippets

Callimas at bahar.

image of calm: "don't worry about me."

Chenza at court, the court of silence

"I don't want to talk to you anymore," or "keep quiet till this is finished."

Kadir beneath Mo Moteh

a hopeless attempt.

Kailash, when it rises

"wait and see"

Kiazi's children, their faces wet

image of grief. Both the tone and nonverbal communication in the scene suggest it means something like "there's nothing you can do for me, don't bother."

Kira at Bashi

image of listening: "I've spoken enough for now--I want to listen"

Mirab, his sails unfurled

image of leaving, usually in haste.

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel

great strides were made; we honor the effort.

The River Temarc, in winter

absolute quiet, following orders. (The Tamarian captain's tone indicates it means "Shut up or I'll have you thrown in the brig for insubordination.")

Shaka, when the walls fell

an effort that failed.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered

hardly needs any translation--"he finally gets it! YAY!"

Temba, at rest

Temba/temba, his arms wide *.

"here, take this"

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red

image of death (used for both mortal injury and fury)

Other Translations

It's interesting to compare my rough translations to the translations of others, to see where interpretations of language differ and connect--check out Memory Alpha's Tamarian language page to see another list!

About the Author

I am Robin, a woman in my late thirties, and I work as a college-level tutor in English and writing in all subject matters; I've loved the Star Trek franchise and lore since childhood, but my favorite series are The Next Generation and Voyager . I also love creative writing, composing music, and making websites, and I run withinmyworld.org as a collective of all the fansites I've made over the years.

About This Website

This is a one-page fansite made to participate in the Amassment One-Pager Challenge of 2022. I find hand-built fansites to be a fun way to talk about the media that affects me, and to find community with others on the subjects, as described in this site . If you also like to build fansites, I recommend checking out Amassment.org to see all the beautiful things people have been building over the years...and if you like, join our Discord group, too!

• Images: Cygnus-X1.net
• Google Fonts : Tulpen One , Six Caps , Birthstone , BenchNine , Oswald
• Background Texture: Axiom Pattern from TransparentTextures.com

Affiliation and Link-Exchange

These related articles and discussion threads help continue the study of all things Tamarian. I'm excited about the possibility of even more Children of Tama content in Star Trek 's future...there's a lot more that the writers could do with the idea of two peoples slowly learning each other's language and communicating.

Tamarian Character on Star Trek: Lower Decks

• CBR: Star Trek: Lower Decks Honors Picard's Most Beloved Ally - Metaphorically Speaking
• Tor: DeCandido, His Review Mixed - Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Kayshon, His Eyes Open"
• ScreenRant: Star Trek Celebrates One Of Picard's Best TNG Victories

Further Discussions

• Quora: If you met a member of the Tamarian culture (as in the Star Trek: TNG episode "Darmok") what great tales from Earth would you teach them?
• StarTrek.com: Striving to Create Our Own "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel"

Memory Beta, non-canon Star Trek Wiki

A friendly reminder regarding spoilers ! At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the continuations of Discovery and Prodigy , the advent of new eras in gaming with the Star Trek Adventures RPG , Star Trek: Infinite and Star Trek Online , as well as other post-57th Anniversary publications such as the ongoing IDW Star Trek comic and spin-off Star Trek: Defiant . Therefore, please be courteous to other users who may not be aware of current developments by using the {{ spoiler }}, {{ spoilers }} OR {{ majorspoiler }} tags when adding new information from sources less than six months old (even if it is minor info). Also, please do not include details in the summary bar when editing pages and do not anticipate making additions relating to sources not yet in release. THANK YOU

Darmok (episode)

"Darmok" was the 102nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , the second episode of the show's fifth season , first aired during the week of 30 September 1991 . The episode was written by Philip LaZebnik MA & Joe Menosky MA and directed by Winrich Kolbe MA .

• 1.1 Characters
• 1.2 Starships and vehicles
• 1.3.1 Shipboard areas
• 1.4 Races and cultures
• 1.5 States and organizations
• 1.6.1 Children of Tama language references
• 2 Chronology
• 3.1.1 Video releases
• 3.3.1 Timeline
• 3.4 External links

References [ ]

Characters [ ], starships and vehicles [ ], locations [ ], shipboard areas [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], other references [ ], children of tama language references [ ], chronology [ ], appendices [ ], related media [ ].

• Information about this episode is presented consistently in all volumes.

Video releases [ ]

Connections [ ]

Timeline [ ], external links [ ].

• Darmok (episode) article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• Darmok (episode) article at Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia.
• 1 Lamarr class
• 2 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 3 Wesley Crusher

Let’s Watch Star Trek

[TNG] Darmok

[TNG] Season 5, Episode 2: Darmok

Rating:  3

This episode is GOOFY. Also a classic.

Most Trek fans would probably rate Darmok higher. That’s understandable. The conflict at the heart of the episode is just the type of thing we want to see Star Trek tackle: Picard must bridge the gap between human perspective and an alien culture that operates in a completely different way. Even in TNG, its rare to see Trek work through a really sci-fi idea like this rumination on language. But we do think Darmok falls short in a lot of ways. Mostly, it plugs a promising idea into a very boilerplate TNG plot. It’s told well enough, but the obligations of this familiar structure leave little room to dive into the nuances of the subject. In the context of the standard plot, things like body language and speaking tone make Darmok’s intentions fairly easy to parse, leaving Picard’s misunderstanding of the situation on the planet feeling a little silly. Still, it throws some cool ideas around, and it makes sense why this episode has lasted in the minds of fans. It’s fun to think through what this species is like, and consider bigger ideas about language. There’s an interesting article at The Atlantic that covers more of that, take a look!

Read more at Memory Alpha

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Darmok (1991).

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Ekostories by Isaac Yuen

Nature | culture | self, of myths and metaphors: star trek tng’s darmok.

S everal weeks past, I attended a workshop on the use of storytelling for effective social engagement. Sitting at my table was a doctoral student interested in better ways to communicate concepts of  ecological economics  to the public. As we chatted about the various metaphors embedded within conventional economics, particularly around growth and development, I started thinking about stories that focus on the challenge of communication and the power of metaphor. Searching my mind for examples, I found myself returning once more to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation  for inspiration, this time to an episode titled Darmok .

The Enterprise, captained by Jean Luc Picard , encounters an alien race called the Tamarians in orbit around the planet El-Adrel. Unfortunately, the two crews find each other’s languages incomprehensible. Frustrated at the impasse, Dathon, the Tamarian captain, kidnaps Picard, transports them both to the planet surface, and orders his crew to prevent the Enterprise from interfering.

Once on El-Adrel, Dathon repeats the phrase “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” to Picard and tosses him a dagger. Picard refuses the weapon, believing the gesture to be an invitation to duel. As night falls and the two make camp, Dathon shares his fire with a frustrated Picard while saying, “Temba, his arms wide.”

The following morning, a hostile creature approaches their camp. Dathon tries once more to speak with Picard.  Picard finally realizes that the Tamarians communicate by citing examples and metaphors. They stand together against the beast, but due to some unfortunate timing, Dathon is mortally wounded in the ensuing fight.

Back on board the Enteprise, the crew struggles to decipher the Tamarian language, but without much success. They come to a similar conclusion as Picard, deducing that the Tamarians speak via metaphors derived from mythology and folklore, but without knowing the context with which to ground these metaphors, the chance for successful communication is slim.

A second night falls on the planet. As Picard tends to a dying Dathon, he pieces together the meaning behind “Darmok and Jaled at Tanagra”, a tale in which two lone warriors arrived on an island as strangers, but through shared adversity against a common foe, left as comrades. Picard realizes that Dathon had hoped to recreate the event on El Adrel as an attempt to open relations between their two people. Moved by his actions, Picard shares a story from Earth, part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. While listening to the tale, Dathon succumbs to his wounds.

Picard has little time to mourn the loss of Dathon the following morning before the hostile lifeform returns. The Enterprise crew resorts to force in order to disable the Tamarian ship and rescue Picard, but the hostile act triggers a full-on firing match between the two vessels. With the Enterprise about to be destroyed, Picard successfully establishes communications with the Tamarian first officer,  demonstrating that Dathon’s mission had succeeded.

The Tamarian crew is saddened by the loss of their captain, recording the story of successful first contact as “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel” before departing in peace.  In the coda, Picard quietly honours Dathon’s sacrifice to open the door between their two people.  

Myth and Storytelling  

“My turn? No, I’m not much of a storyteller.” – Jean-Luc Picard: Big fat liar.

Darmok’s quiet campfire scene ranks as one of my favourites in the entire series. Picard’s telling of Gilgamesh was my first exposure to the ancient Mesopotamian tale, and complemented by the background music, it left a lasting impression on me.   Patrick Stewart  puts on a masterful performance, but equally excellent is the venerable Paul Winfield , expertly playing one who only has a vague notion of what is being said, but is nevertheless captivated.  The scene reinforces the notion that the telling is often more important than what is being told.

I love that Picard chose to tell the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Narratively, it is a fitting tale to tell, for Enkidu was eventually struck down by the gods, leaving Gilgamesh to mourn the loss of a dear companion. But beyond that, this ancient tale, one of the earliest known stories in human history, also depicts conflict between the forces of nature and culture. Enkidu, the massive man-beast of the wild, fights Gilgamesh, the god-king from the city of Uruk,  yet out of this tumultuous struggle emerges a sense of mutual respect and a profound friendship that renders both more human and humane. Gilgamesh discovers a worthy equal and ceases to torment his subjects, while Enkidu sheds some of his feral nature to adopt the ways of civilization.

At the episode’s conclusion, Picard comments that “more understanding with our own history and mythology makes us more capable of understanding and communicating with others.” The statement serves as a reminder that past knowledge can help us foster more durable relationships with ourselves and with others. This links me back to a comment made by a fellow WordPress blogger I keep coming back to about the value of mythic stories:

“All over the world great mythic stories were told to people of all ages, stories that had violence, humor, sex, slap-stick, philosophical questions, and ethical dilemmas built into them. As you grew older, you would realize new depths to the stories, picking up on themes and ideas within the tale as your own maturity grew and your mind asked new questions… We injure ourselves by simplifying the world.” – Earthknight

• What are your favourite mythic stories? What elements make them memorable?

Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered!

 “Their ability to abstract is highly unusual. They seem to communicate through narrative imagery by reference to the individuals and places which appear in their mytho-historical accounts.” – Data, describing the Tamarians

Over the course of the story, Picard slowly works out the main but by no means complete meanings behind the phrases uttered by his Tamarian counterpart:

• “Shaka when the walls fell!” denotes failure
• “Mirab, with sails unfurled.” means departure
• “Kiazi’s children, their faces wet.” signifies unavoidable death (?)
• “Sokath with his eyes uncovered!” conveys revelation or understanding

I won’t go into the feasibility of a language constructed entirely upon metaphor. I am not a linguist, and far more knowledgeable people have written extensively about this issue. ( See here for an essay on Tamarian grammar ) As I rewatch the episode, I instead find myself thinking about our own use of metaphors in everyday life, that we often communicate through narrative imagery. Why are metaphors so evocative? Why are we so drawn to them?

This is personal speculation, but perhaps the power of metaphor stems from its inherently cooperative and participatory nature. In a successful metaphor, the teller compresses and transmits the entirety of their experience as code, while the receiver uses their understanding of the world and the other party to decipher its meaning. The teller must trust that the receiver is capable of understanding the essence of their experience, while the recipient has to be fully engaged in the process of figuring it out .

Perhaps this active and inclusive process, compared to one party stating instructions or ideas at another, is what makes metaphors so powerful. Visiting a concept discussed in The Science of Narrative , communicating in metaphor, like communicating in stories, may lead to greater “neural coupling” in which both teller and receiver become more attuned with each other.

Darmok also illustrates how metaphors are able to tap into vast multidimensional experiences. Packed into the five word phrase of “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel” is a sea of emotion and meaning that Picard becomes intensely aware of: First contact, shared danger, cultural exchange, death and sacrifice, personal courage, and all the specifics those elements entail. Maybe this is why as narrative devices or standalone expressions, metaphors can evoke such deep resonance within us: They can instantly deliver and provide context to a web of elements that cannot be easily summarized by ordinary means of communication.

• What are examples of powerful metaphors that have stayed with you?

The Courage to Convey, The Willingness to Listen

 “The Tamarian was willing to risk all of us just for the hope of communication, connection. Now the door is open between our people. That commitment meant more to him than his own life.” – Picard, in the coda

What resonates with me most in Darmok is how Picard’s curiosity of the other and his willingness to listen helps avert a disastrous conflict. Dathon, despite his commitment and sacrifice, could not have achieved his goal without Picard’s help. Darmok highlights the fact that it always takes two (or more) for successful communication, especially across disparate worldviews.

We often celebrate the courage of the conveyor, the one who initiates the exchange, extends the first gesture. What is less often praised is the listener, the one who is receptive and perceptive enough to create the space for fruitful dialogue. Both are absolutely crucial for meaningful communication. Having two speakers can quickly degenerate into one talking over the other, while having two listeners mean no bridges will ever be built.  Successful communication seems to be an exercise in complementary partnership, and as I write this sentence, I realize that this also holds true in reverse: enduring partnerships rely on complementary communication styles.

• Are you a conveyor or a listener?

While not as accessible as The Inner Light , I found Darmok to be an extraordinary hour of television, embodying one of core mantra of Star Trek “to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations.” As with most aliens in science-fiction, the Tamarians serve as mirrors for ourselves, reminding us of the importance of myths, metaphors, and storytelling in our lives while demonstrating how ingenuity, determination, and receptiveness can help defuse conflict, bridge gaps, further understanding across different worldviews.

Related Ekostories

• Zelda’s Twisted Tale: Majora’s Mask
• Star Trek’s Finest Hour: The Inner Light
• Changing Planes: The Nna Mmoy Language

  Star Trek: The Next Generation is a registered trademark of Paramount Pictures. All images are © Paramount Pictures and are utilized under the the guidelines of Fair Use; no copyright infringement is intended.

17 Comments

• November 14, 2013

This is one of my very favorite Next Generation episodes, and certainly among the most moving. Thank you for posting the clip.

Going back to the title of your post, I think myth and metaphor are very tightly entwined, and the most powerful metaphors I know of are myths. Watching Bill Moyers’ interviews with Joseph Campbell was a powerful experience, and as a Christian, I call to mind C.S. Lewis’s comment that he saw Christianity as a “true myth.” (I think that’s the correct quote. Haven’t double checked.) Recognizing that religion is rooted in symbol, metaphor, and myth as its primal language should keep those of us who subscribe to organized religions humble and help to avoid the hubris that comes from literalist readings that attempt to force the reader’s opinion on everyone else.

The most powerful literature draws on myths, too, for example The Lord of the Rings, which is rooted in Tolkien’s deep religious beliefs, which he uses to create something at once old and new. One of the things that moves me most in Tolkiens’ work is his obvious reverence for the earth and its creatures, as embodied in Treebeard and the Ents. Another of my favorite writers, Robertson Davies, talks about this kind of mythic intertwining of life in many of his novels, most notably in The Deptford Triology and “Rebel Angels.”

Thanks for reminding me of a beloved ST episode and for making me think!

• November 15, 2013

Glad you connected to the episode and the subject of myth and metaphor.

There’s a section of Campbell’s “Thou Art That” that I am fascinated by. I’ll post the link to it here, because it’s a little too long to quote, but it’s full of really intriguing ideas:

http://www.dailyom.com/library/000/000/000000578.html

Temba, his arms wide!

This was one of my favourite episodes!!!

And the Inner Light was my all-time favourite! An excellent post and discussion of universal themes.

Haha I don’t mean to highlight Patrick Stewart and Star Trek episodes, but it seems that they’re too good to avoid 🙂

• November 16, 2013

They are, indeed! There were so many universal themes that foreshadowed what has come to pass. I enjoy your discussions – insightful and detailed.

• November 17, 2013

Fun post Isaac and thanks for reminding me of that particular episode. I think it’s interesting to think how language and communication have changed and continue to do so in the present moment. On more than one occasion, I have felt that people are losing their ability to recognize or relate to traditional metaphors and symbols. Perhaps the world trending towards the secular has had an impact here? This just underscores our need to create new stories or find ways to update the more universal ones. When I look at how my own children communicate with their friends through social media and text messaging, I’m struck by the brevity of words and the renewed importance of actual images.

I think language and communication is always changing and evolving, but perhaps it is the rate and the changing of forms in present times that is a little disorienting. I think the lack of resonance of particular stories lies very much in the way of telling and that is a generational problem. If kids don’t want to read long books anymore, is it our responsibility to push them to read them or should we engage them on their own medium and tell stories on tweets and texts? Is there a way to meet half way, to engage in some form of compromise that works for both parties? Bit of a rambling train of thought.

As an aside, I would actually contest the claim that as a whole the world is trending towards the secular 🙂 There’s a fantastic series on Ideas, a Canadian radio show, titled the Myth of the Secular. It’s a lengthy series, but well worth it, if you are interested:

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2012/10/22/the-myth-of-the-secular-part-1/

I don’t recall this particular Star Trek episode, but it sounds very thought-provoking. Specifically, one question that comes to my mind about a language based on metaphors: would said metaphors eventually come to receive so much use, they devolve to the level of cliche, wherein everyone knows instinctually what the words mean, but they fail to resonate on an emotional level or stimulate new emotions and perspectives the way a new metaphor comparing previously unassociated ideas does?

Netflix Joanne! Check it out 🙂

What an intriguing question, and one I’m not sure the episode addresses at all – how metaphors evolve with use. After all, language is so organic and open to change, how will they “wear” over time? Do they invent new ones? I’m sure like our language, there would be dead metaphors that become irrelevant, and ones that enter into such ubiquitous use that they become as ingrained as common verbs are for English. Maybe they build metaphors upon metaphors, or mix them together to create weak and strong versions.

My mind is blown!

• November 18, 2013

Wonderful post. Yet another reason why Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of the best TV shows ever. The Epic of Gilgamesh was very fitting as you mentioned. Such a great story. My favorites, however, are Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. Stories are such a powerful way to build bridges from one culture to the next, if only we take the time to listen.

It’s definitely got some very good standout episodes, that’s for sure!

I’m actually ashamed to admit I’m quite illiterate when it comes to the Western classical epics, being more familiar with Chinese mythology. That being said, I’m currently working on a piece related to The Aeneid, so stay tuned!

• November 19, 2013

Good. Glad to hear it. I’ll look forward to that post.

• December 12, 2013

This has always been one of, if not my favorite episode (I am watching it now, which made me look for discussions of it on the internet). Watching it makes me wonder what happens in our modern age when, due to information overload, there is no root metaphor to unite a culture, no story that is common to all Can this be a single uniteda culture? In past centuries the Bible served as a source of metaphors that tended to unite a culture. What story serves as a metaphor for ours? I hate to think that it is only whatever video on Youtube has the most hits week.

Hello John,

Religion certainly served and will continue to serve as a major source for metaphors. What else? Economic doctrine is can be a pretty rich mine for metaphors, and war is full of narratives that both bind and divide. Perhaps there are powerful stories out there that both unites and acknowledges diversity, but maybe human unity requires we strive against something, the Other. I’m pondering this myself.

• July 8, 2014

I really enjoyed your post, and I really liked the linked article about the language. I always thought this language was impossible – just a fun idea for star trek that conveyed the importance of culutral understanding. I live in Korea, an English teacher, and I’m pretty patient, but 1) I get a bit flustered when I’m with a really good English as a second language student and they don’t get a metaphore or 2) when I’m using Korean, and I though out a Chinese 4 letter proverb, most young people don’t get it (although I admit, sometimes this is due to my pronounciation:p)

Anyway, I think it IS possible for a language to be like this, as when I read chinese characters I often don’t think or can’t remember their korean reading(sound), but just think oh, that’s fire(instead of reading “bul” in my head), or that’s independence or solitutude (instead of “dok” in my head). So its possible if their written language is iconographic ~ OR, like another poster said about our children and texting, its pretty time saving and easy enough nowadays to just send an image of where we are to our friends instead of typing. It’s not hard to conceive a race 400 years in the future would have an even easier time perhaps even transmitting video recordings or reenactments of these myths to one another through… who knows, blue tooth brain implants? (They’re aliens too, so if they are mildly telepathic, that would explain a lot as well).

Just my two cents! Just found your page, and it’s awesome, keep posting!

• July 9, 2014

Hi Stephen, thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts on the possibility of a language like this.

I’m Chinese, and I always marvel at the terseness of the language in communicating complex ideas in a few succinct words. Poetry comes closest to thought, as they say. I remember as a child, my parents would cite a proverb (many times grounded in a historical event or a story) and then proceed to tell me what it means in normal Chinese. So the question is: How do you communicate entirely in metaphor without that step of explanation in a base language? Can the same ideas in the proper context be precisely conveyed to an entire society? For me, that’s one of the many very interesting aspects about Darmok.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation's Best Episodes

"The Best of Both Worlds" is routinely cited not just as the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episode but as one of the greatest pieces of science fiction programming ever created. Who are we to argue? That two parter probably is Next Generation's best episode. We'll concede that right here and now. So when we came together to discuss our favorite episodes, we agreed that one is entirely off limits.

The other contender? "The Inner Light." Absolutely an amazing episode. It won a Hugo, for crying out loud, and it's fondly remembered by pretty much everybody. Which means it, too, is  too easy a pick. So out it goes, we tossed it right out of contention, just to make things interesting.

So to celebrate the arrival of Star Trek: Picard we've put together a a guide to the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, aside from the one where Picard gets turned into Locutus the Borg or the one where Picard plays a flute. Make it so…

Encounter at Farpoint | S1 EPISODES 1&2

"Encounter at Farpoint" is the only episode on our list which actually made it on to the Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Next Level Blu-ray set. It's worth it. This was the premiere episode and while in the beginning fans were a little unsure of how to react to this bold new vision, over time this two-parter has aged like a fine wine.

It introduces the crew and then sends them on a complicated mission, in which they're put on trial for the crimes of humanity by an omnipotent being named "Q" and then must unravel the mysteries of a far off outpost which in the end turns out to be two imprisoned aliens who leap up into the stars like stunningly beautiful space-faring jellyfish.

It manages to weave in all the elements which made Star Trek: The Next Generation so great into a single, nearly cinematic storyline with huge special effects. Even though the characters are still getting to know each other, the chemistry is almost instantaneous. Plus it has Q. You can't go wrong with Q.

Skin of Evil | S1 EPISODE 23

Counselor Troi's shuttlecraft crashes on a remote world, and the Enterprise swoops in to the rescue. Unfortunately, they discover they can't beam Troi or her pilot up, so they send down the requisite away team. On the ground, they discover the craft being guarded by a living pool of black liquid, an entity that calls itself Armus. When the creature refuses to let the team past, security chief Tasha Yar tries to move past him. Instead Armus blasts her with a wave of psychic energy…killing her instantly.

Trek gave us one of the best known onscreen deaths with Spock's demise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , but the death of Yar was a shocking and unforgettable moment in a series that at that point still felt fairly safe and predictable. For many younger fans in the eighties it was one of their first exposures to the death of a major character on a TV show, and it was all the more shocking in that pre-internet era. Yar's death was so sudden, Armus' actions so offhanded, that it is to this day one of the most memorable TV deaths ever.

The Measure of a Man | S2 EPISODE 9

After the Enterprise puts into spacedock for maintenance, Data is confronted by a Starfleet cyberneticist named Maddox who wants to study Data's positronic brain. Unfortunately, they soon learn that by "study," he actually means "disassemble." Data, quite understandably, refuses to submit to the procedure, and threatens to resign. Maddox counters by suggesting that Data is not a sentient being, but rather a machine, and furthermore property of Starfleet, therefore, he can't resign…and can't refuse. Picard demands a hearing be held in order to determine Data's legal status, with Picard acting for the defense and Riker forced against his will to serve as prosecutor.

The very best Star Trek episodes delve into the Big Questions, and there are few bigger than the simple question "What does it mean to be alive?" "Measure of a Man" is one of the very best Data stories Star Trek: The Next Generation ever told, and even gave Riker something interesting to do.

Q Who | S2 EPISODE 16

Nearly every episode involving Q is worth watching but this one combines the best Star Trek guest star in John De Lancie as Q, with the best Star Trek villain: The Borg.

It was Q who first introduced the crew of the Enterprise to their cube-shaped foes, as part of one of his cruel jokes to teach humanity its insignificance. Q shows up on the bridge and flings the Enterprise beyond the borders of known space, where they encounter a race of impassive and seemingly unstoppable cyborgs who immediately set to work carving out portions of the Enterprise's hull.

The best thing about "Q Who" is that in the end, Picard and his crew don't win. They only survive because Q snatches them up and takes them back to the Federation, leaving them with dead crewmen, a hole in their hull, and a haunting warning: The Borg are coming.

Yesterday's Enterprise | S3 EPISODE 15

If "Best of Both Worlds" is the episode most often cited as TNG's best, then "Yesterday's Enterprise" is a close runner up for the title of Star Trek: The Next Generation's best episode.

It involves time travel and the creation of an alternate universe, when the Enterprise-D's predecessor, the Enterprise-C suddenly appears out of a time rift badly damaged and on its last leg. The ship's emergence changes the timeline and transformers Enterprise-D from a ship of exploration to a ship of war as part of a Federation in the midst of a losing battle with the Klingons. The crew of the Enterprise-C was supposed to give its life defending a Klingon outpost, but by escaping through the rift they destroyed decades of peace. Picard must choose between sending the crew of the Enterprise-C back through the rift to face certain death, or fighting a battle that the Federation cannot win.

This Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ends with Picard on the Enterprise bridge, surrounded by flames, firing phasers in a hopeless bid to distract their enemy while Enterprise-C returns to her death in the past.

Hollow Pursuits | S3 EPISODE 21

Not everyone on the Enterprise is a born hero. "Hollow Pursuits" was our first introduction to a recurring character named Reginald Barclay, given the unfortunate nickname of Broccoli by the snickering Enterprise crew.

Barclay is everything everyone else in the Star Trek universe is not. He's awkward and shy, he stutters, he's easily intimidated and even more easily convinced he has some fatal disease. Barclay has no idea how to deal with the real world, he retreats into the holodeck, creating fantasy worlds where he's a confident hero and the crew of the Enterprise are his admirers or even servants. LaForge tries to work with him, to no avail. Troi tries to treat him, with only limited success.

Yet for all his psychosis Barclay is utterly brilliant and "Hollow Pursuits" offered our first look at what the world of the Enterprise might be like for someone who isn't part of the ship's heroic bridge crew. In the end Barclay overcomes his anxieties long enough to save the ship, and after being commended by Geordi swears off the fantasy world of the holodeck. Don't worry, he's addicted. It won't last.

Data's Day | S4 EPISODE 11

Like "The Measure of a Man", this episode is about Data, his identity, and his relationship with humanity. Instead of handling the topic in an overtly philosophical or legalistic way, however, ‘Data's Day' takes a somewhat lighter approach.

The episode is framed as a "day in the life" recorded for Commander Maddox, which includes a wedding, a birth, and the application of Sherlockian principles to solve a political mystery. There are many reasons for ‘Data's Day' to be included in this list, but it's greatest merit lies in the wedding subplot.

Data has difficulty with the complex matrix of emotions that go along with weddings – the pressure, cold feet, etc – and we get to see his interactions with various crew members as he works through them. There is even a moment when Troi and Data discuss what it would mean for Data to ever marry someone. The wedding subplot also gives us one of the most enjoyable scenes in all of The Next Generatio n: Data dancing.

Darmok | S5 EPISODE 2

Everyone in the Trek verse may be able to understand each other's words, but that doesn't mean they necessarily understand each other. In ‘Darmok', the crew interacts with a race who communicates entirely in metaphors and mythological allusions.

Universal translators can convey the words the Tamarians say, but not what they mean. After a frustrating initial attempt at communication, the Tamarian captain and Picard are transported to and temporarily stranded on a nearby planet. There they bond and face off against a murderous foe, while the crew tries to make sense of the language and whether the Tamarians are a threat.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode is wonderful for a number of reasons. It interrogates a basic part of the Trek ‘verse – universal translator – and makes you really think about the nature of language and how complicated communication is. Also, the metaphor-based Tamarian language is just so damn evocative. Who wouldn't rather grumble "the beast at Tenagra" instead of "this is a problem"?

Relics | S6 EPISODE 4

Like every Star Trek series since the original, Star Trek: The Next Generation often struggled with the balance between acknowledging previous incarnations and striking out on its own. Sometimes the result was far from stellar ("The Naked Now"), but other times you get episodes like "Relics".

In the sixth season episode, the Enterprise crew finds Scotty's bio signature trapped in a transporter and, essentially, brings him back to life. The former chief engineering officer is eager to get back to work and, initially, excited about the technological leaps that have been made while he was away. As he realizes how far he has fallen behind (and that Ten Forward no longer serves real alcohol), though, Scotty finds that it is difficult living as an anachronism.

The episode's strength is largely drawn from the viewer's nostalgia for the original series cast and James Doohan's performance – a performance that is sweet and sad despite being full of Scotty's characteristic charm. Whether you think this is one of Star Trek: The Next Generation's best episodes will largely depend on how you feel about the original series' Chief Engineer.

Chain of Command | S6 EPISODES 10&11

Captain Picard, Lt. Worf, and Dr. Crusher are deployed on a covert mission to destroy a weapons factory on a Cardassian planet. Unfortunately, the mission goes wrong and they learn that the entire thing was a Cardassian ruse to lure in and capture Picard. While Worf and Crusher escape, the Captain is taken prisoner. Over the entire second episode of this Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter, Picard is tortured and interrogated by Gul Madred (David Warner).

While Trek had plenty of conflict and even death throughout its history, "Chain of Command" dipped into dark territory that was rare for the franchise until Deep Space Nine shook things up. Appropriately enough, "Chain" also set up the Cardassians as a major nemesis, a thread that would be played out over the course of DS9 . Best of all, Patrick Stewart gets the chance to really show his acting chops as the tortured Picard, playing off an equally masterful actor in David Warner. Picard's defiant cries of "There are four lights!" remain one of the best moments in all of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

More Of Star Trek: The Next Generation's Best Episodes

We've just scratched the surface. Delve deep into the mind of Captain Jean-Luc Picard with our list of The Best Picard Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

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Dathon was a Tamarian who held the position of captain on a deep space cruiser during the late- 24th century .

In 2368 , Dathon became the first of his race to successfully establish communications with the United Federation of Planets when his ship rendezvoused with the USS Enterprise -D at El-Adrel IV .

Because the Tamarian language was based upon a series of metaphors, prior attempts to communicate verbally had failed. Knowing this, Dathon beamed himself and Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard down to the planet , where he hoped that some time together would better help them understand each other's languages. At first, Captain Picard believed Dathon had kidnapped him and when the Tamarian offered him his dagger , Picard assumed he wished to engage in combat and thus refused. In reality, Dathon was offering Picard a weapon to defend himself against an electromagnetic lifeform that resided on the planet.

After a short time on the surface, the lifeform attacked the two men, wounding Dathon. Picard was able to fend off the creature and tend to Dathon's injuries. It was during this time that Dathon was able to "teach" Picard how his language worked – using metaphors; proper names and places Dathon cited were references to situations in his history. Armed with this new found understanding, the two were successfully able to communicate on a basic level, which assisted in defeating the creature a second time.

However, this victory came with a price as Dathon was mortally wounded . But his sacrifice was not in vain, as when Picard returned to the Enterprise , he was able to successfully communicate with Dathon's ship and explain how their captain was killed, thereby opening a new era in relations with the Tamarian people. Indeed, his actions immortalized both himself and Picard in the form of a new metaphor: " Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. " ( TNG : " Darmok ")

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

Dathon was played by actor Paul Winfield in his second of two Star Trek appearances. Photo double Bill E. Rogers and stunt double Gerard Williams filled in for Winfield.

Because Winfield was a large man with a great presence, the makeup department realized that building alien features up through separate appliances would enlarge his head too much. So, instead, the department built a single piece that covered the actor's entire head and featured a bony ridge, almost like a central skull spine, over the top of the Tamarian's head down to his nose, which was more like a snout, and bony ridges on both sides of his skull. The three ridges looked like three parallel tracks of bone connected by a set of ridges that ran across the top of his head and down the bridge of his nose. His ears were large, but recessed, and there was a separate appliance for Winfield's upper lip that was modified for the other actors portraying Tamarians on their ship. The Tamarian coloring was added with hand-painted patterns of orange spots in patterns that were unique for each individual Tamarian, although they were all modeled on Winfield's pattern. ( Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts , p.121)

The script for "Darmok" states the pronunciation of Dathon's name is "DAY-thahn." Additionally, it says of the scene in which Dathon first appears; " displays a TAMARIAN -- CAPTAIN DATHON -- flanked by his FIRST OFFICER, and TWO OTHER OFFICERS. Their uniforms are rich with insignia -- and each wears a small ceremonial dagger across his or her chest. But all look the very embodiment of "well-meaning. " [1]

Apocrypha [ ]

The novel Articles of the Federation references the events of "Darmok" and how the progress made since that time was considered one of the noteworthy accomplishments of Federation President Jaresh-Inyo and his administration.

Dathon is depicted as a cat in a scene from Jenny Parks ' 2018 book Star Trek: The Next Generation Cats . [2]

External link [ ]

• 1 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 2 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Star Trek: Prodigy

Screen Rant

Star trek actor has important advice for who plays spock’s brother sybok in strange new worlds.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 - Everything We Know

I want strange new worlds to break star trek canon & save captain pike, star trek: strange new worlds should bring back a forgotten starfleet rank.

• Laurence Luckinbill advises future Sybok actor to focus on the character's good intentions and not see him as a villain.
• Luckinbill shared his experience working with William Shatner on Star Trek V and his interpretation of Sybok's role.
• His memoir, "Affective Memories: How Chance and the Theater Saved My Life," is available for purchase.

Laurence Luckinbill, who played Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , has important advice for the next actor to play Spock's Vulcan half-brother in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Although no one was officially cast in the role, Sybok made a shocking comeback in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 1, episode 7, "The Serene Squall" - 33 years after Luckinbill originated the role of Sybok in Star Trek V . Sybok did not appear in Strange New Worlds season 2, but it's possible Spock's older half-brother who eschewed logic for emotion could return in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3.

In an upcoming exclusive interview with Screen Rant to discuss his memoir, "Affective Memories: How Chance and the Theater Saved My Life", and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , Laurence Luckinbill offered his words of wisdom for whoever is eventually cast to play Sybok in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Luckinbill also spoke in depth about how he never saw Sybok as a villain and his conversations with Star Trek V director William Shatner . Check out Laurence's quote below:

Hold on very hard to the idea that this is a man who really wanted to change the world that he knew to a better one, to a better world. And I've told the story before, but when Bill [Shatner] said, ‘Let's meet to talk about how you see the role,’ we were supposed to have dinner, but we ended up at an orange juice bar with [us] standing in the corner. And he said, ‘Well, how do you see the part?’ and I said, ‘Lenin.’ And he said, ‘John?’ And I said, ‘No Vladimir Ilyich.’ And he said, ‘Wait a minute, this isn't a commie movie.’ I said, ‘No, no, that's not my intention.’ My intention is the fact that all of these reformers start with the intention of making things better for people, for humans, freedom, equality, justice, all those things. But when they reach obstacles, and there are many people who don't want the kind of government that the guy is projecting, then they start to get dictatorial. And that's what happened when Sybok decided the key thing was to steal the Enterprise, which was a criminal act, and he knew that. But if you recall the ending, which I'm very, very fond of, where Leonard and I became brothers, and then I sacrificed myself for the community. And so, I would tell anyone who's got the new Sybok robes to remember, really, that his impulse is good, is really good. He is not a villain. He is someone who has made mistakes. You and I might make those mistakes. And in terms of trying to change your family or hold the community better, or something like that, you might get nuts and say, ‘No, you will do it this way.’ But the impulse [is] to make things better, and really, at its heart, is let me take your pain away. Let me make life better for you. So, that was what that is. That is my take on it. And I resisted the idea of being the villain. And I told Bill that. I said he's not a villain. He's a heroic guy. And he's just, he's just in the way of the legal stuff, you know. That's what I would say.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 ended with an epic cliffhanger and here's everything known about when it will be resolved in season 3.

How Spock's Brother Sybok Fits Into Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Sybok is still a secret spock is keeping from the rest of the starship enterprise.

In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck) keeps his older half-brother Sybok 's existence a secret, but this is also to preserve Star Trek canon since Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) never knew Spock had a brother in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . In Strange New Worlds , Sybok is married to a space pirate named Captain Angel (Jesse James Keitel), who tries to liberate their husband from his confinement at the Ankeshtan K'Til Vulcan Criminal Rehabilitation Center overseen by T'Pring (Gia Sandhu), Spock's fiancée. Sybok uses the alias Xaverius , which means T'Pring may not even know she's holding Spock's brother.

Captain Angel hijacked the USS Enterprise as part of their plot to free Sybok, decades before Sybok will steal the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 not following up on the dangling Sybok thread was surprising, but the opportunity for Sybok's return is something Strange New Worlds season 3 will hopefully take advantage of. With Captain Angel still on the loose and Sybok still in a Vulcan rehabilitation center, the pieces are there to continue Sybok's story. Much of Sybok's backstory remains to be told, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds can reveal new facets to Sybok that could explain the Vulcan revolutionary's desire to find God in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

"Affective Memories: How Chance and the Theater Saved My Life" by Laurence Luckilbill can be purchased at this link .

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

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