I have the next generation on while I'm working. I've got a few questions:
1) why does everyone speak english except for the klingons who have some retarded language?
2) how can klingons and humans make babies? we can't even make babies with other species on our planet.

i guess there's a "don't ask questions" policy around anything the klingons do

the_reverend said:

Yes we can.

yeah man. rich is a product of a cross between marsupial, bat and wooly mammoth.

rich is a combination of the fruit of my loins and the fruit of matt rowe's loins.

um...manbearpig, duh

are you serial?

yeah. Rice Krispies, in fact.

Rich Horror is a mixture of Booberry and Captain Crunch.

Truth.

RichHorror was raped by brids when she was a young little lassie:

I hate breathing.

Cowmaximus: I hate life.
MattSPONCH: i hate life as well.

the_reverend said:

The storyline reason is that everyone has a universal translator in their com badges which allows every known language at the time to be translated into English (the only problem with this is that we consequently shouldn't hear anything in Klingon, right?).

But the real answer to your question is because sub-titles are too intrusive for a one hour TV show, and having them for every language would be annoying (and a waste of time and effort). Keeping that in mind, they still include a few words of Klingon in order to not totally exclude the linguistic aspects of people living among other cultures.


the_reverend said:

There's actually a later TNG episode that explains that all humans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc. evolved from the same DNA building blocks planted five billion years ago on several planets by the original humanoid race (in order to perpetuate themselves after they died off). The whole series makes a lot more sense when you see it, because until then I always wondered why the hell all these supposedly "different" races look alike.

ShadowSD said:

that reminds me, i was in new bedford today, and we need those in real ife, seriously.

hahaha the girls hat says "So-Hi".

dreadkill said:

Mt. Doom puffs

i really wish i could find a picture of al gore leaned way back in that computer chair

I guess I'm the only one who thought that last South Park was kinda weak...

strangely enough it was more like family guy humor

Really, how so? I didn't notice lots of tangential cutaways in the episode. Also, Family Guy is funny.

more random...like manbearpig, and al gore acting ridiculous, and cartman shitting fake treasure

then again, that's pretty standard south park stuff

i guess it's like family guy humor when there isn't cutaways

rich horror is a beluga whale in disguise

how does he hide the horn on his forehead?

I mean, I guess Cartman swallowing that fake treasure was classic South Park in the way that he got what was coming to him, but aside from that, it was an at best thirty second Al Gore joke that was stretched out for twenty minutes. I usually love political satire, but this got really boring, I'd have been better off watching SNL reruns of Darrel Hammond impersonating Gore. South Park is always so great at beating the fuck out of figures that people put on pedestals, because deep down you know that at least some people who nievely revere that figure will rightfully have their insulated bubble burst by the episode; the problem here is that nobody puts Gore on a pedestal, even the people who voted for him, so the jokes fall flat...

Manbearpig was also not as funny as other South Park oddities (or anything by Family Guy, Family Guy would have had the sense to limit the half hour joke to five seconds, and it would have been funny). Crazy hybrid South Park characters like Scuzzlebutt, The Underpants Gnomes, Mr. Hankey, Towelie, and the Taco that Shits Ice Cream were all funny because they played with the innocence/nostalgia factor of the boys' imagination coming into contact with reality. Even the show's perception of God as an ugly hybrid beast was hilarious, because it showed the futility in the arrogance of people who assume they could know the form of deity. Manbearpig would be funnier if it somehow exposed the arrogance of all those rabid Al Gore fans... wait there aren't any.

the_reverend said:

I'm guessing these questions were directed at me, though I was happy to see ShadowSD answer them seriously.

1. The universal translators make everyone speak English, or at least everyone whose species has been programmed in. There are actually several races throughout the shows who you can't understand at first, not just the klingons. The reason they let you hear the klingon language is because they are so popular and they really delved into their culture a lot. Yes, the universal translator is a deux ex machina and they could have done without it. One of the only good things about the oft-maligned, shitty Enterprise prequel series is that they played around with the translator when it was new, they actually had a languages expert on the crew to program it.

2. Their biologies are very similar, same thing with Humans/Vulcans, Human/Romulans and some other races that have kids. Most of the differences between humans and klingons are cosmetic or caused by the difference in environments on their home planets. What is probably a greater question (and criticism) is why so many damn races were just humans with 'foreheads of the week'.

The Klingons, Ferengi, Vulcans, Romulans, and Cardassians all laugh at our boring foreheads behind our back.

Sacreligion said:

thats a narwhal
this is a beluga