![]() His work can also be seen on, ScreenCrush and Badass Digest. Jordan Hoffman is a writer, critic and lapsed filmmaker living in New York City. This one means “first contact.”ĭid your first viewing of “Darmok” blow your mind like it did mine? If so, leave your metaphorical description below. That's what “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean” mean. However, my favorite one is “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.” It doesn't just mean two strangers come and make a connection. Frankly, I'm not sure I've nailed them all yet. “Sokath, his eyes open.” To translate this to TOS, this means “We Reach!” Possibly based on “freeze,” as in “freeze your thoughts/mouth.” “Uzani, his army with fists closed.” A tactical move to close-in on an enemy after luring him in. “Uzani, his army with fists open.” A tactical move to lure your enemy closer by spreading out. “Mirab, with sails unfurled.” This means travel or departure. I've decided to start saying this when anything doesn't go my way. “Kiazi's children, their faces wet.” This also means pain, but also sadness or frustration. Something one says when in great pain or very angry. “Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.” Hearing this means bad news. “Temba, at rest.” When a gift has been rebuffed. “Temba, his arms open.” This means “take or use this.” A gift. The lack of communication between Dathon and Picard is a “beast at Tanagra” of its own. “The beast at Tanagra.” This is the foe that Darmok and Jalad fought, but has grown to represent any problem that needs to be solved. “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.” Building on the last one, this is when two strangers, or foes, work together against a threat and succeed. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.” This most famous phrase (which appears on some hilarious T-shirts) means, basically, “working together.” Repeat viewings of “Darmok,” however, will give you a few key Tamarian phrases you can keep in your back pocket. They look neat, but no amount of scrutiny will ever make them mean anything. We do get a very quick peek at Dathon's log and its strange notation that appears to have graphs as well as glyphs. Or it could just be that the instigating words are somehow just lost in the mists of time. The first one, as always, is “shut up!” (More so than usual, the choice to just suspend disbelief offers great pleasure – the cathartic final beat should swell up emotion in just about anyone, as success at communication is a very basic human trait.) The other suggestion I've heard is that the Tamarians speak with partial telepathy, and the verbal aspect is merely flourish – like an emotional tint that comes from inflection. Perfectly, the tale of Gilgamesh mirrors the current life-or-death struggles of our two poet-warriors on the dangerous planet of El-Adrel. He tells him a story – the first story – the Epic of Gilgamesh. It reaches its climax when Picard, our most cultured of all Captains, engaged in conversation with a man who can't really understand him, but yearns for that outreach. Lucky for him he's going head-to-head with Captain Picard, a man with an almost fanatical devotion to understanding and learning. We'll eventually realize that “Shaka, when the walls fell” means “failure,” but with no reference to Shaka (or his wall-falling misfortune) the UT program is unable to do so.īut Dathon perseveres. Because of their unique fashion of speech which used metaphoric descriptions based on their own mythology, the universal translator is unable to make the usual connections. “Darmok,” of course, is the episode where a Tamarian (also known as the Children of Tama) named Dathon realizes that great risks must be taken if his people are ever going to reach outside their own clan. ![]()
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