Darmok's Linguistical Nonsense

There's few groups so stupefyingly anal-retentive as Trekkies. Unless you count linguists. Merge the two and what do you have? A linguistic sci-fi geek-out that will smear you against the wall into a thin, translucent jelly.

My favorite linguistics blog Tenser, said the Tensor has posted just a huge essay on the linguistic problems of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'Darmok', including a complete skewering of the Universal Translator ("working magical telepathy") and the unbelievable linguistic situation of a race that communicates entirely in allusion:

I also don't believe that a language based entirely on allusion is at all suitable for situations requiring precision. If all you're doing is arguing about a general course of action, Tamarese-B might be enough, but how can you run a starship using it? When the captain wants to tell the helmsman to go to warp factor five, does he say, "Darmok...uh...that time he went warp factor five"? At the end of the episode, in fact, the first officer orders his ship to warp out of orbit with "Mirab, with sails unfurled", which is used several times in the episode to mean something like 'go'. Shouldn't the helmsman reply, "Mirab-with-sails-unfurled factor what, sir?".

While Tenser thinks the episode is one of the weaker TNG episodes, even without the lingustic problems, I've personally got to give it props for its place of honor in Black Materia's Picard Song.

Darmok [Tenser, said the Tensor]