When Flint makes the Enterprise disappear and then reappear on the table where they were talking near the end of the episode, Kirk looks into the ship looking through the main viewer of the ship. Kirk sees the bridge and the crew frozen in time but the lights behind Scotty are still blinking indicating that the computers are still working. But, how can the computers still be working when the ship and the crew are in suspended animation? I think this is a goof.
shareIt probably is, but it's forgivable. If you need some help to suspend your disbelief, think of it as a part of the process, that the ship may have been shrunk, but it wasn't in suspended animation like the crew was, because Flint isn't so much interested in the age of the ship as he would be for the crew.
shareNo, I don't need help suspending belief. I just posted something that I noticed that's all.
shareAll he w/d have 2 do, anyway,is "turn off the ship" with that little remote-control of his! A Galaxy-class Star Ship probably can withstand a K yrs or 2 just sitting idle on a table top in the middle of an environmentally controlled room.
shareBTW, what was the explanation for Flint living so long?
Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!
I always get this mixed up with Walter Jamison from TZ. I know that one of them was given a longevity potion and the other had no explanation, but I can't remember which.
shareThanks for your post. Hey, cind5, do you or any other posters have a theory about this?
Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!
As far as I can tell, he was just born this way. The oft-quoted Chrissie's Transcript Site offers this exchange:
SPOCK: You were born?
FLINT: In that region of earth later called Mesopotamia, in the year 3834 BC, as the millennia are reckoned. I was Akharin, a soldier, a bully and a fool. I fell in battle, pierced to the heart and did not die.
MCCOY: Instant tissue regeneration coupled with some perfect form of biological renewal. You learned that you were immortal and
FLINT: And to conceal it. To live some portion of a life, to pretend to age and then move on before my nature was suspected.
Thank you for your post! Now that I think about it, didn't he also claim to be Leonardo DaVinci and some other famous historical figures in human history?
Going a little OT here, Flint kind of reminds me of Wolverine from The X-Men. Nobody (not even him) knows how old he is.
Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!
didn't he also claim to be Leonardo DaVinci and some other famous historical figures in human history?
You're right. In fact, that episode information reminds me of one of the lines from The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzi Across The Eighth Dimension (boy, is that a long movie title)
"Buckaroo Banzi: If he's not one thing, he's another."
Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!
Comparisons with DC comics villain Vandal Savage (first appearance - 1943) are perhaps obvious, although Savage was more of a conqueror than an artistic type.
shareComparisons with DC comics villain Vandal Savage (first appearance - 1943) are perhaps obvious, although Savage was more of a conqueror than an artistic type.
SPOCK: Your collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces, Mister Flint, they appear to have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials. And on your piano, a waltz by Johannes Brahms, an unknown work in manuscript, written in modern ink. Yet absolutely authentic, as are your paintings.
FLINT: I am Brahms.
SPOCK: And da Vinci?
FLINT: Yes.
SPOCK: How many other names shall we call you?
FLINT: Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson. A hundred other names you do not know.
SPOCK: You were born?
FLINT: In that region of earth later called Mesopotamia, in the year 3834 BC, as the millennia are reckoned. I was Akharin, a soldier, a bully and a fool. I fell in battle, pierced to the heart and did not die.
Interesting thoughts, as always.
So how could he have become Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, or Johannes Brahms whose early lives have been recorded?
Thanks.
In 1046 Harald Hardrade came to Norway with an army, claiming to be the uncle of King Magnus and to have been in Russia and the Byzantine Empire since Magnus's father Saint Olaf had been killed in 1030. Harald shared the throne and Harold's treasure with Magnus until Magnus died childless in 1147 and then became sole king.
King Harold III Gille of Norway showed up on Norway in 1127 claiming to be the illegitimate half Irish son of King Magnus Barefoot and was accepted by King Sigurd. Harold claimed the throne in 1130 and divided the country with King Magnus, which lead to a long period of civil wars.
in 1176 Sverre came to Norway claiming to be the illegitimate son of King Sigurd Munn and thus grandson of Harold Gille and fought a long civil war to seize the throne.
It would be very logical for a Flint-like character to say that he had been one or more of those Norwegian kings.
Not so logical to claim to be King Solomon or Alexander the Great. Most kings want to leave their thrones to their certain sons and not to men ho claim to be their illegitimate relatives.
Most kings who succeed their fathers have been born and raised in the royal household and have been seen to grow from babyhood by many members of the household. In the case of Alexander his mother Olympias was a foreign princess married to King Philip of Macedon and survived Alexander and was involved in politics for years after Alexander's death. It seems certain Flint/Alexander didn't make her up.
Alexander (or his curt sophists) invented several colorful legends about his childhood - for example, the Temple of Artemis burned down he day he was born, because Artemis herself was away attending the birth of Alexander. He was raised until the age of 13 or so by a nurse, who just happened to be the sister of one of his generals, Cleitus. Is it so difficult to believe that his childhood was contrived after he became king? Can't you imagine him saying, "Look, Cleitus, you and I both know I was adopted as an adolescent by Philip, but the story will play better in the provinces if we claim I was his son. Get the propaganda machine working, and invent a plausible childhood. Nobody in the kingdom can read or write, anyway, so whatever we record will be the official version."
Up until the time he was tutored at Aristotle's school, Alexander wasn't really known outside of the palace. The details that survive are from Alexander's official version, which could easily have been manufactured to provide a plausible claim to the throne after Philip's assassination. The first thing he did was start eliminating his rivals, and solidifying his own position. The invention of an 'official' history, with the cooperation of Philip's out-of-favor wife, Olympias, makes perfect sense.
Although a different kind of story, Josephine Tey's fine novel The Daughter of Time covers a similar kind of reinventing history, concerning Richard III ("My kingdom for a horse!")
Although a different kind of story, Josephine Tey's fine novel The Daughter of Time covers a similar kind of reinventing history, concerning Richard III ("My kingdom for a horse!")
In word and deed he gave so many proofs of his liberal education, of polite nay rather scholarly, attainments far beyond his age; ... his special knowledge of literature ... enabled him to discourse elegantly, to understand fully, and to declaim most excellently from any work whether in verse or prose that came into his hands, unless it were from the more abstruse authors. He had such dignity in his whole person, and in his face such charm, that however much they might gaze, he never wearied the eyes of beholders.[3]
Everyone feel free to go to my thread "Methuselah's Other Identities" and suggest historical characters who might not have been well known to the Star Trek audience but seem likely candidates to have been fake identities of some Flint-like immortal man, woman, or child.
Persons who miraculously survived violence or disasters.
People who first appeared as adults with unknown backgrounds.
Persons reported to have lived for centuries.
People who reportedly died but then someone claimed to have been them. Maybe some of the false impersonators in history really were who they claimed to be.
People who were recluses like Flint.
People who made long trips and then returned to their homes after years or decades.
It might be OT, but I've always wondered what it would be like to be reincarnated multiple times with perfect memory of previous lives; probably more of a curse than a blessing but if there is such a thing as reincarnation and the law of karma, at least it would be nice to know what mistakes to avoid even though it'd be awfully lonely knowing the loved ones we'd left behind. (That's also assuming a gap between incarnations, not instant rebirth at the time of death.)
shareI pray there is no reincarnation. I really do not want to go thru this sheet again.
share