Huh? So, the letters "oya" were blacked out due to dirt, and the genious aliens could not in fact wipe it off?
Oh, so the Ilya robot who had arms could not just do what Kirk did eventhough there is space between V and Ger?
Huh? They built that huge ship but cant wipe smudge off?
huh?
Oh, and how the heck could any aliens read English and know it says V'Ger?
In the novelization, the name plate is partially torn away, only leaving the letters V..GER, and the crew surmised that it was Voyager. I suspect that for the movie, they wanted a way to reveal the full name VOYAGER for the audience to see.
👷👳
Bob the Builder and Hadji walk into a bar...
The planet was populated by "living machines" but it was never specified exactly what they were. Kirk's fingers are covered by flesh, which is more efficient at smudge removal than metallic Terminator-fingers, which is what I always envisioned the machines to have. Maybe the race of living machines don't make messes that leave behind smudges?
While the first two Voyager probes didn't have a primer for the English language included for an alien race to decipher, maybe Voyager 6 did?
-Rod
Pure logic got in the way of rational thinking
The thing about these living machines, is that they had pure logic thoughts, which Spock mentioned. There something like quick thought "That's smudge, wonder whats underneath that?" never comes to mind.
Their own pure logic just dictated out of the letters they could see, which was V G E R.
This.
And besides that, the first time i saw the movie, i was stunned that the mysterious Vejur/V'ger was in fact one of our own Voyager satellites.
I found that to be a great twist.
This would not have worked if Ilia started saying things like "Voyager this" or "Voyager that".
I'm just on my way up to Clavius.
Agree. When I first saw this in theaters, I did not see it coming, and really liked that the big crazy super-alien thing is... from Earth. More or less, but still cool and crazy.
Ultimate Frankenstein monster thing, getting back to the maker, no matter what.
Never thought about the Frankenstein parallel!
Nice thinking!
EDIT: Now that I think about that: Robert Wise directed in the 40's 'The Body Snatcher', starring Boris Karloff. Now how cool is that?
I'm just on my way up to Clavius.
I thought it was a great twist, also. Like all good sci-fi, it's an idea that sets the mind racing. The idea of this relatively simple piece of machinery triggering the evolution of a new, logic-based species is very cool. And of course the fact that it is none other than Spock who points out the limitations of such a species.
My movie reviews: www.rocknreelreviews.com/reviewed_by/rupert
The aliens also had found a Rosetta Stone translater
shareIt's funny that the crew of Enterprise had a tough time communicating in V'ger's language because their technology was way past the binary. Perhaps Enterprise was unable to decipher machine language from prehistoric age so it required Spock to make out what it's message contained.
There lies his crown in water deep, till Durin wakes again from sleep.