this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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/c/StarTrek: Your safe harbored Spacedock in these Stellar Seas!
Fire up the inertial dampeners, retract all moorings and clear space dock. It's time to boldy go where no one has gone before!
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In my head-canon, it's boredom, not prudishness, that caused swearing to die out.
Almost no one in the future swears because it's not any fun anymore, because almost no one else cares.
This allows for i.e. Mariner being intentionally fluent in 20th century swears, and command crew around Mariner reacting - not because anyone cares in the 24th century about those words, but only because they know Mariner explicitly intentionally chose those words to cause annoyance.
It also allows Kirk, another academically minded rebel, to have some poorly researched idea how to swear in the 29th century, while Spock is genuinely confused at encountering a long dead way of speaking.
Yeah, but it didn't die out. Not just Mariner and T'Ana swear. There's plenty of swearing in Discovery and SNW. It's been retconned and rightly so.
Edit: And Raffi swears in Picard as well. And then there's Data's "oh shit" when the Enterprise crashes in Generations. Plus, you know McCoy swore as much as T'Ana did, they just couldn't broadcast it.
Yeah. Bones absolutely was meant to swear like a sailor, and couldn't get out part the censors.
This all still fits my head-canon, in case it helps you enjoy Trek IV more.
In my head canon, It's not that swearing died out. What died off is any particular words being exceptional or able to cause offense.
Spock is confused in the 20th century, because the angry man expected a reaction to his swearing.
A typical angry 24th century person wouldn't waste their energy adding swears when truly angry, because the swears don't bring any additional reaction.
We do see some evidence of this in other Trek - 24th century people (at least federation officers) are often shown to get very articulate, when angry.
So I attribute Spock's confusion to encountering a 20th century person who became less articulate, when angered. Then Kirk has to try to explain that the selected (less specific) words carry 20th century cultural significance.
Except, again, people swear when angry in Discovery, SNW, Lower Decks and Picard.
Yeah. I mean - It's still clearly a retcon. I don't disagree by any means.
I just like to allow that the 20th century man's reaction is substantially different enough from any 24th century norm to support Spock's confusion.
Our conversation led me to this, which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did-
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Profanity
That's delightful! I love this community.