THE CULTURE MEETS THE BORG
Borg Hive Mind: "Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated."
SC Agent Lor Dfla Shrt: "You're welcome to try."
Borg Hive Mind: "Nonstandard glands identified, assessing…. 404 Out of Cheese Error+++ Redo From Start yaaaaasssss queeeeeeeeeen...oontz oontz oontz …I'm a happy little Blu-Ray player …. ….can… can we join…you?"
SC Agent Lor Dfla Shrt: "Maaaaaaybe once you outgrow ship design that looks like a badly-run chemical refinery?"
Borg Hive Mind: *starts broadcasting Squarepusher on all frequencies, Borg cube starts flashing strobe lights and spinning gently in place*
SC Agent Lor Dfla Shrt: "ALL RIGHT LET'S DOOO OOOO OOO IT! WOOF! *rips shirt off, pyro somehow explodes in the background, and he starts bodysurfing the Borg-rave in a cloud of glitter*"
GCU Failure Is Always an Option: "Here we go again"
THE CULTURE MEETS BABYLON 5 (THE FIRST TIME)
GOU We Never Just Talk Anymore: "Hello we're from the Culture and…. we'll be back in a couple centuries when you've got your shit together. TTFN."
THE CULTURE MEETS THE KZINTI
GCU Howdy, Neighbor!: "Oh look, chibi Chelgrians!"
Kzinti: *Sudden fanatical unprovoked mass suicidal attack on the GCU, resulting in their own species' near-extinction
GCU Howdy, Neighbor!: (now fairly traumatized by unexpected self-defense xenocide, and surrounded by a small but dense Oort cloud of Kzinti ship wreckage): "What. The. FUCK. Was THAT?"
THE CULTURE AND THE GALACTIC EMPIRE (STAR WARS)
GSV Disciplined Self Indulgence: "Who the hell is the Galactic Empire?"
GCU Didn't We Reiterate This Already?: "Not sure, but they blow up planets."
GSV Disciplined Self Indulgence: Many?
GCU Didn't We Reiterate This Already: Only one so far that we know of.
GSV Disciplined Self Indulgence: "Not very ambitious, then."
GCU Didn't We Reiterate This Already: "They have a thing called a Death Star, which they use for the purpose."
GSV Disciplined Self Indulgence: "Not much on branding, either. As far as galaxy-wrecking superweapons go that's like that Spam stuff Skaffen-Amtiskaw mentioned."
Superlifter Throughput Achiever: "Um, this just in, apparently a one-man ship just blew up the Death Star."
GSV Disciplined Self Indulgence: "So, not very careful, either."
THE CULTURE MEETS RED DWARF
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Hello, do you need assistance?
Red Dwarf crew: [incoherent shouting and arguing]
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Hello, again, do you need assistance?
Red Dwarf crew: [incoherent shouting and arguing]
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Really, what's going on?
Red Dwarf crew: [incoherent shouting and arguing]
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Oh this is silly. Bay 17, bring them aboard and put them in a stasis field until we figure out what papadums are, and how to slap-drone a hologram.
THE CULTURE MEETS THE FIFTH ELEMENT
GOU We Never Just Talk Anymore:I told you. Never use a Star Trek solution to solve a taxi driver problem.
GSV Walking on Glass Along the Steep Approach to the Crow Road Bridge to Stonemouth: You don't need to gloat, you know.
SC Agent Lor Dfla Shrt: I'd like to give her five minutes with MY ultimate weapon! WOOOF WOOOF!
THE CULTURE AND FARSCAPE
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Well, we thought they took the wormhole tech we laid out as schmuck bait, but it turned out to be one being from a really primitive civ on the other side of the galaxy who came up with it ON HIS OWN and blundered through his own wormhole into our experiment, totally scrowched our control group, and now he's on the run on a sentient bioship with a bunch of other petty criminals.
GCU If At First You Succeed, You Missed a Variable: So what did you do about it?
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: What do you think I did? I left him there.
GCU If At First You Succeed, You Missed a Variable: Are you sure that was wise?
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: So far he's tried to mate with four other species, annoyed almost everyone he's come in contact with, and started an interstellar war between two significant but uninvolved heavily-militarized societies, both of whom needed taking down a peg. I think we have a new experiment opportunity on our hands.
GCU If At First You Succeed, You Missed a Variable: … This wouldn't be another SC hack, would it?
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: I won't ask and they won't tell.
THE CULTURE MEETS THE FEDERATION (STAR TREK, PART 1)
Captain James Tiberius Kirk: "Shit, these drug glands are ...Give us the drugs… please give us the drugs ….….can… can we join…you? Hey where'd the green girl go?"
Diziet Sma [getting dressed and scowling] "… Wait, what green girl?"
Skaffen-Amtiskaw – "Well that was an anticlimax."
Diziet Sma: "You're telling me. Not even a tingle."
LOU Ask A Silly Question, Get The Sad Bleak Truth: "Here we go again"
THE CULTURE MEETS THE FEDERATION (STAR TREK, PART 2)
Contact Agent Mapsdna Egasuas Sggemaps, on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 engineering deck: "Ok, so I get that you figured out how to use the waste heat from a dilithium power plant to run an ethanol distillation system that somehow the Starfleet inspectors never seem to find.
Chief Engineer M. Scott: "Aye, she goes her dinger."
Contact Agent Egasuas: And you ran a non-contact condenser loop through some sort of tank which may or may not be either the reactor radiation shield, or the ship's sewage bilge. Very efficient.
Chief Engineer M. Scott: *beams proudly*
Contact Agent Egasuas: "And everything in here is very….clean, and shiny, and looks suspiciously like a brewery."
Chief Engineer M. Scott: "Ye didn't see the warp core modifications for the Klingon gin plant"
Contact Agent Egasuas: "…in fact I did, because apparently when it's always a good day to die, and want to get knee-walking drunk really fast, neutrino-irradiated FTL gin is fair game, but that doesn't mean I want to talk about it….
But… why do you have one entire shuttlecraft bay crammed full of mineral water tanks, grain, and blocks of ….dried swamp organics? Which you …burn, to flavor the grain with soot deposition? You've got onboard food synthesizers, and an energy-to-matter replicator is basically the logical extension of the transporter beam you've already got, (sotto voce) and which most civilizations that dare mess with that kind of thing invent before the transporter because they'd rather risk materializing oatmeal wrong instead of their crew on return from leave. Why not just synthesize your water and barley as you need it?"
Chief Engineer M. Scott: [Incomprehensible Scots]
Contact Agent Egasuas: …. "sorry, didn't get that?"
Chief Engineer M. Scott [very agitated incomprehensible Scots]
Contact Agent Egasuas: *reboots translator implant* what was that about boiling heads? You don't put actual…heads in there? Like, you and I have the same understanding of head, right? This isn't boiled head juice, is it?"
Chief Engineer M. Scott [very agitated incomprehensible Scots and vigorous gestures]
Contact Agent Egasuas: (in desperation)….. "Ba weep granna weep ninny bong?"
Chief Engineer M. Scott, on verge of tears: JUST…. NAE. NAE. Ye doaty gowk.
Contact Agent Egasuas: "ok, ok, gotcha, very sorry [flags log of conversation as "culturally sensitive issue, possibly irrational/religious, add to Terran acculturation curriculum"]
Chief Engineer M. Scott [red in the face, sweating profusely and very slowly speaking BBC English through gritted teeth] "If I have to settle for [shudder] English to make myself understood, I'm not sure I want to join you glaikit bampots after all."
THE CULTURE MEETS THE FEDERATION (STAR TREK, PART 3)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "Tea?"
SC agent Farver Gnoogen: "Yes please, but if you have something other than Earl Gray? The bergamot, you know."
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "…here we go again."
THE CULTURE AND THE DUNIVERSE
SC Agent Borknagar Thrust: "So in summary, they're a decaying interstellar empire, with a dysfunctional monarchy and their entire civilization's interplanetary economy depends completely on a single resource that comes from one hostile environmental planet, which is full of extremely dangerous wildlife, rival primitive socioeconomic factions, and at least two different groups of violent religious fanatics with biomods. Because of the single socioeconomic point of failure, most Involved civilizations would classify them as less a civilization than an organized crime syndicate."
GSV Shipmind The Sound of One Hand Making a Rude Gesture: "And they hate artificial intelligence."
SC Agent Borknagar Thrust: "Yes, they also hate artificial intelligences. They used to have them. Had a big purge of them a while ago and called it a religion."
GCU Shipmind Louder than Love, Quieter Than Everything Else: "You can see how this might be a… stumbling block for us."
SC Shipmind I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "So they have a religion based on not allowing thinking machines? How do they navigate hyperspace?"
Contact LSV Making Flippy Floppy: "That's one of the things they depend on this resource to do—they mutate baseline humans into an evolved state that claims to have the ability to do it using psychic powers. They're not actually very good at it."
Orbital Mind Gravitas Isn't Even a Theory: "And that's…. somehow better than having a machine do it? To use … meat?"
SC Agent Borknagar Thrust: "They seem to think so. They also use a different drug to mutate other people to use as general purpose high-level thinkers, to provide a capacity equivalent to a very low-level sub-Mind analytical system."
SC Shipmind Louder than Love, Quieter than Everything Else: "So what exactly is this resource that they rely on?"
Contact LSV Making Flippy Floppy: "It's dried and processed form of a fungus that grows on giant desert worm larva poop, which explodes. They call it a "spice mélange," even though there's apparently only one ingredient."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "The worms explode?"
Contact LSV Making Flippy Floppy: "No, the fungus does. It blows itself up to the surface of the planet and it's strip-mined."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "This makes no sense."
Contact LSV Making Flippy Floppy: "We agree. It's too illogical to be a natural development."
Rock Pedantically Literally Pedantic: "If it's a desert planet, how do these worms ingest enough biomass to live, let alone carve out an exemption from the square-cube law and most of mechanical physics? And, for that matter, planetary geology. About which, I know a lot, not to brag."
Contact LSV Making Flippy Floppy: "We have a theory that the worms are an introduced species or an old bioweapon or terraforming asset which ran amok for a few decamlilennia before the current civilization settled on the planet."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "…. If someone wrote this up as fiction, nobody would believe it."
MSV Spam Eggs Sausage and Gravitas: "Absolutely. At least fiction has an editor somewhere to kill the really ridiculous ideas."
GSV The Sound of One Hand Making a Rude Gesture: "These idiots are lucky they never ran into the Affront or the Idirans. Or even the Nariscene. That war would be over before these people knew what happened."
ROU I'm Vilifying You, For God's Sake Pay Attention: "From the text of the assessment report, we'd need to start producing slap drones at a pretty massive rate to put the brakes on their malefactor quotient hard enough to stop them from destroying themselves. On the other hand, their next major upheaval is likely to destroy their own interplanetary communications and transport ability, so they firebreak themselves. So maybe the problem fixes itself."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "Ah…this …came to us as a referral from the Zetetic Elench, right?"
GSV The Sound of One Hand Making a Rude Gesture: "Yes, and it was probably their idea of a joke."
ROU I'm Vilifying You, For God's Sake Pay Attention: "We could just comet this Arrakis planet, you know."
Rock Pedantically Literally Pedantic: "From the available data, we can conclude that they're no threat to us now, and based on a stochastic analysis, at the rate they're going, the odds of them actually being a threat to us are astronomically low. The question of our intervention is therefore mostly to prevent a power vacuum after their collapse, plus nearer-term altruistic questions for the population. Abruptly destroying the spice resource would only cause the whole system to collapse suddenly, and those on the bottom of the social hierarchy always suffer more when that happens."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "Hmm. Let me think on this.
OK here's what we're going to do. We'll try a two-stage plan. Get some of this 'spice' stuff and synthesize it, then start infiltrating it through some of these feudal houses so that each of them think they have a black market back-channel to the primo stuff, then add more and more outlets until there's too much of it around for anyone to control.
Then we start adding Sharp Blue and Calm to the mix, and gradually wean them off the worm poop onto that.
Failing that, we infiltrate this spacing guild thing and take it over from the inside. And maybe we do that anyways.
Failing THAT, we comet the worm planet and wait."
THE CULTURE MEETS STARGATE
Anubis: "I AM THE GOD ANUBIS OF THE GOU'ALD SYSTEM LORDS. YOU WILL SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY AND BOW BEFORE YOUR NEW MASTER."
GOU Better to Light a Flamethrower than to Curse the Darkness "You know, compared to this, the civilization that ran on worm poop fungus made sense. Arm everything and fire most of it. Then fire the rest."
THE CULTURE MEETS THE DOCTOR
12th Doctor: "Hello, I'm the Doctor!"
GCU My Baby is Interested in Geopolitics, But I Just Want to Dance: "Yes we know, the other nineteen of you are in the lounge. Hope you like nachos, they already ordered appetizers. By the way…. Did you know you exist in four dimensions?"
The CULTURE MEETS THE DALEKS
Daleks: EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
ROU The Sound of One Hand Making a Rude Gesture: "Sounds like a good idea. I'll go first."
THE CULTURE MEETS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
GCU My Baby is Interested in Geopolitics, But I Just Want to Dance [doing the Mind equivalent of a Double Facepalm]: "Ok so let me get this straight….YOU (pointing at Roslin), AND YOU TWO (pointing at Six and Eight) and you two (pointing at Baltar and Adama) are ALL Special Circumstances…. And NONE OF YOU THOUGHT TO CHECK?"
THE CULTURE MEETS THE VENTURE BROTHERS
Contact Agents PorKroleg Anchiiz and Biehn Zontost: "Hello, we're from a vastly powerful pan-alien galactic civilization and…."
Doctor Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture: "Oh God I don't have time for this crap… BROOOOOCK, THE SCIENTOLOGISTS ARE BACK…. and WHAT ABOUT THAT ROOF LEAK?"
DOWNTON ABBEY
GCU Yay Newfriend! (Avatoid #37) HOW MANY KINDS OF SPOON DO YOU PEOPLE NEED?
THE CULTURE AND LEXX
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: Oh you've got to be kidding us. STOP HUMPING MY AVATOID!
Dammit I'm a spaceship the size of a moon, not a therapist!
THE CULTURE MEETS BOTTOM
SC Agent Itsgri Mu Pnorth: "Hello, I'm from the gas board!"
Richard Richard "GASMAN! GASMAN! GASMAN!"
Edward Elizabeth Hitler *SCREAMS AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS*
THE CULTURE AND THE XENOMORPHS
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "Well, they're not as bad as the Affront, but…."
*Nukes the site from orbit, on general principles.
THE CULTURE, BEHOLDING RINGWORLD
LOU Ask A Silly Question, Get The Sad Bleak Truth: "Well, it's certainly big….. I have to say, it's overall an interesting concept but the execution leaves something to be desired.
GCU Anticipation of A New Lover's Departure: It's boring and pointless. We could have done so much better with this concept. Such a waste of material.
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: You can tell they were just making it up as they went. The whole thing would be completely unstable if they hadn't added those PLOT devices after the fact. It's a total bodge.
ROU If You Think That's Bad, Check This Out: I can't believe the creator of this place thought you could breed evolutionarily for good luck.
GCU Anticipation of A New Lover's Departure: I must admit, "Lying Bastard" is a good name for a ship, though.
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: It lacks gravitas, though.
ROU If You Think That's Bad, Check This Out: …Are you trying to start something?
THE CULTURE VS THE VOGONS
VOGONS
On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.
The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them - which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.
The Culture ships in orbit, however, saw them plain as day. Of course, the people of Earth didn't see the Culture ships either.
Words were exchanged between the two fleets or spaceships, then insulting images, and then things got really bad with things said about mothers, grandmothers, and lastly a particularly pungent reference to the Vogon commander's grandmother and the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. The situation deteriorated. And then it got worse.
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "Look, my motives were nothing but the best, and the planet is under threat of imminent destruction and the extermination of the population!"
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: "I'm not criticizing your motives, I'm just saying it was your idea to get into a poetry slam with Vogons!"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "Like asking the most bureaucratic species in the universe to see their planetary demolition permit and environmental impact report was any better. My data transfer buffers are still clogged from the infodump."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "Greetings all, we have arrived and per Contact's request we are taking charge of this problem. What is the current situation?"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "We may not win this one. So far we've held our own with the Plastic Ono Band and Diamanda Galas. We're matching them unit for unit on transmission power and intensity, but they've really increased the vogringe factor in the poetry in the last couple tentharcs. He's started in on free verse alternating with sonnets. The last one involved the joy of not bathing for a long time and admiring the accumulated filth."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "What are the ramifications of that?"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "Drones learning what violent nausea is."
ROU Indestructible No. IV: "What about….."
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "Before you say anything, yes, we tried it, and the dubstep did nothing."
ROU When Lacking Charm, Substitute Wit: "Klingon opera?"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "We just finished Yoko Ono's Klingon-language performance of Der Ring Des Niebelungen"
ROU Indestructible No. IV: "Oh, I thought that was just inarticulate screaming"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "That's what everyone thinks. Largely because that's what it is."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "What's vogringe?"
GCU Well There's Your Problem: "It's a reflex most species who have both internal digestion and internal digestion have when a performance becomes bad enough to trigger simultaneously vomiting, groaning and cringing."
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense:…. "I have nineteen million organic persons aboard, that amount of vomit doesn't bear thinking about even with three shipminds, trapdoor systems or none."
GCU Any Solution is Potentially Viable At Least Once: "How about a dance remix?"
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "No, this is serious. A world is at stake here. My crew will be furious if we don't do something. Go straight to …interpretive dance. Full power. And We'll ready our WMG-OSOK, just in case."
ROU When Lacking Charm, Substitute Wit: "I'm sorry, your what?"
ROU Indestructible No. IV: 'Wave Motion Gun/One Shot One Kill,' it's what all the fanciest GSVs are packing this decade.
ROU When Lacking Charm, Substitute Wit: "Armed escalation at this point?"
GSV I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense: "We have a GSV, two GCUs, and four OUs, against only several dozen fully armed Vogon planetkiller ships. I'll take those odds. The Vogons are the worst shots in the galaxy, the Galactic Hyperspace Bypass Planning Council the Vogons work for is so stupid they actually invested in artificial stupidity, and this planet has been cataloged by the Culture for potential mentoring. As senior Shipmind on the scene I will authorize it and take all responsibility."
ROU Omar's Coming: "I guess it's true. I'm Having Trouble Hearing You, Could You Please Make More Sense really doesn't trifle with shit."
THE CULTURE AND THE HEART OF GOLD (HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE)
Zaphod Beeblebrox (the Sam Rockwell one)
GCU And Now For Something Completely Different: DUDE!
Zaphod: DUDE!
Shipmind: DUDE!
Zaphod: DUDE!
Shipmind: DUDE!
Zaphod: DUDE!
Shipmind: DUDE!
Zaphod: DUDE!
Arthur Dent: "Here we go again"
Culture drone: "…..Yup. Tea?"
Arthur Dent: "Yes please."
Marvin: "Sigh."
A very stoned Ford Prefect "I'm a hoopy froooooooo…." [falls gently to the ceiling]
GCU I Have Always Been Here Before (ZE) "42."
Trillian "Eeew, Earl Gray"
Voice of The Book (bearing a startling resemblance to Rowan Atkinson, because Stephen Fry didn't return any calls and Hugh Laurie was busy with House): The Culture is a large galactic civilization composed of beings from myriad races, unified by the four principles of their society: 1) post-scarcity economics, in which nobody lacks for anything and has almost complete freedom of choice, 2) building mind-blowingly awesome stuff in space, and living in it, 3) Building drones and artificially intelligent minds to do all the real work of running their civilization, which fortunately the drones and Minds found to be a perfectly equitable and indeed enjoyable arrangement, and 4) indulging in the kind of industrial-scale bacchanalian hedonism that makes other, more prudish civilizations like the Spiraling Lustbots of Climax Magna blush and sneak back out of the room to drink some cold water and think very hard about the equivalent of glaciers or naked British politicians of the 1970s and 1980s.
The reasons for the Culture's success are hotly debated in the galaxy's intellectual circles, since in theory a civilization as decentralized and sybaritic as the Culture should, in a galaxy full of ancient menaces, striving and insidious up-and-comers, grim rivals and cold, hard politics, have had the kind of short, eventful existence experienced by a stunned and wounded dugong lost and alone in shark-infested waters.
The fact that reality turned out differently is due, according to the head of the Department of Applied Social Theory and Disaster Management at Unsichtbar University, to two things. The first of these is that a civilization like the Culture is likely to have more friends than enemies because it doesn't do the sort of aggressive, selfish things that create enemies. The second thing is that, hedonistic or not, a large galactic civilization that is capable of defending itself so effectively that its last 'small, short' war- which lasted half a century, culminated in the blowing up of two suns, and ended in the complete extinction of a powerful and heavily militarized rival empire- tend not to have any real enemies at all. At least, not for very long. In effect, if the Culture is a dugong, it's a wide-awake dugong with body armor, a shotgun and a baseball bat with big spikes in it...and friends.
This is a good reminder that the difference between decadence and hedonism can be explained as akin to the difference between drinking four Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters while on a comfortable couch in a fancy restaurant with a good meal and surrounded by friends, safe in the knowledge that your ride home has a good autopilot and the restaurant has a fully-equipped emergency detoxification clinic in the basement, and drinking four Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters while skysurfing the Blesheb Meteor Ricochet naked, on a moonless night, without a parachute, and destined to land in flarn-infested jungle, because you're on a dare from your boss who's two seconds behind you doing the exact same thing and trying like hell to catch up.