#not me making star trek abt my favorite little bits of classical scholarship again

[splendidemendax]

there's something extremely sensible abt enterprise having a guy from the future constantly coming back and trying to shape the mission. it reminds me of a bit from barchiesi's "future reflexive" about allusions to earlier texts which descibe events in the characters' future:

...the effect approaches what we usually call dramatic irony: the information that the author shares with the audience tends to create a sort of complicity between them directed against the characters.

daniels' role in the narrative is to embody that complicity. he knows what we know: that the federation has to happen and archer's going to be involved. he wants what we want: to see that happen, so we can get to the bright shiny future that trek promises

it's a really interesting way to deal with the tension that my mom calls "the prequel problem", where that complicity lurks unspoken underneath the surface of the text