.

Chaka, when the walls fell.

Temba, his arms wide

Temba, his arms wide

terrorists communicating in a code?  quick, some call the homeland of departmental defence.

raise your right hand if you caught up on that right away, also raise your left hand if you are not a geek.

How many hands do you have raised.

Caught it right away.

Called the wife over, she got it right away too.

So proud of you guys.

That's definitely one of my favorite STTNG episodes.

Caught it right away. Favorite TNG episode.

I'm not enough of a geek, I've seen part of that episode, but not all.  I missed a bunch of TNG through not having cable the last 15 years.

OTOH, you're all losers for not recognizing that it's based on something from James Blish: "IMT made the sky / fall!"

I don't think so.

I bet it is...  Blish did all those short novelizations of TOS, I bet they were thinking of him.  It's a similar transformation of history into epic.  OTOH, since I haven't seen all of Darmak, I forget if that was the point.

IAC, you're not a geek if you have to look up "spindizzie."

The idea was that this was a species that the universal translator did not work with because all of their communication was via metaphorical reference. So if you did not know the cultural history, you would have no idea what the incidences represented. So the alien brought Picard to a planet to work together fighting some third crazed alien animal, and during their camping they had to tell stories with sign language and drawing pictures in the sand. Picard told the Gilgamesh epic. The alien captain was killed and the alien ship was mad, but when Picard returned he was able to communicate with them.