Yes, I watch a lot of series, I always have. My all-time-favourite has to be ‘STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION’. As one of my students said: It’s a great study of human nature. Spot on! Let alone Data with his highly motivated attempts to become more human; each encounter with an alien life form exposes our manly (and womanly!) vices and virtues.
There may be some of you who favour Kirk over Picard, but for me there’s no contest! I mean, come on! Can you blame Lwaxana for swooning over him? Sure, Kirk is more of a comedian, but consider Picard with that undeniable charm and that smirk you can’t resist… And of course who else would go where no one has gone before so boldly…well, baldly.
Sorry, I seem to be drifting slightly off topic.
What I mean is… I would follow any command that falls from Picard’s lips. Speaking of commands – let’s take a look at the Imperative!
It’s one of the simplest grammartical structures in English and yet there is so much use for it in everyday life that I thought it would be nice to acknowledge it.
Make it so!
Engage!
Shut off that damn noise!
Prepare for warp 3! …
…are just some examples of Piacrd’s commands to his Crew. They are all positive – grammatically that is. It is easy to see what we need to make a correct imperative: A VERB!
To make the imperative negative, in other words: to make someone not do something or forbid them to do it, we simply put DON’T (or emphatic DO NOT if you’re being nasty).
Weird as the above commands would sound coming from Picard’s mouth, they would go like this:
Don’t make it so!
Don’t engage!
Don’t shut off that damn noise!
Don’t prepare for warp 3!
Yes, it’s that simple.
I encourage you to fish for more Picard’s imperatives and post them in the comments below.
Engage!