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Old March 15 2013, 09:10 PM   #50
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Re: What would a TOS spin off look like

CorporalCaptain wrote: View Post
I accepted the idea that he was assigned his code name at birth.
"Code," by definition, means the conversion of information into a different form. So something can only be a code name if it's different from your real name.

No, but Gary's aliens obviously kept up with the times, and could have named the subjects.
But consider it. We're talking about a population of humans who've grown up together on an alien planet for 6000 years. Do you really want to believe they're mere puppets of the aliens who have all their decisions made for them right down to what they're named? I find that a rather hideous prospect. To all indications, the Aegis are good guys, and they care about human rights and individuality and freedom and all that. That's what Gary was sent to Earth to protect. So presumably they'd grant freedom to their own agents as well, and allow them to develop their own culture, name and raise their own children, and lead lives that weren't exclusively about training for secret missions.

I don't see why Gary, at least, can't be his given name. It's not like he actually needs an alias for the sort of reason that, say, the spies on The Americans do.
Again, consider his origins. Whatever language is spoken in the community he was born to -- a community whose forebears were abducted 6000 years ago -- would be a descendant of a tongue or mix of tongues older than any recorded language in human history, with six millennia of isolation and alien influence acting on it. Logically, its language, and the names its people used, would be unlike anything known on Earth. So yes, he would need an alias if he wanted to pass for a 20th-century Earth human.

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