Space, the final Lebensraum

Strasbourg is a city that changes ownership from time to time, and this is reflected in the TV channels available in its hotels. There is a mix of French and German language programmes.

I was delighted last night, whilst sitting in my room ruining my diet with a Chicken Tikka Pizza, to find an old episode of Star Trek dubbed into German.

Spock, in German, is utterly convincing. He is a sinister looking character to say the least, and so the accent suits him. All that is missing is the duelling scar.

My German is even worse than my French, so I have trouble following most of it, but I think they changed the script to suit German tastes. I may have made some errors, but I think it went like this:

Chekov: "Mein Kapitain, I have an unidentified craft on the port beam".

Kirk: "Assume an attacking position now, or I will have you shot".

Spock: "Kapitain, Sulu and Uhura are missing from their posts!"

Kirk: "They are not very well..."

Spock: "Why, what is wrong with them?"

Kirk: "I had them gassed, they are untermensch."

Chekov (swallowing loudly): "Kapitain, my mother may be Russian, but I promise you, my 18 fathers were all German soldiers."

(Image of unidentified craft now looms onto the screen)

Spock: "Achtung, Spitfire!"

Kirk: "We are done for......"

Spock:"Gott in Himmel, why do we Germans always lose?"

Kirk: "That was nothing to do with us Germans, it was the Nazis what done it."