TOS

 For those in the know you probably know that the acronym TOS stands for "The Original Series" of Star Trek. You know, the one with Kirk, Spock and Bones. Pam is a die hard TOS fan. In fact, she loves it so much that she doesn't acknowledge the other Star Trek (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine & Voyager) series' validity. Well, that may be a little harsh, but she does like TOS a whole lot more than those other imposters. 

I was thinking today about the grammatical use of The Original Series acronym. Since the "T" is for "The", how does it work when one says something like:

"Pam is a huge fan of the TOS series of Star Trek."

Would that be correct?  If we are to rewrite that phrase without the acronym, it would read:

"Pam is a huge fan of the The Original Series series of Star Trek."

Well, that's not right. Too many repeated words. 

Perhaps one could say:

"Pam is a huge fan of TOS." and be done with it. 

Personally, I believe the following should be true:

1. An acronym should not contain a "The" at the beginning of the acronym. Too confusing. 
2. Use of an acronym should not include having to decipher it in order to use it grammatically correct in a sentence. Too annoying. 

For you Star Wars geeks out there ...

R2D2 Translator

http://www.r2d2translator.com/

I believed for a long time (actually, until tonight when I looked it up on The Fount of All Knowledge) that R2D2 was controlled in the original Star Wars movies by a monkey. I guess somebody told me that once and I never took the time to confirm it. Anyway, Wikipedia says that Kenny Baker was inside one of the two units In the original films.  Small yes, but not a monkey. The other unit was a remote controlled version. Interestingly, Kenny Baker acted in some part in all 6 of the Star Wars films, including one role as the Ewok that stole the speeder bike in Return of the Jedi. 

I am fairly certain however that he did not and does not speak R2D2, even though many characters in the film seemed to understand R2 just fine.