why did "talia" have ras's voice??

[DerekPowers]

i just watched out of the past again, for like the millionth time, and i know this was mentioned back when the ep first aired, but i forget what we all came up with as an explaination. so if ras transplanted just his brain waves into talia's body, shouldn't her vocal cords be the same? how did she (or he??) turn on the talia voice, then turn it off and speak in a ras voice? this actually may be one of those things where you just have to accept that there isn't an explaination except the fact that it made things much cooler (and disturbing). but perhaps one of you have a better explaination.......

[redDragon]

Perhaps like Supes, he had percise muscle control and could mimic other voices?

[Maxie Zeus]

I really don't know how it all works, but here's some speculation.

Where, for instance, is a person's "accent" located?

An accent is like a habit, a way of moving the muscles that give rise to a particular quality of sound (a Scottish growl or a Southern drawl, say). Those habits, if they're located anywhere, would not be located in the muscles themselves; you may habitually shout "Ouch!" when burned, and may do so unthinkingly, but the habit is there not because the mouth muscles have been trained that way, but because your brain has. Something similar is surely the case with the habits that are accents.

Now in transferring brainwaves (the sci-fi equivalent of transplanting the entire central nervous system, I suppose) those same habits should be carried over into the new body. So, if Ra's habitually chewed his fingernails and Talia didn't, it's reasonable to assume that Ra's-in-Talia would still chew her fingernails. So something like his accent (unless he consciously worked to suppress it) would also carry over, and the new Talia would speak in something resembling Ra's' old voice.

Of course, the exact vocal quality must still depend in part upon the particular vocal apparatus (transplant Ra's into a chicken and the chicken won't have David Warner's melifluous tones). So I'm guessing there would be some blending of what is peculiar to the body and what is peculiar to the new psychology, perhaps enough to let the new blend slide over to each extreme, if they're not far enough apart.

Of course, someone who knows this stuff better should intrude and set all of us straight.

[Bird Boy]

sounds to me you know it pretty darned well Maxie!..That's a great explination!

-BB

[optimal321]

Maybe after Ra's was in Talia, he realized he couldn't do the cool, creepy voice anymore, so he did a voice box transplant too.

Whatever the cause, i don't think it really matters, because i think it is much better to have Ra's voice coming out of Talia. Science schmience. That's just cool:)

[Nightwing]

Yes, which is the exact same reason why I'm glad they used Ra's Al Ghul's original voice cast. I don't think anyone else could do it. Heck, Talia (and Ubu from TNBSA) prove that, eh? :rolleyes:

I was a bit scared when I saw this post, because it's a lot similar to the thinking gone into that huuuge Joker and ROTJ thing. Hoo boy! But anyway, with the 50 years they have on us, I'm sure Ra's created some way. Heck, he made that machine that can transfer the neural patterns from one brain into another right? That's far gone as strictly sci fi in our time and world, aint it.