system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[star trek] why did kirk and crew have to travel back in time to bring a whale to the future when they could've used their advanced communication technology to create a whale translator and communicate with he alien craft?
gpt
Kirk actually asks Spock after being pitched the plan to go get some whales. He asks, "Could the humpbacks' answer to this probe be duplicated technologically?"

Spock answers, "The sounds, but not the language. We would be responding in gibberish."

The problem is that they dont know the humpback language at all, so the universal translator wont work.