Don't we all assume our life will go on like it did before?
It's a matter of degrees.
The planets will continue to spin in their orbits, the suns will burn until they run out of their fuel, etc. etc.
But there's something a bit Francis Fukuyama "End of History" about the way TNG viewed the Federation and the Natural Endpoint of things. It's an issue the franchise has had throughout it, and is baked in at varying levels*. But there is a certain degree to which the franchise, TNG especially, has seen the Federation as something incapable of backsliding or going anywhere but "Ever better" thanks to that interpretation that everything is on this direct path to it's ultimate form and it's only a matter of time till the society gets there. It's a very latter 20th Century American ideal about what progress means and a dangerous one because it leaves you unprepared for setbacks and can, in some cases, even be traumatic when those setbacks do occur.
As others noted, in TNG, things like a corrupt admiral aren't systemic issues within the Federation, despite the fact the question becomes "wait, how did this crazy bastard rise to the rank of Goddamn Starfleet Admiral." They're just obstacles to be overcome, temporary inconveniences to be ironed out in the larger whole that is progressing ever onward.
DS9 on the other hand tended to grapple with the systemic nature of things more readily than TNG did, or thanks to its format, could. Its part of why Section 31 works there but is so abysmal in other Trek ventures, because Section 31's narrative and thematic role is to be a systemic form of corruption within starfleet, to erode the ideals that the Federation is supposed to embody ostensibly for the sake of its preservation (that is, the body of the Federation is preserved, but the soul is sacrificed for that preservation). And it heavily dealt in what happens when societal systems come into conflict in ways that aren't simply the risk of war as two ships stare each other down in deep space, when you have to deal with the messy cleanup that comes with trying to court a society that's been the victim of oppression, enslavement and genocide when your own society has been working hand in hand with their oppressor for decades to prevent the outbreak of another war between them (The Federation and Cardassia, in this case, with Bajor caught in the middle), a partnership that has seen the Federation's ideals erode as they allow and even order injustice of varying forms to occur within their sphere of influence (like, say, "whoops, we're gonna evacuate these folks descended from indigenous Americans who finally found a new place to call their own, because the Space Nazis say their planet is theirs.")
There's just overall this sense in DS9 that the Federation is mortal in a way that it never seems to be in TNG. It's an organization that might not just have parts that make errors, that it's something that ultimately could fail because it had a systemic breakdown because it failed to stand up for its ideals in the drive to preserve and grow itself as a political entity. And when you take both TNG and DS9 together as this holistic snapshot of the state of the Federation in the 24th century, TNG has this feeling of not being aware of just how much trouble the Federation actually is in.
And, perhaps, in a way it looks like Picard and, to a much further down the line extent, Discovery are going to be exploring that. And in a way, it works, given the place America stands today and how the Federation has always had that sense of "What if the idealized image of what America is and could be, but on a galactic scale?
*such as whenever the Prime Directive is defended through the idea of the "natural evolution" of a planet, even after contact and relations develop between the subject culture and the Federation, as though somehow as long as the Federation doesn't give them technology, or pick a side in a political dispute (See: The Narcotic Pusher Aliens and their LITERAL ENTIRE PLANET FULL OF VICTIMS) then the "natural evolution" will proceed accordingly, even if they're still in some kind of diplomatic relationship, utterly ignoring that by making even that level of interaction they become a player in that culture's development.
With regards to the Prime Directive, people (some of them episode writers) seem to miss that it's a Starfleet directive, not a Federation directive. The Federation at large has diplomats and the ability to apply diplomatic pressure, but Starfleet captains shouldn't be going around making these kinds of decisions, even when the answer is obvious, and it's best understood within that framework.
To be fair to Geordi, he never asked the computer to do that. It produced an avatar of Brahms based on a misinterpretation of request to "show him" something, and when the holo-Brahm's was a plank of wood, he asked the computer to generate a personality based on available information, but the available information was her gushing about her work so she popped out as a touchy-feely character. (Why the computer derived romantic intentions from a bunch of research papers and lectures, who knows) He didn't ask for that to happen, and while he didn't immediately shut it down, he didn't hang out there very long once the mission was over and there's no evidence Geordi ever returned to that simulation afterwards.
It's not a good thing that happened, but it also was obviously not something Geordi went out of his way to create, it happened and Geordi moved on. Brahm's WAS in the wrong because she saw like a minute of out of context speech and immediately assumed Geordi had used her image to make a sex doll, which isn't at all what happened. She was absolutely going to condemn him for something he didn't actually do. Brahm's had every right to be "WTF?" but she should have at least let Geordi explain what happen and demonstrate "no, it was just this weird thing, we can run through the entirety of my interactions with the avatar to prove I didn't intend to create this and I never interacted with it again after it kissed me."
yeah like, she's wrong and unreasonable in that instance, but it's coming at the end of half an hour of him trying to get his mack on in increasingly distressing ways so I don't blame people for kind of lumping that bit in with all the rest
I do think the previous episode was fine. If falling in love with a hologram that looks like a person (but also turns out to have none of their personality) is wrong it's wrong in a pretty milquetoast way next to like, cyberstalking an actual real person
I mean it's a lesser problem than stalking, sure, but I don't think it's as milquetoast as you're implying.
Like compare it to something you could do today: Someone takes your face and photoshops it onto the body of an actor wearing a bikini (male or female). That'd be unsettling, right? And if they then didn't seem to recognize how abberant that was once you met them, it'd be kind of creepy.
Or another example, if someone you never met, who was nevertheless a fan of yours from Youtube or Twitter or something, carefully molded your face onto a video game character - say they replaced Miranda Lawson's face with your face, but kept all her other features the same, then played Mass Effect with You-anda Lawson, including romancing that character. Then you met the person and they showed no embarassment about their mod. I don't see any way to view that except alarming.
Neither of those things are what happened though.
Like, absolutely if Geordi dug up this woman's likeness and made a sex doll out of it, that'd be fucked up. But, like it's something that accidentally popped out of a computer based on 100% innocent requests.
As mentioned, his behavior towards Brahm's herself is still bad either way.
Ok, I used bad examples.
Supposing you put your Twitter celebrity crush on Suvi's face, from Mass Effect Andromeda, and romanced her in the game. Suvi is not a character you can have sex with in game, and she doesn't dress in a particularly sexual way. Then when you happened to meet your Twitter celebrity crush, you explained about your special mod, do you think the celebrity would be squicked out? I think that's pretty close to what Geordi did.
You're still taking an unintentional situation and likening it to one where the person willingly chose to involve the person's likeness.
A better example is what if you were playing Mass Effect and it randomly slapped one of the developers face onto a character that you could romance, even though you didn't ask you to.
Geordi needs to ask Deanna for lessons on boundaries, and Picard for advice on flirting/dating. I would say Riker, but I think Geordi would unintentionally come off as creepy if he tried to emulate him—swagger doesn't work for everyone.
Then, when his training is complete, he needs to go out for a night on the town with Guinan as his wingman.
The other part about TNG is that it was for the most part an episodic show. The idea of serial episodes beyond two parters was mostly just not there when it was airing. And even then the cast still advanced. Data got more human, Picard had nuance to his high minded ideals, exemplifying the best of us at times, and the worst of us (his interactions with the borg post locutus). Riker... got a beard... yep good beard.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
the change in Data is really striking when you watch the show back to back to back
season 1 Data is all "'pulling his leg', sir? I did not see you exert force on his appendage."
season 3 Data is like "Geordi I have sometimes noticed that people say things they do not mean to spare another's feelings. You told that woman you would be happy to help her move. Was that one of these polite lies?"
season 7 Data be like "Captain, how do thinking beings find meaning in a universe with no fixed moral laws?"
Or even take a character like Barclay. He was kind of a stunt casting "ha its murdock from the A team!" for I want to say one joke episode, and then turned into a more fully fleshed out and interesting character who eventually sadly rescues voyager.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
To be fair to Geordi, he never asked the computer to do that. It produced an avatar of Brahms based on a misinterpretation of request to "show him" something, and when the holo-Brahm's was a plank of wood, he asked the computer to generate a personality based on available information, but the available information was her gushing about her work so she popped out as a touchy-feely character. (Why the computer derived romantic intentions from a bunch of research papers and lectures, who knows) He didn't ask for that to happen, and while he didn't immediately shut it down, he didn't hang out there very long once the mission was over and there's no evidence Geordi ever returned to that simulation afterwards.
It's not a good thing that happened, but it also was obviously not something Geordi went out of his way to create, it happened and Geordi moved on. Brahm's WAS in the wrong because she saw like a minute of out of context speech and immediately assumed Geordi had used her image to make a sex doll, which isn't at all what happened. She was absolutely going to condemn him for something he didn't actually do. Brahm's had every right to be "WTF?" but she should have at least let Geordi explain what happen and demonstrate "no, it was just this weird thing, we can run through the entirety of my interactions with the avatar to prove I didn't intend to create this and I never interacted with it again after it kissed me."
yeah like, she's wrong and unreasonable in that instance, but it's coming at the end of half an hour of him trying to get his mack on in increasingly distressing ways so I don't blame people for kind of lumping that bit in with all the rest
I do think the previous episode was fine. If falling in love with a hologram that looks like a person (but also turns out to have none of their personality) is wrong it's wrong in a pretty milquetoast way next to like, cyberstalking an actual real person
I mean it's a lesser problem than stalking, sure, but I don't think it's as milquetoast as you're implying.
Like compare it to something you could do today: Someone takes your face and photoshops it onto the body of an actor wearing a bikini (male or female). That'd be unsettling, right? And if they then didn't seem to recognize how abberant that was once you met them, it'd be kind of creepy.
Or another example, if someone you never met, who was nevertheless a fan of yours from Youtube or Twitter or something, carefully molded your face onto a video game character - say they replaced Miranda Lawson's face with your face, but kept all her other features the same, then played Mass Effect with You-anda Lawson, including romancing that character. Then you met the person and they showed no embarassment about their mod. I don't see any way to view that except alarming.
Neither of those things are what happened though.
Like, absolutely if Geordi dug up this woman's likeness and made a sex doll out of it, that'd be fucked up. But, like it's something that accidentally popped out of a computer based on 100% innocent requests.
As mentioned, his behavior towards Brahm's herself is still bad either way.
Ok, I used bad examples.
Supposing you put your Twitter celebrity crush on Suvi's face, from Mass Effect Andromeda, and romanced her in the game. Suvi is not a character you can have sex with in game, and she doesn't dress in a particularly sexual way. Then when you happened to meet your Twitter celebrity crush, you explained about your special mod, do you think the celebrity would be squicked out? I think that's pretty close to what Geordi did.
You're still taking an unintentional situation and likening it to one where the person willingly chose to involve the person's likeness.
A better example is what if you were playing Mass Effect and it randomly slapped one of the developers face onto a character that you could romance, even though you didn't ask you to.
It's a lot more complicated to mod out a video game than it is to get the Enterprise to randomly make some wildly advanced tech, but that doesn't mean there is no intentionality. Just because Geordi didn't spend hours in Photoshop making sure his Leah Brahm's skin texture was just perfect, doesn't mean that he didn't take the image of a celebrity and tell his computer to give it a personality to give him something human-esque to deal with, and then flirted with that real doll, and then expected the real Leah Brahms to have the same personality as his real doll.
Edit: Though I think Barclay making a love goddess version of his coworker/therapist for him to make out with on the holideck is a bunch worse. But at least Barclay had the understanding to be embarrassed by his fantasy holideck programs and wouldn't have tried to tell Troi that it was her problem instead of his if he didn't like him making out with her holo doppleganger.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
The other part about TNG is that it was for the most part an episodic show. The idea of serial episodes beyond two parters was mostly just not there when it was airing. And even then the cast still advanced. Data got more human, Picard had nuance to his high minded ideals, exemplifying the best of us at times, and the worst of us (his interactions with the borg post locutus). Riker... got a beard... yep good beard.
Riker I feel was also sadly underutalised by the show.
Watching like A Matter of Honor from the first season, he's just so goddamn compelling as a lead in the right story. The dinner scene in the middle is really like the heart of the episode and really showcases Riker as a really great person and officer. And Frakes is, of course, charming as all fuck too.
The complacency of TNG is that the utopia just is with no real effort from the crew to maintain it.
Now, that's not 100% the case all the time, but there's an underlying assumption that this utopia they've created is self-perpetuating, and that Admiral/Ambassador McBadPerson is very much an outlier from the rest of their society. The challenges provided by McBadPerson aren't really a statement of the Federation, or really a test of its purported ideals (McBadPerson always loses at the end, and is almost presented as being obviously wrong, with no validity in their true motives whatsoever - again, the Data episodes are an exception to this norm, not an example of it), but are set up as shallow reflections of our real world issues and are purposely designed to be defeated neatly in the span of 40-50 minutes.
Some of that is due to the structure of TV back then, but it's still, I think, a legitimate take/criticism. Adversaries are presented for Picard to defeat via "This is what our ideals are" speeches, and that's it. And, it's not like it's terrible - I live for SirPatStew delivering impassioned dialogue - but it is noticeable. There's no real opposing ideology to the Federation that exists in TNG. The other main cultures are either vague (Klingons, Romulans, etc.), played up as comic relief (Ferengi), or are unknowable (Borg). There's nothing real to challenge the utopia in a meaningful way. It just is.
Like, if you wanted to make Admiral McBadPerson a real threat, then they should have followers and/or benefactors... something that not only helps explain how and why they've become Admiral in the first place, but a mechanism that shows that even if they're thrown in the brig the underlying threat remains. That there are people who believe in what they espouse and/or there are others with the means and temperament to fill their place.
To get really real here for a moment, someone like Trump isn't absolutely terrifying only because of what he says and does in office... he's terrifying because he has a rabid street level following as well as powerful people at all levels of our various institutions who have a vested interest in supporting him. Some of them are true believers, some of them see him as a means to a desired end, but there's an entire apparatus and cult of personality supporting him. And potentially removing him from office doesn't remove those other aspects of the problem, nor does it erase the damage caused.
Which is why I find the various Admiral/Ambassador McBadPersons in TNG to be pretty ineffectual antagonists. They pop out of the ether, have some particular pet issue struck in their craw, are defeated, and are never heard from again. They have no support of any kind. Their existence is momentary, in a vacuum, and has zero lasting results. Their philosophy or motivations are declared wrong, and that's it. It's off to the next adventure, the next Picard speech.
And, to reiterate, it's not terrible. But it is noticeable.
DS9, in contrast, had an entire structure devoted to challenging the Federation from the outset. Bajor, in particular. A religious culture who had dealt with, what, a generation or so of occupation, only to have the Federation waltz onto the station and sit in the same seat as the oppressors? That's pretty heady stuff. And a lot of the first couple seasons were about Sisko and the Federation part of the crew trying to earn the trust of everyone else... that they weren't just a different kind of occupier. And then, during the war, there's the (typical, but still unique for Trek) questions about warfare itself, how to wage it, where the lines (if any) should be, etc.
Throughout it all, there's a constant theme of showing that the Federation's ideals are something that must be constantly worked towards, whether it's by earning the trust of the locals or engaging in war in about as ethically a manner as possible.
Again, the difference isn't bad. I'm not one of those people who goes "DS9 was like, really real maaaaannnnnn, and everything else sucks... " and TNG still has some of my favorite Trek moments ("The Inner Light," "BoBW," just about anything with Q, the aforementioned Data episodes, and a ton of others). But it hardly ever challenges (or, really, examines) the ideals of the Federation. The most it does is give us a short parade of McBadPersons for Picard to beat up on.
Regarding Discovery, yeah, it really needs to be paced better. It's the Max Power of Trek - every episode is more important/bombastic than the last - and it's just tiring. It's okay to let a show breathe, and to have quiet character moments. Those moments are what make it possible to have "Oh shit" moments later on.
This is exactly the kind of cynicism I take issue with. This idea that there's something, like, wrong with the characters living their ideals instead of constantly struggling with them on some fucking razors edge or the like. That's not a legitimate criticism of the show imo because it's not actually a problem. It's not what the show is trying to do and it's counter to the entire point of Star Trek's utopian vision in many ways. The people you see maintain that vision via their actions. That's the point.
And pretending like they don't in DS9 is rather silly imo. The federation characters on DS9 are not like shades-of-grey flawed characters struggling to do the right thing or whatever. They are very much in the mould of your standard Starfleet/Federation character. I really don't see a running theme in the show of having to work towards those ideals or maintain them for the federation types.
To be fair to Geordi, he never asked the computer to do that. It produced an avatar of Brahms based on a misinterpretation of request to "show him" something, and when the holo-Brahm's was a plank of wood, he asked the computer to generate a personality based on available information, but the available information was her gushing about her work so she popped out as a touchy-feely character. (Why the computer derived romantic intentions from a bunch of research papers and lectures, who knows) He didn't ask for that to happen, and while he didn't immediately shut it down, he didn't hang out there very long once the mission was over and there's no evidence Geordi ever returned to that simulation afterwards.
It's not a good thing that happened, but it also was obviously not something Geordi went out of his way to create, it happened and Geordi moved on. Brahm's WAS in the wrong because she saw like a minute of out of context speech and immediately assumed Geordi had used her image to make a sex doll, which isn't at all what happened. She was absolutely going to condemn him for something he didn't actually do. Brahm's had every right to be "WTF?" but she should have at least let Geordi explain what happen and demonstrate "no, it was just this weird thing, we can run through the entirety of my interactions with the avatar to prove I didn't intend to create this and I never interacted with it again after it kissed me."
yeah like, she's wrong and unreasonable in that instance, but it's coming at the end of half an hour of him trying to get his mack on in increasingly distressing ways so I don't blame people for kind of lumping that bit in with all the rest
I do think the previous episode was fine. If falling in love with a hologram that looks like a person (but also turns out to have none of their personality) is wrong it's wrong in a pretty milquetoast way next to like, cyberstalking an actual real person
I mean it's a lesser problem than stalking, sure, but I don't think it's as milquetoast as you're implying.
Like compare it to something you could do today: Someone takes your face and photoshops it onto the body of an actor wearing a bikini (male or female). That'd be unsettling, right? And if they then didn't seem to recognize how abberant that was once you met them, it'd be kind of creepy.
Or another example, if someone you never met, who was nevertheless a fan of yours from Youtube or Twitter or something, carefully molded your face onto a video game character - say they replaced Miranda Lawson's face with your face, but kept all her other features the same, then played Mass Effect with You-anda Lawson, including romancing that character. Then you met the person and they showed no embarassment about their mod. I don't see any way to view that except alarming.
Neither of those things are what happened though.
Like, absolutely if Geordi dug up this woman's likeness and made a sex doll out of it, that'd be fucked up. But, like it's something that accidentally popped out of a computer based on 100% innocent requests.
As mentioned, his behavior towards Brahm's herself is still bad either way.
Ok, I used bad examples.
Supposing you put your Twitter celebrity crush on Suvi's face, from Mass Effect Andromeda, and romanced her in the game. Suvi is not a character you can have sex with in game, and she doesn't dress in a particularly sexual way. Then when you happened to meet your Twitter celebrity crush, you explained about your special mod, do you think the celebrity would be squicked out? I think that's pretty close to what Geordi did.
You're still taking an unintentional situation and likening it to one where the person willingly chose to involve the person's likeness.
A better example is what if you were playing Mass Effect and it randomly slapped one of the developers face onto a character that you could romance, even though you didn't ask you to.
It's a lot more complicated to mod out a video game than it is to get the Enterprise to randomly make some wildly advanced tech, but that doesn't mean there is no intentionality. Just because Geordi didn't spend hours in Photoshop making sure his Leah Brahm's skin texture was just perfect, doesn't mean that he didn't take the image of a celebrity and tell his computer to give it a personality to give him something human-esque to deal with, and then flirted with that real doll, and then expected the real Leah Brahms to have the same personality as his real doll.
I dunno, it’s kinda like, what if there was some fairly famous public intellectual you really respected, and you randomly chanced upon a porn actor who did lookalike videos of them, and you realized you were into it. Then later you unexpectedly ended up working with this person in real life. Yeah, it would be really embarrassing and maybe even mildly violating to admit to them that you’d been watching those videos, but before you met them they were just videos mimicking some celebrity you liked. Would you want to let it get in the way of pursuing a relationship with someone you legitimately really respected?
What I’m trying to say is yeah I’m totally still going to hit on Patrick Stewart when I meet him in person.
To be fair to Geordi, he never asked the computer to do that. It produced an avatar of Brahms based on a misinterpretation of request to "show him" something, and when the holo-Brahm's was a plank of wood, he asked the computer to generate a personality based on available information, but the available information was her gushing about her work so she popped out as a touchy-feely character. (Why the computer derived romantic intentions from a bunch of research papers and lectures, who knows) He didn't ask for that to happen, and while he didn't immediately shut it down, he didn't hang out there very long once the mission was over and there's no evidence Geordi ever returned to that simulation afterwards.
It's not a good thing that happened, but it also was obviously not something Geordi went out of his way to create, it happened and Geordi moved on. Brahm's WAS in the wrong because she saw like a minute of out of context speech and immediately assumed Geordi had used her image to make a sex doll, which isn't at all what happened. She was absolutely going to condemn him for something he didn't actually do. Brahm's had every right to be "WTF?" but she should have at least let Geordi explain what happen and demonstrate "no, it was just this weird thing, we can run through the entirety of my interactions with the avatar to prove I didn't intend to create this and I never interacted with it again after it kissed me."
yeah like, she's wrong and unreasonable in that instance, but it's coming at the end of half an hour of him trying to get his mack on in increasingly distressing ways so I don't blame people for kind of lumping that bit in with all the rest
I do think the previous episode was fine. If falling in love with a hologram that looks like a person (but also turns out to have none of their personality) is wrong it's wrong in a pretty milquetoast way next to like, cyberstalking an actual real person
I mean it's a lesser problem than stalking, sure, but I don't think it's as milquetoast as you're implying.
Like compare it to something you could do today: Someone takes your face and photoshops it onto the body of an actor wearing a bikini (male or female). That'd be unsettling, right? And if they then didn't seem to recognize how abberant that was once you met them, it'd be kind of creepy.
Or another example, if someone you never met, who was nevertheless a fan of yours from Youtube or Twitter or something, carefully molded your face onto a video game character - say they replaced Miranda Lawson's face with your face, but kept all her other features the same, then played Mass Effect with You-anda Lawson, including romancing that character. Then you met the person and they showed no embarassment about their mod. I don't see any way to view that except alarming.
Neither of those things are what happened though.
Like, absolutely if Geordi dug up this woman's likeness and made a sex doll out of it, that'd be fucked up. But, like it's something that accidentally popped out of a computer based on 100% innocent requests.
As mentioned, his behavior towards Brahm's herself is still bad either way.
Ok, I used bad examples.
Supposing you put your Twitter celebrity crush on Suvi's face, from Mass Effect Andromeda, and romanced her in the game. Suvi is not a character you can have sex with in game, and she doesn't dress in a particularly sexual way. Then when you happened to meet your Twitter celebrity crush, you explained about your special mod, do you think the celebrity would be squicked out? I think that's pretty close to what Geordi did.
You're still taking an unintentional situation and likening it to one where the person willingly chose to involve the person's likeness.
A better example is what if you were playing Mass Effect and it randomly slapped one of the developers face onto a character that you could romance, even though you didn't ask you to.
It's a lot more complicated to mod out a video game than it is to get the Enterprise to randomly make some wildly advanced tech, but that doesn't mean there is no intentionality. Just because Geordi didn't spend hours in Photoshop making sure his Leah Brahm's skin texture was just perfect, doesn't mean that he didn't take the image of a celebrity and tell his computer to give it a personality to give him something human-esque to deal with, and then flirted with that real doll, and then expected the real Leah Brahms to have the same personality as his real doll.
Edit: Though I think Barclay making a love goddess version of his coworker/therapist for him to make out with on the holideck is a bunch worse. But at least Barclay had the understanding to be embarrassed by his fantasy holideck programs and wouldn't have tried to tell Troi that it was her problem instead of his if he didn't like him making out with her holo doppleganger.
Again, it was Barclay's intention to make a holofantasy of his coworker.
Geordi didn't ask for Brahms to appear, and once she did, he didn't ask the computer to give her a flirty personality, just one based on her records. Geordi didn't program her to give a sappy goodbye or to kiss him, the computer did that of its own volition based on its interpretation of the info that it had of Brahms. He let that happen yes, but that was it. After those few brief interactions, he turned the program off and never touched it again as far as we know.
It's certainly awkward and embarrassing, for both of them, but the important thing here is intent.
And yes, treating the real Brahms the way he did was shitty, I'm not arguing against that.
The other part about TNG is that it was for the most part an episodic show. The idea of serial episodes beyond two parters was mostly just not there when it was airing. And even then the cast still advanced. Data got more human, Picard had nuance to his high minded ideals, exemplifying the best of us at times, and the worst of us (his interactions with the borg post locutus). Riker... got a beard... yep good beard.
Riker I feel was also sadly underutalised by the show.
Watching like A Matter of Honor from the first season, he's just so goddamn compelling as a lead in the right story. The dinner scene in the middle is really like the heart of the episode and really showcases Riker as a really great person and officer. And Frakes is, of course, charming as all fuck too.
I’ve been doing a rerun of TNG (done) and DS9 (20 eps into S5), and one thing I wish is that the latter show hadn’t wasted Frakes on Defiant. In particular, I would have loved to have seen Tom Riker in the role Eddington played. The betrayal would have been more surprising for the viewers given all the built up connection to Will Riker from TNG, and I would have loved to have seen Frakes chew some scenery with Avery Brooks. The actor who played Eddington was fine, but I never felt like he was a credible opponent to Sisko.
The other part about TNG is that it was for the most part an episodic show. The idea of serial episodes beyond two parters was mostly just not there when it was airing. And even then the cast still advanced. Data got more human, Picard had nuance to his high minded ideals, exemplifying the best of us at times, and the worst of us (his interactions with the borg post locutus). Riker... got a beard... yep good beard.
Riker I feel was also sadly underutalised by the show.
Watching like A Matter of Honor from the first season, he's just so goddamn compelling as a lead in the right story. The dinner scene in the middle is really like the heart of the episode and really showcases Riker as a really great person and officer. And Frakes is, of course, charming as all fuck too.
I’ve been doing a rerun of TNG (done) and DS9 (20 eps into S5), and one thing I wish is that the latter show hadn’t wasted Frakes on Defiant. In particular, I would have loved to have seen Tom Riker in the role Eddington played. The betrayal would have been more surprising for the viewers given all the built up connection to Will Riker from TNG, and I would have loved to have seen Frakes chew some scenery with Avery Brooks. The actor who played Eddington was fine, but I never felt like he was a credible opponent to Sisko.
I told you this already, but I really, really love this idea.
Plus Frakes just deserved more to do in general. It's like the character peaks in The Best of Both Worlds, part 2 and after the writers establish that he likes being on the Enterprise enough to stay second-in-command, and that he's not going to constantly butt heads with Picard in a Kirk/Decker TMP style, they lose interest in doing anything with him.
the change in Data is really striking when you watch the show back to back to back
season 1 Data is all "'pulling his leg', sir? I did not see you exert force on his appendage."
season 3 Data is like "Geordi I have sometimes noticed that people say things they do not mean to spare another's feelings. You told that woman you would be happy to help her move. Was that one of these polite lies?"
season 7 Data be like "Captain, how do thinking beings find meaning in a universe with no fixed moral laws?"
Insurrection Data be like "Saddle up. Lock and load."
Don't we all assume our life will go on like it did before?
It's a matter of degrees.
The planets will continue to spin in their orbits, the suns will burn until they run out of their fuel, etc. etc.
But there's something a bit Francis Fukuyama "End of History" about the way TNG viewed the Federation and the Natural Endpoint of things. It's an issue the franchise has had throughout it, and is baked in at varying levels*. But there is a certain degree to which the franchise, TNG especially, has seen the Federation as something incapable of backsliding or going anywhere but "Ever better" thanks to that interpretation that everything is on this direct path to it's ultimate form and it's only a matter of time till the society gets there. It's a very latter 20th Century American ideal about what progress means and a dangerous one because it leaves you unprepared for setbacks and can, in some cases, even be traumatic when those setbacks do occur.
As others noted, in TNG, things like a corrupt admiral aren't systemic issues within the Federation, despite the fact the question becomes "wait, how did this crazy bastard rise to the rank of Goddamn Starfleet Admiral." They're just obstacles to be overcome, temporary inconveniences to be ironed out in the larger whole that is progressing ever onward.
DS9 on the other hand tended to grapple with the systemic nature of things more readily than TNG did, or thanks to its format, could. Its part of why Section 31 works there but is so abysmal in other Trek ventures, because Section 31's narrative and thematic role is to be a systemic form of corruption within starfleet, to erode the ideals that the Federation is supposed to embody ostensibly for the sake of its preservation (that is, the body of the Federation is preserved, but the soul is sacrificed for that preservation). And it heavily dealt in what happens when societal systems come into conflict in ways that aren't simply the risk of war as two ships stare each other down in deep space, when you have to deal with the messy cleanup that comes with trying to court a society that's been the victim of oppression, enslavement and genocide when your own society has been working hand in hand with their oppressor for decades to prevent the outbreak of another war between them (The Federation and Cardassia, in this case, with Bajor caught in the middle), a partnership that has seen the Federation's ideals erode as they allow and even order injustice of varying forms to occur within their sphere of influence (like, say, "whoops, we're gonna evacuate these folks descended from indigenous Americans who finally found a new place to call their own, because the Space Nazis say their planet is theirs.")
There's just overall this sense in DS9 that the Federation is mortal in a way that it never seems to be in TNG. It's an organization that might not just have parts that make errors, that it's something that ultimately could fail because it had a systemic breakdown because it failed to stand up for its ideals in the drive to preserve and grow itself as a political entity. And when you take both TNG and DS9 together as this holistic snapshot of the state of the Federation in the 24th century, TNG has this feeling of not being aware of just how much trouble the Federation actually is in.
And, perhaps, in a way it looks like Picard and, to a much further down the line extent, Discovery are going to be exploring that. And in a way, it works, given the place America stands today and how the Federation has always had that sense of "What if the idealized image of what America is and could be, but on a galactic scale?
*such as whenever the Prime Directive is defended through the idea of the "natural evolution" of a planet, even after contact and relations develop between the subject culture and the Federation, as though somehow as long as the Federation doesn't give them technology, or pick a side in a political dispute (See: The Narcotic Pusher Aliens and their LITERAL ENTIRE PLANET FULL OF VICTIMS) then the "natural evolution" will proceed accordingly, even if they're still in some kind of diplomatic relationship, utterly ignoring that by making even that level of interaction they become a player in that culture's development.
With regards to the Prime Directive, people (some of them episode writers) seem to miss that it's a Starfleet directive, not a Federation directive. The Federation at large has diplomats and the ability to apply diplomatic pressure, but Starfleet captains shouldn't be going around making these kinds of decisions, even when the answer is obvious, and it's best understood within that framework.
Were there any episodes where a Federation official decided to get involved with a pre-warp culture's activities and the involvement was considered to be on the up and up? The prime directive is a Starfleet thing, but I never got the impression that there were a bunch of non-Starfleet Federation types running around saving species from genetic diseases or trying to prevent the rise of Space Hitler.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I always assumed that the Prime Directive was a Federation wide matter (with some reasonable backing as to why) but that Starfleet really were the only guys who it mattered to on the regular as a matter of doctrine, because they are basically the Federation's uniformed service for, well, everything really
Apart from internal police. Does the federation even have police?
I always assumed that the Prime Directive was a Federation wide matter (with some reasonable backing as to why) but that Starfleet really were the only guys who it mattered to on the regular as a matter of doctrine, because they are basically the Federation's uniformed service for, well, everything really
Apart from internal police. Does the federation even have police?
I always assumed that the Prime Directive was a Federation wide matter (with some reasonable backing as to why) but that Starfleet really were the only guys who it mattered to on the regular as a matter of doctrine, because they are basically the Federation's uniformed service for, well, everything really
Apart from internal police. Does the federation even have police?
Probably. A post-scarcity healthy democracy would deter most crime, but you’d still have petty idiocy stuff on the low and the super Creep Factor stuff on the high end.
I think that if I were writing Star Trek I'd say that communities have local social support people who help with stuff like domestic issues and any kind of disturbance by helping those involved, and that a very small number of those have access to technology which means they can very easily and safely disable anyone who has become too violent for the social support to assist.
The emphasis would always be on providing social and psychological assistance to people who need help, and actually I imagine that the Federation is largely free of serious violent crime.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
This is exactly the kind of cynicism I take issue with. This idea that there's something, like, wrong with the characters living their ideals instead of constantly struggling with them on some fucking razors edge or the like. That's not a legitimate criticism of the show imo because it's not actually a problem. It's not what the show is trying to do and it's counter to the entire point of Star Trek's utopian vision in many ways. The people you see maintain that vision via their actions. That's the point.
And pretending like they don't in DS9 is rather silly imo. The federation characters on DS9 are not like shades-of-grey flawed characters struggling to do the right thing or whatever. They are very much in the mould of your standard Starfleet/Federation character. I really don't see a running theme in the show of having to work towards those ideals or maintain them for the federation types.
I disagree that what Nightslyr could be in any way described as "cynicism." Humans have memory that, at least when measured at a cosmic scale, is very short term. Humans can be swayed by their emotions, humans have to continually relearn things they have learned. Humans are not omnipotent or omniscient, humans work with what they have which means their outlook by necessity is very limited. These are all value-neutral observations, they aren't any more cynical than saying the sun is hot or water is wet.
The thing that's different from DS9 is not that the characters are somehow less idealized than the TNG crew, it's specifically that DS9 doesn't go around talking about how they have "evolved beyond" natural human foibles. I really think that's all that anyone takes issue with in TNG (at least, it's the main thing I take issue with). Trek frequently has a problem understanding what evolution actually is -see also the salamander episode of Voyager - but TNG's harping on how we've all evolved past being shitbirds forever has always particularly irked me. To me that's the actual cynicism here, that humans as they are today aren't good enough to eventually pull ourselves out of the messes we've made, that instead we have to wait for the 'evolved' human to do it for us, and once they're here we're all saved.
I think DS9 simply presents this utopian world in a more human way than TNG was able to do (I mostly blame Gene for arrogant "evolved" dialog in TNG, to be fair), because it allowed for human foibles, for conflict, for the acknowledgement that paradise must be maintained with constant human struggling against their own worse instincts.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
A lot of the TNG/DS9 tone comparison comes from Picard vs Sisko, the latter is pretty unique even in DS9 as to how underhand he can be. He's literally involved in political assassinations, and okay with that, but Worf, Dax, Bashir, O'Brien? Definitely they wouldn't
This is exactly the kind of cynicism I take issue with. This idea that there's something, like, wrong with the characters living their ideals instead of constantly struggling with them on some fucking razors edge or the like. That's not a legitimate criticism of the show imo because it's not actually a problem. It's not what the show is trying to do and it's counter to the entire point of Star Trek's utopian vision in many ways. The people you see maintain that vision via their actions. That's the point.
And pretending like they don't in DS9 is rather silly imo. The federation characters on DS9 are not like shades-of-grey flawed characters struggling to do the right thing or whatever. They are very much in the mould of your standard Starfleet/Federation character. I really don't see a running theme in the show of having to work towards those ideals or maintain them for the federation types.
I disagree that what Nightslyr could be in any way described as "cynicism." Humans have memory that, at least when measured at a cosmic scale, is very short term. Humans can be swayed by their emotions, humans have to continually relearn things they have learned. Humans are not omnipotent or omniscient, humans work with what they have which means their outlook by necessity is very limited. These are all value-neutral observations, they aren't any more cynical than saying the sun is hot or water is wet.
The thing that's different from DS9 is not that the characters are somehow less idealized than the TNG crew, it's specifically that DS9 doesn't go around talking about how they have "evolved beyond" natural human foibles. I really think that's all that anyone takes issue with in TNG (at least, it's the main thing I take issue with). Trek frequently has a problem understanding what evolution actually is -see also the salamander episode of Voyager - but TNG's harping on how we've all evolved past being shitbirds forever has always particularly irked me. To me that's the actual cynicism here, that humans as they are today aren't good enough to eventually pull ourselves out of the messes we've made, that instead we have to wait for the 'evolved' human to do it for us, and once they're here we're all saved.
I think DS9 simply presents this utopian world in a more human way than TNG was able to do (I mostly blame Gene for arrogant "evolved" dialog in TNG, to be fair), because it allowed for human foibles, for conflict, for the acknowledgement that paradise must be maintained with constant human struggling against their own worse instincts.
No, that's entirely cynical in the face of the message Star Trek is sending about humanity. These aren't even value-neutral observations. It's expressing a view completely different to the specific utopian vision Star Trek was going for.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Star Shrek. That is all.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I think the notion that one's society is perfect and doesn't need evaluation on a systemic level is a bad one in general. I don't think that's a cynical thing to say, and I think TNG has a number of villains (Pegasus) that can only be produced through systemic failure, and the show is happy to move on and pretend everything is perfect
I guess one could think that it's overly cynical to want to examine such things, but given how often people in real life are more than happy to ignore what the authorities are doing, I don't think it's particularly beneficial to have fictional heroes be similarly uncritical (TNG does engage in this from time to time as well, such as when Picard is forced to enforce the Cardassian treaty)
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
If they are bringing back Lal and the new Picard series doesn't go well (or if the character is poorly done), then I can already see the internet memes using her name as a particularly stupid form of "LOL".
This is exactly the kind of cynicism I take issue with. This idea that there's something, like, wrong with the characters living their ideals instead of constantly struggling with them on some fucking razors edge or the like. That's not a legitimate criticism of the show imo because it's not actually a problem. It's not what the show is trying to do and it's counter to the entire point of Star Trek's utopian vision in many ways. The people you see maintain that vision via their actions. That's the point.
And pretending like they don't in DS9 is rather silly imo. The federation characters on DS9 are not like shades-of-grey flawed characters struggling to do the right thing or whatever. They are very much in the mould of your standard Starfleet/Federation character. I really don't see a running theme in the show of having to work towards those ideals or maintain them for the federation types.
I disagree that what Nightslyr could be in any way described as "cynicism." Humans have memory that, at least when measured at a cosmic scale, is very short term. Humans can be swayed by their emotions, humans have to continually relearn things they have learned. Humans are not omnipotent or omniscient, humans work with what they have which means their outlook by necessity is very limited. These are all value-neutral observations, they aren't any more cynical than saying the sun is hot or water is wet.
The thing that's different from DS9 is not that the characters are somehow less idealized than the TNG crew, it's specifically that DS9 doesn't go around talking about how they have "evolved beyond" natural human foibles. I really think that's all that anyone takes issue with in TNG (at least, it's the main thing I take issue with). Trek frequently has a problem understanding what evolution actually is -see also the salamander episode of Voyager - but TNG's harping on how we've all evolved past being shitbirds forever has always particularly irked me. To me that's the actual cynicism here, that humans as they are today aren't good enough to eventually pull ourselves out of the messes we've made, that instead we have to wait for the 'evolved' human to do it for us, and once they're here we're all saved.
I think DS9 simply presents this utopian world in a more human way than TNG was able to do (I mostly blame Gene for arrogant "evolved" dialog in TNG, to be fair), because it allowed for human foibles, for conflict, for the acknowledgement that paradise must be maintained with constant human struggling against their own worse instincts.
One of Sisko's primary goals was to bring Bajor into the Federation. And I think it's common sense not to talk about how the Federation is superior to others because they are a post-needs society when talking to a society that is literally unable to satisfy its needs because of Cardassian pollution of their world.
And Picard and his crew were meant to represent the Federation to the universe. Sisko was meant to represent the Federation to the Cardassians, whom the Fed had recently fought to a stalemate in a territorial war. Which always made me question: Why does a post-needs society need territory?
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Which always made me question: Why does a post-needs society need territory?
I never had a problem with this, it makes sense to me. It's not about need, but about emotional attachment and want. If you took a piece of land and tilled it and farmed it, made it "your own", you don't want to just give it up to other people, even if there's another perfectly good plot of land for you to have on some other M class planet. It's like asking Barclay why he wastes his time pining for Counselor Troi when there may well be other women out there who find him charming (at least before he started up a right wing radio program). It's not logical, but it's understandable. It's more of that "cynicism" as some in this thread has styled it, that humans remain human even if they no longer have to fight to live.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
The other part about TNG is that it was for the most part an episodic show. The idea of serial episodes beyond two parters was mostly just not there when it was airing. And even then the cast still advanced. Data got more human, Picard had nuance to his high minded ideals, exemplifying the best of us at times, and the worst of us (his interactions with the borg post locutus). Riker... got a beard... yep good beard.
Riker I feel was also sadly underutalised by the show.
Watching like A Matter of Honor from the first season, he's just so goddamn compelling as a lead in the right story. The dinner scene in the middle is really like the heart of the episode and really showcases Riker as a really great person and officer. And Frakes is, of course, charming as all fuck too.
I dunno if I'd say undertutilized more that he was pretty much a complete character from the start (minus the beard) and like he has an arc a bit, but Riker for the most part is a rock for most of TNG. Frakes just was so steady as an actor and the character of Riker strong from the jump, it feels like he didn't need to evolve or change much. At least in my opinion.
I do look forward to a domesticated retired Riker though, we know this is a change from his series finale Riker who remained a star fleet admiral, so I want to see Chill Riker.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
There is no want for food or shelter in the Federation. However, warp capable starships are not exactly being parked on the corners of Federation planets like Bird Scooters for the general public to use as they see fit.
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I think the notion that one's society is perfect and doesn't need evaluation on a systemic level is a bad one in general. I don't think that's a cynical thing to say, and I think TNG has a number of villains (Pegasus) that can only be produced through systemic failure, and the show is happy to move on and pretend everything is perfect.
This is such a weird tack to take. "The show pretends everything is perfect." "Well, what about X, Y, and Z?" "The show just moves on and doesn't become entirely about those things!"
What the show does assert is that life can be better than it is right now and that there are other ways to live than constantly scrabbling for money. I don't think that that's some "arrogant" assertion that needs to be continually justified, explained, or excused, possibly because Star Trek is not my only venue for sci-fi and speculative thinking. The fact that some people do think it's some shameful sin, to the point that they've made a little crusade of it for 50+ years, is weird to me! Do you feel it's not?
Jacobkosh on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I dunno, I doubt any dialogue about the human race becoming more evolved was meant to literally refer to biological evolution
this is a thing that seems to trip a lot of people up despite it being (apparently?) quite clear in context
the word "evolution" to mean something akin to "development" predates 19th-century biology as does the Enlightenment idea of humankind kind of ascending through the ages to a better place
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I always assumed that the Prime Directive was a Federation wide matter (with some reasonable backing as to why) but that Starfleet really were the only guys who it mattered to on the regular as a matter of doctrine, because they are basically the Federation's uniformed service for, well, everything really
Apart from internal police. Does the federation even have police?
At various times in the show we see characters visiting Federation member worlds (or worlds that seem to be Federation members? it's not always clear, of course) and falling afoul of their local authorities. We see actual police-ass police in...Into Darkness, I think. After the bombing in the opening scene. Although for some folks that of course won't be definitive.
But in episodes like "Mudd's Women" we also see the Enterprise enforcing interstellar law and like, having little shipboard trials for suspected criminals and so forth. What I kind of guess is that there's a federal system in place member worlds have a lot of latitude in self-governance (Vulcan can still have Pon Farr deathmatches) and enforce their own laws on their own worlds, but Starfleet handles the law between the stars.
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With regards to the Prime Directive, people (some of them episode writers) seem to miss that it's a Starfleet directive, not a Federation directive. The Federation at large has diplomats and the ability to apply diplomatic pressure, but Starfleet captains shouldn't be going around making these kinds of decisions, even when the answer is obvious, and it's best understood within that framework.
You're still taking an unintentional situation and likening it to one where the person willingly chose to involve the person's likeness.
A better example is what if you were playing Mass Effect and it randomly slapped one of the developers face onto a character that you could romance, even though you didn't ask you to.
Then, when his training is complete, he needs to go out for a night on the town with Guinan as his wingman.
pleasepaypreacher.net
season 1 Data is all "'pulling his leg', sir? I did not see you exert force on his appendage."
season 3 Data is like "Geordi I have sometimes noticed that people say things they do not mean to spare another's feelings. You told that woman you would be happy to help her move. Was that one of these polite lies?"
season 7 Data be like "Captain, how do thinking beings find meaning in a universe with no fixed moral laws?"
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's a lot more complicated to mod out a video game than it is to get the Enterprise to randomly make some wildly advanced tech, but that doesn't mean there is no intentionality. Just because Geordi didn't spend hours in Photoshop making sure his Leah Brahm's skin texture was just perfect, doesn't mean that he didn't take the image of a celebrity and tell his computer to give it a personality to give him something human-esque to deal with, and then flirted with that real doll, and then expected the real Leah Brahms to have the same personality as his real doll.
Edit: Though I think Barclay making a love goddess version of his coworker/therapist for him to make out with on the holideck is a bunch worse. But at least Barclay had the understanding to be embarrassed by his fantasy holideck programs and wouldn't have tried to tell Troi that it was her problem instead of his if he didn't like him making out with her holo doppleganger.
Riker I feel was also sadly underutalised by the show.
Watching like A Matter of Honor from the first season, he's just so goddamn compelling as a lead in the right story. The dinner scene in the middle is really like the heart of the episode and really showcases Riker as a really great person and officer. And Frakes is, of course, charming as all fuck too.
This is exactly the kind of cynicism I take issue with. This idea that there's something, like, wrong with the characters living their ideals instead of constantly struggling with them on some fucking razors edge or the like. That's not a legitimate criticism of the show imo because it's not actually a problem. It's not what the show is trying to do and it's counter to the entire point of Star Trek's utopian vision in many ways. The people you see maintain that vision via their actions. That's the point.
And pretending like they don't in DS9 is rather silly imo. The federation characters on DS9 are not like shades-of-grey flawed characters struggling to do the right thing or whatever. They are very much in the mould of your standard Starfleet/Federation character. I really don't see a running theme in the show of having to work towards those ideals or maintain them for the federation types.
I dunno, it’s kinda like, what if there was some fairly famous public intellectual you really respected, and you randomly chanced upon a porn actor who did lookalike videos of them, and you realized you were into it. Then later you unexpectedly ended up working with this person in real life. Yeah, it would be really embarrassing and maybe even mildly violating to admit to them that you’d been watching those videos, but before you met them they were just videos mimicking some celebrity you liked. Would you want to let it get in the way of pursuing a relationship with someone you legitimately really respected?
What I’m trying to say is yeah I’m totally still going to hit on Patrick Stewart when I meet him in person.
Again, it was Barclay's intention to make a holofantasy of his coworker.
Geordi didn't ask for Brahms to appear, and once she did, he didn't ask the computer to give her a flirty personality, just one based on her records. Geordi didn't program her to give a sappy goodbye or to kiss him, the computer did that of its own volition based on its interpretation of the info that it had of Brahms. He let that happen yes, but that was it. After those few brief interactions, he turned the program off and never touched it again as far as we know.
It's certainly awkward and embarrassing, for both of them, but the important thing here is intent.
And yes, treating the real Brahms the way he did was shitty, I'm not arguing against that.
I’ve been doing a rerun of TNG (done) and DS9 (20 eps into S5), and one thing I wish is that the latter show hadn’t wasted Frakes on Defiant. In particular, I would have loved to have seen Tom Riker in the role Eddington played. The betrayal would have been more surprising for the viewers given all the built up connection to Will Riker from TNG, and I would have loved to have seen Frakes chew some scenery with Avery Brooks. The actor who played Eddington was fine, but I never felt like he was a credible opponent to Sisko.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
I told you this already, but I really, really love this idea.
Plus Frakes just deserved more to do in general. It's like the character peaks in The Best of Both Worlds, part 2 and after the writers establish that he likes being on the Enterprise enough to stay second-in-command, and that he's not going to constantly butt heads with Picard in a Kirk/Decker TMP style, they lose interest in doing anything with him.
Were there any episodes where a Federation official decided to get involved with a pre-warp culture's activities and the involvement was considered to be on the up and up? The prime directive is a Starfleet thing, but I never got the impression that there were a bunch of non-Starfleet Federation types running around saving species from genetic diseases or trying to prevent the rise of Space Hitler.
Apart from internal police. Does the federation even have police?
Probably. A post-scarcity healthy democracy would deter most crime, but you’d still have petty idiocy stuff on the low and the super Creep Factor stuff on the high end.
The emphasis would always be on providing social and psychological assistance to people who need help, and actually I imagine that the Federation is largely free of serious violent crime.
I disagree that what Nightslyr could be in any way described as "cynicism." Humans have memory that, at least when measured at a cosmic scale, is very short term. Humans can be swayed by their emotions, humans have to continually relearn things they have learned. Humans are not omnipotent or omniscient, humans work with what they have which means their outlook by necessity is very limited. These are all value-neutral observations, they aren't any more cynical than saying the sun is hot or water is wet.
The thing that's different from DS9 is not that the characters are somehow less idealized than the TNG crew, it's specifically that DS9 doesn't go around talking about how they have "evolved beyond" natural human foibles. I really think that's all that anyone takes issue with in TNG (at least, it's the main thing I take issue with). Trek frequently has a problem understanding what evolution actually is -see also the salamander episode of Voyager - but TNG's harping on how we've all evolved past being shitbirds forever has always particularly irked me. To me that's the actual cynicism here, that humans as they are today aren't good enough to eventually pull ourselves out of the messes we've made, that instead we have to wait for the 'evolved' human to do it for us, and once they're here we're all saved.
I think DS9 simply presents this utopian world in a more human way than TNG was able to do (I mostly blame Gene for arrogant "evolved" dialog in TNG, to be fair), because it allowed for human foibles, for conflict, for the acknowledgement that paradise must be maintained with constant human struggling against their own worse instincts.
No, that's entirely cynical in the face of the message Star Trek is sending about humanity. These aren't even value-neutral observations. It's expressing a view completely different to the specific utopian vision Star Trek was going for.
???
Pretty sure that's just an overweight Andorian.
I guess one could think that it's overly cynical to want to examine such things, but given how often people in real life are more than happy to ignore what the authorities are doing, I don't think it's particularly beneficial to have fictional heroes be similarly uncritical (TNG does engage in this from time to time as well, such as when Picard is forced to enforce the Cardassian treaty)
One of Sisko's primary goals was to bring Bajor into the Federation. And I think it's common sense not to talk about how the Federation is superior to others because they are a post-needs society when talking to a society that is literally unable to satisfy its needs because of Cardassian pollution of their world.
And Picard and his crew were meant to represent the Federation to the universe. Sisko was meant to represent the Federation to the Cardassians, whom the Fed had recently fought to a stalemate in a territorial war. Which always made me question: Why does a post-needs society need territory?
I never had a problem with this, it makes sense to me. It's not about need, but about emotional attachment and want. If you took a piece of land and tilled it and farmed it, made it "your own", you don't want to just give it up to other people, even if there's another perfectly good plot of land for you to have on some other M class planet. It's like asking Barclay why he wastes his time pining for Counselor Troi when there may well be other women out there who find him charming (at least before he started up a right wing radio program). It's not logical, but it's understandable. It's more of that "cynicism" as some in this thread has styled it, that humans remain human even if they no longer have to fight to live.
I dunno if I'd say undertutilized more that he was pretty much a complete character from the start (minus the beard) and like he has an arc a bit, but Riker for the most part is a rock for most of TNG. Frakes just was so steady as an actor and the character of Riker strong from the jump, it feels like he didn't need to evolve or change much. At least in my opinion.
I do look forward to a domesticated retired Riker though, we know this is a change from his series finale Riker who remained a star fleet admiral, so I want to see Chill Riker.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
This is such a weird tack to take. "The show pretends everything is perfect." "Well, what about X, Y, and Z?" "The show just moves on and doesn't become entirely about those things!"
What the show does assert is that life can be better than it is right now and that there are other ways to live than constantly scrabbling for money. I don't think that that's some "arrogant" assertion that needs to be continually justified, explained, or excused, possibly because Star Trek is not my only venue for sci-fi and speculative thinking. The fact that some people do think it's some shameful sin, to the point that they've made a little crusade of it for 50+ years, is weird to me! Do you feel it's not?
this is a thing that seems to trip a lot of people up despite it being (apparently?) quite clear in context
the word "evolution" to mean something akin to "development" predates 19th-century biology as does the Enlightenment idea of humankind kind of ascending through the ages to a better place
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At various times in the show we see characters visiting Federation member worlds (or worlds that seem to be Federation members? it's not always clear, of course) and falling afoul of their local authorities. We see actual police-ass police in...Into Darkness, I think. After the bombing in the opening scene. Although for some folks that of course won't be definitive.
But in episodes like "Mudd's Women" we also see the Enterprise enforcing interstellar law and like, having little shipboard trials for suspected criminals and so forth. What I kind of guess is that there's a federal system in place member worlds have a lot of latitude in self-governance (Vulcan can still have Pon Farr deathmatches) and enforce their own laws on their own worlds, but Starfleet handles the law between the stars.