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[Star Trek] Keep On Trekkin' (Lower Decks stuff in SPOILERS)

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  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    What happens if you've got a Bronze Age civilization on one half of a planet but you want to put some Federation colonists on the other half? The two should never meet for generations so it should be okay, right?

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    What happens if you've got a Bronze Age civilization on one half of a planet but you want to put some Federation colonists on the other half? The two should never meet for generations so it should be okay, right?

    Starfleet specifically doesn't colonize already inhabited planets. It even comes up in a episode where they discover some previously unknown type of life after they started a terraforming project.

    Hey, is there any EU stuff about Wesley's nanite civilization?

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    emnmnme wrote: »
    What happens if you've got a Bronze Age civilization on one half of a planet but you want to put some Federation colonists on the other half? The two should never meet for generations so it should be okay, right?

    Starfleet specifically doesn't colonize already inhabited planets. It even comes up in a episode where they discover some previously unknown type of life after they started a terraforming project.

    Hey, is there any EU stuff about Wesley's nanite civilization?

    Yes, in one novel the join the Federation - they don't achieve warp, but being hopelessly contaminated by interstellar contact they get loopholed in. They get special ships that are basically just stuffed with a huge amount of unprogrammed circuitry and they can set it up the way they need to control the ship (I think the same author had a Horta crew piloting a Galaxy-class that was just filled with solid rock that they could hollow out burrows as they pleased, kind of a theme with that guy), or colonies could be loaded into blank androids (kind of like the downloadable celebrity robots in Futurama) to serve as a single officer on another ship.


    As for colonizing inhabited planets, yeah, though it's fuzzy where the line is. Like, would Australopithecus count? Chimpanzees? Whales (which Star Trek asserts are of human-level intelligence)? The angry little blob of light suggests they would err on the side of caution but there's a lot of daylight in there.

    As an extension, for a planet to join the Federation, all sentient species on it have to join. TNG even had a case of a warp capable race sharing a homeworld with a pre-warp one, and even before it turned out the advanced side were the bad guys, they were looking at a hard no on membership.

    Hevach on
  • CroakerBCCroakerBC TorontoRegistered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    Star Trek has had a bunch of episodes where some well-meaning Federation officer interfered with a planet's development and Things Ended Badly, perhaps best exemplified by the one where someone re-invented the Nazis to "help things along".

    Whatever you might think, in the Star Trek universe there's ample evidence that sticking your oar into pre-warp civilisations is a Bad Idea.

    My off the cuff counter argument would be that we’re not talking about a pre-warp civilisation. We’re talking about other humans. Humanity is warp capable. Deciding that these other humans, who are not warp capable *any more* due to (environmental factors) don’t get to be actors on the galactic stage is it’s own special hubris.

    The Disco one was especially egregious, if I remember correctly, because the colony had set up a distress beacon asking for help. The help finally got there and went “Sorry, you’re too unique not to get typhoid” and bugged out again.

    The Prime Directive makes me itchy in a lot of ways, but once we’re saying “Humanity is a single civilisation” then we’re also saying “And if we find some poor unfortunate colony world under dictatorial rule and thrown back to the medieval period, we should sort that out, no matter how long they’ve been out of touch”.

    It’s (one of) Starfleet’s jobs to connect human colonies with the core. Not helping people because you took too long to get there is…atrocious.

  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    Yes, the Prime Directive is designed to create exactly that kind of conflict for the protagonists.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    And remember, the Prime Directive isn't a brick wall. Picard had violated it 9 times by Drumhead, and faced no repercussions for it.

    You don't run into the Prime Directive and eat popcorn while the volcano wipes out the colony, you hit the Prime Directive and call a meeting. You listen to all viewpoints, from Worf ("Fire phasers and torpedoes until the problem stops being one,"), to Troi ("I can't actually come up with something as painfully obvious as many of her lines."), you make a collective command decision in context of the Prime Directive, and handle any dissent appropriately.

    Or if you're Janeway you call a meeting, shut down opposing viewpoints, and make a unilateral decision in the context of "I'm the captain" and bank on it being too late to do anything by the time it comes back around.

  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    And remember, the Prime Directive isn't a brick wall. Picard had violated it 9 times by Drumhead, and faced no repercussions for it.

    You don't run into the Prime Directive and eat popcorn while the volcano wipes out the colony, you hit the Prime Directive and call a meeting. You listen to all viewpoints, from Worf ("Fire phasers and torpedoes until the problem stops being one,"), to Troi ("I can't actually come up with something as painfully obvious as many of her lines."), you make a collective command decision in context of the Prime Directive, and handle any dissent appropriately.

    Or if you're Janeway you call a meeting, shut down opposing viewpoints, and make a unilateral decision in the context of "I'm the captain" and bank on it being too late to do anything by the time it comes back around.

    What it feels like is that if you break the Prime Directive, that's an automatic trial, where you have to defend your decision. And sometimes it's a easy trial (well, there was this volcano, see...) but you're still putting your career on the line, so you'd better be real certain.

  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    Star Trek has had a bunch of episodes where some well-meaning Federation officer interfered with a planet's development and Things Ended Badly, perhaps best exemplified by the one where someone re-invented the Nazis to "help things along".

    Whatever you might think, in the Star Trek universe there's ample evidence that sticking your oar into pre-warp civilisations is a Bad Idea.

    That episode was so uncomfortable. There was a lot of "the Nazis produced the most effective, efficient civilization known to man, if only it weren't for the mass murder," and most of that nonsense was coming from the Enterprise's own bridge crew.

  • TryCatcherTryCatcher Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    You know that a Trek thread got going when you land into the inevitable Prime Directive argument.

    TryCatcher on
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Can't wait for the inevitble spinoff.

    Star Trek: PDU
    In the federation justice system, prime directive based offenses are considered especially heinous.
    In Starfleet, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious violations are members of an elite squad known as the Prime Directive Unit. These are their stories.

  • TryCatcherTryCatcher Registered User regular
    On Japan, it's descent into imperialism was pretty much inevitable since the only way they found to make an unified country from a bunch of islands filled with mountains (read: making roads was hard and arable land was scarce) was industrialization (which is a major part of the Meiji restoration) and Japan is kinda lacking on things that make industrialization possible, like iron, copper, bauxite and so on. So it pretty much has to bring them from somewhere else and before WWII that meant empire.

    WWII happens, that idea gets crushed, and Japan is kinda screwed. Except....the US needs bodies and allies against the Soviets, and China was on it's fifth decade or so of gruesome civil war. So, they get access to the new global trading system with the US Navy securing their shipments. Economically, they got everything they wanted, which is why it was called "a miracle".

  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    The children of Red Squad needed to die because too much media encourages children to commandeer a spaceship and have exciting adventures

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »
    The children of Red Squad needed to die because too much media encourages children to commandeer a spaceship and have exciting adventures

    (ad for ST PRODIGY goes here)

  • CroakerBCCroakerBC TorontoRegistered User regular
    Yes, the Prime Directive is designed to create exactly that kind of conflict for the protagonists.

    But how does it even apply? (Leaving aside that I find the results rather enraging). Humanity isn’t a pre-warp civilisation.

  • Dark_SideDark_Side Registered User regular
    TryCatcher wrote: »
    You know that a Trek thread got going when you land into the inevitable Prime Directive argument.

    Or a Jelico was right! argument.

  • BronzeKoopaBronzeKoopa Registered User regular
    I didn’t like red squad, they seemed almost cultish. Didn’t they sabotage Earth’s defenses in a previous DS9 episode before they got the keys to a defiant class ship?

  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    Bogart wrote: »
    Star Trek has had a bunch of episodes where some well-meaning Federation officer interfered with a planet's development and Things Ended Badly, perhaps best exemplified by the one where someone re-invented the Nazis to "help things along".

    Whatever you might think, in the Star Trek universe there's ample evidence that sticking your oar into pre-warp civilisations is a Bad Idea.

    That episode was so uncomfortable. There was a lot of "the Nazis produced the most effective, efficient civilization known to man, if only it weren't for the mass murder," and most of that nonsense was coming from the Enterprise's own bridge crew.

    It was very much of its time, before people actually started studying the Third Reich and revealed what a shit show it had been behind the scenes. At the time the "at least they made the trains run on time" argument was very common. It didn't really start dying until the 70s, when most of the senior West German Government officials that totally had been de-nazified started to retire and be replaced by west Germans born post war. It was cold war propaganda made into television.

    Edit: But yep, its fucking creepy and if I had to pick one episode to decanonize, it would be that one. Not even the Transwarp Tadpoles are as bad.

    Kipling217 on
    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    all the bad examples from the prime directive are caused by starfleet officers so doctors should be forbidden from giving medical aid to starfleet officers because one day they might reinvent nazis

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    but then how will the kids (tweens, teens) get their wish fulfillment, where protags who are their own age face peril and potential trauma to life, limb and mental health have exciting adventures?

    every now and then, adults have a moment of clarity when looking at such media (it's easier when it's some show, book, etc that they themselves didn't grow up with) and the sensible reaction of "omg what is wrong with you these are children?!?" but most only think of how much they enjoyed it when they were that age, and blissfully ignorant of things like PTSD, permanently crippling injuries, etc etc.

    Commander Zoom on
  • MancingtomMancingtom Registered User regular
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    I think Kira demonstrates adequately that her being a child soldier fucked her up and in many ways she's broken beyond repair, she's the first one to practically smack Zeal across the face for wanting to hold up a gun in defense of something

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    I didn’t like red squad, they seemed almost cultish. Didn’t they sabotage Earth’s defenses in a previous DS9 episode before they got the keys to a defiant class ship?

    The episode very much shows that the "Captain" is running an authoritarian cult of personality and that his crew is not mentally equipped for what they are trying to do but can't voice or even think that because of said social structure.

  • HydropoloHydropolo Registered User regular
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

    Is it though? There was a LOT of terrorism going on pre-DS9 (which was part of the whole reason they made no bones about who or what Kira had been).

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Hydropolo wrote: »
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

    Is it though? There was a LOT of terrorism going on pre-DS9 (which was part of the whole reason they made no bones about who or what Kira had been).

    yes, but none/very little of it was directly against us (the United States), so we had the luxury of observing the issue at arm's/ocean's length.

  • see317see317 Registered User regular
    Hydropolo wrote: »
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

    Is it though? There was a LOT of terrorism going on pre-DS9 (which was part of the whole reason they made no bones about who or what Kira had been).

    It is a lot more loaded post September 11th then it was before, at least in the United States.
    Before, terrorism was a thing that happened "over there", some nebulous foreign region that popped up on the news for us to sadly tut-tut over and then go back to whatever we were doing.
    Then September 11th happened, and we realized that terrorists aren't just people on the news from Over There, and that adds a lot of weight to the term.

    Sure, there were terrorist incidents before that. The Unabomber, the Oklahoma city bombing, countless other incidents the news always presented those as the standard lone crazy guy, or that got washed away entirely by politicians white washing history for the school books.

  • HydropoloHydropolo Registered User regular
    Hydropolo wrote: »
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

    Is it though? There was a LOT of terrorism going on pre-DS9 (which was part of the whole reason they made no bones about who or what Kira had been).

    yes, but none/very little of it was directly against us (the United States), so we had the luxury of observing the issue at arm's/ocean's length.

    There was a ton. Iranian hostages, takeover of buildings in DC, a bunch of domestic terrorism. I mean, the only real "game changer" was 9/11, and only in sheer scale.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    You can tell where terrorism occupied the mindset of Americans in the 80's and 90's, when there was an popular children's cartoon and toyline(GI Joe) that featured terrorists as the weekly badguys.

    They were basically supervillains, complete with goofy costumes and ridiculous plans for world domination.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • LanlaornLanlaorn Registered User regular
    see317 wrote: »
    Hydropolo wrote: »
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Frankly, more speculative fiction needs a "child soldiers are fucked up don't use them" episode.

    (glances at Star Wars)

    You're right.

    But Red Squad wasn't made up of children. They're Starfleet cadets, putting them at 18-22. Young, stupid, and inexperienced, but not child soldiers. Kira was the child soldier for DS9 and they didn't spend nearly enough time to going into that. It's one of the things that would probably change about Kira were she written today—that, and softening her actions during the Occupation since "terrorist" is far more loaded in 2021 than it was in 1993.

    Is it though? There was a LOT of terrorism going on pre-DS9 (which was part of the whole reason they made no bones about who or what Kira had been).

    It is a lot more loaded post September 11th then it was before, at least in the United States.
    Before, terrorism was a thing that happened "over there", some nebulous foreign region that popped up on the news for us to sadly tut-tut over and then go back to whatever we were doing.
    Then September 11th happened, and we realized that terrorists aren't just people on the news from Over There, and that adds a lot of weight to the term.

    Sure, there were terrorist incidents before that. The Unabomber, the Oklahoma city bombing, countless other incidents the news always presented those as the standard lone crazy guy, or that got washed away entirely by politicians white washing history for the school books.

    There were other terrorist attacks, 9/11 wasn't even the first time the World Trade Center was attacked, they had placed bombs in the underground parking garages a few years earlier trying to make one tower collapse into the other. They had lots of plane stuff too, bombings and hijackings.

    9/11 was just so grand, so successful for the terrorists, blowing up or hijacking a single plane is already a crazy tragedy that alone would have been the scope of previous terrorist plots - and here we have four planes hijacked and destroyed, the WTF destroyed in a dramatic, highly televised fashion and the Pentagon partially destroyed for bonus points.

    Plus there was an organized foreign group taking credit, an enemy to fight. I don't think Oklahoma city, etc. were erased from history or "whitewashed" by Politicians, it's just like the Boston Marathon bombing, isolated incident by two crazy Chechen-Kyrgyzstani guys that had a lot more to do with them being crazy than Kyrgyzstani or asylum seeking refugee immigrants or whatever else.

    September 11th just had a lot of Pearl Harbor effect to it by its nature.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    You can tell where terrorism occupied the mindset of Americans in the 80's and 90's, when there was an popular children's cartoon and toyline(GI Joe) that featured terrorists as the weekly badguys.

    They were basically supervillains, complete with goofy costumes and ridiculous plans for world domination.

    I mean real life terrorists often wear goofy costumes and have ridiculous plans for world domination

    if it wasn't for all the horrible shit they did they'd be just as silly as Cobra

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    9/11 led to a pretty large and obvious shift in how american culture viewed "terrorism" and "terrorists". Whether you think this "makes sense" or is "logical" just doesn't fucking matter. It happened.

    Watching DS9, as I've noted before, Kira very much feels like a character from the pre-9/11 era. The show is basically fine with her past. It leads to stories and such but the show fundamentally does not view it as a negative character trait and there's not really anything notable about that treatment.

    Post-9/11 if you tried to take that route it would imo have been calling attention to itself. It would have been a thing your show was doing and not just a piece of backstory as unremarkable as "used to work on the Enterprise" or "likes baseball for some inexplicable reason".

    shryke on
  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    For all its faults, I liked Into Darkness' Prime Directive boondoggle, where it's not necessarily that Kirk violated it, but he tried to avoid taking responsibility for it.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    It also meant that every single show and movie since has got to have a traumatic surprise attack on Earth (or Mars), starships crashing into buildings, etc.
    Gotta keep going back to that well, mining that tragedy for drama, picking at the psychic wound. :?

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    For all its faults, I liked Into Darkness' Prime Directive boondoggle, where it's not necessarily that Kirk violated it, but he tried to avoid taking responsibility for it.

    Yup. A friend and I have discussed this at length; the short version is that IMO the Prime Directive is the most important rule, and it's not ever to be broken without damn good reason... but such reasons do exist, out in the black. But a captain must be willing to put their career on the line for it, and defend that decision, explain their reasons before a review board or court martial, and generally take responsibility for their actions. (The difference between Prime and Kelvin/nuKirk is that the latter learned to duck responsibility as a survival skill, due to his altered upbringing; as a Starfleet officer and captain he has to unlearn that impulse, which is a big part of his development in ID.)

    In TNG "The Drumhead", it's noted that Picard has a few PD violations on his record. Clearly he was not drummed out of the service, so apparently those were all found to be justified and that he took the proper action to keep harm to a minimum, etc.

    In fact, we've speculated, it may be that someone with a career of any length and no PD flags on their file may actually be considered less reliable. Either they're a by-the-book officer like blueshirt Picard who never takes risks or pushes the envelope, the sort who's good for charting stars or ferry runs around the trade lanes, but not an exploratory command where they will have to make calls like that; or they're really good at covering their own ass. Either way, you don't know how they're going to break or what they'll do if push ever comes to shove - which is what both the Kobayashi Maru sim and its TNG-era successor, the Academy psych test, are there to find out (in a controlled environment, with no actual lives or civilizations on the line and people to put you back together afterward).

  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    Speaking of the Kobayashi Maru, the snippets I see in the extended lore where people "hack" the test and somehow pass it really ruins the whole point of the test. But maybe that's just me.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Speaking of the Kobayashi Maru, the snippets I see in the extended lore where people "hack" the test and somehow pass it really ruins the whole point of the test. But maybe that's just me.

    Yes. They are all dumb and miss the point of that story while also feeling like desperate "me too" terrible writing where you take something interesting and unique and grind it into the ground so that everyone's favourite pet character gets to have the thing too.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Also you'd think they would have locked the software down after the first half dozen hacks.

    Unless they want to keep that possibility open so they can pat people on the heads for thinking outside of the box.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    edited June 2021
    Two of my OCs took entirely the wrong lesson from the KM test. One was convinced that a real captain, a better captain, would have not made any "mistakes" and found a way to win; he had to have it explained that "sometimes you can do everything right, and still lose." (He's gotten better at his imposter syndrome since, but still has to fight that tendency to blame himself for anything that goes wrong - which someone else pointed out is perversely arrogant, as if no one else has any agency but him.) Another, like Saavik, took issue with the form of the test; she understood and accepted that first truth but got upset that in the simulation, "God" is real and has His hand on the scales to make you fail, no matter what you try. Which is true, but misses the point - the KM is a constructed scenario which forces a certain outcome to see how the subject reacts, and was never intended to be a fair or accurate simulation of reality. She argued (at length) that introducing that kind of bias to the test made the results meaningless. (This is what happens when you let Science branch officers take command tests...)

    Those are the standouts. Most of my characters simply took the test, "failed" it in the ordinary course, and got on with their lives and careers. :P

    Commander Zoom on
  • MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    Can't wait for the inevitble spinoff.

    Star Trek: PDU
    In the federation justice system, prime directive based offenses are considered especially heinous.
    In Starfleet, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious violations are members of an elite squad known as the Prime Directive Unit. These are their stories.

    <RikerTrombone>Bwun Bwun!</RikerTrombone>

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Star Fleet Temporal Prime Directive Investigators would be fun. Trials and Tribble-ations is direct evidence of this.

This discussion has been closed.