Meh it's all debatable but I think you get the point of what I'm getting on with. The structure of everything in the show resembles much of the communist state.
No, it doesn't, not even slightly. I don't know where you're getting that. The structure of what we usually see in the show is that of a military organization, not a civilian population. I'm not sure what you mean by "communist state" -- it's actually a contradiction in terms, since a communist society is stateless -- but if you're referring to the authoritarianism of states ruled by so-called Communist parties (which, as I said, are theoretically working toward the creation of communist societies but have never actually succeeded at it), then that's a function of the fact that we're seeing stories about military personnel operating under a command structure, which is a different matter altogether. Beyond that, I can't imagine what you're referring to, since you're just asserting it without actually defining your terms.
And right here is why people talk of the no money issue.
Federation society is an advanced/very advanced form of communism.
No. "Communism" does not just mean "no money." That's completely wrong. Yes, in theory,
one aspect of an ideal communist society, per Marxist theory, is that all commerce would be direct trade between individuals and money would be rendered superfluous, but that's only one out of many attributes. Saying that the Federation is communist because of the single property that it lacks money is like saying that a Welsh Corgi is a brontosaurus because of the single property that it has four legs, or that a ping-pong ball is the Sun because of the single property that it's round.
However make no mistake American's are very intolerant of anything communist.
Yes. Now you're making my point for me. If you recognize that, you should see how completely nonsensical it is to think that any American-made TV show would be presenting a communist society. I don't know how you can hold two such contradictory notions and think they make sense together.
Except for the no money, lack of class conflict, 100's of cases where it's illustrated that they have a command economy, etc etc
Any ideal society will lack class conflict, because class conflict is stupid and unfair. Marx doesn't have a monopoly on that idea.
And again you're making assertions without support. "Command economy?" Where are you getting that? I think you're again confusing the military structure of Starfleet for the broader society it serves.
Besides, in the 24th century they have a replicator-based economy. They can manufacture anything they want on request. Communism is an economic theory based on the assumption of scarcity and the need for labor to manufacture goods. It's incompatible with a post-scarcity, replicator-based economy. That would require an entirely new theory, neither capitalism nor communism. Economic theories aren't immutable laws of physics. They're just ideas that some people made up and tried out. Both modern capitalism and communism were invented in the 19th century. Neither one of them was around 3 or 4 centuries ago. So why assume either one would be around 3 or 4 centuries from now? They'll probably both have been replaced by new economic theories.
If you change it to that extent you might as well call it something different because it won't feel like Trek anymore. Trek as a brand shouldn't just mean "space exploration". It's got to have more specificity than that which would carry through a reboot.
Not at all. What makes it
Star Trek isn't the psi powers or the forehead aliens or any of that. It's the characters and the spirit and the philosophy. A humanist, inclusionist philosophy that would be better lived up to by a more diverse cast and a more diverse range of alien designs.
Besides, Roddenberry always wanted
Star Trek to be plausible. He consulted with scientists and engineers and think tanks to build the most credible future ever seen on television up to that point. He often fell short in the execution, sometimes for budgetary or logistical reasons (the implausible Earth-duplicate worlds were purely about making the show affordable to shoot, and there were so many stories about psi powers because it's cheap to film actors pantomiming mind control and the like) and sometimes for creative license (e.g. on the principle that a star name like Rigel or Deneb would be more familiar to audiences than, say, HD 23546); but with each subsequent production he was in charge of (TMP, early TNG), he tried to improve the credibility and correct past mistakes and build a more realistic version of the future. But a lot of the assumptions he built it on back in the '60s and the '80s are outdated now. If he were alive and at his creative peak today, he'd be the first person trying to reinvent
Star Trek to fit more modern, up-to-date understandings of science, while still embodying the same approach to characterization and action and philosophy.
So no, I'm not proposing changing it into something other than
Star Trek. I'm proposing being true to the spirit of
Star Trek that Roddenberry always intended but that it's drifted away from under other creators and over the passage of time. He wanted it to be cutting-edge and based on the most current ideas, not an exercise in '60s nostalgia.
Ticking boxes on diversity is what I'd like to see gone from Trek. The main objective of any writer should be to tell a compelling story, not to buck social norms for the sake novelty or PC value.
You're getting it backwards. Diversity is the natural state of the human race. More than half of humanity is Asian; less than a fifth of it is white. In an honest, balanced portrayal of the human race, diversity will happen automatically, because it's simply the truth of the world. You have to make a conscious effort to
avoid diversity, to cling to the artificial, fabricated image of a world dominated by white heterosexual males.
That's the political statement, that active denial of the reality of diversity.
Just look at the current Hugo nomination controversy. The ones bringing politics into it are the ones protesting diversity and pushing for a slate friendly to a conservative, traditional, white-dominated portrayal. Whereas the more inclusive works of fiction in this and earlier years didn't get there because of an active political campaign; they just happened to be written and published and enjoyed by the readers. Diversity is increasingly becoming the norm, the natural and unaffected state of affairs. Many of America's major cities, like New York, LA, and San Francisco, are white-minority now. So it's the people resisting diversity, those continuing to make stories and movies dominated by white people, who are trying to fill artificial quotas. The rest of us are just acknowledging reality.
