You really need to watch more TOS as the '"utopian idealism" mold' you describe WASN'T a part of Star Trek (which began with TOS 1966-69) from the beginning...
With all due respect, TOS is hands-down my favorite Star Trek series, and the only one of which I have watched every single episode, more than once. I'll stand by what I said: the utopian futurism of the show was there from the very beginning. TNG may have extrapolated (some of) it further, but it didn't originate it and it most assuredly wasn't a retcon. There are plenty of people who were fans before 1987 who can testify to this.
It was clear that the Federation was a society built around egalitarianism and freedom. Nationalism has been left in the past, as had material scarcity and the vices it engendered. People didn't work "for a living," they worked for personal satisfaction and self-realization. The Federation was clearly a post-capitalist society, without money, as Kirk himself mentioned in
STIV:TVH (still before TNG). When you bring up examples like Harry Mudd or Cyrano Jones, the thing to remember about TOS is that the Enterprise was out at the frontier, dealing with societies that were
not part of the Federation, whether by choice or because they hadn't yet had the chance to join, ranging from colonies and outposts to full-fledged interstellar governments. (The Federation had no death penalty, for instance — Talos IV aside — so if Deneb V did then it obviously wasn't a member.) These other societies certainly could and did have economies of their own, and it makes sense that "Federation credits" were what the UFP used when it had to trade with such societies, but that says nothing about how things were conducted
within the UFP. We never even visited any of the homeworlds (except Vulcan, just once, for a ceremonial occasion).
...in the TOS era, the Federation let member worlds KEEP their own laws and racial/social traditions, no matter what they were - and respected a Member Planet's local laws EVEN IF they didn't align with Earth's societal norms.
I'm curious what example(s) you're thinking of there, because none spring to mind.
So... As far as anyone knows, the Discovery was lost in battle. The Mirror Universe is to be kept top secret. Emperor Georgiou is put in charge of the ship and they're sent on this mission to Qo'nos.... Anyone else get the feeling this is a suicide mission, and Cornwell is hoping to take care of all these problems in one fell swoop?
What you say makes a certain kind of nasty sense... but the more I thought about it, the more I decided that nothing we've seen of Cornwell makes her seem that ruthless and conniving. Disillusioned, yes, but that's not the same thing.
I remember when the federation recruited the most terrible dictator and genocide in the history of the earth to help them defeat the Klingons in a war
[pic of Khan]
I don't remember Khan ever being described as the most terrible dictator in history, much less a genocidal one. On the contrary, in "Space Seed," Scotty admitted to "a sneaking admiration" for him and mentioned that "there were no massacres under his rule"; McCoy specified that there were "no wars until he was attacked"; and Kirk called him "the best of the tyrants." His rule wasn't known for freedom, true, but comparing him to a bloodthirsty maniac like Georgiou is ridiculous.
The whole klingon war story-arc is one BIG clusterfuck of a botched arc. Holy hell.
Forget how it clashes with canon - It's just bad. Like, this is suddenly the most dire war the Federation has ever fought. Closer to the brink of defeat than they were even against the Borg and the Dominion - and the show SKIPPED the whole thing? ...
Great post, calling out some real whoppers in the storytelling. Unlike you I rather liked the Stamets/Tyler scene, but other than that I think you're on the money. This whole storyline has been a mess. I'm beginning to wonder if this show has any professional advisers or consultants on military affairs, government, or diplomacy, never mind the science stuff. TOS always had experts consulting on its stories, but with DSC, sometimes it seems like the writers are just making it all up as they go, with no reality checks at all.
...What could make sense of this whole mess of a story would be if the mirror universe were a metaphor for the darker side of our nature, which we actually need to survive because that is where our survival instincts reside. ... With this in mind, what the writers would be doing by installing MU Georgiou as captain, would be the equivalent of reaching into our darker natures and finding the will to survive.
If it were to go that route then the next step would be Starfleet committing an atrocity and threatening to commit more (like Hiroshima and Nagasaki), putting the Klingons in the position of facing the extinction of their species, and thus ending the war. I know a lot of people will be uncomfortable with this scenario, but I am fairly certain that the majority of men (maybe not woman) reading this will know deep down in their hearts that this is what we would do if we were in their position.
Of course we have the luxury of living in a time when not all human males have been neutered, so our perspective is obviously going to be different from utopian Starfleet. It might be difficult to find an un-neutered human male among the almost all female cast portraying humans on Discovery...
You know, you were offering some interesting (if disquieting) speculations about the show's themes... until you suddenly went full MRA in the middle of the post. Yikes. Speaking as a guy (stereotypical straight white male American, no less), I can assure you that even deep down in my heart I would
not commit genocide to end a war... and I'd hope that the vast majority of civilized human beings, male or female, would say the same thing.
There are lots of ways to find "the will to survive" that don't involve sacrificing what makes us human, and that's not "sanctimonious tripe" nor "politically correct." Really, that's a big part of what Star Trek has always been about.
[regarding definitions of treason] They're at war. Rules are more strict, punishment more harsh.
Umm, no. The law remains the law, in wartime as in peacetime. That's true even today, and I can't imagine the Federation would be
less civilized. Why do you imagine otherwise?
Keeping the true nature of Georgiou a secret from actual Academy trained crew is just another joke on them, hell they're used to being led by the nose by mirror captains. Bad enough that mirror Lorca was not Starfleet and went unknown, but to sanction Georgiou? One has to believe it will be revealed as a ruse.
One certainly does hope so. Unfortunately, revealing it will presumably also mean Cornwell takes the fall for it, which will cost us another good recurring character, one who showed a lot of potential until she was saddled with this storyline.
A lot of people have been saying that it's easy to keep MU Phillipa a secret...but didn't she appear as a hologram in front of the whole bridge crew in "The Wolf Inside?"
That was on the Shenzhou.
...The only prime people who saw her then were Burnham and the now deceased Lorca. She's not even visible in the transmissions to the Discovery from the Throne room of the ISS Charon.
I also flashed back to her holo-appearance on the bridge at first, before I recalled that was on the MU
Shenzou. Probably a side-effect of the bridge sets looking so similar, with almost indistinguishable color schemes, lighting, and camera angles.
That said, putting this in perspective, it seems shamefully obvious that the last few episodes were written as they were... right down to the Emperor being mysteriously nameless to most denizens of the MU... specifically (and only) so the writers could set up this "twist" with MU Georgiou replacing her counterpart. Evidently they felt so strongly that this was a story worth telling that they carefully constructed previous events, however implausibly, just to make it possible. I can't say as I agree... so far, I find it gimmicky and offensive, and I'm hard-pressed to imagine what could happen next week to change that impression.
JI *really* hope we can keep Michelle Yeoh around for a few more episodes delivering the kind of MU sass we now have come to expect from her week to week.
Can't agree at all. I find her boring, clichéd, and tiresome.
This is a contrivance too far? Really? Not space salamandars? Or bloodless brain transplants? Temporary gender swapping? 50-foot Vulcans? Sentient holodecks? The gazelle speech? Really?
The fact that you're comparing this particular contrivance to some of the worst stories in the history of Star Trek says a lot about the level DSC is operating on here.
