THE ORVILLE: S1, E7: "MAJORITY RULE"
- Thread starter Mudd
- Start date
Nah. The whole "utopia" of Star Trek has always struck me as a kind of Stepford Future.
What made Star Trek great was not Gene Roddenberry's "vision". He's always been given too much credit for that. The OS was made great by a group of fantastic writers, several of whom went on to craft great stories in the other series. The future is a utopia by our standards but in all the series, what makes the story compelling are the flaws in that utopia. DS9 was the closest in spirit to the original series but even TNG showed how the Federation had pockets of discontent.
TOS didn't portray a utopia - it was just a fairly standard sci-fi future of the type we saw in much pulp fiction of the 40s and 50s. Everything's cleaner, everything works better, the more humane trends, as the writers saw them, of the modern era were extrapolated forward as well - a better solution to crime, faith in psychiatry as a science, etc. Fans of the thing latched on to the shiny fifties future as some kind of beacon of hope given that these folks were flying spaceships instead of having blown the world to smithereens.
Funny thing - like Trek would, most popular sf writers of the time did reject the notion of racial bigotry as barbaric and outmoded while - like Trek - continuing to utilize variations of racist stereotypes in their writing. Heinlein is a good example.
Funny thing - like Trek would, most popular sf writers of the time did reject the notion of racial bigotry as barbaric and outmoded while - like Trek - continuing to utilize variations of racist stereotypes in their writing. Heinlein is a good example.
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Making somebody's "mind right" doesn't mean zombifying them. It's exactly what we do now-- from counseling to medical treatment for mental illness-- just with more effective techniques. It's better to fix somebody's problems than to incarcerate or kill them.
So apparently the Chinese are implementing a Social Credit System, where they lower your score for perceived transgressions and punish you as your score gets lower.
This system allows people to "donate money" (where it actually goes, no one knows) to increase their score.
Gotta love the commies.
Definitely is homage to TOS, while giving a subtle wink to "Sliders" as well.
If "Orville" didn't have me as a fan before, it did by this point.
It's not the newest of tropes, but only so many exist. How they're re-used has more to do with whether or not they work. "Orville" has been pretty much on top of its game for its first season - which is something of a rarity.
Then there's the nuanced dialogue. Even rewatching, there are some bits I hadn't picked up on before. Such cynicism subdued so sublimely... by the seashore...
I also found it amusing that the talk show host took a direct bias against LaMarr - it would have been interesting if even hosts had their badges up so people could react. Or was that the point?
If "Orville" didn't have me as a fan before, it did by this point.
It's not the newest of tropes, but only so many exist. How they're re-used has more to do with whether or not they work. "Orville" has been pretty much on top of its game for its first season - which is something of a rarity.
Then there's the nuanced dialogue. Even rewatching, there are some bits I hadn't picked up on before. Such cynicism subdued so sublimely... by the seashore...
I also found it amusing that the talk show host took a direct bias against LaMarr - it would have been interesting if even hosts had their badges up so people could react. Or was that the point?
I wouldn't have perceive transgressions cause a person problems.
In the case of China, lower the person's points.
It's sad.
But with all Commie countries it's not always who you know, it can be who you pay.
Name one country where that never occurs.
I've never been able to pay my way out of say, a speeding ticket.
I live in the USA.
That doesn't even begin answer the question.
You either pay it online or put a check in the envelope with the ticket and mail it to the state. What's hard about that?
This is not a problem with Communist countries so much as developing countries. Throughout Central America and Africa, you can get around the rules if you pay the right people. And in many African countries, police will outright ask for bribe money.
You have to go to court, then you pay
Money.
It's not usually 'perceived' that one was speeding, subsequently causing you to lose points.
As in China, remember when they killed the people in China that wore eyeglasses because it was perceived that they were dissidents?
That's what I'm talking about.
And as above where you can pay money to someplace or someone to have them look the other way.
But, if you like communism,
More power to ya.
Regardless if you're paying in a courtroom, paying online or through the mail, you're still paying your way out of a speeding ticket, which you previously asserted is not possible in the US.
And in the US, people of a certain skin colour are often perceived of as criminals, even when they're honest law-abiding citizens.
In pretty much every country (even in the free world) the rich do that all the time.
Not really my thing, but I can see the appeal.
