Unpopular Trek opinions game
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We Prime Earthers are so binary!
Nah Riker was the real Xenosexual dawg! He loved anyone and anything! Kirk personified.
If he ever got stuck in our time he would be sexually frustrated, feeling sorry for himself being limited to just one species and only two genders lol
I remember one episode where Be'lanna said when she was a child, human children would call her "turtle head".
So Trek starts out with Kirk saying where he comes from, it doesn't matter what you look like what size or sex you are, and Data says judging by appearance was the 'last of the human prejudices'.
So by the time we get to adult Belanna, she tried to change the appearance of her unborn child to look less Klingon and more human. That's extreme.
I won't say worse than modern humans, (things are much better) but worse according to the evolution Trek says humans obtained.
Between crazy admirals and genocidal ones, the Maqui situation, bigoted children, people worrying about money again, failed colonies, the attempted takeover of earth by a admiral, etc., etc.. it looks like humans have slid down a bit.
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Of course it did, because no one but the original writers/creator had any interest in writing evolved characters, because frankly it's hard to do without being boring. What can you write about people who are supposed to have no prejudices, no internal conflicts, no compromising attributes? If you can't lean on the crutch of having conflicted characters, you have to actually come up with interesting stories that stand on their own
Or perhaps humanity simply isn't all at the same level, even in the Federation . I mean, Tasha Yar lived on a colony world with rape gangs. Kirk grew up were supplies ran short. It's not ever been shown to be consistent.
Wow. Interesting discussion I missed out on upthread! But on another note...
I agree and disagree. After Gene started touring colleges, and after all the turbulence of the '60s and '70s, he probably put a lot of thought into the idea of Utopia. The only problem is: a series where there's no conflict doesn't translate into interesting TV and you'll have frustrated writers because they were taught "Conflict is the root of all drama." You tell a story and the question becomes "What's the conflict?" It doesn't have to be life-or-death, but something has to be there. And no one can ever be challenged if they're perfect. So I think Utopia was well thought out as an idea, but it just doesn't work for storytelling and so was impossible to keep up.
Unpopular Opinion: I don't mind "The Royale". It's stupid '80s TV, knows what it is, and has fun with it. Troi and Picard even talk about how horrible the dialogue in the novel is, so the episode is self-aware. It knows how silly it is and I just roll with it. Kind of like how Data rolls with the dice.
I agree and disagree. After Gene started touring colleges, and after all the turbulence of the '60s and '70s, he probably put a lot of thought into the idea of Utopia. The only problem is: a series where there's no conflict doesn't translate into interesting TV and you'll have frustrated writers because they were taught "Conflict is the root of all drama." You tell a story and the question becomes "What's the conflict?" It doesn't have to be life-or-death, but something has to be there. And no one can ever be challenged if they're perfect. So I think Utopia was well thought out as an idea, but it just doesn't work for storytelling and so was impossible to keep up.
Unpopular Opinion: I don't mind "The Royale". It's stupid '80s TV, knows what it is, and has fun with it. Troi and Picard even talk about how horrible the dialogue in the novel is, so the episode is self-aware. It knows how silly it is and I just roll with it. Kind of like how Data rolls with the dice.
Kirk is from Iowa, they might be a bit more enlightened there or he speaks from a position of Terran privilege. Torres lived on a colony world, probably the standard of life was far removed from the semi perfect Sol system. Perhaps judging other humans by appearances was the last of the human prejudices, judging others not so much, consider McCoy's attitude to Spock.
I'm not sure conflicted characters are a "crutch." More like the human condition.
Wasn't it Faulkner who wrote that literature was all about the human heart in conflict with itself?
When they tried that in Into Darkness, they were so obvious with McCoy injecting the dead tribble, it made Kirk's whole death scene all the more lame and predictable.
Wow. Interesting discussion I missed out on upthread! But on another note...
I agree and disagree. After Gene started touring colleges, and after all the turbulence of the '60s and '70s, he probably put a lot of thought into the idea of Utopia. The only problem is: a series where there's no conflict doesn't translate into interesting TV and you'll have frustrated writers because they were taught "Conflict is the root of all drama." You tell a story and the question becomes "What's the conflict?" It doesn't have to be life-or-death, but something has to be there. And no one can ever be challenged if they're perfect. So I think Utopia was well thought out as an idea, but it just doesn't work for storytelling and so was impossible to keep up.
Unpopular Opinion: I don't mind "The Royale". It's stupid '80s TV, knows what it is, and has fun with it. Troi and Picard even talk about how horrible the dialogue in the novel is, so the episode is self-aware. It knows how silly it is and I just roll with it. Kind of like how Data rolls with the dice.
No conflict can mean no war, no civil war, no violent crime, no hate crimes, etc., etc. A society can be so much better than the present one that it seems like a utopia to present day people, but still have its own kind of problems and conflicts.
A person from a few centuries or millennia in the past transported to our present day society would find it was very different from what they were used to. And some persons from the past might consider the difference to be a fantastic improvement and modern society to be utopia. But it is a fact that members of modern society are aware of various social problems and have differences of opinion and there is interpersonal conflict within imperfect modern society.
To illustrate the difference between heroes & villains on one hand, and protagonists and antagonists on the other hand, I sometimes discuss a story where a child wants to get and eat a cookie from the cookie jar without permission, and the mother wants to prevent the child from doing so. Such a story could be written with either the child or the mother as the protagonist, and either the child or the mother as the antagonist, but it would be hard to write it with either the child or the mother as either the hero or the villain. And it is possible that a great enough writer might be able to make such a minor conflict seem epic.
It is rather hard to picture a society ever becoming so enlightened that it doesn't have some such minor interpersonal conflicts. So there should always be societies where protagonists struggle against antagonists, even if not against villains anymore. And of course there will always be some natural conditions serving as antagonists or even villains.
I remember an Arthur C. Clarke story in which a character struggled against the leaders of his society about unspecified causes. The leaders can't stand to have him "corrupt" their society and ask what can they do with him. The character says they could always kill him, and is told that joke is in bad taste. Their society was such an utopia as far as violence is concerned that killing an opponent is dismissed as a bad joke, but still imperfect enough to have a conflict over unspecified issues.
So I have no problem with a future highly improved 24th century society seeming like utopia compared to the present, and full of people with superior ethics. But there should still be some minor social problems, and the people should still be imperfect enough to have some sort of interpersonal conflicts.
So a highly enlightened future should not block writing stories with various conflicts, though it might restrict the types of possible conflicts.
I don't think that it is a case of all or nothing. It is not a choice between using a setting as primitive, backward, and conflict filled as present day Earth or using a setting so utopian and enlightened that there are no internal conflicts. I think that there is a broad spectrum of imaginable societies between those two extremes.
There is a broad spectrum for stories. I think the frustration is trying to write a weekly action/adventure/drama show imposes another limit that challenges with writing conflicts in a "utopian" mindset.
The utopia concerns only Earth and maybe the Federation. The rest of the Galaxy doesn't have to live in a Utopia. That's where the conflicts could come from.
The way Trek characters describe how much humans have evolved, you wouldn't expect to see all this dysfunction. A lot of this stuff is just as bad or even worse than contemporary times.
There really shouldn't have been a Maquis situation at all if humans were really that evolved and prosperous. No admiral should be trying take over earth or scheme with the enemy over some plot. Or the failed colony where Tasha came from.
Sometimes I wonder if all these claims are realistic, or if they just went overboard with them.
Humans are no longer offended by insults at all.
Humans are no longer warlike
Humans are so prosperous, they don't want or need material things anymore
There aren't any human prejudices anymore.
Humans aren't sexist anymore
Humans don't solve problems with fist fights anymore.
Humans aren't afraid to die anymore.
Humans don't worry about money anymore.
People don't get sick anymore.
Humans don't got to war or argue over politics anymore.
Humans don't argue over economic systems anymore.
They don't do drugs anymore. etc.
All of this is supposed to be the foundation that Trek is based on. All of them were reversed in some way as the franchise went on. And all this taken together, is Utopia or a form of it.
There really shouldn't have been a Maquis situation at all if humans were really that evolved and prosperous. No admiral should be trying take over earth or scheme with the enemy over some plot. Or the failed colony where Tasha came from.
Sometimes I wonder if all these claims are realistic, or if they just went overboard with them.
Humans are no longer offended by insults at all.
Humans are no longer warlike
Humans are so prosperous, they don't want or need material things anymore
There aren't any human prejudices anymore.
Humans aren't sexist anymore
Humans don't solve problems with fist fights anymore.
Humans aren't afraid to die anymore.
Humans don't worry about money anymore.
People don't get sick anymore.
Humans don't got to war or argue over politics anymore.
Humans don't argue over economic systems anymore.
They don't do drugs anymore. etc.
All of this is supposed to be the foundation that Trek is based on. All of them were reversed in some way as the franchise went on. And all this taken together, is Utopia or a form of it.
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As much as I see objections to how humanity is portrayed, one of the things that helps to keep in mind is that humanity isn't monolithic. Which, in my opinion, is were Trek suffers the most in trying to portray optimism because there are still some conflicts, like Kirk rebuking Stiles in "Balance of Terror" telling him to keep his prejudices in his quarters, and there is no place for them on the bridge. He didn't tell him to stop. He just told him to keep it in check in the course of his duties.
I don't think it was quite that perfect, since McCoy laments not having a cure for the common cold, Spock notes dissatisfaction with the highly "balanced" environments of human colonies, etc.
I think that TNG had this base, but I don't think it was to be applied to all of Star Trek all the time.
This is due to technology. It did not change human nature.
It made humans *comfortable* enough that they can become *narcissistic* and *arrogant* enough to start claiming things like
The only reason these things can be *claimed* is because humans are *comfortable* enough to not NEED to be so offended, warlike, tribelike, and with medical technology they don't need to be afraid of being sick or dying young. It is the only reason that economic systems don't really matter (although at the frontier, its still in huge play, ala Mudds Women, etc). "Drugs", I would argue, is a combination of 1) some things just no longer being demonized, because with medical tech, it cures addiction and/or afterefects and 2) with the comfort levels enjoyed by humans, the mental conditions that lead to looking for comfort or release from depression in drugs no longer exists.
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