Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x03 - "The End is the Beginning"

Scanning through the past few pages, it really seems like I'm in the minority re: E03. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have called it The Necessary Transition Episode between the SOL III based action and what's to come out in space and in FREECLOUD and elsewhere. Also - seems like a few other Bowie/Picard crossover fans remember "The Wild Eyed Boy from FREECLOUD" too!

Point of order in case it wasn't made already: the EMH and the ENH were different beings with different accents (British v. Irish). Thank goodness for Closed Captioning!

 

I re-watched THE MEASURE OF A MAN just to familiarize myself with Bruce Maddox. I would recommend this to others since it really gives us a flavor for who he was (is?). I hadn't seen the episode in years.

 

As a newbie (CADET now ENSIGN) I am surprised that completely political stuff is allowed on the board. My preference would be to see ZERO posts about USA politics here and to instead see a focus on things like Starfleet-Romulan politics. But what do I know... I'm just an Ensign.

 

tl;dr
is there a one paragraph version of this, so I can follow the discussion

 

Star Trek hasn't been a moneyless society for a long time. Remember that time Sisko bought some land? And yes it was on Bajor, but Sisko doesn't get paid by Bajor, so he would have had to have used Federation credits to buy it. The again his son had to borrow money from Nog to buy a baseball card...

In short the whole money thing is something we probably shouldn't take too seriously.

 

I suspect UFP's money system is some kind of meritocratic concept that some writers didn't necessarily follow

 

Or they have some future version of universal income. All Federation citizens get a certain amount a week and can earn more if they have a job. Maybe that is why everyone wants to be a Starship Captain because of the $$$$

 

those two concepts are not exclusive.

 

I guess with the vast amount of resources the Federation has on its hand, the government can easily afford to provide most amenities to its citizens. Especially when most of those amenities is probably just whatever indiscriminate matter they're pumping into replicators as raw material. Other than that, it's probably the good old Federation credits. Some sort of hybrid economy with an expansive, interstellar-scale welfare state.

I'd think most people can and will use public transport free of charge if they want to travel to other worlds, but you'll pay freelancers like Rios or that alien guy from The Search for Spock if you want to fly unnoticed off the books.

 

Did my Minion avatar get me in trouble? Because, for once, I wasn’t the one stirring shit up.

 

Well, on the one hand, I can understand your position. SciFi (and Fantasy) universes allow us to forget the reality for a while, they allow us a bit of escapism. But on the other hand, especially the SciFi genre, always can be seen as an allegory, a comment to the reality. Sometimes, sci fi storys are about 'general ideas' like all the utopian novels or tolerance (like ST), and sometimes, the parallels are a bit more specific, like in 'The Undiscovered Country' (keyword: Soviet union). So, as long as it is a part of the interpretation or analysis of one moment, episode or show, it is a valid point to talk about this parallels. But of course, sometimes political discussions can become very off-topic and that would be the point, where they should be outscourced into another thread.

 

So you use an episode where it was an important plot point that humans do not use money and thus Jake didn't have any as an example of there being money...

 

Would you prefer it monosyllabic as well?

 

I think it was pretty clear that the point I was trying to make was that money or the lack thereof has never made any sense in Star Trek

 

no.

 

The discussion between Jake and Nog in "In the Cards(DS9)" about how humans in the 24th century don't use money and live to better themselves is entertaining. The writers of DS9 clearly didn't enjoy or at least wanted to have fun with the idea that the Federation was a moneyless society.

 

Did it? Raffi's complaints were focused not on money, but private ownership of real estate, something which has not been said to have lost meaning. We do know Picard's vineyard was a family heritage--"JL" did not buy it. Raffi's bitterness reflects how her fallback position did not involve seclusion to an idyllic location where she could pursue pastoral pastimes in seclusion from the slowly decaying social values. The opportunities she had outside of Starfleet were far less attractive. (Her bitterness also reflects Picard's unwillingness to put more at stake for the rescue mission.)

Obviously, the existence of real estate complicates how we would understand equality in a world without money. However, it does not outrightly contradict it.

 

that 'idyllic location' gets way too often overworked by some nasty dudes

... at least to my liking