Let's be honest about the Federation's failings

[Tenacity]

In the novels the Titan is the first mixed species crew where humans are the minority, and is touted as a first.

in one of the novels set on the post-tmp enterprise, captain decker (prior to his disappearance) had deliberately made the enterprise the "most mixed species."

I mean, the unavoidable implication of this explanation is that the Federation Starfleet practices segregation....

who says it doesn't? neither the federation nor starfleet are perfect.

The flag ships also, time and time again, have had a primarily human crew, a human captain, and named after an Earth ship.

well we only seen one (prime universe) flag ship.

.Spock being the only non human on the Enterprise in the TOS (Ok it was down to budget) was ridiculous

would spock have been aboard the tos enterprise if he hadn't been half human?

The question is whether or not such segregation is necessary for some sort of compelling biological

maybe some species psychologically simply can't serve with each other for protracted periods of time?

On the other hand -- why on Earth was the USS T'Kumbra an all-Vulcan ship in 2375?

it's captain controled transfers on and off the ship, and he wanted a all vulcan ship?

 

[at Quark's]

Of course it is. The question is whether or not such segregation is necessary for some sort of compelling biological reason.



Are you aware of how potentially offensive starting your argument off that way could be given the real-world implications of such a thing?



See... the thing is, "separate but equal" is almost never actually equal. Equality inherently requires integration. Yes, in this fictional construct that is Star Trek, there may occasionally be biological necessities such as incompatible atmospheric requirements. But if you're constructing a work of fiction like Star Trek, I would say that creators have an obligation to depict diverse species and diverse real-world cultures as an integrated whole. Because there is no equal treatment without integration. In the real world, there is no such thing as separate but equal. There is no such thing as egalitarian segregation.

And within the fictional world of Star Trek, leaders should be aware that that same principle holds true, and should seek to minimize species segregation as much as possible.

I am aware that in our world this wouldn't work. But Star Trek takes place in a different universe, where humanity magically bettered itself. They live in a world where humans also have no more desire to enrich themselves and use no more money. Those two are things I also think will never happen, but I accept them because it is a story of a make-believe universe.

Similarly, I doubt whether humans will ever be really able to leave behind their ingrained behaviour of treating people from different groups differently. Again, for Star Trek I assume they do, and hence the issues you describe simply are no longer there within universe. If we can believe that humanity can leave behind greed and selfishness and such things, I see no reason to believe that segregation without unequal treatment would be impossible in that universe, even though it is in our world.

So basically the difference is that we agree that this wouldn't work or be desirable in the real world, but that you are concerned with the "message" Star Trek sends, and I'm (at this point) merely trying to find a fictional solution for an imaging problem that I think is even more pernicious: a Starfleet that professes with its mouth that it grants equal opportunities to every species, yet that is almost exclusively shown to be run by human officers, with the rare "token" Vulcan or other alien.

And that sounds very much like many of our societies today, where most of the higher functions are still filled by white men despite all the efforts of governments to change that. But at least we admit it is a problem, and the Federation apparently doesn't address Starfleet on its responsibility. So in fact the situation in Starfleet seems to be worse than in our real world today, if you want to go with the idea that we see Starfleet as it really is.

The only other possible explanations I can possibly think of is that either most aliens don't make the cut (which would again show that humanity is "better" somehow, and you probably don't want that), or that only very few aliens actually wish to serve in Starfleet for an unexplained reason (perhaps there are simply too many humans around and too few of their own species?).

However the way you look at it/ want to explain it, if you don't accept the idea that there may be Vulcan crews etc. elsewhere, but we really see a truly random cross section of Starfleet, it would show that integration /equal participation of multiple species in Starfleet has failed miserably. It's very telling that of the classic series, the one that had the most 'mixed' main cast was also the only series that actually didn't take place on a Starfleet ship.

Sure -- a compelling biological necessity. But even then, that should be mitigated as much as possible. If you can have chlorine-breathing officers on an oxygen-breathing ship through special apparatuses without compromising crew safety or significantly compromising crew performance, you should. And vice versa. Equality comes from integration.

Not sure if integration should be a goal in itself, or just a tool to reach the end goal of equality. Again, I agree that in the real world we need it since we cannot achieve it in any other way. In the Star Trek universe, where humanity supposedly has magically taken all those insurmountable hurdles already 2 centuries before, however ....

Better idea: Officers and crew who engage in such bigoted behavior should suffer disciplinary action, and officers from diverse cultures should be integrated into unified crews whenever biologically possible.

I actually agree with that, myself. However, you should not be saying that to me, but to the makers of Voyager, and the original series (Spock himself suffered quite a lot from this, too). Get Kirk and McCoy reprimanded for those times they called him pointy-ears or a computer! Oh, and Spock himself, too. He shows a good deal of disdain for us humans, after all...

 

[Watersluis]

This is the case. I would hope a Star Trek reboot would change all this, but that did not happen in the modern movies. The scene where all the admirals meet before they were attacked, well they all looked human. Since the UFP was really a T.V version of the USA this natonalistic bias was reflected in the show, exchange the concept of the human privilege in the UFP for the Eurocentric privilege of real life and the concept exposes its in universe ugliness. Would make an interesting media study essay.

Another thing that strikes me as very odd is that Enterprise's title sequence, which supposedly is a documentary of man's greatest milestones in exploration, somehow does not feature the first artificial satellite, the first mammal in space, the first primate in space, the first man in space, the first space station, but does the first man on the moon.

You cannot begin to convince me that the fact that of all space venture milestones they just happened to select the one success of the U.S.A., and omitted each and every of the U.S.S.R. — a præposterous move.

 

[Tenacity]

The up front answer is that ENT was a American made show with Americans intended as a primary audience.

On the wall of the Enterprise D conference lounge, the ships on display based on actual historical ships/vehicles are all American.

The argument could be made that in-universe while the ENT Starfleet was somehow connected to a international institution (UE/UESPA) that Starfleet at that time was largely a American organization. It was headquartered in America, Admirals (that we saw) were American iirc, the two senior Human officers on the Enterprise were Americans. We never came to know the majority of the crew, their nationalities were what? I honestly wouldn't be surprised given how the show was set up if most were Americans.

I haven't watched the show for a couple of years, but was Starfleet ever said to be a international organization? It sure isn't shown as one.

 

[Nyotarules]

in one of the novels set on the post-tmp enterprise, captain decker (prior to his disappearance) had deliberately made the enterprise the "most mixed species."

Yes the Ex Machina novel (I think), a novelverse reason for why TOS was so white er I mean so human. I wonder it if was better to do the Klingon thing and pretend the crew was always diverse?

 

[Nyotarules]

The up front answer is that ENT was a American made show with Americans intended as a primary audience.

On the wall of the Enterprise D conference lounge, the ships on display based on actual historical ships/vehicles are all American.

The argument could be made that in-universe while the ENT Starfleet was somehow connected to a international institution (UE/UESPA) that Starfleet at that time was largely a American organization. It was headquartered in America, Admirals (that we saw) were American iirc, the two senior Human officers on the Enterprise were Americans. We never came to know the majority of the crew, their nationalities were what? I honestly wouldn't be surprised given how the show was set up if most were Americans.

I haven't watched the show for a couple of years, but was Starfleet ever said to be a international organization? It sure isn't shown as one.

The audience is meant to pretend when Uhura speaks its with an East African accent, when La Forge speaks its with a Somalian accent, when Picard speaks its with a French accent, Worf with a Russian acccent, and when the aliens speak its not with an Earth accent and most of them do not speak English. E.g Quark, Odo and Kira Rhys are not speaking English. Perhaps a level of English aka Standard is needed to join Starfleet which makes it even more Humancentric. Or for aliens is such an easy language to learn an alien baby can do it.
Starfleet is meant to be an international organisation in ENT and then a galactic one from DISC onwards. If its just an American one then the concept is even more racist. In this fictional future, humanity unites, explores space and becomes North American cultural clones. That is not a United Earth, that is a United States empire.
In the modern era where the world is a lot smaller due to social media, a Star Trek reboot would need to be more international, less 'American', and in universe more galactic. Or change the concept and call it NASA Treks in the 23rd century

 

[Nightdiamond]

I don't think it is segregation to have completely difference species, with different needs and living standards, to work together.

Different species have different physiological needs, however if a Human wanted to serve on a Vulcan dominated ship as long as they past the relevant xeno cultural exams they should be allowed to serve there.

See... the thing is, "separate but equal" is almost never actually equal. Equality inherently requires integration. Yes, in this fictional construct that is Star Trek, there may occasionally be biological necessities such as incompatible atmospheric requirements.

I would suppose this type of segregation doesn't hurt, since it doesn't affect anyone else financially or civically, but technically it is segregation. It's not accidental or necessary, it's a deliberate choice based on race and species, but made to seem lighthearted somehow.

Funny how you can see something like that right in your face and never think about it. I mean, I've seen episodes and references like this many times in Trek, and never paid any attention it. Because it seems so innocent and lighthearted in the 24th century.

The all Vulcan crew from Take Me Out to the Holosuite -- Even though it was an all Vulcan crew, you can think being 24th century people, they still believed in equality and were tolerant, and but when you see the way they're portrayed in the episode, they looked like an arrogant group that believed in segregation of the species.

Or maybe it was a dig at humanoid arrogance always being in the forefront.

And then there's that commander Hobson guy from TNG, that believed that certain aliens had certain limitations and aren't suitable to do certain things, and had a 'certain place'.

And yet each of the things he described, a human is almost always seen doing them because--humans are so multi talented. Maybe he was serving with a mostly all human crew too long.

Colonialism? I don't know about that. I'd say imperialism. At least as conceptualized in TOS, that's how I always saw the PD:

Speaking of, this brings to mind another issue about Federation Failings that hasn't been solved yet.

Star Trek Insurrection. Starfleet was participating in removing the 600 Baku settlers (peaceful) from their settlement on one of their planets so it could study the energy radiation around the planet.

The problem---- the Baku claimed to have settled on the planet almost 100 years before the Federation was even founded. So therefore the Baku have a claim to the planet. There is no current explanation for this .

 

[Nightdiamond]

I think it likely humans would get past the -isms only as long as they had some aliens to displace their anger and prejudices on.

Ah, the optimism runs wild in this thread! What if the inclination toward prejudice is simply re-directed toward the new group outsiders?

Yeah, I always liked that aspect of TOS myself, and it's one of the things that always seemed a little "off" to me about First Contact (even in contrast to the versions of humanity's first warp explorations presented in earlier Trek novels). Although, to be fair, even TOS posited that we had to get through some version of a Third World War first.

Real history has fallen far behind what Trek optimistically posited in lots of ways.

Similarly, I doubt whether humans will ever be really able to leave behind their ingrained behaviour of treating people from different groups differently. Again, for Star Trek I assume they do, and hence the issues you describe simply are no longer there within universe. If we can believe that humanity can leave behind greed and selfishness and such things, I see no reason to believe that segregation without unequal treatment would be impossible in that universe, even though it is in our world.

I remember when fans generally accepted Trek's (or TNG's) idea that human in the 24th century are totally different than today. they won't fear death, aren't bothered by insults, accepts everybody of all races and colors, don't discriminate, aren't sexist or homophobic at all.

And are very pacifist, aren't greedy or selfish and don't judge anyone by appearance--at all. But lately I noticed a lot of cynicism about all this.

TNG seems to say humans "evolved" these qualities and are inherent almost. And that they are far, far away from our "primitive" behavior today.

Whereas now some fans are claiming this is bulls***. Probably because they see how stubborn our primitive qualities are, but also because it may be in our DNA- after millions of years being raised and programmed to have "isms".

So now the idea is that technology is the best or only way humans can achieve what Trek claims . Because the more technology provides for all the people, the more barriers it removes. The more barriers it removes the more people can benefit from it. And so on...

But then the other view says humans made rational choices to change because they were shocked when they discovered they weren't the only ones in the universe and most of their society was almost wiped out as well. And this view seems more "organic" because it comes from the inside, it's internal.

That's the debate now. Technology vs moral evolution. And religion barely gets a word in the matter.

It was headquartered in America, Admirals (that we saw) were American iirc, the two senior Human officers on the Enterprise were Americans. We never came to know the majority of the crew, their nationalities were what?

Idk, (in universe) it seems like a logical explanation, but it also seems almost like a slippery slope back into the stilted world of segregation.

If these Trek characters were to walk into a Starfleet office light years away from earth and saw 90 percent of the staff there were....... Andorians......(because I can barely list any more than 4 Fed members) I wonder if the same characters would looked shocked because there were no humans there.

And it tapers off into the real world too, since some fans seem hypersensitive to any attempt at diversity in casting, which is why all these exaggerations like "sjw" "feminism" and "get woke, go broke" are flying around. They're too used to seeing a status quo, though they won't admit it.

 

[Tenacity]

I wonder it if was better to do the Klingon thing and pretend the crew was always diverse?

I think it "better" to take the show as its presented, instead of trying to make it something it isnt.

starfleet is meant to be an international organisation in ENT

I've put forward what my theory is based on. what makes you think it's international?

then a galactic one from DISC onwards.

in tos the crew we see is human with one half human. kirk, mccoy and sulu are americans.

If its just an American one then the concept is even more racist.

american is a nationality, not a race

Star Trek Insurrection. Starfleet was participating in removing the 600 Baku settlers (peaceful) from their settlement on one of their planets so it could study the energy radiation around the planet.

the federation wanted to remove the baku so they wouldn't be killed when the particles in orbit were collected. the study of the particles was finished prior to the start of the movie, they wanted to collect the particles to help billion of people.

think being 24th century people, they still believed in equality and were tolerant, and but when you see the way they're portrayed in the episode, they looked

it not unknown that people think (and say they are) one thing, while they are something completely different

picard built up this self image of himself that was a work of fiction, then in first contact lily forced him to realize. what he truly was. all too human.

aren't sexist or homophobic at all.

the culture shown in tos was very obviously sexist, even in the 24th century women in senior command/management positions was the exception.

the complete absence of gays in the prime universe does suggest homophobia.

.And are very pacifist

so they would not defend themselves if attacked?

 

[Nyotarules]

The problem---- the Baku claimed to have settled on the planet almost 100 years before the Federation was even founded. So therefore the Baku have a claim to the planet. There is no current explanation for this .

Claiming and taking over land that belongs to other people is a human tradition

If these Trek characters were to walk into a Starfleet office light years away from earth and saw 90 percent of the staff there were....... Andorians......(because I can barely list any more than 4 Fed members) I wonder if the same characters would looked shocked because there were no humans there.

I would expect a Starfleet office or starbase on or near Andor to be mainly staffed by Andorians. However there was no reason why Deep Space Nine had 99% of its Starfleet personnel as humans. Bajor is nowhere near Earth, even the Bajoran crew lacked diversity unless Bajor is a monoethnic planet?
But the HQ of Starfleet is on Earth, it should reflect the planets that it represents. Consider real life, the UN head office is in NYC, but its not just staffed by US citizens.

think it "better" to take the show as its presented, instead of trying to make it something it isnt.

There will always be gaps to be filled, or else we would have to accept no one needs the toilet since no one ever used one lol

I've put forward what my theory is based on. what makes you think it's international?

The premise is humanity gets its shit together, unites politically and explores space. The premise is not North America or the USA gets its shit together, unites politically and explores space.

in tos the crew we see is human with one half human. kirk, mccoy and sulu are americans.

In universe DISC predates TOS, plus in TOS there are 430 crew members from different Earth backgrounds, we do not meet all of them. Uhura is meant to be African not Amerian, Chekov is Russian, Scotty from Scotland, even Mr Leslie had an English accent

That's the debate now. Technology vs moral evolution. And religion barely gets a word in the matter.

It can be both. Technology helps but as Kirk said (generally) humanity operates on 'we choose not to kill TODAY' or 'we choose not to be racist , sexist, bastards TODAY'.
Look at the history of the industrial revolution, it took external forces, (workers, social reformers, politicians) to persuade the state to force industry to reform child labour laws for example. My guess is most businesses do not do these things out of the goodness of their hearts.

american is a nationality, not a race

Then the concept is just as prejudiced.

the federation wanted to remove the baku so they wouldn't be killed when the particles in orbit were collected. the study of the particles was finished prior to the start of the movie, they wanted to collect the particles to help billion of people.

Then ask the Baku, The concept of 'I want to help other people, so stealing and kidnapping makes it ok'. Colonialism, was based on 'lets help the motherland, our people get some new resources, and so what if the people living there, before we turned up get in the way'. Its the same mindset.

 

[Tenacity]

In universe DISC predates TOS, plus there are 430 crew members

it difficult not to see std as being in a separate universe/continuity than the first five series.

, plus there are 430 crew members from different Earth backgrounds, Uhura is meant to be African not Amerian, Chekov is Russian, Scotty from Scotland, even Mr Leslie had an English accent

23rd century, a ship with all humans, except for a single half human. the crew wasn't composed of people from dozens of different species. certainly this wasn't mentioned or overtly shown.

and even in std, while there are a small number of non-humans among the crew, aren't the majority of the crew human? certainly the majority of the feactured characters on the hero ships.

 

[Nyotarules]

it difficult not to see std as being in a separate universe/continuity than the first five series.23rd century, a ship with all humans, except for a single half human. the crew wasn't composed of people from dozens of different species. certainly this wasn't mentioned or overtly shown.

and even in std, while there are a small number of non-humans among the crew, aren't the majority of the crew human? certainly the majority of the feactured characters on the hero ships.

Sorry I misunderstood your post, I thought you were making the point (post 104) most of the crew shown to the audience were American so Starfleet might be an American organisation

 

[Arpy]

Um, there’s nothing magical about how humans did away with racism and bigotry. They desegregated and got to know one another. If you don’t do that, I think it’s a natural inclination of maybe any species to find “other”ness off putting on some level. We learn to not be afraid of others when we have a parallel to draw from our past experience. But if you’re segregated off the bat, ignorance seeps in.

In my mind, Trek is as it says it is, as it aspires to be, not as budgets and convention necessarily present. The alien, or the minority, was just off-camera. I.e.: Vilix'pran.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

On the other hand -- why on Earth was the USS T'Kumbra an all-Vulcan ship in 2375?

Because Captain Solok was a racist jackass who hated humans?

 

[Tenacity]

Sorry I misunderstood your post, I thought you were making the point (post 104) most of the crew shown to the audience were American so Starfleet might be an American organisation

it was my position that that was the case in during ENT.

23rd century enterprise would be earth (and not america), and not possessing a integrated crew composed of representatives of the various federation member. there is a starship "manned by vulcan" at the same time period. senior command officers seen, at least those senior to kirk are all human. perhaps the vulcan ships admirals would have been vulcans during this time period? federation member fleets would cooperate. but be for the most part separate.

in the 24th century picard said the federation had over 150 members, but in reunion picard said that the enterprise d's crew was compose of 13 species. another way of saying that would be "only" 13 species

in tomorrow is yesterday, there's a scene where kirk and Christopher encounter a female crewmembers in the corridor. it would have been interesting if it had been a non-human instead.

but it wasn't, other than spock (and outside the mirror universe) there is no mention of non-humans aboard the ship. and I think they would would have if there was supposed to be.

 

[Sci]

who says it doesn't? neither the federation nor starfleet are perfect.

If Starfleet does practice species segregation, then that's a very disturbing thing that has implications for what kinds of real-world politics the show is espousing. It's possible to do an anti-segregation program that depicts segregation intentionally and thoughtfully, but that's not what ST has ever done if indeed we are supposed to accept the idea that Starfleet is segregated.

maybe some species psychologically simply can't serve with each other for protracted periods of time?

I think it would be a very bad idea for the writers to establish something like this in-universe, because then the show is essentially endorsing real-life racial segregation whether the writers want it to or not.

I am aware that in our world this wouldn't work. But Star Trek takes place in a different universe, where humanity magically bettered itself. They live in a world where humans also have no more desire to enrich themselves and use no more money. Those two are things I also think will never happen, but I accept them because it is a story of a make-believe universe.

I get what you're saying, but I fundamentally disagree. I think part of being honest in our depiction of people is that creators can't depict something that has deeply oppressive consequences in real life but claim that it magically doesn't in the world of the story.

So basically the difference is that we agree that this wouldn't work or be desirable in the real world, but that you are concerned with the "message" Star Trek sends, and I'm (at this point) merely trying to find a fictional solution for an imaging problem that I think is even more pernicious: a Starfleet that professes with its mouth that it grants equal opportunities to every species, yet that is almost exclusively shown to be run by human officers, with the rare "token" Vulcan or other alien.

And that sounds very much like many of our societies today, where most of the higher functions are still filled by white men despite all the efforts of governments to change that. But at least we admit it is a problem, and the Federation apparently doesn't address Starfleet on its responsibility. So in fact the situation in Starfleet seems to be worse than in our real world today, if you want to go with the idea that we see Starfleet as it really is.

I would say that there are two basic ways to approach this seeming dilemma:

1) Establish that Starfleet is way more diverse than we've seen canonically, and just accept that the predominance of seemingly-Human characters is an conceit of the limitations of television, the same way we pretend the USS Constellation wasn't behind held up by strings in "The Doomsday Machine" and that it wasn't a forced-perspective painting of a hallway behind Wesley in "Coming of Age;" or,

2) Call it out in-universe. Have a character, maybe an Andorian or a Tellarite or a Bolian or whatever, appear who actively says, "Hey, Starfleet talks a good talk about diversity, but it's a Human supremacist organization with only token non-Human representation. They're engaging in blatant discrimination against non-Humans and blatant species segregation. They need to change." And have Starfleet realizing it's been speciesist and needs to change be a story in its own right.

To me, any other way of approaching the topic just ends up (accidentally or not) endorsing racial segregation IRL.

Another thing that strikes me as very odd is that Enterprise's title sequence, which supposedly is a documentary of man's greatest milestones in exploration, somehow does not feature the first artificial satellite, the first mammal in space, the first primate in space, the first man in space, the first space station, but does the first man on the moon.

You cannot begin to convince me that the fact that of all space venture milestones they just happened to select the one success of the U.S.A., and omitted each and every of the U.S.S.R. — a præposterous move.

I would say that the ENT opening title sequence does not exist in-universe. Obviously in real life, those scenes were chosen to reflect an perceived American nationalist bias in the primary intended audience, and it's deeply offensive that non-American accomplishments weren't represented.

In the modern era where the world is a lot smaller due to social media, a Star Trek reboot would need to be more international, less 'American', and in universe more galactic. Or change the concept and call it NASA Treks in the 23rd century

If I were reimagining Star Trek from the ground up, I think I might solve the problem of how to avoid essentially depicting species segregation as a good thing, by not having a multi-species state in the first place. I'd probably go the Babylon 5/ENT route, and have Our Heroes be in service to a United Earth, and have other planets be fully independent, sovereign worlds that are not part of a federal union with Earth. That would solve a lot of the weird quirks in old Trek (why is there a Vulcan Embassy on Earth if Earth and Vulcan are both part of the Federation? It's not like there's a Massachusetts Embassy to Utah), and it would also allow the show to focus on the metatextual idea of human unity and human equality in real life without worrying about the politics of multispecies egalitarianism.

I would suppose this type of segregation doesn't hurt, since it doesn't affect anyone else financially or civically, but technically it is segregation. It's not accidental or necessary, it's a deliberate choice based on race and species, but made to seem lighthearted somehow.

Funny how you can see something like that right in your face and never think about it.

Yup!

Speaking of, this brings to mind another issue about Federation Failings that hasn't been solved yet.

Star Trek Insurrection. Starfleet was participating in removing the 600 Baku settlers (peaceful) from their settlement on one of their planets so it could study the energy radiation around the planet.

The problem---- the Baku claimed to have settled on the planet almost 100 years before the Federation was even founded. So therefore the Baku have a claim to the planet. There is no current explanation for this .

I mean, the explanation is simple: The Federation was doing something deeply immoral. INS kind of hand-waves it by saying that exposing Dougherty's actions to the Federation public will mean that such operations are stopped and their leaders brought to justice, but... yeah. The Federation did a colonialism.

I remember when fans generally accepted Trek's (or TNG's) idea that human in the 24th century are totally different than today. they won't fear death, aren't bothered by insults, accepts everybody of all races and colors, don't discriminate, aren't sexist or homophobic at all.

And are very pacifist, aren't greedy or selfish and don't judge anyone by appearance--at all. But lately I noticed a lot of cynicism about all this.

TNG seems to say humans "evolved" these qualities and are inherent almost. And that they are far, far away from our "primitive" behavior today.

Whereas now some fans are claiming this is bulls***. Probably because they see how stubborn our primitive qualities are, but also because it may be in our DNA- after millions of years being raised and programmed to have "isms".

It's not so much that I think it's in our DNA. "Human nature" is a concept that encompasses everything from Ghandi to Hitler, from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to "Bull" Connor, from Malala Yousafzai to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It's so broad that it's a meaningless term.

My problem is not with the idea that Human culture has become much more progressive and has ended oppression. My problem is that, well, the Humans on TNG don't act like they're any better than us. They say they're more evolved, but they act just as prejudiced and myopic against the "Other" as people today. They just don't realize that that's what they're doing.

Prime example? Riker during first contact with the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost." A Tkon emissary offers to kill the Ferengi. Instead of saying, "No, they are sentient beings with rights," he asks the Tkon not to kill the Ferengi because they remind him of what Humans used to be like and if they're dead they'll learn nothing. He has been in contact with the Ferengi for like maybe a half-hour. He has no real understanding of their culture or their values or their beliefs. And yet, he's prepared to prattle on about how they're inferior to his people, how they're like what his people were like when they used to be primitive, and how they need to learn Human values to have lives worth protecting. It's deeply speciesist, dressed up in "we're so evolved" rhetoric.

If these Trek characters were to walk into a Starfleet office light years away from earth and saw 90 percent of the staff there were....... Andorians......(because I can barely list any more than 4 Fed members) I wonder if the same characters would looked shocked because there were no humans there.

I for one prefer the idea that Starfleet is so huge that its levels of species integration from ship to ship or station to station fall along a bell curve -- that most crews are very, very diverse, with a small number that reflect the demographics of whatever local system they're in or nearest to. So I'd be kind of amused if, say, we saw an episode where the Enterprise docks at Starbase 3 in orbit above Andor, and almost the entire crew is Andorian.

And it tapers off into the real world too, since some fans seem hypersensitive to any attempt at diversity in casting, which is why all these exaggerations like "sjw" "feminism" and "get woke, go broke" are flying around. They're too used to seeing a status quo, though they won't admit it.

Y e p.

I think it "better" to take the show as its presented, instead of trying to make it something it isnt.

Problem is that the canon constantly contradicts itself, so we've always got to creatively reinterpret.

the federation wanted to remove the baku so they wouldn't be killed when the particles in orbit were collected. the study of the particles was finished prior to the start of the movie, they wanted to collect the particles to help billion of people.

Yes. That's an example of colonialism.

I would expect a Starfleet office or starbase on or near Andor to be mainly staffed by Andorians. However there was no reason why Deep Space Nine had 99% of its Starfleet personnel as humans. Bajor is nowhere near Earth,

Intriguingly, "In the Pale Moonlight" seems to imply that the Federation Member World closest to the Bajor system is actually Betazed... Maybe a lot of the DS9 Starfleet crew we see in the background are actually Betazoids, and we just can't tell because we're not seeing close-ups of their black eyes?

even the Bajoran crew lacked diversity unless Bajor is a monoethnic planet?

Excellent point! The casting directors dropped the ball by not having more actors of color playing Bajoran characters.

it difficult not to see std as being in a separate universe/continuity than the first five series.

Be that as it may, DIS does indeed take place in the same continuity as TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, PIC, and movies 1 through 10.

On the other hand -- why on Earth was the USS T'Kumbra an all-Vulcan ship in 2375?

Because Captain Solok was a racist jackass who hated humans?

Well, sure, but why did Starfleet as an institution allow him to get away with that?

(My headcanon is that he got away with it because he took advantage of the chaos and distraction of war to transfer off his non-Vulcan crewmembers, and that Starfleet would probably not let him get away with it if they had not been focused primarily on winning the war. But that's just after-the-fact rationalization.)

 

[Watersluis]

I would say that the ENT opening title sequence does not exist in-universe. Obviously in real life, those scenes were chosen to reflect an perceived American nationalist bias in the primary intended audience, and it's deeply offensive that non-American accomplishments weren't represented.

Quite, this is one of the reasons that I feel that, for all his flaws in writing, Gene's progressive vision also died with him.

They say Star Trek has historically pushed the envelope, but I find this stopped with Gene, who was willing to include a Russian character during the height of the cold war to show a future where man had cast aside these petty differences and to also acknowledge that the U.S.S.R. was leading the so-called “space race”, at the time; he wished for a female second officer when this was controversial; he demanded an interracial kiss that led to many complaints.

I cannot find the same daring boldness with characters like Stamets and Culber, at this point it is hardly controversial any more, nay, it reeks of commercialized pandering rather than true idealism done at a time where it is still controversial; they're no Jack Harkness who again dared to be controversial again.

Modern Star Trek can feel very full of Americana to me, as a European where the point of T.O.S. was often to limit it — Uhura and LaForge were not “African American” but actually from the “African Fœderation”; it was supposed to repræsent a global ship, not U.S.A. identity pandering, slapped in one's face under the prætence of “diversity” where I can't but help to feel “Yes, you're quite diverse in what you've collected from a single country on earth, good for you.”.

There are many works of fiction that do it far better.

 

[Sci]

Quite, this is one of the reasons that I feel that, for all his flaws in writing, Gene's progressive vision also died with him.

I mean, honestly, I think Gene wasn't nearly as progressive as he liked to think he was. His depiction of women throughout his life was always incredibly sexist, for instance.

They say Star Trek has historically pushed the envelope, but I find this stopped with Gene, who was willing to include a Russian character during the height of the cold war to show a future where man had cast aside these petty differences and to also acknowledge that the U.S.S.R. was leading the so-called “space race”, at the time; he wished for a female second officer when this was controversial; he demanded an interracial kiss that led to many complaints.

Yeah, but then he helped bury an early TNG script that featured a same-sex couple. The Klingons of TOS were a thinly-veiled racist stereotype of Asians designed to evoke Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril iconography, and the TOS movie/TNG Klingon redesign is uncomfortably close to blackface.

I cannot find the same daring boldness with characters like Stamets and Culber, at this point it is hardly controversial any more, nay, it reeks of commercialized pandering rather than true idealism done at a time where it is still controversial; they're no Jack Harkness who again dared to be controversial again.

I'm afraid I don't agree. It's far more common in American television to see women same-sex couples than two men who are married. That's not to say it's not a thing -- two men are married in Modern Family, for instance. But it's really common to see same-sex male couples who are depicted as older or somehow unsexualized; one of the things that makes Stamets and Culber unique on American television is that they are still relatively young and still sexual subjects.

Also... Not to deny the very real progress that has been made in American society, but I'm afraid LGBT people in the United States are still subject to a level of oppression and persecution I suspect they are not subjected to in Europe. The Pulse massacre was only four years ago.

Modern Star Trek can feel very full of Americana to me, as a European where the point of T.O.S. was often to limit it — Uhura and LaForge were not “African American” but actually from the “African Fœderation”

I mean... yeah, but Uhura and LaForge were still coded as African American. Both of them had clear American accents, and neither of them made reference to any uniquely African cultural background or practice. Honestly most people wouldn't know they're supposed to be from Africa if they haven't looked up the supplementary material.

ENT was pretty bad about national diversity -- IIRC, everyone was American or coded as American except Reed.

I think DIS is doing at least as well as TOS in terms of national diversity. Michael Burnham may be coded as American, but she grew up on science outposts and on Vulcan, and I couldn't find anything on Memory Alpha that explicitly establishes she's from the U.S. Culber described himself as being injured as a teenager while hiking in Cabo Rojo; his actor, Wilson Cruz, has clarified that this was meant to be in Puerto Rico (Cruz is of Puerto Rican descent). Puerto Ricans nominally have U.S. citizenship, but in reality Puerto Rico is an oppressed colony with a meaningful independence movement, so I tend to think that this should count at least partially as national diversity. Memory Alpha doesn't list Stamets's planet of origin, but we do know that he met Culber on Alpha Centauri, suggesting the possibility that he is not even from Earth. M.A. doesn't explicitly say Tilly is from America, but the logo of her school "Musk Junior High" (and the term "junior high") suggests to me that she's probably American. Voq/Ash Tyler, of course, is Klingon, but his human predecessor was from Seattle, so we should probably count him. Jason Issacs has said that Gabriel Lorca was from the American South, and of course we know from "The Cage" that Christopher Pike is from Mojave in the U.S. But then, of course, we've got both versions of Philippa Georgiou, who hail from Malaysia.

So the breakdown for Human characters on DIS is:

Definitely or Probably American (excluding Puerto Rico): Tilly, Ash, Lorca, Pike
Definitely or Probably Non-American (including Puerto Rico): Culber, Georgiou
Origin Unestablished: Burnham, Stamets

The TOS breakdown for Human characters' nationalities, meanwhile, was:

Definitely American: Kirk, Sulu, McCoy
Definitely Non-American: Scotty, Uhura, Chekov

I would definitely like to see Burnham and Stamets established as explicitly non-American, but I think DIS is doing okay on that front.

PIC's not doing awful. From what I can remember, the breakdown of the Human characters is:

Definitely Non-American: Picard, Rios (Chabon has said he's from Chile)
Probably American: Raffi (lived in California), Soji (her false memories being from the U.S., though she's actually from Coppelius)
Coded American: Jurati

Of the non-Human main characters (sans Soji), Narek and Elnor don't read to me as being coded American.

 

[Tenacity]

but that's not what ST has ever done if indeed we are supposed to accept the idea that Starfleet is segregated.

but during tos that is what we were shown. the enterprise carried a human crew. if the intent was that it was a "mixed" crew in three seasons there would have been many chances to have brought it up, even if was just a passing mention.

the intrepid was a vulcan crewed ship, not a ship with vulcans, andorians, tellers, humans so forth. my understanding of the dialog is the intent was the crew were all vulcans.

 

[Sci]

but during tos that is what we were shown. the enterprise carried a human crew. if the intent was that it was a "mixed" crew in three seasons there would have been many chances to have brought it up, even if was just a passing mention.

You seem to have mis-read what I said.

I said: "If Starfleet does practice species segregation, then that's a very disturbing thing that has implications for what kinds of real-world politics the show is espousing. It's possible to do an anti-segregation program that depicts segregation intentionally and thoughtfully, but that's not what ST has ever done if indeed we are supposed to accept the idea that Starfleet is segregated."

In other words: There are ways to depict segregation that are intentional and thoughtful and thereby expose how segregation is an inherently bad and oppressive thing. But if we are supposed to accept that Starfleet is segregated by species, then TOS did not depict that species segregation in a way that was intentional and thoughtful and thereby exposed how segregation is an inherently bad thing.