@Lance , thank you very much for your kind words. And I'm very impressed by your willingness to re-consider longheld views.
I would, however, like to suggest with respect that you maybe swinging just a little too far in the other direction.
(Maybe I'm just a born contrarian.)
I do think that the Federation and Starfleet present in TNG is actually more morally flawed than TNG is generally aware of as a narrative. And I do think that all of the characters on TNG are more flawed than TNG realizes. (Prime example: Geordi is incredibly creepy to Leah Brahms in her two episodes, but the narrative frames him as though he's in the right, even though he behaves completely inappropriately and sexually harasses her.)
But! That doesn't mean I don't think TNG still presents an optimistic vision of our future, or that the idea of a better future is a lie. The idea of a "more evolved" humanity that has no interpersonal conflict is a lie, yes -- a lie Gene Roddenberry embraced in his later years, I suspect, as a manifestation of his own desire to avoid confronting and taking responsibility for his flaws as a human being in real life, IMO. But! That doesn't mean that the hope for something better is inherently a lie.
One of the reasons I cited Chief O'Brien is that, while he reaches his full potential as a character on DS9, the building blocks for who he is were established by TNG in "The Wounded." He's a damaged guy, and he's got a very serious flaw in his own bigotry against Cardassians. But he also knows that that part of him isn't good, and he genuinely tries to fight it, and he makes sure that someone else he cares about who also carries that pain and that anger doesn't end up starting another war because of it. It's one of my absolute favorite episodes of TNG, because it synthesizes TNG's optimism with a more realistic depiction of what people are really like.
So it is with PIC. Jean-Luc is a flawed man, yes! He was screwed over by his government, but his pain and shame at failing to achieve the goal he knew he could never achieve without Starfleet support, led him to withdraw from the world and hide for 14 years. He abandoned people who loved him because he was so ashamed of his failure. That's a pretty serious flaw... But he realizes how large a mistake he had made. And he gets out there, and he finds out how to protect the innocent person he knows needs his help, and in doing so he builds a new "found family" of broken people who start to heal.
You are absolutely right to say that the Zhat Vash have a point! They are acting out of a sincere desire to save all organic life in the Milky Way Galaxy from a threat they genuinely believe to be existential to everyone. They're not acting out of malice, or even out of Romulan nationalism. And the Synths did indeed choose to become hostile and dangerous at one point!
But, there again, those Synths had a point! The Zhat Vash had been attempting to genocide their kind for centuries. Even the Federation itself, seemingly the most liberal of the major galactic powers, had had a history of refusing to see sentient artificial intelligences as sentient even before the Federation banned androids and synths after the Mars Attack. And now here the Zhat Vash are, pounding on their doors, hunting them down after murdering their fellows, and there's this vaunted Federation that had been keeping sentient A.I. slaves just twenty-four years ago and had banned their people. And on world after world, they were keenly aware that synthetic life was exploited for free labor (though they did not probably want to see the difference between exploiting a non-sentient machine and a sentient synth). So, yeah, between all that, and the simple fact that, as Picard notes, their minds are not fully formed and are in some respects more like the minds of children than adults? Yeah, I can totally understand why the Coppelius Synths might feel as though summoning the Admonition Makers is the only way they can ever be safe from genocide!
That's one of the things I really love about Star Trek: Picard -- nobody is truly evil in this show. They have conflicting political agendas because they're all driven by this totally understandable fear of annihilation and genocide. And Picard and the Federation find their redemption from their past sins, by being willing to sacrifice -- to put their lives on the line to stop a genocide, to prove to the Synths that organics can live with them side-by-side as equals, that they can set fear aside and start to build a better future as neighbors. And even in their righteous anger at the Zhat Vash for orchestrating the Mars Attack, Picard and the Federation recognize that peace is better than war -- they get the Zhat Vash to leave without a war breaking out, and they seem to draw a meaningful distinction between different Romulan factions instead of essentializing all of them and blaming all Romulans for the Zhat Vash's actions.
I really do think that Star Trek: Picard preserves Star Trek's optimism in this way. Yes, it takes a long detour into darkness, and, yes, I think it is a more honest portrayal of what Starfleet and the Federation are like. We see them struggle with their fears, their flaws, their limitations. But we also see them find the best in themselves and transcend their flaws, and doing so brings new hope for the future -- symbolized by Picard finding new life as a synthetic lifeform himself.
Anyway, like I said, I'm sorry if I seem just hopelessly contrarian here. I think Star Trek encompasses "both Superman and Batman," so to speak, but I also think Star Trek reaffirms the value of Superman even as it indulges in a lot of Batman. Which, to me, is the perfect kind of Star Trek story -- one that begins in darkness and ends in light.
I would, however, like to suggest with respect that you maybe swinging just a little too far in the other direction.
(Maybe I'm just a born contrarian.)I do think that the Federation and Starfleet present in TNG is actually more morally flawed than TNG is generally aware of as a narrative. And I do think that all of the characters on TNG are more flawed than TNG realizes. (Prime example: Geordi is incredibly creepy to Leah Brahms in her two episodes, but the narrative frames him as though he's in the right, even though he behaves completely inappropriately and sexually harasses her.)
But! That doesn't mean I don't think TNG still presents an optimistic vision of our future, or that the idea of a better future is a lie. The idea of a "more evolved" humanity that has no interpersonal conflict is a lie, yes -- a lie Gene Roddenberry embraced in his later years, I suspect, as a manifestation of his own desire to avoid confronting and taking responsibility for his flaws as a human being in real life, IMO. But! That doesn't mean that the hope for something better is inherently a lie.
One of the reasons I cited Chief O'Brien is that, while he reaches his full potential as a character on DS9, the building blocks for who he is were established by TNG in "The Wounded." He's a damaged guy, and he's got a very serious flaw in his own bigotry against Cardassians. But he also knows that that part of him isn't good, and he genuinely tries to fight it, and he makes sure that someone else he cares about who also carries that pain and that anger doesn't end up starting another war because of it. It's one of my absolute favorite episodes of TNG, because it synthesizes TNG's optimism with a more realistic depiction of what people are really like.
So it is with PIC. Jean-Luc is a flawed man, yes! He was screwed over by his government, but his pain and shame at failing to achieve the goal he knew he could never achieve without Starfleet support, led him to withdraw from the world and hide for 14 years. He abandoned people who loved him because he was so ashamed of his failure. That's a pretty serious flaw... But he realizes how large a mistake he had made. And he gets out there, and he finds out how to protect the innocent person he knows needs his help, and in doing so he builds a new "found family" of broken people who start to heal.
You are absolutely right to say that the Zhat Vash have a point! They are acting out of a sincere desire to save all organic life in the Milky Way Galaxy from a threat they genuinely believe to be existential to everyone. They're not acting out of malice, or even out of Romulan nationalism. And the Synths did indeed choose to become hostile and dangerous at one point!
But, there again, those Synths had a point! The Zhat Vash had been attempting to genocide their kind for centuries. Even the Federation itself, seemingly the most liberal of the major galactic powers, had had a history of refusing to see sentient artificial intelligences as sentient even before the Federation banned androids and synths after the Mars Attack. And now here the Zhat Vash are, pounding on their doors, hunting them down after murdering their fellows, and there's this vaunted Federation that had been keeping sentient A.I. slaves just twenty-four years ago and had banned their people. And on world after world, they were keenly aware that synthetic life was exploited for free labor (though they did not probably want to see the difference between exploiting a non-sentient machine and a sentient synth). So, yeah, between all that, and the simple fact that, as Picard notes, their minds are not fully formed and are in some respects more like the minds of children than adults? Yeah, I can totally understand why the Coppelius Synths might feel as though summoning the Admonition Makers is the only way they can ever be safe from genocide!
That's one of the things I really love about Star Trek: Picard -- nobody is truly evil in this show. They have conflicting political agendas because they're all driven by this totally understandable fear of annihilation and genocide. And Picard and the Federation find their redemption from their past sins, by being willing to sacrifice -- to put their lives on the line to stop a genocide, to prove to the Synths that organics can live with them side-by-side as equals, that they can set fear aside and start to build a better future as neighbors. And even in their righteous anger at the Zhat Vash for orchestrating the Mars Attack, Picard and the Federation recognize that peace is better than war -- they get the Zhat Vash to leave without a war breaking out, and they seem to draw a meaningful distinction between different Romulan factions instead of essentializing all of them and blaming all Romulans for the Zhat Vash's actions.
I really do think that Star Trek: Picard preserves Star Trek's optimism in this way. Yes, it takes a long detour into darkness, and, yes, I think it is a more honest portrayal of what Starfleet and the Federation are like. We see them struggle with their fears, their flaws, their limitations. But we also see them find the best in themselves and transcend their flaws, and doing so brings new hope for the future -- symbolized by Picard finding new life as a synthetic lifeform himself.
Anyway, like I said, I'm sorry if I seem just hopelessly contrarian here. I think Star Trek encompasses "both Superman and Batman," so to speak, but I also think Star Trek reaffirms the value of Superman even as it indulges in a lot of Batman. Which, to me, is the perfect kind of Star Trek story -- one that begins in darkness and ends in light.
