Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x05 - "Spock Amok"

[wayoung]

I remind you this is the Federation during its early years. Not TNG's era.

The Federation where there's months between worlds of travel and you may not visit a planet again for decades.

I remind you, this is a member world. Ardana is the Federation.

 

[cooleddie74]

This is the Federation of 2161-2269. And yes, I can buy incompetence and overlooking things for the "greater good" of the organization from a vast interstellar bureaucracy full of appointed and elected representatives who jockey to curry favor with their own native citizens as well as the Federation's top leadership.

 

[wayoung]

and overlooking things for the "greater good" of the organization from a vast interstellar bureaucracy full of appointed and elected representatives who jockey to curry favor with their own native citizens as well as the Federation's top leadership.

Right... Purposely overlooking things for their own benefit. So we agree.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Federation has lots of members with sketchy cultural practices. Hell, Andorians basically still have the reputation for being violent warmongers even in TOS and that's more than a century after the founding of the UFP and nobody can tell me all their martial practices and rituals involving bloodletting and missing body parts went away after Andoria's representative signed the Federation Charter.

 

[DaveyNY]

Your still making assumptions that we have no actual evidence to go by.
It's quite possible that the Ardana's joined the Federation quite early on in it's formation and thus were possibly not as rigorously vetted as other future members.
We have no idea when it was admitted or the circumstances at that time.
Also remember, Andoria & Tellar were member founding worlds who were not forced to completely conform to Federation standards to join.

The Zenite that Ardana produced was not actually as important a resource as say Dilithium, it apparently was found to only have a limited use and thus was only needed when there was an outbreak of a particular plant disease.
Not somethin that probably occurs on a regular basis.
Thus it's quite possible that it's actual production was never considered by the Federation to need strict enforcement and dutiful adherence to Federation-wide conformity.

 

[cooleddie74]

I'm on your side in the general argument, though, and not making a big deal that "oh, Ardana has a caste system of slave laborers and that's so un-Trek and against the ideals of the Federation." I'm just willing to believe Ardana either lied to cover up its caste system or the Federation got wind of it but overlooked it because it needed Ardana as a member with its technology and natural resources. Bureaucracies exist to do tasteless things. The Federation's a great club to be a member of but in any club somebody's going to urinate in the collective shower.

 

[wayoung]

Your still making assumptions that we have no actual evidence to go by.
It's quite possible that the Ardana's joined the Federation quite early on in it's formation and thus were possibly not as rigorously vetted as other future members.
We have no idea when it was admitted or the circumstances at that time.
Also remember, Andoria & Tellar were member founding worlds who were not forced to completely conform to Federation standards to join.

And your assumption is that the Federation is just hugely incompetent and somehow didn't know that a member world violated like, all of their requirements. And by saying that they've been a member world for a long time you're assuming they're even more incompetent that no one ever noticed for decades upon decades until Kirk did.

My assumption is willful ignorance in return for benefits for the Federation as a whole, corruption and aborgation of ethical values at the highest levels of the organization, one that's supported by multiple episodes and movies, such as the two I cited.

 

[wayoung]

I'm on your side in the general argument, though, and not making a big deal that "oh, Ardana has a caste system of slave laborers and that's so un-Trek and against the ideals of the Federation." I'm just willing to believe Ardana either lied to cover up its caste system or the Federation got wind of it but overlooked it because it needed Ardana as a member with its technology and natural resources. Bureaucracies exist to do tasteless things. The Federation's a great club to be a member of but in any club somebody's going to urinate in the collective shower.

Oh, I'm sure it's both. Ardana had to lie, and the Federation had to know it was a lie.

 

[cooleddie74]

I know you don't like ENT but an episode that was very heavily talked about as in the works had the series been renewed for a fifth season was the first canonical visit by humans to Ardana in the years before the birth of the Federation. It would have been interesting to see if Archer and his officers picked up on something not smelling right about Ardanan society in the mid-to-late 2150s and if it was any more progressive in that timeframe. The zenite mining may have been a slave labor issue from the very beginning or developed closer to the time of TOS as the need to produce more zenite pushed the civil authorities on Stratos to employ less humane methods to meet quotas.

 

[DaveyNY]

And your assumption is that the Federation is just hugely incompetent and somehow didn't know that a member world violated like, all of their requirements. And by saying that they've been a member world for a long time you're assuming they're even more incompetent that no one ever noticed for decades upon decades until Kirk did.

My assumption is willful ignorance in return for benefits for the Federation as a whole, corruption and abrogation of ethical values at the highest levels of the organization, one that's supported by multiple episodes and movies, such as the two I cited.

You're basing your assumptions on the Federation of the TNG era for which we have plentiful factual information and the Federation has been around for a couple of hundred years.

This is an era in which the Federation is still in it's infancy and most likely was still figuring out just how to thoroughly vet new members without scaring them off or pissing off current members who may not have been all that forthcoming when joining.

 

[wayoung]

You're basing your assumptions on the Federation of the TNG era for which we have plentiful factual information and the Federation has been around for a couple of hundred years.

This is an era in which the Federation is still in it's infancy and most likely was still figuring out just how to thoroughly vet new members without scaring them off or pissing off current members who may not have been all that forthcoming when joining.

Thoroughly vet = one person actually, like, looking.

And how is not vetting applicants thoroughly on purpose because they need them to join and so don't want to know the truth not the same as what I've been writing?

 

[DaveyNY]

Also, when the High Advisor began to berate and threaten Kirk for his interference, he didn't say anything at all about the Federation previously turning a blind eye to their ways of governing their planet or how they go about mining the Zenite.

And if it were actually the case, THAT would have been at the top of the High Advisors complaints toward Kirk.

Instead, he only complained loudly about the effect that the interference would have on the planets current political situation.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I remind you, this is a member world. Ardana is the Federation.

Yes, which means they are people who have the assumption of ruling over their own stuff without difficulty.

I think the big thing here is Kirk is visiting, given the guest of honor treatment, and then has the whole planetary situation hidden from him.

Because that's what they would do with Federation delegates.

 

[cooleddie74]

I mean, if we want to talk about VERY uncivilized, un-Federation-like behavior we have the Ambassador from Vulcan and high-ranking Starfleet Admirals plotting to set off a bomb inside the Klingon Homeworld and commit planetary genocide all because the Klingon Empire got the upper hand in a brief war. That was in 2257, not long before "The Cloud Minders(TOS)" and less than a century after the founding of the Federation.

Slave miners kept in a lower caste system seems almost, well, quaint compared to that.

 

[Captrek]

And, honestly, if you just saw a race nearly destroy itself, would you be in hurry to help them expand, including into your own neighborhood?!

Make The Federation Great Again!

 

[DaveyNY]

Yes, which means they are people who have the assumption of ruling over their own stuff without difficulty.

I think the big thing here is Kirk is visiting, given the guest of honor treatment, and then has the whole planetary situation hidden from him.

Because that's what they would do with Federation delegates.

I doubt they would have done it on purpose with any evil intentions, I just rewatched the episode, the High Advisor and his Daughter were completely convinced that the Troglodytes were a lower human lifeform and thus undeserving of even being mentioned during any communication with the Federation.

It is obvious that the entire Stratos population had long forgotten their own history of violence due to living away from the gas in the mines for at the very least, the current populations entire lifetime.

The gas is also something they weren't even aware of, until McCoy actually discovered it using the Enterprise's extensive computer and science resources.

 

[cooleddie74]

I wonder how quickly the Aenar gained equal rights within Andorian society after the events of ENT Season 4? Hemmer is a full-fledged and senior Starfleet officer on the flagship of the Federation just a little over a century later so it looks like the Andorians evolved in that regard even if they remained retrograde in other ways.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I wonder how quickly the Aenar gained equal rights within Andorian society after the events of ENT Season 4? Hemmer is a full-fledged and senior Starfleet officer on the flagship of the Federation just a little over a century later so it looks like the Andorians evolved in that regard even if they remained retrograde in other ways.

The Aenar are notably isolationist versus second class citizens. The Andorian President actually calls their tribe to speak with them.

 

[Belz...]

This episode makes it seem like Vulcans treat logic the way Klingons treat honor. Something to be proud of and that makes them superior to other races but can be thrown away when it's inconvenient.

The Vulcan makes a crack about humans evolving from apes when a few thousand years ago they were about as savage as humans at their worst. And of course we all know this ends up in a ritual where betrothals are challenged by fights to the death, obviously a traditional holdover from their savage period.

The truth emerges between this, and the way Vulcans were portrayed in DS9. Logic is not a way of life so much as a security blanket, a placebo to protect them from their worst instincts. They suppress their emotions on the belief that the only way to win the fight is to deny the battle, and are only coming to realize that by the time of the 24th century, much like for the humans, the battle has already been won.

The character in question is a criminal and a rebel. I wouldn't take him as a typical Vulcan in this era. DS9 and subsequent series didn't do Vulcans a favour, but so far SNW hasn't committed to this sort of characterisation.

 

[Tuskin38]

Woah one of the signatures on the ‘scorch’ appears to be Matt Jeffries
https://twitter.com/scott_atoz/status/1533657441396633600?s=21&t=7OTJ7Vgk467eDQsxHXaO9A