I think it's time to stop relying on Trek as that optimistic tone that TOS was. TNG put that to rest.
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Is it time to put Star Trek to rest?
- Thread starter Dar70
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Which is a shame, because that was one of the main characteristics that made it interesting.
writing dystopia is lazy, writing utopia is boring. TOS managed to find a hopeful middle and it worked. SNW is trying, and doing pretty well. Season 1 shook off the ghosts of Discovery and made it very apparent that it was going to be nothing like PIC. Which is good.
Because it is a general thread asking about the state of Star Trek.
The snag is that modern Trek writers are still deliberately anchoring themselves to it - the speech given by Gooding's holodeck character in the latest SNW episode, for example.
You can tell all kinds of darker or moodier stories in the setting of course, but Star Trek without the hopeful aspect is, for many fans, missing something key, hence the current writers' desire to connect themselves to that idea, both in the scripts themselves and in PR stuff.
I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but DS9 crossed that line for me - not because it got "too dark", but because the Federation didn't resemble a humanist, mostly-peaceful organisation anymore (and not in a way I found convincing, it just felt like they decided to write them as the US Navy instead), and so the core of the Star Trek setting was missing. You could have swapped the uniforms and changed the title and nobody would ever have mistaken it for something even loosely inspired by Star Trek, beyond having transporters. Obviously a lot of people love DS9 so it's just my opinion, but I reckon there's a significant subset of fans and casual viewers who associate Star Trek strongly with optimsitic futurism, which can be present even when telling dark stories in which the Federation is morally compromised. Goldsman even used the "it's optimistic!" line when announcing SNW.
Yes, it is stupid to destroy them the way the did.
What you think in this matter is irrelevant to me. As for your taste, maybe you should watch Baywatch or something similar instead of Star Trek.
So what? I like those characters and what you think is irrelevant for me
I have.
Not to mention that ENT was dull and boring.
They are ruined and the destruction was unnecessary, a stupid move by some ego-maniac producer who should have tried to make something better of that gloomy, gory mess which was PIC.
Merging the Romulans with the Vulcans actually destroys two of the most important races in the Star Trek universe.
Who are you to question my opinions?
"Things can and should change"? What a stupid statement!
What if they change to the worse? If a new Hitler should seize power somewhere, would you welcome that?
As for Voyager, it did change to the worse. But you seem to like such changes.
Changes for the sake of changing is just stupid. Like when certain sports teams change their logo and colors and all their fans hate it.
No, they have become a sad mess and so have the Vulcans too. A lukewarm mess-up. The destruction of two species which were great and interesting.
Thanks, finally a decent person to discuss with!
Then why reply? Replying proves the opposite.
Watching Star Trek is not proof of intelligence.
But that started in TNG. It got rid of the idea to a level that growth idea with technology. The Borg represented a different sort of dark tone, not just philosophically but technological. It was technology run Amok not able to be understood but simply destroyed.
Wolf 359 was a bit of a loss of innocence for the Federation. The optimism was colored by uncertainty. Deep Space Nine doubled down on the conflicts, rooting the initial contact with the new lead to that watershed moment. It carry forward conflicts from TNG, and added to the shades of gray of Federation policy.
I just have to show some of my distaste for sneak attacks on a character I like in a thread which has very little to do with that character.
I agree that watching Star Trek is not proof of intelligence. But I still assume that those who watch Star Trek may have some intelligence.
Why? Everyone here knows your feelings about the character. I personally feel bad for Jennifer Lien, because Kes was a poorly thought-out character by the creators and never should have made it to the screen in the form that it did.
Never assume. Like anything else, the spectrum of intelligence among Trek fans is wide.
My problem with DS9 is that the Federation doesn't feel like a logical extension of the Federation as seen in TOS or TNG. I don't have a problem with dark plots about wars or conflicts or scary enemy races, but rather with the way the Federation were written - the "ooh-rah" stuff and taking war trophies from corpses, and the back-slapping macho military stuff that's indistinguishable from 20th-century war films, and the S31 plot is clearly just leaning into X-Files type stories about the modern American deep state.
I'd be really interested in how the TNG-era Federation do respond to a massive-scale conflict, and can reasonably see a situation where their utopianism does start to crack, but DS9 didn't feel like that story to me. The DS9 writers seemed to think that just writing modern miltiary and political thriller tropes into the setting was a good way of showing "the darker side" of the Federation, but it didn't work for me.
This is also where some nuTrek falls down for me on the same grounds - I don't have a problem with Klingon Wars and spore drives and whatnot, but the organisation we see in Discovery doesn't really feel anything like Starfleet to me, so my engagement with the show starts to slip.
Not really. Stupid implies without thinking but the thought is for dramatic potential which is what Trek does.
No, the Romulans are not one of the most important races in Trek. They happen to be one of the earliest, and they offer some dramatic potential. But, they developed in to an authoritarian top down regime and Trek already had too many of those.
It was not destruction for the sake of it, but destruction to explore dramatic story ideas. Just like with Praxis, or the Doomsday Machine the story is meant to go with the drama.
The Romulans are not deserving of special treatment.
It's an entertainment franchise not an intelligence test. Poor assumption.
We saw them deal with it.
They lost. And a lot of the previous wars and conflicts were shown to be either fought by soldiers and machismo to some measure, like Kirk, or to be contrition.
The TOS gang was explorers and could admit when they made mistakes and misread a particular situation. SEE: "Arena", "Devil in the Dark", "Errand of Mercy" among others. The later shows became about the characters being missionaries singing the praises of humans and the Federation.
That's not how I feel about it, sadly! To me, it felt more like we saw Behr transplant a load of war films into the setting with minimal changes, and Moore practice his nuBSG ideas. The DS9 Federation very rarely felt like a logical extension of the TNG Federation to me, but rather like a generic military sci-fi outfit you'd see in any other series, obviously based on 20th-century America.
That's not to mention the representation of warfare - a guy shoots himself in the foot to get "pulled off the line" because the Klingons have him "pinned down", and then the line breaks and they enter bladed combat? That's not even sci-fi, the average WW1 soldier would find that to be a bizarrely outdated depiction of conflict!
The show tells us that the Federation are cracking with their backs against the wall, but it feels to me like they forgot to write the Federation, and the technology that enables their utopianism, into the show to begin with.
I always wish TNG leaned into this aspect more - there's a sense at times that the Federation are becoming the Metrons, not wanting to muddy themselves by helping "less-developed" civilizations, and so high on their own morals that they've become cold and cruel. There's a fantastic story somewhere in there.
Twas referring to TNG.
Ah, fair enough. Yeah, the representation of conflict in TNG feels a lot more convincing to me, especially the "should we use Hugh as a death-bomb" thing, which is definitely the kind of question the Federation would be grappling with.
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Ah, don't worry.
In the spirit of the 2020's we may expect a new series where Earth has been ravaged by civil war and then destroyed, the Federation has fallen apart and the few human survivors are searching for a new planet where they can continue their infighting and bickering.
As for DSC, it was downright horrible, almost as bad as Stargate Universe.
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