Are we victims of Federation propaganda?

[Destructor]

Gene Roddenberry himself called TOS an inaccurate representation of the five-year mission in his TMP novelization. It opens the door to question if anything we've seen in Trek is what "really" happened, or some skewed after-the-point interpretation.

Here's the relevant section of the TMP novel:

Unfortunately, Starfleet's enthusiasm affected even those who chronicled our adventures, and we were painted somewhat larger than life, especially myself.

Eventually, I found that I had been fictionalized into some sort of "modern Ulysses" and it has been painful to see my command decisions of those years so widely applauded, whereas the plain facts are that ninety-four of our crew met violent deaths during those years - and many of them would still be alive if I had acted either more quickly or more wisely. Nor have I been as foolishly courageous as depicted. I have never happily invited injury; I have disliked in the extreme every duty circumstance which has required me to risk my life. But there appears to be something in the nature of depicters of popular events which leads them into the habit of exaggeration. As a result, I have become determined that if I ever again found myself involved in an affair attracting public attention, I would insist that some way be found to tell the story more accurately.
(P. 7-8)

Then there's Voyager, which implies that up until "Latent Image" we'd been seeing the Doctor's censored, Ensign Jetal-free version of the show.

It's fascinating to wonder what we might be missing...

That sounds less like we were given a false image of the occurrences of the original five-year voyage of the Enterprise and more Kirk being guilt-wracked over the loss of crewmembers under his command, blaming himself for their loss because he wasn't fast enough, or he wasn't strong enough.

I agree- while I think the meta-statement on the show does shine through pretty clearly, I also see nothing in that excerpt that the Kirk from the show would not himself say, even if the events depicted in TOS were to be shown 'literally'.

It's funny how we want our televised drama to be a literal depiction of events when we are so good at 'filling in the blanks' in our literature, stage shows, music, computer games- virtually every other media has a sort of 'don't interpret this literally!' hole in it that our imaginations fill, and you'd think as Trekkies we'd be so good at circling that square, because TOS is so much like a stage play, you have to sort of mentally blank out the creakier aspects of the show, yet we still want that show from the 60s to mesh into the more recent shows from the 90s, rather than fill in the blanks ourselves. It's interesting, and I think the 'propaganda' thought-experiment is a clever way of interpreting those gaps.

 

[Christopher]

It's funny how we want our televised drama to be a literal depiction of events when we are so good at 'filling in the blanks' in our literature, stage shows, music, computer games- virtually every other media has a sort of 'don't interpret this literally!' hole in it that our imaginations fill, and you'd think as Trekkies we'd be so good at circling that square, because TOS is so much like a stage play, you have to sort of mentally blank out the creakier aspects of the show, yet we still want that show from the 60s to mesh into the more recent shows from the 90s, rather than fill in the blanks ourselves. It's interesting, and I think the 'propaganda' thought-experiment is a clever way of interpreting those gaps.

Good observation, except I'd point out that we're building on a premise Roddenberry himself advanced in 1979 and thereabouts.

Anyway, I think GR's intent there was that the exaggerations in TOS were not so much in the characters and their actions, but in some of the more ludicrous ideas like Kirk meeting a Greek god or visiting an Ancient Rome planet where everyone spoke English. Maybe the "real" version of Landru's planet didn't look so much like the Culver City backlot and didn't have 12-hour clocks with Arabic numerals or citizens dressed in clothes left over from Westerns and historical dramas. Maybe the "real" encounter with Lazarus didn't actually involve a version of antimatter that contradicted every prior and subsequent portrayal of antimatter in the series. Maybe "A Piece of the Action" exaggerated just how perfectly the Iotians had been able to replicate 1920s technology when all they had to base it on were a few textbooks. And of course, there was Roddenberry's suggestion that the Klingons had always had forehead ridges and they were just misrepresented. Perhaps other aliens "really" looked less human than they appeared.

Although then you're getting into breaks from "reality" arising from limited 1960s production resources, rather than the sort you might have found in a 23rd-century dramatization after the fact. So it's not an idea that can be taken too literally.

 

[Vandervecken]

If part of this supposed "propaganda" is that the Federation is inherently peaceful in its approach to the wider universe, and that the wider universe is not, I would say that that is NOT propaganda. Time and again we SEE other species attacking the Federation (and more) with hardly any provocation. Ask yourselves if, in each of these events, you can seriously see the Federation as the perpetrator in the reverse scenario:

The Gorn attack and obliterate the colony on Cestus 3 for nothing but encroachment. No attempt to communicate, nothing. Just encroachment as justification for the slaughter.

The Tholians want the Enterprise out of their space. When Spock refuses to leave on their schedule, they start trapping the Enterprise in a "web." I don't see the Feds doing anything like that.

The Dominion launches a war of annihilation and enslavement based strongly in extreme prejudice against solids, and because the Dominion claims the whole friggin' Gamma quadrant and considers any Federation presence there to be an act of war. Even then, they are such warmongers that they do not distinguish between the actual "perpetrators" (the Federation) and the entire alpha quadrant.

But I seriously doubt the Dominion actually controls the entire GQ, and even if they did, they're still no better than the Gorn in their response.

The Sheliak are prepared to kill everyone on a Fed colony if they aren't gone by a specific time in a treaty/contract. Never mind that Picard isn't asking them to give up their right to the planet; he just wants more time to get the people to evacuate. Does anyone see the Feds doing something like that?


We have to assume that the events actually shown us are the events that occur--the show itself can't be skewed propaganda, or then nothing can be considered canon. And given that assumption, the Feds' relative peacefulness and nonbloodthirstiness toward sentientkind comes across again and again.

 

[Christopher]

If part of this supposed "propaganda" is that the Federation is inherently peaceful in its approach to the wider universe, and that the wider universe is not, I would say that that is NOT propaganda. Time and again we SEE other species attacking humanity with hardly any provocation.

Except the premise here is that what we see is the propaganda, the fictionalized version of events, so that we don't know what actually happened. Plenty of old Westerns showed Indians attacking settlers seemingly without provocation, but that obscured the historical reality that they were defending their homes and being constantly screwed over by an American government that used its treaties with them as tissue paper. So the fiction obscured the more ambiguous reality. That's what propaganda does. You can't use the fiction itself as evidence for the underlying reality that it might be distorting.

We have to assume that the events actually shown us are the events that occur--the show itself can't be skewed propaganda, or then nothing can be considered canon.

We don't "have to" do anything. And again, nobody is suggesting this is the "right" way we need to interpret Star Trek from now on. One more time, we're just doing a thought experiment, asking a hypothetical question based on Roddenberry's own premise that what we see is only an imperfect approximation of the underlying reality. Hypothetically, just for fun, if what we see is just a work of fiction created in the 23rd century based on actual Enterprise adventures, then what if the fictionalization were a biased view, and what might it potentially be covering up?

As for considering things "canon," you seem to be making the common mistake of equating "canon" with "real and unquestionable." A canon is just a set of stories that go together -- and as stories, their reality is flexible. Remember, the first fictional work to which the term "canon" was applied was the Sherlock Holmes series -- which was explicitly established as being a fictionalized, dramatically embellished, names-changed-to-protect-the-innocent chronicle of the "real" adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Many of the Holmes stories described Holmes complaining about how Watson's past stories had embellished or sensationalized things for dramatic effect. So since that was the original fictional canon, there is absolutely no reason that other fictional canons can't be seen the same way. It's called the Literary Agent Hypothesis, the idea that the story we're seeing is a dramatization of a true story, thereby explaining any inconsistencies, implausibilities, or errors as the result of the chroniclers' mistakes or embellishments. "Canon" has nothing to do with reality, because it's pointless to try to judge a work of fiction by how real it is. It's just about the accepted premise and conceits of the narrative universe the fiction occupies. Just because a fictional series is consistent with itself, that doesn't necessarily mean it's consistent with the objective reality it's based on.

 

[Vandervecken]

If part of this supposed "propaganda" is that the Federation is inherently peaceful in its approach to the wider universe, and that the wider universe is not, I would say that that is NOT propaganda. Time and again we SEE other species attacking humanity with hardly any provocation.

Except the premise here is that what we see is the propaganda, the fictionalized version of events, so that we don't know what actually happened. Plenty of old Westerns showed Indians attacking settlers seemingly without provocation, but that obscured the historical reality that they were defending their homes and being constantly screwed over by an American government that used its treaties with them as tissue paper. So the fiction obscured the more ambiguous reality. That's what propaganda does. You can't use the fiction itself as evidence for the underlying reality that it might be distorting.

We have to assume that the events actually shown us are the events that occur--the show itself can't be skewed propaganda, or then nothing can be considered canon.

We don't "have to" do anything. And again, nobody is suggesting this is the "right" way we need to interpret Star Trek from now on. One more time, we're just doing a thought experiment, asking a hypothetical question based on Roddenberry's own premise that what we see is only an imperfect approximation of the underlying reality. Hypothetically, just for fun, if what we see is just a work of fiction created in the 23rd century based on actual Enterprise adventures, then what if the fictionalization were a biased view, and what might it potentially be covering up?

As for considering things "canon," you seem to be making the common mistake of equating "canon" with "real and unquestionable." A canon is just a set of stories that go together -- and as stories, their reality is flexible. Remember, the first fictional work to which the term "canon" was applied was the Sherlock Holmes series -- which was explicitly established as being a fictionalized, dramatically embellished, names-changed-to-protect-the-innocent chronicle of the "real" adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Many of the Holmes stories described Holmes complaining about how Watson's past stories had embellished or sensationalized things for dramatic effect. So since that was the original fictional canon, there is absolutely no reason that other fictional canons can't be seen the same way. It's called the Literary Agent Hypothesis, the idea that the story we're seeing is a dramatization of a true story, thereby explaining any inconsistencies, implausibilities, or errors as the result of the chroniclers' mistakes or embellishments. "Canon" has nothing to do with reality, because it's pointless to try to judge a work of fiction by how real it is. It's just about the accepted premise and conceits of the narrative universe the fiction occupies. Just because a fictional series is consistent with itself, that doesn't necessarily mean it's consistent with the objective reality it's based on.

It is not pointless. What we're judging in such instances in a work of fiction is how the parts fit together and whether or not it is internally consistent--and thus true to itself. Not whether or not it's consistent with any objective reality, something I didn't even remotely suggest.

 

[Christopher]

^But that doesn't address, nor does it rule out, the hypothetical scenario we're exploring as a thought experiment: Namely, that the fictional canon, however internally consistent it may be, is based on a less idealized reality that we aren't being shown accurately. You claimed that if that were the case, that if the show were propaganda then "nothing can be considered canon." My point was that it has nothing to do with canon, that a work of fiction can have its own clearly defined canon yet still be explicitly an inaccurate representation of reality. So you were wrong. The show being propaganda would not in any way preclude the show having a canon. It would just mean that the canon was fictional, which is a given anyway.

If we accept Roddenberry's premise that the show is a dramatization of unseen "actual" events, then we implicitly accept that some things about it are inaccurate -- that, just like any dramatization, it embellishes or simplifies events, alters their timing or progression to flow better dramatically, creates composite or fictional characters, invents dialogue or scenes to fill in gaps in the record, etc. At the very least it's implicit that the characters are being played by actors who don't look like them and are probably a lot prettier, and that the design of sets, props, costumes, etc. might not be 100 percent authentic. So it's just a question of how and why the dramatization departs from reality. Was it done strictly for dramatic effect, or might there have been a propagandistic element to it?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If we accept Roddenberry's premise that the show is a dramatization of unseen "actual" events, then we implicitly accept that some things about it are inaccurate -- that, just like any dramatization, it embellishes or simplifies events, alters their timing or progression to flow better dramatically, creates composite or fictional characters, invents dialogue or scenes to fill in gaps in the record, etc. At the very least it's implicit that the characters are being played by actors who don't look like them and are probably a lot prettier, and that the design of sets, props, costumes, etc. might not be 100 percent authentic. So it's just a question of how and why the dramatization departs from reality. Was it done strictly for dramatic effect, or might there have been a propagandistic element to it?

Interestingly, that is pretty much the case on another show, the entirety of which, according to the final episode's closing credits, is a simulation done after the fact:

Spoiler: show

Babylon 5

 

[agent1138]

I just find the concept of the 'Captains Log Conceit' to be entirely unconvincing. With the possible exception of TOS, there are just too many scenes (and sometimes almost entire entire episodes) where no starfleet or federation personnel were present. And even outside that, there are way too many details that would never be included in any log of any kind.

I dont know, you forget there is most likely audio and video recording devices covering every inch of a star ship. By that stage the technology would be highly advanced so I think its quite possible.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I just find the concept of the 'Captains Log Conceit' to be entirely unconvincing. With the possible exception of TOS, there are just too many scenes (and sometimes almost entire entire episodes) where no starfleet or federation personnel were present. And even outside that, there are way too many details that would never be included in any log of any kind.

I dont know, you forget there is most likely audio and video recording devices covering every inch of a star ship. By that stage the technology would be highly advanced so I think its quite possible.

Do the audio and video recording devices of starfleet vessels extend to watching the private conversations of Klingons and romualsn and changelings and vorta on completely different ships? And where did all the information about what happened on highly primitive planets come from?

 

[Christopher]

Just because the captain's logs are used as a frame device, that doesn't mean we're meant to be watching actual recordings. There are plenty of movies and shows that are framed by characters writing letters or journals, or recording audio tapes. DS9's "In the Pale Moonlight" is explicitly framed by Sisko recording a log entry where the only video is of him talking in his quarters. Iron Man 3 is framed -- post-credits spoiler -- by Tony Stark verbally relating its events to Bruce Banner. Even Person of Interest, which is framed by the ubiquitous video and audio surveillance of the Machine, only uses it to set up and transition between scenes before cutting to a more standard cinematic POV that surveillance cameras wouldn't have. (Particularly in flashbacks to the '80s or '90s -- there was one where the archived surveillance video available to the Machine was just a satellite shot of the roof of a house, with the viewpoint then shifting to the interior of the house for the benefit of the viewers.)

So a lot of works of fiction have a hybrid approach between a "here's what happened" narration and a more standard omniscient cinematic viewpoint. I think that was the approach TOS was intended to have. Although, as we've discussed, Roddenbery later suggested that maybe it had just been a dramatization based on the log entries, and that certain things like the Klingons' appearance or some of the scientific implausibilities had been inaccurately represented.

 

[Vandervecken]

Christopher, there is absolutely no limit, then, to what you can propose as existing but not being seen in the show we see in front of our eyes, once you suppose that nothing we see is necessarily what it is. If nothing is certain, then anything is possible. Anything at all--there's no reason to stop at how other species are portrayed as the potential deviation from reality once this door is opened. For example, we could suppose that the Federation is hiding that it's really a complex Borg experiment with Borg in control--from, say, the 21st century onward. Or we could say the characters we see are really the thought projections of space-going flying purple elephants who have found a way to live inside the ergosphere of a supermassive black hole. Or maybe all the ships are a special kind of rubber. Etc.

You don't have to do anything, but what you absolutely are doing with this kind of deconstructionist delving is unsuspending the suspension of disbelief, which is critical to enjoying any fiction. You're substituting your creative efforts for those of the shows' writers. Ultimately a sterile exercise and a rejection of the fiction you're experiencing in favor of your own fiction.


(The Bab-5 example posted was in-universe. Love "Deconstruction of Falling Stars," too. It's genius.)

 

[Robert Comsol]

The Bab-5 example posted was in-universe. Love "Deconstruction of Falling Stars," too. It's genius.

I couldn't agree more. What deeply disturbs me here, is the early part of this parallel BBS thread, according to which Captain Picard's claims in "Farpoint" are branded as hypocritical remarks because of the retroactive continuity of ST VIII:FC altering his behaviour and attitudes.

Several posts there really remind me of the historians from the aforementioned B5 episode which were looking for faults in the principal protagonists.

Bob

 

[Christopher]

Christopher, there is absolutely no limit, then, to what you can propose as existing but not being seen in the show we see in front of our eyes, once you suppose that nothing we see is necessarily what it is. If nothing is certain, then anything is possible.

Yes, and that's exactly what makes this an entertaining thought experiment. You seem to think that this is a proposal for how we should actually think about Star Trek from now on, and so you're resisting it. But it's actually just meant to be playing with ideas, exploring alternative possibilities. And the fact that anything is possible is what makes this a fun idea to play around with.

Anything at all--there's no reason to stop at how other species are portrayed as the potential deviation from reality once this door is opened. For example, we could suppose that the Federation is hiding that it's really a complex Borg experiment with Borg in control--from, say, the 21st century onward.

Or we could assume the Borg are not as humanoid as they're shown. Maurice Hurley's original concept was for an insectoid race, but they had to simplify that for budgetary reasons. Of course, that would preclude the later portrayal of the Borg as assimilating humans and members of other species, but that itself is hard to reconcile with their original portrayal in TNG. If we assume we're seeing an evolving fictionalized portrayal of the "real" Borg, it would resolve a lot of the onscreen inconsistencies and implausibilities.

Or we could say the characters we see are really the thought projections of space-going flying purple elephants who have found a way to live inside the ergosphere of a supermassive black hole. Or maybe all the ships are a special kind of rubber. Etc.

You're using the lazy reductio ad absurdem argument, that just because ludicrous extremes are possible to speculate about, that means that no speculations of any kind are worth exploring. That's hardly true. We can explore any alternative possibilities that are interesting to us, that take us in thought-provoking directions. You're deliberately trying to concoct uninteresting and absurd speculations because you're hostile to this discussion for some reason and want to shut it down. But those of us who actually want to use our imaginations and play with ideas should be free to do so.

You don't have to do anything, but what you absolutely are doing with this kind of deconstructionist delving is unsuspending the suspension of disbelief, which is critical to enjoying any fiction.

Except, for the umpteenth time, we are not proposing this is how Star Trek should really be interpreted. It's just a thought experiment, a hypothetical that's interesting to contemplate in the abstract.

You're substituting your creative efforts for those of the shows' writers. Ultimately a sterile exercise and a rejection of the fiction you're experiencing in favor of your own fiction.

Oh, that is absolute, unadulterated crap. Speaking as a professional writer myself, let me assure you that the last thing writers want audiences to do is just turn off their brains and passively absorb what we feed them. We want our audiences to be inspired to think for themselves, to apply their own creativity to the interpretation of our work. Being a member of an audience is an active process, a dialogue with the creators, not merely a passive, slavish absorption. It's exciting when our readers or viewers discover things in our work that we never realized were there.

So you have it absolutely backward. If you refuse to take a story into your own mind and play with its ideas, then you're the one who's rejecting it by refusing to think about it. That's the real sterile exercise, by the literal definition of "sterile," because it spawns nothing new. We want the ideas we write to take seed in our audience's minds and stimulate new creativity. That's a tribute to our work, because it means we've created something inspiring and thought-provoking.

 

[Vandervecken]

Christopher, there is absolutely no limit, then, to what you can propose as existing but not being seen in the show we see in front of our eyes, once you suppose that nothing we see is necessarily what it is. If nothing is certain, then anything is possible.

Yes, and that's exactly what makes this an entertaining thought experiment. You seem to think that this is a proposal for how we should actually think about Star Trek from now on, and so you're resisting it. But it's actually just meant to be playing with ideas, exploring alternative possibilities. And the fact that anything is possible is what makes this a fun idea to play around with.

Anything at all--there's no reason to stop at how other species are portrayed as the potential deviation from reality once this door is opened. For example, we could suppose that the Federation is hiding that it's really a complex Borg experiment with Borg in control--from, say, the 21st century onward.

Or we could assume the Borg are not as humanoid as they're shown. Maurice Hurley's original concept was for an insectoid race, but they had to simplify that for budgetary reasons. Of course, that would preclude the later portrayal of the Borg as assimilating humans and members of other species, but that itself is hard to reconcile with their original portrayal in TNG. If we assume we're seeing an evolving fictionalized portrayal of the "real" Borg, it would resolve a lot of the onscreen inconsistencies and implausibilities.




You're using the lazy reductio ad absurdem argument, that just because ludicrous extremes are possible to speculate about, that means that no speculations of any kind are worth exploring. That's hardly true. We can explore any alternative possibilities that are interesting to us, that take us in thought-provoking directions. You're deliberately trying to concoct uninteresting and absurd speculations because you're hostile to this discussion for some reason and want to shut it down. But those of us who actually want to use our imaginations and play with ideas should be free to do so.

You don't have to do anything, but what you absolutely are doing with this kind of deconstructionist delving is unsuspending the suspension of disbelief, which is critical to enjoying any fiction.

Except, for the umpteenth time, we are not proposing this is how Star Trek should really be interpreted. It's just a thought experiment, a hypothetical that's interesting to contemplate in the abstract.

You're substituting your creative efforts for those of the shows' writers. Ultimately a sterile exercise and a rejection of the fiction you're experiencing in favor of your own fiction.

Oh, that is absolute, unadulterated crap. Speaking as a professional writer myself, let me assure you that the last thing writers want audiences to do is just turn off their brains and passively absorb what we feed them. We want our audiences to be inspired to think for themselves, to apply their own creativity to the interpretation of our work. Being a member of an audience is an active process, a dialogue with the creators, not merely a passive, slavish absorption. It's exciting when our readers or viewers discover things in our work that we never realized were there.

So you have it absolutely backward. If you refuse to take a story into your own mind and play with its ideas, then you're the one who's rejecting it by refusing to think about it. That's the real sterile exercise, by the literal definition of "sterile," because it spawns nothing new. We want the ideas we write to take seed in our audience's minds and stimulate new creativity. That's a tribute to our work, because it means we've created something inspiring and thought-provoking.

I like to play with ideas as much as the next person, and I'm not trying to shut your discussion down, nor am I hostile to it. I am opining on it, as anyone else would. This is a discussion thread, yes?

No, proposing far-out possibilities given your propaganda premise isn't a reductio ad absurdam argument. It isn't an attempt to scuttle the discussion. It's an attempt (apparently wasted and hopeless, as it's become crystal clear that you are not open to new points of view from other posters) to show you that there really is no limit to what can be supposed once you propose that presenters of the fiction are unreliable. Obviously I presented the elephant idea to show how extreme this could become. That was the point, and although you don't consider it a fair one, it most certainly is a fair point. But the Borg idea is in-universe, and not so absurd that it couldn't be true. It is, though, a fan fiction idea, pure and simple. And that's really what's behind your propaganda premise--writing fan fiction. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that it's something it's not. You've presented an excuse to rewrite Trek, not an actual approach to interpretation of the existing series that makes any sense in-universe.

No one said zip about turning off your brain. I think about Trek and other works all the time, and concoct "what if scenarios" in my imagination as often. But I don't tell myself that everything I'm viewing on screen is false as an excuse for my own internal exercises. I build off what I'm seeing/reading/hearing.


So, Mr. Professional Writer (and I'm an editor myself), you are wrong. Pithy enough? Go ahead and speculate on what maybe be hidden in Trek as a result of Federation "propaganda," and fool yourself that your ideas aren't just substitution of your ideas for the writers' if you must, but you're not fooling anyone else.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Of course, that would preclude the later portrayal of the Borg as assimilating humans and members of other species, but that itself is hard to reconcile with their original portrayal in TNG.

Within the context of TNG I thought I had presented a feasible conflict-free rationalization. Since nobody pointed out problems with the theory, I have to assume it works rather well - within the realm of TNG.

If we assume we're seeing an evolving fictionalized portrayal of the "real" Borg, it would resolve a lot of the onscreen inconsistencies and implausibilities.

I don't think I understood this one correctly. I think the major problem in all of this is retroactive continuity which adds to onscreen inconsistencies and implausibilities (because of lackluster research and a lack of devotion to continuity).

But that's not what you meant with "evolving fictionalized portrayal"? I mean, seriously, it sounds like a contradiction: it's not like the "evolving" portrayal resolves inconsistencies and implausibilities, the "evolving" portrayal is the culprit introducing these.

Essentially, it works like a Game of Telephone, but the original message is usually the correct and authentic one.

Bob

 

[Mudd]

"We come in peace. Shoot to kill."

Yeah, pretty definitely.

Star Trek is derived directly from the American western and its tropes, which in turn was a sort of propagandistic fantasy about the nature of the frontier and our activities and motives in "exploring" it.

 

[Christopher]

No, proposing far-out possibilities given your propaganda premise isn't a reductio ad absurdam argument.

It's not my premise. Melakon started the thread. I'm just exploring it in the spirit intended.

It's an attempt (apparently wasted and hopeless, as it's become crystal clear that you are not open to new points of view from other posters) to show you that there really is no limit to what can be supposed once you propose that presenters of the fiction are unreliable.

And I don't see how that's a bad thing. It gives us the freedom to explore the possibilities that are interesting. The only limits are those we choose -- it stands to reason that we'd rather explore interesting and fruitful speculations than ridiculous and pointless ones.

Countless works of fiction have explicitly presented themselves as dramatizations of true stories. I mentioned the Sherlock Holmes canon as an example, but that was actually in keeping with a pretty standard practice of the era, presenting fantastic literature as true stories related to the author or journals discovered by the author. A Princess of Mars was supposedly based on the journals of John Carter as discovered by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Frankenstein was one person's account of a story he was told by a second person, incorporating that second person's account of a story told by yet a third person. It goes back as far as what I consider the first science fiction novel, Gulliver's Travels, which was so committed to its "true story" conceit that it was originally meant to be published anonymously with Gulliver alleged to be the real author.

So given that so many works of fiction present themselves from the subjective viewpoint of a participant in events, rather than an objective, impersonal, omniscient viewpoint, it then naturally follows that the version of the story we're being told may be biased. We're experiencing John Carter's or Victor Frankenstein's or Mina Harker's or Lemuel Gulliver's or Dr. John Watson's version of events, but how do we know how reliable the narrator's memory is or what agenda might be shaping their account? There's nothing remotely new about fiction that allows for such questions, so it certainly does not destroy the experience of the fiction to explore them.

And that's really what's behind your propaganda premise--writing fan fiction. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that it's something it's not. You've presented an excuse to rewrite Trek, not an actual approach to interpretation of the existing series that makes any sense in-universe.

Again, Melakon made the initial proposal, and several others have chimed in as well. I don't know why you think this is about me.

And again, let's remember that the first person to suggest that the show we see might be an inaccurate dramatization of the "real" events was Gene Roddenberry himself. He was unhappy with many of the budgetary and dramatic compromises he'd had to make in TOS, and thus put forth the idea that TOS had been inaccurate so that he'd be free to reinvent things like the Klingons for later works like ST:TMP. The Literary Agent Hypothesis as applied to Trek can be a handy way to deal with the many, many glaring contradictions and scientific implausibilities within the canon, and it's endorsed by the franchise's own creator, who cast himself as the Literary Agent in his TMP novelization.

Is it fan fiction to explore these possibilities? Well, arguably, yes. That's always been part of the function and value of fan fiction -- the freedom it has to explore revisionist or transgressive interpretations of a text, to reinvent a text in ways the canon and its official tie-ins are not free to do. This is just a conversation on a bulletin board, not an attempt to write actual stories, but yes, absolutely, the goal here is to use our imaginations and conceive alternative ways of reading the text of the Trek universe. I don't think anyone here has denied that. As I've told you over and over, we're not trying to propose a "correct" reinterpretation of the actual franchise, we're just playing with a hypothetical, "what-if" possibility. So you're accusing us of hiding the very thing that we've made no secret of doing from the start. We haven't pretended anything. You've just misunderstood the goal of this discussion.

But I don't tell myself that everything I'm viewing on screen is false as an excuse for my own internal exercises. I build off what I'm seeing/reading/hearing.

For the umpteenth time, we're not "telling ourselves" that. We're asking what the ramifications might be if it were hypothetically the case.

So, Mr. Professional Writer (and I'm an editor myself), you are wrong. Pithy enough? Go ahead and speculate on what maybe be hidden in Trek as a result of Federation "propaganda," and fool yourself that your ideas aren't just substitution of your ideas for the writers' if you must, but you're not fooling anyone else.

Nobody's trying to fool anyone. You're fooling yourself by completely and profoundly misreading the intent of this conversation -- up to and including not bothering to pay attention to who it was who started the thread in the first place. And you seem to have incorrectly fixated on me as the instigator of this discussion, and that's causing a disruption for the other posters in this thread, so for their benefit I'm going to stop responding to you and I recommend you do the same with me.

 

[Mudd]

Well, the "unreliable narrator" is a pretty well-established technique in fiction. So...

 

[Vandervecken]

No, proposing far-out possibilities given your propaganda premise isn't a reductio ad absurdam argument.

It's not my premise. Melakon started the thread. I'm just exploring it in the spirit intended.

It's an attempt (apparently wasted and hopeless, as it's become crystal clear that you are not open to new points of view from other posters) to show you that there really is no limit to what can be supposed once you propose that presenters of the fiction are unreliable.

And I don't see how that's a bad thing. It gives us the freedom to explore the possibilities that are interesting. The only limits are those we choose -- it stands to reason that we'd rather explore interesting and fruitful speculations than ridiculous and pointless ones.

Countless works of fiction have explicitly presented themselves as dramatizations of true stories. I mentioned the Sherlock Holmes canon as an example, but that was actually in keeping with a pretty standard practice of the era, presenting fantastic literature as true stories related to the author or journals discovered by the author. A Princess of Mars was supposedly based on the journals of John Carter as discovered by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Frankenstein was one person's account of a story he was told by a second person, incorporating that second person's account of a story told by yet a third person. It goes back as far as what I consider the first science fiction novel, Gulliver's Travels, which was so committed to its "true story" conceit that it was originally meant to be published anonymously with Gulliver alleged to be the real author.

So given that so many works of fiction present themselves from the subjective viewpoint of a participant in events, rather than an objective, impersonal, omniscient viewpoint, it then naturally follows that the version of the story we're being told may be biased. We're experiencing John Carter's or Victor Frankenstein's or Mina Harker's or Lemuel Gulliver's or Dr. John Watson's version of events, but how do we know how reliable the narrator's memory is or what agenda might be shaping their account? There's nothing remotely new about fiction that allows for such questions, so it certainly does not destroy the experience of the fiction to explore them.




Again, Melakon made the initial proposal, and several others have chimed in as well. I don't know why you think this is about me.

And again, let's remember that the first person to suggest that the show we see might be an inaccurate dramatization of the "real" events was Gene Roddenberry himself. He was unhappy with many of the budgetary and dramatic compromises he'd had to make in TOS, and thus put forth the idea that TOS had been inaccurate so that he'd be free to reinvent things like the Klingons for later works like ST:TMP. The Literary Agent Hypothesis as applied to Trek can be a handy way to deal with the many, many glaring contradictions and scientific implausibilities within the canon, and it's endorsed by the franchise's own creator, who cast himself as the Literary Agent in his TMP novelization.

Is it fan fiction to explore these possibilities? Well, arguably, yes. That's always been part of the function and value of fan fiction -- the freedom it has to explore revisionist or transgressive interpretations of a text, to reinvent a text in ways the canon and its official tie-ins are not free to do. This is just a conversation on a bulletin board, not an attempt to write actual stories, but yes, absolutely, the goal here is to use our imaginations and conceive alternative ways of reading the text of the Trek universe. I don't think anyone here has denied that. As I've told you over and over, we're not trying to propose a "correct" reinterpretation of the actual franchise, we're just playing with a hypothetical, "what-if" possibility. So you're accusing us of hiding the very thing that we've made no secret of doing from the start. We haven't pretended anything. You've just misunderstood the goal of this discussion.

But I don't tell myself that everything I'm viewing on screen is false as an excuse for my own internal exercises. I build off what I'm seeing/reading/hearing.

For the umpteenth time, we're not "telling ourselves" that. We're asking what the ramifications might be if it were hypothetically the case.

So, Mr. Professional Writer (and I'm an editor myself), you are wrong. Pithy enough? Go ahead and speculate on what maybe be hidden in Trek as a result of Federation "propaganda," and fool yourself that your ideas aren't just substitution of your ideas for the writers' if you must, but you're not fooling anyone else.

Nobody's trying to fool anyone. You're fooling yourself by completely and profoundly misreading the intent of this conversation -- up to and including not bothering to pay attention to who it was who started the thread in the first place. And you seem to have incorrectly fixated on me as the instigator of this discussion, and that's causing a disruption for the other posters in this thread, so for their benefit I'm going to stop responding to you and I recommend you do the same with me.

I love how people write their ill-conceived and usually anger-driven opinions as if they're proved facts. No question I hit a nerve here, you be some angry Trekkies, although I must say I didn't expect this level of vehemence. Take a chill pill bra.

For the umpteenth time, you are writing fan fiction under the guise of literary deconstruction. It's that simple. And I have no problems with that (although you and another seem desperate to impute some emotional stake in this to me; trust me, I have none)--but I do enjoy pointing out the emperor's nakedness, at times. Go ahead and do whatever you want to do, self-deception included.

 

[F. King Daniel]

We have to assume that the events actually shown us are the events that occur--the show itself can't be skewed propaganda, or then nothing can be considered canon.

Sounds fine to me. The show is so rife with contradictions both visually and in terms of story, where does the "reality" lie? I see it as Star Wars' now defunct Expanded Universe did - that everything we see and read is a window into the "real" Trek universe. Some windows are clearer than others, some are extremely foggy. But all contain an element of truth.