I'm old enough to remember a certain book called Heir to the Empire that was all the rage at the time.
Burnham, Sarek and Picard
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I remember raging at the book. Does that count?
Fella, the Timothy Zhan trilogy (and later Thrawn duology) are some if my favourite EU books.
Joruus Caboath was a great antagonist also and Palleon's development from lackey to GA and then part of the New Repub was mint
Yes but did you ever Rage Against The Machine?
Several machines in fact.
You are Neo and I claim my £5
Sorry, was distracted by a red dress.
Trek has always commented on issues of the current times, reflected against the 23rd or 24th century setting. The rebellious anti-science theme is very much a reflection of our current times. Human nature, sadly, doesn't change all that much, despite Roddenberry's hope for the future.
Humans are capable of growing far beyond Roddenberry's imagination.
Human nature doesn't exist... why do people constantly use this ill-informed myth as a cop-out?
Human behavior is dependent on the environment... change the environment/system and you change human behavior.
Where does this figure come from? I'm genuinely curious because I've never heard it before, and I will admit it sounds somewhat dubious. If also cool.
One of the fundamental problems, from my view, is this: the Federation is a political alliance, and although it certainly provides many benefits, it doesn't follow that every member is going to use those benefits equally or even agree on how to do so. The Vulcans and Andorians were enemies for many years, and the former aren't going to be interested in building huge numbers of weapons and warships just because they agree there are powerful threats like the Borg and the Dominion. That's not overly consistent with how their culture evolved to reject war and violence in favor of logic and peaceful exploration. Perhaps such avenues would be more suitable for the Andorians to pursue. The Tellarites also love to argue mainly to argue even if they ultimately agree with what they're working on.
One thing I like about the FASA Trekverse was that there were ongoing debates about the role of Starfleet. Some viewed it as an essential form of protection, primarily against the Klingons, while others were concerned that same protection could be manipulated to create war instead of just protecting against it. And there was a notable incident when tensions between the Andorians and the Tellarites over a trade dispute led an Andorian captain to attack Tellarite ships, leading to their removal from fleet command.
You're also assuming that the Federation isn't likely to encounter something they can't handle that could be incredibly damaging, like V'Ger or the Borg. Something that, under the right circumstances, could either destroy them or cripple them in terms of resources and technology. The Dominion captured Betazed during the war and was in a position to threaten Vulcan and other core worlds (Andor, Tellar and Alpha Centauri are mentioned). The Breen hit Earth directly even though it was a suicide attack, just for the sake of shock value and damage potential. The Klingons in the YE timeline were on the verge of winning after a few decades, with Yar saying that more than half the Starfleet had been wiped out by that time.
Because humans don't always react equally in the same environments, due to their own individual natures. Simply changing the environment isn't always enough.
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Or regressing below it, apparently...
Not if you study history.
I'm sure I'll regret this, but...elaboration?
Off topic so no.
Where does this figure come from? I'm genuinely curious because I've never heard it before, and I will admit it sounds somewhat dubious. If also cool.
The figure is from here:
https://www.kurzweilai.net/understanding-the-accelerating-rate-of-change
"And because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress, which is a thousand times greater than the 20th century, which was no slouch to change."
So, if the 21st century will be progressing at 1000x faster than the 20th... we could reasonably posit the same or greater increase in speed will occur for the 22nd century (assuming we reverse climate change, repair environmental damage and restore lost biodiversity - all of which could be done in less than 10 years), meaning that 20 000 years would now become 20 MILLION years worth of advancement (so if anything, my previous calculations for UFP's rate of progress/evolution were... EXTREMELY conservative).
I think THIS is what Trek should be portraying (and Dyson Swarms/Type II civilization, Type III and Type IV would conceivably be part of it).
Already we could have started construction of our own Dyson Swarm since 1990... and its construction would have been completed by now. So as a species, we are technically Type 0, but with the technological and scientific potential to become Type II if we wanted - we're just constricted by our outdated socio-economic system and lack of education.
One of the fundamental problems, from my view, is this: the Federation is a political alliance, and although it certainly provides many benefits, it doesn't follow that every member is going to use those benefits equally or even agree on how to do so. The Vulcans and Andorians were enemies for many years, and the former aren't going to be interested in building huge numbers of weapons and warships just because they agree there are powerful threats like the Borg and the Dominion. That's not overly consistent with how their culture evolved to reject war and violence in favor of logic and peaceful exploration. Perhaps such avenues would be more suitable for the Andorians to pursue. The Tellarites also love to argue mainly to argue even if they ultimately agree with what they're working on.
We know that alien species who join UFP, their ships, trained personnel and space based assets get absorbed into Starfleet and their government largely continues to operate with autonomy for the most part - but they get their own council member who would push for newer policies, etc. which would benefit the whole UFP.
We also know that UFP won't necessarily share their technology with EVERY species they encounter or who might be prospective member (at least not prior to joining UFP)... especially if they think that this could cause cultural contamination or more damage down the line.
So, from what we saw canonically, we have a relatively good idea of how it works: less advanced species which are deemed good 'candidates' for UFP joining first need to meet certain parameters (no caste based systems, no social inequalities, no internal wars/conflicts, etc.)... and usually, until these criteria are met by the species in question, the UFP doesn't really intervene, (unless there is a disaster the species cannot cope with - in case of Bajor, UFP did loan some technology temporarily only to help repair the damage), which means that the species in question is left to achieve these goals (if they want to) by themselves.
Once the species meets the criteria and finally joins UFP, it stands to reason that Starfleet would then start upgrading their orbital facilities and shipyards to latest standards (if UFP expects to provide effective protection of the planet in question), or simply build new ones (if they deem it necessary).
We also know from Discovery S3 that the UFP ordered all Federation worlds to research alternatives to dilithium and M/AM - the writers choosing to opt for failure on that research (sans SB-19) is entirely drama based, but one thing we did learn from this is that UFP can use resources of ALL its member planets for research... which implies they can do the same for building new ships, etc.
I mean, it only makes sense that at the height of the tensions between UFP and Dominion (before the war began), UFP would be engaged in upgrading ALL its ships and building new ones.
If member planets expected to protect what they had, they would of course be building ships and whatever is needed to protect themselves from a potential threat (and SF would have numerous facilities in every member species system).
UFP may prefer peace and pacifism, but its also not stupid (or at least it shouldn't be), so it would understand that building proper defenses would be prudent in case of a full blown war (and they know the galaxy isn't a safe place).
To be fair, all of those would be long forgotten and part of the past. Inter-species issues would have existed primarily in the early days of UFP, but would have largely disappeared in a few decades at best.
I mean, if Humanity was able to act as a bridge between species which had strained and practically barely speaking relationships in the past to the point where they brought them all together into a massive alliance that hadn't been seen before in that part of space (from what we know) in less than 10 years, then it stands to reason those kinds of social and inter-species tensions would have disappeared fairly quickly (and a way to doing that would likely be accomplished via exposure to relevant general education of the general public which would be facilitated by the UFP council - at least you'd expect mature civilizations to handle such issues - they'd have to in order to function as part of UFP and to eventually result in various species mixing together which would result in hybrids as well).
Oh and the Vulcan logic 'extremists' in Disco never made sense because of what I mentioned. It would have been plausible they existed in the early years of UFP, but not 90 years later).
To be fair, V'ger wasn't 'incredibly damaging'... powerful and dangerous? Yes, but it didn't do any permanent damage to UFP.
The Borg were also not too damaging. Sure, SF lost almost 40 ships and 11 000 lives at Wolf 359, but Shelby pretty much shrugged off the incident saying SF will bring the fleet back up in a year.
11 000 lost people isn't a small thing, and since UFP cherishes preservation of life, it would be seen as a devastating loss to them at the time, but on a larger scale, that's probably nothing compared to lives lost when the Xindi decided to attack Florida, or during the initial war between UFP and Klingons during Disco S1... or the border wars between UFP and Cardassians (albeit, those weren't conceived by the writers as of yet, so... the UFP only losing 11 000 people at Wolf 359 and 40 ships was actually somewhat 'lucky' - the losses could have been higher).
The Dominion capturing Betazed was a stretch for me. SF was effectively 'caught with their pants down' (which is ludicrous since sensors have ridiculous ranges and computers would be automatically alerting the crew if a large fleet of enemy ships was approaching). It was further compounded by the stupidity of Betazed's orbital defenses being in the process of being upgraded (as they were 80 years old). Now, who does that?
SF found time to upgrade the USS Lakota to rival the Defiant before the war broke out... the needed orbital upgrades would have occurred prior to the war (when the Dominion threat became eminent at the end of DS9 Season 2 - majority of S3 was spent upgrading DS9 - and SF technology is capable of self-repair and self-upgrades... who the heck would forget making such upgrades to all UFP member planets on a regular basis?).
Starships receive regular maintenance and upgrades every few years... why the heck would orbital defenses NOT receive the same treatment?
And don't tell me because UFP became complacent. In all honesty, just because they lived in an era of peace for a long time, it wouldn't have eroded their sense of need to be as best prepared as they could (especially because they were surrounded by potentially hostile species like the Cardassians and Romulans). Besides, when the Borg attack of Wolf 359 happened, you'd think entire UFP would have taken THAT as a slap in the rear end to get them to upgrade all their defenses (which can be done simultaneously throughout ALL UFP member planets - they have officers stationed EVERYWHERE - specs can be sent on secure/encrypted subspace channels too. So what happened? Unnecessary 'drama').
Individual natures have nothing to do with it.
Each human is impacted differently by the same environment because no conditions in that environment are the same (sounds, smells, touch, experiences, etc.). They change on a regular basis.
Twins in a single household will also grow up to be different because they don't experience things from the identical point of view nor are they both ever treated identically by both parents (it would be practically impossible for a human to reproduce same course of action twice with 100% accuracy.
Even if a father picks both of them up, he can only pick each with his hands... meaning, one child will be looking from his right, the other from the left... that means they will see things from different perspectives. Or, if the father picks one up but leaves the other behind temporarily, its a time delay (which already makes a change).
Now, these changes may seem minuscule, but they do add up over time.
The point about changing the environment was that existing environment (capitalism) creates conditions which generates competition, greed, selfishness, etc. - which coupled with existing 'education' (if we can call it that) creates present day humans who are poorly uneducated (when it comes to understanding how the world works via basic methods of science), jump to conclusions, aren't generalists, don't really question things on a large scale and are not predominantly problem solvers.
Changing the environment is pretty much everything there is.
When you change education (which can also be considered part of environment) to match the larger environmental changes, Human behavior changes.
This is well documented by both Dr Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky for example.
Obviously, these changes can also be limited in their effect if there is no change in socio-economic system for example. So if a poor child is given education, but they have no monetary means or connections to escape poverty, chances are they will resort to methods only available to them to survive and they won't be able to escape poverty (at least in the world we live right now).
I didn't find the Dominion taking Betazed surprising at all. Starfleet is full of explorers and not enough officers with adequate combat experience. Wars against the The Cardassians and Tzenkethi didn't seem to be more than Border skirmishes and given that both of those powers were much smaller than the Federation and the tactical superiority Starfleet ships compared to Cardassian warships, I doubt Starfleet Command really had to put too much effort into fighting those wars. However Starfleet seemed to struggle when faced with aggressive species of equal tactical standing like the Klingons. The fact that Starfleet was struggling with the Klingons who were fighting a two front war says a lot.
Starfleet had already made some questionable tactical decisions since the beginning of the war and it's why they were losing so heavily. The attack on the Torros III shipyard instead of reinforcing Deep Space Nine and Starfleet Command later almost rejecting Sisko's plan to retake it because they thought Earth was of greater tactical importance than controlling the wormhole, are examples of this. Both instances show how shortsighted Starfleet was and I think it was something that The Dominion realised and exploited and the main reason that Betazed fell. Firstly, The Dominion launched their attack from the Kalandra sector, which Starfleet intelligence deemed an impossibility because of the sectors distance from Dominion supply lines and secondly, the entire tenth fleet was off on training exercises for some reason.
As for Starfleet being complacent, they absolutely were, as was the Federation government if President Jaresh Inyo was anything to go by. Sisko said it himself when discussing why the Defiant was mothballed, the Borg threat became less urgent and It wasn't until Starfleet lost a Galaxy class starship to the Dominion that they realised how woefully unprepared they were.
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Yeah but that wouldn't make for a good TV show. It needs to be some what relatable.
Wouldn't make for a good TV show?
Forgive me, but I don't share that perception. Some of the most successful and quality TV shows are ones that make people think.
Good writers would make some things relatable, but a large effort would also fall onto them as a responsibility to portray something very different while prompting the audience to enjoy it.
Also, ever heard of abstract art?
Things don't need to be necessarily relatable to be beautiful or interesting.
See, that's your first mistake. Expecting Star Trek to be relatable on a human level, when clearly Star Trek has always been about technology and how much humans suck without it.
