Spoilers Disco and Picard weren't the first Trek shows to hold a dystopian view.

[The Rock]

When people say they don't like Disco and Picard because it doesn't hold Trek's optimism like the prior shows and movies did, well what about Deep Space 9? And even Voyager to some extent?

DS9 sort of pissed all over Gene's view of a utopian view of humanity. Sure, on earth, everything was great. But as that one admiral said in that one DS9 episode (forgot which episode it was) "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." Outside of earth, humans were still just as flawed as humans are today. Even on earth, some of the things that Starfleet had to do to maintain that utopia were downright horrifying. DS9 took a darker view of Starfleet, the Federation, and humanity in general by presenting major character flaws of the DS9 heroes. Michael Eddington made some damn valid points against the Federation. Let's not even get started with Section 31...

Also, let's look at Voyager! Janeway was pretty cold sometimes and some of her decisions were controversial both amongst the Voyager crew members and Trekkies alike. Even the later episodes of TNG things got a bit darker what with the Federation having a peace treaty with the Cardassians and screwing over Federation civilians and forcing them to move from their homes.

In my opinion, Disco and Picard's tone really isn't all that much different than DS9, some elements of Voyager, and the later seasons of TNG. I know a lot of you will disagree with this and I totally respect your opinion.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Imperfection is not dystopian.

 

[1001001]

Out of an abundance of caution, I added a spoiler tag so that Picard can be discussed freely (we're still not quite at the 6 month period since the airing of the first episode).

Carry on.

 

[fireproof78]

The idea of a perfect or utopian Federation is greatly exaggerated, in my view. But that doesn't make it dystopian and I think that word gets too freely tossed around.

 

[RAMA]

Neither show is even remotely dystopian.

I gather most Trekkies don't know the definition of: "dystopian"

 

[STEPhon IT]

DS9 and Voyager characters were flawed or they had some flaws... all of Star Trek's heroes had flaws which was why I liked them and I could relate to them. What I enjoyed about Star Trek is the hope of good things to come... even in the worst places, the worst scenarios, and in the worst of people. Giving audiences a sense of optimism is a great thing and it should never be considered old fashion and not a path to continue. Heck, if a viewer don't like what they see, simply don't watch it or don't invest money to subscribe. DISCO and PICARD will end someday and they will be another series and hopefully it will garner the elements which were more enlightening like TOS and TNG.

 

[Qonundrum]

DS9 definitely questioned and showed or hinted at how the shiny happy people utopia was maintained, since TNG pretty much said "we're a shiny happy people utopia" and didn't dig into any solution building, which is a shame as some TOS episodes even provide possible solutions to problems that plagued the past... the 24th coasted on the 23rd and it took a spinoff to go anywhere with it to remind that everybody's in it but not everybody's wanting to be and for whatever reason of the week or season it was.

Janeway was the most inconsistently scripted by far, which is a shame as she encapsulates the best of Kirk and Picard while not being a carbon copy of either.

TNG going to the dark side later on is a given since it was running on fumes and dredging anything for ratings... it also did what PIC did and started to wallow in "small universe syndrome" because it had nothing else TO tell. (Plus, it was a great springboard for DS9 to make into its own universe, TNG just couldn't wallow in complexities for too long, not even with evil Admiral Pressedham Pressman - who is a great character who livened up the latter half of TNG and partly because the show was already floundering with boring nonsubjects, but I'm going to ham up the camp anyway...)

PIC is different iin that it tries to feel more 20th century with the deformalization of language (use of slang and hipster lingo - did the 24th century really change that much? But it's more believable into why the Romulans are soooooooo unenamored with AI and that b.s. storyline and not just because TNG had Romulans all over the place saying they had lots of researchers into that!!!), log cabins and huntin' bunnycorns (the name alone insults toddlers, and not because the name is right up their demographic) because everyone retired is either an evil admiral or related to Elmer Fudd... (Frakes being a good actor could sell absolutely anything that's on paper, I swear...)

And, yep, as with all things that start out with a zing but quickly crater and then quickly get flanderized after that, Section 31 is the icing AND the cake it's on in that regard.

DSC is a mixed bag. It's trying to fit into the 23rd century and on a certain level it works - given TOS was inconsistent in some of its inconsistent messages, sometimes loopy science (even with what was known at the time), and how Kirk struts around as a know-it-all, there actually is a certain type of continuity afoot. Albeit it's also flanderized and given some scenarios and characters are well-rounded, there is a trait that is made larger than life that replaces any intricate detail in the process. (the fact anyone would want to emulate an era humanity evolved passed actually boggles, but before I really digress into two directions then two dozen more from either of those each...)


For more, don't go to the library - it's all mentioned here:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization

 

[Qonundrum]

Neither show is even remotely dystopian.

I gather most Trekkies don't know the definition of: "dystopian"

Was William Gibson a Trekkie?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The sh-thole country I currently live in is probably worse than Freecloud. So, no, Picard is not dystopian.

 

[Christopher]

There's nothing "dystopian" about either Discovery or Picard. People jumped to that conclusion after the first few episodes of each because they were still judging it like an episodic series rather than by the modern serialized approach where the entire season is one long story. Any story is going to start out with things seeming bad; for instance, "The Changeling" and "The Immunity Syndrome" opened with entire planetary populations being wiped out, but the characters were laughing and joking by the end. That's what matters -- how the story ends. "A Private Little War" ends with the bad situation unresolved and arguably getting worse, so that's a tragic story. But "Patterns of Force" ends with the Nazi regime brought down and peace restored, so that's an optimistic story.

Both seasons of Discovery and the first season of Picard all ended on upbeat notes, with the characters triumphing over the bad stuff by reaffirming their optimistic values. So no, they were anything but dystopian stories. If anything, they made it a little too easy for good to triumph and wipe out all the bad in the last episode of each season. If people had just waited until the stories were finished before rushing to judgment about them, they would've seen that.

 

[Lord Garth]

My approach is to use examples from the actual shows. I can't do that in here with Picard yet, so it's like fighting with one arm. Because of this, I'll hold off until six months after "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" has aired.

But what I will say is that DS9 spent three years building up to a war and then spent two years primarily focused on said war. DSC didn't do that. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying PIC didn't do that.

Picard picks up 20 years after Nemesis and over 20 years after the end of DS9. Data's dead, the Federation's gone through a horrible war that changed it, and then there's the destruction of Romulus referenced from the 2009 Film as happening in the Prime Timeline. These are not things Picard created. These are things Picard inherited.

That's where I'll stop until a few months from now.

 

[RAMA]

DS9 wasn't dystopian either. Wars are terrible, but not a sign of dystopia in and of itself.

RAMA

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, it takes a lot more than a society having flaws and imperfections to make a story dystopian. DS9 was a deconstruction of utopianism, but that didn't make it dystopian, because there's plenty of middle ground between the extremes. The Mirror Universe was dystopian. Life under the Cardassian Union or the Dominion was dystopian. The Federation has never been remotely that bad, even at times when it's faltered and made mistakes.

 

[Orphalesion]

How were the TOS characters not flawed or in any way more "utopian" than the DS9 characters? (aside from the racial equality, which was also present in Ds9, VoY and is still present in DISC and PIC Are we watching the same people?
How were the TNG characters more "utopian" than the DS9 characters? They just started out as more bland and a lot more smug.
And really, even in TOS and TNG we were shown that there's a seedy underbelly to federation society.

 

[BigDaveX]

If memory serves, Kurtzman and Chabon said that George W. Bush-era America was what they based Picard’s version of the Federation on. And while I don’t know many people who consider that a golden age for the country, I really wouldn’t call it dystopian by any stretch.

 

[Christopher]

How were the TNG characters more "utopian" than the DS9 characters? They just started out as more bland and a lot more smug.

That question doesn't really make sense. "Utopian" and "dystopian" do not describe characters, but societies and states. The "-topia" root means "place." A utopia is an impossibly ideal society, seemingly perfect and paradisical (though often with a dark underbelly -- Thomas More coined the word as a pun on the Greek for "good place" and "no place," to say that no perfect society could really exist), and a dystopia is a terrible, worst-case society defined by misery or oppression. There can be a range of different character types in a story in either setting -- an amoral iconoclast who rebels against a utopia, say, or a hopeful idealist who strives to help and protect people in the middle of a dystopia.

 

[Orphalesion]

That question doesn't really make sense. "Utopian" and "dystopian" do not describe characters, but societies and states. The "-topia" root means "place." A utopia is an impossibly ideal society, seemingly perfect and paradisical (though often with a dark underbelly -- Thomas More coined the word as a pun on the Greek for "good place" and "no place," to say that no perfect society could really exist), and a dystopia is a terrible, worst-case society defined by misery or oppression. There can be a range of different character types in a story in either setting -- an amoral iconoclast who rebels against a utopia, say, or a hopeful idealist who strives to help and protect people in the middle of a dystopia.

Darling I know what an Utopia/Dystopia is and where the words come from and what they mean. ;-)
Dystopian Fiction was my main topic when I my graduation work in high school, so I don't need a lecture on it.

I might have expressed myself a bit inelegant. But do you really not understand that I meant "in what way do these characters embody an utopian society?", "How are they idealized"?

 

[Christopher]

But do you really not understand that I meant "in what way do these characters embody an utopian society?", "How are they idealized"?

I'm surprised the question needs to be asked about TNG's characters. I would've thought it was self-evident.

 

[Orphalesion]

I'm surprised the question needs to be asked about TNG's characters. I would've thought it was self-evident.

But are they really that much more "perfect" and "flawless" than the DS9 characters? Is Picard perfect? Any more than Sisko?
Does Riker, of all people, have a moral high ground over the Voyager crew that would make him reminiscent of a utopian society, while they are (as the OP claims) from a Dystopian version of Star Trek?
That is the point of this thread.

 

[Christopher]

But are they really that much more "perfect" and "flawless" than the DS9 characters? Is Picard perfect? Any more than Sisko?
Does Riker, of all people, have a moral high ground over the Voyager crew that would make him reminiscent of a utopian society, while they are (as the OP claims) from a Dystopian version of Star Trek?

I stand by what I said before -- it's invalid to atttempt to argue about such things on the level of individual characters, since the words describe the overall approach of the story and its worldbuilding. TNG was utopian in that it chose to portray an idealized humanity with little conflict. DS9 challenged that utopia while remaining consistent with it, by taking characters from that idealized society and putting them through hardships that challenged their ideals, as well as playing them off against characters from more dystopian backgrounds to create conflict. You could have swapped out individual characters from one series to the other and they would've adapted to the approach of the overall series. Indeed, exactly that did happen with the O'Briens and Worf. The characters were the same, but their context changed to be less idealized. That's why your attempt to define the question in terms of individual characters just doesn't make sense.

That is the point of this thread.

I think I've made it clear that I reject the entire premise of this thread, that even using the word "dystopian" to talk about any Star Trek series is an erroneous application of the word.