Dumb and Bizarre Trek Novel Moments...

[Stevil2001]

Am I the only person who remembers Kirk going, "This is just like Vietnam! And just like then, we've got to do it now!" in "A Private Little War"?

(That said, I always groan at that bit.)

 

[DevilEyes]

Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many

Kai Kira. A lot can happen in 30+ years, but...

Ugh. I'm so glad I haven't bought that book... At least it has no effect on the primary book continuity. (I don't play video games, so I don't care about STO.)

Picard and Beverly's kid Rene marrying Riker and Troi's kid Tasha.

I don't see what's the problem with that.

The Gorn and the Klingons settling their differences and delaying a war with a baseball game. My new all-time dumbest TrekLit moment. Ever. I almost drove my palm through my face.

Oh dear...

Now I am really glad I haven't bought that book!

But that's not my point, to me it seems they go out of their way to force their political views and take on contemporary issues into the stories themselves, in ways that our completely outside the norm for Star Trek.

You think that it's absolutely unheard of for Star Trek to force commentary on contemporary political and social issues into stories? O-kay...

Am I the only person who remembers Kirk going, "This is just like Vietnam! And just like then, we've got to do it now!" in "A Private Little War"?

(That said, I always groan at that bit.)

Yeah. It's not like "A Private Little War" was an obvious allegory for Vietnam. And it's not like "The Omega Glory" had space communists and space Americans, complete with American constitution... and TOS Klingons were such a subtle substitution for Soviets, and TUC just happened to be made at the time of the end of the Cold War and was full of subtle references such as Chancellor GORbachevlinCOlN...

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

A little late, but to the earlier (wow, MUCH earlier) discussion of whether or not ST's utopian future is "communist," well:

Socialism is what you get when you take populism -- good old American populism, the polar opposite of elitism -- to an extreme.

Totalitarianism is likewise the extreme form of authoritarianism (just as anarchism is the extreme form of libertarianism).

Communism is simply totalitarian socialism.

(And as to Uhura in The Starless World, well, consider the source.)

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many

Kai Kira. A lot can happen in 30+ years, but... (I would have said the same about Londo and Vir at the start of Babylon 5, though, so I guess I can cope)

That's actually from the game.

 

[JarodRussell]

Rene Picard and Tasha Riker. That's eerie.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

^Why? What's so eerie about it?

 

[JarodRussell]

^Why? What's so eerie about it?

Can't tell. Just the choice of names and the fact that their kids married. It's just too... awkward, for the lack of a better word. I somehow can't see family Picard and family Riker regularly having picknicks so that their little ones can play together in the sandbox. And "uncle Worf" and godfather Tuvok and stop by now and then, too. And then as they grow older they fall in love with each other and get married.


What happened to Anij, I wonder. Wasn't she Picard's biggest love, for all of eternity? What happened that he stopped spending his entire shore leave of 300+ days on Ba'ku growing young with her?

 

[ProwlAlpha]

He found out that the she was really irritating, especially about taking out the garbage and cleaning out the gutters. At first it was like they were newlyweds, but then the intimacy went and soon Picard needed his space.

 

[Christopher]

Communism is simply totalitarian socialism.

Not really. Technically, communism is a stateless society in which the means of production are communally owned and individuals take full responsibility for social order and justice. But Marx believed that a society would have to mature through successive phases, from agrarian feudalism to industrial capitalism to a socialist dictatorship that would redistribute the wealth and educate the people to be self-sufficient so that the final, anarchic, communist level could be reached. The fatal flaw in that theory is its naive assumption that any power structure, particularly a totalitarian one, could be trusted to work toward its own dissolution. The other flaw is that it depends too heavily on the perfectibility of human morality and thus has no safeguards against corruption. And so societies that claim to be working toward a communist ideal inevitably get stalled at the socialist dictatorship stage and never actually become communist. Their ruling parties are called Communist parties because that's what they theoretically aspire to, not what they actually, functionally are.

 

[JD]

Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many

Kai Kira. A lot can happen in 30+ years, but... (I would have said the same about Londo and Vir at the start of Babylon 5, though, so I guess I can cope)

Picard and Beverly's kid Rene marrying Riker and Troi's kid Tasha.

The Gorn and the Klingons settling their differences and delaying a war with a baseball game. My new all-time dumbest TrekLit moment. Ever. I almost drove my palm through my face.

Poor Wolf Dulmer being locked up because he's the only one in the galaxy who remembers all the continuity errors in Star Trek! (I loved that chapter so much! )

I keep thinking about picking this up, but then I read something like this... and quickly change my mind.

 

[Sci]

On another note, I wouldn't name a repair facility after a contemporary political figure who was alive and still in office at the time it was written, no matter how much I believed in him and his policies.

-Gray

Oh, c'mon. Even if you don't support his policies, surely the fact that Barack Obama is the first U.S. President of African-American descent is worth naming a space station after him? I sure as hell wouldn't have objected to them naming it the "Powell facility" if former Secretary of State Colin Powell had won the presidency on the Republican ticket. Being the first American to win the presidency from a minority group that was brutally oppressed for four centuries -- and doing so only about two generations after the start of the civil rights movement! -- is a huge, historic accomplishment, no matter what party the guy belongs to. (In fact, I can't think of a single other country where something equivalent has ever happened, to be frank.)

Hell, I detest Sarah Palin, but if she had become the first female President, I'd certainly consider it appropriate to name a space station after her for it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Okay, maybe she didn't talk about ook dedications, but when I was twelve and first started getting interested in writing, even if it's only fanfiction so far, she cautioned me not to force that type of social commentary into my stories.

Mom gave you a bum steer, there. What are her credentials in regard to writing and publishing?

 

[Cicero]

On another note, I wouldn't name a repair facility after a contemporary political figure who was alive and still in office at the time it was written, no matter how much I believed in him and his policies.

-Gray

Oh, c'mon. Even if you don't support his policies, surely the fact that Barack Obama is the first U.S. President of African-American descent is worth naming a space station after him? I sure as hell wouldn't have objected to them naming it the "Powell facility" if former Secretary of State Colin Powell had won the presidency on the Republican ticket. Being the first American to win the presidency from a minority group that was brutally oppressed for four centuries -- and doing so only about two generations after the start of the civil rights movement! -- is a huge, historic accomplishment, no matter what party the guy belongs to. (In fact, I can't think of a single other country where something equivalent has ever happened, to be frank.)

Hell, I detest Sarah Palin, but if she had become the first female President, I'd certainly consider it appropriate to name a space station after her for it.

I wouldn't, and I'm discomfited by the Obama reference (though I voted for him). I think that persons honored in this way should be noteworthy for their accomplishments, courage, integrity, etc., not for who they are. I don't think John F. Kennedy will be remembered as the first president of Catholic heritage a century from now; he will be noted for his accomplishments, principles, and inspiration. He would probably not be remembered at all had he been simply mediocre (ignoring the disaster we might have met had we had a mediocre president in the early 1960s).

We had no reason, at the time the book was written, to conclude that President Obama would be remembered from any of those. He might have been the next FDR or the next Franklin Pierce; the author had no way of knowing.

 

[Lonemagpie]

When I was very young my Mom taught me not to do that. You don't dedicate novels to people at the center of contemporary political and social issues and you don't make specific references to specific people and their policies, either to praise or condemn them.

"One must never overtly preach, but always covertly preach and teach"

They didn't on television

Graywand, let me introduce you to A Private Little War and The Omega Glory...

 

[Christopher]

Hell, I detest Sarah Palin, but if she had become the first female President, I'd certainly consider it appropriate to name a space station after her for it.

She actually could see Russia from that...

 

[Myasishchev]

Out of curiosity, has there never been anything named after Nixon in Trek?

If not, why not? The man who forged a lasting friendship with China and put us on Luna has got to rate.

 

[DevilEyes]

Well it would be less problematic than having Federation ships named after Christopher Columbus or Hernan Cortez, IMO...

 

[Myasishchev]

USS Linebacker II. Woot!

 

[Greg Cox]

In "Let That Be Your Battlefield" they didn't once specifically mention anyone even vaguely connected to the Civil Rights Movement in either opposition or support. They constructed a brilliant work of subtle social commentary and let it stand for itself.

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is many things, but subtle isn't one of them. Ditto "The Way To Eden" and any number of sledgehammer parables found in the original series.

Star Trek is a series of little morality plays told in a space opera format. At least, that's what I always thought it was. Why is this controversial now, 45 years on?

Exactly. I'm always puzzled when people complain about finding liberal politics in STAR TREK (and, yes, I've gotten some hate mail myself on the subject). Heck, the fourth movie was all about saving the whales! Political allegories and agendas have always been part of STAR TREK. Not the only part, mind you, but Trek writers have often gotten political, sometimes more obviously than others . . . .

 

[LightningStorm]

I wouldn't, and I'm discomfited by the Obama reference (though I voted for him). I think that persons honored in this way should be noteworthy for their accomplishments, courage, integrity, etc., not for who they are. I don't think John F. Kennedy will be remembered as the first president of Catholic heritage a century from now; he will be noted for his accomplishments, principles, and inspiration. He would probably not be remembered at all had he been simply mediocre (ignoring the disaster we might have met had we had a mediocre president in the early 1960s).

We had no reason, at the time the book was written, to conclude that President Obama would be remembered from any of those. He might have been the next FDR or the next Franklin Pierce; the author had no way of knowing.

I agree with the general point you're making on this, but I would see it slightly differently. There are things in Trek named after leaders in Trek that ruled in Trek's history at a time that hasn't happened yet in real life (future leaders). So I could see this as being a variation on that. While Obama is a real person and his time as president hasn't been fully accomplished yet, the honoring of him with naming something after him is also apart of the fiction. So in Trek (regardless of what actually comes to pass IRL) he was a great leader and therefore deserved the honor. That's the way I'd look at it anyway.

Though I totally understand the eye-rolling one might have seeing such a thing.