Sure. Optimistic? Better than the then present? Yes. But it was hardly a utopia.
Says who? Contemporary Earth wasn't even shown until TMP, and there's no one definition of what constitutes a "utopia"; it doesn't have to be a society without currency. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say that a future Earth free of war, violence, and starvation, that's also ecologically sustainable (thanks in part to unlimited colonization potential in an infinite cosmos), and in which all humans enjoy basic civil liberties amounts to a utopia. And all those conditions are is pretty much inferred, if not necessarily stated outright, in TOS, are they not?
TOS was regularly criticizing utopia as something bad and to be avoided as it can only lead to stagnation. Some might even argue Berman proved that to be true. 
You even have some Federation citizens rejecting the sterilized atmospheres and artificially balanced environments.
We reach.
In TOS?
Says the lunatics incarcerated in insane asylums (Lord Garth).
Says the murderers (Kodos).
Says the human traffickers (Mudd).
When you consider that practically the only other big sci-fi show on tv was “The twilight zone” which was often dark,scary and in no way “utopian “.No wonder that Trek was popular.
And guys ..you’re making utopian sound like a political outlook.Not every fucking thing has to be a culture war barb.
And guys ..you’re making utopian sound like a political outlook.Not every fucking thing has to be a culture war barb.
All of whom the Enterprise encountered on a five-year mission to explore the frontiers of known space. Okay, I should have said "Star Trek [TOS] showed a future in which humans of all backgrounds were apparently peaceful and united within Starfleet's active ranks, which implied that the core of Federation society was utopian."
Surely the existence of criminals such as Mudd and disgraced former Starfleet captains like Garth on the fringes of Federation society does not mean that most of that society, particularly in its most-established areas, can't be considered generally utopian – especially when depictions of new encounters with Starfleet authority, in the form of the Enterprise and its crew, pretty much always end with such problems being seemingly resolved. There's a vast spectrum of societal enlightenment between the tyranny of the Terran Empire and the overwhelmingly peaceful and comfortable Earth seen in the TNG days, and the term "utopian" cannot be treated a binary.
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Yeah, Harry's from the wild west, or at least that's where he operates. Garth was cured by Federation science, for free, in the first episode he appeared in, so I reckon that ticks some utopian boxes. Kodos the Executioner was from a colony world that suffered from a disaster and his desperate measure to save half of them from starvation wasn't even needed as Federation supply ships got there in time.
Well, there’s Kirk’s history professor from SFA. The one who thought that copying Nazis verbatim was a great idea.
There’s Captain Tracey who went all Colonel Kurtz in The Omega Glory.
SF has its bad eggs in TOS. Not just fringe criminals.
How was he cured? He was absolutely mental.
I think we can safely label flagrantly shredding the Prime Directive to create a Nazi society as a fringe idea in Kirk's time, and John Gill a fringe criminal. What makes one "fringe," anyhow? Surely numbers play a part. Of all the billions of humans alive in TOS, wouldn't one criminal extremist be a "fringe" individual?
Just because a cop show has its heroes tracking down serial killers every episode doesn't mean the viewer isn't supposed to perceive those villains as fringe exceptions to the vast majority of a peaceful society and citizenry.
Perhaps, for the purpose of discussion, a definition of utopian is appropriate? It's not a term I use lightly, and find it often more pejorative towards modern society than describing actual society shown in Star Trek, especially in TOS.
But, there are some positive elements like no longer fearing words that I take from TOS.
Sure, we could define utopia. For the general spacefaring context of TOS, I'd say that the Federation could be a called a human utopia if:
- No significant factions of humans are at war with each other.
- The vast majority of humans in the Federation don't face material scarcity, and enjoy basic civil and political freedoms.
- Starfleet is an all-volunteer organization, and people can live entirely comfortable lives pursuing any number of alternative careers.
- If a small minority of humans (say, 5% of the species or less) living in colonies on the Federation's frontiers face higher risks than those on more established worlds, those persons choose to live in such circumstances and accept those dangers of their own free will, and are not compelled by reasons of discrimination or unreasonable economic/social/whatever hardship to be there.
I admit I still haven't seen much TOS, but from I have seen and heard, I get the impression that all the above is, if not outright stated, amply implied, if not at the time, then definitely in retrospect. Am I wrong?
- No significant factions of humans are at war with each other.
- The vast majority of humans in the Federation don't face material scarcity, and enjoy basic civil and political freedoms.
- Starfleet is an all-volunteer organization, and people can live entirely comfortable lives pursuing any number of alternative careers.
- If a small minority of humans (say, 5% of the species or less) living in colonies on the Federation's frontiers face higher risks than those on more established worlds, those persons choose to live in such circumstances and accept those dangers of their own free will, and are not compelled by reasons of discrimination or unreasonable economic/social/whatever hardship to be there.
I admit I still haven't seen much TOS, but from I have seen and heard, I get the impression that all the above is, if not outright stated, amply implied, if not at the time, then definitely in retrospect. Am I wrong?
It's also not keen on machine intelligence.TOS was regularly criticizing utopia as something bad and to be avoided as it can only lead to stagnation. Some might even argue Berman proved that to be true.
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Young people of today have their own vision of utopia, but it doesn't seem to be popular in Hollywood. We saw that in the series "Picard" where they downgraded their society by abandoning the technology of androids and artificial intelligence.
However, this is what young people are dreaming of. The world run by AGI that will do everything for them and take care of everything, while they are getting UBI (universal basic income) they can spend however they like. It's a sort of utopia that is popular today and very contemporary.
This is something they can use to move on with "Star Trek". Further in the future, forget about "Picard", move on with technological advancement that creates a better society, imagine new worlds, new races and go back to space exploration.
Imagine the world with highly advanced, but benevolent AGI. I think that young people would love it.
However, this is what young people are dreaming of. The world run by AGI that will do everything for them and take care of everything, while they are getting UBI (universal basic income) they can spend however they like. It's a sort of utopia that is popular today and very contemporary.
This is something they can use to move on with "Star Trek". Further in the future, forget about "Picard", move on with technological advancement that creates a better society, imagine new worlds, new races and go back to space exploration.
Imagine the world with highly advanced, but benevolent AGI. I think that young people would love it.
You said people within Starfleet.
They are both people who come from within the ranks of Starfleet.
You can try to spin it however you want, but the evidence it is not a Utopia is right there in the episodes.
If you want to go closer to home, McCoy is outright racist to Spock and everybody is alright with it.
I think you might have a slightly different interpretation of utopia to some of us. It's the society that's utopian, but people are going to be people.
Most of them are going to be better people, but sometimes someone gets it into their head to try to improve an alien culture by introducing Nazism, and then Federation officers have to come and tell them to knock it off. Because their directive says 'don't interfere with other people's business even if it would benefit us to do so', which is a very utopian attitude.
The McCoy and Spock thing is between two senior officers that get a certain leeway that Kirk would never permit for the rest of his crew because they're his friends and he knows there's no real bite to it. McCoy isn't racist to Vulcans, he's annoying to Spock, and vice versa.
At the very end of the episode he was treated and cured.
The very notion of "Utopia" is grounded in ideology. It is not a truly extrapolative idea from any other than ideological premises.
Now, the important caveat is that such fabrications don't spring from only one or two ideological frameworks. There are right-wing and left-wing Utopias in literature. Capitalist and socialist visions of Paradise. Rational and religious. Libertarian, and fascist.*
But "utopian" is not a simple synonym for "idealistic." It is literally "no place" - an unattainable vision of perfection, and there are probably as many ideas of what would be a perfect world as there are people.
You cannot tell devoted believers in a particular Utopia that its ethical assumptions about what is good for people are limited or unsound. A Stalinist once said, "The only freedom denied people by the Russian state is the freedom to exploit one another."
Roddenberry's vision was, frankly, about as naively authoritarian as these things get. Melinda Snodgrass wrote a good piece taking it apart for OMNI magazine, in December of 1991.
*Whoever posts, "same thing" goes straight to Rhetorical Jail without collecting 200 dollars.
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