And Trek hasn't really been that since 1969.
Entertainment Weekly Cover Story (7/28)
- Thread starter JoeP
- Start date
And Trek hasn't really been that since 1969.
Yeah, I know. One of the reasons I never really fell in love with the spinoffs. Enterprise tried to a degree late in its run and the Abrams films were fun.
I know they can't make everyone happy. I just hope Discovery gives us something that isn't already plastered all over TV with a Star Trek skin.
Personally would prefer Federation that was as heterogeneous as the TPTB can possibly make it, and this would include many religions. Multiple religions for every species, but also have those who are non-religious.
A Federation that was the interstellar equivalent of a "planet of hats" where there was a Federation wide predominate of anything I feel would be lost opportunity to depict a sophisticated and diverse Federation, and that would be a shame.
This.
Maybe the people they encountered were less than peaceful was owing to the Federation having just sent a heavily armed starship into their area of the galaxy.
Hopefully it's "looks" won't be all it has going for it.
This is a no win scenario, if they don't go armed they could be destroyed easily.
I've said this before, but the heart of it is, if we're supposed to accept the idea that 'The Starship Enterprise = The Starship Earth,' then it really needs to fully representative.
Religion has been a major force for the entirety of human civilization. It's kind of ridiculous to call yourself a "study of the human condition" and ignore it." And even if, in the future, humans light switch rational thinking and fully embrace science and all that, religion will still exist. There will be plenty of John Fugelsangs in the future.
This is especially true because the show is making such a big deal about its diversity. And don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that two prominent characters (including the lead) are women of color and that Star Trek TV show is (finally) going to have an openly gay character. But the way they openly ignore--in an almost condescending way--such a significant aspect of humanity comes off as a little specious.
It ultimately comes down to believably, and this air the franchise has about itself becomes unbelievable--and thus unrelatable--to most of the movie-going/TV-watching public.
I've always said there are ultimately only two things that separate Star Trek and Star Wars: The pretense of science fiction and "Gene's vision." Here's the rub of the Abrams films: all he did was throw those two things out the window. And, sure enough, people showed up.
Also, if Star Trek really wants to be as inspirational as it wants to be, it would better if, instead of just showing up and saying "See: better humans," show the humans going through the growing pains from time to time.
There's really only one analogy I can think of, it's not the best, but whatever. Imagine a child asks a parent for help on a school project. Kirk is the parent who encourages the child, but ultimately the child still puts in the work, regardless of the results. Picard is the parent who comes along and takes over hoping to ensure the child gets an A.
If Star Trek really wants to put humanity through its educational paces, it needs to includes all of its facets: sexuality, gender, skin color, philosophies and creeds.
Religion has been a major force for the entirety of human civilization. It's kind of ridiculous to call yourself a "study of the human condition" and ignore it." And even if, in the future, humans light switch rational thinking and fully embrace science and all that, religion will still exist. There will be plenty of John Fugelsangs in the future.
This is especially true because the show is making such a big deal about its diversity. And don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that two prominent characters (including the lead) are women of color and that Star Trek TV show is (finally) going to have an openly gay character. But the way they openly ignore--in an almost condescending way--such a significant aspect of humanity comes off as a little specious.
It ultimately comes down to believably, and this air the franchise has about itself becomes unbelievable--and thus unrelatable--to most of the movie-going/TV-watching public.
I've always said there are ultimately only two things that separate Star Trek and Star Wars: The pretense of science fiction and "Gene's vision." Here's the rub of the Abrams films: all he did was throw those two things out the window. And, sure enough, people showed up.
Also, if Star Trek really wants to be as inspirational as it wants to be, it would better if, instead of just showing up and saying "See: better humans," show the humans going through the growing pains from time to time.
There's really only one analogy I can think of, it's not the best, but whatever. Imagine a child asks a parent for help on a school project. Kirk is the parent who encourages the child, but ultimately the child still puts in the work, regardless of the results. Picard is the parent who comes along and takes over hoping to ensure the child gets an A.
If Star Trek really wants to put humanity through its educational paces, it needs to includes all of its facets: sexuality, gender, skin color, philosophies and creeds.
Or, saying these things might not have anything to do with religion, except for those occasions when they do.
When someone kneels in the ship's chapel, you can't always assume it's because they tripped on a tribble.
My point is the fact that a Christian church was built on another planet surely is a pretty good indication that Christianity is still being practiced in the 24th century, no?
The episode I referenced was not written by Moore. Penumbra was written by Rene Echevarria.
There really isn't much room for interpretation here though. Human religious beliefs or spirituality of some kind has been depicted throughout all Star Trek TV series. There has only been one time humanity has been said to be secular, but that's been ignored by everything that came afterwards, including other TNG episodes.
Personally, I'm not religious and I would be fine if humanity of the Star Trek world were secular and had abandoned religion. In fact, I'd kind of prefer it. But that is not what Star Trek has presented us with at all, this is only stated once with many examples to the contrary. The belief that humanity is secular is ironically the result of fandom turning Roddenberry into a deity and treating things he said during his later years when he was succumbing to mental illness and was known to be constantly drunk as holy commandments.
Religion isn't a race.
The tendency to see it as one, or attribute religion to heritage status within an ethnic group, as if one's neutral hominid genome contains a heritable preference for Christianity/Islam/etc, has served to curtail freethought, in my opinion.
Religion is, with respect, an ideology - one that Star Trek, or perhaps particularly TNG, opined would be unpopular by the 24th century - at least revealed religion, dogma, in-groups and formal structure. Albert Einstein, a Spinoza-influenced non-theist, famously opined that in the future, the world would need a "cosmic spirituality/religion", that incorporated the timescales and attitudes of deep time and cosmic scale - and that no revealed religion fit the bill. This interpretation of spirituality; that nature = objective truth, but that one may build purely poetic spirituality on top of it, by observing the universe, and the human condition, began in the renaissance, and has been influential with scientists up until the present day. Star Trek is a TV show that probably came out of this scientific Carl Sagan-like view, from Gary Mitchell reading Spinoza in the pilot, to there being a race of space-faring logicians who study the cosmos, to Picard's speeches, and so on. It's fine for other shows like B5 to take another approach, and show all religions co-existing, unchanged, but I'm personally also interested in the Star Trek approach to the future, which is rooted in another famous interpretation of religion; that it will be surpassed in time, as history suggests happens.
Steven Pinker's book, the Better Angels of Our Nature, shows how violence, once thought to be "a fact of life", is largely being eradicated across the world. Star Trek predicted this, while critics thought it was naive. Star Trek also posits that some kind of freethought or humanism will surpass current religion, as the most popular source of values. Will critics eventually eat crow on that too?
I kinda hope that in the future, we atheists have more respect for other peoples' complex religious belief systems than to write them off as "silly Bronze Age superstitions."
Nope. The Bajoran religion, and the questions it raises about the nature of divinity, is present in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from the very first episode, "Emissary," written by Michael Piller. Ronald D. Moore did not join the Deep Space Nine writing staff until season three -- well after episodes like "Emissary," "Battle Lines," "In the Hands of the Prophets," "Homecoming," "The Circle," "The Siege," and "The Collaborator" had all established the importance of the Bajoran church and of the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens in their culture.
Dude, we've gotten two trailers and some P.R. write-ups. We don't really know jack shit about what Star Trek: Discovery will be about except in the broadest of terms, and we shouldn't be writing it off like we already know whats in it.
This. I'm with you 100%.
I don't really agree here. I think Star Wars and Star Trek have fundamentally different thematic concerns.
Star Wars is concerned with the idea of tearing down oppressive power structures; it plays upon one foundational theme of American identity, the idea of liberty through just war. Star Trek, on the other hand, is concerned with the idea of building up liberating institutions; it plays about a different foundational theme of American identity, the idea of settling the frontier to create a "city on a hill."
A severe oversimplification, that.
Except it didn't -- Babylon 5 made it clear that First Contact had led to an evolution of all the world's religions, including the emergence of a new religion called Foundationism.
I really don't see how that's any different from a Christian saying he wants to see a show about a future where all non-Christian religions have been "surpassed."
Just an odd thought. Could Captain Lorca not be from Earth or of Earth human decent (even with a name like Gabriel), and thus just not use as many familiar colloquialisms as an Earth human would? What if he is from Alpha Centauri or maybe Izar instead? There seem to be plenty of humans that are not Earth humans in Star Trek, or even some non-humans that look human with no visible differences back in TOS. Just enough so that the phrase "For God's sake" would be weird for his people to say, and that would be an Earth phrase. I mean, would wouldn't normally expect that phrase from say Spock, or Kira, or Worf due to their species. So why not Lorca due to his planet of origin (if not Earth)?
The only information I have about this character's origins states that he "looks human" and that's about it.
The only information I have about this character's origins states that he "looks human" and that's about it.
Last edited:
They are free to believe what they want, and just as I can enjoy Ben Hur or The Prince of Egypt without being a theist, I'm sure they can enjoy Star Trek.
Thank you! This was truly an excellent post and matches my view pretty much 100%.
Is it really a religion without supernatural elements? I guess that's a semantic question. If it is, sure that sort of religion is fine. I just want to see a Federation (and a real future!) where most people have gotten over believing stuff without proper scientific proof.
I mean I'm an atheist and I still celebrate Christmas. I wouldn't call that practising religion though. I'm sure many such traditions will live long past the day when the people stop believing in the supernatural things these things originally signified.
Although there is a certain elegance to the word "fuck" IMO."What the fuck, Bones. What have I done?", Star Trek III as rewritten by Kirsten Beyer.
I like the other way better.
Fuck yeah.
Similar threads
