Human society in TOS and TNG/DS9/VOY

[JarodRussell]

Heya.

I'd like to know a few bits about the depiction of human society in Trek, and how, or IF it evolved in any way. Between TOS and TNG are 100 years, yet it doesn't seem people changed at all. Uniforms, yes. Behavior, no. If you look at how our society changed in the last 100 years, language, style, behavior, itsomehow makes not much sense that between TOS and TNG there's no evolution.

And why are there, even after 200 or 300 years of beaming, phasering, warping, replicating, that there are still 60-, 70-year olds who complain about that technology like they were born in 1950 instead or 2250. It's one of those anachronisms I never liked.

Sisko's father for example made no sense, in my opinion. Replicators were probably in regular use when he was still young. Yet he was portrayed like he was someone from 1990 who sees that slowly food gets replaced with some artificial stuff, and not from 2370, where that artificial stuff is as common as sunshine. If you get what I mean.

Was Sisko's father an AMISH of the 24th century?

And then there's Gene Roddenberry's vision of human society. In the foreword to The Motion Picture (the novel), he describes that there are "primitive" humans serving in Starfleet, and that the civilian society is a strange one, where people have love instructors and no last names and the like. So Kirk and the other Starfleet officers were regarded primitive because they still followed tradition like having last names, and because they were not as intelligent as the normal humans.

Is human society divided into traditionalists and, like, MENSA type of people?

And that was in TOS, in the 23rd century. How did that develop until TNG?

Intelligence is another part. How intelligent is the usual human in the 23rd and 24th century? Starfleet officers in the command positions all seem to be experts in quantum physics, chemistry, biology, etc..., and then they are walking libraries, knowing everything about Shakespeare and alien literature and whatever. Are human brains in Trek's 23rd and 24th century capable of so much more than today?

 

[Anwar]

Well, basically for TOS they just said "Everything is exactly the same only now we're in space" but for TNG onwards they decided to see what kind of social effects contact with aliens and all the new tech would have on human behavior. Unfortunately most people today just deride the TNG+ folks for being a bunch of hippies because apparetly how people act today are the pinnacle of humanity.

 

[Star Wolf]

Heya.

I'd like to know a few bits about the depiction of human society in Trek, and how, or IF it evolved in any way. Between TOS and TNG are 100 years, yet it doesn't seem people changed at all. Uniforms, yes. Behavior, no. If you look at how our society changed in the last 100 years, language, style, behavior, it somehow makes not much sense that between TOS and TNG there's no evolution.

People didn't change at all because human people were portrayed as socially perfect. With alien peoples showing the dark sides of humanity. It took DS9 and the Maquis to even suggest that their were human rebels to The Man.

 

[JarodRussell]

Well, basically for TOS they just said "Everything is exactly the same only now we're in space"...

Yeah, that's something I'd disagree with. Nobody knows what we'll be like in 100, 200, 300 years (if we don't eradicate us), but I think it's safe to say that we won't be the same.


I personally like Roddenberry's idea, as far as I understand it. Human's being totally different in 300 years makes sense to me. And that you need a bunch of more "primitive" guys that are able to travel through space like 300-600 years ago guys like Columbus travelled the seas, because those are more closed minded and hence not as open to all the seduction by alien technology and culture, is also plausible.

But then the little of civilians we've seen in TNG or TOS were just like the Starfleet members. I would say that perhaps Spock's mother would fit Roddenberry's idea of a more evolved human woman, but I'm not sure about that.

 

[DevilEyes]

Well, basically for TOS they just said "Everything is exactly the same only now we're in space" but for TNG onwards they decided to see what kind of social effects contact with aliens and all the new tech would have on human behavior. Unfortunately most people today just deride the TNG+ folks for being a bunch of hippies because apparetly how people act today are the pinnacle of humanity.

Or perhaps they think it's silly and unconvincing to suggest that people will actually reach "the pinnacle of humanity" in just 300 years. Or ever. What is "the pinnacle of humanity", anyway? I'd much rather see people striving to be better and to make their society better, and see that it's better to an extent, but that it still has a lot that could be made better, and that people are working on it - rather than be told "see, everything is perfect, they have no problems at all in their society, isn't it great?" which just seems totally unconvincing. I recently rewatched "Time's Arrow" and rolled my eyes when Troi was going on about how perfect their society was, no poverty, no inequality, etc. That's fantasy, not Science Fiction The only way I could actually buy that scene would be to take it as Troi either exaggerating in order to impress Mark Twain, or being deluded. I really don't think that there can ever be perfect equality and no problems with distribution of wealth, jobs, social structure, etc. in a society, and anyone who says "we live in a prefect society" is just being deluded and complacent. The moment you say "this is the pinnacle of human society", is the moment you stop striving to do anything better.

Or at least that's what Kirk used to believe and TOS seemed to suggest (see "This Side of Paradise"), and in TOS and DS9 you see that Earth society is much better in many ways than it was in 20th century, but that it is not perfect. But apparently TNG is somehow being "more faithful to Gene Roddenberry's vision" - whatever the heck that means - by implying completely the opposite.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

GR's "New Human" schtick really made me cringe. It was just a bunch of wishy washy hippie crap. People will never be like that. At least that's my hope.

 

[Timo]

The idea that we're "the same but in space" in TOS strikes me as perfectly acceptable - as long as we also accept that "we" means the military. Those folks haven't changed all that much since standing armies were (re-)invented half a millennium ago, and there's no particular reason to think that they would in the near future.

One thing that TOS was actively futuristic about was the issue of crime. Everything from use of counterfeit money to attempted genocide was viewed as mental illness, and the "punishment" was medical treatment - and it worked. TNG stayed true to this, adding tidbits about "screenings of the young against criminal tendencies" and examples of memory wipes or personality reworkings, measures actively supported by our 24th century heroes. Again, it seemed to work just fine. Crimes were committed, then very short, standard-length "jail" sentences were issued, and the culprits emerged from their "incarceration" (actually medical treatment) reformed, never to commit said crime again. Yet the treatment didn't seem to leave lasting undesired side effects. For example, the treated ex-cons were still fully capable of performing crimes of other sorts, if they felt justified or obligated to do so. The treatment seemed very precise in nature.

I don't see how it should be unacceptable or even surprising that people in a futuristic/foreign society should appear "deluded". After all, that's what a society is all about. Today, we live in the fantasy that equality of genders, races, social classes or species is desirable, or that killing is bad, or a dozen other well-rooted beliefs that people a mere hundred years ago would have found simply sickening. Obviously, the same will be true of tomorrow - and people may firmly believe that money is fundamentally evil, clones should be killed at sight, and there's no harm in dying as long as one's transporter clone goes on living the original's life.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bertie]

Count me among those who view Trek's attempts to portray some semblance of social evolution to be generally positive. Sure, it can lead to some mistakes, both in misguided politics (*cough, cough* the Prime Directive) and has implications for the amount of drama that can be put on screen if the evolution goes far enough, but it is worth the attempt.

Put another way, just because BSG was good, doesn't mean we need to make all TV/film sci-fi going forward into BSG. And the amount of "gritty" sci-fi out there far outweighs the alternatives. Choices are good.

(And to repeat what others have said above: there already was a fair amount of human evolution — implicit and explicit — in the TOS era. TMP and TNG just pushed it farther.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

People can make minor changes in behavior, true. But in general, human nature will never change. Human beings will always be nasty, brutish, violent animals, and there's no getting around that. The only thing that can be done is what Kirk once said - decide not to kill today.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Obviously, the same will be true of tomorrow - and people may firmly believe that money is fundamentally evil, clones should be killed at sight, and there's no harm in dying as long as one's transporter clone goes on living the original's life.

There are those who believe those things already; me included. Does that make me advanced?

However, your point is a valid one; the "rules" of society change throughout the ages; what's "good" and what's "bad" is merely the agreed upon combination of the moral views of the people living in that society.

An utopia is, by definition, unattainable. As such, all that matters is the journey; what are we willing to do to take society (and the lives of it's people) to a higher level. I assume that, when a few hundred years have passed, we are at least on our way.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I don't see how it should be unacceptable or even surprising that people in a futuristic/foreign society should appear "deluded". After all, that's what a society is all about. Today, we live in the fantasy that equality of genders, races, social classes or species is desirable, or that killing is bad, or a dozen other well-rooted beliefs that people a mere hundred years ago would have found simply sickening. Obviously, the same will be true of tomorrow - and people may firmly believe that money is fundamentally evil, clones should be killed at sight, and there's no harm in dying as long as one's transporter clone goes on living the original's life.

Timo Saloniemi

This was always where Trek had the potential (occasionally fulfilled) to be really interesting science fiction. It is generally a despised episode, but Up the Long Ladder (TNG) actually explored an alternate society scenario, what with the Mariposa's cloned community facing degenerative copy disease and needing to breed with new DNA - to the point that each woman needed to be impregnated by at least three men - an idea that is fairly challenging to today's societal mores which still label a woman a whore for such things. This is a far-fetched but interesting fictional exporation of what could happen should humans clone themselves. Having a group of humans around who were essentially Amish (i.e. not interested in technology) was interesting too. It's also one of the very few Trek episodes in which a difference in society was not written up so that the Starfleet crew could preach to them about their mistakes at the end of the story (ala Justice (TNG)). Half a Life (TNG) was one of the best of these episodes - though Lawaxana was judgmental of Timicin's decision to follow his culture and kill himself, she eventually accepted his difference. The episode was poignant, explored the issues of assisted suicide thoughtfully and through the characters, and was not moralistic in the end.

I, for one, would find Star Trek a thousand times more interesting if it concentrated on stories like that. Assuming humans have spread across the galaxy, integrated with alien species, created colonies under wildly different environmental conditions, with different attitudes towards technology and other basic assumptions of what's good in our current day society - you could tell a million interesting stories that just play with those basic assumptions - but not for moralistic purposes that in the end just reinforce our idea that our current Western society is the pinnacle of human society.

A culture where children are removed from parents at birth to be raised in educational facilities until a certain age.
A culture where marriage is illegal.
A culture where one's first sexual experience is ritualized and public.
A culture where group marriage is customary.
A culture where, to achieve adulthood, children of a certain age must go on a walkabout and all arrive alive, or remain children.

That last one was actually used in the great early ST novel Uhura's Song - though with an alien culture. While this is a formula of Trek's and has resulted in some interesting explorations of culture - notably the Ferengi - I think in many ways it undermines the power of these kinds of stories. Also Trek has tended to reduce what is supposed to be different in an alien culture into a kind of cliched shorthand. Personally I think the implications of the basics of Vulcan and Klingon culture were never all that interestingly extraplored and both races ended up being reduced to simple formulas - Vulcans are logical, Klingons are warriors - without getting too much into how their cultures actually worked day to day the way we saw Ferengi culture work.

It's a huge missed opportunity for Trek and one of the most straightforward things they coudl do to make it interesting SF again. Of course any new tv series that did this would need to air on HBO or Showtime...

 

[TheGodBen]

I suggest we take an American, an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Russian, a Chinese man, an Iranian, a Zimbabwean, and we'll throw in an Aborigine too, and we'll force them to live together without paying them anything and we'll put their lives in danger on a weekly basis. But most importantly of all, we'll add some very beautiful women who walk around in mini-skirts all the time.

Then we'll see if the characters on TOS act just like modern people.

 

[JarodRussell]

Thanks everyone for all your insightful and interesting replys. But it also strays away a bit from my original post. I'd like to know what the depiction of Trek society is "now", and not how it should have been.

But please keep on posting, guys!

GR's "New Human" schtick really made me cringe. It was just a bunch of wishy washy hippie crap. People will never be like that. At least that's my hope.

Well - if you want to read that into Gene's words - I think Roddenberry was also opposed to that kind of society. Who were the heroes of Star Trek? It wasn't those kind of civilians. It was the "primitive" Starfleet officers who always saved the day.

 

[Timo]

I'd like to know what the depiction of Trek society is "now", and not how it should have been.

Well, the new attitude towards crime and possibly other nonconformism is one thing.

Another is the "we hate money, we don't have money, and even if we use things a bit like money, we refuse to call them money" issue. For all we know, it's 90% propaganda and 10% new economics. But it could just as well really be 10% propaganda and 90% new economics. Trek is famous for lacking references to salaries, except as ambiguous sayings ("I'll bet real money" etc.) in the TOS era; we could consider that "new society" all right.

There's the general lack of racism between humans, or between humanlike species; these sentiments have been transferred to relations with less humanlike creatures, or are mainly expressed by those alien creatures. This is a plausible development: a person intolerant of different humans wouldn't survive long in a world where there are so many things far more different than the differentest human that he or she has to cope with. Yet Ben Sisko finds some sort of emotional resonance in the 1960s US racism, which sounds fairly odd when there's nothing like that in his immediate social surroundings...

We see an assortment of adventurers in space, either in Starfleet or in colonial endeavors (many of which revel in artificial hardship and despise central government). Earth is referred to as a paradise, her citizens mainly concerned about fighting boredom. A plausible combination again: adventurous misfits would feel social pull and push to leave Earth. It's just too bad we seldom see the Earth side of that equation, but we can deduce that people like the Outrageous Odona or Harry Mudd are the antithesis of what's going on back home.

Our windows into Earth are mainly Robert Picard, Richard Bashir and Joe Sisko, I guess. The first is a basic back-to-Earther who enjoys the benefits of futuristic prosperity without feeling an obligation to be especially thankful. The second is from a lower social class of sorts, at least from his own point of view, as social standing in the brave new world seems to depend on one finding one's own niche, and Richard hasn't managed that yet. Joe Sisko has found the niche, isn't really opposed to 'em new-fangled gadgets and city folks' ways, and probably just enjoys playing the crumpy grandfather role to the hilt with grandson Jake. He's not actively hating replicators, he's simply making a living on doing things without replicators, for the significant curiosity value.

Any other window ideas?

Well - if you want to read that into Gene's words - I think Roddenberry was also opposed to that kind of society.

Probably. After all, he only put that in writing for TMP, and the purpose there was to create an antagonist to Kirk - Decker, a fellow Starfleet officer who'd have opposing motivations and would be at odds with Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bertie]

I think Timo basically went as far as you can go without leaving the canon behind and doing full-on speculation. And speaking of speculation, this EAS article is some of the best speculation on Earth/Federation society that I know of that remains consistent to the canon in spirit.

The only additional "mirror" I can think of as I write this might be the Risian hotel workers in the infamous "Let He Who Is Without Sin..."; yeah, they're aliens, but they are clearly about as human-like as aliens can be and are meant to represent your typical core-world Federation citizen — the terrorist's speeches in that episode even make the link explicit.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, Risans apparently behaved in a fashion that standard UFP citizens found refreshing and relaxing... Thus perhaps atypical.

The fact that Risans wouldn't prosecute Fullerton and his gang was apparently an issue Worf and Dax agreed on, even though it was their initial instinct to arrest the bunch (indeed, Starfleet seems to be the only police force in the UFP!). Supposedly, then, the same situation on some other planet would have led to Starfleet arresting Fullerton, and the natives prosecuting. Again an apparent difference there.

There might not be anything one could really describe as "typical UFP life" there. Earth could be a paradise to humans, Vulcan to Vulcans, and Andor to Andorians, but all could have different values and customs, much like they have different climates. Risa could cater to the lowest common denominator, or then be something different and exotic again. So perhaps our search for "human society" is in vain - humans off Earth could have societies as different from Earth's as Vulcans or Andorians have, and even when we only usually see the luddite outer colonies, there could be a fuller range of societal models.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I think Timo basically went as far as you can go without leaving the canon behind and doing full-on speculation. And speaking of speculation, this EAS article is some of the best speculation on Earth/Federation society that I know of that remains consistent to the canon in spirit.

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with some pretty basic premises of this article.

It says:

"In debates on this in the past, I've always advocated that some sort of monetary system must exist not only based on in-episode evidence, but to satisfy human nature. Mankind will always strive for prestige in some fashion because we are by our very nature competitive."

"We are by our very nature competitive" is a social bias of contemporary Western society and it is in no way inherent to the human species. The obviosuness of this bias is apparent in the very next sentence of this essay which gives a very simplistic "rebuttal" of communism which is the standard brainless mantra of those who have been been raised on the idea that competition is everything. The article goes on to discuss as an example Boothby, the Starfleet Academy gardener and how his actions can be explained as a way for him to gain prestige. This is ridiculous. No people anywhere are motivated purely by the desire for prestige and people of the Federation are explicitly motivated by other values. People are motivated by things like responsibility and duty, wisdom and companionship, tradition and innovation, a desire for peace of mind, a desire to challenge oneself, and yes, the desire to impress other people. To reduce the economic and societal system of the Federation to a knee-jerk race for prestige is to ignore not only a ton of material from Star Trek but also teh complexities of human nature.

 

[DevilEyes]

There's the general lack of racism between humans, or between humanlike species; these sentiments have been transferred to relations with less humanlike creatures, or are mainly expressed by those alien creatures. This is a plausible development: a person intolerant of different humans wouldn't survive long in a world where there are so many things far more different than the differentest human that he or she has to cope with. Yet Ben Sisko finds some sort of emotional resonance in the 1960s US racism, which sounds fairly odd when there's nothing like that in his immediate social surroundings...

Oh come on, you can't be serious. They may not be any apparent racism between Star Trek Humans in the 23rd and 24th century, but we've seen plenty of examples of racism between humanoid races, including the Federation ones, in every show and many of the movies. We've even seen many Federation Starfleet officers and crewmembers use racial slurs, express disparaging attitudes and prejudice, and even downright racial hatred - even towards their fellow Federation races - Humans to Vulcans, and Vulcans to Humans. From the "friendly" racist banter between McCoy and Spock, to the more serious moments like Scotty's outburst against Spock in "Day of the Dove", to the downright hatred of Stiles towards Romulans and towards Vulcans and specifically Spock, just because they look similar. The Vulcans themselves have consistently displayed prejudice and disparaging attitudes towards Humans, Romulans and anyone else who they don't deem "logical" enough. (No, you don't even have to get to "Enterprise" or ST09 - it's always been there, starting with TOS.) And how about the racism and hatred many Starfleet Humans and other Starfleet officers have shown, over and over, towards members of the races they were in war or had been in war before - Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians? From Stiles in "Balance of Terror", to everyone in "Day of the Dove" and Undiscovered Country (including, in particular, Kirk, but also some random crewmembers who had no personal reason we knew of to hate the Klingons), to Miles O'Brien and Captain Maxwell's issues with Cardassians, and so on? And that's all without even looking outside of Federation, and seeing all the racism, distrust, xenophobia, colonial attitudes, even genocide between various humanoid races who look very similar and are apparenetly so similar in their DNA that they are able to have children together. Cardassians and Bajorans, Klingons and Cardassians, Romulans and everyone else. And that's just the humanoid races. Plus, before Changelings became the "Founders" and genocidal oppressors, we know that they had been mistreated by "solids" for ages.

With all those examples right under his nose, I'd be surprised if Sisko was not sensitive to examples of racism in Earth history. Some people know their planet's history. And not just Sisko - Picard used slavery as a comparison to what Starfleet could do with intelligent androids like Data, as an argument in his court speech in "Measure of a Man".

 

[JarodRussell]

Yeah, now we're talking! Thanks so much guys!

Another is the "we hate money, we don't have money, and even if we use things a bit like money, we refuse to call them money" issue. For all we know, it's 90% propaganda and 10% new economics. But it could just as well really be 10% propaganda and 90% new economics. Trek is famous for lacking references to salaries, except as ambiguous sayings ("I'll bet real money" etc.) in the TOS era; we could consider that "new society" all right.

Could it be that in TOS society still used money, yet 100 years later in TNG they got rid of it?


Further thing on the money... let's just imagine at some point money ceases to exist. The why is not important at the moment, think of some technobabble if you will. But what happens to your society once you can't make any profit anymore because all the money you have is suddenly totally worthless?

It would automatically turn into something we call communism today. When people can't drive towards profit, they need a new direction, a new goal. And it depends on the nature of humans, but I think it would be a positive goal. Like "we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity" like Picard said.

Just imagine what would happen if Hollywood movies and Star Trek novels weren't made for money anymore. Either they would cease to exist because nobody ever wants to make movies and books again, or they would be completely free of any restrictions. Anybody could write, anybody could film, if anything is free. It's a very utopic idea, but once money vanished (for whatever reason), any society would adapt to that change, wouldn't it?

But the question remains if that change happened between TOS and TNG? I think that's plausible. Kirk & Co still had Federation credits to "buy a boat", Picard & Co grew up in a world without any money (on Earth at least).

The only additional "mirror" I can think of as I write this might be the Risian hotel workers in the infamous "Let He Who Is Without Sin..."; yeah, they're aliens, but they are clearly about as human-like as aliens can be and are meant to represent your typical core-world Federation citizen — the terrorist's speeches in that episode even make the link explicit.

Great point. The Risans look like they are those uberevolved citizens. They seem to practice free love all day and are only interested in psychedelic, mind-expanding stuff. And we also see the reactions to that: Trills like Jadzia have no problem with that, Ferengi like Quark are only after the sex, and Klingons like Worf have huge problems with that entire attitude.



I also think Sisko's reaction to 1960s racism was too contrived. Let's face it, he lives in the year 2370, almost 360 years after a black man became President of the United States (okay, they didn't know about that when they wrote the episode, but still the general consensus was that stuff like racism ceased to exist hundreds of years before Sisko was born). So Sisko wouldn't even KNOW what racism against black people is, nor would he care about what happened in the 1960s. And then he wouldn't care about a friggin' holodeck program set in the 1960s.

 

[DevilEyes]

I also think Sisko's reaction to 1960s racism was too contrived. Let's face it, he lives in the year 2370, almost 360 years after a black man became President of the United States (okay, they didn't know about that when they wrote the episode, but still the general consensus was that stuff like racism ceased to exist hundreds of years before Sisko was born). So Sisko wouldn't even KNOW what racism against black people is, nor would he care about what happened in the 1960s. And then he wouldn't care about a friggin' holodeck program set in the 1960s.

He lived a life, in a way, as Benny Russell, a man faced with racism in the 1950s. Of course he would know about it, just like Picard knew the life he had in "The Inner Light".