Here Here!
Is Deep Space Nine racist?
- Thread starter Destructor
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Here Here!
The changelings/Founders are spectacularly racist/speciesist. Doesn't make the show racist, but as another poster posted, it is race aware.
As much as I enjoyed Beyond I could not see the character arc with Kirk. Unless he was hoping the 5 year mission was exploring pretty humanoid space babes and not tiny little creatures that tear your shirt. I know most of the cast are human beings cos the audience needs to identify with them but its shame the senior bridge crew of a Starfleet ship cant be truely diverse. Spock is the token alien in the command structure. No wonder TOS Sarek hated Starfleet.
As in real life all those pale folks above a certain age wish segregation and Jim Crow never happened.....right and would pass a Guess who is coming to dinner test? LOL
Sometimes for attitudes to change a few generations have to die off. The ST generation who lived when Klingon = bad guys were still alive and kicking when Scotty retired.
Another real life example, there are people over a certain age in the UK who still thinkg all Germans are suspect..70 years after WW2
Personally, I want to see more humans in Star Trek, not fewer.
First of all, I liked the way the mostly human cast of the original Star Trek explored and demonstrated human diversity, the kind of diversity encountered in the really real world.
Second, unless an alien character is thoroughly developed in a nuanced way, as Spock was, it comes across like window dressing, an artificial way to add something interestingly exotic, which in addition to lazy writing is the exact opposite of sensitivity to diversity. All the casual talk in Deep Space Nine about Morn's multiple stomachs and off-screen nonentities who have children by budding or who sport transparent skulls, its all a transparent (pun intended) use of extraterrestrials to make the station seem weird and bizarre, and to make its humans more normatively human.
Third, even when a member of the main cast is an alien, the writers often use the fact as a crutch to generate stories and character interactions, inadvertently denying the possibility of such stories and interests to real, genuine human beings. Kira and Jadzia are strong, assertive females, but they're both alien females (and Jadzia is androgynous to boot). What the station needed was more human women like Cassidy Yates.
^ Which shows the difficulty of developing a fictional universe. If there was a real life Federation I doubt intelligent aliens would allow new kids on the block humans to dominate so much of it. Why should they? The Enterprise is meant to be the flagship of the fleet, a fleet that defends a multi-species Federation where transparent skulls and multiple stomachs are as normal as human beings with blonde hair and blue eyes, even though in real life such human traits are a genetic minority, but if one was an alien from outer space watching our movies and tv, you would think that was the human norm.
Star Trek is presented the way it is cos its human audience must see itself as the dominant species. Even though how it is presented makes as much sense as having a tv show about the US navy where 90% of the characters are African American on the submarine US Enterprise lol
Star Trek is presented the way it is cos its human audience must see itself as the dominant species. Even though how it is presented makes as much sense as having a tv show about the US navy where 90% of the characters are African American on the submarine US Enterprise lol
Oh really? In what way?
If you're referring to how "alike" the Founders are, well, they have an excuse. It's called the Great Link.
And the OP made one error that I can see right away: describing the Ferengi as always honoring the terms of a contract. They do nothing of the kind. As we have seen, Ferengi will break a contract whenever it suits them (it's even built-in to their Rules of Acquisition, which has things like "Never be afraid to mislabel a product"). Although it usually SHOULDN'T suit them, because if enough people realize how often this happens, they won't do business with the Ferengi. And if there's one thing the Ferengi hate, it's losing customers...
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No, I don't mean that at all. I mean their racism. How they despise and fear solids--and look down on them as well. This attitude rules and informs all their important actions, eg, conquering and becoming the "gods" of the GQ, genetically engineering the Jem'hadar and Vorta, and launching an all-out war on the AQ.
The human dominance of the Federation does seem unrealistic at first blush. On the other hand, if someone wrote a science-fictional series in the nineteenth century and that series depicted Americans (Yankees, USA-ers) dominating the global politics and alliances of the mid-twentieth to early-twenty-first centuries, I'll bet readers would raise similar objections: "If there was a real-life NATO or United Nations, I doubt people would allow new-kids-on-the-block Yankees to dominate so much of it. Why should they?" Yet here we are.
And the comparison is not merely analogous. The Starfleet and Federation of the original Star Trek were largely modeled on and allegorical of post-WWII USA and its constellation of global allies. In other words, right at the time the USA took a huge step forward in global dominance, a US television show aired about humans who'd recently taken a huge step forward in galactic dominance.
What Star Trek never provided, to the best of my knowledge, was an analogous explanation for the huge step. There's no allegorical event equivalent to WWII (I suppose we could consider the Romulan War) and no allegorical technology equivalent to atomic and nuclear weapons. Instead of providing such explanation, the Generation-era spin offs (aired in a later, arguably less history conscious America) strayed from the original premise. The UFP is no longer a science-fictional USA, at least not so obviously. But because of the limits of production and audience expectation to which you allude, the UFP remains dominated by humans and in fact dominated more or less by Americans with the typical Hollywood look, which is less defensible with the original premise abandoned.
Maybe an Earther developing warp drive (or discovering the space warp, as it where) might be such an explanation? Naaaaah.
I just finished binging DS9 and there were a handful of conversations I hadn't noticed before that made me uncomfortable (which surprised me since DS9 is the best Trek). A recurring theme in DS9 was that almost every species had a problem killing members of its own species. Bajorans balked at killing Bajorans (justified as collaborators), Cardassians balked at killing Cardassians (a totalitarian police state can't function without killing it's own citizens), etc. Even Sisko balked at killing humans during a Maquis episode (Really? Because humans don't kill humans?).
There were several conversations throughout the series that seemed odd and out of place, particularly in a supposed enlightened future. Why is killing another human taboo, but it's fine killing a sentient Cardassian?
There were several conversations throughout the series that seemed odd and out of place, particularly in a supposed enlightened future. Why is killing another human taboo, but it's fine killing a sentient Cardassian?
Only if the US gained global dominance by being the last country in the world to develop nuclear weapons.
However the USA global dominance came when the global dominance of other powers was waning e.g Western Europe, especially Great Britain, Ottoman Empire. There is no ST version of this; Earth enters the global arena where Vulcan, Andoria and other galactic powers are not in decline as per ST Enterprise. Vulcan, even after their second Reformation hands over Earth to look after itself not because it has to but due to a change of government they decide to view Earth as an independant status rather than a galactic baby.
Only if such a person was the first known sentient being to do so, there is no evidence that Cochrane was the first being to develop warp drive, after all how were the Andorians, Romulans, Vulcans everyone else managing?
It's amazing how little familiarity there is with major moments of consolidation in internationals affairs beyond NATO/UN in this thread. What about Pax Romana, the Monroe Doctrine/Big Brother policy or more importantly, Pax Victoriana?
If I were to compare the Federation to an Earth political system, I would compare it to the Holy Roman Empire under the Hapsburgs (ignoring that Federation Presidents always seem to be aliens), with a centralized government with a unitary foreign policy that favored the leading member, but a high degree of regional autonomy and internecine conflict. Each member state maintains its own military (notably, we see Vulcan naval ships in even 24th century Treks), but also contributes to the Imperial military. Like the Hapsburgs, Earth doesn't have an independent military (unlike the Vulcans). Instead, Earth's military is the Imperial military. I imagine a universe where the Federation collapsed or another species became dominant in the Federation with the human planets absorbing the Federation military as it's own as they lost coalition power.
The United Nations is hardly dominated by the Yankees, although the US pays a large portion of the UN's bills. Thankfully the US isn't dominated by the UN either. You wouldn't want to be dominated by an organization in which a majority of its members are ruled by dictators, thugs, and other cultures that oppose liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc.
The Federation, with the Earth as the leading member, seems to be a benign power with the member states maintaining their own sovereignty and autonomy. For whatever reason, it's an arrangement that appears to work for all that are involved.
The UN should count its lucky stars that it doesn't have to suffer the curse of the bambino.Or the Red Sox...
No, the US does not completely dominate the UN, but as one of the five permanent Security Council members, it has a great deal of power, and certainly more than most nineteenth-century folks would probably credit, given how limited the United States' global influence was pre-WWII.
And the US would more fully dominate the UN if there weren't two other permanent Security Council members, Russia and China, that routinely counter its global interests, even though these states were its WWII allies. It would be as if the Klingons and humans had been allies in the Romulan War and emerged the competing power players in a subsequent galactic confederation of some sort. Heck, maybe it's what galactic politics will look like between the humans, Klingons and Romulans after the Dominion War.
All those Enterprise plots may be considered canon now by Star Trek fans and Star Trek writers, but they weren't part of the original Star Trek program's premise. To the contrary, they were created and influenced by writers of Generation-era Trek, with its different conception of the Federation.
But even taking Enterprise into account, human dominance of the twenty-third century UFP might make sense. You have to remember that there's about a hundred year gap, plenty of time for galactic politics to shift and galactic powers to wane. The US and UK have been key allies throughout US history, but throughout the nineteenth century, the US was definitely the junior partner in terms of global influence. By the late twentieth century (arguably by the mid twentieth century) the two allies' roles somewhat flipped. It reminds me of twenty-second century Vulcan-human relations vs. twenty-third century Vulcan-human relations.
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