• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Is the utopistic Trek gone with this movie?

Murder is fairly common in my country, and I don't live in some distant Third World. Every single day in my city there are more murders.
May I ask what city you live in? My city has 600,000 people and we have about 25 murders a year.

:)

My city has about 134k residents and murders are rare rare things. about four or five a decade, if you include manslaughter.
 
Murder is fairly common in my country, and I don't live in some distant Third World. Every single day in my city there are more murders.
May I ask what city you live in? My city has 600,000 people and we have about 25 murders a year.

:)

My city has about 134k residents and murders are rare rare things. about four or five a decade, if you include manslaughter.

We had three just yesterday!
Inquirer said:
Philadelphia was hit by a burst of violence Friday with three homicides and the shooting of a woman by police near one of the crime scenes.
 
A Utopia is a world without famine, disease or war.
Star Trek's The United Federation of Planets is attempting to create a society (as a interstellar federal republic) amongst the Federation of the above just as in modern day the United Nations are trying to accomplish that within the 192 member countries on Earth.
cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace.
according to Wikipedia.
Current politics aside this is what the Federation is trying to do in the Star Trek future.
I'm pretty sure Gene Roddenberry modeled the Federation on the United Nations and added a republic centralized governmental body. Here is what the Star Trek Wiki says about the Federation:
planetary governments that agreed to exist semi-autonomously under a single central government based on the principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality
For example, the "no money" thing I think wasn't actually established until TVH, as there are references to money invested in the crew's training in TOS.
I think this thread shows the use and need of money even within and outside the Federation in the Star Trek universe.
Trying to figure out the Federation Economy

I don't think we'll see the ideas about a utopian society that Roddenberry created in the next 2 feature films. Not until the next Trek TV series...
 
He says "they're still using money" implying they stopped using it by his time. But that's nowhere near as strong as First Contact's "money doesn't exist in the 24th century". It could just mean that in Kirk's time Earth doesn't use money internally, and the rest of the Federation does.
 
Did Kirk mention about the 'Federation Bank' in A piece of the action or something? Maybe they use money as a computerised thing, but not as a physical thing
 
*Feels safe in England*

Really? Dude...I live in Bournemouth.A sleepy little town on the south coast. The town has a reputation for being a big 'retirement village', and we've had three or four murders this year so far at least!

That's on top of muggings, rapes, assaults....
 
The Federation is not and has never been a utopia. It has always been a thoroughly good and decent society that presents the audience with a positive, optimistic vision of the future, but it has also always been a society beset by social problems and conflicts of its own.
 
The Federation is not and has never been a utopia. It has always been a thoroughly good and decent society that presents the audience with a positive, optimistic vision of the future, but it has also always been a society beset by social problems and conflicts of its own.

Bingo.
 
He says "they're still using money" implying they stopped using it by his time.
As I recall, Kirk said this after witnessing someone on the street purchasing a newspaper from a vending machine. He expressed no surprise along the lines of "They're still buying things," but rather that the individual was employing coins.

Vending machines are about the only time I use "money" anymore. If Kirk had arrived in the past forty or fifty years later than he had, he might not have seen any people "still" using money.

:)
 
We saw characters using money all the time in TOS, perhaps most famously in "The Trouble with Tribbles," where Uhura haggles with Cyrano Jones over how many Federation credits a tribble is worth. Hell, several important TOS episodes don't even make sense if the Federation literally has no currency of any sort -- "Mudd's Women," "Journey to Babel," and "The Devil in the Dark."
 
We saw characters using money all the time in TOS, perhaps most famously in "The Trouble with Tribbles," where Uhura haggles with Cyrano Jones over how many Federation credits a tribble is worth. Hell, several important TOS episodes don't even make sense if the Federation literally has no currency of any sort -- "Mudd's Women," "Journey to Babel," and "The Devil in the Dark."
De Salle's line* from "Catspaw" wouldn't make much sense, either, if credits were anything but a form of currency.

catspawhd0850-1.jpg


(* DeSalle's Command to Engineering has here been excised.)
 
Tracey: "Virtual immortality, or as much as any man will ever want."

Kirk: "For sale by ... "

Tracey: "By those who own the serum."

:)
 
Maybe they are there, just not making a big production number out of something that is no one's business in the forst place, especially in settings where it has bo relevance.



of course. Because no characters in Trek ever discuss their heterosexuality when it comes to dating, relationships, etc., right? But gay characters would have to keep things quiet, because in their case, it would be "no one's business."


a nice standard of equality, there. "sure, be gay, just keep it QUIET, ok?"

Well, now that the US military is abolishing "Don't ask, don't tell", maybe Starfleet will finally follow suit as well. :p
 
Well, now that the US military is abolishing "Don't ask, don't tell", maybe Starfleet will finally follow suit as well.
Well, the US military isn't abolishing "don't ask, don't tell," the US government is. The military didn't want it in the first place, their Commander in Chief (Clinton) forced it upon them.

:)
 
Can we stop talking about IRL politics?

Yeah instead we should focus of how the Federation of the 24th century (Which everyone is really think about when they say the Federation is a utopia) really isn't a utopia but is instead so evil they let entire worlds die and say it isn't their problem, who would dump their principals the moment it becomes convienent for them, who seem to want to rule over the entire universe and launch miltary action againsy anyone who gets in their way, who use their own people has political pawns and then get involved in the problems of another power becuase said people aren't happy with the situation even though those people aren't a part of them anymore, and finally let their starship commanders do all sorts of illegal and amoral things and the PROMOTE them!
 
TOS was never supposed to be utopian. It showed a future that worked, that was better than today, but people were still struggling and feuding and trying to make a go of it on the final frontier. It was a positive vision of the future, as opposed to all the post-apocalyptic dystopias out there, but people still fought and argued and had their hearts broken . . .

The new movie felt like TOS to me. You have people from different planets and cultures united in a commmon Federation. It's not a post-atomic wasteland, the apes and the killer robots haven't taken over, Big Brother is not watching.

It's a future that works, but not one without problems or disagreement.

Just like the original series.

(But, yeah, the lack of gay characters in TREK has been embarrassing for years. Hell, even sitcoms have gay characters these days, but TREK keeps pussyfooting around the issue.)

I like the fact that their has yet to be a token gay character, nothing annoys me more then a character like the will and grace type, purposely extra flaming as if to say, look at me i'm gay, I like a penis in me, see my bright pink shirt and capri pants, and my bejeweled phaser...ick it is demeaning to gay people, not supportive.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top