Except it hadn't and that was abundantly clear in all the old shows.
Spoilers Let’s talk about the destruction of Trek utopia…
- Thread starter Anters
- Start date
Except it hadn't and that was abundantly clear in all the old shows.
But that can't be! Humanity did left [insert negative thing here] behind! Picard said so!
... seriously, far too many people take whatever bullshit the characters say for definitive objective statements about the setting. Especially considering this preaching quietly flickered out as Gene's influence waned and the characters didn't even practice what they preached most of the time while it was still there.
I mean, I personally generally like to at least try to take the characters at their word and imagine how things can be that way. I will generally side against the idea of Sisko paying waiters, etc, etc. But evolving beyond certain things (like money) in no way equals the sort of perfection that some people seem determined to read into the old series, and even that much progress was always very clearly limited. No money required to live on Earth is defensible, no pay required for working on Earth or in Starfleet is defensible, but other parts of the Federation are already much more dubious and anything outside the Federation (like Freecloud) is obviously not at all bound by any of those statements.
And in terms of 'human nature' specifically we have literally dozens upon dozens of episodes explicitly based on humans acting badly for often very similar reasons that people act badly today up against what is really only a handful of speeches and statements most of which are either super-specific (humans don't kill themselves with drugs or enslave animals for food) or just incredibly vague and inspirational (the challenge is to improve yourself! - kind of automatically means there is still the obvious option of not improving yourself...).
There's really no other option than to assume that when Picard talks about Humans having 'evolved beyond' these things, he's talking about the best of humanity, not every individual human in the Federation.
Picard (at times) was a clueless boob who lived in a fantasy bubble of his own misconceptions.
Gene's Vision™ was a real pisser.
Clear to us, sure.
I don't actually know how someone would get into that headspace., but it looks like people have managed it
Yeah, it's as though it's not optimistic enough that the human race didn't destroy itself but instead united to go to the stars, eventually joining a United Federation of Planets, composed of myriad alien species working together in peace; they want to escape to a perfect future with no swearing, no schoolyard fights, no smoking, no pushy reporters, etc.
Last edited:
We survived World War III, the Xindi threat, the Earth-Romulan War and numerous confrontations and conflicts with the Klingons, Cardassians, Talarians, Tzenkethi, Borg and Dominion and yet the problem is that Starfleet post-2375 seems to be a bitter and secretive organization that doesn't live up to its principles. I guess all that Trek between 1966 and 2005 said otherwise and I'm just forgetting.
Imagine if we ever see an actual naked boob in Star Trek. The forums will explode. You haven't seen nothing yet
Remember, Kzinti are now canon too
I have no problem with allowing people to take from Star Trek what they want. If all they are interested in is the pew-pew or the tight catsuits, fine. Picard is rather low key as science fiction. I don't know if there is an equivalent science fiction as there is low fantasy, but there is very little fetishizing of technology. Indeed, there is no new technology that wasn't already introduced in any previous series, including Discovery. There are no beauty shots of the hero ship--assuming La Sirena is the hero ship. Even Dahj and Soji are more like BSG's skinjobs than Data's more robotic, yet anatomically correct, construction. Picard is not serving that crowd.
That said, Star Trek has always attempted to be more than escapism, whether from the viewpoint of Gene Roddenberry or any of the showrunners and writers who followed from the creation of their respective series. Piller, Moore, Behr, Fuller, and others wanted to use the series a platforms to analyze the human condition with a slant to being able to improve humanity and free it from social strife. Certainly, the producers made a big deal out of this aspect starting in the 1990s. Berman and Piller were everywhere promoting Star Trek as something that was of great political importance:they were the Clash of television, the only show that mattered.
Some who are coming here to complain about Picard are doing so in a way that distorts the series that have come before, both in terms of what happened in episodes and what the creators said their intentions were. They are doing so not in terms of what happened in the current episodes or in the past, but according to their culture war. In another venue, someone out of nowhere complained about how Troi addressed Picard for his treatment of Soji--another "wahmen" dominating our hero. What? Not only was this in character, this was the reaction of a professional--who the fuck cares if it was a woman!
I have found in the seven years I have posted on this forum that there exists thoughtful points of view with which I disagree. It changes my impressions, sometime making me like something I disliked. I would hope more of this type of engagement would show up with Picard.
Imagine if we ever see an actual naked boob in Star Trek. The forums will explode. You haven't seen nothing yet
I'm more of a butt guy, and besides, the biggest boobs on Star Trek currently belong to Will Riker
It doesn’t bother me too much, it reflects the paranoia we’ve experienced since 9/11.
And I don’t think things are even that much darker in 2399 than the 2370s. The camera just points at darker places.
And I don’t think things are even that much darker in 2399 than the 2370s. The camera just points at darker places.
And keep in mind...the Federation/Starfleet had planned on using Hugh to commit genocide on an unimaginable scale against the Borg.
Mind you, the Borg were unlike any threat the Federation had ever faced, but the simple fact is they were planning on killing billions, if not trillions, of living beings all at once.
Mind you, the Borg were unlike any threat the Federation had ever faced, but the simple fact is they were planning on killing billions, if not trillions, of living beings all at once.
Because that's the mythos which has built up in popular culture over the decades, that trek features evolved humans who have eliminated all flaws and character flaws. TOS certainly didn't, TNG didn't, DS9 made a point of challenging that idea, but still it persists amongst a subset of people who read it somewhere and don't, for whatever reason, choose to apply their thinkjng critically or look at the evidence.
Like flat earthers.
Because it is uncomfortable.
One of the big issues:
TOS - Was NOT designed or envisioned as directly 'family friendly' viewing. They weren't going to go out of their way to make it really 'adult'; but with many of the topics, it was never designed as a 'family/primarily kids' show. They wanted to do adult themes for the time; and they did.
As time went on TOS became (because issues changed and some of the topics it had dealt with had been resolved and weren't seen as 'edgy' any longer), and Star Trek was molded to be more geared to the whole family as time went on to the point that TNG overall became very 'family friendly' and Rick Berman took more of the reigns from Gene Roddenberry as GR got older.
Now DS9 and ENT tried to get back to doing 'edgier' stuff; while VOY was in UPN's/Paramount's more 'family friendly' vision (again as time went on, VOY had a really interesting premise that was all but abandoned 3 episodes in.
But my point: TNG became the epitome of 'family friendly' Star Trek; and overall, I think MANY TNG fans hoped Picard would try to maintain that because yes, while we're in 2020 - this series still has a very family friendly and forthright character in 'Jean-Luc Picard'; and many wanted that one character aspect to continue into whatever situation the character found himself in.
^^^
The problem for them is: Patrick Stewart DIDN'T. He didn't want to reprise late 1980's/early 1990's Picard in any way. He wanted to make a statement with this show and show a side of the Picard character no one had seen; and there's many a TNG fan who heard this from him, but it either didn't register, or they somehow thought: "No, the circumstances may be dire but Picard is Picard..." - and in a way, that's EXACTLY what the show is to a degree, but because of the situation, it's showing full force how flawed and unreal (even in the 24th century) Picard's view was; and that Picard is now realizing the Federation was NEVER as good/grand/altruistic as he believed; and further that his actions in the past years and his own unwillingness to compromise never helped the situation...
^^^
And some fans who LOVED that aspect of Picard's character (that he's always 'right' and never compromises on a single moral principle -- Which is probably HOW the character became so popular with the "Conservative Right" in the U.S. and abroad; but that's a whole other discussion for a different area of this BBS
) can't cope with that revelation as presented in this series - thus the cries of: "ST: Picard is too dark, and NOT STAR TREK!"
Last edited:
is Picard a right-wing icon now? eww
Every Captain has been embraced, at some point, by all sides of the political spectrum.
He's popular on both sides of the political fence - because both sides tend to interpret him in a way that fits to their political leaning. That's why a LOT of... shall we say... more conservative Trek fans hurled abuse at Sir Patrick on Twitter for "alienating half of your fanbase" when he said PIC would be a loose analogy re: Trump, Brexit, etc. They really did view Jean-Luc as one of their own until now (as cringeworthy as I personally find this to be).
Personally I've signed up just to say that it's definitely effecting my viewing pleasure of this show not that I hate Picard or anything. Although I can take on-board a lot of what people are saying. I think my problem comes down to the fact that Picard is operating outside of the Star Fleet. While there were always bad actors in Trek ultimately the governmental systems that were in place came to the right decision in the end. I would suggest that Star Trek in general was Utopian in the sense that it offered a look at the best possible society rather than a literally perfect one. I realise that DS9 was a lot of a dark Trek franchise but I don't really feel that it gave up on the core of good governance which I feel that Picard has. Also I'm probably letting DS9 off easier as I think it's a better show.
Also politically I find it a lot more ambiguous, I kind of feel that it could be seen as siding with a Trumpian/ Brexit view of the world very easily. Although I don't think they intended on that being the take away.
Also politically I find it a lot more ambiguous, I kind of feel that it could be seen as siding with a Trumpian/ Brexit view of the world very easily. Although I don't think they intended on that being the take away.
Similar threads
- Sticky
- Poll
