War. War never changes.
Spoilers Let’s talk about the destruction of Trek utopia…
- Thread starter Anters
- Start date
Then what is it good for?
Ah. Well, that sort of visceral, personal reaction now makes perfect sense, given your life experience. Quite understandable.
Written and directed by Nicholas Meyer no less, right before he directed THE WRATH OF KHAN.
(Fantastic movie, btw.)
Actually Star Trek tells us it's the discovery of warp drive and first contact with aliens that does it.
Not a nuclear war.
Say it again.
[*George Murdock throws thread out of window*]
Exactly this. That war was part of humanity’s decline. A spiral that would have continued if we hadn’t realised there was a universe out there to explore and we weren’t alone in it. It could be argued Trek is a bit colonialist...after all, one of the main reasons we aren’t smashing each other on the head over limited resources and territory is because we are out there in the stars finding new territory and resources (and then occasionally smashing someone on the head over it in most of TOS admittedly) but fundamentally it says ‘isn’t it better when we are explorers, not soldiers’ rather literally.
In this sense, yes Picard is a story looking in, rather than out... but it’s about a man who lost his way, and the federation has lost theirs a little. Now he’s going to find the way back, and in all likelihood the federation will too. It’s precisely the sort of thing DS9 did in little arcs, and even things like the movies occasionally address. A bad choice is made, someone finds the way to the right one.
Even DSC does this, but a bit more hamfistedly.
The one where the blue guy Kelly cheated with comes back and
It turns out he was using pheromones to manipulate people into having sex with him, and I think he ends up bedding both Kelly and Ed. They play it off as a joke when it's really fucked up.
I don’t think they fully play it off as a joke, but they did write themselves into a bit of a corner.
Yup, if anything humanity was in a very steep downward spiral in the 2050's with mass murders of people who were ill with radiation sickness, etc.
It was first contact with Vulcans that was the momentum shift point.
I think the closest we come to Earth not being Utopian in PIC is how Raffi is able to fall through the cracks. She enters a self imposed exile as a hermit, and self medicates to deal with the pain dealt her and which in turn she has dealt herself. I view this as being fairly realistic even in a society with universal full spectrum medical care.
The Federation and Starfleet have rules about not inflicting help onto those who do not want it, and if that principle is made universal, then at the smallest scale we should see the ability of individuals to refuse offered help. It might go so far that help is only offered in the first place if requested, thus no outreach. So in either case Raffi denied the need for help, instead self medicating with space drugs and booze, instead of facing the multiple mental conditions she likely possesses.
If she had been in Starfleet, Starfleet has rules of officer fitness, so she would have had to get treatment or risk being kicked out. But, she had no choice in being fired. Those mental conditions which lead her to her current state of paranoia and conspiracy theory might have lead her to Starfleet intelligence in the first place, meaning she might have been managing until then. But once she was fired it could have caused enough stress to tip her balance and no longer take care of herself. She might have been undergoing long term treatment, but stopped, or suddenly needed treatment.
So, for the first time we see the reality of mental health outside Starfleet. In Starfleet mental health would be a job requirement, among other aspects of health, but outside Starfleet no such requirement would exist.
The Federation and Starfleet have rules about not inflicting help onto those who do not want it, and if that principle is made universal, then at the smallest scale we should see the ability of individuals to refuse offered help. It might go so far that help is only offered in the first place if requested, thus no outreach. So in either case Raffi denied the need for help, instead self medicating with space drugs and booze, instead of facing the multiple mental conditions she likely possesses.
If she had been in Starfleet, Starfleet has rules of officer fitness, so she would have had to get treatment or risk being kicked out. But, she had no choice in being fired. Those mental conditions which lead her to her current state of paranoia and conspiracy theory might have lead her to Starfleet intelligence in the first place, meaning she might have been managing until then. But once she was fired it could have caused enough stress to tip her balance and no longer take care of herself. She might have been undergoing long term treatment, but stopped, or suddenly needed treatment.
So, for the first time we see the reality of mental health outside Starfleet. In Starfleet mental health would be a job requirement, among other aspects of health, but outside Starfleet no such requirement would exist.
IMO mental health should be so advanced by passionate people trying to better themselves that Raffi would be flagged in some database and they'd have some system to help her without her requesting or rejecting it. And if that sounds unimaginable, then so is a world without widespread violence or money.
I honestly think writers just have a hard time writing something that different from today's world but TNG felt more futuristic in that regard. That's ok though this is still really good on its own.
I honestly think writers just have a hard time writing something that different from today's world but TNG felt more futuristic in that regard. That's ok though this is still really good on its own.
Brrrr... what you're describing is not utopian, it's basically a Black Mirror episode. People being institutionalized against their will because a computer algorithm said so is not exactly something I'd want to see in Star Trek.
So if humanity had just sent a warp ship and contacted aliens before WW3, they could have avoided a whole lot of death and destruction.
I don't why, but for some reason, First Contact's idea of how humans finally solved their problems to create a near utopia, feels so flat. It's not the way you'd imagine it, based on the previous Trek episodes.
But the idea that discovering other alien civilizations would cause massive changes to human behavior for the better, does have some logic.
But as far as trying to create a Federation-like society in real life, it's not practical or realistic at all. We can't really wait to accidentally bump into advanced aliens, or create a warp drive because we don't know if it's even possible.
All it does is beg the question, how in the world would humans be able to create a Federation-like future without the spaceships or aliens?
In a way, First Contact made it look even more like a fantasy than 'our possible future'.
She actively avoids treatment, and isn’t falling through any cracks...she’s an addict by choice. That’s how she’s presented as a character. Her paranoia and conspiracy theory is actually right, and had Picard remained Admiral, he would likely have followed up on it.
I haven't watched this episode but I agree with your statement.
As for "The Orville", I've watched it from time to time just because it has some similarities to Star Trek.
But it's made in the dreadful 2010's so I'm not surprised that there are alot of bad stuff in it too.
Last edited:
Similar threads
- Sticky
- Poll
