It's a good point that it can be difficult to have meaningful social commentary on some issues given that the Federation is post-scarcity while our world and societies are certainly not so Trek trying to address some economic issues could come off as irrelevant preaching. Other issues more related to foreign affairs could have a lot of promise, though, especially relations with the Klingons.
Social Commentary in this new Star Trek show
- Thread starter The Overlord
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Man, the prime directive episodes have really gone wrong.
I always interpreted the prime directive as "don't give antimatter-technology to civilisations still at war with each other". And "don't preach your own ideology on other cultures, let them find enlightment on their own". As well as being a great excuse why we today haven't heard of aliens yet (figuring out FTL-travel on it's own being a good threshold for first contacts). Basically the intention was some sort of anti-colonialism, were you don't change the world by direct intervention, but by being a positive example on your own. And that's how it was basically handeled everytime outside of those special "prime directive" episodes.
But all these "we are not going to help innocents and patting ourselves on the back for it" episodes were completely bonkers. And anti-thetical to everything introduced in TOS. (Remember when they broke the prime directive to save this civilisation on a doomed artificial asteroid? The even mentioned how they would violate it, but looking at the alternative they never even considered not to/were never ordered not to/were never punished for intervening because people aren't complete monsters.
I love TNG, but introducing that weird notion about the prime directive (which basically boils down to "god wants it that way, so we don't question it") was one of the worst things. And basically made you question how they ever established diplomatic relations with other species.
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Hardly a given, the federation seems to constantly be on the search for natural resources. Plus there can be commentary on why gays were absent in Starflett up until now.
I absolutely wouldn't want there to be a reason given for the lack of gay characters. Anything they come up with is going to either erase gays from Trek's future or destroy their vision of a united humanity. I don't see any way to justify the erasure without destroying future use of gay characters. Just do fair diversity going forward.
^^^ Not at all, there can be a storyline on how gays within the collective Federation membership (or just Earth) were formerly suppressed/oppressed and "now" things were changing. Gay quietly within Starfleet were openly serving.
Most of today's Human population live in areas where gays are to varing degrees oppressed.
Most of today's Human population live in areas where gays are to varing degrees oppressed.
I just can't see the Federation doing something like that. I think it would be best to just introduce gay characters and not really acknowledge that they were the first we saw. They've always been there, we just haven't seen them.
If they want to do a story like you're talking about, it would be best to do outside of the Federation.
If they want to do a story like you're talking about, it would be best to do outside of the Federation.
I think it would depend on the era. Perhaps between TOS and TNG I could see it working, but the rest feels too on the nose, as far as a commentary goes. Not that Star Trek has always done the sexual politics especially well, but I think an alien species could provide more room for comment.
Not sure how ell it would work.
Not sure how ell it would work.
Revealing that Trek's history in the 23rd and 24th century were less progressive than western civilization currently is on gay rights would be terrible. It would discredit everything we ever heard about humanity's optimistic progression to learn that all along there were severe oppression of gays in Starfleet and Earth.
It wouldn't just be a crack in the facade, it would make a mockery of everything Trek was supposed to stand for.
I don't see where we need an explanation for the absence of gays in Trek's past. The real reason is that the real world wasn't evolved enough yet. It's bad enough that I've lived my life in a homophobic world, don't take the optimistic future of Trek away. Just move forward with better diversity.
Not only that, but society is bitterly divided on what the right or wrong side is on most issues. I guess the same was true of the 60s but there seems to be less interest in actually engaging intellectually and instead it's just about getting outraged and hurling insults from the parapets. It remains to be seen whether CBS is really interested in backing a show that is highly politicized.
It doesn't have to be though, is the larger point. A great point of science fiction is to have our heroes be the ones looking from the outside in on issues that are very relevant to current society. They offer a different point of view because they look at it a different way, and can comment on how odd it is. "Let that be your last battlefield" is a rather on the nose example, but illustrates how our heroes were rather unimpressed by the arguments between Bel and Loki.
A post scarcity world can allow the viewer to see things from a different point of view. Maybe my utopian visions are not the same as the next person's but it's nice to imagine a world from a different point of view. That's the idea of speculative fiction.
I disagree obviously. Maybe it's because I'm one of the fans who has never seen the Federation as "utopian," but I would like to see a society that is in the process of making advances, and not one that is perfect in every way. It wouldn't have to be gay rights exclusively, nor would it have to be a center point of the show, depict a society (the one the heroes are a part of) that has a diversity of opinions on multiple societial issues.
Don't (please don't) have all the main characters be on one side of every issue. There are hundreds of billions of beings in the Federation ... they all agree on major aspects of their own society?
The heroes will come from different cultures, they were raised with different accepted standards, and they would carry those different social standards into their adult lives.
Basic concepts and civil rights that you and I would hold as essential, would be viewed by some Starfleet officers as completely obsurd.
Even objectionable.
It was, but then it might be argued that this was because it was first. There's that famous graph that gets posted here a lot, of overall ratings performance through the Trek series of the 80s, 90s and 00s, and I think the same steady decline would be seen regardless of the order in which you arranged the series. Voyager was quite deliberately a soft reboot of TNG in terms of tone and yet continued the decline just as DS9 and ENT did. I don't think we can attribute TNG's success purely to its attitude to the future.
Personally, I feel TNG has dated the most noticeably of all the Trek series, even the original. While the original visually smacks of the sixties, I think its stories, characters and plots hold up better to the modern eye than a lot that TNG did. TNG just seems, to me, quite naive and preachy looking back on it. Some of Picard's speeches are cringeworthy in retrospect.
They absolutely shouldn't, and there will be hot button topics in the 24th century just as there are now. But I don't think having a current social issue reflected almost verbatim in 24th century humans makes sense or works in the story. It would look as out of place as teenagers in 2016 New York being shown discussing the best ways of identifying witches.
By all means, they can have an issue they fall on both sides of, but it should be a new one, specific to the time. DS9 sort-of went there with genetic engineering, but didn't push it all the way or allow it to develop as an issue. In retrospect, that choice seems outdated, as its more likely to be a real world issue of the 22nd century, not the 24th, but at least it is a morally ambiguous concept with good arguments on both sides which doesn't require our characters to appear like bigoted jerks from a 21st century perspective.
The Trek formula was for the social ills to be reflected in societies that the crew encounters in first-contacts, not within Federation society itself. It's the Gulliver's Travels formula, best illustrated in the infamous "Nazi Planet" episode (Patterns of Force).
The downside of externalizing and concentrating social ills is it gives the impression of elitist cultural imperialism. There are some today who feel we should practice a strict form of isolation in our foreign policy and whatever happens in other countries is their problem, not ours. The prime directive seems to point towards that, although it was constantly bent and broken for the sake of what Kirk and co. thought would make the lives of various alien civilizations' better. I guess Beyond will deconstruct that formula, but it IS the Trek formula.
Agreed. In my view, the gay characters have always been there, they just haven't been the focus of any stories yet. You don't need to write a mistake on the part of the writers with some wacky sci-fi explanation. Just bring them into the universe, they way we always knew they were.
Totally agreed. After 9/11/2001 I felt that ENT had too many story arcs around this general topic.
How about
ecology, exploration of the sea, environmental radicals, advances in technology, and political intrigue like Seaquest DSV?
While Seaquest DSV's 2nd season got into other monster of the week stuff it did cover genetic engineering, aliens, parapsychology, Time travel.
There is the example of Picard and his asinine " we so much better than you" attitude.
I wasn't advocating "wacky sci-fi," but rather that the federation still has powerful social schisms centuries after it's creation, there is no defined "group philosophy" among the membership. In addition, new members are constantly being introduced, with all the cultural baggage they bring with them. Personnally I would find this a interesting continuing minor plot in the new series.
Star Trek had stories about terrorists long before 9/11.
Agree absolutely. It'd be like if they said: "But hey wait you can't have female captains!" it would be so retrograde and stupid in light of the fact that we *already* have female Captains that we'd look down on the Federation as backwards savages, when they are supposed to be a more enlightened humanity.
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