The status of the Federation in 2399
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
- Start date
I remind you that they constructed a thousand ships for their longest enemy, only to then have it all destroyed and an entire planet of theirs destroyed. I feel that qualifies as a game effort.
The Federation is beyond all racism and sexism but xenophobia is a thing it struggles with.
Thus my depression.
That's always been there, though.
Miles, for example, hates Cardassians.
Mind you, I think its weird that fans seem to forget Romulans are kind of...evil.
One war vets character arc of overcoming his racism vs 14 Federation worlds taking their balls and going home if we dare save billions of lives...
Yes, after a 100,000 people were killed by the very people they were trying to save. After all of the Federation's resources poured into it were destroyed. After an entire planet had to be evacuated and they had a refugee crisis of their own.
Picard views it as a matter of good vs. evil. I think its considerably grayer. Mind you, I don't think racism is the reason its rejected.
All true, but I still find the neck snap in Man of Steel depressing and wrong-headed no matter how many people point out the story reasons he "had to".
You mean the same Federation that bans people with Romulan heritage from serving in Starfleet, and which empowered a witch hunt? (TNG "The Drumhead") The same Federation where people constantly make speciesist remarks against Ferengi and Klingons and Cardassians? The same Federation that betrayed its own citizens on DMZ worlds by turning a blind eye to the Cardassian Central Command arming Cardassian civilian militias? The same Federation that locks up people with severe cognitive disabilities instead of providing effective treatment (DS9 "Statistical Probabilities," "Children of Time")? The same Federation that used the slave labor of sentient EMHes (VOY "Author, Author")? The same Federation full of Vulcans who are bigoted against Humans, and Humans who are bigoted against Vulcans, and all sorts of other speciesist bullshit? The same Federation that arbitrarily defines societies that haven't invented warp drive as "primitives" and lets them go extinct if they face natural disasters?
I'm sorry to say, the Federation has always struggled with speciesism.
I hate the neck-snap in Man of Steel too. But I hate it because Superman is supposed to be a psychologically aspirational, non-realistic character that inspires people with bright and optimistic stories written first and foremost for children.
I don't think Star Trek is Superman. Sometimes it's Superman. But oftentimes Star Trek is Batman. Specifically, I think sometimes Star Trek is about, to use a metaphor, travelling from Gotham to Metropolis: stories that begin in darkness and end in light.
I always put Star Trek/Starfleet/the Federation in the same aspirational box as Superman. I ignore the slave EMH nonsense because it's garbage writing that craps all over Measure of a Man, same with any story that uses the prime directive to justify letting natural disasters wipe out a species (Paradise Syndrome showed the Enterprise was allowed to save pre-warp societies from an asteroid). I'm not sure Romulans are outright banned, Simon just didn't want to deal with it. Presumably a full blooded Romulan can join Starfleet with a letter of recommendation from a command level officer the same as Calhoun, Nog, Icheb and Jaylah. The other stuff is very much an issue, but it's not supposed to be official Federation policy.
And if the stories are constantly starting in darkness, it quickly feels very repetitive and like no progress is being made.
Well, given that the only backstory we've ever (or are likely) to given for Saavik (and potentially the Last Minute Stand-in Not-Saavik!Valeris) describes them as half-Romulans mentored by Spock, a "command-level officer", then this seems to be implied.
In fact, Tarses himself strongly implies that this could be the case:
TARSES: ... My career in Starfleet is finished.
PICARD: Not if you aren't guilty, Simon.
TARSES: It doesn't matter. I lied on my application, and that mistake will be with me for the rest of my life.
Now personally, I don't have any difficulty with the idea that -- assuming the background checks triggered by Satie's investigation come up clean -- that Starfleet would have brushed the "paperwork error" under the carpet as part of any cover-up of Satie's fall from grace, and TrekLit strongly implies this as Tarses stays in Starfleet and eventually rises to the role of CMO.
IMO a little "bad" is often necessary to highlight the "good".
It's definitely a wrong decision but I feel like it's one that exploring the consequences of was valid. Mind you, the response of the neck snap should have been, "I shall never kill again." Which would have made it a triumphant moment.
Which is to say, "In-universe it should be a mistake but a valid enough one that doesn't seem like a smear against the Federation."
So the ending of Picard where the Federation abandons its xenophobia against Synths is meant to be a redemptive positive moment.
Starfleet has always struggled with fear against those threats. We have the various admirals of the week who are giving in to their fear, like Leyton, or Pressman. So, I understand the point of view, but the elements in Picard have always been there.
I think the Federation is as strong as it has ever been, just looking at the fact they can now field an effective, dedicated fighting force the way they did at such short notice. Starfleet being the dominant military power in the region makes sense, I can't see anyone being even close to them.
Oftentimes the definition of a negative review is the distance between the story the author wanted to tell and the story the audience wanted to hear.
I mean this with genuine respect, but I would like to suggest to you that that's not a reasonable interpretation of Star Trek. ST is sometimes like Superman. But it is also sometimes like Batman -- dark and pessimistic and dealing with corruption. And most of the time, ST is like Spider-Man -- neither fully dark nor fully light, neither fully pessimistic nor fully optimistic, caught in-between but usually leaning towards optimism even as darkness has its due.
I mean, the sheer number of admirals issuing illegal orders on TNG suggests there's an institutional problem, doesn't it? And goodness knows, DS9 is hardly as bright and optimistic as Superman.
I think if you start viewing ST through the lens that accepts the franchise does explore darkness while simultaneously reasserting faith in a brighter future, I think you'll find that more ST is enjoyable and you'll see more high-quality work.
But it's really not. TNG itself established that the Federation had already become blinded to the precedent set by Data's case when they failed to see the Exocomps as sentient beings until Data stood up for them. And Federation already has widespread preconceptions about what holograms are compared to androids. It's not at all unrealistic or unreasonable to imagine that Federation society might just have multiple blind spots when it comes to various forms of artificial intelligence, and that different AI forms will likely have to fight that collective mental blind spot.
But even there, Star Trek's depiction of the fight for A.I. rights is remarkably optimistic! The Federation went from outright banning all synthetics to legalizing them and accepting a colony of them as a protectorate in a remarkably short period of time once they understood that the synths who attacked them on Mars did so because they had been hacked! And, they accepted Coppelius as a protectorate in spite of the Coppelians having initially summed the Admonition Makers -- a remarkable act of foregiveness.
The fight for AI rights in the Federation is, at this point, about 34 years old in ST, but even with the significant setback in 2385, it's going a lot better than, say, the fight for equal rights for black people in the real-world United States, which is entering its 401st year with police forces still murdering black people with impunity and white supremacists openly seeking to perpetuate their oppression. I'd rather be an android fighting for my rights in the 24th Century Federation than a black man fighting for my rights in modern America.
Sorry, but you don't get to ignore continuity like that. Like it or not, the Federation as depicted by TNG is more morally ambiguous than the light tone of TNG made it out to be. The Federation government was consistently willing to stand by and do nothing while sentient species went extinct in the name of "non-interference."
I'll concede that upon review of the transcript of "The Drumhead," it's not clear Romulans are banned from Starfleet service or if the only problem is that Tarses lied on his application.
However, that means that the best-case scenario is that the Federation is so prejudiced against Romulans that Tarses felt it would be safer for him to lie about who his grandfather was. That's still pretty damn dark -- and unofficial prejudice can be just as damaging and dangerous as official prejudice. Once again, the Federation in TNG is not as moral as TNG's light tone would imply.
Well, first off, I think it's pretty clear that PIC S2 is not going to be starting in darkness -- after all, literally Picard has righted all wrongs at the end of PIC S1. Similarly, DIS S2 did not start in darkness. Nor has LD S1.
So, I rather object to the idea that stories are constantly starting in darkness.
In fairness, Saavik's Romulan ancestry has never been canonically established. It originates from the novels. I accept it as my headcannon, but the actual canon has never established her as anything other than a Vulcan.
(Also, the idea that someone is "half-Vulcan, half-Romulan" doesn't make any sense from a biological standpoint. Vulcans and Romulans have only been separate gene pools for less than two thousand years; it takes longer than that to become separate species. Honestly, there's less genetic separation between Vulcans and Romulans circa 2300s than there was between Europeans and Native Americas circa 1492. They're all the same species.)
Given how often Starfleet officers make speciesist remarks, I think it's pretty clear that the Federation does struggle with interspecies prejudices. And of course, it's not made any easier by the fact that, in-universe, there are real and meaningful differences between species that can activate tribalist instincts for In-Group, Out-Group, exclusionary thinking.
I feel that the circumstances of his grandfather being Romulan are something he might not be comfortable becoming public.
As I said in my post a moment ago, I reviewed the transcript of "The Drumhead" and conceded that the episode is ambiguous whether people with Romulan ancestry are banned or if only lying about his ancestry was the problem.
And if Tarses was so paranoid that he thought his Romulan heritage was something to be covered up - well, that's all on him.
I mean, prejudice against Romulans is so widespread in the Federation that 14 different Member States were threatening to secede if Starfleet assisted in the evacuation of Romulus, and that was after Federation and Romulan officers had shed blood together to defeat the Dominion. Sounds to me like Tarses had really good reason to believe that if he were open about his Romulan ancestry, he would be subjected to bigotry and oppression.
Is the prejudice that severe in Picard? The choice to secede in the show comes after the destruction of a member of the Federation and its planetary evacuation along with the destruction of the fleet they built to help them.
