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People always get confused about dystopias, it seems. Even Star Trek's Federation can be seen as a post-apocalyptic dystopia. You don't get to see much of life

by mkr-hn 5y ago

People always get confused about dystopias, it seems. Even Star Trek's Federation can be seen as a post-apocalyptic dystopia. You don't get to see much of life outside a few locations from the perspective of Starfleet's freakishly accomplished officers and mostly empty cities between warp nacelles, but I suspect things aren't as peachy as presented by Starfleet propaganda.

goatlover 5y ago
They have replicator, transporter, force field and holodeck technology, with ships that can travel between solar systems in days or weeks time. Why would the Federation be dystopian? It's long after the events of WW3. In First Contact Geordi tell Zefram Cochrane that 50 years after contact with the Vulcans, war, disease and poverty on Earth would be eliminated. Picard tells Lilly in the same movie that money is no longer used. People work to better themselves. At least until the recent Star Trek, fans understood the Federation to be utopian. That was Gene Roddenberry's optimistic view of human potential. That we would get past our current issues. Q even puts the Enterprise crew on trial in TNG's first episodes for various historical crimes, and Picard is able to argue that humanity has evolved past much of that. It's only really with external threats and other cultures that the Federation's values are challenged, and sometimes compromised.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  You're talking canon. I'm talking fan theories. Canon is limited to the perspective of the people who had to go through the wringer of studio meddling and appeasing broadcasters. There's a reason Discovery is the first to have a gay relationship, trans character, and nonbinary character. Most of the people involved in the previous shows at least since TNG wanted to do that but couldn't get past all the interests in the way. I consider a world without people like me in it pretty dystopic because there's only two things that do that: suppression and genocide.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Multiple interpretations are good, but I would argue there really was a break TOS's full employment culture, and today's stagnation culture. Let's not essentialize our current moment, projecting it back uncritically.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      I don't think I can reason about real-world applications for a show's themes without considering the real world. That's the topic of discussion here. One of the actors in TOS was a closeted gay man who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp. Gene Roddenberry was an idealist. His utopia was nonsense. Berman was annoying to work with[0], but his version of Trek was more realistic without losing the optimism and turning grimdark. Roddenberry's utopia needed a genocide and apocalyptic world war to wipe out all the difficult problems getting from A to B. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        I don't think we are really disagreeing? I think pre-1968 if there were fan theories by that point, they wouldn't have been so drawn to calling out some optimism that doesn't make sense. But I really haven't watched enough Star Trek let alone caught up with fan theories to carry this further :). Did George Takei get casted thinking "fuck this bullshit, I'm going to subtlety undermine the nonsense utopia with my acting?" Or was the pain and skepticism of cold war rhetoric more a subconscious war of vacillating between hope for the future, and skepticism that "United Space Ship" and "United States Ship" had enough distance between them? I don't think many people were on that former level, say, pre-1968 at least.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    If we're talking in the context of Blade Runner dystopias of a crowded, polluted, dying environment run by powerful corporations, then the Federation is nothing like that. Certainly not on Earth. As far as diversity goes, that's just a matter of what was allowed on tv at the time. TOS certainly portrayed a society where racism was no longer an issue, so I think we can safely attribute the same to LGBTQ equality. It was implied and nothing in any of the shows suggest otherwise to my knowledge.
- beecafe 5y ago
  Why would technologies enabling such power and control be allowed into the hands of anyone but the most trusted/trained/indoctrinated to use in service of the Federation?
  - goatlover 5y ago
    It's pretty clear that civilians and other organizations have access to replicators and holodecks, at least. There are civilian ships with warp drives also. Federation restricted technology is mostly military tech, like phasers and photon torpodos. I'm guessing the civilian replicators are restricted when it comes to replicating guns or bombs.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > In First Contact Geordi tell Zefram Cochrane that 50 years after contact with the Vulcans, war, disease and poverty on Earth would be eliminated. But he’s wrong based on Star Trek canon (and throughout this I am not referencing Discovery and concurrent series, which are charged with being a change of tone) except maybe on war, and even then only if you take “on Earth” to mean, for war, “between nations of Earth, since they are all subordinated to a single government” and not “physically occurring on Earth”. > Picard tells Lilly in the same movie that money is no longer used This may be true on Earth, which seems like it uses centralized (possibly exchangeable) centralized rationing rather than (or at least to an extent that most people need not, if they do not choose to, interact with) a money economy, though profit-seeking independent traders exist in Federation space at least in the TOS era, and Federation citizens have and spend various forms of money for various things throughout the various series.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    I believe Earth is a post scarcity society. By war I meant inside the Federation. External threats still pose that risk, and so Starfleet can also serve as the military when diplomacy can’t work.
matkoniecz 5y ago
Blade Runner was a clear case of dystopia, no matter the viewpoint
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  You would be surprised. Not everyone gets the same thing out of media. Some people root for the villains, or don't understand that the dystopia is supposed to be a dystopia. There are whole worldviews where the disparity of outcomes between people who are stuck on Earth and people who left for colonies is a good, normal, and ideal situation.

by mkr-hn 5y ago

goatlover 5y ago

They have replicator, transporter, force field and holodeck technology, with ships that can travel between solar systems in days or weeks time. Why would the Federation be dystopian? It's long after the events of WW3. In First Contact Geordi tell Zefram Cochrane that 50 years after contact with the Vulcans, war, disease and poverty on Earth would be eliminated. Picard tells Lilly in the same movie that money is no longer used. People work to better themselves. At least until the recent Star Trek, fans understood the Federation to be utopian. That was Gene Roddenberry's optimistic view of human potential. That we would get past our current issues. Q even puts the Enterprise crew on trial in TNG's first episodes for various historical crimes, and Picard is able to argue that humanity has evolved past much of that. It's only really with external threats and other cultures that the Federation's values are challenged, and sometimes compromised.

mkr-hn 5y ago
You're talking canon. I'm talking fan theories. Canon is limited to the perspective of the people who had to go through the wringer of studio meddling and appeasing broadcasters. There's a reason Discovery is the first to have a gay relationship, trans character, and nonbinary character. Most of the people involved in the previous shows at least since TNG wanted to do that but couldn't get past all the interests in the way. I consider a world without people like me in it pretty dystopic because there's only two things that do that: suppression and genocide.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Multiple interpretations are good, but I would argue there really was a break TOS's full employment culture, and today's stagnation culture. Let's not essentialize our current moment, projecting it back uncritically.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    I don't think I can reason about real-world applications for a show's themes without considering the real world. That's the topic of discussion here. One of the actors in TOS was a closeted gay man who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp. Gene Roddenberry was an idealist. His utopia was nonsense. Berman was annoying to work with[0], but his version of Trek was more realistic without losing the optimism and turning grimdark. Roddenberry's utopia needed a genocide and apocalyptic world war to wipe out all the difficult problems getting from A to B. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I don't think we are really disagreeing? I think pre-1968 if there were fan theories by that point, they wouldn't have been so drawn to calling out some optimism that doesn't make sense. But I really haven't watched enough Star Trek let alone caught up with fan theories to carry this further :). Did George Takei get casted thinking "fuck this bullshit, I'm going to subtlety undermine the nonsense utopia with my acting?" Or was the pain and skepticism of cold war rhetoric more a subconscious war of vacillating between hope for the future, and skepticism that "United Space Ship" and "United States Ship" had enough distance between them? I don't think many people were on that former level, say, pre-1968 at least.
- goatlover 5y ago
  If we're talking in the context of Blade Runner dystopias of a crowded, polluted, dying environment run by powerful corporations, then the Federation is nothing like that. Certainly not on Earth. As far as diversity goes, that's just a matter of what was allowed on tv at the time. TOS certainly portrayed a society where racism was no longer an issue, so I think we can safely attribute the same to LGBTQ equality. It was implied and nothing in any of the shows suggest otherwise to my knowledge.
beecafe 5y ago
Why would technologies enabling such power and control be allowed into the hands of anyone but the most trusted/trained/indoctrinated to use in service of the Federation?
- goatlover 5y ago
  It's pretty clear that civilians and other organizations have access to replicators and holodecks, at least. There are civilian ships with warp drives also. Federation restricted technology is mostly military tech, like phasers and photon torpodos. I'm guessing the civilian replicators are restricted when it comes to replicating guns or bombs.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> In First Contact Geordi tell Zefram Cochrane that 50 years after contact with the Vulcans, war, disease and poverty on Earth would be eliminated. But he’s wrong based on Star Trek canon (and throughout this I am not referencing Discovery and concurrent series, which are charged with being a change of tone) except maybe on war, and even then only if you take “on Earth” to mean, for war, “between nations of Earth, since they are all subordinated to a single government” and not “physically occurring on Earth”. > Picard tells Lilly in the same movie that money is no longer used This may be true on Earth, which seems like it uses centralized (possibly exchangeable) centralized rationing rather than (or at least to an extent that most people need not, if they do not choose to, interact with) a money economy, though profit-seeking independent traders exist in Federation space at least in the TOS era, and Federation citizens have and spend various forms of money for various things throughout the various series.
- goatlover 5y ago
  I believe Earth is a post scarcity society. By war I meant inside the Federation. External threats still pose that risk, and so Starfleet can also serve as the military when diplomacy can’t work.

matkoniecz 5y ago

Blade Runner was a clear case of dystopia, no matter the viewpoint

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mkr-hn 5y ago
You would be surprised. Not everyone gets the same thing out of media. Some people root for the villains, or don't understand that the dystopia is supposed to be a dystopia. There are whole worldviews where the disparity of outcomes between people who are stuck on Earth and people who left for colonies is a good, normal, and ideal situation.