10 ms·
A lot of these feel like lazy worldbuilding.
by PoignardAzur 3y ago
A lot of these feel like lazy worldbuilding.
- gortok 3y agoIt was a TV show back when they wrote 26 episodes a year, and were producing a show a week. Heck, the entire Star Trek universe is taking pieces of ideas that you see for seconds and turning them into whole backstories.
- gortok 3y agoCardassians? Germany post WW1 The marquis? French resistance Against? The Germans. Romulans? Romans. Remans? Guess who? Vulcans? Greek. Klingons? Russians/Japanese depending on the Star Trek series. Federation? Evolved America. Ferengi? Present day capitalism. Borg? Eventual conclusion of overreliance on technology. All of the archetypes and races from Star Trek are taken from germs in our own history.
- jiggawatts 3y agoBorg = Space Zombies
- the_gipsy 3y ago> Remans? Guess who? Africans? > Ferengi Jewish people.
- synetic 3y agoI took Ferengi to be written as a ridicule of those pursuing an Ayn Randian style utopia where everything is a business negotiation. It is not, in my opinion, a reference to Jews.
- zo1 3y agoAs a fan of the series, I'd argue thay they definitely took inspiration for the Ferengi from a caricature of traders, greed, utilitarianism and overall love of money and materialism. But to be fair yes, everything in real life is a negotiation at the end of the day. Relationships included.
- synetic 3y agoI disagree with the first sentence. I believe the Ferengi were written to show what they think happens with the sort of unfettered capitalism that the U.S. appears to be on a path to implementing.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- eddieroger 3y agoThis is what I took from them as well, particularly since Star Trek was set in an Earth post-scarcity. When humanity has progressed to the stars as a result of the end of modern society in a war, the Ferengi were a foil against what we have versus what we can become.
- Steltek 3y agoAh yes. All those Jewish women who aren't allowed to wear the clothes they want, own property, or conduct business without a male present. It's not as straight forward as "ferengi" = "Jewish".
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- RobotToaster 3y agoI always took the Bajorans to be an obvious allegory to Palestine.
- ant6n 3y agoYes, but Marquis != Bajoran resistance.
- orls 3y agoI always felt that the DS9 relationships between Cardassians & Bajorans was a product of the time when the show was written, and had stronger overtones of the 1990s Balkans conflicts and Israel/Palestine than anything else. (Though it’s far from a direct allegory for either)
- arp242 3y agoYou also had The Troubles in Northern-Ireland at the time, and that's not a huge leap either. I've also seen people describe the Bajorans as an analogue for the Jewish diaspora. You can fit many real-life events, even more if you try hard enough.
- dopidopHN 3y agoMaquis : it’s a French word for tall grass or, like here, underground resistance.
- hef19898 3y agoOnly that the Star Trek Maquis is later also faught by the Federation. Which makes the Federation, what, Vichy France? I really seem to be way more indulged with Star Wars, were supporting insurgents against oppresive regimes was what the Good (TM) do.
- dopidopHN 3y agoThere is some episode of DS9 where the legitimacy of the maquis is bring upon. One of the female lead has connection to it and it’s problematic. I like those grey area better
- ravenstine 3y agoI always thought the Vulcans had more in common with Eastern cultures than a Western one like the Greeks. Also, Bajorans = Israelis
- ant6n 3y agoAlso, Palestinians = Bajorans. (Don’t attempt the transitive property on this one, for it will probably get u in trouble)
- DropInIn 3y agoBajorans are not Israelis, though they are in part inspired by the Jewish experience. Keep in mind there was no major Exodus, the vast majority of bajorans remained on Bajor and never left. The fee who did were either escaping the cardis or were taken for slavery offworld. They're actually more aptly described as amalgam of Pre WWII Jews (more specifically Zionist terrorists like the Irgun aka Likud), the Irish during and after the Troubles, and the Current Palestinians.... If we're going to focus on the source people's at all maybe it behooves us to focus on the ones actually facing the horrors depicted, rather than those who used long past atrocities as excuse for their own misdeeds.
- DropInIn 3y agoBajorans? An amalgam of post WWII Jews, Irish during and after the Troubles, and modern Palestinians. Interestingly one of those groups is still being very actively oppressed and abused, yet everyone always ignores that and often denies their part in the references which inspired the creation of the Bajorans.
- _npe3 3y agoThe Cardassians seem a lot more like Stalinist USSR, or maybe East Germany to me.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoDon't get me wrong, I love the expanded universe thing. Lower Decks is one of my favorite animated shows. Just, you have to recognize that the source material had its flaws. Like, this: A contract is a contract is a contract… but only between Ferengi. That's just kind of... bleh? Especially when, yes, you consider the ethnic stereotypes "culture of sneering traders who will cheat you" evokes. But even without those stereotypes, it's just kind of childish.
- Ekaros 3y agoThen again even in our own world contract is only as strong as the legal system backing it. Treaties and agreements change things, but going beyond that it is often true.
- zo1 3y agoJudging by how many "contracts" between the west and Russia I imagine have been broken over the war in Ukraine, its actually deeper than many think. We forget how writers and comedians have a good pulse on human nature without all the fluff and feel good narrative we like to placate ourselves with.
- true_religion 3y agoWell, non Ferengi will often sign contracts then come back to claim they didn’t know it bound them to do illegal actions, or refuse to do something immoral or worse yet claim bankruptcy and try to run from debt. So this line is a warning about outsiders.
- OscarCunningham 3y agoYeah, the Ferengi exist only as a counterpoint to the Federation; not as a society that could actually function. Capitalism is always shown in a negative light, except for that one episode where Nog goes on a fetch quest.
- Ekaros 3y agoNot that Federation was a society that could function either... I'm not sure deeply about others, but in general it felt that most of them would fail.
- XorNot 3y agoThe Federation has Replicators and the Transporter. They are almost the only type of society that makes sense in the setting.
- Ekaros 3y agoDo they transport for example Ores or building materials out of planets? Who actually builds all the stuff that can't be replicated? And can they just quit their job or take personal time off when ever they want? Also if you really think that everything goes through replicators, what does that mean for energy expenditure? If done on planets where does all the energy go? And don't everyone else have those two things too? So why did Cardassia need mining outpost?
- hnlmorg 3y agoReplicators were always described as being energy hungry. In some instances slave labour was “cheaper”. In other instances they used the “this material cannot be replicated” loophole. Such as the drug that the Dominion were addicted to.
- XorNot 3y agoWhich also doesn't make sense: you can't replicate the drug, but it hardly implies you also can't replicate the factory which makes it, for example. Just how far up the "can't do that" chain do you go? The thing is, the mechanism of the Replicator is less important then what it represents: productivity with zero human labor input. We don't live in that world - we have trouble conceiving of that world. But that's essentially the whole promise of AI: robots which can build more robots, which can then build products for us. At some point, your whole civilizations pipeline becomes "energy + robot labor". And once you get the first part of the Dyson swarm up and running, energy is infinite - at least in human terms.
- chongli 3y agoCould you elaborate? Do you mean they’re lazy at world-building? Or do you assert that the process of world-building itself is lazy storytelling? Personally, I happen to love the Ferengi and their Rules. They started off as villains on TNG but they’re just too comical for that. DS9 seriously developed their culture into a lovely satire on capitalism. At the same time, the show developed their individual characters to an impressive extent, transforming them from the “greedy merchant/criminal” hat to something much deeper. I think the greatest lesson of Star Trek is that we need to look past our stereotypes and past the most visible manifestations of culture to see people as individuals. The Ferengi, being such a strong caricature, challenged us to do so even more than the Klingons.
- ant6n 3y agoOnce you look past the stereotype, the other cultures allow a new perspective on us, that is, the perfect humans in Star Trek. A rather poignant moment in this respect is the Episode in DS9, when the humans encounter the “dominion” with whom they will start a war a 2 years later. Quark gives this little speech to Sisko, arguably the moral center of DS9, who’s been kind of looking down on Quark the whole episode: “The way I see it, hew-mons used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget. But you're overlooking something: Hew-mons used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi. Slavery. Concentration camps. Interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you. We're better.”
- acheron 3y agoThat was one of the best moments where the writers actually took the Ferengi society seriously. Unfortunately they didn’t really stick with it later in the series.
- tonfreed 3y agoWell the Ferengi were a largely unknown race when first encountered in TNG, beyond the fact they were hyperlibertarians they didn't bother elaborating. They were the portrayed as an annoyance more than anything serious to worry about. DS9 was the first series to really build on it, and they recycled a lot of old rejected b plots from TNG in the first couple of seasons so there was a lot of filler dialog which became canon.
- CalChris 3y agoThe Ferengi are a monarchy led by the Grand Nagus.