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What is a utopia that "actually works"? Star Trek is "What if Communism but it wasn't influenced by human nature?", and totally avoided thinking about how the

by lupire 2y ago

What is a utopia that "actually works"? Star Trek is "What if Communism but it wasn't influenced by human nature?", and totally avoided thinking about how the trillions of humans not in the military lived.

tomrod 2y ago
ST:TNG goes into quite a bit of on-the-ground imagining of the lives of Federation individuals and Star Fleet. Colonies, research stations, etc. Though the only earth-side I remember is Jean Luc's winery and estate or when the admiral was mind controlled by some kind of pest.
- krapp 2y ago
  Even TNG didn't always follow through with utopian ideals, because that doesn't make for compelling drama. Tasha Yar came from a failed Federation colony where society had collapsed, and spent her childhood avoiding roving rape gangs.
- sircastor 2y ago
  Part of the challenges of early TNG is that it tries to make the federation perfect. The writing suffers because of it because there appear to be no true internal conflicts. It’s not until Roddenberry takes a back seat in the creative process that the writing starts to get really good. Though that might also in part be the departure of Maurice Hurley as show runner.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    When Paramount released the HD remaster of TNG on Blu-ray, I really enjoyed watching the lengthy (like 2 hours per season) documentary they did on the making of the show. And sadly, one thing was abundantly clear watching that documentary: TNG was good despite Roddenberry, not because of him. The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters. And the show was all the better for it. Writers are lazy, too, and conflict between main characters is by far the cheapest way of creating drama, and the main way fiction differs from reality. Being strongly discouraged from using this shortcut is what gave TNG-era Star Trek another unique feature, that's almost unseen in shows and movies (sci-fi or otherwise): the main cast, and Starfleet in general, are portrayed as competent professionals who are good at their jobs and work well together. It's kind of what you'd expect from people whose dayjob is flying around on FTL-capable WMD platforms. But yeah, Roddenberry had various peculiarities that needed pushback on. Constraints breed creativity, I guess?
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> Star Trek is "What if Communism but it wasn't influenced by human nature On the contrary, the very premise of Star Trek is "what if humans overcome the bad parts of their nature, and embraced the good ones". The core concept of the entire franchise, coming from Gene himself, is that humanity must be recognizably human to the audience, just better than what it is now. The Federation being fully automated communist space utopia is an extension of that.
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  Yeah, that really is its fatal flaw. The only really good Star Trek series I saw was DS9. It was darker, had longer story arcs, religion and fully developed characters. There was even a scene that illustrated this, where Captain Sisko was talking with an Earth politician and telling him that the problem was he lived on Earth, a paradise, and couldn't understand the war and problems those near DS9 faced.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." DS9 was really good. But all the shade it threw at the underlying premise was still to reinforce it, not break it. Where any other show would take e.g. the above case of the Federation governance being out of touch with needs of their constituents near the border, and deconstruct it six ways to Sunday in most cynical of fashions, DS9 made the paradise something good, if fragile, and worth fighting for, worth aiming to have here - whether "here" is out there in lthe frontier colonies, or back today in the 21th century real-world. That's why I still say it was an aspirational show, if much darker, and worked to reinforce TNG instead of deconstructing it.
ryandrake 2y ago
You don’t need to overcome all of human nature, you “just” need to overcome greed and solve scarcity. I put “just” in quotes because I recognize those are a tall order, but I don’t think you really need much else to have a Star Trek collectivist utopia.

by lupire 2y ago

tomrod 2y ago

ST:TNG goes into quite a bit of on-the-ground imagining of the lives of Federation individuals and Star Fleet. Colonies, research stations, etc. Though the only earth-side I remember is Jean Luc's winery and estate or when the admiral was mind controlled by some kind of pest.

krapp 2y ago
Even TNG didn't always follow through with utopian ideals, because that doesn't make for compelling drama. Tasha Yar came from a failed Federation colony where society had collapsed, and spent her childhood avoiding roving rape gangs.
sircastor 2y ago
Part of the challenges of early TNG is that it tries to make the federation perfect. The writing suffers because of it because there appear to be no true internal conflicts. It’s not until Roddenberry takes a back seat in the creative process that the writing starts to get really good. Though that might also in part be the departure of Maurice Hurley as show runner.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  When Paramount released the HD remaster of TNG on Blu-ray, I really enjoyed watching the lengthy (like 2 hours per season) documentary they did on the making of the show. And sadly, one thing was abundantly clear watching that documentary: TNG was good despite Roddenberry, not because of him. The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters. And the show was all the better for it. Writers are lazy, too, and conflict between main characters is by far the cheapest way of creating drama, and the main way fiction differs from reality. Being strongly discouraged from using this shortcut is what gave TNG-era Star Trek another unique feature, that's almost unseen in shows and movies (sci-fi or otherwise): the main cast, and Starfleet in general, are portrayed as competent professionals who are good at their jobs and work well together. It's kind of what you'd expect from people whose dayjob is flying around on FTL-capable WMD platforms. But yeah, Roddenberry had various peculiarities that needed pushback on. Constraints breed creativity, I guess?

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> Star Trek is "What if Communism but it wasn't influenced by human nature On the contrary, the very premise of Star Trek is "what if humans overcome the bad parts of their nature, and embraced the good ones". The core concept of the entire franchise, coming from Gene himself, is that humanity must be recognizably human to the audience, just better than what it is now. The Federation being fully automated communist space utopia is an extension of that.

AlchemistCamp 2y ago
Yeah, that really is its fatal flaw. The only really good Star Trek series I saw was DS9. It was darker, had longer story arcs, religion and fully developed characters. There was even a scene that illustrated this, where Captain Sisko was talking with an Earth politician and telling him that the problem was he lived on Earth, a paradise, and couldn't understand the war and problems those near DS9 faced.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." DS9 was really good. But all the shade it threw at the underlying premise was still to reinforce it, not break it. Where any other show would take e.g. the above case of the Federation governance being out of touch with needs of their constituents near the border, and deconstruct it six ways to Sunday in most cynical of fashions, DS9 made the paradise something good, if fragile, and worth fighting for, worth aiming to have here - whether "here" is out there in lthe frontier colonies, or back today in the 21th century real-world. That's why I still say it was an aspirational show, if much darker, and worked to reinforce TNG instead of deconstructing it.

ryandrake 2y ago

You don’t need to overcome all of human nature, you “just” need to overcome greed and solve scarcity. I put “just” in quotes because I recognize those are a tall order, but I don’t think you really need much else to have a Star Trek collectivist utopia.