6 ms·

Star Trek: The Next Generation Was the Last Sci-Fi Show Hopeful About the Future

80 points by fraqed 12y ago

VLM 12y ago
Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not "real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more, no alternative universe type of effect which is so interesting about hard sci fi. Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures. If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome. Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is becoming unknown?).
- mhandley 12y ago
  On the other hand, by the last episode in 1994, I was spending around eight hours a week in transatlantic multi-party video conferences over the Internet using IP multicast. That and this little thing called the web had already taken off. Looking back, a lot changed in the early 1990s.
qwerta 12y ago
Most sci-fi shows men kind in good form controlling a few plannets around. I would call it great success.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  Just suggesting that we'll control a lot of real estate isn't much of an optimistic view of the future. Historically, exploration and colonization went hand in hand with subjugation.
  - waps 12y ago
    That's assuming we'll find inhabited planets. Current research seems to indicate that we'd have to be quite lucky to find 5 terraformable planets (not supporting life, but could be if artificially managed) in a 10-lightyear cube.
scotty79 12y ago
Some one should make a series out of Iain M. Banks Culture novels. I find them very optimistic regarding technological advancement, its societal influence and liberal coexistence of minds of very different kinds and power.
- arethuza 12y ago
  I rather liked David Brin's take on the Culture: "...Culture Universe was among the few to confront straight-on the myriad hopes, dangers and raw possibilities that might be faced by a humanity-that-succeeds." http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lament-then-optimism.html http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lame... NB If anyone wants to get a quick taste of the Culture visiting the Earth the BBC Radio 4 version of "The State of the Art" is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU
- scotty79 12y ago
  Short homemade movie inspired by those novels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET8IFxPo61w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET8IFxPo61w
- lmm 12y ago
  They rather prove the point about conflict being necessary for narrative though. The Culture is a genuine utopia - so most of the pagecount is spent not on the Culture or its ordinary citizens, but on its boundaries, its neighbours, or the Contact specialists that are supposedly a miniscule fraction of the population. (I still greatly enjoyed them, mind. To anyone looking for similar stories I'd recommend Neal Asher's works, particularly Hilldiggers)
protomyth 12y ago
Babylon 5's ending had a lot of downs, but it did end in a good place for humanity.
resist_futility 12y ago
Stargate was pretty hopeful about the future. Although it is somewhat set in the present it does touch on the future quite a few times.
- evan_ 12y ago
  In the one episode where they actually did show Earth's future, it was a Brave-New-World-esque dystopia fueled by an alien incursion. (Really good episode in one of my absolute favorite franchises) I agree that it's generally optimistic but it's hard to say that the characters had any faith in humanity in general, since they keep the whole program a Military secret. http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode) http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode)
- aschampion 12y ago
  Stargate has an amazingly contemporary American conservative outlook on the universe: that most places, peoples and dilemmas, even if bizarre on the surface, ultimately boil down to familiar with-us-or-against-us conflicts that are solved through might and a strong sense of exceptionalism. It's a suburban universe that you commute to that's not too different from home and doesn't compel change other than to double down on the status quo. Space is the Olive Garden. Aliens are more interested in us than we are in them. Scientists are myopic and are only good as resources to be used by a white guy without much book learnin' but lots of common sense (who of course is always smarter than the scientists when push comes to shove) -- I don't even mean particular characters, it's a template across all the shows. The characters might profess hope about the future, but to me it was more a sobering study of the narrow view we have of our own world projected onto the universe. TNG has its share of similar colonial tendencies, but the show has some self-awareness about it and DS9's entire run was a deconstruction of those themes.
api 12y ago
The most fantastic aspect of Star Trek isn't warp drive, teleportation, or replicators. It's a competent bureaucracy. Starfleet seems to be just that: competent, usually very trustworthy, fair, and honest. Almost equally unbelievable is a society that isn't incredibly emotionally dysfunctional. There is little in the way of psychopathy, narcissism, addiction, unhealthy ideological fanaticism, or depression on display among the protagonists. Cyberpunk has proven to be the most prophetic of the sci-fi genres by far. It's done that by being technologically optimistic and socially pessimistic. So far it seems right on-- technology continues to advance, but globally it looks as if the normal arc of society is from freedom to despotism followed by a decay into syndicated criminality. The mafia state -- almost exactly as depicted in the common cyberpunk setting -- looks like the ascendant future. If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.
- Eliezer 12y ago
  I watched "Star Trek: Into Darkness". At first I was like "Kirk should be fired." Then I was like "Everyone on the Enterprise should be fired." Then I was like "Everyone in Starfleet should be fired." Then I was like, "Wow, I've never wanted to fire an entire civilization before, and this movie has given me a new appreciation for the importance of rules and regulations in real life."
  - api 12y ago
    The competent bureaucracy part is really the lynchpin. Because bureaucracies are so incompetent, criminal syndicates just run circles around them. This is why the mafia state looks like the logical endpoint-- basically anarcho-syndicalism, and it's not a utopia. I think this is also why the most bureaucratic states -- the USSR and Communist China -- have been the first into this brave new future. The criminal mammals triumphed easily over those byzantine dinosaurs. The bottom line is that we have the scientific method and we have the discipline of engineering, and those together can reliably produce progress in the technical realm. We have no set of tools or techniques that reliably produces progress in the human realm. There are no institutions charged with understanding and healing us psychologically. The closest we come is to pop pills, and even that is poorly done -- diagnosis is incredibly unscientific and haphazard. I personally blame -- directly and indirectly -- the war on drugs. I am not one of those people who thinks that dosing everyone with LSD would create some kind of utopia. I've known too many drug users to think that. But beneath the pop culture misuse of those substances, there was some really visionary research into genuinely understanding and even changing deep human psychology at work back in those days. The ridiculous moral panic that followed had the effect of shutting down almost all of that research, even some of the non-psychedlics-related stuff, and leaving us with nothing but talk-talk psychotherapy and the ham fisted pill pushing approach. To this day attempting to delve deeply into human psychology in an active way immediately leads into realms since declared utterly taboo.
gmuslera 12y ago
I think Internet made us not so naive about the future considering how we really are, specially after we get some kind of power. And the present is making us even more pessimistic about it.
curtis 12y ago
When it comes to storytelling, conflict is inherently more interesting than the alternatives. I can't help but feel that this explains most of what's going on here.
- api 12y ago
  There are many forms of conflict. Optimistic visions of the future often portray a healthy, competent humanity vs. some unknown danger, mystery, or challenge.
  - curtis 12y ago
    I agree. But I think those kinds of stories are harder to write, especially for television shows that need scripts for dozens or even hundreds of episodes.
staunch 12y ago
Star Trek: Enterprise was incredibly optimistic.
gdubs 12y ago
I liked mostly all the Star Treks, but it bugged me that the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world I supposed. I loved the optimistic future painted in TNG.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  > "the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world" Both DS9 and Voyager were completely wrapped up prior to 9/11. Enterprise struck me as far less militarized -- though far more competently written (it gets off to a slowish start, but the later seasons are great). And the original was probably written in part by people with naval backgrounds (note how people are constantly handing Kirk clipboards to sign off on, there's a fire control room that weapons fire is sometimes directed through, etc.) I think the only thing that fits your pattern is Star Trek: Into Darkness.
  - gdubs 12y ago
    Ah, quite right about the timing. I enjoyed Enterprise, but man, that theme song.
  - krapp 12y ago
    I believe Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy. I'll probably be downvoted into oblivion if i'm wrong though. CBA to google it.
- krapp 12y ago
  On the other hand, DS9 at least, with its serial format, fleshed out a couple of alien cultures and explored some of the concepts behind the Federation in ways other series wouldn't have even been able to attempt - although there were a couple of episodes in TNG which managed to take some risks, when the writers managed to lock Gene Roddenberry in a cupboard. Even though the Cardassians were essentially Nazis in space (in a series which, literally, had Space Nazis as a thing) and the Ferengi were comic relief, it was refreshing to me to see a bit of effort put into some of the other species. The Ferengi and Cardassians, unlike the Klingons (who despite being a warp-capable species were portrayed as barely coherent psychopathic warlords) were presented as reasonable, if not very alien alternatives to the Federation point of view. TNG would never have had an episode where an alien species calls out the humans for their history of slavery and violence, it would have merely shown us an "alien" species as an allegory but DS9 did (and had the wonderful "Far Beyond the Stars" which, despite barely being in-universe, was able to state Star Trek's essential thesis more directly and profoundly than the main series itself.) And yes, it was essentially Babylon 5 (But Trek) and wound up being all about a war, and the Dominion and the Changelings were utterly disappointing. And by Voyager, the Borg had gone from being one of the most sinister and alien concepts on television to just another bunch of goons for the Federation to punch, and the only thing in my mind that Enterprise had going for it was the cynical and manipulative Vulcans. But I think, for the most part, the further Star Trek got from Roddenberry's idealism, the more its idealism actually meant something, precisely because it was flawed. The story of how humans get to paradise is much more interesting the the one about how awesome it is after they're there.
schultkl 12y ago
It surprised me to only see Gene Roddenberry mentioned in an aside....
davidw 12y ago
Neal Stephenson makes a similar point in this interview: http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/ http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Pretty weird, considering he's rather strongly steeped in the post-cyberpunk weirdtopian tradition.
mercer 12y ago
Futurama could be considered at least partly hopeful, but I suppose that doesn't really count?
gte910h 12y ago
Sci-Fi is commentary on the present, or the near future. Even Star Trek (TOS was 60's era Apollo optimisim, ST:TNG was 1980's "Communism is falling"/We're getting okay with Russia/The Economy is booming/Roddenberry said so!) The reason why today's SciFi isn't hopeful is that there are lots of very easy to see bad ways today turns into tomorrow, and not very easy to see good ways. I honestly think self driving cars will make life crazy better for instance. But there isn't Sci-Fi to write about that is interesting enough to publish or make a show about with that premise. Or for 3d printing. etc
- esturk 12y ago
  I'm not sure if you would want to watch "I robot", but there was implications of a robot/AI driving car and what that would mean if there's a system that's calculating the probability of survival in the event that an accident is imminent. Again, I'm not suggesting anyone to watch it, but there's a scene about leisurely self-driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_cW7aoRdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_cW7aoRdQ
- bergie 12y ago
  I would recommend the Daemon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez for an interesting take on self-driving cars and a few other things that can shape our near future http://thedaemon.com/ http://thedaemon.com/
  - gte910h 12y ago
    That is quite interesting looking, I will read that.
- eudox 12y ago
  >Or for 3d printing. etc There's The Diamond Age, which is moderately optimistic, and other molecular nanotechnology-related fiction.
  - gte910h 12y ago
    But was written 20 years ago. Certainly within memory of many readers who'd be alive today, but certainly missing many important themes that could be explored to extrapolate from today.
ufmace 12y ago
I watched most of TNG, but I don't consider myself to be really into the series. One of the things that I found odd about it was how externally-focused it was - everything seemed to be about various alien species and unknown astronomical phenomenon, with almost nothing about what this Federation that they all serve is and how it really works. All I remember is drips and drabs of that, which is a shame, when there are so many ideas that could stand to be explored. Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? The fine details of that would all have massive effects on what the society as a whole looks like. Can anybody replicate anything on them? Including weapons and drugs? If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make? This also gets into the rather odd and poorly fleshed-out idea of a society without money. Exactly how does this society work without money? Books can and have be written on ideas around this, but it's just kind of casually thrown out there, with no exploration of the implications on how the greater society functions.
- stormbrew 12y ago
  Portraying the mechanics of post-scarcity has the same problem as showing a truly alien species: Our imagination is simply not up to the task because we've never seen anything like it to template it on. Avoiding the issue and focusing on smaller stories that exist within post-scarcity is the only way to maintain suspension of disbelief. If and when we reach true post-scarcity, our society will change in ways we simply can't predict. Our economic models are no use there. But things get a lot easier if you just assume everyone in Trek is a LARPer who can just do that because why the fuck not.
- krapp 12y ago
  >Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? It takes matter, and rearranges it into something else less boring. Using science. Ish. Things. Lasers. >Can anybody replicate anything on them? Depends on the episode. >Including weapons and drugs? I think certain weapons were impossible to replicate but you certainly could crank out as many guns and knives as you liked. But of course, being a utopian society, such things would be unthinkable, so it's not an issue. >If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? Nobody. It's a perfect society. Everyone is nice and peaceful because they choose to be. No wars (with other humans - aliens are fine), no famine (except for that one thing in the original series), no money (or something). They just use the replicators and holodecks for aggressive but entirely wholesome and not at all sexual sports and research and interactive fiction, because the humans of the future have evolved beyond the need to be interesting. Except for Barclay. And La Forge, because one time he created a holodeck model of this girl he had a crush on. Which was awkward when she showed up and he had forgotten to close his porn folder. >They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? ...subspace or something. Dilithium. Quantums. Shut up. >Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make? Probably just the size of the replicator console thing. And energy. By Voyager they had entire starships made up of holograms so who knows? Like a lot of post-scarcity ideas, to me, Star Trek essentially ran on magic. A lot of that had more to do with the necessities of sci-fi on a low budget (the only reason transporters existed, for instance, was to they didn't have to spend effects money on shuttlecraft) than thinking hard about actually making it work. It just did. The holodeck, literally, could create self-aware sentient beings if you asked it to. Riker got cloned when a transporter beam reflected off the clouds of a planet or something. The Enterprise got pregnant and had a space baby. That was a thing that happened. No one cared enough about science fictional speculation to actually try fleshing things out, because that would take time, cost money, and potentially mean taking dramatic risks. Rather, they just came up with a new particle, or kind of energy, or swirly whatever, of the week that would defeat the monster, or other swirly whatever, of the week. Now and then they would just drop the ball on some potentially awesome plot points, like the aliens invading from subspace that snatched people out of their beds and did surgery on them (real creepy stuff) or the Ikonian Empire (apparently a big deal, left magic portals everywhere, completely forgotten about) or the parasites mind-controlling certain Federation higher-ups (leading to the only head-explosion in Trek history.) But the truth is, the "science fiction" was just stage dressing for utterly banal drama. Probably the books got into it more deeply. The Borg was nice though, until it wasn't. Edit: I shouldn't say 'no one cared.' Reading blogs by people like Doug Drexler, clearly a lot of people cared, just all too often the plot didn't seem to permit much complexity or insight.
Bzomak 12y ago
"The Heisenberg uncertainly principle means that transporters like the ones in Star Trek are physically impossible, at least in terms of the physics that we understand. But that didn't stop Roddenberry and friends. They just assumed that human beings would figure out some way to "compensate" for the physical laws." From what I've read, that's somewhat of a generous and optimistic view. My understanding was that the transporter was created purely as a money-saving feature, as they didn't have the budget to create planetary landing effects on a weekly basis. The Heisenberg compensator circuits were a convenient piece of techno-babble in an attempt to hand-wave the underlying physics problem of transporters away...
- AgentConundrum 12y ago
  Via Memory-Alpha: > When asked by Time magazine in 1994, "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" Michael Okuda replied, "They work just fine, thank you." I suspect the article being referenced is "Reconfigure the Modulators"[1], but it's behind a pay wall so I can't confirm that. [1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,00.html http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,...
stevedekorte 12y ago
From whose perspective is living a militaristic fascist communist state dressed in onesies hopeful?
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  You've never seen the show have you?
  - stevedekorte 12y ago
    Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate? What I see is on the show is a glorified militaristic hierarchy and an audience of fans whose greatest wish is to be the guy giving the orders. It's the kind of thing the Star Wars Empire would fund as state propaganda.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate? Militaristic -- even Starfleet, the main "military" in the federation, seems to (despite the fact that it fights wars, has military ranks, and military process like "courts-martial"), maintains a myth that it isn't military. The society is so anti-militaristic that it can't even admit that it has a military. Fascistic -- Aside from militarism (discussed above), a defining element of fascism is nationalism. It'd be hard to think of a society less nationalistic than the Federation. Communist -- Rather than a planned economy, people seem pretty free to chose their own pursuits and applications of productive resources. State -- while it clearly has institutions like Startfleet, its not clear that the Federation is a state as we'd understand it, rather than an international institution with sovereign members like the UN. About the only part of your description that is roughly accurate is the "dressed in onesies" part.
      - hitchhiker999 12y ago
        The poster clearly hasn't really watched the show, without a doubt spouting off something that sounded 'edgy' for the sake of it. Nice rebuttal by the way!
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
In 1994, technology was a part of our lives, but it did not dominate us completely. So it was possible for Star Trek: TNG to imagine a world in which we, as people, stayed much the same, but the worlds in which we traveled expanded infinitely outward. Technology for the past twenty years has relentlessly driven inward. It's so interesting to me that commentators keep making this same point over and over again, and the only answer we get is "But we'll just make even cooler tech, and it'll all work out." I don't think so. I think the time of man is at a close, whether we evolve past it or self-terminate. Billions of years of evolution has created this species of hominids that travel in packs. We are, instead, trying to re-make ourselves in something closer to the Borg. It's not going to end the way we expect it to.
noblethrasher 12y ago
I can't find it now, but I remember a brilliant comment on reddit that described the theme of TOS and TNG as being about “what it means to be a hero in a utopian age”.

80 points by fraqed 12y ago

VLM 12y ago

Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not "real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more, no alternative universe type of effect which is so interesting about hard sci fi. Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures. If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome. Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is becoming unknown?).

mhandley 12y ago
On the other hand, by the last episode in 1994, I was spending around eight hours a week in transatlantic multi-party video conferences over the Internet using IP multicast. That and this little thing called the web had already taken off. Looking back, a lot changed in the early 1990s.

qwerta 12y ago

Most sci-fi shows men kind in good form controlling a few plannets around. I would call it great success.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
Just suggesting that we'll control a lot of real estate isn't much of an optimistic view of the future. Historically, exploration and colonization went hand in hand with subjugation.
- waps 12y ago
  That's assuming we'll find inhabited planets. Current research seems to indicate that we'd have to be quite lucky to find 5 terraformable planets (not supporting life, but could be if artificially managed) in a 10-lightyear cube.

scotty79 12y ago

Some one should make a series out of Iain M. Banks Culture novels. I find them very optimistic regarding technological advancement, its societal influence and liberal coexistence of minds of very different kinds and power.

arethuza 12y ago
I rather liked David Brin's take on the Culture: "...Culture Universe was among the few to confront straight-on the myriad hopes, dangers and raw possibilities that might be faced by a humanity-that-succeeds." http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lament-then-optimism.html http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lame... NB If anyone wants to get a quick taste of the Culture visiting the Earth the BBC Radio 4 version of "The State of the Art" is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU
scotty79 12y ago
Short homemade movie inspired by those novels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET8IFxPo61w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET8IFxPo61w
lmm 12y ago
They rather prove the point about conflict being necessary for narrative though. The Culture is a genuine utopia - so most of the pagecount is spent not on the Culture or its ordinary citizens, but on its boundaries, its neighbours, or the Contact specialists that are supposedly a miniscule fraction of the population. (I still greatly enjoyed them, mind. To anyone looking for similar stories I'd recommend Neal Asher's works, particularly Hilldiggers)

protomyth 12y ago

Babylon 5's ending had a lot of downs, but it did end in a good place for humanity.

resist_futility 12y ago

Stargate was pretty hopeful about the future. Although it is somewhat set in the present it does touch on the future quite a few times.

evan_ 12y ago
In the one episode where they actually did show Earth's future, it was a Brave-New-World-esque dystopia fueled by an alien incursion. (Really good episode in one of my absolute favorite franchises) I agree that it's generally optimistic but it's hard to say that the characters had any faith in humanity in general, since they keep the whole program a Military secret. http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode) http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode)
aschampion 12y ago
Stargate has an amazingly contemporary American conservative outlook on the universe: that most places, peoples and dilemmas, even if bizarre on the surface, ultimately boil down to familiar with-us-or-against-us conflicts that are solved through might and a strong sense of exceptionalism. It's a suburban universe that you commute to that's not too different from home and doesn't compel change other than to double down on the status quo. Space is the Olive Garden. Aliens are more interested in us than we are in them. Scientists are myopic and are only good as resources to be used by a white guy without much book learnin' but lots of common sense (who of course is always smarter than the scientists when push comes to shove) -- I don't even mean particular characters, it's a template across all the shows. The characters might profess hope about the future, but to me it was more a sobering study of the narrow view we have of our own world projected onto the universe. TNG has its share of similar colonial tendencies, but the show has some self-awareness about it and DS9's entire run was a deconstruction of those themes.

api 12y ago

The most fantastic aspect of Star Trek isn't warp drive, teleportation, or replicators. It's a competent bureaucracy. Starfleet seems to be just that: competent, usually very trustworthy, fair, and honest. Almost equally unbelievable is a society that isn't incredibly emotionally dysfunctional. There is little in the way of psychopathy, narcissism, addiction, unhealthy ideological fanaticism, or depression on display among the protagonists. Cyberpunk has proven to be the most prophetic of the sci-fi genres by far. It's done that by being technologically optimistic and socially pessimistic. So far it seems right on-- technology continues to advance, but globally it looks as if the normal arc of society is from freedom to despotism followed by a decay into syndicated criminality. The mafia state -- almost exactly as depicted in the common cyberpunk setting -- looks like the ascendant future. If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.

Eliezer 12y ago
I watched "Star Trek: Into Darkness". At first I was like "Kirk should be fired." Then I was like "Everyone on the Enterprise should be fired." Then I was like "Everyone in Starfleet should be fired." Then I was like, "Wow, I've never wanted to fire an entire civilization before, and this movie has given me a new appreciation for the importance of rules and regulations in real life."
- api 12y ago
  The competent bureaucracy part is really the lynchpin. Because bureaucracies are so incompetent, criminal syndicates just run circles around them. This is why the mafia state looks like the logical endpoint-- basically anarcho-syndicalism, and it's not a utopia. I think this is also why the most bureaucratic states -- the USSR and Communist China -- have been the first into this brave new future. The criminal mammals triumphed easily over those byzantine dinosaurs. The bottom line is that we have the scientific method and we have the discipline of engineering, and those together can reliably produce progress in the technical realm. We have no set of tools or techniques that reliably produces progress in the human realm. There are no institutions charged with understanding and healing us psychologically. The closest we come is to pop pills, and even that is poorly done -- diagnosis is incredibly unscientific and haphazard. I personally blame -- directly and indirectly -- the war on drugs. I am not one of those people who thinks that dosing everyone with LSD would create some kind of utopia. I've known too many drug users to think that. But beneath the pop culture misuse of those substances, there was some really visionary research into genuinely understanding and even changing deep human psychology at work back in those days. The ridiculous moral panic that followed had the effect of shutting down almost all of that research, even some of the non-psychedlics-related stuff, and leaving us with nothing but talk-talk psychotherapy and the ham fisted pill pushing approach. To this day attempting to delve deeply into human psychology in an active way immediately leads into realms since declared utterly taboo.

gmuslera 12y ago

I think Internet made us not so naive about the future considering how we really are, specially after we get some kind of power. And the present is making us even more pessimistic about it.

curtis 12y ago

When it comes to storytelling, conflict is inherently more interesting than the alternatives. I can't help but feel that this explains most of what's going on here.

api 12y ago
There are many forms of conflict. Optimistic visions of the future often portray a healthy, competent humanity vs. some unknown danger, mystery, or challenge.
- curtis 12y ago
  I agree. But I think those kinds of stories are harder to write, especially for television shows that need scripts for dozens or even hundreds of episodes.

staunch 12y ago

Star Trek: Enterprise was incredibly optimistic.

gdubs 12y ago

I liked mostly all the Star Treks, but it bugged me that the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world I supposed. I loved the optimistic future painted in TNG.

lotharbot 12y ago
> "the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world" Both DS9 and Voyager were completely wrapped up prior to 9/11. Enterprise struck me as far less militarized -- though far more competently written (it gets off to a slowish start, but the later seasons are great). And the original was probably written in part by people with naval backgrounds (note how people are constantly handing Kirk clipboards to sign off on, there's a fire control room that weapons fire is sometimes directed through, etc.) I think the only thing that fits your pattern is Star Trek: Into Darkness.
- gdubs 12y ago
  Ah, quite right about the timing. I enjoyed Enterprise, but man, that theme song.
- krapp 12y ago
  I believe Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy. I'll probably be downvoted into oblivion if i'm wrong though. CBA to google it.
krapp 12y ago
On the other hand, DS9 at least, with its serial format, fleshed out a couple of alien cultures and explored some of the concepts behind the Federation in ways other series wouldn't have even been able to attempt - although there were a couple of episodes in TNG which managed to take some risks, when the writers managed to lock Gene Roddenberry in a cupboard. Even though the Cardassians were essentially Nazis in space (in a series which, literally, had Space Nazis as a thing) and the Ferengi were comic relief, it was refreshing to me to see a bit of effort put into some of the other species. The Ferengi and Cardassians, unlike the Klingons (who despite being a warp-capable species were portrayed as barely coherent psychopathic warlords) were presented as reasonable, if not very alien alternatives to the Federation point of view. TNG would never have had an episode where an alien species calls out the humans for their history of slavery and violence, it would have merely shown us an "alien" species as an allegory but DS9 did (and had the wonderful "Far Beyond the Stars" which, despite barely being in-universe, was able to state Star Trek's essential thesis more directly and profoundly than the main series itself.) And yes, it was essentially Babylon 5 (But Trek) and wound up being all about a war, and the Dominion and the Changelings were utterly disappointing. And by Voyager, the Borg had gone from being one of the most sinister and alien concepts on television to just another bunch of goons for the Federation to punch, and the only thing in my mind that Enterprise had going for it was the cynical and manipulative Vulcans. But I think, for the most part, the further Star Trek got from Roddenberry's idealism, the more its idealism actually meant something, precisely because it was flawed. The story of how humans get to paradise is much more interesting the the one about how awesome it is after they're there.

schultkl 12y ago

It surprised me to only see Gene Roddenberry mentioned in an aside....

davidw 12y ago

Neal Stephenson makes a similar point in this interview: http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/ http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Pretty weird, considering he's rather strongly steeped in the post-cyberpunk weirdtopian tradition.

mercer 12y ago

Futurama could be considered at least partly hopeful, but I suppose that doesn't really count?

gte910h 12y ago

Sci-Fi is commentary on the present, or the near future. Even Star Trek (TOS was 60's era Apollo optimisim, ST:TNG was 1980's "Communism is falling"/We're getting okay with Russia/The Economy is booming/Roddenberry said so!) The reason why today's SciFi isn't hopeful is that there are lots of very easy to see bad ways today turns into tomorrow, and not very easy to see good ways. I honestly think self driving cars will make life crazy better for instance. But there isn't Sci-Fi to write about that is interesting enough to publish or make a show about with that premise. Or for 3d printing. etc

esturk 12y ago
I'm not sure if you would want to watch "I robot", but there was implications of a robot/AI driving car and what that would mean if there's a system that's calculating the probability of survival in the event that an accident is imminent. Again, I'm not suggesting anyone to watch it, but there's a scene about leisurely self-driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_cW7aoRdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_cW7aoRdQ
bergie 12y ago
I would recommend the Daemon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez for an interesting take on self-driving cars and a few other things that can shape our near future http://thedaemon.com/ http://thedaemon.com/
- gte910h 12y ago
  That is quite interesting looking, I will read that.
eudox 12y ago
>Or for 3d printing. etc There's The Diamond Age, which is moderately optimistic, and other molecular nanotechnology-related fiction.
- gte910h 12y ago
  But was written 20 years ago. Certainly within memory of many readers who'd be alive today, but certainly missing many important themes that could be explored to extrapolate from today.

ufmace 12y ago

I watched most of TNG, but I don't consider myself to be really into the series. One of the things that I found odd about it was how externally-focused it was - everything seemed to be about various alien species and unknown astronomical phenomenon, with almost nothing about what this Federation that they all serve is and how it really works. All I remember is drips and drabs of that, which is a shame, when there are so many ideas that could stand to be explored. Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? The fine details of that would all have massive effects on what the society as a whole looks like. Can anybody replicate anything on them? Including weapons and drugs? If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make? This also gets into the rather odd and poorly fleshed-out idea of a society without money. Exactly how does this society work without money? Books can and have be written on ideas around this, but it's just kind of casually thrown out there, with no exploration of the implications on how the greater society functions.

stormbrew 12y ago
Portraying the mechanics of post-scarcity has the same problem as showing a truly alien species: Our imagination is simply not up to the task because we've never seen anything like it to template it on. Avoiding the issue and focusing on smaller stories that exist within post-scarcity is the only way to maintain suspension of disbelief. If and when we reach true post-scarcity, our society will change in ways we simply can't predict. Our economic models are no use there. But things get a lot easier if you just assume everyone in Trek is a LARPer who can just do that because why the fuck not.
krapp 12y ago
>Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? It takes matter, and rearranges it into something else less boring. Using science. Ish. Things. Lasers. >Can anybody replicate anything on them? Depends on the episode. >Including weapons and drugs? I think certain weapons were impossible to replicate but you certainly could crank out as many guns and knives as you liked. But of course, being a utopian society, such things would be unthinkable, so it's not an issue. >If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? Nobody. It's a perfect society. Everyone is nice and peaceful because they choose to be. No wars (with other humans - aliens are fine), no famine (except for that one thing in the original series), no money (or something). They just use the replicators and holodecks for aggressive but entirely wholesome and not at all sexual sports and research and interactive fiction, because the humans of the future have evolved beyond the need to be interesting. Except for Barclay. And La Forge, because one time he created a holodeck model of this girl he had a crush on. Which was awkward when she showed up and he had forgotten to close his porn folder. >They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? ...subspace or something. Dilithium. Quantums. Shut up. >Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make? Probably just the size of the replicator console thing. And energy. By Voyager they had entire starships made up of holograms so who knows? Like a lot of post-scarcity ideas, to me, Star Trek essentially ran on magic. A lot of that had more to do with the necessities of sci-fi on a low budget (the only reason transporters existed, for instance, was to they didn't have to spend effects money on shuttlecraft) than thinking hard about actually making it work. It just did. The holodeck, literally, could create self-aware sentient beings if you asked it to. Riker got cloned when a transporter beam reflected off the clouds of a planet or something. The Enterprise got pregnant and had a space baby. That was a thing that happened. No one cared enough about science fictional speculation to actually try fleshing things out, because that would take time, cost money, and potentially mean taking dramatic risks. Rather, they just came up with a new particle, or kind of energy, or swirly whatever, of the week that would defeat the monster, or other swirly whatever, of the week. Now and then they would just drop the ball on some potentially awesome plot points, like the aliens invading from subspace that snatched people out of their beds and did surgery on them (real creepy stuff) or the Ikonian Empire (apparently a big deal, left magic portals everywhere, completely forgotten about) or the parasites mind-controlling certain Federation higher-ups (leading to the only head-explosion in Trek history.) But the truth is, the "science fiction" was just stage dressing for utterly banal drama. Probably the books got into it more deeply. The Borg was nice though, until it wasn't. Edit: I shouldn't say 'no one cared.' Reading blogs by people like Doug Drexler, clearly a lot of people cared, just all too often the plot didn't seem to permit much complexity or insight.

Bzomak 12y ago

"The Heisenberg uncertainly principle means that transporters like the ones in Star Trek are physically impossible, at least in terms of the physics that we understand. But that didn't stop Roddenberry and friends. They just assumed that human beings would figure out some way to "compensate" for the physical laws." From what I've read, that's somewhat of a generous and optimistic view. My understanding was that the transporter was created purely as a money-saving feature, as they didn't have the budget to create planetary landing effects on a weekly basis. The Heisenberg compensator circuits were a convenient piece of techno-babble in an attempt to hand-wave the underlying physics problem of transporters away...

AgentConundrum 12y ago
Via Memory-Alpha: > When asked by Time magazine in 1994, "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" Michael Okuda replied, "They work just fine, thank you." I suspect the article being referenced is "Reconfigure the Modulators"[1], but it's behind a pay wall so I can't confirm that. [1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,00.html http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,...

stevedekorte 12y ago

From whose perspective is living a militaristic fascist communist state dressed in onesies hopeful?

hitchhiker999 12y ago
You've never seen the show have you?
- stevedekorte 12y ago
  Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate? What I see is on the show is a glorified militaristic hierarchy and an audience of fans whose greatest wish is to be the guy giving the orders. It's the kind of thing the Star Wars Empire would fund as state propaganda.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate? Militaristic -- even Starfleet, the main "military" in the federation, seems to (despite the fact that it fights wars, has military ranks, and military process like "courts-martial"), maintains a myth that it isn't military. The society is so anti-militaristic that it can't even admit that it has a military. Fascistic -- Aside from militarism (discussed above), a defining element of fascism is nationalism. It'd be hard to think of a society less nationalistic than the Federation. Communist -- Rather than a planned economy, people seem pretty free to chose their own pursuits and applications of productive resources. State -- while it clearly has institutions like Startfleet, its not clear that the Federation is a state as we'd understand it, rather than an international institution with sovereign members like the UN. About the only part of your description that is roughly accurate is the "dressed in onesies" part.
    - hitchhiker999 12y ago
      The poster clearly hasn't really watched the show, without a doubt spouting off something that sounded 'edgy' for the sake of it. Nice rebuttal by the way!

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

In 1994, technology was a part of our lives, but it did not dominate us completely. So it was possible for Star Trek: TNG to imagine a world in which we, as people, stayed much the same, but the worlds in which we traveled expanded infinitely outward. Technology for the past twenty years has relentlessly driven inward. It's so interesting to me that commentators keep making this same point over and over again, and the only answer we get is "But we'll just make even cooler tech, and it'll all work out." I don't think so. I think the time of man is at a close, whether we evolve past it or self-terminate. Billions of years of evolution has created this species of hominids that travel in packs. We are, instead, trying to re-make ourselves in something closer to the Borg. It's not going to end the way we expect it to.

noblethrasher 12y ago

I can't find it now, but I remember a brilliant comment on reddit that described the theme of TOS and TNG as being about “what it means to be a hero in a utopian age”.