I just don’t get it. What is the freaking problem of those directors, trying to rewrite federation into some kind of dystopian tech fascism?
I was annoyed by the first Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams, with those police cops. I was alienated by those anti-android resentments in Picard. I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode, because the main protagonist was sent to some kind of labor prison for disobedience, where prisoners regularly die. I didn’t think it could get any worse but just watching the first 10 minutes of Starfleet Academy makes me want to bury the whole franchise [edit: and stopped watching]. Some drumhead court-martial, lifelong prison sentence, violently separating a mother from her child and some goons beating up a prisoner. How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?
Star Trek is supposed to be the ONE fiction with a positive, utopian view on mankind and the future. I totally get the attraction of dystopian settings but for that I can read some Warhammer 40k novels. This really makes me furious.
Fortunately there is still Strange New Worlds.
Please spoiler me, when this bullshit in Starfleet Academy gets turned around in some twist, because otherwise I will just ignore the show.
A utopia will never exist because a utopia implies that everyone and everything is perfect, but this will never happen because human instinct and diversity won’t allow it and everyone’s definition of perfection is different. In Star Trek this utopia was started after WW3 followed by massive genocide followed by people just trying to survive. So there was a hard reset for humanity.
For Picard’s vineyard, it’s a family legacy and heirloom, so he gets a pass. But if you want your own vineyard and there’s enough land then you get one.
Here’s where Star Trek kind of falls apart, someone has to mine the raw resources that can’t be replicated or do menial tasks that no one would want to do even 200 years from now. How does that work? If the work you do still equates to social ranking and resource allocation then does the steel worker also get prime real estate next to the president of the federation?
I love Star Trek but it’s just a dream that will never exist, the idea of Star Trek could never exist just based on the simple fact of the fans can’t even agree on what it is. To me it’s Sci-fi adventures in a world where people can be open about who they are but also none threatened or threatening about it, where everyone works together to accomplish a goal, where doing what you love is payment enough.
Well written. Earth’s utopia seems to exist (or not) as is relevant to the plot at hand. But if there is one thing Star Trek drills into it’s messaging over and over and over again, it’s that the work, the brutally difficult work to get one centimeter closer to that “impossible” utopia is what motivates starfleet.
And so do all of his descendants who inherit it in perpetuality
An unchanging social structure with no means for mobility.
Either your family was rich enough to own land centuries ago, or you never will be.
Utopia!
/s
And then your descendants always get it because it’s a family legacy and heirloom…
So even if there’s “open land” it’s going to run out eventually.
So your argument is that you can’t have a utopia if you can inherit your parents belongings?
I would also argue that the accumulation of goods and hoarding resources would not be tolerated. So if you’re rich before the fall you’re probably not now. But my assumption is that if you can justify owning lots of land by something other than greed then you probably won’t keep/get it.
Yes land would be a finite resource and would be closely regulated.
Star Trek is a dream that will never come true because it assumes that all humans would be rational and reasonable. That’s just inconceivable.
I’m saying if one vineyard has been in the same family for a thousand years…
Anyone who says everything is fair and equal doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
It’s not a utopia because it’s not a classless society.
It’s what modern day oligarchs would call a utopia.