Well, now, they have enshrined forever in the mod logs, a record of their abuse, the URL to the images that prove it, and an invitation to come here. They have been foisted on their own petard, haha!!
Holy shit removing those top two in particular is absolutely inexcusable. They are constructive. They’re quite detailed and respectful in their criticism.
We’ve got this community, but someone needs to make a generic Star Trek and a Daystrom community outside of that instance now.
Fair enough. I have wanted to create a new DaystromInstitute, but I’m already the mod of a Plex community that I let go to hell 7 months ago because of an ongoing life event, and I’m certainly in no position to start another community, let alone mod it. (I have modded a few Reddit communities over the years, and it’s a lot of work, often not fun).
¯_(ツ)_/¯
The other community doesn’t get much traffic because everyone just comes here, even though traffic should really be split between the two, and this should mostly be a meme/shitposting community.
The Star Trek community isn’t very busy yet, but we are trying to make it more so.
As far as Daystrom, Lemmy doesn’t have enough totally hardcore fans to make it work. You need people who are not only willing to pick apart Star Trek down to the creative atoms, but also to find absolutely impossible explanations for ridiculous plot points.
Daystrom is definitely not a place for me anyway, but I just don’t see it being a Lemmy thing at this point.
Ok I don’t know why, but I swear when I clicked that link earlier it was showing me the most recent posts were 8 months ago. It’s fixed itself now, and looks pretty good!
That’s giving too much credit to the website and Value Subtracted. It’s more like an afterschool church group that had too much sugar.
Dude is 85 different levels of pathetic but rising to the level of cult leader? He’d have to have intelligence and charisma for that. Intelligence? Well he can repeat things others have said so at least parrot level intelligence but charisma? Lol
George Lucas introduced evil guys wearing SS uniforms who conduct genocide before the viewers’ eyes and somehow people still pretend that Star Wars is apolitical.
The best political statement from Star Wars is that the raging liberal that is George Lucas created a galactic society with a robotic slave labor race and apparently unlimited resources but could not imagine a world where the good guys did anything but fight to restore the status quo of poor people being not quite so oppressed.
That said, Star Wars 10 should be the Droid Revolution.
To be fair to Star Wars, the entire premise of the overall universe is that the Galaxy is stuck on cycle between fascism and neo-liberalism because the latter will always pave the way to the former.
Also because the only beings who could break the cycle (the Jedi/Sith) are more interested in wiping the opposite faction than fixing the galaxy. Pre-Disney, Anakin/Luke begin the important transition from the cyclic system into a state of perfect balance.
It unironically does… Otherwise, why stop at droids - using a hammer to drive a nail would also be slavery. We’d have countless slaves working for humanity right now, in the form of industrial robots.
That’s precisely why the default protocol in Star Wars (that nobody remotely related to the main cast seems to follow) is to periodically wipe droids, to prevent them from developing sentience and personality.
They especially won’t, since 2024 generative-AI panic will make everyone root against the droids.
I’m not saying there aren’t valid concerns, but people act as if ChatGPT’s existence suddenly made the Terminator movies into a fucking documentary.
Motherfuckers remind me of the weirdos hunting down robots to kill in that redneck carnival, in the second act of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. : Artificial Intelligence.
Are you seriously criticizing the use of droids in a galaxy where slavery and clone armies are a thing? Also, in-universe, the use of droids isn’t quite as bad as it seems - we get confirmation from multiple sources that Droids do not develop a personality and sense of self unless they’re left on for too long. That’s why I’d consider C3PO, R2-D2 and most B1 battle droids to be sentient individuals, but most Droidekas to be no more than tools/weapons.
Then you read the next book, and it’s about space being a Libertarian utopia. And then the next one is about a free love cult.
He might not be writing satire, but if he wasn’t, then I don’t know how to make anything coherent out of his writing. The only commonality is a very obvious self insert mouthpiece character.
And maybe it’s true? He definitely became more libertarian over time – but he was a professional writer, so his output is bound to be a combination of what he believed and what he thought would sell. Personally, I have no idea what the mix is. Would be nice if the people who enjoyed his stories didn’t also feel obligated to puff up his moral bone fides though. So much bending over backwards isn’t really good for a person.
I’m a big proponent of the “death of the author”. Even if the author is still around to give their reasons for writing something the way they did, it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is what the audience sees in the work.
Every interpretation is equally valid as long as they’re sincere. The drapes were blue. The drapes represent depression. The drapes represent Democrats. The only invalid deconstruction is one delivered in bad faith.
I hate death of the author because it destroys art as a form of communication. You end up with Orwellian art: Whoever controls the present narative, controls the past.
I can imagine a fascist future where Guernica is taught as a pro-Nazi work of art.
Death of the Author enables the most absolute shittakes to be valid. John Carpenter felt the need to make a public statement decrying the neo-nazis who were promoting the idea that They Live was a critic of Jews.
I don’t think it destroys art as a form of communication any more than the possibility of being misunderstood over texting or even in person destroys those media.
The chance for miscommunication exists in every form of communication, it’s the consequence of letting an idea out of your own head and into the world. And art is inherently less clear a method for communication than something more straightforward would be.
If you create a work that nazis can see a bit of their worldview in, congratulations! They see their worldview in the world, so you’ve created a decently accurate facsimile of reality. Shitty people seeing their own shitty ideas in your art doesn’t say anything about you, y says something about them. The same “death of the author” that lets them have that take insulated the author from that take.
But the reason I like it is that it also allows decent people to come to decent conclusions about art made by shitty people. Even if I didn’t like it, I know it exists. Art can speak to someone about experiences the author didn’t imagine, and that can be powerful and significant and beautiful, even if it can also be shitty.
The fact that you used the word misunderstood means you understand that an interpretation can be wrong.
Death of the author means there is never misunderstanding. If you send a text and I misread it, you are wrong, not me. I can ignore any attempts that you might use to correct the misunderstanding because my interpretation is just as valid.
The fact that you used the word misunderstood means you understand that an interpretation can be wrong.
If you are attempting to use art to communicate, then that can be understood as you intended or understood differently, i.e. misunderstood.
If you send me a text that says “Take the frogs over to the bank” and I take some amphibians to the river, that isn’t a wrong reading of that sentence even if you wanted me to take some roads over to the money storage location (a valid, if unusual, way to parse that sentence). I misunderstood you, but my reading is not any less valid than yours.
I misunderstood you, but my reading is not any less valid than yours.
The difference is that I couldn’t correct the misunderstanding because you believe your interpretation is valid no matter what the author says. What I intended is irrelevant to you.
The interpretation is valid. But that doesn’t mean communication hasn’t broken down. In the case of a text message, the “true purpose” isn’t to entertain or to elucidate deep truths about the world (usually), it’s to convey a message.
Art with the goal of covering a single message is, in a word, propaganda. Propaganda that succeeds at being art may or may not succeed at being propaganda, but as art, the message intended by the author is not as important as the interpretation of the audience. Tolkien said he hated allegory, but it doesn’t make Lord of the rings not allegorical, it only makes it not deliberately allegorical.
Guernica is propaganda? If you remove the “misleading” part of the definition of propaganda then all communication is propaganda. A Maths textbook is propaganda.
but as art, the message intended by the author is not as important as the interpretation of the audience.
You state that as a fact when this is the problem being discussed!
The author is trying to tell you something and you are saying, “I don’t care if you try to correct me. You actually meant amphibians go to the river and your attempts to correct me are wrong.”
(as a neutral word, dated) Agitation, publicity, public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda.
(derogatory) Such communication specifically when it is biased, misinformative, and/or provoking mainly emotional responses.
I’m using sense 1, here, and yes, Picasso’s Guernica is propaganda. It was commissioned explicitly to raise awareness and funds for a war. It is also, and separately, art.
I don’t think all communication is propaganda, but I also don’t think all communication is art. If you’re choosing to create something and call it “art” while also trying to push a particular message, it is (at least almost) certain that you are also intending to convey an emotional and influential message. Perhaps there need not be an agenda, except your own desire to send the message you hope to.
I can imagine a fascist future where Guernica is taught as a pro-Nazi work of art.
And even more importantly is that people are gonna “teach” the making of art how they teach it regardless, but the teacher experiencing it one way doesn’t make any of the other readings invalid.
The beauty of the book is that you’re basically reading a future soldier’s diary. Heinlein is letting the story speak for itself, the reader has to decide what to think of such a life, such a future without being nudged into any direction whatsoever. I love it.
I think Heinlein did that a lot. I think stranger and a strange land is him looking at the hippie culture and taking it to a sci-fi extreme. I don’t think he was trying to advocate for anything. In particular, a lot of his books was about trying to protect the future and see how that would affect people.
Not mad at you but I literally cannot fucking abide with critics’ read of Starship Troopers that it’s somehow pro-fascist. Not only have I read some of his other books that are about peaceful, optimistic space exploration, but the book itself is so clearly a satire it astounds me. I could really write a whole wall of text right now.
Anyway, it’s concept is “what if facism was normal to everyone and it was centuries of that normalization and they decided to conquer the galaxy because… Fascism” And then it goes into the mind of a literal average soldier who starts to think too much and is really horny because he’s barely ever laid eyes on a girl." It’s anti fascist, but in a clever way. That’s what makes it so good.
I personally think the book is an exploration of what a militaristic society would look like if faced by a external threat, and that it should be taken at face value, but there are plenty of critics who have read more books than I have with much less favourable interpretations.
Episode 1 was about a trade dispute on the surface and a plot to take over the Republic and turn it into a dictatorship just below the surface (where “the surface” is about what the characters in the movie see, the audience sees it all if they’ve watched the OT before). Episode 2 is about expanding that into a war, episode 3 is about creating a moment to perform a coup.
The action is secondary to the politics with the exception of the death of Darth Maul, the escape of Obi Wan and Yoda, Obi Wan defeating Anakin, the destruction of the first Death Star, the Ewoks joining the battle of Endor, and Anakin turning on Sideous. Everything else was part of Sideous’ plan to take political power.
There are also strong messages about trauma and how being cloistered can lead people to become the very evil their isolation was intended to prevent. Luke is a walking billboard saying “even evil people can realise the gravity of their mistakes”, as well.
I honestly do not like this meme. Rom is the opposite of crude. He is sweet and caring, which is why Leta loves him and also why many fans, myself included, love him. I get that it’s a joke, but using the very wrong character in my opinion.
Okay, but who cares? Do you think that you’re entitled to a more important opinion because you are a moderator? Judging from the upvotes, enough people enjoy this meme and there is no need for you to spread such unnecessary negativity.
Christ mate, they only stated their personal opinion. I'd be with you if they abused mod and removed stuff arbitrarily, but that's not what happened, so chill out.
I agree with that and I am actually glad you voiced the opinion because seeing all the upvotes on this makes me wonder about the communities taste a bit.
People probably saw it and had a slight chuckle and hit the up arrow.
I think that’s probably it. It doesn’t need to be authentic or true to the character to elicit that response. I doubt it’s some deep thing, or that there’s something seriously wrong with the community.
Besides, I think the fact that this is extremely unlike Rom is somewhat of a subversion of expectations, and is a deliberate part of the joke. I think that’s being missed.
Probably. I also believe that they would truly honor someone who went through a difficult, painful journey in order to realize - and become - who they really are.
What’s SNW and even DSC then? I’m confused how main characters like Ortegas and Stamets are “set-pieces”? I do really hope they bring back Captain Angel though, what a great baddie (you love) haha.
Well, when they only exist to die for plot points and their only character developent exists to service the convenience of the moment— yeah, clearly these characters are only important as a matter of plot convenience, not as actual people.
It’s cheap, shitty, and shallow. And if you don’t see that for what it is, I feel very bad for you. but I feel worse for all of the LGBTQ audience members who are fooled into thinking that this is progress. It’s fucking trash.
Trek has only evolved from “lgbtq people are invisible” to “lgbtq people are expendable for the sake of ratings”
They only acknowledge us to murder us horribly in order to yank tears.
…Seven of Nine and Rafi got their own command. Stamets and Culber remained a loving couple throughout (apart from Culver’s unfortunate temporary death) and adopted a young enby who had their own growth throughout the series while everyone respected their pronouns. Nurse Chapel is a bi woman who withdrew her application to a fellowship at the Vulcan Science Council, essentially telling them “your fellowship ain’t ready for me”.
I wouldn’t consider their queer identities to be conveniences or their character arcs to be simple plot points by any stretch of the imagination. retconning Sulu as gay? Maybe. Agender computer genius aliens stealing the ship or a third-gender alien’s romantic encounter with Riker? Okay, sure.
But the latest Trek serieses put queer people in space and haven’t been using them as lip service or exclusively as minor supporting characters. They’ve been full-fledged characters whose queer identities the audience was been made aware of and shown that, in the future, the bigots lose because their queerness doesn’t define them…it is just a part of who they are. They are masters of their own destinies.
(That being said, as much as I hate the lip service stuff, I do wish they’d have thrown us a bone with Detmer and Owosekun because c’mon…enough queerbaiting already.)
They’ve had out, badass prominent characters whose identities don’t define them in the last three live action Star Trek series, spitting in the face of the aNTi-wOkE haters who claim to love Star Trek but have only ever watched it through their own particular bigoted myopic lenses. What do you want them to do? Invent an actual time machine to do rewrites of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT?
The best way to apologize is to learn from your mistakes and do better in the future. The Star Trek show runners have taken this to heart, so I don’t know what more you want from them. (And I say this as a long-time, trans, leftist Star Trek fan.)
If anyone had a problem it might be the Ferengi watching (Fe)Males putting on clothes and doing business, but they’d just figure out a fine to levy and keep the latinum moving.
I don’t know, but there’s a pattern of Rick Berman having something to do with sexist takes in Star Trek. It’s complicated, and there’s a lot of hear-say. And I think there ought to be some credit given all around for Trek generally being progressive for it’s time.
But it seems like more of the issues seemed to happen when Rick Berman was involved, at least in the TNG, DS9 era:
Rick Berman certainly worked to pull down the franchise. To be clear, though, Ferengi society was not a sexist take. It was a negative depiction of a sexist society. You were never supposed to watch an episode and come away thinking “man, those Ferengi really have it all figured out.”
You were never supposed to watch an episode and come away thinking “man, those Ferengi really have it all figured out.”
Yeah. Certainly.
It still stands out as a weird artistic choice, I think. We see this extreme take on sexism, but it’s a long time before we get a female Ferengi protagonist shown overcoming it.
Yeah, that’s definitely fair to say. I don’t think we saw any Ferengi women until DS9. TNG tried to introduce them as the new big bad in season 1, but when that kind of fizzled they really didn’t seem to have any solid ideas to develop them.
It’s worth pointing out that Grand Negus Rom led sweeping changes in Ferengi society largely inspired by the business acumen of his beloved Moogie and to a lesser extent his wife, Leta.
Ferengi were originally written to be a villain race when Roddenberry was directly running TNG, but they ended up testing comical to audiences, originally they were very 60’s free love era coded villains, wearing fur, using space whips, and of course absurdly misogynistic, They also sinffed around like animals, and hooted and hollarded very barbarically, and they weren’t into Rikeresk Polyamory AT ALL, the no clothes thing was a really early line of dialog where a ferengi says “disgusting, they cloth their women, inviting you to disrobe them” or some stupid shit like that. DS9 retconed the Ferengi A LOT, showing the first ferengi female, which was just a slightly shorter ferengi with smaller ears. I always kinda hoped they’d explain woman never leaving Ferengiar, or their homes by having them be very dysmorphic to the males, like huge and immobile physiologically, because aliens. but they mostly made ferengi a comic relief race, they’re kookie! but eventually Moogie controls ferenginar through two puppet Grand Negus. At first the culture shock causes a lot of backlash, but once clothing companies realize they can expend their markets by some 50% of local on planet business everyone stop caring.
Depends on where they’re hypocritical or not. In real life, queer culture is entirely about making less restrictive laws regarding morality. The “small government” types should absolutely be locking arms at Pride Parades, but the Pride Gadsden is a rarity.
You think an empire that is extremely sexist to the point where they let a Ferengi be a leader of a noble house before a woman would be super accepting of trans issues?
…Yes? Because I stated exactly why I feel it fits with the Klingon ethos? Outside of combat, Klingons don’t generally favor deception, so why would a trans woman trying to pretend she’s a man not be looked at as dishonorable? Besides, Grilka couldn’t be the leader of the House because (as far as the Klingons knew) Kozak died in combat which meant Quark had the right to be the head of the House. Had Quark admitted upfront that Kozak had gotten drunk and fallen on his own blade, he never would have been involved and Grilka would have been granted the House.
In the real world, it is entirely possible to be against gender but not sex (c.f. TERFs like J.K. Rowling) or to be against sex but not gender (c.f. how many gender reassignment surgeries are performed in Iran, where it’s culturally better to be a woman or trans-woman than it is to be a gay man).
A huge part of the Klingon civil war arc is that the Duras family had no male heir. They eventually just dig one out of the brothels. At no point is it considered a viable option for either of the sisters to openly lead.
When Worf wanted to get married to Jadzia, they needed Martok’s wife’s approval due to the extremely stratified gender roles. When they had trouble getting said approval, Martok basically said that it wasn’t his place to interfere and sort it out himself. A huge portion of the reason why Jadzia had trouble getting approval is because she doesn’t behave like you’d expect a Klingon women to. All of this friction is in spite of the fact that Martok is a lot more open minded than most other Klingons.
Klingon society is regressive in a million other ways. They are governed by a glorified aristocracy. Worf installed Martok as chancellor by killing Gowron in a casual death battle. They advised crusher to help Worf kill himselves when he was paralyzed. The society is still fairly religious. A popular coming of age ceremony involves repeatedly getting shocked with pain sticks.
All of that’s just off the top of my head. There’s probably more. The idea that Klingon society is ass backwards in a million different ways but super tolerant of trans individuals stretches all belief and feels more akin to Tumblr headcanon than any actual reality.
My dude, your lame Tumblr insult aside, you’re still conflating discrimination of sex with discrimination of gender. Yes Klingon society is sexist in a lot of ways, but that doesn’t necessitate that they’re genderist too, because 1) despite what conservative ideology believes sex and gender aren’t the same thing, and 2) you’re attempting to square that circle using human logic with a species that isn’t. I gave you an example of each situation that exists on our current planet as is.
You’re also ignoring that L’Rell was Chancellor of the Empire and also that lots of female Klingons are shown in the military same as the males.
There is absolutely nothing in Klingon society that indicates that they’d be accepting of trans individuals. There are a million things in Klingon society that, while not explicitly anti trans, heavily hint at a society that would not be accepting.
I feel like you like Star Trek and want every aspect of it to be explicitly pro trans. However instead of just acknowledging that Klingons were portrayed as extremely regressive anyway, you invent a headcanon and grasp as straws to justify it.
She may have overacted. Once Gowron became aware of the situation, he addressed her directly and assured her we would honor her rights to the house. She may have not needed The Bravest Ferengi to get involved, but it didn’t help her being understood.
I blame the late Manny Coto for that. I blame him for a lot of bad TV, actually. lol (ENT was the exception, somehow)
or get cancelled with a big cliffhanger (My name is Earl)
Wasn’t that due to the Writer’s Strike? Regardless, showrunners should never end a season on a cliffhanger when the studios have shown they’ll pull the plug for any reason whatsoever.
Regardless, showrunners should never end a season on a cliffhanger when the studios have shown they’ll pull the plug for any reason whatsoever.
I guess if contracts are signed, it’s okay, but even then it’s a risk (e.g. strikes). For the most part I agree, though. You need to end on a note that, at the bare minimum, could serve as a slightly unsatisfying pausing point.
During an interview with the “Slick & Thick” podcast, Ethan Suplee, who portrayed Randy Hickey, revealed that, ultimately, the cancellation was due to communication issues between NBC, the show’s network, and Fox, the show’s studio.
“We were a hit. And the network called the studio and said, ‘We want to license the show for another year,’ and the studio said, ‘Well, we want more money. We want to renegotiate our deal with you.’ And the network basically did not respond for two weeks,” said Suplee. “And then the studio called back and said, ‘We’ll take your deal,’ and the network said, ‘Too late.’”
Looks like plain old incompetence killed the show.
It’s definitely a possibility that it had something to do with why the studios were so far behind that next year. Even shows that weren’t cancelled at the time suffered terribly (Heroes comes to mind).
That show overstayed its welcome inside the third season. It would have been a better show as a British style 3-episode / 4-season mini-ish series. But there was sooooo much filler and soooo much recycling of plots, the edginess of killing and dismembering a guy was downright trite by the time Jimmy Smits got to the set.
I figure the title is meant to be interpreted as “D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers”. He’s the main character and the book is about his adventures with them. What does bother me is the total lack of muskets.
It’s about D’Artagnan’s journey to becoming a Musketeer, so calling it 4 Musketeers would be Spoilers! A better choice would be “The 3 Musketeers and I” which my old brain is hinting may have been the title of some film version…
I'm not sure where you get your information but I'm pretty sure their names are Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. Pluto was just a dog in that movie.
Because he wasn’t actually a musketeer (not until the very end anyway). He was friends with the musketeers, but was basically just a regular guy off the street. A musketeer was some kind of position in the military/royal guard or whatever. He didn’t hold that position.
Ah, I haven’t read the other two. I actually didn’t even know they existed until you told me just now. But for the first book he’s definitely just a friend of the Musketeers until the very end.
This whole thread should be a Curry Love Fest, because he is incredible in that movie. Rebecca DeMornay and he are just chewing the scenery and enjoying a free vacation in France.
Oooh, nice catch, both of you. I dunno if Disco or The Orville used “Lieutenant Tyler” as the character name intentionally, but I think you might be the first to document this trope.
They are both copies. They explain that the guy operating the transporter was losing him, so he used a second beam to try to compensate. On beam made it through, the other bounced off the st uff in the atmosphere that was causing the problem and rematerialized him on the planet. I’m pretty sure this explanation was in the episode in order to establish that both Rikers are equally real.
Except that that explanation means Tom was made with the original Riker materials and Will was made from matter reserves on the ship using the original Riker as a template.
Both beams were pulling in genuine Will Riker. Presumably they are both a mix of the original material and additional material formed by the transporter. That or the transporter is violating the law of conservation of energy.
This is a semantics argument. The way the person you’re talking to means it, two things being equally fake also means that they’re equally real, because they are both just as real as the other (that is, not).
i always felt that it was wrong that they gave the riker that got out a promotion; but wouldn’t do the same thing for the riker that didn’t get out even though he was the one who paid the price for his heroism while the other riker simply got lucky and both did the same thing that earned that promotion.
Always thinking of the outtake where she’s talking to a Starbase and a guy off-camera does a fake feminine voice in response to her line and her eyes just light up and she says “Hey, suger.” in the most genuinely sultry voice I’ve ever heard her use.
In most other circumstances, I think it would have been sort of creepy, but I went to a Star Trek convention as a kid just after Star Trek V came out and she was the guest and some fan came up to the mic during questions time and said, “I don’t have a question, I just saw Star Trek V and I wanted to tell you that you still have the best legs in the galaxy.”
Like I said, creepy in many instances, but she was 57 when he said it and she spent years as a dancer (she’s one of the main dancers in the film of Porgy and Bess), so she definitely appreciated the compliment. It got a massive cheer too, and not just from the men.
Sisko didn’t have the privilege of being a peace time captain. He had to be at the center of a war between galaxies with everything at stake. He didn’t have a choice how agents he may have protected acted. he didn’t command, direct, or approve of their methods. He only benifited, and protected, with disgust and grief for the values he once held dear. But all he had then was the list of all those lost, and the precise knowledge that losing the war, ment total destruction to everything and everyone he cared about. It would be future generations that would judge him, no one who marched through the mud along side him would.
Well put. There were still those that judged his choices/actions, but then, those detractors likely would have made radically different and likely detrimental decisions in the name of peace.
He didn’t command, direct, or approve of any of their methods. He only benefited, and protected, with disgust and grief for the values he once held dear.
So… I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing, a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it… Computer, erase that entire personal log.
Beamed directly out of the butt and into a small shuttle that follows behind a starfleet ship.
Once the shuttle fills up to the point that it’s almost bulging with pressure from all the feces, they park it on some forgotten moon and wait for alien explorers to discover it and open it up to see what’s inside.
This is why voyager had so many shuttles. Once they started beaming the poop into space instead of shuttles they could use their entire stock of poop shuttles as normal shuttles. Bit of an extravagance for the delta quadrant, really
Talking it out instead of shooting first and asking questions later is one of the things I admire most about Star Trek. It was sold as essentially a space Western, but unlike your standard Western, it says that violence is not the answer, talking and understanding each other is the answer.
And really, the only Westerns I truly enjoy are the same way. My favorite is The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck. He’s an aging “fastest gun in the west” who just wants to be reconciled with his wife and child, retire and live a quiet life. But he keeps getting challenged. Spoiler for a movie made in 1950: There’s only one gun fired in the entire film, shot at the titular Gunfighter by a young hotshot. As Peck’s character lays dying, he lets the hotshot know that the curse of a life of violence has been passed on and he’s about to have as dismal a life as the man he killed.
The same sort of moral lesson Star Trek teaches.
But they want John Wayne coming in blazing, shooting at those inhuman savages (they don’t have to worry about being called racist if they hate Cardassians).
The number of times in trek where they could easily destroy the ship or entity that was causing the problem in the episode is huge in Trek. But they spend most of the episode trying to figure out how solve the problem with the minimum damage to both sides.
I also love how they have different types of leaders.
Kirk is the Captain you’d love to have as a boss. He gets stuff done, but also has fun with it. He’d inspire loyalty through Charisma.
He’s the captain you want standing by your side in a bar fight.
Picard is the perfectly-distantly, dignified leader. He’s a diplomat and archaeologist who loves exploring not only space, but culture and the nature of life. His love for his crew is shown through his desire to develop them into better officers.
He was the captain who kept you from getting into a fight.
Sisko is the most militaristic of the Captains. We first meet him in a battle, and he doesn’t back down from many fights. When Picard was annoyed by Q he complained. When Sisko met Q he punched him. But Sisko was a great tactician who also had to be a diplomat in charge of a station inhabited mostly by people outside his command structure.
He was the captain who punch someone in the throat if he thought there would be a fight.
Janeway was a scientist and diplomat. She could be hard as iron, but she was absolutely devoted to her people and would do anything for them. Her loyalty would cause her to occasionally cross the line, however. More than any of the captains, she wanted to develop her crew into leaders. They had limited options for advancement, but she tried to give them all opportunities to grow. She also didn’t see any sense in playing fair if she was in the right.
She was the captain that would bring a gun to a knife fight.
The funny thing is that, contrary to how they act in their roles as Captain, Kirk was a studious nerd and a bit of teacher’s pet at the academy while Picard was a hard-partying drunk who not only participated in, but started bar fights.
Kirk would do his best to defend you in a bar fight and then would punish you after the fact, according to Star Fleet rules.
Picard would try to stop the bar fight from happening to begin with, would break it up if it escalated, but probably wouldn’t defend you specifically unless you had a good reason for being in the fight. He would only punish you if you were in the wrong and then it would probably be something more creative, more immediately punishing, and less impactful (career-wise), then Star Fleet’s regulations prescribe.
Picard got stabbed in the heart in one of those academy bar fights. Might have cooled his jets a bit.
Also, “a bit of a teacher’s pet‽‽‽” Kirk was so much of a golden boy teacher’s pet, he cheated on the Kobiashi Maru test by hacking the holodeck, and forcing a “win condition,” and the instructors allowed it to stand.
OK I love to laugh at Wesley, don’t get me wrong, but why the hate? I am a dirty casual it’s true. But next Gen is the one I know best, he wasn’t that bad was he?
Because Wesley Crusher was written to be seen as an annoying kid who got in the way. That was the social slant of the time. But you watch those episodes now and you realize, “Hey, he was actually very smart, just trying to help, and he even saved the ship a couple of times.” So all the “Shut up, Wesley!” moments became so stupid, even if he did deserved it sometimes, that the community decided to lean into it ironically as an in-joke.
My theory is that the other members of the Federation saw humans as a bunch of chaotic, violent monkeys that somehow had gotten into space and in time would spread their flavor of chaos and violence across the universe.
So it makes sense they thought better training the puppy before it grows up.
My variation was that humans were the wildcard. Everyone else had long-standing tensions, but no one had a history with humans. There is that connection to the Vulcans, but Vulcans treat humans as children so it’s neither a friendship nor enmity
And the humans breed like crazy - at least, given what we see in the different ST shows; humans FAR outnumber the quantities of any other race. Even in the Undiscovered Country, one of the Klingons remarks that the Federation is little more than a “Humans only” club. So it was like, join them, train them, or we’re going to be overwhelmed by them!
I think it’s not quite as bad as it appears - it’s just that despite the alliance most species still self segregate (understandably, requiring different conditions for comfort). We just see the story from the human side.
I think the question is why The Federation exists to begin with. Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites don’t like each other, so how did they hold together a Federation before the Humans showed up? Was this entirely an alliance of convenience against Klingons and Romulans? Or was this a serious collaborative partnership that’s just been cracking up as Humans arrive?
I’ll say, one think I’ve really enjoyed about Lower Decks is that they have done more “What is life like on a Foreign Ship?” stories in a few seasons than a other Star Trek series have done in entire show runs. The closest episodes I can think of that take a deep dive into life on a Klingon ship was a few Worf episodes on TNG and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The Federation is created at the end of Enterprise: before that there’s a cold war going on between the Andorians and the Vulcans. The Coalition of Planets forms during the show and is dissolved when the Federation is created.
There’s a ton of Voyager episodes of “a few crew are captured and they’re working for this other set of people out here!” But those are generally not a view of another well-developed culture since they’re in such foreign territory.
Well, the whole point of a diplomatic interplanetary body is to have a common forum of communication to soften their relationships over time, by allowing dialogue and cooperation to occur at some level in a fashion doesn’t involve shooting phasers and photon torpedoes at each other. Even if the shooting still happens from time to time.
It’s a parallelism with the UN. All sorts of countries who hate each other are part of it and sit at the same table, at some unequal level even. They still shoot each other and commit atrocities towards others and their own people from time to time. But still, the point is that the table exists and is available. It creates opportunities for dialogue and cooperation, that wouldn’t exist otherwise, that create opportunities to solve conflict peacefully and soften their differences over time.
Your comment and the OP act like the Tellarites don’t like anyone, but that’s not really true. The Tellarites and Vulcans got along just fine before Humanity showed up. The Vulcans probably figured out the Tellarites’ gimmick and decided that challenging each other’s ideas was how they arrived at a logical conclusion. The Andorians were probably too hot headed to get along with people who challenged them on everything, leading to them being in conflict during ENT.
As for how humans fit in, humans may be crazy bastards, but they also occupy a nice middle ground between the others. We can be as emotional as Andorians one day, as logical as Vulcans the next, and a number of our political systems were built on Tellarite-style arguing. Humans can hear out one ally, then explain their position to another in terms they’ll understand. We can also tell when Vulcans are secretly being driven by emotion, can leverage Andorian emotions to bring them to a more rational perspective, and debate Tellarites on even ground. Humans are the interpreters and negotiators that got these people to actually talk about their problems with each other and come to a reasonable compromise.
This whole discussion feels like nobody watched ENT.
The Federation exists because Archer was such a fantastic mediator. Add in his rapport with T’Pol and Shran, and his willingness to die in the place of a Tellarite ambassador, and it’s little wonder he was able to knit the beginnings of this alliance together.
I really got an Archer vibe from Pike in “Spock Amok” (SNW S01E05), when he dealt with the R’ongovians.
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