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Star Trek: Does Anyone Care Anymore?


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#21 1701D

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Posted 27 October 2015 - 04:25 AM

Having said that though, Star Trek IS and will always be based on an ensemble crew from a variety of different backgrounds and ethnicities onboard the USS Enterprise working together. As long as Star Trek has that then it's Star Trek, right?

#22 Destructor!!!

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Posted 31 October 2015 - 09:56 PM

What would be radical in 2015? Maybe issues with how technology shouldn't be the only point ... Healthy living should be important. Maybe dealing with the advent of new ideas and concepts that can be dangerous if not dealt with properly. The possibilities are endless but someone at the helm really needs to try!

 

There's a Borg story in there somewhere.

 

The thing is, I feel like even that's not particularly radical. In fact, that story has been told in science fiction in some form or another since long before the current "connected" era. There are new twists to be put on that concept, sure - the necessity to strike a balance - the need to take a breath between iterations of advancing tech - but those are problems that have been solved already for the people of the Federation. If it's not about the people of the Federation, then it doesn't feel like it's about us, and it becomes just another "Very Special Episode". A better writer than I may be able to make a theme of it.

 

If you want a radical theme, something topical, then how about ambiguity?

 

Friend? Foe? Neither? ...Why?

 

Europe is facing a tide of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East, composed of desperate, decent people struggling tooth and nail to find a safe haven in the EU. They're running from opposing forces of tyranny and cult-exploitation, or just from the all-encompassing destruction between those forces.

The welcome they find here is limited - they're treated with suspicion for many reasons:

They're desperate - will they turn to crime?

They're running from radicalisation - have some of them been turned? Will they kill us if we take them in?

They're educated - might they have a hidden agenda?

 

Meanwhile the strife they're running from is a cesspool of competing corporate and political interests, many of which have environmental ramifications that are exacerbating the whole situation.

 

Star Trek, in its early days, always excelled at re-imagining our Earthly issues, social and political, as challenges faced by our characters on alien worlds and within the Federation.

 

DS9 tackled some of this ambiguity with Changeling infiltrations and religious extremism. It almost seems prescient when you re-watch it these days!

 

Imagine re-casting the real-world situation as the fallout of the Dominion War, or (cringe) the destruction of Romulus... or both.

 

The Federation, structurally, is much more like the EU in this situation, and would continue to serve as an aspirational society - though flawed. They would be the ones dealing with the moral dilemma of how to accommodate the displaced hordes of Cardassians, Romulans, and Gamma Quadrant species.

 

The Cardassian Union would make multiple attempts to create a lasting government, but repeatedly fall to internal struggles.

 

They, together with the Dominion would be like the Assad and Murzi regimes, desperately trying to hang onto control as their empires crumble. Initially the Dominion would be hit by a popular uprising applauded by the Alpha Quadrant powers, but some new group rising within the influx would represent ISIS, and start to co-opt the uprising to try to secure its own foothold.

 

Leaderless, structure-loving Romulans would cast around for whomever they could install as a leader, but unused to the nomadic lifestyle thrust upon them, and unable to contend with the uprisings on vassal worlds throughout the former empire, they fracture into multiple factions, some seeking Federation aid.

 

All of this would place a strain on the Federation, with border worlds beset by resource shortages and bottlenecks in the refugee trail emerging everywhere. Tensions between member worlds would rise, but I'd rather the Federation weather the storm. Star Trek exists to show us the most righteous way to deal with our problems. That's what it has always set out to do.

 

This might be controversial, but I think it would be interesting to turn the traditional Trek political analogy on its head, and have the Klingons fulfil some of the unsavoury roles that the US has had in the last couple of decade's events.

 

They should be the ones who suffer a 9/11-style atrocity, and then use it as an excuse to start a proxy war that's really about Dilithium or labor. The Federation has been ignoring some of the uglier traits of Klingon culture for decades, but events will conspire to force the UFP to either call them out, or tacitly permit immoral behaviour. Their warp engines are damaging subspace, and they're waging war to continue mining the Kovenium Monotserite and dilithium that continue that process. Meanwhile, an enormous cultural bias against scientific advancement (There's no honour in being a nerd), and a general incompatibility with Federation tech stalls any move away from that dependency, and they maintain a misplaced pride in the fact that their primitive technology allowed the allies to circumvent the Dominion's Breen advantage in the war.

 

The Klingons would retain the sympathetic regard we've built up for them over the last 16 seasons of 24th century TV, in that many of them would be fine people, but the Federation public would have to deal with the uncomfortable truth of how the Klingon government conducts itself in war, occupation, and intelligence.

 

...So, that would set the stage. Then the writers come in and depict the heroes of the Federation, their Klingon allies, and the decent folk among the disadvantaged masses doing the right thing, and resolving the situation as peacefully as possible

 

Perhaps that's the perspective that's been missing from Trek - they need to stop trying to make the Federation be the US. It used to be the aspirational goal for the US, but America has shifted away from that path, and perhaps it's time for a foreign perspective. The Federation is the EU, and the Klingons are the US... everyone else is just trying to pick themselves up... you know... in a lot of ways, that fits like a glove!



#23 Jay K

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Posted 01 November 2015 - 12:09 AM

Man, reading this depresses the hell out of me because it's pure Star Trek gold. Not to make it sound like I'm trivialising some awful shit that's going on in the world recently, but we need a good TNG/DS9 style show right now. Destructor, in a perverse way, the examples you listed gave me goosebumps because you nailed it in terms of how Trek could cover them. I'll make a promise to your all - if I somehow come into a billion quid, I'll pay for some new series of TNG/DS9 to be made. Helmed by Ira Steven Behr with Ron Moore and Robert Wolfe, the Enterprise, Titan, DS9 & Defiant, and even Voyager's crew would all feature (without Braga, I might grow to like all of them, not just Janeway and the EMH).

Getting serious again for a moment, here's a couple more issues I'd like Trek to cover/re-cover:

Racism - still a huge problem globally.

Capitalism - 1% earning the same amount as the lowest 90%.

Sexism/Women's rights - abortion mainly at the moment, which leads me to...

Religion - how harmful to science it can be, for one.

We need season 8 of DS9 now (Sisko, Ferengi, Bajor and the Prophets respectively).

One issue I'd like to see covered, is the topic of weapons of mass destruction. It seems Britain is going to spend an insane amount of money soon on acquiring new nukes (Trident). The main reason is because they're a 'deterrent'.
Personally, my opinion is that if a country were to bomb Britain with nukes (killing millions of innocent people in the process), the LAST thing I would personally want to see happen, would be for us to retaliate by killing millions of their innocent people - and yet according to general media over here, this seems to be the default and acceptable response. Anyone who expresses a different opinion, like mine for instance, is literally painted as being weak and/or cowardly.
A good bit of inspiration for a way with which Star Trek might cover this subject, could be the infamous 'letters of last resort':

https://en.wikipedia..._of_last_resort

Basically, one of the first things any newly-elected British Prime Minister must do, is sit down and write these letters. In these four letters (one for each of our nuclear submarines), he must give one order from a choice of four, which would tell the submarine's commanding officer how to proceed in the event that Britain had come under nuclear attack, and has lost all forms of governance. Those options are:

1) Retaliate against the nation that is responsible.
2) Don't retaliate.
3) Report to an allied country and place the vessel under their command.
4) Let the submarine commander make the decision using their own judgement.

I personally feel this subject would make for a killer episode (pun only half-intended :P ).

#24 BadBunnyMike

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Posted 02 November 2015 - 10:58 AM

Looks like they do care enough that its coming back to TV!

#25 Destructor!!!

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Posted 02 November 2015 - 02:10 PM

Indeed. This'll stir things up a bit :P

 

Thanks for the kind words, Jay, I always like to administer a dose of the goosebumps! However, I understand why it's depressing, too.

 

Your own ideas are excellent. I think a few of them would work together with mine -

Racism is certainly going to be a part of the refugee situation, with different groups being profiled differently. I think it'd be an interesting way to lift the lid on the Klingon and Romulan empires, and depict some of their subjugated species for once. With the size of their empires, and their general cultural stances, there have got to be hundreds of developed worlds having not-such-a-great-time within their borders.

 

When those deprived peoples start flooding over Federation borders with little in the way of education, hygiene, or social skills, certain stereotypes will start to form in the minds of our people. As the usual trickle of interesting individuals of known races like the Cardies or the Rommies grows to a flood of faceless masses... do they *all* become conniving and ruthless, or secretive and duplicitous, respectively?

 

Capitalism could be a subplot among Ferengi characters, as Rom's divisive rule is prolonged by the newly-enfranchised female electorate, and his reforms struggle to get through an increasingly fair and equitable system. It's likely that all the Ferengi we've ever seen up to this point are members of the 1%. Are there people on Ferenginar who take care of the down-and-outs? Do they figure it as a long-term investment, demanding half of their protogè's profits, should they ever hit it big again?

 

I'm not sure how to make a point on Women's rights and abortion without giving it too much focus. Perhaps a character can face the dilemma, but at no point would it be anything other than her and her partner's decision. I feel like it's well past high-time for Star Trek to properly address gay rights, too - but by "properly address", I sort of mean "don't address". Some characters are not part of the standard gender binary, that's it, nobody's bothered by it, just write them as themselves.

 

And... religion... ugh... can we not? It's done to death! DS9 did a good job of villifying the anti-science nature of it with then-Vedek Wynn blowing up a godsdamn school! I'd really like there to be a modern sci-fi with no mystical or religious element. Instead, I feel the traditionalist, hard-liner Klingon Honour crowd would fill that role, as I said, "being a nerd is not honourable".

 

As for the letters of last resort - aren't those answers foregone conclusions? We know what the Federation would do, and we know what the Klingons would do...



#26 Morgan

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Posted 08 November 2015 - 07:21 PM

CBS cares!






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