Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.
In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.
So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.
Star Trek canon is that humans suddenly acted completely differently than they had throughout their entire history. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
The book “Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow makes a strong case that our current way of structuring society and exploiting eachother is actually an aberration from the norm based on archeological evidence, where it appears we were far more egalitarian and collective.
Here’s a summary from Wengrow himself in video form: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4
So the Star Trek future may in fact be a return to our previous state.
I don’t know in fairness an actual all-out nuclear war would probably do it. Mostly people are alright, the problem is governments and corporations which presumably wouldn’t survive a nuclear war.
I think it’s reasonable that post-scarcity can be self-reinforcing
The mirror Star Trek happened when Zephram Cochrane shot and killed the Vulcans arriving to greet them instead of shaking their hand. The nearby people stormed the ship and raided the weapons, using them to conquer the rest of Earth.
And further more the Vulcans did not manage this rapid transition away from armed conflict and instead had thousand years of war. They were impressed and scared but the humans adapting this quickly breeding doubts in their restraints from violence.
I know, I know, I was just hoping that we could skip the foreplay? Damn it all.
none of us will be alive to see it.
Montana looked like a safe place to survive
And apparently San Francisco survived, even though you would have thought it would have been a target, and Paris, and London.
Really it seems to have been an incredibly restrained war. Nothing of any actual value appears to have been destroyed.
They want the Terran Empire, but instead we have the Ferangi Commerce Authority. And only barely.
The ferengi can actually run a business
I feel like we’re the pakleds at this point
MAGA: “We are smart. We make economy go.”
Did you notice that Elon has started wearing a bigger baseball cap than Trump’s?
Well it’s traditional for the wives to wear large hats.
we have the Ferangi Commerce Authority. And only barely.
I feel like I’m gonna be getting a lot of mileage out of that link in the near future; this is already the second time in a few days I’ve had cause to post it.
One of the best parts of Deep Space Nine is taking the problematic Ferangi and using them to roast he shit out of Humanity for seven seasons.
It’s impressive how radical DS9 was, and yet no one complained. I don’t know if people just didn’t notice or if it was just better times then. I’m sure if it were made today you’d hear non-stop complaining from a certain segment of society about it being “woke” (which it is, in a good way) and bad. They even justify the use of terrorism as a tool against oppressive regimes!
DS9 is, by far, the best ST has ever been I think. It’s always been progressive, but almost always in a “things will just work out” sort of way. It didn’t actually deal with how we need to act to create the future we want. It just says that the ideal future is inclusive of everyone, which is great but limited. DS9 wasn’t afraid to say there’s almost no method off limits against (figurative) fascist oppressors and, like you mention, really go to town on roasting capitalists and warning us to be afraid of them.
DS9 has
Religion Apologia (Bajoran Prophets)
War Crimes Apologia (Siskos multiple war crimes)
CIA Apologia (Glamorization of Section 31)
Nationalist War Glamorization (Dominion Federation War)
The entire last two seasons are nothing but glamorizing a traditional “good vs evil” war with the Federation basically serving the role of a nationalist hegemonic superpower.
I like Deep Space Nine, but to act like it’s anything but the degeneration of Star Trek into its most base capitalist apologia spacewar elements is a stretch.
I have to disagree. DS9 definitely had some problematic episodes, like any show with that many episodes, but the positives IMO definitely outway the negatives especially in the aspects you mention:
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Religion is not shown as one dimensional, positive or negative. It’s clearly shown to be abused as a tool to control populations (the Dominion), and as something that can be abused to wield power including religious leaders that obviously don’t follow their own teachings (Kai Winn).
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Re war crimes apologia: I give you that, but I’d attribute that to bad writing of some episodes (For the Uniform is simply an awful episode) or is clearly shown as being problematic (e.g. In the Pale Moonlight, and that episode is simply a masterpiece)
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Section 31 is never glamorized. On the contrary, Odo clearly calls out the Federation when they don’t want to counteract the genocide of the founders started by Section 31.
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War is not glamorized, DS9 is the first Star Trek show to really show what war does to people. Nog’s PTSD, Quark’s take on humankind just as some examples.
Not to forget when they stop a fear-mongering fueled coup attempt on the federation.
I also disagree that it in any way is “capitalist apologia”. While other Star Trek shows are just hand-waving “post scarcity” around without ever explaining how the monetary system of the Federation actually works, and some weak-ass attempts to criticize capitalism with this one guy who had stocks in the 90s on TNG, DS9 clearly and openly attacks capitalism with their characterization of the Ferengi throughout the whole show.
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The religion thing I dismiss as just sci-fi magic. Their religion is based on alien stuff. Sure, religions in our world are wrong, but you can’t travel faster than light either so we might as well dismiss the whole show, right?
For example, in Stargate SG1 almost all the civilizations view the gua’uld as gods. When technology is so far beyond your understanding, it’s effectively magic. In that show religion is often said to be wrong, but not for any reason besides the ones they worship are evil. For the Norse people worshiping the “good” aliens it’s fine, and they might as well be gods with their technology.
The people of Bajor interacted with aliens and created a religion to help them understand it. I don’t think that’s apologia. I think that’s a reasonable analogue for what we do too. We don’t understand lighting? It’s God/Thor/Zeus.
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That’s why Ireland didn’t reunite last year.
…and in stead of the Bell Riots, we got the clearing of Gaza…boo…
We have the sanctuary zones, though!
Well they did win the franchise wars
Parmesan is now pronounced parmesean.
Thai is now pronounced thigh.
Ooh, I like both! ;3
you just gave me an idea for the worst stop motion picture i gotta run this by my director and maybe the entire nation of italy
Noooo
I wasn’t 100% sure what the mirror universe Starfleet logo was, and I was ready to accept that as the musk/Trump logo for real.
Pfft, that would require an actual cool thought to cross their corrupted brains lmao
Nah, remember that in star trek we had to go through WWIII before shit got better
Yay?
hold on now…what about the bell riots?
maybe we’re just late to the party.
I really do think that’s what’s going wrong. Where are the Bell Riots?
We didn’t have eugenics wars in the 90’s either, we may have been shunted into a JJ Abrams style universe.
“genetic engineering = eugenics” is the worst take in Star Trek, though. Bashir’s parents did nothing wrong.
Also the implication that Bashir himself would be punished for the way he was born is straight up punishing someone for not upholding racial purity.
Its a “tolerance of intolerance” situation.
Bashir himself did nothing wrong, but if you let genetic engineering go, you end up with brutal ubermensch and civil war. They know this first hand, as it happened to them.
They have to level action against him and his family, to prevent the mass death that their actions lead to.
That’s why I think it’s a shitty Star Trek take, not a shitty in-universe Federation take. Correcting disabilities at birth is not a slippery slope to ubermensch. Superior ability doesn’t create unchecked ambition. “From each according to their ability” implies we’re not all equal in ability.
Boooo. NeuTrek is worse.
Remember, the prime universe Earth had to endure WWIII
