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Sanguinia posted:There has literally never been a time in all of Star Trek's history where there has not been something sinister afoot in Starfleet, up to and including episodes that Gene himself wrote. Preserving utopia from threats within as well as without is part-and-parcel of Star Trek's message, pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Humanity can rise above its vices and become better, but it can also backslide and part of our job is making sure that doesn't happen. Do any JJ films actually show the optimistic aspect? I only saw the first two and they were just generic action blockbusters, theyd be totally forgettable if they weren't stealing the names of a bunch of characters people are familiar with.
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Mar 14, 2021 21:42
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 10:37 |
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star trek being reanimated by these freaks into a shambling, brain-devouring zombie franchise is way more heartbreaking then the lovely star wars movies
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Mar 14, 2021 23:57
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VinylonUnderground posted:When Star Trek was first created the Space Race and the Sexual Revolution were in full swing. The possibilities for the future were endless and bright. There was also the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. But the only thing holding humanity back was humanity. Hell, the Cuban Missile Crisis, terrifying as it was, was a clear example that if well-intentioned people just spoke to each other they could solve anything. it appears from your second paragraph that the only thing holding back humanity is still, in fact, humanity doing things for express goal of owning the libs is in fact, ideology.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:20
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one last fact: why can't we have star trek without gay bars? I'm a little confused by that part.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:25
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VinylonUnderground posted:Yeah but how would you have a sit down discussion to solve it? Who is Kennedy and who is Khrushchev? How do you solve "owning the libs" as an ideology through discussion? TOS also had an answer for Nazis, and that's throwing some old Western-style haymakers. I'm not sure I can agree with any of your thinking honestly because I don't see the same things. In star trek the point is that we didn't sit down and solve those old problems. There's a few reasons why I don't like the cold war and cuban missile crisis examples you bring up, but ultimately within the universe the answer is that those problems weren't resolved, the backstory of the federation is humanity is brought to the brink of extinction by a nuclear holocaust. It's only the development of warp travel and the contact with other species in the galaxy that humanity is able to galvanize itself out of 100-150 years of an almost total breakdown of formalized government, culture and massive societal-scale misery and injustice. within the universe humanity didn't solve these issues at all, they barely survived them, and it gave humans a grave maturity that enabled them to look back. The federation is specifically not meant to be a smug, know it all group of over-achievers, even if that's how it can come across at times, especially in TNG. All of the high-minded ideals of star trek are intended within that world to have been learned at the price of near-extinction. part of the point of star trek is that humanity is just holding itself back with all of these self-inflicted battles and wounds. Within the external world, you can easily point to those same issues you demonstrate and show how they are just the fruits of humanity's discordance. Global warming? It's provably the result of humanity's push for an unsustainable lifestyle that is specifically rooted in competition and conflict with each other to hoard resources at the expense of the broader race. It's completely plausible that we could arrest global warming, but will we reach the harmony and the cooperation necessary to do so? Covid? An ideological issue here in the states, undeniably, but also in the grand scheme of things it's not going to break down the world. It's a speed bump. But if you want to roll with that idea, you can still use what's happening in the US as a model for it. Human greed and selfishness, demagoguery and petty squabbles (think of Newsom or Cuomo and the Covid-related scandals they instigated) prevent a society that is totally capable of weathering a health crisis from actually managing to do so and lead to it running rampant and causing a catastrophe. There are tons of examples of that same thing happening in the modern world. You could easily use those as fuel for the collapse of humanity if you are searching for systemic issues that paralyze and very nearly cripple human society. I don't think that Star Trek was actually presenting the answers to the questions you ask about it in the 1960s, either. TOS didn't have an answer for Nazi's at all, because that was a solved problem in the 1960's. The nazis were already defeated. That's a solved problem in world history, especially in 1960's American perspectives. Gene Roddenberry wasn't writing TOS as a repudiation of fascism or ethno-states, although obviously multicultural, progressive ideals were (mostly) a bedrock theme for the show and the in-universe ideals of the federation.
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Mar 17, 2021 06:43
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 10:37 |
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Trek isn't ever going to have answers to issues like that though, besides the core message of "We can be better" that runs through all the episodes. Modern trek, or any other sci-fi, isn't going to have a more satisfying reply to modern problems that aren't already contained in the several hundred episodes of the 1966-whenever enterprise ended run. Disease? Xenophobia? Authoritarianism? Poverty? Terrorism? The environment? Every issue you talked about existed back then, along with a hundred other issues that will never have any clear answers. That's reality. No media can fill in those gaps for you. Trek already had a message for all of those impossible problems you seem to think modernity faces, and it's really simple. I wrote all that poo poo about the backstory of Trek's history because a fundamental part of the show is that humanity rebuilds from almost nothing, there is never a point where you are too far gone to change for the better, etc. It is not the show's goal to present realistic problems and it's not a bad thing that it simply tells you the future can be better than it is today without spelling out the steps you have to take to get there. People don't like Trek because it told them how to fix the world, they liked it because it said that the world is capable of being fixed. Star trek is moralizing and aspirational! Kirk makes two enemies shake hands and then the crew flies away, roll credits. The message is that you should have hope that you can solve these seemingly intractable problems. It never provided any answer of how that really happens. It's not the goal, or the point of storytelling of any kind to do that for you. I'm not sure if you just have a desire for pop culture that wallows in nihilistic despair or if you think that's how the world actually is.
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Mar 17, 2021 09:28
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