Star Trek: The Next Generation Was the Last Sci-Fi Show Hopeful About the Future
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Starfleet seems to be just that: competent, usually very trustworthy, fair, and honest. Almost equally unbelievable is a society that isn't incredibly emotionally dysfunctional. There is little in the way of psychopathy, narcissism, addiction, unhealthy ideological fanaticism, or depression on display among the protagonists.
Cyberpunk has proven to be the most prophetic of the sci-fi genres by far. It's done that by being technologically optimistic and socially pessimistic. So far it seems right on-- technology continues to advance, but globally it looks as if the normal arc of society is from freedom to despotism followed by a decay into syndicated criminality. The mafia state -- almost exactly as depicted in the common cyberpunk setting -- looks like the ascendant future. If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.
The bottom line is that we have the scientific method and we have the discipline of engineering, and those together can reliably produce progress in the technical realm. We have no set of tools or techniques that reliably produces progress in the human realm. There are no institutions charged with understanding and healing us psychologically. The closest we come is to pop pills, and even that is poorly done -- diagnosis is incredibly unscientific and haphazard.
I personally blame -- directly and indirectly -- the war on drugs. I am not one of those people who thinks that dosing everyone with LSD would create some kind of utopia. I've known too many drug users to think that. But beneath the pop culture misuse of those substances, there was some really visionary research into genuinely understanding and even changing deep human psychology at work back in those days. The ridiculous moral panic that followed had the effect of shutting down almost all of that research, even some of the non-psychedlics-related stuff, and leaving us with nothing but talk-talk psychotherapy and the ham fisted pill pushing approach. To this day attempting to delve deeply into human psychology in an active way immediately leads into realms since declared utterly taboo.
We may never be able to get out of our own way. Who knows? Not a big pill fan ( although they've absolutely gotten better for people with real brain-chemistry problems ) but these days, it's easier than ever to identify bad sources of information and understand what's gone wrong. My parents' (Silent) generation had no idea why there was a Depression; mine actually has a few theories.
The emphasis on LSD as "better living through chemistry" was as much about advertising-propaganda as anything else. Regardless of any War on Drugs, that went badly.
I never managed to finish watching it (I love Star Trek too much to do that), and all I could see is that Abrams should be fired.
Out of a cannon.
Into molten lava.
I mean, let me put it this way: most of the time, our so-called awful, so-called incompetent bureaucracies actually do work. Seen from the inside (of any large, complicated system that has to deal with real people's lives instead of neat database columns), the amount of dull, everyday effort necessary to stave off entropy and keep the whole system functioning is massive. The fact that it all keeps working on a daily basis is amazing.
The older you get, the more you notice that for all the constant sky-is-falling talk of societal collapse, the end never hurries up and arrives. From there, anyone who remotely understands probability ought be able to update to "actually our institutions are pretty competent at their core job of keeping society going."
> If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.
I want this to be a thing. Please tell me this is a thing. If it is, it's probably an anime.
I think that series was called Firefly.
In Star Trek's hypothesized post-scarcity civilization, I would think a lot of humans take the time they would have spent working, and spend it on raising their kids well--or, even more interestingly--contributing to raising one-another's kids well. Star Trek doesn't often go into what civilian life is like on Earth, but it seems like "growing healthy minds" could be a large part of it.
There are other forms of post-scarcity. E.g. the long-term unemployed of Western Europe, in England, Holland and France. People who have been unemployed for 2-3 generations. They don't have any real way to improve their situation, nor to make it worse. They spend their time being bored, watching tv, and generally doing anything they possibly can to avoid caring for their kids (just like those rich guys, just less over-the-top).
I would add that this is what any intelligent algorithm would do when confronted with the situation. Outside of completely ridiculous things (like winning the lottery, or committing murder) there is nothing they can do to improve or worsen their situation : they will enter into a self-reinforcing random walk through their options.
There were also a couple TNG episodes: one where there was a witch hunt to find a supposed spy on board the Enterprise, and another where Starfleet claimed Data was property and not alive.
There's also Star Trek 6 which exposed a Federation conspiracy to sabotage peace talks with the Klingons. Probably my favorite movie in the series after Khan.
Granted it's much earlier in the Trek universe, but Enterprise also tackled xenophobic groups in the last season.
I always enjoyed episodes that featured internal struggles even if they were relatively rare.
In that sense, Trek is actually extremely individualistic. The Borg are the Trek version of a functional bureaucracy, and are shown as terrifying for their elimination of individuality.
In the more cynical DS9+ era, we even get the wonderful element of a puppetmaster (Section 31) behind the incompetence of the Federation that keeps it alive to hide its clandestine activities that keep the sheep believing in their ideals. And our heroes wind up siding with them, effectively.
Star Trek directly reflected the economic-Utopian side of Gene Roddenberry's hopes and dreams. That was explicit, deliberate and according to various documentaries, sorta drove the writers nuts. It emphasizes the positive aspects of humanity. Gene was an 8 year old in 1929 and 24 at the end of WWII, and was formed right through the teeth of the Depression. He flew 89 missions in WWII...
Cyberpunk? Not my cup 'o tea.
Then your experience is woefully incomplete, as you've completely forgotten to account for sex.
And, you know, all the more idealistic things I could list.
All the more idealistic things, especially in youthful participants, are just ways to get power and sex. Or have you never visited a global warming related event in San Francisco ? Can you say with a straight face that those events are about idealism ?
Then I'm afraid I must recommend you receive psychotherapy for your dangerous misapprehension. Please tell me you're single.
Just IMO, but power is a narrative artifact because stories want protagonists and antagonists. Social science uses the word "status", which is better.
Star Trek presents a utopian future where resources are limitless and every child grows up in a friendly and happy world with an education we can't even imagine.
They have healthcare that actually works. They can fix essentially any physical or mental ailment. A bit of a sadist? Oh, let me fix that right here, your levels were extremely high.
You have to imagine what happens to society when we can fix almost all the problems that divide us.
DS9 got a bit into genetic engineering as a result of the post-apocalyptic setting of the Trek universe with Bashir, who was secretly sent offworld by his parents (IIRC I forget the reason) to be genetically modified by aliens because (thanks to the Eugenics wars) that sort of thing was forbidden on Earth. So he was essentially an Augment hiding out. The Maquis were upset with Federation politics and essentially seceded. For all it's utopian pretense, it's clear at least as it's portrayed, that the Federation is a society with limits, and laws, and wherever you have limits and laws you have crime and a desire to game the system.
Even a soft prison can feel like a prison. I can easily imagine the Federation feeling like that.
Still, the world you're describing sounds like a nightmare to me.
You could have a philosophical utopia in which all the laws are derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative, but those would still be laws, limiting the actions you're allowed to take.
For the Federation's defense, if you wanted that kind of total liberty, you could move to some godforsaken colony world and live totally alone.
Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? The fine details of that would all have massive effects on what the society as a whole looks like. Can anybody replicate anything on them? Including weapons and drugs? If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make?
This also gets into the rather odd and poorly fleshed-out idea of a society without money. Exactly how does this society work without money? Books can and have be written on ideas around this, but it's just kind of casually thrown out there, with no exploration of the implications on how the greater society functions.
If and when we reach true post-scarcity, our society will change in ways we simply can't predict. Our economic models are no use there.
But things get a lot easier if you just assume everyone in Trek is a LARPer who can just do that because why the fuck not.
It takes matter, and rearranges it into something else less boring. Using science. Ish. Things. Lasers.
>Can anybody replicate anything on them?
Depends on the episode.
>Including weapons and drugs?
I think certain weapons were impossible to replicate but you certainly could crank out as many guns and knives as you liked. But of course, being a utopian society, such things would be unthinkable, so it's not an issue.
>If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it?
Nobody. It's a perfect society. Everyone is nice and peaceful because they choose to be. No wars (with other humans - aliens are fine), no famine (except for that one thing in the original series), no money (or something). They just use the replicators and holodecks for aggressive but entirely wholesome and not at all sexual sports and research and interactive fiction, because the humans of the future have evolved beyond the need to be interesting. Except for Barclay. And La Forge, because one time he created a holodeck model of this girl he had a crush on. Which was awkward when she showed up and he had forgotten to close his porn folder.
>They presumably require energy, and where does that come from?
...subspace or something. Dilithium. Quantums. Shut up.
>Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make?
Probably just the size of the replicator console thing. And energy. By Voyager they had entire starships made up of holograms so who knows?
Like a lot of post-scarcity ideas, to me, Star Trek essentially ran on magic. A lot of that had more to do with the necessities of sci-fi on a low budget (the only reason transporters existed, for instance, was to they didn't have to spend effects money on shuttlecraft) than thinking hard about actually making it work. It just did. The holodeck, literally, could create self-aware sentient beings if you asked it to. Riker got cloned when a transporter beam reflected off the clouds of a planet or something. The Enterprise got pregnant and had a space baby. That was a thing that happened.
No one cared enough about science fictional speculation to actually try fleshing things out, because that would take time, cost money, and potentially mean taking dramatic risks. Rather, they just came up with a new particle, or kind of energy, or swirly whatever, of the week that would defeat the monster, or other swirly whatever, of the week. Now and then they would just drop the ball on some potentially awesome plot points, like the aliens invading from subspace that snatched people out of their beds and did surgery on them (real creepy stuff) or the Ikonian Empire (apparently a big deal, left magic portals everywhere, completely forgotten about) or the parasites mind-controlling certain Federation higher-ups (leading to the only head-explosion in Trek history.)
But the truth is, the "science fiction" was just stage dressing for utterly banal drama. Probably the books got into it more deeply. The Borg was nice though, until it wasn't.
Edit: I shouldn't say 'no one cared.' Reading blogs by people like Doug Drexler, clearly a lot of people cared, just all too often the plot didn't seem to permit much complexity or insight.
Sure we get the Starfleet Technical Manual, but that was tossed as non-canon almost as soon as it hit the stores.
The Federation has a currency, "Federation credits" -- they discuss a deal priced in credits for control of the Barzan wormhole, and Federation crew use these credits to make purchases at the Ferengi-run bar on Deep Space 9. The Ferengi keep all their wealth in the form of latinum, precisely because it can't be replicated. Presumably the only reason they need these credits is to facilitate trade between species; I don't remember them ever discussing how the crew get the credits.
The replicators' energy comes from the ship's warp engine, the same thing that powers everything else, and from recycled material. They can both convert matter to energy and energy to matter. We know they use the ship's energy because when Voyager is stranded with limited fuel, the first thing the captain does is ration replicator usage by the crew, and pick up a chef to start cooking fresh food instead of replicating meals. The energy source for the engine, in turn, was controlled annihilation of matter (deuterium) and antimatter (anti-deuterium). The ships all had Bussard ramscoops with which to collect deuterium from interstellar space for use as fuel -- that was the red part on the front of the nacelles on the Enterprise D in TNG for example.
In an episode of ST:DS9, they discuss the fact that the Federation does restrict the ability to replicate dangerous objects like weapons without authorization. Trade in weapons is always implied to be heavily regulated.
All that said, most of it is really left to our imaginations. I was hoping Star Trek: Enterprise, the prequel to the rest of the series, would shed some light. Unfortunately it wasted 3/4 of its time on weird time travel plots that could've taken place in any of the series, and only tried to get back to explaining how the Federation came about at the very end... just before being cancelled.
Someday one author came about and proposed that they simply have no money. Instead of saying "Well that couldn't work!", they just went with it, leaving interesting voids to be filled.
Altogether, I agree there are so many things left unexplored, but they could only do so much with the limited time and while actually telling a compelling story. Remember, this is a TV show, it's meant to draw emotions, be compelling, and tell political stories about people.
I think part of this is the need to have character driven stories. Which I'm basically fine with, but I really want to see more exploration of the universe the characters are in. Defining the rules of that universe helps establish the environment the characters have to operate in. With clever writing this can add extra flavor to the story.
This might be one of the reasons I like DS9 the best, they do a little bit of both, exploring the setting a bit (establishing internal and external politics, trade, war, alliances, factions, economics etc.) while having quite good character driven stories in this setting.
For example, the principle planet in the story, Bajor, needs to rebuild. The Federation offers to help by providing industrial replicators. There's an entire story about how the fairly few industrial replicators the Federation can provide drives a political story involving the remnants of the Bajoran freedom fighter/terrorists. It's not the best Sci-Fi ever written, but it's a pretty strong story and helps really define this corner of the universe with better granularity than 4 other series and better than a dozen moves did over hundreds of hours. Some questions are left unanswered, but you can make some assumptions like, why doesn't the Federation provide more replicators? Is there something about the technology that makes them hard to manufacture? Why can't replicators replicate other replicators? Perhaps there's some component that prevents that? etc.
It sets limits on the Federation's powers and logistics without using the typical plot device of introducing a more powerful alien or enemy or whatever.
Star Trek is Starfleet. There's such pitifully little information on the life of non-Starfleet folks...heck there's almost nothing produced on non-officers in Starfleet outside of Chief O'Brien. And he seems virtually indistinguishable from his officer colleagues except being a bit more badass than the normal space pajama wearing explorer.
Every once in a while the series touches on economics: transporter credits, or replicator limitations when buying a gift for a friend. But by and large it throws those glimpses away as soon as it shows them.
It's a huge missed opportunity for the shows; the life of civilians in the Federation. How do they get goods and services? What motivates them to work other than pure self-actualization. What about menial jobs? There's so much territory to explore, and it's never explored at all and instead we end up with more fan-service throw away romance episodes.
Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures.
If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome. Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is becoming unknown?).
Even Star Trek (TOS was 60's era Apollo optimisim, ST:TNG was 1980's "Communism is falling"/We're getting okay with Russia/The Economy is booming/Roddenberry said so!)
The reason why today's SciFi isn't hopeful is that there are lots of very easy to see bad ways today turns into tomorrow, and not very easy to see good ways.
I honestly think self driving cars will make life crazy better for instance. But there isn't Sci-Fi to write about that is interesting enough to publish or make a show about with that premise. Or for 3d printing. etc
There's The Diamond Age, which is moderately optimistic, and other molecular nanotechnology-related fiction.
Again, I'm not suggesting anyone to watch it, but there's a scene about leisurely self-driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_cW7aoRdQ
TNG has its share of similar colonial tendencies, but the show has some self-awareness about it and DS9's entire run was a deconstruction of those themes.
"...Culture Universe was among the few to confront straight-on the myriad hopes, dangers and raw possibilities that might be faced by a humanity-that-succeeds."
http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lame...
NB If anyone wants to get a quick taste of the Culture visiting the Earth the BBC Radio 4 version of "The State of the Art" is available on YouTube:
(I still greatly enjoyed them, mind. To anyone looking for similar stories I'd recommend Neal Asher's works, particularly Hilldiggers)
> When asked by Time magazine in 1994, "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" Michael Okuda replied, "They work just fine, thank you."
I suspect the article being referenced is "Reconfigure the Modulators"[1], but it's behind a pay wall so I can't confirm that.
[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,...
It's so interesting to me that commentators keep making this same point over and over again, and the only answer we get is "But we'll just make even cooler tech, and it'll all work out."
I don't think so. I think the time of man is at a close, whether we evolve past it or self-terminate. Billions of years of evolution has created this species of hominids that travel in packs. We are, instead, trying to re-make ourselves in something closer to the Borg. It's not going to end the way we expect it to.
Both DS9 and Voyager were completely wrapped up prior to 9/11. Enterprise struck me as far less militarized -- though far more competently written (it gets off to a slowish start, but the later seasons are great). And the original was probably written in part by people with naval backgrounds (note how people are constantly handing Kirk clipboards to sign off on, there's a fire control room that weapons fire is sometimes directed through, etc.)
I think the only thing that fits your pattern is Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Even though the Cardassians were essentially Nazis in space (in a series which, literally, had Space Nazis as a thing) and the Ferengi were comic relief, it was refreshing to me to see a bit of effort put into some of the other species. The Ferengi and Cardassians, unlike the Klingons (who despite being a warp-capable species were portrayed as barely coherent psychopathic warlords) were presented as reasonable, if not very alien alternatives to the Federation point of view.
TNG would never have had an episode where an alien species calls out the humans for their history of slavery and violence, it would have merely shown us an "alien" species as an allegory but DS9 did (and had the wonderful "Far Beyond the Stars" which, despite barely being in-universe, was able to state Star Trek's essential thesis more directly and profoundly than the main series itself.)
And yes, it was essentially Babylon 5 (But Trek) and wound up being all about a war, and the Dominion and the Changelings were utterly disappointing. And by Voyager, the Borg had gone from being one of the most sinister and alien concepts on television to just another bunch of goons for the Federation to punch, and the only thing in my mind that Enterprise had going for it was the cynical and manipulative Vulcans. But I think, for the most part, the further Star Trek got from Roddenberry's idealism, the more its idealism actually meant something, precisely because it was flawed. The story of how humans get to paradise is much more interesting the the one about how awesome it is after they're there.
What I see is on the show is a glorified militaristic hierarchy and an audience of fans whose greatest wish is to be the guy giving the orders. It's the kind of thing the Star Wars Empire would fund as state propaganda.
Militaristic -- even Starfleet, the main "military" in the federation, seems to (despite the fact that it fights wars, has military ranks, and military process like "courts-martial"), maintains a myth that it isn't military. The society is so anti-militaristic that it can't even admit that it has a military.
Fascistic -- Aside from militarism (discussed above), a defining element of fascism is nationalism. It'd be hard to think of a society less nationalistic than the Federation.
Communist -- Rather than a planned economy, people seem pretty free to chose their own pursuits and applications of productive resources.
State -- while it clearly has institutions like Startfleet, its not clear that the Federation is a state as we'd understand it, rather than an international institution with sovereign members like the UN.
About the only part of your description that is roughly accurate is the "dressed in onesies" part.
Nice rebuttal by the way!