I just don’t get it. What is the freaking problem of those directors, trying to rewrite federation into some kind of dystopian tech fascism?
I was annoyed by the first Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams, with those police cops. I was alienated by those anti-android resentments in Picard. I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode, because the main protagonist was sent to some kind of labor prison for disobedience, where prisoners regularly die. I didn’t think it could get any worse but just watching the first 10 minutes of Starfleet Academy makes me want to bury the whole franchise [edit: and stopped watching]. Some drumhead court-martial, lifelong prison sentence, violently separating a mother from her child and some goons beating up a prisoner. How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?
Star Trek is supposed to be the ONE fiction with a positive, utopian view on mankind and the future. I totally get the attraction of dystopian settings but for that I can read some Warhammer 40k novels. This really makes me furious.
Fortunately there is still Strange New Worlds.
Please spoiler me, when this bullshit in Starfleet Academy gets turned around in some twist, because otherwise I will just ignore the show.
I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode
watching the first 10 minutes of Starfleet Academy makes me want to bury the whole franchise
These are shows that historically have taken a couple of seasons to grow their beard, and you’re judging them on (parts of) their pilots? Maybe you’re just not as much into Star Trek as you think.
I was alienated by those anti-android resentments in Picard
Funnily enough, this isn’t actually anything new. The Federation has historically harboured sentiments against sapient androids and holograms, not intentionally, of course, but more that they don’t believe that they are people. Just look at the treatment the Doctor/Mark I EMH, Data, and the ExoComps received. The Doctor had fight to regain the rights to works he made, and had the Voyager crew factory resetting him whenever he had a human problem, Data had to fight to be recognised as enough of a person to avoid being dismantled, and then had to do again to avoid having his daughter taken. The ExoComps’ sapience was initially taken as malfunctions, and they were lobotomised, to be used as bombs. The Borg nearly got a genocidal virus unleashed upon them, by the Federation, and Picard specifically got into trouble for not deploying it.
To paraphrase Chancellor Gorkon, the Federation is a human(oid)s only club. Everyone else gets pushed to the wayside.
How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?
It is also the same Federation that saw no qualms about using multiple genocidal weapons against their enemies. The moment they were threatened even slightly, out comes the big G.
Sure, Wolf 359 had a considerable death toll, and one of the Federation core worlds was threatened, but the automatic reaction shouldn’t have been attempt genocide at the first opportunity. DS9 at least made an attempt to show that they were breaking the rules of engagement by putting down self-replicating subspace mines.
Similarly, the Dominion War. The Federation response to realising a rogue organisation had unleashed a virus designed to wipe out one of the main species of the Dominion seems to have been to sit pretty and wait for them to be forced to the negotiation table, rather than work towards a cure, and try to send it over ASAP. If it wasn’t for the DS9 crew going out of their way to make a cure, one might never have existed, leaving them to die. It would be unimaginable, if, during the Federation-Klingon war, the Federation had simply sat back, and told the Klingon Empire “good luck” in response to both Narendra-3, and the Praxis incidents, instead of offering aid. Nor did they just sit back and tell the Romulan Empire to go away when their main star blew up.
Voyager at least gets a little pass since they were working on their own, and didn’t have the support of the rest of the Federation backing them up, but ethically, it’s still not a good look for them to promote Captain Janeway for her work in assisting Admiral Janeway in deploying the neurolytic pathogen that we know ultimately wiped out the Collective.
Star Trek is supposed to be the ONE fiction with a positive, utopian view on mankind and the future. I totally get the attraction of dystopian settings but for that I can read some Warhammer 40k novels. This really makes me furious.
I would be a little curious about where that came from. The Federation is better, but it thinks of itself as a perfect utopia, when TNG shows it to be more due to hubris on the part of the Federation, and that they not only have some ways to go, but have to spend work to stay there.
In my opinion, the difference between the Federation as it is now, and the way it was back then is that the flaws are more front and centre now.
Whereas previously, it seemed to be treated as more of a case of it being the actions of a lot of bad eggs within the Federation. Starfleet famously has issues with the admiralty trying to order reprehensible things. Similarly, for DS9, where it’s left ambiguous whether Section 31 is a rogue organisation made of people who think that the Federation is “too soft”, and thus needs people to do the dirty work behind the scenes. The actual flaws within the Federation, like the mess about what rights to personhood androids and holograms had, were mostly skated over.
Compare that to now, where we see a bunch of Admirals convene to decide to blow up Kling/Qo’noS. In older shows, it would have just been one admiral giving the order, and the decision would laid solely at their feet, rather than something that would be attribute more to Starfleet, or the Federation in general.
Whereas previously, it seemed to be treated as more of a case of it being the actions of a lot of bad eggs within the Federation.
That`s a good observation.
I mean, that point about seperating a mother and child, kind of forms the entire basis of the show as its what drive Captain Ake to come head the new Starfleet Academy. She feels like complete shit that it happened and wants Starfleet to be better in its rebirth.
And technically, Academy IS a “dystpian setting” because they had the galaxy wide apocalypse event that was The Burn that obliterated every warp drive and collapsed everything but it sounds like you didn’t watch Discovery so you may have missed that.
Hopefully this spoiler will help:
Your concern is precisely the primary theme of the show.have you seen the animated Lower Decks series? I love it.
but yeah, a lot for newer star trek stuff I don’t think was written by people intending to follow the series
Right! Totally forgot about Lower Decks. Awesome!
lower decks and prodigy were way better than the other ones.
man I’ve been out of the loop for too long, I don’t even remember prodigy. I’ll have to get caught up!
DISC did a lot of bad things to Trek just for shock value. But in a utopia there still has to be rules, Burnham committed probably the worst crime in the Trek universe, she disobeyed a direct order, started a mutiny and opened fire on an alien ship, which started a war killing millions. The only reason she got out of prison was because her boyfriend from an evil universe broke her out of prison under false pretenses hoping that since she started a war in this universe that she was just as evil as her counterpart. How messed up is that? Then her redeeming moment is she seized command of the ship and starts a civil war and threatens to blow up another species home world to end the war she started. That’s some cowboy shit right there. All because he has unresolved child hood trauma. She deserved to got to federation vacation colony for life.
Kelvinverse would have been great as a big budget sci-fi franchise if it wasn’t set in the Trek universe. You can pretty much ignore Kelvinverse movies and pretend that it was just a fun experiment.
SFA and SNW are just trying to undo the mistakes of DISC.
PIC got a lot of things wrong but shared trauma from an unprovoked attack by the Romulans hacking Androids and forcing them to attack people would trigger mass panic and fear that it could happen again, I don’t think that’s far fetched.
The “this specific person (who happens to be a woman and black but that has nothing to do with it I swear) must be punished for being a naughty bad girl” fantasies always make me super uncomfortable BUT it’s nice to see someone not calling Burhnam an overly perfect Mary Sue for once.
Do people fantasize about that? I would think that the writers and show runners should get the flak for DISC, that was a terrible redemption story, “The only why to stop this war, is more war”, like wtf were they thinking?
List of captain’s major misdeeds from the top of my head-
Sisko was accomplice to murder and many war crimes by his crew. Didn’t go to jail and actually became a god.
Can’t think of any serious crimes Picard committed and got away with. There were a couple times he disobeyed orders but it was usually to save or protect someone or something, and that was few and far between.
Janeway broke the prime directive every Tuesday, except when she was stopping someone else from breaking it. But that’s kind of excusable since her ship and crew were stranded in another quadrant of the Galaxy.
Kirk broke the temporal prime directive and the regular prime directive, routinely disobeyed orders, stole the enterprise, and wasn’t afraid to step into some morally gray areas. He got positive results, so he got demoted and promoted and demoted and got promoted to desk duty. Probably should have spent time in a federation vacation colony.
Pike hasn’t really stepped out of line except when he help DISC escape the rogue AI thing and breaking the temporal prime directive.
Archer was stubbling into trouble by mistake and there weren’t really any rules for him to break but I can’t think of any major crimes.
Freeman wasn’t really onscreen much but she doesn’t seem to be the start a mutiny, shoot first and start an galaxy wide war type.
Worf would never dishonor federation or his family.
Riker wasn’t on screen much but he does seem like he would get into some trouble, although when he was #1 he doesn’t seem like the mutiny and start wars type either.
i feel like snw still suffer from the legacy of picard and disc too much. being run by the same showrunner. i heard s2 and on were pretty bad.
Because the federation changes over time, there are good times and bad. One of the core values in many Star Trek stories is redemption through change, it’s the central idea of this one.
Also because the federation is an allegory for whatever real world good guy alliance you believe in and fascist elements coming and going from the federation are a commentary on the real world.
Thanks for the warning. Any show that continues Discovery’s bullshit isn’t going to be worth a watch in my opinion.
Picard tries to copy STD anf fix some of the bs, but it falls flat hard, snw tries to do that but the actors are so wooden and writing is not good at all.
there’s a saying that goes something like “democracy is a fresh challenge for each generation.” any trek show that shows what we can be without also exploring how we can (or can fail to) stay there is being overly optimistic at best and dishonest at worst. i agree that the execution often fails, especially in Picard and early Discovery, but later Discovery and Academy are shows not about a distopian future but about carving out a utopia within one. Discovery starts out in the SNW era and even in universe everyone can tell how messed up this crew is- note how Pike treats Disco with kid gloves versus how he treats the Enterprise like a ship of adults- but something very interesting happens when they make the jump to the post-Burn future, where suddenly the worst Starfleet has to offer are the best just because they remember how things could be. That offers them and the fallen federation (and the show) a mutual chance at redemption, and Academy is building off of that without Disco’s baggage. Academy sees the same problems you do with the post-Burn galaxy and are working to turn it back into the one you remember. you could argue about the execution still, but the heart is there
If you pretend Star Trek stopped after First Contact, it’s a lot better. I really don’t understand why they keep trying to make new trek, or who is watching it. Who is it for? It’s too fast, too action-y. Too many camera angles. The writing and acting feels like teen drama. Where is the professionalism, the decorum, the reserved nature of Starfleet? And what little humor there should be, should be dry.
I personally disliked the first episode of Starfleet Academy, but I’m glad I watched past it. So far in this show, the point (and it’s very explicitly stated) is that Starfleet and the Federation are NOT supposed to be like that, and that change starts with the youth.
It just feels wrong. It’s like having superman act like homelander. Even if the message is “things shouldn’t be this way”, you are tarnishing a symbol of hope and optimism. People like Star Trek, especially these days, because it gives them hope of a better future, beyond the struggles and corruption of modern society; where justice isn’t just an abstract concept that has to be fought for every day. Where competence and intelligence is rewarded, and corruption and prejudice is not tolerated.
To take that and twist it by going “actually the future is shitty and still full of fascism and it will always be an uphill battle” is just soul crushing.
Personally, I think the message of “things could be fine without struggle or setbacks” would go up like a lead balloon in the year 2026 (or really, any year since at least 2014, probably much earlier). I don’t see anything inspirational or hopeful when it seems like pure fantasy.
Well, I get you. I’m personally the oposite though: I need pure fantasy to give me hope, to set the ideal to strive for.
I understand where you’re coming from, but, to put it plainly, this show is not meant for you. Media reflects the times; Enterprise is the way it was because of 9/11. Academy is for the young people of today who have grown up in and are facing an increasingly bleak and hostile future. They will have to fight for a better future, because the one that is being handed to them is a dumpster fire. A show that shows them a better future is attainable and models how to do it is what they need, not a fantasy that is unobtainable.
A goal to work toward. A hope that if we keep fighting, there will eventually be a future where people don’t have to fight. That there is a path toward humanity reaching it’s peak, rather than an endless sisyphian struggle until our extinction.
It’s not “things could be fine without struggle or setbacks”, Star Trek makes it VERY clear that it was not a smooth and easy path toward fully automated gay space communism. It’s history of humanity is riddled with wars and uprisings and cultural slides backwards. But there is the idea that there could be a better future someday. Where greed and inequality are almost foreign concepts in society. Where science and reason finally win out against superstition and ignorance.
It may be a fantasy, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold onto a belief that things will not always just continue to be shitty forever. Never forget the words that can make a happy man’s joy turn to ash, or a sad man’s misery into hope:
This too shall pass.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold onto a belief that things will not always just continue to be shitty forever.
Neither does Star Trek. But neither the franchise nor I are so naive that we think that there’s a “mission accomplished” state in which bad things don’t happen any more.
Thank you. I really liked the second episode so far and I think I can live with a federation that finds back to its former values.
Some drumhead court-martial, lifelong prison sentence, violently separating a mother from her child and some goons beating up a prisoner
The key point here is that it is portrayed as horrible. Ake resigned in protest and only came back for the opportunity to make amends. The scene is there to show how far the Federation has fallen, in order to set up the task of rebuilding it.
Starfleet Academy has a justification for how shitty the world is, and IMHO it’s approaching it correctly. There was a galactic disaster that almost completely destroyed the federation, so SFA is literally post-apocalyptic. But it’s using that setting to tell a hopeful and positive story.
The core message of the show is that you can rebuild a just society even after it’s gone so far down the shitter. You can choose to do better, to be better. This is culturally relevant.
@Chemo
> Why do they turn Federation into a dystopia?I had the same niggle, but I’m hoping it’s a way of setting up a redemption arc.
Like when they replaced Captain Georgiou with Emperor Georgiou. She had to learn the value of the Federation’s way of doing things. But they also learned a thing or 2 from her.
Star Trek is just a media product now run by business people trying to make it appealing to mass audiences
Besides the awful plots and settings the writing and acting is horrific and as far as I’m concerned Star trek is over and academy is just fanfiction slop
nutrek is pretty bad so its seems to be kurtzman agenda for the franchise.
