Klingon Empire = United States
Federation = Russian Federation
Cardasians = Post WW2 Germany
Bajorians = Post WW2 Israel
Ferangi = United Arab Emerits
Lukari = British
This is just what I believe in my own mind, please post yours below.
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As for the Federation being the Russian Federation, I also don't see it. It is more like the idea of the League of Nations or the United Nations, than really any one country.
The Cardassians as post WWII Germany is an interesting postulation.
The Bajorans as Post WWII Israel with the Zionists, also sounds interesting. Though I have always thought of the Bajorans like space Muslims than space Jews.
The Ferengi being the United Arab Emirates is pretty spot on.
The Lukari being the British, I am not sure about that one. They might be some other country but not that one.
Klingons are either a fractured assemblage of houses (ENT and DSC) or a martial Empire built on war to the exclusion of any other culture (TNG, DS9, VGR).
The the first description might describe the old USSR or Yugoslavia and modern day countries like Libya that are made up of tribal regions tenuously bound to a nation but no the US.
The US does have a strong military worship but it's not the only focus of their culture. They also quite like fast food too .
The RF is a nationalistic and essentially dictatorial plutocracy run by oligarchs. It's borders are formed from what didn't escape the collapse of the USSR and whichever bits of Eastern Europe and Central Asia don't fight back hard enough.
The Federation is a post-scarcity socialist state (the polar opposite of a plutocracy) that's made up of voluntary members.
I assume you mean the STO Cardassian Union. In which case it's more of a post-WWI Germany. It's been Treaty of Versailles-ed allowing the True Way to gain ground using legitimate grievances to impose fascism.
Possibly. Though Bajor is not an expansionist state.
Come on. They're the bloody USA! Gunboat libertarians and capitalistic utopia. The UAE is rich, sure, but their national pastime is not privatisation or commercialisation.
I really don't get this one. I know the main Lukari has an English accent (or what her voice actor thinks is an English accent) but they don't really tie up. Their main 'hat' seems to be exploration and that was true of Britain in the 16-1700s it was also true of Spain, Italy, and some other European powers.
If the Lukari were us, then they'd be trying to break away from the Alliance and hope the Voth will open a trade deal despite just promising to become isolationists.
I've tried to give descriptions here and not make it look too reflective of the current politics (though as the RF has only existed since the 90s all its politics are more or less current politics) due to forum rules on politics. But these sorts of threads have existed before and don't always cause a flame war.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
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'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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The Ferengi seem to represent capitalism pushed to the extreme rather than a country.
But here's one for you: The Borg. I think they're supposed to represent the globalizing influence of The West. They're a nearly unstoppable force that absorbs and homogenizes other cultures, often against their will, for the benefit of the assimilator ("Your culture will adapt to service us") who can't understand why anyone wouldn't want this ("Why do you resist? We only wish to raise quality of life, for all species.").
And this is where people make the thread political. All you've done here is like your issues with the USA. None of those things are traits of the Klingon Empire.
Klingons don't have prisons beyond Rura Penthe (which seems to be the only one as Kirk, Archer, and Nero were all sent there from different regions). Klingons seem to prefer instant execution or honour duels for minor crimes.
Klingons spend 100% of their resources on war.
Klingons use a different code of honour to the sort familiar to western Humans. It's Worf with the polluted idea of what Klingon honour is. Gowron, Chang, Kol, Duras, etc. All perfectly honourable from a Klingon perspective.
That's a description of all globalisation and imperialisation not specifically Western. Marxism (USSR), Maoism (China), and Salafism/Wahhabism (KSA) are all Eastern forms of globalisation that are characterised by assimilation and overwriting of cultures.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Yeah, true. I guess I didn't think of those because they're mostly in the past or not as high-profile (at least in this part of the world). That being said, I would guess that in terms of who the borg are supposed to represent, it's more likely that the writers had their sights squarely on the West (especially the US). To an American writer with aims on tackling globalization, the West is a more appealing target than the East because his own culture's role will be more familiar to him and it will give him a way to lash out at an aspect of his culture that frustrates him. And if you're representing something by writing the biggest, scariest, most inhuman villains you can come up with, you're definitely frustrated by the thing you're representing.
It's also worth noting that I don't think Marxism, Maoism or Wahhabism quite fit the borg like western globalization does. Marxism and Maoism may say that they're benefiting the people they're assimilating, but I don't think the people in charge actually believe that's true. Maybe in the early days they did, but both movements have been corrupt for so long that they are inextricably tied with lying expansionist states in the Western mind. The borg do. As for Salafism/Wahhabism, I feel like something aimed at personifying those movements would be a bit more... self-righteous. The borg don't look at the world around them and see sin, they see things to assimilate to improve both themselves and the people they assimilate.
However, I will note that I've never seen anyone else voice this theory, so maybe I'm just nuts.
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— Sabaton, "Great War"
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Klingons : Mongolian Empire or Vikings
Romulans : Roman Empire
Just my two cents...
Which would be ironic, considering that in TOS the Klingons were a counterpart to Soviet Russians (i.e. specifically Russian SSR under the Soviet Union, "first among equals") and the Federation was the (idealized) United States.
These don't actually map very well onto real-world states. @artan42's post does a good job describing the reality of modern Russia (which in foreign policy is actually a decent comparison to some periods in Klingon history), but you also have to add in a culture that hybridizes a lot of different warrior cultures in Earth history (particularly Medieval Europe esp. Scandinavia and Shogunate Japan).
And as artan said, the Federation has the part where the United States is a union of many nations, but significantly lacks the warmongering attitude (often to a fault, as seen with the Cardassian situation in TNG and DS9) and capitalist neoliberalism (the Federation's economic system would give both our major parties heart attacks).
Mix of that and post-WWII Japan, I'd say. There is the issue with sympathizers of the ancien regime becoming a problem for the new government, but the German Federal Republic got to keep its military after World War II.
Low-hanging fruit and not really accurate on deeper analysis. The Bajorans are said by the showrunners to represent oppressed peoples across all of history, including both the Israelis and the Palestinians. You also have to include significant influence of American red states (agrarian, strongly religious, suspicious of outsiders). But the current Bajoran culture is more like what Israel might have been if their ethnonationalist extremists hadn't managed to secure an electoral dictatorship for the past two decades straight.
Ira Steven Behr openly said he actually based the Ferengi he wrote on modern-day Americans, and it matches up pretty well.
... Wut?
The Borg, I think, are a lot more of a technological commentary than an ideological one. I'm going to quote something I wrote on another board (you'll need an account to view the original post):
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
We are the Federation. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile. We don't see any biological improvements in the Borg, but there are a few human/alien hybrids in the Federation. Also, the dead temporal ship pilot from the Future Tense episode in Enterprise that STO decided was Kal Dano has Human, Vulcan, Terrellian, and Rigellian DNA. So it is possible that there are no pure humans in the 31st Century.
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I come to STO and these forums to escape the cares and worries of the Real World. This is my diversion from Real Life. I prefer it remain that way.
Could a Moderator to keep an eye on this one please? It hasn't gone sideways yet but I suspect it might in a very short order.
I feel your pain, though. Had to completely shut down zone chat on Risa, because when my Romulan captain, Fed-allied or not, is using his antigrav backpack to float through a holographically-designated aerial course on a distant alien planet, the last thing he wants to be inundated by is discussion of 21st-century Terran politics.
it's only one poster. But their post is clearly a political rant against the USA as I already pointed out their comparisons to the KE don't really stack up.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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I think it depends on if it's the TNG or the VGR Borg. The former are drones who assimilate to improve themselves. The latter introduced the Queen and her weird religious aspect with upgrading other life forms to Borg.
I wouldn't say you're nuts but I think it's a bit of a stretch. I think the Borg are concept villains rather than political inserts.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Completely assimilating a race never made sense to me if the Borg are only interested in assimilating the biological and technological distinctiveness of a species. Just assimilate a few starbases and come back to do it again in 50 years. Completely assimilating a race removes the possibility of obtaining more technology and biological mutations from the assimilated species.
However, Star Trel changed the initial Borg signal from "We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile." in TNG to ""We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." in First Contact. Even still, there was no point in attacking Earth in the Best of Both Worlds to obtain the Federation's technology and biology when attacking a Starbase is far more efficient.
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The Lukari are an emergent minor power - for an equivalent, I'd pick some Asian or African nation with a rapidly developing economy. Maybe the Philippines? Indonesia?
I was thinking mostly of the TNG borg. The thought originally came to me while watching TNG, and I think by the time Voyager's borg rolled around you had a different writing crew.
I think you're projecting an opinion about globalization onto me. I don't oppose globalization (or a pluralistic society, which is a separate issue), and I'm not trying to stir up fear about it. But I've heard people (mostly on the political left) who do think about it that way, and the way the TNG borg are portrayed seems to echo those views. Given the left-leaning slant of the show's writers and how often they use their show to write parables about their beliefs, I thought it was likely that the borg could be an engine by which the writers can criticize globalization.
And speaking of "the ultimate user," that actually fits. Western globalization goes hand-in-hand with Western commercialization, which runs primarily on consuming things. The "ultimate user" could easily refer to "the ultimate consumer."
Of course, whatever else they might be they definitely are a technological parable.
I've done nothing to earn hate from fellow Star Trek fans. Neither has my country. And I've generated no hatred towards other countries. Nor do I encourage such. To quote Nog, "And we're done here." #WalkAway
This is pretty sad to behold...
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