> @starkaos said: > There is only one known sapient species on Earth while there are tons of sentient species on Earth. > > Sentient - ability to perceive and react to the world > Sapient - ability to reason > > So unless Dolphins and Whales are able to reason and they just don't have the appendages to create technology or there is some unknown underground sapient race, then we are the only known sapient race on Earth.
Yes, I'm aware of the distinction between "sapient" and "sentient", Stark. And there's any number of experiments showing that various animals are quite able to reason: gorillas have been able to learn sign language and express complex thoughts, dolphins have figured out how to imitate sounds they lack the hardware for by using their blowhole on the surface of the water (WITHOUT having had a human teach them that trick), and many other animals are quite capable of solving logic puzzles (crows using a short stick to pull a longer stick to them, to pull a piece of food to them with the longer stick). That's why I made the distinction "technological species" instead of "sapient species": humans are the only species (to my knowledge) that have developed the ability to invent new SUBSTANCES, mainly by mastering the ability of fire to break down raw materials.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
There is only one known sapient species on Earth while there are tons of sentient species on Earth.
Sentient - ability to perceive and react to the world
Sapient - ability to reason
So unless Dolphins and Whales are able to reason and they just don't have the appendages to create technology or there is some unknown underground sapient race, then we are the only known sapient race on Earth.
I personally find this to be meaningless pedantry simply because that definition of sentient includes almost all animals, and even includes certain things that aren't.
There is only one known sapient species on Earth while there are tons of sentient species on Earth.
Sentient - ability to perceive and react to the world
Sapient - ability to reason
So unless Dolphins and Whales are able to reason and they just don't have the appendages to create technology or there is some unknown underground sapient race, then we are the only known sapient race on Earth.
I personally find this to be meaningless pedantry simply because that definition of sentient includes almost all animals, and even includes certain things that aren't.
And almost all animals are sentient which is why sentient in Science Fiction is so often misused. The only animals that aren't sentient are animals like sponges and corals since they just react to the world not perceive it.
If they write it well, I won't watch it, because it's not my type of show. If they write it in a way that Georgiou is anything near likeable, I won't watch it, because that is not credible writing. The woman is an unapologetic genocidaire, TRIBBLE, cannibalistic, xenophobic monster. The reason she's a good villain is because she's irredeemably evil, but convinced she's right (the difference between such villains today and the moustache-twirling black hats of yesteryear, who knew they were evil and revelled in their evilness). As I said when this was announced, they're trying to make a show where the protagonist is inherently unlikeable.
We have never seen Empress Georgiou snack on humans so she is not cannibalistic. She is an unapologetic, genocidal, xenophobic monster. Snacking on sapient beings just means Empress Georgiou is a monster not a cannibalistic monster. Carnivorous sapient races would likely devour other sapient races without having any moral qualms especially if they are tasty sapient races.
It's semantics, but I think the use of the word "cannibalistic" here is valid. While it's true we wouldn't use it on Earth to refer to a human eating other animals, Earth only has one technological sapient species.* Besides, all humanoid species in Star Trek share a common ancestry and can interbreed anyway (never mind that this is scientifically ludicrous).
* The jury is out on whether many species of animals qualify as sapient, but we are the only extant species that can achieve science more advanced than "poke stick into hole to retrieve yummy bug".
There is only one known sapient species on Earth while there are tons of sentient species on Earth.
Sentient - ability to perceive and react to the world
Sapient - ability to reason
So unless Dolphins and Whales are able to reason and they just don't have the appendages to create technology or there is some unknown underground sapient race, then we are the only known sapient race on Earth.
There are, however, a number of species trembling just on the verge of sapience so far as we can tell, held back by the fact that in their particular evolutionary niches, sapience wouldn't give them any particular advantages. Dolphins and chimps are the obvious candidates, of course, which is why those were the first two species uplifted by humans in David Brin's Uplift universe (and a good thing, too, as when we discovered the civilization of the Five Galaxies, it turned out that they didn't believe sapience could occur naturally, and your rank as a species was determined by who your Patrons were and how many other species you had uplifted. Humans have no known Patron race; what kept us from being forcibly adopted into a hundred thousand years of servitude by an older species was the fact that we had two client races of our own already). However, the behavior patterns of raccoons, corvids, and coyotes shows that they're also right at that ragged edge of becoming sapient.
It's an interesting thought experiment - if we humans manage to keep other life forms on this planet alive when we (seemingly inevitably) go extinct, who's the front-runner for the next sapient species on Earth?
Or sentience and sapience are on a spectrum. So dolphins and chimpanzees are barely sapient while the average human is less sapient than someone like Stephen Hawking or Einstein. A dog or cat would be far more sentient than an insect.
It has been years since I have read the Uplift series. All the discrimination towards humans because they were naturally uplifted seems entirely flawed since the first Patron race had to be naturally uplifted as well.
I am conflicted, I must admit. I am a Michele Yeoh fan, and enjoy her performances.
But Emperor Georgiou is an amoral/immoral, inhuman monster. I have often thought about how my characters would deal with her; is there any true chance for her to redeem herself, or does the weight of her crimes outweigh what little chance for redemption she might have? Despite the many times I have meditated on this question, I still have no clear answer.
Would she be given a second chance? Or tried as a War Criminal and executed for her crimes?
I don't get the point. What's the reason behind a whole series on Section 31? 'Kinda makes them somewhat less secret. A series on Starfleet Intelligence, why not? But not S31.
Also the Emperor is a cannibalistic space Naz.i. Lorca was at least redeemable. The Emperor is not.
People started to confuse S31 with the 'heroes' of the stories sometimes around ENT and now this stuff is highly popular. S31 has semi-canonically been established to be the sole reason the Federation still exists and their personnel gets that weird '24' or 'homeland' antihero pathos. I thought it's ten years too late for this, but it's basically what floats peple's boat these days.
Which also means it is completely irrelevant what any of the other protagonists do. Because in the end, it always only works because someone "does what has to be done" behind the scenes. It's really pretty dumb.
Actually, what DS9 demonstrated, was that S31 wasn't right and was in severe need of being reformed or disbanded.
Sacrificing innocents as "the ends justify the means" is evil, and not the best solution, even when it is presented as the best the heroes could manage at the time. Sisko ( and Archer) had both gotten their hands dirty but they did not like those actions nor how committing those actions changed them. The final episode of DS9 illustrated it the best, as the crew worked together to save Odo, who in turn forced a peaceful resolution to ending the war by saving his people. A better 'solution' than the one made by S31.
Was someone hung up on that? I must have missed it, because I would have mocked the concept mercilessly, particularly in the 23rd Century, after a third World War and after mankind has joined an interstellar, multispecies Federation.
I mean, my wife is black, and nobody's ever blinked twice at the fact that her maiden name was Welsh (or that her mother's maiden name was Flemish, for that matter).
> @jonsills said:
> Was someone hung up on that? I must have missed it, because I would have mocked the concept mercilessly, particularly in the 23rd Century, after a third World War and after mankind has joined an interstellar, multispecies Federation.
>
> I mean, my wife is black, and nobody's ever blinked twice at the fact that her maiden name was Welsh (or that her mother's maiden name was Flemish, for that matter).
I've seen the complaint here, in the comments at trekmovie and trekcore, and on facebook. I had much the same reaction as you Jon as I am a mixed Native American with an Irish first name and a Danish last name.
605 is Danish? Scandinavians are weird .
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
Well, I still prefer to think of Gabriel Lorca as a Spaniard because of his name (because that way Picard isn't the only European captain in the six series). IIRC Jason Isaacs even rolls the 'r's a little when he introduces himself.
Then there was that silverlobes guy who kept whining about having a Chinese captain command USS Shenzhou, named for China's first manned space mission, as if he'd forgotten about how the entire NX class was named for the American space shuttles.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Was someone hung up on that? I must have missed it, because I would have mocked the concept mercilessly, particularly in the 23rd Century, after a third World War and after mankind has joined an interstellar, multispecies Federation.
I mean, my wife is black, and nobody's ever blinked twice at the fact that her maiden name was Welsh (or that her mother's maiden name was Flemish, for that matter).
This was the problem I had with the latest Doctor Who. The Rosa episode's villain was a racist from hundreds or thousands of years in the future trying to prevent Rosa Park's protest so that black people "won't get above themselves." It makes as much sense as someone from modern civilization believing that sacrificing virgins to the volcano will stop it from erupting.
Was someone hung up on that? I must have missed it, because I would have mocked the concept mercilessly, particularly in the 23rd Century, after a third World War and after mankind has joined an interstellar, multispecies Federation.
I mean, my wife is black, and nobody's ever blinked twice at the fact that her maiden name was Welsh (or that her mother's maiden name was Flemish, for that matter).
This was the problem I had with the latest Doctor Who. The Rosa episode's villain was a racist from hundreds or thousands of years in the future trying to prevent Rosa Park's protest so that black people "won't get above themselves." It makes as much sense as someone from modern civilization believing that sacrificing virgins to the volcano will stop it from erupting.
Not really. The Selma bus protest was indeed a turning point in American race relations; the support shown by the black community in Alabama was very nearly a precondition to Dr. King getting the publicity that he did (he'd been a preacher for many years already, trying to spread his message, but the only people willing to hear it then were also black).
He'd probably need to go interfere in a few other turning points, but that was a pretty big one right there.
Nobody has ever batted an eye in large part because it's widely assumed that those are slave names, and in fact her father's last name is indeed that of the family that owned his ancestors. (Her mother's maiden name was taken by her freed ancestors from a kindly Flemish family that helped them out in those first few years.) My point, however, is that a mere 150 years after the American Civil War, nobody assumes that the last name of an American is terribly indicative of national or ethnic origin, so why would it be "impossible" for someone with ethnically Malaysian features like Capt. Georgiou to have inherited a Greek last name almost three hundred years hence, on a United Earth?
None the less Jon, that was a repeated complaint on multiple platforms from the moment Yeoh's character was announced. It is as you say utterly nonsensical, and not just from an American perspective, the future king of England after all has Asian Indian ancestry through his mother Princess Diana. But then racial or ethnic predjudice has never been based in sense.
And then you have the fact that the current heir's father is half-Greek, half-German, the current Queen's grandmother was Danish, Grandfather was half-German, etc.
And to top things off, large swathes of the population have Irish ancestry since at least the early 1900s if not earlier (myself included, Great-Grandfather was an Irish emigre in the 1920s). Heck, my first name is Irish and my surname's so English everyone would think I'm aristocracy if I didn't live on a Council Estate!
(To be clear, my name wasn't chosen because it was Irish. My sister chose it after the footballer Ryan Giggs to stop my parents from calling me Miles. )
I've been trying to formulate a credible storyline for this series, and to be honest, I'm firing blanks. I can't see this, as a Trek show, going anywhere. As Generic Sci Fi there's a place for it, somewhere between time travel and hack-n-slash horror, but Trek is meant to be a more cerebral show for an audience which isn't afraid to think, (even if we don't do it all that well from time to time!)
The premise is that this unrepentant murderer and despot is going to be useful to Section 31. How? By taking it over and ruling the Federation from behind a black curtain? The very idea of her being around should scare the TRIBBLE out of S31 because they know exactly what a person like her is capable of doing. And absolute dictators seldom become less power-hungry over time.
What they are suggesting is not dissimilar to offering an addict just a little bit to maintain his addiction in exchange for a promise that he won't go out on his own and get a big fix.
"So, former Empress Of All You Surveyed, here are the keys to the city, access to secret weapons and specialists in a variety of nefarious and criminal activities, and blackmail information on hundreds or thousands of prominent citizens. Now, play nice and don't kill and eat anyone who isn't on your list."
Is she "unrepentant" though? I mean, we've gotten to see her playing the Empress for like an episode and a half, and we've seen her since then for what, forty seconds? That's not really a lot of time to get a feel for the character.
I'm content to wait for more data. We should be getting some Thursday, apparently.
Brian there are plenty of ways for this not to backfire. I know fans that have wanted a Romulan Empire/Tal Shiar show for decades.
That's different: those are the bad guys!
Like it or not, Trek is steeped in the white-hat/black-hat mentality, (along with a lot of other hats.) The Federation is the White Hat Cowboy, coming in to save the day with guts, grit, and pure good-heartedness.
But now we have this black-hat organization running the show from behind the scenes? Are the white-hats really that stupid? Also, are they really that incompetent that they can't run things without a secret black-hat organization doing stuff behind the scenes for their benefit?
Is she "unrepentant" though? I mean, we've gotten to see her playing the Empress for like an episode and a half, and we've seen her since then for what, forty seconds? That's not really a lot of time to get a feel for the character.
I'm content to wait for more data. We should be getting some Thursday, apparently.
I'll have to wait for data, but I'm more concerned at the moment with human psychology. People don't just change. Especially people who make the acquisition of power their life's work, and who prove to be good at it. For someone like the Empress there is only one thing that is good in life, and that is to hear the lamentations... wait, wrong despot... to have and exercise power.
Megalomania is a brain condition as severe as heroin addiction. You don't just wake up one day and decide you want off the train.
As I said, I see this as a generic sci fi show, but as a Trek show it is out of place. Whether there is an audience for it is not the issue: the audience would be there if it were set in Space-Probe 2440 or some other setting.
As for creative limiting: that only demonstrates the relative skill and imagination of the writers and producers. I see a ton of potential in a better future. And I'm not talking about materialistic things, I'm talking about social improvements, which apparently the current crop of writers don't believe can happen.
I find the statement that "people don't change" to be untrue. It generally requires some sort of profound psychological shock, but it can indeed happen. People "find the light" every day, from former cult members to recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.
Say, the shock of being dragged out of a world where the only way to advance was through vicious ruthlessness, and trusting anyone, on anything, was a weakness exploitable by one's enemies - that is to say, everybody - into one where cooperation and trust are strengths, and where "ruthlessness" can actually set one back from one's goals.
We've seen glimpses of the basic Philippa Georgiou; recall that the Empress, like the Captain, regarded Michael Burnham as her daughter, and gave her extraordinary freedom and trust out of love (and was betrayed in the end, although Mirror Michael probably didn't even try to justify it as anything more than her own power grab). It's not impossible that Mirror Philippa, having lost everything in her own universe to the point that she actively wanted to die fighting against a rebellion she couldn't defeat, might reassess her life in terms of how things are done in this new place, particularly in light of the way that Burnham was able to see a possibility for the Klingons that Philippa never even conceived of.
I find the statement that "people don't change" to be untrue. It generally requires some sort of profound psychological shock, but it can indeed happen. People "find the light" every day, from former cult members to recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.
Say, the shock of being dragged out of a world where the only way to advance was through vicious ruthlessness, and trusting anyone, on anything, was a weakness exploitable by one's enemies - that is to say, everybody - into one where cooperation and trust are strengths, and where "ruthlessness" can actually set one back from one's goals.
We've seen glimpses of the basic Philippa Georgiou; recall that the Empress, like the Captain, regarded Michael Burnham as her daughter, and gave her extraordinary freedom and trust out of love (and was betrayed in the end, although Mirror Michael probably didn't even try to justify it as anything more than her own power grab). It's not impossible that Mirror Philippa, having lost everything in her own universe to the point that she actively wanted to die fighting against a rebellion she couldn't defeat, might reassess her life in terms of how things are done in this new place, particularly in light of the way that Burnham was able to see a possibility for the Klingons that Philippa never even conceived of.
This would be an interesting route to take. Seeking redemption is something that happens, but it is not achieved by giving the former bad-guys small doses of exactly what they had before and trusting their impulse to do good. There would have to be a disassociation between the former empress and anything like power, or she will fall back into the life she was trying to get out of. Sort of like giving someone who is going on a diet a grocery bag filled with chocolate bars and saying, "You can have one once in a while, but not too many!"
Your comments about creative limitations shows that you have never heard of the "comics code authority", one of the worst things to ever happen to the comic book industry. This body imposed the same rules on comics that you want to put on Trek and it resulted in decades of the worst most brainless stories ever written, or in other words worse than the most by the numbers Berman Trek. When the various authors decided of their own accord to discard those rules was when the stories hit a whole new plateau and created some of the greatest stories. I find your comments on the writers berift of factual basis and founded only on your own bias. Finally, claiming that the writers don't believe social improvements can happen shows you haven't been watching what those writers have been doing.
And since none of that is what I'm talking about, it's not really relevant. I don't want to 'clean up' Trek.
What I'm talking about is the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys: the good guys don't use the same tools as the bad guys to accomplish their goals, and the, 'it's good for me,' solution isn't good enough for the good guys.
Can the Federation fall short of it's goals? Of course.
Will every problem have a neat and clean solution? Of course not.
What will be different is that the Federation will be striving to follow the ideals as set forth in the charter rather than paying them lip service and doing 'what has to be done' behind the scenes. This is a cop-out, and it makes the Federation Charter a lie.
Comments
> There is only one known sapient species on Earth while there are tons of sentient species on Earth.
>
> Sentient - ability to perceive and react to the world
> Sapient - ability to reason
>
> So unless Dolphins and Whales are able to reason and they just don't have the appendages to create technology or there is some unknown underground sapient race, then we are the only known sapient race on Earth.
Yes, I'm aware of the distinction between "sapient" and "sentient", Stark. And there's any number of experiments showing that various animals are quite able to reason: gorillas have been able to learn sign language and express complex thoughts, dolphins have figured out how to imitate sounds they lack the hardware for by using their blowhole on the surface of the water (WITHOUT having had a human teach them that trick), and many other animals are quite capable of solving logic puzzles (crows using a short stick to pull a longer stick to them, to pull a piece of food to them with the longer stick). That's why I made the distinction "technological species" instead of "sapient species": humans are the only species (to my knowledge) that have developed the ability to invent new SUBSTANCES, mainly by mastering the ability of fire to break down raw materials.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
My character Tsin'xing
And almost all animals are sentient which is why sentient in Science Fiction is so often misused. The only animals that aren't sentient are animals like sponges and corals since they just react to the world not perceive it.
Or sentience and sapience are on a spectrum. So dolphins and chimpanzees are barely sapient while the average human is less sapient than someone like Stephen Hawking or Einstein. A dog or cat would be far more sentient than an insect.
It has been years since I have read the Uplift series. All the discrimination towards humans because they were naturally uplifted seems entirely flawed since the first Patron race had to be naturally uplifted as well.
I am conflicted, I must admit. I am a Michele Yeoh fan, and enjoy her performances.
But Emperor Georgiou is an amoral/immoral, inhuman monster. I have often thought about how my characters would deal with her; is there any true chance for her to redeem herself, or does the weight of her crimes outweigh what little chance for redemption she might have? Despite the many times I have meditated on this question, I still have no clear answer.
Would she be given a second chance? Or tried as a War Criminal and executed for her crimes?
Actually, what DS9 demonstrated, was that S31 wasn't right and was in severe need of being reformed or disbanded.
Sacrificing innocents as "the ends justify the means" is evil, and not the best solution, even when it is presented as the best the heroes could manage at the time. Sisko ( and Archer) had both gotten their hands dirty but they did not like those actions nor how committing those actions changed them. The final episode of DS9 illustrated it the best, as the crew worked together to save Odo, who in turn forced a peaceful resolution to ending the war by saving his people. A better 'solution' than the one made by S31.
The Borg Assimilator
Live Long and Prosper.🖖[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I mean, my wife is black, and nobody's ever blinked twice at the fact that her maiden name was Welsh (or that her mother's maiden name was Flemish, for that matter).
605 is Danish? Scandinavians are weird
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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Then there was that silverlobes guy who kept whining about having a Chinese captain command USS Shenzhou, named for China's first manned space mission, as if he'd forgotten about how the entire NX class was named for the American space shuttles.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
This was the problem I had with the latest Doctor Who. The Rosa episode's villain was a racist from hundreds or thousands of years in the future trying to prevent Rosa Park's protest so that black people "won't get above themselves." It makes as much sense as someone from modern civilization believing that sacrificing virgins to the volcano will stop it from erupting.
My character Tsin'xing
He'd probably need to go interfere in a few other turning points, but that was a pretty big one right there.
Nobody has ever batted an eye in large part because it's widely assumed that those are slave names, and in fact her father's last name is indeed that of the family that owned his ancestors. (Her mother's maiden name was taken by her freed ancestors from a kindly Flemish family that helped them out in those first few years.) My point, however, is that a mere 150 years after the American Civil War, nobody assumes that the last name of an American is terribly indicative of national or ethnic origin, so why would it be "impossible" for someone with ethnically Malaysian features like Capt. Georgiou to have inherited a Greek last name almost three hundred years hence, on a United Earth?
And then you have the fact that the current heir's father is half-Greek, half-German, the current Queen's grandmother was Danish, Grandfather was half-German, etc.
And to top things off, large swathes of the population have Irish ancestry since at least the early 1900s if not earlier (myself included, Great-Grandfather was an Irish emigre in the 1920s). Heck, my first name is Irish and my surname's so English everyone would think I'm aristocracy if I didn't live on a Council Estate!
(To be clear, my name wasn't chosen because it was Irish. My sister chose it after the footballer Ryan Giggs to stop my parents from calling me Miles.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
The premise is that this unrepentant murderer and despot is going to be useful to Section 31. How? By taking it over and ruling the Federation from behind a black curtain? The very idea of her being around should scare the TRIBBLE out of S31 because they know exactly what a person like her is capable of doing. And absolute dictators seldom become less power-hungry over time.
What they are suggesting is not dissimilar to offering an addict just a little bit to maintain his addiction in exchange for a promise that he won't go out on his own and get a big fix.
"So, former Empress Of All You Surveyed, here are the keys to the city, access to secret weapons and specialists in a variety of nefarious and criminal activities, and blackmail information on hundreds or thousands of prominent citizens. Now, play nice and don't kill and eat anyone who isn't on your list."
How can this not backfire?
I'm content to wait for more data. We should be getting some Thursday, apparently.
That's different: those are the bad guys!
Like it or not, Trek is steeped in the white-hat/black-hat mentality, (along with a lot of other hats.) The Federation is the White Hat Cowboy, coming in to save the day with guts, grit, and pure good-heartedness.
But now we have this black-hat organization running the show from behind the scenes? Are the white-hats really that stupid? Also, are they really that incompetent that they can't run things without a secret black-hat organization doing stuff behind the scenes for their benefit?
I'll have to wait for data, but I'm more concerned at the moment with human psychology. People don't just change. Especially people who make the acquisition of power their life's work, and who prove to be good at it. For someone like the Empress there is only one thing that is good in life, and that is to hear the lamentations... wait, wrong despot... to have and exercise power.
Megalomania is a brain condition as severe as heroin addiction. You don't just wake up one day and decide you want off the train.
As for creative limiting: that only demonstrates the relative skill and imagination of the writers and producers. I see a ton of potential in a better future. And I'm not talking about materialistic things, I'm talking about social improvements, which apparently the current crop of writers don't believe can happen.
Say, the shock of being dragged out of a world where the only way to advance was through vicious ruthlessness, and trusting anyone, on anything, was a weakness exploitable by one's enemies - that is to say, everybody - into one where cooperation and trust are strengths, and where "ruthlessness" can actually set one back from one's goals.
We've seen glimpses of the basic Philippa Georgiou; recall that the Empress, like the Captain, regarded Michael Burnham as her daughter, and gave her extraordinary freedom and trust out of love (and was betrayed in the end, although Mirror Michael probably didn't even try to justify it as anything more than her own power grab). It's not impossible that Mirror Philippa, having lost everything in her own universe to the point that she actively wanted to die fighting against a rebellion she couldn't defeat, might reassess her life in terms of how things are done in this new place, particularly in light of the way that Burnham was able to see a possibility for the Klingons that Philippa never even conceived of.
This would be an interesting route to take. Seeking redemption is something that happens, but it is not achieved by giving the former bad-guys small doses of exactly what they had before and trusting their impulse to do good. There would have to be a disassociation between the former empress and anything like power, or she will fall back into the life she was trying to get out of. Sort of like giving someone who is going on a diet a grocery bag filled with chocolate bars and saying, "You can have one once in a while, but not too many!"
And since none of that is what I'm talking about, it's not really relevant. I don't want to 'clean up' Trek.
What I'm talking about is the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys: the good guys don't use the same tools as the bad guys to accomplish their goals, and the, 'it's good for me,' solution isn't good enough for the good guys.
Can the Federation fall short of it's goals? Of course.
Will every problem have a neat and clean solution? Of course not.
What will be different is that the Federation will be striving to follow the ideals as set forth in the charter rather than paying them lip service and doing 'what has to be done' behind the scenes. This is a cop-out, and it makes the Federation Charter a lie.