A lot of you people really Do not get this topic What Star Trek IS and always been about being enlighten showing the world the Injustices of that's out there in a Sci-fi Setting Yes Discovery (First Season) and Enterprise (Second Season) went really off the Rails with Star Trek true meaning but when you have a Diverse Cast like it and telling stories that's shows the problems the world facing and how a crew that's enlighten faced that challenge it gives us a blueprint how to fight injustice in the world and how to change the world. So many got inspired from Star Trek like Altar Computer that Jobs and Waz developed Apple 1 Basic from that helped spawned the information Age that were in right now. Cell Phones both flipped and touched Screen Inspired by Star Trek and its why I think personally Star Trek Insurrection is one of the most Underrated TNG films out there because it speaks about "RELOCATION" of a Society from a planet that Federation as no rights too all because they can Heal and it goes EVERYTHING what the Federation was founded and What Star Trek means and that Movie reminds us that! So we have a TRIBBLE Engineer or Non Binary Officer a Black Female Captain in Discovery So what in 1964 we had the FIRST Female First Officer Number one aka Una. Star Trek is about telling stories about the Human adventure and how we can improve or selves as a race. Yes With Picard and Discovery Third season of Enterprise and Even 5th season to 7th Season of DS9 it became more serial but as long it sticks to the core value with in these stories like season 4 of Discovery did and season 3 of Picard even DS9 Star Trek can do both be Episodic (Planet of the Week) or a serial like Discovery's Run and Picard's Run. As long they can inspire people tell stories about Problems that the world is facing in a Scifi setting That's To me the Core of what Star Trek is
That's not how forums work. You get to start a discussion, but you don't get to decide what comes next or whether people "get" it or not. Also, you really need to learn how to format a post.
What you are saying here is that murder is acceptable so long as it is below a certain threshold. Honestly, the mental gymnastics being made to justify that are truly incredible. Either the ideals the Federation and Starfleet so pride themselves on apply to everyone or they do not. Quite clearly, we have seen on several occasions that the Federation will absolutely forego the Prime Directive and all of their other ideals they hold precious.
Again, I believe Vreenak and Grathon Tolar would argue that their lives were two too many, and the lives of two people definitely make it wrong. Neither were willing participants who heroically decided on their own to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. They were murdered.
It is also further proof that the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few is not always applied the same. Two is fewer than billions, and so are 600.
Val... there's a difference between spy stuff to get the Star Empire to actively participate in the war, and ultimately help WIN the war, vs making a planet uninhabitable just to "have now" rather than actually conduct research. Also I think you forgot the part where the Holoship was a violation of the Treaty of Algeron due to the illegal Cloaking Device. The situtaion with the Ba'ku was basically a revenge plot by the Son'a against their own parents that the Federation ended up getting involved in. The Federation Council put an official stop to the operation once the Enterprise made contact with Starfleet. And I swear that whole Ba'ku situation was a Section 31 plan too. Any advantage at ANY cost.
And since when was the Federation the Arbiter of Evolution?
The whole point of war is that it is uncivilized and morally bankrupt, nations inflicting unacceptable behavior on each other until one side gives up to get the other to stop. There was a whole TOS episode about it, A Taste of Armageddon, that featured an attempt by an isolated society to change that and their "solution" became worse than the original problem.
Civilized nations pretty much have to break their own moral codes in war, especially when it comes to killing people to gain an advantage (whether it is in droves in open battles or smaller numbers in commando or black ops actions), and it should not come as a surprise that even Starfleet will occasionally stoop to Section 31's level if the need is dire enough.
The real point about Sisko's actions is not that even Federation commanders will take that step if nothing else will work, but rather the fact that for the Federation it takes longer to reach that point. It is simply not a binary situation.
I don't have a problem with character growth. My problem is that her racist views are never actually challenged in the season: she just randomly remembers in the last half-hour that, oh, wait, genocide is wrong. Also, again, regime change by nuclear blackmail? Hello? Anyone? (Bueller?)
Starfleet and Federation characters being racist and/or willing to commit genocide is nothing new to Star Trek.
Captain Picard was more than willing to commit genocide against the Borg
Admiral Nechayev scolded Picard for not committing genocide against the Borg
Really? 🤭 The Borg? 😂 The friggin Borg, that's what you're going with? 🤣
The Borg Collective commits genocide by its very existence: it has been wiping out civilizations and suppressing the identities of their inhabitants to turn them into peripheral devices for itself for millennia. The Borg is not an ethnic group that can have genocide done to it, it's a single malevolent botnet intent on the absorption or destruction of all intelligent life. Any drones killed in the process are the victims of the computer that forced them to be there, not the people fighting it in self-defense and in defense of others -- the most classic and accepted defense for homicide that exists.
Sisko was complicit to multiple murders in order to bring the Romulans into the war with the Dominion
This is not genocide or racism, it's just common murder. And he's not presented as heroic for doing so: he knows full well it was wrong, but he has to keep the secret because admitting to it probably means the Romulans declare war on the Federation.
Also, in the long run, it didn't just save Federation and Klingon lives, but it also likely saved the entire Romulan species. Remember this bit from "Broken Link"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb4ezxM8YUg
"They're dead. You're dead. Cardassia is dead. They died when they decided to attack us."
Exterminating the Cardassians once they outlived their usefulness was always the plan. The Romulans were involved in that attack, too, you really think the Dominion's going to treat them any differently?
Admiral Cartwright referred to the Klingons as the "alien trash of the galaxy"
Was Admiral Cartwright supposed to be the hero of the series? Or was he just a background character who didn't like the people he'd spent his whole career fighting?
I don't have a problem with character growth. My problem is that her racist views are never actually challenged in the season: she just randomly remembers in the last half-hour that, oh, wait, genocide is wrong.
Really. You just don't remember the part where she went to jail, and only got out because Prime!Lorca was some kind of wunderkind who got whatever he wanted, and Mirror!Lorca took advantage of this? Or the way most of the rest of the crew treated her after her assignment to Discovery? Or the various interactions she had with Klingons over the season, that showed her the problems with Humans using the "Vulcan Hello"?
I remember Burnt Ham going to jail for mutiny and issuing illegal attack orders. Not for being a racist against the Klingons. And did she ever actually have a civil conversation with a Klingon in the entire run of the season until the last half-hour? Discuss her opinions of their culture and how they were wrong, or visit a Klingon world and see that they were wrong? Because I remember Admiral Cornwell doing something like that in reverse with L'Rapist, but not Burnt Ham. As far as I remember the only time she even interacted with a Klingon besides shooting at them was when L'Rapist tried to activate Voqler and he went crazy and tried to kill her. I don't even think she shared two words with L'Rapist the entire time she was on Discovery.
And again: regime change by nuclear blackmail.
----
As far as the Ba'ku/Son'a conversation, notwithstanding the continuity problems with that film, my personal interpretation is that Picard learned his lesson about trying to uproot people from their homes a little too well with his unintentional involvement in the formation of the Maquis, and swung too far the other direction.
"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"
Comparing first season DSC with mainline Trek is iffy at best since (according to the interviews in the first season behind the scenes special) most of the writers and other creative people hired for the show had very little, if any, exposure to (or liking of) the various traditional series.
Apparently Moonves was intent on essentially ignoring Trek (or actually "overwriting" it with something else) but keeping the name for its marketing power while actually delivering something more akin to the Kelvin movies with a big dash of Game of Thrones style power struggles mixed together. In that kind of setup, the "nuclear blackmail" (it would actually be a form of extortion rather than blackmail, in effect the Federation setting up a form of protection racket) would fit right in.
Of course, the nuclear extortion was probably an extreme example of the damage control CBS was doing to try and put out the fires from the split Moonves caused in the Trek fanbase. Comments in the runup hype and early first season interviews give a strong impression that they were intending to keep the war going for the entire series or at least a majority of it, and the new CBS leadership probably wanted to kill the war threads as quickly as possible and they only had a few episodes in order to accomplish it by the end of the first season.
Ironically, Kirk did something similar, though in a far smaller scale and less ruthless way, in A Peice of the Action since in that case it was the most expedient way to resolve the situation there without breaking the Prime Directive any more than it already was. And of course, the mere existence of General Order 24 in A Taste of Armageddon and Whom Gods Destroy proves that the Federation will in fact consider the "nuclear option" if the situation is dire enough and there is no other viable option.
The issue with the way they ended the war in DSC was just one more example of the clumsy, heavy-handed way the series was written in general, and that in turn is an aspect of the struggle all the studios are having trying to get a handle on the still-too-new-for-stability streaming media markets along with the fast pace of advancements in production technologies.
Overall, it probably does not help that they mainly have (or at least had) movie people in charge and tried to, as Kurtzman put it, "bring the movie excitement and experience to the small screen" with the show so they ended up with the typically very fast-and-loose relationship with continuity that action movies generally have.
Comparing first season DSC with mainline Trek is iffy at best since (according to the interviews in the first season behind the scenes special) most of the writers and other creative people hired for the show had very little, if any, exposure to (or liking of) the various traditional series.
Apparently Moonves was intent on essentially ignoring Trek (or actually "overwriting" it with something else) but keeping the name for its marketing power while actually delivering something more akin to the Kelvin movies with a big dash of Game of Thrones style power struggles mixed together. In that kind of setup, the "nuclear blackmail" (it would actually be a form of extortion rather than blackmail, in effect the Federation setting up a form of protection racket) would fit right in.
Of course, the nuclear extortion was probably an extreme example of the damage control CBS was doing to try and put out the fires from the split Moonves caused in the Trek fanbase. Comments in the runup hype and early first season interviews give a strong impression that they were intending to keep the war going for the entire series or at least a majority of it, and the new CBS leadership probably wanted to kill the war threads as quickly as possible and they only had a few episodes in order to accomplish it by the end of the first season.
Ironically, Kirk did something similar, though in a far smaller scale and less ruthless way, in A Peice of the Action since in that case it was the most expedient way to resolve the situation there without breaking the Prime Directive any more than it already was. And of course, the mere existence of General Order 24 in A Taste of Armageddon and Whom Gods Destroy proves that the Federation will in fact consider the "nuclear option" if the situation is dire enough and there is no other viable option.
The issue with the way they ended the war in DSC was just one more example of the clumsy, heavy-handed way the series was written in general, and that in turn is an aspect of the struggle all the studios are having trying to get a handle on the still-too-new-for-stability streaming media markets along with the fast pace of advancements in production technologies.
Overall, it probably does not help that they mainly have (or at least had) movie people in charge and tried to, as Kurtzman put it, "bring the movie excitement and experience to the small screen" with the show so they ended up with the typically very fast-and-loose relationship with continuity that action movies generally have.
Prime Directive is a doctrine of moral laziness, and become like dogma during the Berman years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUiqp2DMMcc <
I agree with the person who made this video about his view on the PD.
Anyhow, my take on this whole thing is the older treks were a bit more subtle, as opposed to something pretty much being bashed in like a brick to the face, now. It's not so much of 'woke' that bothers me, it's the, imo, bad writing and characters I don't like that bothers me. *shrugs*
Anyhow, my take on this whole thing is the older treks were a bit more subtle, as opposed to something pretty much being bashed in like a brick to the face, now. It's not so much of 'woke' that bothers me, it's the, imo, bad writing and characters I don't like that bothers me. *shrugs*
Well put and I completely agree.
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was a masterpiece of subtlety, wasn't it? Not to mention "The Omega Glory", "Miri", "The Cloud Minders", "Patterns of Force", "Return of the Archons"...
Oh, but maybe that was just the old '60s style of writing. Let's look ahead to such subtle TNG tales as "Angel One", "Code of Honor", "Skin of Evil", "The Drumhead"...
DS9 was basically a show about how evil expansionist empires are.
When exactly was all this "subtlety" y'all are on about in evidence?
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was a masterpiece of subtlety, wasn't it? Not to mention "The Omega Glory", "Miri", "The Cloud Minders", "Patterns of Force", "Return of the Archons"...
Oh, but maybe that was just the old '60s style of writing. Let's look ahead to such subtle TNG tales as "Angel One", "Code of Honor", "Skin of Evil", "The Drumhead"...
DS9 was basically a show about how evil expansionist empires are.
When exactly was all this "subtlety" y'all are on about in evidence?
You may feel there is no difference between 1960's television and television of today and you are certainly welcome to believe that. That in no way makes the opinions or tastes of others wrong.
I did not say there was "no difference". Nor did I invoke taste. I merely responded to the claim that old Trek was "subtle", when generally it was about as subtle as a brick to the face.
@starswordc I believe you misunderstood the context and missed the point that was being made as to why I provided the examples I did. You seemed surprised that it took Burnham so long to come to the conclusion that genocide is bad and that things like racism and genocide were out of character for Starfleet officers and/or the Federation in general. Time and again, canon proves the exact opposite. The examples I provided were to show that our heroes and the Federation - despite all their lofty ideals and preachings - are absolutely capable of and willing to do whatever is necessary, including committing murder and genocide, to achieve their goals. Our favorite heroes are also not above reproach and have biases and other character flaws.
And he realized he was being an @sshole two sentences later and accepted and carried out the mission despite his grudge.
...
Was Admiral Cartwright supposed to be the hero of the series? Or was he just a background character who didn't like the people he'd spent his whole career fighting?
Once again, you missed the reason these examples were included. They are canon examples of "good guys" having biases. Characters having flaws is not something unique to Burnham.
Never said they didn't. I said they're supposed to be portrayed as wrong when they display them, and in other series they usually are.
The Borg Collective commits genocide by its very existence: it has been wiping out civilizations and suppressing the identities of their inhabitants to turn them into peripheral devices for itself for millennia. The Borg is not an ethnic group that can have genocide done to it, it's a single malevolent botnet intent on the absorption or destruction of all intelligent life. Any drones killed in the process are the victims of the computer that forced them to be there, not the people fighting it in self-defense and in defense of others -- the most classic and accepted defense for homicide that exists.
We are all familiar with who and what the Borg are. Your attempt to dehumanize them does not make genocide right nor does it change a very important fact, which you conveniently ignored. Those "peripheral devices" are in fact individuals which canon shows are redeemable. Guinan and Picard came to the same conclusion in "I, Borg". Hugh, Seven of Nine, Icheb, Picard, Riley Frazier, Orum were all once Borg who were removed from the Collective and who went on to be noble characters in their own right. Callously hand waving to dehumanize them and say all Borg are irredeemable so its acceptable to kill them is just plain wrong. One group dehumanizing another group to justify killing them is replete throughout human history and is overwhelmingly viewed as evil.
Please reread the parts where I explicitly said that Borg drones were victims of the Borg and explained the difference between murder and self-defense, and come back when you can explain to me in your own words what is wrong with this strawman argument.
This is not genocide or racism, it's just common murder. And he's not presented as heroic for doing so: he knows full well it was wrong, but he has to keep the secret because admitting to it probably means the Romulans declare war on the Federation.
You again missed the reasoning this example was included. See above. I never suggested murdering Vreenak and Tolar was genocide. And yes, it is murder, ("common" or not) which is a crime. Sisko feeling guilty about it does not make it acceptable or right. Vreenak and Tolar were not given a choice nor did either one of them agree to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. That decision was taken from them.
The Romulans were involved in that attack, too, you really think the Dominion's going to treat them any differently?
This is supposition. We have no way of knowing what the outcome might have been. It is just as reasonable to conclude the Romulans would have thrived had the Dominion won. The Dominion had allies in the gamma quadrant, so one could just as easily say the Romulans would not be treated any differently. This also ignores the potential issues that could arise should the Romulans ever find out what Sisko really did and the dubious means they were tricked into a war they may not have needed to enter. That truth coming to light may not be a good thing for Federation and Romulan relations either.
Appeal to ignorance. We are shown repeatedly that the Dominion's military and civil services are under the absolute theocratic control of a small cabal of congenital control freaks who habitually react very poorly to having their control threatened or their manifest destiny challenged: in addition to the Omarion Nebula, we have Weyoun himself saying he planned to preemptively glass Earth just to keep it from being a focus of resistance against occupation, as well as the example of the Teplans. If Subcommander T'Rul hadn't been written out of the series after "The Search", the preponderance of the evidence says the Founder would have told her the exact same thing she told Garak, and that she would have done the same thing to the Romulans that she did to the Cardassians: subverted them to her own use, and then exterminated them the minute they outlived their usefulness and/or said 'no' to her.
"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"
This is the TOTAL antithesis of the anti-woke movement in EVERY possible way. After all, spreading hatred and fear are much harder when people DARE to understand one another, work to actually communicate and comprehend unusual things. This is totally against whatever is being spouted by whichever political hack is in favor of being utterly wrong gramatically this week. On ANY side, btw.
Star Trek was ALWAYS about diversity, communication and acceptance. At least on the Starfleet side, supposedly. So by many 'special' peoples' definitions today, yes, it IS that nasty grammar mistake that became a fear soaked political movement. So of course, it too needs to die a fiery death on the altars of 'hate', 'fear' and 'oppression in the name of greed' just like 'liberty', 'freedom' and 'peace' are currently.
Who NEEDS a maniac like Khan Noonian Singh when we have this?
To answer the question, no it is not GOING there. IT ALWAYS WAS in Gene Roddenberry's hopeful vision of the future which is becoming less and less possible as days go by. I find that sad, but so many simply want an excuse to hate now. So, they find it and then they justify it. Nothing new there.
I can only hope that sanity WILL prevail, eventually. I am not going to hold my breath though.
Prime Directive is a doctrine of moral laziness, and become like dogma during the Berman years.
The second part is true. The first part is categorically false.
The Prime Directive was IRL born out of the Cold War and European colonialism. It was supposed to be a caution against imperialism, a la what most of the Western (white) world had been doing in Africa, Asia, and the Americas pretty much continuously for the previous 500-odd years, as well as such things as the CIA coup in Iran in '53 and the Vietnam War (both contemporary to TOS), or more recently the regime change wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.
In other words, the Federation wasn't supposed to be conquering other countries or interfering in their internal affairs, it was supposed to respect their rights to national self-determination until and unless the Federation was directly threatened, and even then act only as much as was needed to defend itself. And with non-warp-capable civilizations, who inherently pose absolutely no threat to the Federation at all, that means leave well enough alone.
But there were limits. The Federation of TOS didn't view extinction, especially by outside-context problems such as asteroid collisions, as the natural course of a civilization. It also does want to expand itself, but by voluntary admission rather than conquest, so it observes uncontacted civilizations and protects them from external dangers until they figure out warp drive or otherwise realize they aren't alone in the universe. Here the rule is "don't get caught". TOS held to that viewpoint, and both DSC and SNW have thankfully fully endorsed it over B&B's nonsense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYZ4IoyztIw
Picard also got smart about it sometimes. "Redemption" is a particular standout: leaving aside that Starfleet is in no shape to help the Klingon government fight off the Duras sisters' rebellion this soon after Wolf 359, if they did help Gowron's side directly, the Duras side can spin that to make Gowron look weak. By Klingon culture, Gowron and his supporters have to win by their own strength or they won't be seen as deserving. But the same applies to Duras, so not interfering directly but instead exposing that he was getting Romulan support makes the legitimacy of his cause evaporate and Gowron wins within weeks. The moral of the story being, "War is a continuation of politics with other means."
"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"
I did not say there was "no difference". Nor did I invoke taste. I merely responded to the claim that old Trek was "subtle", when generally it was about as subtle as a brick to the face.
In your opinion, which does not in any way make your preference universal fact.
2. fine or delicate in meaning or intent; difficult to perceive or understand: subtle irony.
Please, tell me - where in there is "opinion" or "taste" mentioned? The fact that you either deliberately fail to understand the points made in TOS. TNG, and DS9 or somehow find more-modern Trek unsuited to your own political positions is irrelevant to the fact that old Trek was never terribly "subtle" about making its points. TRIBBLE, just reference Lincoln's discussion with Uhura in "The Savage Curtain" - real subtle points about racism and how the utopian Federation doesn't practice it any more, huh? (Well, you know, until we get into the incredibly racist portrayals of Genghis Khan and Kahless the Unforgettable...)
Anyhow, my take on this whole thing is the older treks were a bit more subtle, as opposed to something pretty much being bashed in like a brick to the face, now. It's not so much of 'woke' that bothers me, it's the, imo, bad writing and characters I don't like that bothers me. *shrugs*
Well put and I completely agree.
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was a masterpiece of subtlety, wasn't it? Not to mention "The Omega Glory", "Miri", "The Cloud Minders", "Patterns of Force", "Return of the Archons"...
Oh, but maybe that was just the old '60s style of writing. Let's look ahead to such subtle TNG tales as "Angel One", "Code of Honor", "Skin of Evil", "The Drumhead"...
DS9 was basically a show about how evil expansionist empires are.
When exactly was all this "subtlety" y'all are on about in evidence?
Every series has its especially heavy-handed stinkers like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, and a handful of them out of 79 episodes is not a bad ratio at all, especially since the show pushed the social issues envelope of its time a lot harder than any of its spinoffs did in theirs.
The Berman era shows had their share too, especially when their technobabble strayed into the soft sciences to thump on social issues at length (personally, I think the Berman stuff was generally noticeably less subtle than TOS, though with so many more episodes it is hard to say for sure what the relative ratio was to TOS).
NuTrek actually pushes the social envelope less than the traditional Treks, it does not push any further than many of today's other shows and in fact uses pretty much the same kind of characters and situations as the rest in the same sort of ways.
For instance, a lot of its critics like to point to the LGBTQ aspects of the show but how many shows nowadays dont have it? And there are shows that have a lot more than NuTrek does.
So no, NuTrek is not more "woke" than other Treks, it just may seem so to some people because of the poor dialog writing in most of them making it sound extra awkward. Additionally, it does not help that instead of being dramas like traditional Trek, NuTrek tends to use the over-the-top melodrama that is common in action movies.
DSC is incredibly sloppy and all over the place with the space-opera and melodrama aspects while SNW is generally much better written but seems to have fallen into a kind of soap-boomerang formula where they resolve the plot issue but instead of leaving it there like TOS would, they come back around to underline the moral of the episode yet again, often with a challenge of some sort that catapults it into soap opera levels of melodramatic teeth-gnashing and other silliness.
Charades is a perfect example of that.
In SNW Spock makes it through the ritual but when T'Pring's mother says she was wrong to doubt Spock since a human would never be able to complete the ritual, he loses his temper and proclaims that he was entirely human during the ritual. In TOS Spock would have gotten through the ritual the same way but that thread would stop there without that declaration scene, and they would have cut to epilog where the captain and officers would have said a few words about it instead of making a circus like SNW did
Trek also warns against appeasement, sometimes some regimes cannot be reasoned with (A certain failed painter comes to mind from history).
Take the Cardassian Border Wars for example, the Federation appeased the Cardassians and the whole Bajor question, well the Federation not helping Bajor when they had the chance to liberate them is another stain on that record.
Trek shows both the good and ugly sides and despite the Federation's holier than thou attitude, they still have to learn, take episode 2 of season 2 of SNW as an example, it exposed that the Federation persecute based on fear of augments and that carried on all the way to DS9 when Bashir was exposed as an augment.
It shows that irrational fear is still very much there but it's just under the surface.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,582Community Moderator
Well... TECHNICALLY its a rational fear. People like Khan did a number on Earth during the Eugenics Wars, which lead into WWIII.
As much as people like Una and Bashir are good people who are augmented, there's still going to be bad people like Khan. Rather than try to sort good from bad on a massive scale, especially since you can't really gauge a personality until they actually are caught or do something... better to just outlaw to prevent the rise of another Khan and if any pop up hope you got people on your side like Pike and Sisko to help them make the choice to enable an exception for officers who have proven themselves like Una and Bashir.
DS9 also showed what usually happens when you try to genetically-augment humans - there was that entire group of psychotic geniuses, each with their own unique psychological issues, that Starfleet asked Bashir to counsel. They helped with a few problems during the war, but they still had to be held in custody for their own good.
And no, the Federation never "appeased" the Cardassians - they fought a war for long enough to give O'Brien (and his former CO) some PTSD. And they did liberate Bajor, they just didn't admit it as a member planet because there were several requirements the Bajorans hadn't met yet (a politically-united planet, for example), and when the Provisional Government finally became the Bajoran government, the Emissary requested that they not seek UFP membership just yet. (The Prophets sent him a vision just before the Dominion attack; as long as Bajor wasn't a Federation member world, they could pretend to neutrality and avoid conquest.)
I play Star Trek Online for a few reasons:
- I'm a lifelong Star Trek fan.
- I enjoy computer games.
- If the computer game is Star Trek based, then I'm into the Bonus Round.
Most importantly, I play Star Trek Online as an escape from the cares and worries of Real Life. Real Life sucks! I'd much prefer to live in the place Star Trek depicts itself and hopes to be.
I'd also prefer people learned to live and let live. But humans being humans, they cannot leave others free from being controlled or put down for some silly reason. "They're not like us! Therefore they must be either controlled or removed! And if you do not wholeheartedly agree with us and then bend the knee, you're one of them!"
In effect, I am allowed to have any opinion I want. As long as either side gets to put their words in my mouth. And their thoughts into my brain. Regardless of which side I choose, I am required to continually publicly prove my devotion. Else I'm not 'pure' enough and must either be purged or consigned to the Reeducation Camps for further brainwashing.
A pox on both their houses.
People on both sides of this type of discussion grandstand to everyone else by loudly announcing to everyone within earshot, "I'm right! And they're stupid!". Volume and throwing hissy fits because somebody does not see things the exact same way you do ought to have been left behind in kindergarten. Sadly, this isn't so.
Some things are important enough to fight for. Some things are important enough to die for. Some things are important enough to kill for. And then live with yourself afterwards. Star Trek does not meet any of the conditions for any of these. It is entertainment. Which sometimes uses something topical as a basis for a story. I may not agree with or like some of the topics or the way they are depicted but other people do. I'm willing to let them do so without getting my nose out of joint about it. Or going off halfcocked about it in public.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Well... TECHNICALLY its a rational fear. People like Khan did a number on Earth during the Eugenics Wars, which lead into WWIII.
As much as people like Una and Bashir are good people who are augmented, there's still going to be bad people like Khan. Rather than try to sort good from bad on a massive scale, especially since you can't really gauge a personality until they actually are caught or do something... better to just outlaw to prevent the rise of another Khan and if any pop up hope you got people on your side like Pike and Sisko to help them make the choice to enable an exception for officers who have proven themselves like Una and Bashir.
Messy, but rational. Blame Khan.
I agree with you so much on that statement one of the most Powerful Episodes of Strange New Worlds was Ad Astra per Aspera its one of my favourite episodes because it makes it clear one thing is what people on the Fascist club think about thoughts who are different that who are part of the LGBTQ+ or who is in minatory and or in different religion comes to FEAR like a great one wised green dude with pointed Ears once said "Fear is the Path to the Dark SIDE fear leads to anger anger leads to hate hate leads to suffering" and these people who are afraid of most is "WOKE" because like in Ad Astra per Aspera" it shows the fear of people though who genetically modify themselves but what this episode actually tells us what were all been saying that Fear can lead to dangures consequence and one thing that's SO great about Star Trek and why Republicans Fear it because the Core thing that Star Trek gives and Ad Astra per Aspera is the prime example what Star Trek is about is enlighten people to wake them up and see the trouble society and how we must come together and make it better and work together as a race and to me when Star Trek deliverers that message its at is best because Star Trek is to explore with the Unknown not with fear but with curiosity excitement and friendship!!!
Comments
That's not how forums work. You get to start a discussion, but you don't get to decide what comes next or whether people "get" it or not. Also, you really need to learn how to format a post.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Val... there's a difference between spy stuff to get the Star Empire to actively participate in the war, and ultimately help WIN the war, vs making a planet uninhabitable just to "have now" rather than actually conduct research. Also I think you forgot the part where the Holoship was a violation of the Treaty of Algeron due to the illegal Cloaking Device. The situtaion with the Ba'ku was basically a revenge plot by the Son'a against their own parents that the Federation ended up getting involved in. The Federation Council put an official stop to the operation once the Enterprise made contact with Starfleet. And I swear that whole Ba'ku situation was a Section 31 plan too. Any advantage at ANY cost.
And since when was the Federation the Arbiter of Evolution?
Civilized nations pretty much have to break their own moral codes in war, especially when it comes to killing people to gain an advantage (whether it is in droves in open battles or smaller numbers in commando or black ops actions), and it should not come as a surprise that even Starfleet will occasionally stoop to Section 31's level if the need is dire enough.
The real point about Sisko's actions is not that even Federation commanders will take that step if nothing else will work, but rather the fact that for the Federation it takes longer to reach that point. It is simply not a binary situation.
The Borg Collective commits genocide by its very existence: it has been wiping out civilizations and suppressing the identities of their inhabitants to turn them into peripheral devices for itself for millennia. The Borg is not an ethnic group that can have genocide done to it, it's a single malevolent botnet intent on the absorption or destruction of all intelligent life. Any drones killed in the process are the victims of the computer that forced them to be there, not the people fighting it in self-defense and in defense of others -- the most classic and accepted defense for homicide that exists.
This is not genocide or racism, it's just common murder. And he's not presented as heroic for doing so: he knows full well it was wrong, but he has to keep the secret because admitting to it probably means the Romulans declare war on the Federation.
Also, in the long run, it didn't just save Federation and Klingon lives, but it also likely saved the entire Romulan species. Remember this bit from "Broken Link"?
Exterminating the Cardassians once they outlived their usefulness was always the plan. The Romulans were involved in that attack, too, you really think the Dominion's going to treat them any differently?
And he realized he was being an @sshole two sentences later and accepted and carried out the mission despite his grudge.
Was Admiral Cartwright supposed to be the hero of the series? Or was he just a background character who didn't like the people he'd spent his whole career fighting?
I remember Burnt Ham going to jail for mutiny and issuing illegal attack orders. Not for being a racist against the Klingons. And did she ever actually have a civil conversation with a Klingon in the entire run of the season until the last half-hour? Discuss her opinions of their culture and how they were wrong, or visit a Klingon world and see that they were wrong? Because I remember Admiral Cornwell doing something like that in reverse with L'Rapist, but not Burnt Ham. As far as I remember the only time she even interacted with a Klingon besides shooting at them was when L'Rapist tried to activate Voqler and he went crazy and tried to kill her. I don't even think she shared two words with L'Rapist the entire time she was on Discovery.
And again: regime change by nuclear blackmail.
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As far as the Ba'ku/Son'a conversation, notwithstanding the continuity problems with that film, my personal interpretation is that Picard learned his lesson about trying to uproot people from their homes a little too well with his unintentional involvement in the formation of the Maquis, and swung too far the other direction.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Apparently Moonves was intent on essentially ignoring Trek (or actually "overwriting" it with something else) but keeping the name for its marketing power while actually delivering something more akin to the Kelvin movies with a big dash of Game of Thrones style power struggles mixed together. In that kind of setup, the "nuclear blackmail" (it would actually be a form of extortion rather than blackmail, in effect the Federation setting up a form of protection racket) would fit right in.
Of course, the nuclear extortion was probably an extreme example of the damage control CBS was doing to try and put out the fires from the split Moonves caused in the Trek fanbase. Comments in the runup hype and early first season interviews give a strong impression that they were intending to keep the war going for the entire series or at least a majority of it, and the new CBS leadership probably wanted to kill the war threads as quickly as possible and they only had a few episodes in order to accomplish it by the end of the first season.
Ironically, Kirk did something similar, though in a far smaller scale and less ruthless way, in A Peice of the Action since in that case it was the most expedient way to resolve the situation there without breaking the Prime Directive any more than it already was. And of course, the mere existence of General Order 24 in A Taste of Armageddon and Whom Gods Destroy proves that the Federation will in fact consider the "nuclear option" if the situation is dire enough and there is no other viable option.
The issue with the way they ended the war in DSC was just one more example of the clumsy, heavy-handed way the series was written in general, and that in turn is an aspect of the struggle all the studios are having trying to get a handle on the still-too-new-for-stability streaming media markets along with the fast pace of advancements in production technologies.
Overall, it probably does not help that they mainly have (or at least had) movie people in charge and tried to, as Kurtzman put it, "bring the movie excitement and experience to the small screen" with the show so they ended up with the typically very fast-and-loose relationship with continuity that action movies generally have.
Prime Directive is a doctrine of moral laziness, and become like dogma during the Berman years.
I agree with the person who made this video about his view on the PD.
Anyhow, my take on this whole thing is the older treks were a bit more subtle, as opposed to something pretty much being bashed in like a brick to the face, now. It's not so much of 'woke' that bothers me, it's the, imo, bad writing and characters I don't like that bothers me. *shrugs*
Oh, but maybe that was just the old '60s style of writing. Let's look ahead to such subtle TNG tales as "Angel One", "Code of Honor", "Skin of Evil", "The Drumhead"...
DS9 was basically a show about how evil expansionist empires are.
When exactly was all this "subtlety" y'all are on about in evidence?
Disco had a great piece of social critique with the Ba'ul/Kelpien-stories. Was it subtle? No, but allegories don't have to be.
Part of what makes them such a powerful type of metaphor is that they present something entirely recognisable, only in a new setting.
Please reread the parts where I explicitly said that Borg drones were victims of the Borg and explained the difference between murder and self-defense, and come back when you can explain to me in your own words what is wrong with this strawman argument.
Appeal to ignorance. We are shown repeatedly that the Dominion's military and civil services are under the absolute theocratic control of a small cabal of congenital control freaks who habitually react very poorly to having their control threatened or their manifest destiny challenged: in addition to the Omarion Nebula, we have Weyoun himself saying he planned to preemptively glass Earth just to keep it from being a focus of resistance against occupation, as well as the example of the Teplans. If Subcommander T'Rul hadn't been written out of the series after "The Search", the preponderance of the evidence says the Founder would have told her the exact same thing she told Garak, and that she would have done the same thing to the Romulans that she did to the Cardassians: subverted them to her own use, and then exterminated them the minute they outlived their usefulness and/or said 'no' to her.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
This is the TOTAL antithesis of the anti-woke movement in EVERY possible way. After all, spreading hatred and fear are much harder when people DARE to understand one another, work to actually communicate and comprehend unusual things. This is totally against whatever is being spouted by whichever political hack is in favor of being utterly wrong gramatically this week. On ANY side, btw.
Star Trek was ALWAYS about diversity, communication and acceptance. At least on the Starfleet side, supposedly. So by many 'special' peoples' definitions today, yes, it IS that nasty grammar mistake that became a fear soaked political movement. So of course, it too needs to die a fiery death on the altars of 'hate', 'fear' and 'oppression in the name of greed' just like 'liberty', 'freedom' and 'peace' are currently.
Who NEEDS a maniac like Khan Noonian Singh when we have this?
To answer the question, no it is not GOING there. IT ALWAYS WAS in Gene Roddenberry's hopeful vision of the future which is becoming less and less possible as days go by. I find that sad, but so many simply want an excuse to hate now. So, they find it and then they justify it. Nothing new there.
I can only hope that sanity WILL prevail, eventually. I am not going to hold my breath though.
The Prime Directive was IRL born out of the Cold War and European colonialism. It was supposed to be a caution against imperialism, a la what most of the Western (white) world had been doing in Africa, Asia, and the Americas pretty much continuously for the previous 500-odd years, as well as such things as the CIA coup in Iran in '53 and the Vietnam War (both contemporary to TOS), or more recently the regime change wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.
In other words, the Federation wasn't supposed to be conquering other countries or interfering in their internal affairs, it was supposed to respect their rights to national self-determination until and unless the Federation was directly threatened, and even then act only as much as was needed to defend itself. And with non-warp-capable civilizations, who inherently pose absolutely no threat to the Federation at all, that means leave well enough alone.
But there were limits. The Federation of TOS didn't view extinction, especially by outside-context problems such as asteroid collisions, as the natural course of a civilization. It also does want to expand itself, but by voluntary admission rather than conquest, so it observes uncontacted civilizations and protects them from external dangers until they figure out warp drive or otherwise realize they aren't alone in the universe. Here the rule is "don't get caught". TOS held to that viewpoint, and both DSC and SNW have thankfully fully endorsed it over B&B's nonsense.
Picard also got smart about it sometimes. "Redemption" is a particular standout: leaving aside that Starfleet is in no shape to help the Klingon government fight off the Duras sisters' rebellion this soon after Wolf 359, if they did help Gowron's side directly, the Duras side can spin that to make Gowron look weak. By Klingon culture, Gowron and his supporters have to win by their own strength or they won't be seen as deserving. But the same applies to Duras, so not interfering directly but instead exposing that he was getting Romulan support makes the legitimacy of his cause evaporate and Gowron wins within weeks. The moral of the story being, "War is a continuation of politics with other means."
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Every series has its especially heavy-handed stinkers like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, and a handful of them out of 79 episodes is not a bad ratio at all, especially since the show pushed the social issues envelope of its time a lot harder than any of its spinoffs did in theirs.
The Berman era shows had their share too, especially when their technobabble strayed into the soft sciences to thump on social issues at length (personally, I think the Berman stuff was generally noticeably less subtle than TOS, though with so many more episodes it is hard to say for sure what the relative ratio was to TOS).
NuTrek actually pushes the social envelope less than the traditional Treks, it does not push any further than many of today's other shows and in fact uses pretty much the same kind of characters and situations as the rest in the same sort of ways.
For instance, a lot of its critics like to point to the LGBTQ aspects of the show but how many shows nowadays dont have it? And there are shows that have a lot more than NuTrek does.
So no, NuTrek is not more "woke" than other Treks, it just may seem so to some people because of the poor dialog writing in most of them making it sound extra awkward. Additionally, it does not help that instead of being dramas like traditional Trek, NuTrek tends to use the over-the-top melodrama that is common in action movies.
DSC is incredibly sloppy and all over the place with the space-opera and melodrama aspects while SNW is generally much better written but seems to have fallen into a kind of soap-boomerang formula where they resolve the plot issue but instead of leaving it there like TOS would, they come back around to underline the moral of the episode yet again, often with a challenge of some sort that catapults it into soap opera levels of melodramatic teeth-gnashing and other silliness.
In SNW Spock makes it through the ritual but when T'Pring's mother says she was wrong to doubt Spock since a human would never be able to complete the ritual, he loses his temper and proclaims that he was entirely human during the ritual. In TOS Spock would have gotten through the ritual the same way but that thread would stop there without that declaration scene, and they would have cut to epilog where the captain and officers would have said a few words about it instead of making a circus like SNW did
Take the Cardassian Border Wars for example, the Federation appeased the Cardassians and the whole Bajor question, well the Federation not helping Bajor when they had the chance to liberate them is another stain on that record.
Trek shows both the good and ugly sides and despite the Federation's holier than thou attitude, they still have to learn, take episode 2 of season 2 of SNW as an example, it exposed that the Federation persecute based on fear of augments and that carried on all the way to DS9 when Bashir was exposed as an augment.
It shows that irrational fear is still very much there but it's just under the surface.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
As much as people like Una and Bashir are good people who are augmented, there's still going to be bad people like Khan. Rather than try to sort good from bad on a massive scale, especially since you can't really gauge a personality until they actually are caught or do something... better to just outlaw to prevent the rise of another Khan and if any pop up hope you got people on your side like Pike and Sisko to help them make the choice to enable an exception for officers who have proven themselves like Una and Bashir.
Messy, but rational. Blame Khan.
And no, the Federation never "appeased" the Cardassians - they fought a war for long enough to give O'Brien (and his former CO) some PTSD. And they did liberate Bajor, they just didn't admit it as a member planet because there were several requirements the Bajorans hadn't met yet (a politically-united planet, for example), and when the Provisional Government finally became the Bajoran government, the Emissary requested that they not seek UFP membership just yet. (The Prophets sent him a vision just before the Dominion attack; as long as Bajor wasn't a Federation member world, they could pretend to neutrality and avoid conquest.)
- I'm a lifelong Star Trek fan.
- I enjoy computer games.
- If the computer game is Star Trek based, then I'm into the Bonus Round.
Most importantly, I play Star Trek Online as an escape from the cares and worries of Real Life. Real Life sucks! I'd much prefer to live in the place Star Trek depicts itself and hopes to be.
I'd also prefer people learned to live and let live. But humans being humans, they cannot leave others free from being controlled or put down for some silly reason. "They're not like us! Therefore they must be either controlled or removed! And if you do not wholeheartedly agree with us and then bend the knee, you're one of them!"
In effect, I am allowed to have any opinion I want. As long as either side gets to put their words in my mouth. And their thoughts into my brain. Regardless of which side I choose, I am required to continually publicly prove my devotion. Else I'm not 'pure' enough and must either be purged or consigned to the Reeducation Camps for further brainwashing.
People on both sides of this type of discussion grandstand to everyone else by loudly announcing to everyone within earshot, "I'm right! And they're stupid!". Volume and throwing hissy fits because somebody does not see things the exact same way you do ought to have been left behind in kindergarten. Sadly, this isn't so.
Some things are important enough to fight for. Some things are important enough to die for. Some things are important enough to kill for. And then live with yourself afterwards. Star Trek does not meet any of the conditions for any of these. It is entertainment. Which sometimes uses something topical as a basis for a story. I may not agree with or like some of the topics or the way they are depicted but other people do. I'm willing to let them do so without getting my nose out of joint about it. Or going off halfcocked about it in public.
I agree with you so much on that statement one of the most Powerful Episodes of Strange New Worlds was Ad Astra per Aspera its one of my favourite episodes because it makes it clear one thing is what people on the Fascist club think about thoughts who are different that who are part of the LGBTQ+ or who is in minatory and or in different religion comes to FEAR like a great one wised green dude with pointed Ears once said "Fear is the Path to the Dark SIDE fear leads to anger anger leads to hate hate leads to suffering" and these people who are afraid of most is "WOKE" because like in Ad Astra per Aspera" it shows the fear of people though who genetically modify themselves but what this episode actually tells us what were all been saying that Fear can lead to dangures consequence and one thing that's SO great about Star Trek and why Republicans Fear it because the Core thing that Star Trek gives and Ad Astra per Aspera is the prime example what Star Trek is about is enlighten people to wake them up and see the trouble society and how we must come together and make it better and work together as a race and to me when Star Trek deliverers that message its at is best because Star Trek is to explore with the Unknown not with fear but with curiosity excitement and friendship!!!