RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events STAR TREK: A Socialist Utopia?

Discuss.

Well they're not supposed to have money in the days of Trek(though sometimes credits are mentioned)as far as Earth and I suppose Vulcan go. I would also guess that also means health care for everyone then and no insurance or HMO's are around. But then that's pretty easy to say since it's fiction.However,most of what I've seen and read focuses almost entirely on the Starfleet side of things and in the real world today when you're on active duty in the service,you don't pay for medical in most cases,so I'm not sure if that's accurate to assume in the civilian world of Star Trek but I would guess it's pretty likely.

There are some inconsitencies though. For example in ST III when McCoy talks to the big eared alien about getting a ship,he flat out tells the dude he's got plenty of money. Then in ST IV when Kirk and Gillian are at the pizza place and the check comes she says "Let me guess,they don't have money in the future." to which Kirk replies "Well,they don't". but then continuity in Star Trek is played pretty fast and loose.

What exactly were you thinking of Pro?

Perhaps it's because you can finally bang green-skinned chicks.

The original series had several references to money, though not always a specific currency system. Harry Mudd was a trader and con man. The dilithium miners were trying to secure their fortunes. Same with the miners on the planet with the Horta (had to look that up). Quark also had a lot of Federation customers, and I'm sure he didn't take anything on barter.

Now that I think about it (and getting to Pro's question), there were a few mentions of corporations in DS9. I don't know if they were human companies or not, though. It does seem that the Federation itself was socialist, though how it worked was never explained. I just write all of this off to my theory that sometime in the 70's, Roddenberry lost his fucking mind.

@Alan & Doc: Good points! I'm not really thinking about anything, per se. But, by the TNG/DS9 era, they always present civilian Earth as a utopia where there is no need.

In FIRST CONTACT:



So then, the question becomes how/why/what is the impetus of evolution and progress? If it's a utopia, which it's presented as on Earth, then what type of government operates this kind of social/cultural/economic world? There's a "President of Earth" we've seen. And we've seen multiple Presidents throughout Trek. So, there must be some type of governmental rule.

As for Quark and DS9 and the like, it's understood that Starfleet provides some type of bartering or payment system for worlds outside the Federation that they have trade with. The idea that neither has a matching economic system is very believable, given you're dealing with alien cultural compatibility issues. For example, the Ferengi Trade Alliance does all its biggest business with the Feds, as we've seen in DS9. But, how do the Feds pay them? Does Earth or other Fed planet have resources to trade with? We've seen countless mining colonies and the like in TOS. So, we know humans are out there sucking the resources off native planets to perpetuate their way of life on Earth. But, are they mining ore to trade with another culture for something else? Are they using it for Earth, as it seems we've eaten up all of our own natural resources (like fucking humpback whales for instance)? That's the kind of stuff I'm curious about.

We know they have something akin to "criminals", as we have seen Federation Penal Colonies (see VOYAGER pilot...if you really want to). They "rehabilitate" their criminals, which has very Orwellian overtones.

This is a subject that's been debated by many Trekkies over the past twenty-years. I don't believe any Trek ever would outright say that its a socialist utopia. But, if you take all the facts that have been presented, it's not hard to see it in that context. At least from modern perspectives. Could be a scifi future thing where we just evolve into higher thinking/learning, and therefore DO work to better ourselves as a whole, with no thought to the progress of the individual. I mean, it's not like we in the 21st century are an agrarian culture. We've moved past "the driving force for food during the winters".

But, also, as Al pointed out.....we usually only see their exploration/military organization StarFleet. We've never truly been exposed to enough of future Earth to know. And a lot of that can be chalked up to Roddenberry admitting outright in an interview that, like trying to land the ENTERPRISE on a planet, he had no idea how that future society would work without money. But, wanted to present it as such anyway. Thus, the never-explained-Earth of the 23/24th Century...

Didn't Sisko's dad run a restaurant on Earth? How the fuck did he manage that without money? And I watched the first Harry Mudd episode about a month or so back and was struck by how he was to be put up for 'psychological rehabilitation' because of his aberrant behavior, which seemed to be mostly greed and lying.

Again, TOS has several people mining for their own fortunes. You could say it was a socialist society because Kirk had to negotiate for dilithium directly from the miners themselves instead of some corporation. They were still after personal wealth, though, which would indicate some form of currency. Still, sometime in the mid seventies, Roddenberry lost his goddamn mind and started to push the whole socialaist utopia and 'Starfleet isn't a military organization' bullshit that most of the writers had to include but didn't really like. I think they just paid lip service to it but pretty much ignored it on the whole. And if we're going with the reboot, that motherfucker had Nokia phones and Budweiser beer.

Agreed. I meant to mention that when talking about Quark. DS9 definitely showed there's SOME type of bartering system on Earth. So, then, is it a Communist state? Do the individuals perform necessary tasks and jobs to further the whole, or is it an advanced, altruistic form of commerce and/or capitalism? I know they made a reference that Sisko's Naw'leans restaurant was unusual because they cooked real food by hand, instead of using Replimats. Which kind of points to basic human needs being easily met by technology (food, water, etc.) Thus, if having all your basic human needs met is as much of a given as say breathing air, where would humanity find the impetus to grow? If all needs are met, then extracurricular needs such as the luxury of real hand-cooked food might be what they work to gain. I mean, the Picards have huge vineyards. They're wine makers. So, who are they making the wine for and why?



Kind of what I was talking about. It has a very brainwashing/Big Brother feel to it.



Ah, but the difference there could be that we're talking about colonies and not Earth citizens. Just like everyone flooding west for gold in American history, humans leapt out into space to find their fortune. It might be that, during Archer to Kirk's era, there was a functioning economy and the like, and it was the cultural evolution from first contact and the meeting of other lifeforms over the next century that lead to Picard's 24th century no-money-on-Earth utopia.

The pursuit of wealth is very present in some of the alien cultures we've seen, the Ferengi being the epitome of that idea. So, it's a fact that some type of galactic economy does exist. But, humans and/or Earth's place in the scheme of thing is muddled at best.



I don't know. Given the timeframe you're speaking of (late-60's/mid-70's) I don't know if I would say he "lost his mind" as much as rode the wave of the free-love zeitgeist of the day. It was the 70's, "man". Peace, love, and acid. The collective demographic of twenty-somethings and younger would not see a "military organization" of any kind true to the philosophy of their day, any more than 80's kids "loved" authority figures. Those kids wouldn't have found it "cool" to dig Vietnam Era "space soldiers". Thus, between '69 and the '79 movie, TREK swung into the "global peace" ideology of the hippy movement. Thus, it's actually a pretty genius business move on his part.

He molded TREK from the "Wagon Train to the stars" as it was pitched in the westerns-of-the-60's era, into an intergalactic Peace Corp for the next decade and culture swing. The kids followed. Spock became a cultural icon as his "logic" was embraced by the hippie crowd. Just look at all the "SPOCK FOR PRESIDENT" slogans of the day.

Then, by the late 80's, it was time to move into the "Next Generation" of Star Trek viewers. Thus, TREK became the evolution of the 70's utopia (which admittedly Roddenberry held onto) but with the avarice of the 80's (check the size of that bridge and ship) and the burgeoning pseudo-psychological feel-good New Age vibe of the mid-to-late-80's (which was in itself a sociocultural response to the height of the Cold War tensions). Enter TNG. Then, the darkness and cynicism of the 90's was front-and-center in DEEP SPACE NINE, curtailing that utopian platform that TNG had preached. So, taking all of that into place, I think Gene was a genius to evolve it to sell, even if he had no idea what he was actually talking about.



VERY good point. I think it's fair to say that the JJ-Trekverse has abandoned that "utopian" angle. That Earth didn't seem too much of a paradise to me. Looked like they were still in the years of rebuilding society after "the great war". But, the major cities like the San Fransisco city looks very, very advanced. So...

It's interesting to consider, really. Even though, realistically, we know there are real-world reasons and inconsistencies that caused this background subtext to the Trek universe.

I don't really have a lot to add that pro or doc or allan haven't already touched upon. there's no question that roddenberry was a socialist, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him a damned dirty hippie. I would have to say that the trek was definitely a labor of love for him and as such embodied his hopes for utopia, but there was occasionally a tinge of skepticism mixed in there (the TOS episode with the hippies comes to mind). it's important to remember that most of what we call 'socialism' today is viewed through a decidedly postmodern lens by both its proponents and detractors, while roddenberry's philosophy was modernist throughout; he was perhaps one of the last modernists in sci-fi. also, roddenberry's commitment to his vision of the future didn't always resonate with the pendulum swings of the culture around him and rarely went over well with the production teams with which he worked, which means that as time wore on, inconsistencies developed of all sorts.

the battles for creative control between roddenberry and the writers and producers that defined the post-TOS period and the early films made it hard for him to keep asserting his particular philosophy, and you can definitely see the federation vacillate between more and less militant postures from film to film. as pro pointed out, TNG was an attempt to reconcile roddenberry's dreams of the ideal future society with the culture of the 80s. initially you see all the trademarks of roddenberry - insistence upon pacifism (until shit hits the fan about thirty-three minutes into most episodes), deconstruction of the 'supernatural' in all its forms, and championing altruism at both the individual and societal levels.

but as the 90s came along, roddenberry's optimism appealed to fewer and fewer people. the latter seasons of TNG (let's say seasons 4-7) are a study in maintaining relevance in what would otherwise have rapidly become a laughably dated franchise; remember that this time around the campiness and saccharine idealism of TOS were exactly what the producers were hoping to avoid! ira steven behr and the other creators of DS9 cranked the cynicism dial to eleven, which is immediately apparent once you see how the ferengi (intended to be a cautionary tale in roddenberry's socioeconomic morality play once the producers of TNG realized they'd never be taken seriously as an enemy race) take on an increasingly prominent and audience-sympathetic role.

I intentionally left voyager and enterprise out of this particular analysis because in my professional opinion (which has been verified by extensive research) voyager blew innumerable goats and the continuity rape that was enterprise cannot be forgiven. the TNG-cast movies are, for the most part, an acceptable compromise between roddenberry's vision and the zeitgeist of the late 90s/early 2000s - many of the inconsistencies can most directly be attributed to changes in the writing and production staff. of course, the reboot was a reboot, and in most ways was intended to make the trek appealing to non-trekkies; the necessary appeals to 'relevance' seem to have precluded concern for the original vision, but considering how well the film was received perhaps that's not all bad. long story short, the trek was and is and will continue to be filtered through the culture and the times, and it seems less important to discuss whether or not its depiction of society is prescriptive of a particular socioeconomic ideal than to discuss how its depiction of society is descriptive of its creators and of the culture in which each successive chapter of the ongoing story originated.

Fuck you, Phil. Enterprise was just as good as the original series. I couldn't give a good gobdamn to the people who bitch about continuity (something that the Trek franchise has a hard time keeping straight to begin with).

I think I would boil it down and say a form of money exists that the Federation/Earth uses and that while not a utopian society,I would say that a unified ideal exists in that,and I think it is pretty self-evident in most of Trek and really what I think Roddenberry wanted to portray,all the people of Earth are a unified people and that while you might come from North or South America,Africa or Asia....whereever doesn't matter. People of Earth regard themselves as Terrans and not by any specific nationality in the future. Greed only really exists in the more rare aspects of humanity and that knowledge and exploration are the more defining aspects of the people of Earth.

I don't buy this since the Vietnam war was in full swing by '68. The military vibe was kept even during the animated series in '73 and '74. Roddenberry attempted several backdoor pilot TV movies in the 70's with no success. He even revamped one idea two more times after the original movie sank.

By the time the Trek movie came about, Roddenberry realized it was all he had and reasserted a control over the franchise that he gave up in the series final season after fighting too much with NBC. I think this is when Trek started to turn itself into the glorified memory of the fans rather than what it really is. There's a reason why Treks 2 and 6 are the best of the original films. It's because Nicolas Myers told Gene to go fuck himself and made the ship and crew look and act like military personnel. He made Kirk the Horatio Hornblower in space that Gene claimed Kirk was. Roddenberry tried too hard to portray the utopian future that fans of the series remembered watching but that, in fact, was never there in the original episodes.

that... good, huh?

I'll admit that at some point people need to realize that concessions must inevitably be made if you're gonna get twenty-something episodes per season out of an established franchise. the only real problem I had with enterprise was that they approached the trek the same way I often approached our vanguard stories back in the day: "holy shit I've got an awesome idea! I'm gonna work this in here whether it meshes with the rest of the story or not!" they were just trying so damn hard to outdo absolutely everything that came before that crucial elements of the franchise's conceptual and even literal aesthetic were disregarded. I dislike the continuity abuses because I see them as a symptom, not as the disease itself - the creators of enterprise were so focused on telling their stories that they didn't seem to go to very great lengths to make them star trek stories. when abrams cranked out the reboot, there were plenty of aesthetic and storytelling concessions made (though the back to the future 2-esque 'alternate timeline' explanation excuses any potential continuity errors), but abrams was careful to respect everything that came before and in the end was always striving to keep that story a star trek story.

Humans in the series are also presented as being different than other aliens. They seem to act like the glue that holds the federation together.

Hmmmmmm. I don't know, man. We've never seen anything further back than Kirk UNTIL Enterprise. So, how can you say they "disregarded" the aesthetic aspects or the continuity? There was NO continuity to disrupt, other than the obviously ridiculous TOS idea that the Feds had gone to war with the Romulan empire.....but NO ONE knew who they were or what they looked like?? Riiiiiiiiiiight. That was dumb and deserved to be ignored.

Other than that, Season One was cool in showing us the "boring" or "routine/basic" aspects of getting into space and finding our feet. That's why Archer was so awesome. That was a REAL person. Not a superhero like James T. That was a man fumbling his way through the galaxy the best he good, being led by a good heart. I LOVED that aspect of ENTERPRISE. The struggle, you know?

Season 2 was, like ALL Trek shows, pretty lame. They made all the same sophomore mistakes that TOS, TNG, & DS9 made. Season 3 and 4, though, were their own damn show. Season 3's Xindi is where they found their identity and feet. Season 4 was the literal pre-cursor to TOS, hands down.

So, I honestly don't understand all this fan nonsense about ENT being bad or disrespectful. I've heard it many times, but no one has ever been able to convince me of it. I mean, without referencing non-canon shit like the novels or the cartoon or whatnot. Otherwise, it was a wide-open era to tell stories in, and I thought it was a damn good effort overall. They never had the studio support that their predecessors had, though. And that's the biggest crime of all of ENT's era...

Don't tell me that you're a Next Gen. fanatic who would prefer the crew to attend the piccolo concert in Ten Forward instead of saving an alien planet from destruction.

no, there were a lot of crappy TNG episodes; I think they escape notice because TNG had almost three times as many total episodes as TOS. it's just the feel of TNG that appealed more to me - well, that and it being a show I literally grew up on given that I was a nerdy kid and it was the late 80s. I've just never been able to take TOS seriously, although there have been a handful of episodes that were pretty good ('city on the edge of forever' was phenomenal), and the TOS-cast films (at least 2 and 6) were good as well. it's just... well, you take the average TOS episode and the average TNG episode and there's really no comparison in my opinion.

if you want actiony episodes, I think the worf/gowron arc is about as good as TNG gets. now the last 3 seasons of DS9? the dominion war was probably about as good as the trek has ever been on the small screen.

Here's where G-man starts posting about how this belongs in the media forum. He'll then cry for several minutes at the fact that he can no longer move it there.

Original Trek is best. I like Next Gen. DS9 was also good; but TOS was the bestestest. First off, pretty much everyone in TOS was trying to get laid at some point or another. Next Gen. was full of a bunch of stuff shirts. Again, I'll point to Roddenberry losing his fucking mind and buying into the over nostalgic idealized version of Trek that the fans created that added pretentiousness. 'Oh no! Warp drives put holes in the universe. Just like cars and the ozone layer. ' Plus, it was full of bad ideas, like putting kids on a deep space starship (with pretty much every episode with kids showing just why it's a bad fucking idea).

Next Gen. and DS9 had a better rounded cast of characters than TOS, but TOS had better stories. Put any single great episode of TNG or DS9 up against the best of TOS, and they won't stack up. The Dominion War was great, but it takes a whole season, plus some setup, to really appreciate it. I can sit down at anytime and watch just one random episode of TOS and, with few exception, be just as entertained. Also, neither Picard or Sisko had the great representations of inner conflict personified that Kirk did with Spock and McCoy. Spock was Kirk's military disciplined logic. McCoy was his unbridled humanity. Kirk had to wrestle with the two sides and come up with the best solution, usually somewhere in the middle.

TOS is my favorite as well. The TNG eps just don't hold up.

It was the cast that seemed to elevate the bullshit on the page.

DS9 was very good at the end but still suffered from some of the cliches that TNG invented.

Sisko leaving his baseball, was fucking awesome!

TNG Trek just seemed like things came too easy. They never went without. With TOS there always seemed to be danger, if only the danger exploring space comes with.

Out of all the Trek shows I've watched, out of the Trek movies I saw, TOS was the most.....

Human

Here's more Trek questions.

Why is a Frenchman such a Victorian Englishman?

Why is Frère Jacques the only song he knows?

That's when they really started to suspect Picard wasn't Picard in that episode.

He sung a different song.

I'll agree with that. I'm not trying to say that TNG or DS9 weren't good. They just weren't good as TOS. TOS never had the financial support that it's successors had, and so it may look cheesy. But it had a lot of heart to it. I think Enterprise was a good mix of that heart and TNG group effort. Archer was a true explorer always hopeful and optimistic, though he did stumble a bit due to the Xindi. Trip was the common man, and I enjoyed his cynical view of events in contrast with Archer's optimism. It was the first time since the Spock-Kirk-McCoy era that I felt that the captain had true friends and not just a devoted crew.

Remember, Picard starts a sing-a-long in 10 Forward. Riker is like "I know that dude only knows Frère Jacques."

What are they NOT singing?

Frère Jacques.

Those Frenchies are and evil, sly lot.

To me. The highlight of TNG/Picard wasn't the Borg stuff. It was that episode where he was tortured by the Cardassians. That shit was epic. Probably the best TNG episode ever.

That was a duplicate Picard. Doesn't count.

A bigger question is, why are there Star Trek marathons on BBCAmerica?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash TNG as much as I'm trying to credit the cast. It was the cast at the end that made the show good for me.

To me TOS had good writng as well as a good cast.

Yeah, I said it was NotPicard in the post before that.

Missed that in the simultaneous postings.

Just clarifying my own position is all. TOS writing was definitely far better because it had actual sci-fi writers writing the scripts instead of TV writers who like sci-fi, which usually meant that you had bigger concepts/ideas that actual TV writers had to water down in order to be able to accomplish it and get it on the air ('The City of the Edge of Forever' is a prime example) rather than shows that were conceived specifically to fit within a TV production. Both casts were good. Gates McFaden comes across as a stuck up bitch in person, though.

The original title was supposed to be 'Edith gets a Ford Tattoo'.

Fuck you, Rick Berman.

I wonder if that was Ronald Moore. He went to DS9 when TNG ended.

I've read that Ellison's original script didn't have McCoy as the time traveler. Instead, it was some midshipman selling drugs to the crew who winds up going to the surface to hide from security and jumps through the sentinel.

Edith Keeler Must Die is also the name to my nerdy deathmetal band.