Bonus dark alley recruiter:
No, this is Admiral Patrick.
All I really want is now is a series about a small team investigating small-scale anomalies with a little bit of lore and a little dark humor once in a while.
You know… Treks Files.
As I said in another comment:
Get me Dulmur and Lucsly!
Recast as needed. Make it their early foibles into the shenanigans concerning temporal mechanics. Still include a semi-dramatic big bad teased throughout the season, preferably Captain Braxton. Done.
Oops, missed that, but: YEEEEEESSSS!
Ive been saying for years that we need a show that leaves the Starfleet. Star Trek is an interesting universe and seeing it from a perspective outside of a starfleet vessel would be great. Really thought STD would go in that direction when they were aboard Books ship at the beginning of S3 (me thinks)…
I wish they took Section 31 more seriously.
I’d settle for a highly produced, gritty Department of Temporal Investigations series though. With nested diabolical plot arcs exploring free will vs determinism and closed timelike curves from a fresh perspective.
I wish they took Section 31 more seriously.
Section 31 can go fuck itself; a utopia does not need black ops. Otherwise star trek is a bunch of potato sack wearing communist squares lying throughout space.
Who in their right mind thinks Star Trek is a utopia? It’s a post scarcity earth society. But hell, half the races that are admitted to the Federation are only there because they developed FTL travel. Each race (humans included) still have a whole boat load of issues. Greed, hubris, battle junkies, etc. There’s no way it wouldn’t exist to try to keep the facade of something better.
I wrote this up a while back
Still think that’s a very naive take. Just because scarcity has been solved, doesn’t mean everyone is magically altruistic. And even if humans were (hint: they’re not, look at what Sisko did), there are multitudes of other races, who are part of the Federation, who don’t have the same views or morals.
That’s basically the entire reason for Star Trek. To serve as an allegory for societal problems that we’re currently facing. Based on that, it stands to reason there would be a group trying to hold things together in the background.
It’s like watching series like Harry Potter and only focusing on the happy Wizardry, good vs evil stuff and overlooking the plight of things like the house elves, classist society, etc. You may have gotten hooked on one angle while completely overlooking the rest.
I can NOT watch Star Wars anymore without being overwhelmed the economic, spiritual, and political impication of droids that are always just… there.
Sadly, I think it’s exceedingly rare for a franchise to ever mature enough to question the foundations of its world building. It seems the role of a franchise is to recycle itself to increasingly younger and more naive audiences until it has lost all value.
The best we can hope for is a spiritual successor offering commentary, like the way BSG is really in conversation with Star Trek (no surprise given the writing staff).
They are not meant to have just solved scarcity, they are meant to have grown beyond being backstabbing self interested people and grown to a better moral state.
Except that’s exactly how they phrased it. Through replicator technology there is no more scarcity of resources, however how you’re measured is more on what you do and produce (reference First Contact). Nowhere did it say that people’s desire for power ever diminished or waned, just that the form of “currency” has changed. That’s also for one planet: earth. It doesn’t refer to the rest of the member planets or how they work together.
How many episodes dealt with the admiralties shady dealings or their power struggles of things, or rogue captains actions. It’s always been there. Even in the TOS days. DS9 even more so.
“Man is meant to be free, but everywhere, he is in chains.”
vs
“Fish everywhere are meant to fly in the air, but everywhere they swim underwater.”
The idea that man can ethically evolve in the tragically short period offered by Star Trek is preposterous. Star Trek is the dream of progress manifested via technology, but we have the technology to feed the world right now, we have the technology to greatly expand medical care at a low cost, yet we don’t because we are designed to be slaves of unjust systems that dominate and abuse.
Still love the show, though.
Why wouldn’t it? The Culture series by Iain M Banks has multiple novels about that exact thing. In an infinite universe, the most benevolent of societies can still have enemies.
I think it’s a story device to show that systems don’t always function self-consistently like their facade would otherwise lead one to believe.
I wrote this up a while back
Get me Dulmur and Lucsly!
Aren’t you tired of dark and gritty? I’m tired of dark and gritty. We’ve suffered 40 years of dark & gritty, ever since Bruce Bethke published “Cyberpunk” in 1983. It was fun for a few years, but it’s like a canker which never went away.
I’d like optimism back again, please.
They’re not mutually exclusive. Optimism in the face of grim circumstances is arguably more heroic.
Þe hope þat you can succeed in not being chewed up by tyranny and inequity is not my idea of an optimistic future. Section 31 never holds out hope þat þe fundamentals will be changed, only þat individual crises can be won by good guys.
Old Trek didn’t need Section 31. Þe forces of Good could win þe long game þrough diplomacy and þe belief in a fundamental rationality of þinking beings Þe short game was won by fisticuffs and seduction, suitable to satisfy prime time entertainment demands. Þe message was often þat, where þinking beings were involved, reason and basic goodness would eventually hold sway.
Th th th th th th th th th th th.
