Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Overread wrote:

I do agree a lot of the more modern Treks have lost a sense of exploration and of optimism. I think they've gone for a very (what I'd consider American) approach to sci-fi of "guns and lasers and fighting and cool stuff".

Well I think also the utopian, no cash, post scarcity society would be considered too woke and left wing for a lot of audiences today.

Compared to the “red menace” 1960’s??!

DS9 pushed the envelope far more than the recent Trek shows in all directions except for maybe LGBTQ+ issues.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Overread wrote:

I do agree a lot of the more modern Treks have lost a sense of exploration and of optimism. I think they've gone for a very (what I'd consider American) approach to sci-fi of "guns and lasers and fighting and cool stuff".

Well I think also the utopian, no cash, post scarcity society would be considered too woke and left wing for a lot of audiences today.

I think the issue is with mood of the audience. Post-scarcity, utopian society is much harder sell today for audiences than it was in the 60's when we basically thought science has no negative consequences and will save us from ourselves.

The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

Exactly. If I want to watch misery, there's the five o'clock news. Sci-fi is there to inspire, a lesson lost on many a sequel or remake (coughBSGcough).

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

There's inspiration and there's inspiration.
A better future where we learned to set aside our petty conflicts and shouldered the massive effort of fixing Earth, and our reward has been the time needed to grow into a space-faring race, sure.
A better future where magic technology simply invalidated all our troubles? That would be believable 60 years ago, but it just isn't something that will fly for most people except the most techbro of techbros in the crust of Silicon Valley.

A show which shows the struggle to fix things will resonate much more with today's audience than a show where things are already fixed and we're all living a life of leisure. One is inspirational, the other is unattainable.

Perhaps one difference is just that when many of us saw Star Trek originally we were kids to teens and now we are somewhat more jaded young adults to full adults.


That in itself can change the nature of what kind of kind of story we find we can connect with.

 Overread wrote:
Perhaps one difference is just that when many of us saw Star Trek originally we were kids to teens and now we are somewhat more jaded young adults to full adults.


That in itself can change the nature of what kind of kind of story we find we can connect with.

Seeing as Trek was always a scifi show aimed at adults rather than kids... no, not really, for a big swath of the audience.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

Exactly. If I want to watch misery, there's the five o'clock news. Sci-fi is there to inspire, a lesson lost on many a sequel or remake (coughBSGcough).

That seems like a very narrow-minded and simplistic take on the genre. Most of the best science fiction in any medium examines modern-day society...it's just dressed up as something futuristic. And humanity and modern-day society are messy things.

 gorgon wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

Exactly. If I want to watch misery, there's the five o'clock news. Sci-fi is there to inspire, a lesson lost on many a sequel or remake (coughBSGcough).

That seems like a very narrow-minded and simplistic take on the genre. Most of the best science fiction in any medium examines modern-day society...it's just dressed up as something futuristic. And humanity and modern-day society are messy things.

Usually either examine modern problems or how new technologies would affect society.

Part of the problem might be the current world issues that Trek would need to find some way to hold a mirror up to.

Like... The Klingons were the Russians in a cold war with the Federation.

Well... who's the Klingons of today for Trek to hold a mirror up to?

How do you represent anti vaxers, bad or anti science, global warming and it's denial, market and economy manipulation or debt - in a world that is post scarcity and already solved all of it's problems with science?

Most of what is wrong with the world RIGHT NOW just don't exist and cannot exist in the Startrek universe.

So what are you holding the mirror up to to show a hopeful answer and future?

I have vague memories of TNG dealing with pandemics and medical emergencies frequently. Similarly, ecological disasters are easy enough to script for. The monster of the week format allows all of these things to be addressed in bite sized chunks.

You do t need to show the federation suffering from these problems, just federation starships turning up at planets having these problems. Hell, the problems of hypercapitalism were embodied in the Ferengi by DS9. Stargate did a fair chunk of these as well if memory serves.

 Flinty wrote:
I have vague memories of TNG dealing with pandemics and medical emergencies frequently. Similarly, ecological disasters are easy enough to script for. The monster of the week format allows all of these things to be addressed in bite sized chunks.

You do t need to show the federation suffering from these problems, just federation starships turning up at planets having these problems. Hell, the problems of hypercapitalism were embodied in the Ferengi by DS9. Stargate did a fair chunk of these as well if memory serves.

The Cold War/Klingons wasn't the monster of the week. It was a story that covered the run of the show.

These things are the Cold War of today. You don't need to make an episode out of it. You need to make a SHOW out of it.

Basically this. Waving the magical Federation Tech at the silly backward aliens' climate change in one episode would really kinda...not work?

Cronch wrote:
Basically this. Waving the magical Federation Tech at the silly backward aliens' climate change in one episode would really kinda...not work?

There is nothing the mighty Deflector Dish cannot solve!!

trexmeyer wrote:
DS9 pushed the envelope far more than the recent Trek shows in all directions except for maybe LGBTQ+ issues.

I sat and thought about this, and you know considering the show was made in the 90s, it's pretty damn impressive that they addressed any LGBTQ issues at all. Mind, there were no explicitly LGBTQ characters on the show, per see, the whole two times anything related comes up is;

-Dax meeting a wife from a previous life and getting into a 'will they won't they/forbidden love' situation over it. In this episode, the two partners being women never came up to my memory. None of the characters bat an eye at the idea so while we never see any LGBTQ characters in classic Trek, it would seem that such relationships are accepted, at least enough that no one care about the two girls part of it. I do have to wonder if that was a purposeful choice (seems so) given that the episode was still about romantic taboos.
-Dax later seemed completely okay with the idea of male-male attraction, granted in the relevant episode she didn't know Pel was a woman and assumed her interest in Quark was homosexual.

Dax never makes any commentary about it, but I guess we could presume Dax was bisexual? Given the whole deal with Trills, it maybe encountered a lot less resistance in their society but no other characters make particularly phobic attitudes toward same-sex relations in the show.

I think ST went for a quiet acceptance aspect on that front in general terms and never really pushed it hard enough to have a clear "agenda/message" as such. But would certainly come down on the supporting side.

Which fits because outside of Kirk kissing every female he met, the general theme of ST is fairly non-sexual and leans more on romancing elements where relationships do happen. If anything the most overt sexual elements were probably Tashsa and Data way back in the early series of TNG.


Jadzia Dax certainly showed a lot of sexual freedom in terms of not holding back affections or attitudes. Something we saw Dax using to good effect several times. However Esrie Dax was very different and a bit more reserved. So whilst the symbiote might bring with it a host of memories; those are tied to personalities within and clearly the host also has an influence. It might be more true to say that Jadzia was more potentially bisexual and overt and that the symbiote brought more of that out; whilst Esrie was more reserved and I forget if she showed much affection toward anyone (though by that point the series was more focused on the war).

I suppose you could make a Trek show that is told from a view outside the Federation?

Because in order to hold a mirror up to today, you need the Federation to fall into ineffective inaction due to calculated or negligent misinformation and more or less watch it degrade and fall apart.

With that context, in order to have your hope and eat it too, you need an outside perspective that is effected by but still outside of the Federation but acting to find solutions and salvage the situation and come out the other side with whatever comes next.

The Federations tech doesn't matter if they are grid locked out of using it.

I guess the problem with that is that Trek always used other races to display very heavily biased societies with the Federation being the hot melting pot of acceptance and general forward/diverse thinking.

I think trying to really go into depth on that would be hard. The series would either have to reinforce those extreme differences ot make the aliens alien; by which point you might lose the attention of the casual audiences; or they'd steadily become more and more Federation in attitude and then you'd have the issue that they are just watering down other races. Even if all they are doing is exploring within the lore .

Well like... you could still have humans and vulcans and whatever in the outside group. They might even be a group that splinters off from the Federation because of it's stagnation.

But the Federation has always been the rock. The NATO. The UN. But to hold a mirror up to current issues... well.. That means the Federation is now the problem.

I think that's what Picard is aiming for - though by the mirror of a group within the Federation rather than outside of it. I'm actually surprised they are as tame as they are with aliens in the group - but that might also be linked to budgets and technical skills. Things like Ferangie take a lot of make up to achieve.

Vulcans and Romulans you can do with a few head bumps and ear attachments.



That said second season is bringing in Q so that can throw everything up in the air in terms of what we'll get. Though I do like using Q as a "so what if" angle as you can do all kinds of funky stuff and in the end he clicks his fingres and its all back to "normal" save the experiences the characters learn.

I think it of it this way.
TOS-TNG was the federation being that big rock. Not facing much adversity
But then the Borg and Dominion war happened and tested them and they where found wanting. That their systems needed to be reevaluated and looked at. And that is what we are seeing now.
Heck, Discovery S3 as bad as it was showed us the federation endures, it continues it's outreach and it still fight for the little man where it can.

 gorgon wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

Exactly. If I want to watch misery, there's the five o'clock news. Sci-fi is there to inspire, a lesson lost on many a sequel or remake (coughBSGcough).

That seems like a very narrow-minded and simplistic take on the genre. Most of the best science fiction in any medium examines modern-day society...it's just dressed up as something futuristic. And humanity and modern-day society are messy things.

That's fair.

I suppose I should say that it's my preference to not watch depictions of abject misery in scifi and instead look for more inspirational or light-hearted material.

To each their own, after all.

I’m happy with Lower Decks honestly. I usually hate Star Trek but I’ve really gotten into it

 Overread wrote:
I think that's what Picard is aiming for - though by the mirror of a group within the Federation rather than outside of it. I'm actually surprised they are as tame as they are with aliens in the group - but that might also be linked to budgets and technical skills. Things like Ferangie take a lot of make up to achieve.

Vulcans and Romulans you can do with a few head bumps and ear attachments.



That said second season is bringing in Q so that can throw everything up in the air in terms of what we'll get. Though I do like using Q as a "so what if" angle as you can do all kinds of funky stuff and in the end he clicks his fingres and its all back to "normal" save the experiences the characters learn.

I kind of hate that about Q episodes. It becomes less 'So what if?' and more 'So what?'

Cronch wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

There's inspiration and there's inspiration.
A better future where we learned to set aside our petty conflicts and shouldered the massive effort of fixing Earth, and our reward has been the time needed to grow into a space-faring race, sure.
A better future where magic technology simply invalidated all our troubles? That would be believable 60 years ago, but it just isn't something that will fly for most people except the most techbro of techbros in the crust of Silicon Valley.

A show which shows the struggle to fix things will resonate much more with today's audience than a show where things are already fixed and we're all living a life of leisure. One is inspirational, the other is unattainable.

Aye exactly what I want from the genre. What you have described there is the difference between a well written sci fi show and a badly written one

 Vulcan wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The way I see it, we are destined for a 40k future rather than the Trek one. In a way that is what I want from Star Trek, a show that can show us how to do better. Something to hope for, for once, instead of the endless misery.

Exactly. If I want to watch misery, there's the five o'clock news. Sci-fi is there to inspire, a lesson lost on many a sequel or remake (coughBSGcough).

That seems like a very narrow-minded and simplistic take on the genre. Most of the best science fiction in any medium examines modern-day society...it's just dressed up as something futuristic. And humanity and modern-day society are messy things.

That's fair.

I suppose I should say that it's my preference to not watch depictions of abject misery in scifi and instead look for more inspirational or light-hearted material.

To each their own, after all.

I mean, I get it, but this is mainly a 40k forum ^^

Voss wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think that's what Picard is aiming for - though by the mirror of a group within the Federation rather than outside of it. I'm actually surprised they are as tame as they are with aliens in the group - but that might also be linked to budgets and technical skills. Things like Ferangie take a lot of make up to achieve.

Vulcans and Romulans you can do with a few head bumps and ear attachments.



That said second season is bringing in Q so that can throw everything up in the air in terms of what we'll get. Though I do like using Q as a "so what if" angle as you can do all kinds of funky stuff and in the end he clicks his fingres and its all back to "normal" save the experiences the characters learn.

I kind of hate that about Q episodes. It becomes less 'So what if?' and more 'So what?'

Yeah but it lets the writers get all those "What ifs?" out of their system without suddenly ending up changing the whole setting through a time warp loop restart or something like that. Because those things always feel cheap/wrong to me in a series that isn't about time itself.

Voss wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think that's what Picard is aiming for - though by the mirror of a group within the Federation rather than outside of it. I'm actually surprised they are as tame as they are with aliens in the group - but that might also be linked to budgets and technical skills. Things like Ferangie take a lot of make up to achieve.

Vulcans and Romulans you can do with a few head bumps and ear attachments.



That said second season is bringing in Q so that can throw everything up in the air in terms of what we'll get. Though I do like using Q as a "so what if" angle as you can do all kinds of funky stuff and in the end he clicks his fingres and its all back to "normal" save the experiences the characters learn.

I kind of hate that about Q episodes. It becomes less 'So what if?' and more 'So what?'

Its pretty much every time travel episode in any sci-fi show - almost always it merely resets..... it was quite amusing in Timeless when they would come back and it had changed every time or in Stargate and they said "close enough"