".... its biggest flaw is the unexplained and unexplored Utopianism that nevertheless informs almost everything about the various shows and movies."
Captain Ed thinks long and hard about the TV show that gave him his name.
October 22, 2006
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If Captain Ed saw the Trek universe as too Utopian, I am surprised that he lost his interest during Deep Space Nine, which portrays a much more complex world of alliances and betrayals against which individuals have to find their way.
I agree with him about Firefly. Shiny Bright! My wife and I are watching it for the first time on DVD, one episode every few days, to make it last.
Oh, so that's the problem with "Star Trek" -- insufficient gay love!
" Science fiction creators seem enamored of scientific progress to point of being extremely careless with their handling of all things social, political, and economic."
I am by no means a science fiction geek, but most science fiction I have read is all about exploring the social consequences of technology and utopianism. I can only begin a list:
Fahrenheit 451
Brave New World
The "Borg" arc on Star Trek
Do Androids Dream of Technicolor Sheep? (Blade Runner source)
Battleship Galactica
Dahlgren
Woman on the edge of time
The William Gibson novels
Oh, God, maybe I am geekier than I thought.
In fact, large swaths of science fiction and fantasy explore broad gender possibilities: Google the Tiptree prize and the Madison based Wiscon convention.
quietnorth, you include Dhalgren? The most preciously 'literary' pointless POC ever published as SF? How did that career change work out for Delaney, anyhow?
I finished it (slogged thru the entire 90,000 or so pages of hinted at storyline), thru it across the room and vowed to never, ever let Delanery have one cent of my hard-earned money nor any of my time spent reading. Haven't missed him or his 'work' since.
Joyce Carol Oates does it better and shorter and I don't read her anymore, either, but she never lied to about her intentions.
So, good-bye Mr. Chip.
oh, there is sufficient gay love on star trek.
There was an episode of The Next Generation that featured a planet where everyone was androgynous, and one of them fell in love with Ryker and decided she was female, and got into all kinds of trouble for it.
It was stupid.
As for the Trek universe overall, the whole "there is no money" thing really only came up in The Next Generation. The original series had more than a few shows in which someone was focussed on accumulating wealth -- the Harry Mudd episodes, the "Devil in the Dark", and others. So the misguided utopianism discussed by Capt. Ed isn't as pervasive as it appears to be... and that's one reason I like TOS best among all the series, although there are some story arcs in TNG and DS9 that are excellent -- but there's a lot of chaff in there, too.
Fascist is not the term I'd have used. Socialist utopia, would be more appropriate.
I often think of the one instance I can think of seeing a civilian going about his daily business. Captain Cisco's father, who apparently ran a New Orleans eatery as a hobby. I just cannot imagine doing such a thing without a profit motive; dealing with cranky patrons, picking up an endless number of dirty dishes, etc. And yet, he was portrayed as being as polite and deferential as I would expect an American restaurant host. If I ran a restaurant as a hobby, there'd be no menus; people would eat what I wanted them to eat. He that pays the piper calls the tune.
I look at that, and I wonder if they've engineered a few social insect genes into the human species.
"quietnorth, you include Dhalgren? The most preciously 'literary' pointless POC ever published as SF? "
jorxmickie; Wow, I haven't had a discussion about Dahlgren for 25 years! I hope someday Ann has a thread about people's favorite books to throw across a room.
You know, I don't know anything about Delaney or what he says he was up to in writing it. And I would agree with what you said about Joyce Carol Oates.
There was something I liked about Dahlgren, though, some sense of living in an undefined and undefinable world, that resonated with me when I was younger. Who knows what I would think now.
"unexplained and unexplored Utopianism" I'm not sure what he means by that (didn't read the original post) but it's no big mystery. Gene Roddenberry was an avowed Secular Humanist who believed in the perfectability of human nature. From Wikipedia: "Secular humanism is an active lifestance that holds a naturalisic worldview and advocates the use of reason, compassion, scientific inquiry, ethics, justice and equality." All the shows made under Roddenberry's watch held close to that utopian standard.
Star Trek wsa ok, but Firefly is great. The science is extremely questionable, but so what? And they play so many games with standard plot items.
One of my favorite Firefly scenes was where a bad guy had come on board and had someone as a prisoner. Then the capt. shows up with his side kick. The bad guy, holding his prisoner, starts into the obligatory speech. The captain draws, shoots the bad guy, and reholsters, without breaking stride.
But it is also interesting because the civilization that they are running from is an apparent utopia. But the Firefly crew don't want any part of it. The members of that civilization can't understand that. Yes, we see some of the dark side of the utopian society. But mostly, it is just that it is too limiting of their freedom. The crew are mostly misfits who just don't want to fit in, and don't. For me, much better hero fodder than either Star Trek or Star Wars.
Someone also mentioned the Planet Of The Androgenenes, which is the episode that really started turning me off to TNG (as the cogniscenti say it). So PC, predictable, and preachy. "Oo! As a hetero, I could have the same ire directed at me!"
Many were like that. There was one where the Lone Scientist "discovered" that warp drive might cause some sort of universal ecological damage to the fabric of space! Happily, the great and good Federation immediately curtailed travel at high warp speeds to avoid this dire peril. Gee, where have I heard that before. . .
But then the bit quoted in the article about there being no money really sealed it.
Hello,
This comment is a little late but I just ran into your blog. The world of Star Trek at least in its original form was a reflection of the cold war atmosphere of that time. Remember that the author, Roddenberry, was an ex-policeman in California ... not an occupation likely to produce a liberal let alone a libertarian outlook. Under the circumstances the results could have been worse. The politics of ST are purposely vague for the same reason, I think, that the science is poorly portrayed. At best it's a parody, at worst expresses a lack of knowledge. Scientific literacy has never been a strong point in the film industry anyway. Also the whole approach is so worn out. I guess they just won't let the corpse die.
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