Strange New Worlds

[Riedquat]

I'm in favor of space exploration - which is precisely why I'm opposed to attempts to put humans there.

The end goal of space exploration is, to get humans to other planets and spread our species to the stars. If you want to stay here forever, that is fine. I want to visit the Shoulder of Orion and walk on the moons of Nibia.

I'm happy for exploration to be for exploration's sake, with no further purpose. That said I like the idea of humanity in the stars too.

[Mabus]

As another poster said, there's a huge difference between making an allegory of a contemporary event, and flat out having the current event in Star Trek. What if in "Let that be your Last Battlefield" Kirk had made Bele and Lokai watch the "I Have a Dream" speech? The attitudes of 1969 were such that it would have generated a lot of backlash. It's harder to say what real effect it would have had given that it aired during TOS's final season, but had it aired during the first, it's entirely possible that TOS would not have gotten a second, there's a strong chance the southern networks would have dropped the show and thus denied the show a significant portion of viewers.

Soviet humor was fairly good at criticizing the political establishment and its effects on the society. It did this by blatantly calling out the abhorrent and absurd state practices with a heavy dose of black humor. By doing this, it forced the teller and the listener to put some intellectual effort into understanding the situation, more importantly it made them think. And it's not like life behind the Iron Curtain was so complicated that you couldn't tell who was the bad guy. Quite opposite, it was blatantly clear who the bad guy was.

The issue with just throwing in the current events in a heavy-handed manner is that you're not allowing the audience to think for themselves: The people that disagree with your message will not change their mind, the ones that are uncertain or undecided will be even more confused and those that agree with it will stay the same. There's no story there. If you want to witness current events, you'd just watch the news. But in a story you need to do more than that. You need to do an analysis or the people or the situation.

Which is something that's lacking in the SNW pilot. There's the discount Cold War setting, with discount Russia mixed with discount USA, discount Hillary + discount Putin, mixed with discount Project Manhatten. But all of these are just surface level, I don't even recall the name of the enemy nation the AlienRuUSA was fighting. Only that they've been fighting for a long time. And then Pike gives the Klaatu-like speech about nuclear escalation. What am I supposed to think about all this? That war is bad? Well, duh, but in this setting, how is it bad? They don't even bother to explain what they're even fighting for. Resources? Land? Ideology? War for each of the three can either be justified, problematic or completely unacceptable. And why would the aliens be afraid of conflict escalation? If they're a parallel to Putin's regime, then they should have known that his modus operandi relies on nuclear blackmail, aka the threat of complete annihilation. If anything, the aliens would strengthen their cause with this speech, they'll be like "here's what will happen if you don't give in to our demands".

If one relies too much on skin-deep analogies and there's no depth to the story, what is the audience supposed to think? How are they supposed to form their opinions if the story is too thin?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It just depends on how you do it lol. Those characters represent something rich in the story. And there are always implications to what’s going on that impact the federation as we know it. That’s consistent throughout trek for allegory.

[clearspira]

The Federation is too hypocritical to deliver an anti-war message anyway. They fly around the galaxy with ships capable to glassing a planet and sidearms capable of disintegrating a man and yet they are supposed to be the peaceful ones. Lets be honest, with the exception of season 1 and 2 TNG (and Chakotay), the Federation is often the one's to shoot first and ask questions later.

''We're not a military!'' they say with their military ranks, military discipline, court martials, antimatter weapons and numerous guns.
''We're peaceful!'' they say just before one of their weekly firefights, the smell of burnt flesh wafting past their noses as they leave.

No offence intended, and I mean that, that is the fundamental problem with America bringing its gun culture to the stars. Britain invents Dr Who, a mostly pacifist man who travels the universe unarmed and tries to solve problems by talking. America gives us the United Federation of Heavily Armed Peace.

[clearspira]

I'm in favor of space exploration - which is precisely why I'm opposed to attempts to put humans there.

The end goal of space exploration is, to get humans to other planets and spread our species to the stars. If you want to stay here forever, that is fine. I want to visit the Shoulder of Orion and walk on the moons of Nibia.

Unless we invent anti-gravity and FTL then human beings are simply too weak to ever make it that far. Our bones will weaken, our muscles will atrophy, our skin will burn from radiation, our bodies will age etc. And that is to say nothing about the fact that we require very specific environmental conditions to survive. Any planet that isn't like Earth would require billions of dollars of terraforming which is not practical if we are talking about light years of travel.

The future of interstellar spaceflight will not involve humans unless there is some serious genetic engineering or we become ''more machine than man.''

Mars and perhaps the moons of Jupiter is our limit for the time being. Any further will be uneconomical.

[Madner Kami]

I'm in favor of space exploration - which is precisely why I'm opposed to attempts to put humans there.

The end goal of space exploration is, to get humans to other planets and spread our species to the stars. If you want to stay here forever, that is fine. I want to visit the Shoulder of Orion and walk on the moons of Nibia.

Unless we invent anti-gravity and FTL then human beings are simply too weak to ever make it that far. Our bones will weaken, our muscles will atrophy, our skin will burn from radiation, our bodies will age etc. And that is to say nothing about the fact that we require very specific environmental conditions to survive. Any planet that isn't like Earth would require billions of dollars of terraforming which is not practical if we are talking about light years of travel.

The future of interstellar spaceflight will not involve humans unless there is some serious genetic engineering or we become ''more machine than man.''

Mars and perhaps the moons of Jupiter is our limit for the time being. Any further will be uneconomical.

Not too long ago, people laughed at the ones who tried to fly. Not too long before that, people were afraid trains would liquify people or drive them mad because they are moving too fast. Not too long before that, people thought that crossing the ocean westwards to reach India is impossible. Et cetera. What you see is insurmountable problems. What I see is just yet another challenge for mankind to overcome.

[CrypticMirror]

[/quote]

Seriously man, gotta ask. You hate the idea of peace, international unity, manned spaceflight, social progressiveness, all that stuff you've railed against all of that stuff here, you're really into international isolationism and cultural supremacy, and militarism, stay-at-homeism, you've praised all that stuff. So, I gotta ask, what the actual fuck are you getting out of Star Trek? It, and Trek fandom, are based on all the stuff you seem to hate and want to not exist. Help me understand what you get out of it, if the hope of a better, more interconnected, future among the stars is so anathema to you?

[Frustration]

The end goal of space exploration is, to get humans to other planets and spread our species to the stars.

No, the end goal of space exploration is to know what's out there. If we learn about space, and it doesn't lead to colonization, it doesn't follow that the exploration failed. Because that was not the point.

[CharlesPhipps]

Britain invents Dr Who, a mostly pacifist man who travels the universe unarmed and tries to solve problems by talking. America gives us the United Federation of Heavily Armed Peace.

Britain also invented Judge Dredd.

Though I do note the Behind the Scenes of Doctor Who was interesting as apparently the Seventies had the writers who wanted to do dark, depressing, violent TV shows got exiled to their writers room. It was why the Fifth Doctor episodes always had him visiting horrifying hellscapes where his pacifism was mocked.

Fans assumed this was a commentary on how pacifism was hard and the Doctor was a better man for it.

No, the writers just hated him.

[Fianna]

I'd hardly call Doctor Who pacifist. They'll have the Doctor express their dislike for guns or the military, but most stories still end with the bad guys meeting a violent death. That the Doctor rarely kills anyone personally, preferring to maneuver them into situations that will destroy them: that's not pacifism, that's just the Doctor being a trickster hero rather than an action hero.