Any areas you passionately agree with Chuck on?

[Yukaphile]

@BridgeConsoleMasher He didn't say it was entirely flawless, though. In that, you two might differ.

[MerelyAFan]

I'm inclined to echo Chuck's points about Star Trek TMP. There is a lot to admire about the film, and as I've noted in other threads, Spock's character arc works quite well.

But the film is so bloated, so effects laden, and focused on the wondrous majesty of the Enterprise and V'Ger that any sense of pace and tension really gets lost the longer it goes on. While Kirk gets some small moments, his arc feels unfulfilled and reeks of the script/production troubles the film. The extended cast gets it even worse and while the screen time for them in this and WoK is probably similar in length, they feel utilized a lot better in the latter.

While the film is ostensibly building towards a conclusion where the audience finally sees the crew truly back together again on the Enterprise, the lack of warmth and camaraderie throughout most of the movie doesn't really make the journey feel worth it.

[clearspira]

As per DS9's "Paradise", Luddhism is a mistake in philosophy, as the problems with such a society is that a lot of suffering and death will happen that is easily preventable.

Luddhism and communism work well as fantasy scenarios. But real human life is too fragile for the former, our real personalities are not altruistic enough for the latter. This is why the Ba'Ku needed immortality for the former, and the Federation needed post-scarcity for the latter.

[clearspira]

The thing about the Prime Directive is that I agree completely with Chuck - it is monstrous to kill off a whole people when you can stop it - but I also agree with the spirit of why it exists. Just recently a missionary was killed trying to spread Christianity to one of the last isolated tribes on Earth - proving how little we have really come since colonialism and imperialism. Oh, we are no longer sending warships true, but the white man's burden crowd is clearly still going strong even though they themselves would never call themselves that; thinking that these ''savages'' need ''civilizing'' instead of just being left to live their lives in peace.
And that is the PD in a nutshell. It stops ''Federation burden'' every time they meet a new people. It stops idiots getting themselves killed and putting native populations at risk of serious contamination.

[Artabax]

Classic PD makes sense. Planet of Gangsters, Planet of Nazis. Likewise:
SPOCK: Telling the People would violate PD.
KIRK: Genocide is worse.
SPOCK: tlc

Kill them all = PD came in with TNG etc.
Orville also applies Genocide is worse than violating PD.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The thing about the Prime Directive is that I agree completely with Chuck - it is monstrous to kill off a whole people when you can stop it - but I also agree with the spirit of why it exists. Just recently a missionary was killed trying to spread Christianity to one of the last isolated tribes on Earth - proving how little we have really come since colonialism and imperialism. Oh, we are no longer sending warships true, but the white man's burden crowd is clearly still going strong even though they themselves would never call themselves that; thinking that these ''savages'' need ''civilizing'' instead of just being left to live their lives in peace.
And that is the PD in a nutshell. It stops ''Federation burden'' every time they meet a new people. It stops idiots getting themselves killed and putting native populations at risk of serious contamination.

I personally think the federation is just being stilted. Or perhaps Starfleet. Post colonialism is definitely the inspiration for it narratively, but I think it says more about the union between planets than it does about any directive by a single planetary member. Starfleet does its own laundry apparently, but it makes a lot of sense if you consider PD just a pact between planets to inhibit any kind of complications one member might put upon the other. Starfleet is like Youtube and enforces the PD like YouTube's copyright bots to not piss off other companies. Of course, Youtube's business tends to involve copyright scrutiny as part of the nature of Youtube's general purpose as a major video hosting site, though technically the legal rules that Youtube is subjected to apply to other sites as well where how they apply the rule seems less obtuse. Starfleet of course being the organization that has a prime directive (as in purpose), for exploration and indiscriminately meeting new planets.

[Sir Will]

The thing about the Prime Directive is that I agree completely with Chuck - it is monstrous to kill off a whole people when you can stop it - but I also agree with the spirit of why it exists. Just recently a missionary was killed trying to spread Christianity to one of the last isolated tribes on Earth - proving how little we have really come since colonialism and imperialism. Oh, we are no longer sending warships true, but the white man's burden crowd is clearly still going strong even though they themselves would never call themselves that; thinking that these ''savages'' need ''civilizing'' instead of just being left to live their lives in peace.
And that is the PD in a nutshell. It stops ''Federation burden'' every time they meet a new people. It stops idiots getting themselves killed and putting native populations at risk of serious contamination.

Well yeah. Chuck agrees it's good in principle and so do I. The issue is that you have to know when to break it.

[Beastro]

This is why the Ba'Ku needed immortality for the former, and the Federation needed post-scarcity for the latter.

Cept Roddenberry's reason for the way the Fed works is that Mankind has evolved enough to make it work being that altruistic, same for his BS about Mankind evolving beyond grief, etc.

[Yukaphile]

That's certainly possibly through technology and environmental reform, but "through the better angels of our nature" alone? Bwahahahaha. Not a chance in hell. He was walking proof of that.

[Simplicius]

Echo others in that I hated "the cosmic plan" nonsense in TNG.

It's only come up a few times but I share his passionate hatred of Braga's weird strawman view of evolution. Threshold is egregious of course, but Distant Origin (despite being a good episode) was an awful example of this, as with Genesis.