Star Trek: What led to Earth's/the Federation's utopia?

Cafe Society
21

Planetside, apparently, TUU provides for stupendously safe, efficient and reliable energy extraction from fusion power and natural renewables (solar, tidal, GT).

ST-IV: “Shortly before the fusion age, there was a brief flirtation with nuclear fission”

ST-TNG-Encounter at Farpoint: “Our planet has been blessed with great reserves of geothermal energy”

I mean, the Sun outputs a prodigious amount of energy. As long as they’re pulling TUU out of their sleeves, they can declare it builds a powersat that turns 99.99% of the whole spectrum that hits it, from longwave radio to gamma, into electricity, and beams it down to Earth safely on a subspace whatchamacallitphased beam.

And the mentality behind Trek would NOT put a large M/A reaction chamber on the surface of an inhabited planet. If the containment field fails, you can’t jetisson, and as soon as the antimatter touches the floor, you just detonated the nuke to end all nukes. So M/A is more likely to be used in space, by starships and the like, than to light up cities. As to where they get the antimatter, in our corner of space the tricky part is holding on to antiparticles generated from atomic decay and collissions long enough to actually add up to something – it probably involves dilithium, the “magic ingredient” of Trek technology; and somewhere, the Federation equivalent of the NRC has some huge particle-accelerator plants orbiting close to stars, sucking up prodigious amounts of their energy in order to turn hydrogen into antihydrogen.

BTW, given proper planning/zoning, population control, AND a world in which “income distribution” and “resource allocation” are trivially dispatched by TUU, you could theoretically optimize Earth into pleasant habitable cities and large green areas without deliberately purging the proles. And in the TUU vision it’s more likely that the method was entire fields of endeavour being overregulated out of existence on Earth and people just leaving for where they could, say, be prospectors, salesmen, miners… or even, play lawn darts, ride bikes w/o helmets, smoke. Part of the Rodenberrian utopia is that on Earth not only do we no longer have to be a part of the financial rat race, but neither do we do anything that’s “bad for us” (Wesley wondering to Tasha how could anyone do drugs :rolleyes: ). THAT is where, to me, it runs into bitchin’ verosimilitude problems.

22

Mrs. Plant says that is from Bread and Circuses

23

I found a whole thread of Trekgeeks hashing this sort of thing out, including trying to reconcile the various Earth wars and casualty numbers and whatnot.

Interestingly, it’s clear that Roddenberry was optimistic about a utopian future, yet pretty sure a nuclear war would precede it. I guess they had to clean out the riff-raff.

24

I always thought it was patently obvious that three technologies would utterly change things on Earth (and, I conjecture, the other major inhabited planets).

  1. Cheap energy changes EVERYTHING, folks. EVERYTHING. Make loads of energy available for free right NOW would change everything. Especially when combined with…

  2. Replicators. Suddenly the issue of ‘resource scarcity’ (the cause of most conflict and warfare) is moot. Want a diamond? Have one made up from a pattern in 2 seconds. Want some food? Have some made from pure energy that’s free (see point 1).

Corrolary to #2: I predict there are places on earth to go where one can get ‘organic’ food that was actually raised and cooked by hand. There is likely some medium of exchange for this but what it is I draw a blank on.

  1. Teleporters. The ability to travel the entire world (and even off planet!) with little to no cost in resources or time drives a pretty big stake in the basic human ‘us and them’ concept of geography. Suddenly there’s no ‘those guys on the other hill are barbarians and we’ve never spoken to them’ because you can speak to ANYONE at anytime with little to no effort.

CORROLARY to #3: I predict that easy intercontinental travel will inevitably lead to the ‘homogenization’ of earth where each individual culture is subsumed into a larger ‘human’ culture and the differences become cosmetic and ‘hobbies’ for the population. New Orleans might still have the French Quarter (a la Sisko’s father’s restaurant) but other than those small areas what you see is the same in each place.

NOTE to #3: In an episode of DS9 Sisko tells Jake that when he first started at the Academy in San Francisco he teleported home every night and Jake remarks that it ‘must have used up his transport credits for months!’ From this I conjecture that teleporting for certain classes (say…students) is limited for some reason.

25

You have to remember that we have never seen Federation society from the point of view of the general populace but always from its military and there is no telling how different the two could be.

I read one Trek book (Prime Directive) that dealt with this to an extent and had the characters (all the TOS crew after they had resigned from Starfleet in disgrace) having to actually wait in lines and using credit to use the transporter or replicator instead of the free usage they used to get as part of the armed forces.

Basically, it was that all this stuff we assume to be free to everyone is actually rationed and that Starfleet has first dibs on everything. If you’re not an officer, you have to wait in line.

26

It’s about time you showed up! What happened? Get hit by a car or something? :wink:
You make a good point. Even today, rank hath privileges. Seems like StarFleet easily out ranks almost anyone else except Federation officials.

27

They’re probably just “gentleman farmers.” It’s a hobby for them. Janeway’s “farm” was probably little more than a barn with some horses. The Picards made wine just because it was a tradition in their family.

So, instead of forcing the undesirables to leave, they made life on earth intolerable for them, so they all fled the planet.

Pardon me if I don’t see this as a morally superior alternative :dubious:

As I mentioned before, we know that life in the colonies can be hard, even during the “utopia” of TNG. It sounds like our heros in Starfleet are operating on a mindset of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” when they brag about how perfect their society is.

Jonathan Chance: There’s a kink in your theory. Replicators do NOT make matter out of pure energy. They require elemental matter as a feedstock, and just sort of piece the atoms together to make the desired item. (I believe that the schematics for the Defiant show an area devoted to “replicator storage tanks” or somesuch place where the raw matter is stored.) Plus, they still have mines up and running on any number of godforsaken rocks throughout the Federation. If replicators could make matter out of pure energy, then these mines would be unnecessary.

I’ve been thinking something like this for a long time. There are a lot of people in Starfleet who would not normally be attracted to a military life. (Don’t even start with that “Starfleet isn’t a military force” crap.) This suggests one of two possiblities: either service in Starfleet is involuntary (ie, there’s a draft), or that there are significant advantages afforded to Starfleet officers that are not afforded to the general public. We know that Starfleet is an all-volunteer force, so that leaves the latter possibility. My theory is that Starfleet officers get free use of replicators, while ordinary citizens must pay, using the credits that have been referred to a couple of times.

28

Maybe it was a comet.

29

Crap my ass. Gene said it ain’t military, therefore it ain’t military.

30

Gene said a lot of things it would just be best to ignore during TNG’s early years. He wasn’t at his brightest those last few years.

31

Early years? Last years?
You would ignore Roddenberry completely?

32

It’s canon that Starfleet is not military. Gene said that from the start.
Admiral Forest asks Archer if it’s ok to have military personnel on Enterprise Pre A,B,C or bloody D.
Picard says in an episode “This is a military vessel!” and Guinan (althogh I usually hate her ass) says “It’s not supposed to be!”

33

The early years of TNG were the last of Gene’s and he was becoming more and more eccentric as his date of death approached.

I’d not ignore all his ideas – he is the Great Bird, after all – but some, like the stupidity of Starfleet not being military is one I’d definitely retcon out of existance.

34

You snuck a post in on me.

The ships have weapons and are called upon to defend planets when they are in danger (cite: too many damned episodes to list) and have a ranking system and chain of command lifted directly from the 20th and 21st Centuries’ United States navy.

I don’t care what Roddenberry said… it’s a military force.

35

You are Targ meat and will be shot out of a canon.

36

I’d say that Starfleet is quasi military, at least. It’s clearly patterned after a military force, and they certainly have a military role. (Who the hell else have we seen doing the Federation’s fighting? Killfleet?) But they also have a fairly sizable non-military function, as well. (Then again, so do 21st century armed forces—look at Army relief and engineering missions, or how closely NASA worked with the military during the Apollo program.)

So, I guess Starfleet might be an all-purpose “government force.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

I guess if Roddenberry had been a Republican, Spock would have been a contractor, or a civilian attache from the Federation Bureau of Research, or something. :smiley:

37

Regardless of what Gene said, StarFleet is definitely military in nature. Shucks, one of the Acadamy’s main courses is “Intimidation Through Firepower 101”

:dubious:

But seriously, Gene contradicted himself by that dementia ranting. In TOS shows such as The Ultimate Computer, The Alternative Factor, The Balance of Terror, Errand of Mercy, A Private Little War, and even The Trouble With Tribbles, NCC-1701 was used militarily. In one of those shows, StarFleet was even called Earth’s first line of defense (the exact wording and ep escapes me right now.)

Gene patterned StarFleet along the lines of 17th to 19th Century navies of the world. The ships explored, sure. They also brought civilization and relief to the colonies and islands (planets and star systems). And they defended those colonies and parent nations by acts of war or shows of force. That IS StarFleet.

Gene got silly with the TUU ideals and tried to make everyone write Picard’s Enterprise as a vessel primarily of exploration. And while that may have a major cause for its mission, it was not the sole cause.

Quite frankly, canon (as in Gene’s early TNG ideals) be damned. Earlier canon already established StarFleet’s military nature. Later shows and series further the argument.

I am forever a fan of the Great Bird of the Galaxy. But he was wrong in this case.

38

In other words, what are you going to believe - canon, or the evidence of your own damn eyes?

39

:smiley:

When canon contradicts itself, I go for the logical choice. Logic and weight of evidence. There are more examples of the military nature than of anything else. Even in a show keying in on scientific exploration, said exploration is still done by ranks of oficers and enlisted persons employed by the miliarily trained and equipped StarFleet.

Yeah, I had almost a whole newsletter as an early nitpicker dedicated to my rantings about this problem.

40

Not proposing it as such. Just saying the followers of the TUU ideology would probably go that way, rather than do outright “cleansings”, if only because of revulsion at getting their hands directly dirty. Rezone all the unsavory aspects of life all the way out to the frontier.

In one show, Kirk says to Scotty something like “Mister Scott, you just earned your pay for the month”. There is evidently some form of compensation for work and for private exchange of goods and services (in the crew’s case, to pay for that which is not Sf-issue), even if it’s not “money”.