The “no money in Star Trek” idea broke down in DS9 as far as I can tell. The Ferengi ruined it. They are a culture based around the acquisition of wealth, especially “gold-pressed latinum”.
Technologically, they don’t seem disadvantaged. So the same reason all of these Federation societies no longer need money would apply to them too; mainly that you can make just about anything in a “replicator” that runs off of cheap, renewable energy. Including “gold-pressed latinum”.
Star Trek walks a tightrope, where they try to produce content that is thought-provoking, speculative, and philosophical, and yet you have to also shut off your brain and just accept some aspects of the show despite the abandonment of logic and the existence of blatant contradictions.
That’s not unique to Star Trek though. That’s common in fictional writing in general, and why writers have had to rely on the audience’s ability to suspend disbelief going back at least to ancient Greek theater.
Star Trek’s idealism never really made sense, but it was necessary (IMHO) for the show to work as it did. People in Star Fleet subject themselves to miserable assignments for no pay because… duty? honor? They ain’t all flying around on starships, after all. And the people we see outside of Star Fleet are all pursuing art of some kind.
Wall-E was a much more realistic view at a post-scarcity society. But that doesn’t lend itself to ethical dilemmas.
Also, IIRC, gold-pressed latinum is valuable because it can’t be replicated, for reasons they never bothered explaining.
Which again destroys the idea of replicators being able to eliminate scarcity. I think dilithium is the same. And if anything that people value is limited, that is the definition of scarcity. Which means you can have wealth, and the post-scarcity, post-wealth concept is gone. (Supposedly you replace “wealth” with “status”, which is why people try to accomplish great things in Starfleet or other walks of life, because the only way to be “rich” is to have a great reputation and legacy.)
Like I said, you have to just accept it. And I’m still a Trek fan, so I do.
One of the things I liked about the original Trek series from the 1960s is that it wasn’t a utopia. Humanity was in a better place in the 23rd century than they were in the 1960s, but they still had faults they were trying to overcome, and I don’t think it occurred to anyone people weren’t getting paid. The idea people weren’t using money didn’t come about until Star Trek IV when Kirk tells that nice lady at the pizza parlor that they don’t use it in the future. For the most part, the original series left it up to our imaginations about how life in the Federation worked.
Even if you can materialize anything you wanted, space is limited. We can’t all have apartments in San Francisco with a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It came back in Lower Decks. Especially when Boimler went to DS9 and won big on the Dabo tables, to the point of nearly bankrupting Quark (IIRC). Then he just left it because, hey, post-scarcity society. Who needs money?
There were other episodes where Mariner just gave away stuff because, hey, post-scarcity. You want more blankets? How many do you need?
And they showed the difference between the federation and those non-PS societies.
I hated gold pressed latinum because it meant DS9 wanted to get away from the “we don’t use money”, which they didn’t need to. Instead of a “post-scarcity” society, we had “forced money conflict”.
Now it seems TOS was not (yet?) post scarcity because of the episodes with miners making money. And Scotty earning his pay for the week (which just could have been an outdated saying with no actual meaning). But I guess TOS also supported “Starfleet isn’t the military” when Kirk fired Scott. And then rehired him.
eta is it really fun to play poker when the pots mean nothing? “I’m all in!” every time. “Oh damn, busted again. Let me go replicate some more chips.”
When we were young and broke, my friends and I used to play for actual chips. Let me tell you - staring you opponent your eye and eating a potato chip from your “stack” is a great form of psychological warfare.
Those are the people you see. The nameless faceless rabble of 15 Billion or whatever? The average person? They’re eating their ration of replicated food in their free tiny apartment (with no view of the Golden Gate Bridge, or of anything for that matter) and having holosex.
To be fair it’s a very nice free apartment, by 21st century standards. Comfy, clean, free from burglars and roving gangs of future MS13, and probably a big wall size screen that can show a view of the Golden gate Bridge in real-time high def imagery. And you can be happy there. You just won’t get a table at Sisco’s. Replicated cajun for you!
Of course, the “pay for the soup” moment comes when the Borg, the Xindi, the Dominion, the whale probe, whatever, that you had no hand in bothering, attack.
I just saw the third episode and it was the first one I actually liked. They picked a tone and stuck with it, they actually had a borderline intelligent storyline, and they eased up on the “Caleb is the Chosen One” vibes - and not coincidentally, Caleb was kind of bearable for the first time. And despite my prediction, they’re actually letting Genesis (eyebrow girl) be the leader for now, so good for them.
Also, Holly Hunter is definitely playing her character as a Hobbit. She even wore these fur-like foot coverings at one point.
I never considered that, but you’re right. He was somewhat tolerable in this episode. The episode didn’t fully revolve around him, and he showed a bit of character growth maybe, where he genuinely apologized for being an ass to his would-be girlfriend and even let himself do something humiliating (running around in a dumb mascot costume). I saw less of the “I’m a genius and a rebel and my tragic past gives me a free pass to do anything” attitude that made him irritating the first couple of episodes. I hope it’s a sign of things to come, where they give his character a bit more balance.
There was a bit of that for multiple characters too, including the were-fish guy (Darem). I liked how his angst about being abandoned by his family because he wasn’t perfect was used to demonstrate how he was likewise abandoning his classmates when he wasn’t getting everything he wanted from them. And so he humbled himself to accept leadership from the person who was actually competent.
He also opened up to why he has to always be perfect and can’t handle anyone thinking he is less than perfect, and he told the truth about his scar (which he originally said was from a knife fight but later admitted was an appendectomy scar).
The mission of any college is to take kids and make adults, and the special mission of an academy is to make unusually mature young leaders out of overachiever kids.
As such, a well-executed long-running drama about a college ought to have all of the student characters slowly turning from kids, warts and all, into young adults who’re better versions of the characters they were in S1ep1.
Have these showrunners bought into that paradigm? Too early to tell, but perhaps what @Alessan noticed in ep3 is a favorable omen.
Well, episode 4 confirmed something I’ve long since suspected about the Klingons in the 32nd century. Also I loved Darem teaching Jay-Den breathing exercises.
That would be a good description of a college, even a a top-tier school like MIT. But Starfleet Academy has always been a sci-fi version of real-life service academies - The US Naval Academy, West Point, etc. They are extremely difficult to get into and incoming students are for the most part already mature young leaders compared to their peers. But the writers of the show seem to treat the overall vibe like a high school, liberal arts university, or Hogwarts with an extra competitive PE class. It is not where derpy-acting incoming freshmen who swallow their combadges or 17 “year old” sentient holograms who cant even shake hands properly end up.
In the TNG era even Wesley Crusher, an obnoxiously overachieving kid who was acting ensign on Starfleet’s Flagship was nervous about his chances of getting accepted into Starfleet Academy. The writers have not given a good reason why it would be any different 700 years in the future - even after The Burn, Starfleet still appears to have maintained a massive space navy if not a warp-capable one and would still need the pipeline for bridge officers that it always had.
This is the first Starfleet Academy class in more than 100 years (with a much smaller federation). It isn’t implausable for standards and applicants to be a bit short of Peak Starfleet.
IMO, not really. The US Naval Academy currently has much higher standards than SFA has and we’re still bobbing along on the oceans of one planet. As I mentioned before, the opening scene of SFA shows that there is still a large intact space navy of sorts. There’s also a “War College,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense so far in context with everything else, along with why Starfleet Academy went away in the first place. There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense in the context of a “Post Burn” society, and my gut feeling is that the writers didn’t really think about it too deeply. I don’t have high hopes of a coherent explanation being revealed in future episodes.
I did not attend a service academy. I was smart enough to do ROTC at a civilian college. But I did spend 8 years thereafter in USAF working with many of USAFA’s “best products”.
Their stories of Academy life and my experience dealing with these folks as 23yos fresh out of school or later as 28yos says they’re as prone to the foibles of youth as anyone else who’s already top 20%.
“Starfleet” handles long-distance missions. Exploration, diplomacy, rescue missions. Starfleet is basically about doing things way out in the middle of wherever using big ships that can get you that far, and populated by a crew of highly-capable, extremely diverse people who are supposed to handle whatever they run into along the way. The Burn took away the ability to travel very far, and made Starfleet completely useless as they had no way to complete their missions.
The “War College” is about killing people, defending planets, that sort of thing. They would still have a place in a setting where travel is limited. It makes perfect sense that they’d still be around, especially since Starfleet always seemed like a semi-military force itself (as they are involved in a lot of major battles throughout history).
I think of it like what would happen if suddenly the oceans became too treacherous to cross, and people had to stay on land. Your army would still be critical for defense, but your navy wouldn’t have anything to do anymore and would get disbanded, at least until you found a way to navigate the sea again.
The fourth episode was a mixed bag. The flashback scenes were atrociously written and directed - as bad as Trek has ever been - and the “solution” was obvious to me about 15 minutes in, and I didn’t even need an epiphany to figure it out. Still, there was some decent dialog and character work, and I found myself enjoying it more often than not.
What does everyone think of the inclusion of Stephen Colbert as the digital dean’s voice?
You may recall Colbert is a huge LOTR fanboy and thanks to his celebrity got a five second on-screen cameo in one of the Hobbit movies. I guess he must be a Trekkie as well because once again his name has got his foot in the door to appear in the credits of ST.
While I have nothing critical to say specifically concerning his voice performance, I can’t help shake the feeling that this feels a little more like a publicity stunt than serious casting.
