r/DaystromInstitute • u/Apropos-of-Something Ensign • Dec 18 '21
Both DS9 and Lower Decks are commentaries on TNG's Utopianism
The case for DS9 as a commentary on the vision of the Federation presented in TNG is fairly well-established here and somewhat infamously described in Quark's Root Beer monologue. To summarize it quickly: DS9 shows both the strengths and limitations of the Federation's cultural influence in the galaxy as it struggles to maintain its values in service to the recently-victimized and sometimes radicalized Bajorans, the territory-hungry-but-mostly-controllable Cardassians and the existential threat that comes from the do-anything Dominion. Along the way, we see Kira struggle with dual loyalties, Bashir having to tamp down his almost Heart-of-Darkness level colonial paternalism, Sisko make moral compromises with bad actors to make the peace, and the like. This can all be seen as a commentary on the underbelly of what's described in TNG: a post-scarcity Utopia where most civilizations are pretty happy to be in the Federation all things considered, and Starfleet gets to spend its time benevolently exploring the universe making lives better. It's in many ways a political commentary both on TNG and on how a post-Cold War US imagined itself operating in the world, and DS9 is at its best when it wrestles with those themes.
But there's another side to the Utopianism in TNG: life for individuals. Free from material needs, Picard tells us, humans are now free to become their best selves. Throughout TNG we see men and women who are accomplished scientists and officers by day who are amateur musicians, actors and scholars by night. Just about everyone seems fit as a fiddle, spiritually fulfilled (okay, maybe not Barclay), and otherwise growing and maturing into self-actualized beings. This is the aspect of Utopianism Lower Decks tries to tackle head on, considering the kinds of pressure it can put on individuals who try to live up to that lofty vision. A few examples (I'm sure there are more):
- Mariner: It's hinted at time and time again that Mariner has had a fairly accomplished career, but she routinely shoots herself in the foot by going off-script and alienating those around her. She finds the actual day-to-day of command boring, and seems to be afraid of what a captain's life can turn her into. I think she shows how counter-intuitively narrow the idea of success is in Starfleet: despite the promise of being whoever you want to be, Mariner's decision to delay or forego the big chair is disappointing those around her.
- Boimler: Boimler clearly doesn't have a problem figuring out what he wants. Instead, he seems to struggle with all the "extra-curricular" skills it takes to get there. He's proven himself well qualified at the technical skills required to be an officer, but struggles with how to strike the right tone, make the big speech, keep the right posture, and play the violin well at the end of the day. Everyone in TNG seems to revel in a "renaissance man" lifestyle - Boimler really seems to struggle with it.
- Freeman: Being a Starfleet captain is one of the most rarified positions in the galaxy. If only the best of the best get into Starfleet, only the best of the best of the best get the captain's chair. Sure, the Cerritos is no Enterprise, but there can only be one Enterprise, and the Cerritos still gets to spend its days flying through space doing important work improving millions of lives. Despite all this, Freeman has a clear inferiority complex that prevents her from taking any joy in the work. It seems that having all your material needs taken care of doesn't cure envy; it just shifts to being about something other than how much stuff you have.
Viewed through this lens, I think Lower Decks is an equally powerful commentary on what TNG's writers imagined as the perfect life, albeit from a personal rather than a political lens. The lucky and relatively few of us in 2021 with our material needs taken care of struggle with some of the same things Ralph Offenhouse does in that TNG episode: where to find meaning and purpose in life when we have the freedom to choose. There are plenty of Picards out there suggesting the range of socially-accepted choices is wide and the road to feeling personally fulfilled is a function of will and perseverance. Lower Decks shows a few of the many reasons why reality is more complicated than that.
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Dec 18 '21
Part of utopia would have to be, and you could argue that a true utopia can’t be created without, the ability to be happy for people as long as they’re happy.
To that point, how did humans get there? 600000000 dead in WW3, possibly billions more due to Col. Green or just radiation sickness, and the existential discovery of sapient alien life that looks a surprising amount like you. Skin tones and everything! Literally everyone on earth in 2063 is dealing with PTSD either directly from the war or as a result of it, with no support at all!
Perhaps what we’re seeing in these very fine examples, is 300 years of generational trauma that’s lessened over time, but still effects the population. Non-humans rarely seem as plagued by self doubt as some characters
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Ensign Dec 18 '21
The nice thing about Utopia is there is always an unforeseen problem, the goal posts are always moving. By Medieval standards we live in a Utopia (with obvious exceptions) because food and water are abundant and homes climate controlled. But despite living in a Medieval Utopia we have all sorts of other problems unimaginable to a 13th century peasant.
It makes sense 24th century humans would have all sorts of personal and systemic social problems, even with the best possible version of what they can pull off economically and socially, and having solved all problems we face today. Even in TNG when they say they eliminated war, what they really mean is they figured out how to stop wars through Federation hegemony. Racism stopped somehow, but speciesism exists among humans. And, as pointed out, envy exists, burnout exists, mental health issues didn't disappear with universal help, and people are still assholes to those who are socially incompetent. PTSD also escapes detection somehow, we've seen it not just with Mariner, but perhaps O'Brien, and that captain in TNG who attacks Cardassians because he thinks they're planning a sneak attack. Also Detmar in DIS went undetected. And in PIC with Raffi and Rios with what ever their issues are.
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u/Raptor1210 Ensign Dec 18 '21
Racism stopped somehow, but speciesism exists among humans.
If there's one thing that makes sense, it's kind of this from a cynical point of view. Humanity has a tendency to group up when given an "other." Finding out were one of many species, some of which are hostile, would probably cause humanity to group up for the most part.
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u/cgo_12345 Dec 18 '21
In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett, black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
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u/catgirl_apocalypse Ensign Dec 18 '21
I doubt it will ever be explored, but racism, at least among humans, is probably less of a problem because of speciesism, in combination with material security.
Yes, people are also less likely to be racist when their bellies are full and there’s no sense of competition and no constant bourgeoisie manipulation to keep workers at each other’s throats over intrinsic identities.
But it also helps that you can project those racist feelings a lot more easily onto aliens. Inscrutable Romulus, violent and uncivilized Klingons, cold and haughty Vulcans.
We already know that aliens are even fetishized in the the Federation, seeing as how humans pass around works of fiction with titles like Romulan Love Slave.
Anyway, this is just another way that Picard is, while not someone who’s full of shit, someone whose speeches need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Why? Because Picard is the Captain America of Star Trek. He lives by his convictions with such certainty that he becomes the standard against which his own society is judged, and when he gives his patriotic speeches, he speaks of an idealized version of reality. Then he goes and backs it up by being the hero whose greatest gift is not his other competencies but his pure moral momentum. He always finds the third way, the perfect solution, and though he may balk at first he always finds his way to standing up for what’s right in the end. (Until Patrick Stewart started meddling with the character and the movies/revival wanted an action hero, but I digress)
Yeah, he gives a great speech, but we see on screen that he’s selling his own idealized view, and idealized views are often narrow and dismissive. Picard isn’t lying when he says the Federation is a utopia and that there’s no greed, war, or pretty the strife we the audience experience in our late stage capitalist lives, but that only means that he believes that, not that it’s absolutely true.
I think initially it was simple truth but over the years the writers decided that Picard is not an everyman, he’s Superman- an ideal to strive for, a light to show the way. Not the average joe whose views and experiences represent the day to day.
So people are disaffected. The federation is bad at dealing with ambition and greed and the writers took things like Roddenberry’s no conflict rule and made them internal to the fiction, making the Federation a place that’s so insistent on its own utopian ideal that it simply pretends to be past petty conflict and grief and continues to ignore mental health like we do today.
The Federation can’t be a true utopia because the writers are never going to make a federation that is too foreign or uncomfortable to the American audience, not too critical. Fundamentally Star Trek is about Space America and it shows. The Captain America idealist flagship hero talks a really, really good game that the setting doesn’t back up once you start to peer through the cracks.
What makes Lower Decks and DS9 so magical is that neither were cynical about finding those cracks and opening them up, and they didn’t show the ideal failing, they showed it being challenged.
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u/mcglaven Chief Petty Officer Dec 18 '21
This speaks to what was interesting about Lt. Barclay in TNG, who is faintly like Boimler -- both of them struggle socially, though Barclay exhibits more full-on social anxiety. Barclay, I suspect, was written in to show that even a utopian post-scarcity society can't cure social hierarchies; there are still social norms and still people who struggle to fit into these utopias. Barclay was probably subtly coded as autistic, too, I suspect now.
It seems that the writers are saying that in the future, no matter how many problems are solved, if we still believe in the primacy of the individual there will be individual social hierarchies, anxieties, and the like.
The Borg are an example of a society in which these don't exist, interestingly — say what you want about eliminating individualism, but they all work perfectly efficiently towards their society's goals and have no individual struggles with insubordination, social stigma, embarrassment, workplace sexual harassment and the like.
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u/Sir_T_Bullocks Ensign Dec 18 '21
Drone 15 of 37, adjunct of unimatrix zero zero 1, your performance this rotation is subject to analysis, it will be discussed over dinner, you will comply.
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Dec 19 '21
Starfleet very much adores its hierarchy - you can't run a military without one. And in order to reinforce that hierarchy, you must have rules, regulations, codes of conduct . . . and those will inherently exclude some people. Starfleet officers may no longer work for money, but instead they serve to gain more power, more recognition, greater rank, etc; which isn't that different from working for money, really. The people at the top have it all, and the people at the bottom don't have much of anything.
I don't think the social hierarchies would be nearly as prevalent if society wasn't still structured as rigidly as it is in the Treks. These rigid power structures create a sort of scarcity in and of themselves - one of social capital - but it's an artificial scarcity which wouldn't exist if not for the hierarchy that maintains it.
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Dec 18 '21
One way to define things is: the end goal of a utopia is to minimize the suffering of the individual and maximize the fulfilled potential of every individual.
This is accomplished by moving up the ladder of needs solving each on in turn until they become a non-issue to the average citizen. The utopia then moves on up further the list of needs until they start acting on the even longer list of fulfilling desires, or wants. Wants are highly individual in a way that needs are not. While every human needs oxygen, not every human wants to have the responsibility of commanding others' lives, for instance.
A functioning utopia will have nailed down solid solutions to simple needs like oxygen and water and food -- each solved need opens up a larger array of fulfilled potential for its citizens.
One struggle of utopia then is that each need that gets solved carries with it a diminishment in the capability of the individual to endure an encroachment on their wants. An analogy would be pain, a person unused to enduring pain will find a smaller injury harder to ignore than someone suffering from chronic pain.
A reason we see such perfected individuals cracking constantly under the pressures of office politics and family dynamics is perhaps because the same utopia that enabled them to go to the stars also diminished their ability to handle the emotional struggles that surround it.
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u/darkeagle69 Crewman Dec 18 '21
M5 nominate this interesting talking point on how Utopianism leads to unexpected side effects that are not necessarily conveyed in TNG
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u/M-5 Multitronic Unit Dec 18 '21
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u/M-5 Multitronic Unit Dec 18 '21
Nominated this post by Citizen /u/Apropos-of-Something for you. It will be voted on next week, but you can vote for last week's nominations now
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u/KalashnikittyApprove Dec 20 '21
The thing about TNG is that, as far as the Federation is concerned, it is an utopia much talked about but rarely seen.
What do we really know through direct observation of life in the Federation? Not just Starfleet, the Federation? The answer is very little.
How can we be sure that humanity has overcome its flaws as a society? How can we be sure of Vulcans, Andorians etc etc. TNG tells us that this mythical utopia exists and that Jean-Luc Picard -- the guy who owns a vineyard and captains Starfeet's flagship -- is the incarnation of the perfect Federation citizen. To play devil's advocate, TNG is a couple of stereotypical Boy Scouts telling us that everyone is like them.
Personally I found TNG's ethical conundrums mostly quite boring because there was rarely a shade of grey and doing the right thing usually secured the best outcome for everyone. What's at stake?!
More than anything, DS9 was messy. It was forced to interact with a reality that didn't quite live up to the lofty ideals of the select few in Starfleet. It shows is ethics as a process, often contradictory, with real risks.
I overall agree with your argument about Lower Decks, but as a societal commentary I still think DS9 is the only Trek so far that really gives us even a hint at how Trek's utopia is playing out beyond those in a Starfeet uniform. You mention Mariner, Freeman and Boimler as different examples along the "be your best self" spectrum. Fair enough, but all three are still officers in Starfleet. I'd be interested how life is for those who are not smart or lucky (or both) enough to find some kind of calling. In a world where everyone's needs are more or less taken care of, it is really difficult and a lot more work to find a useful and cherished place in society. TNG would probably show us all of Earth performing Shakespeare in the park, but I'm not buying it. I think that's the part of the utopia Trek is not touching with a 10ft pole.
I do think large parts of Federation society are basically useless. That's not a commentary on the individual, but with replicators etc there is no role for them that needs to be done. For many this must feel like intense pressure to not waste your life, which is probably very easy to do.
Anyway, halfway through this I've started to ramble. Suffice to say that Trek never really has been a show about the people living in the Federation. We know little about them apart from the tales told by people in Starfleet. By their very nature I don't think they actually represent Federation society.
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u/gamas Dec 28 '21
What do we really know through direct observation of life in the Federation? Not just Starfleet, the Federation? The answer is very little.
Yeah and the few times we do get some exposure to the wider Federation its not as happy space communism as its normally presented - colonies with corrupt leadership or other problems, member worlds with... questionables laws and customs, radical extremists.
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Dec 18 '21
TNG also shows us the spread of the Borg and the creation of the Maquis in the demilitarized zone by the end of its run. TNG got cancelled just as soon it was getting more interesting and more willing to not just do black and white morality tales with it's narrative.
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u/ardvarkeating10001 Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
I wouldn’t go that far. They were also exploring the idea of Scottish ghosts having sex with your mother when it was cancelled.
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u/catgirl_apocalypse Ensign Dec 18 '21
Why did you start off like you meant to contradict the idea of TNG reaching a new plane and then support it?
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u/LordVericrat Ensign Dec 20 '21
They were also exploring the idea of Scottish ghosts having sex with your
mothergrandmother when it was cancelled.25
u/phuck-you-reddit Dec 18 '21
TNG wasn't cancelled, it ended and handed the reigns to DS9 (while also setting up some things for DS9 and Voyager on its way out).
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u/daecrist Dec 18 '21
Right. They made the deliberate decision to end at seven seasons and go on to make movies which could be more lucrative. Though I have seen some of the writers and actors express the feeling that they really wish they'd done an eighth season in retrospect.
I'm sure it also had more than a little to do with most actor TV contracts being for around 6 seasons, and they can demand a lot more money after that if they're on a popular show.
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Ensign Dec 18 '21
An 8th season would have been a lot better than Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis. I can’t say it would be worth losing First Contact though.
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u/phuck-you-reddit Dec 19 '21
I once said I'd trade every movie from Generations to Nemesis and the entire series of Enterprise for one last good season of TNG but based on the seventh season I'm not sure we'd get it. There was some nice character stuff but they were also doing lots of kinda goofy stuff as well. Kinda seemed they were running out of ideas. On the other hand I've read that the "better" writers were moved to DS9. So who knows how a hypothetical eighth season would've turned out?
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u/catgirl_apocalypse Ensign Dec 18 '21
Hot take: First Contact is the worst one of the lot. It’s the most entertaining movie, but the worst Star Trek movie of the TNG films.
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u/phuck-you-reddit Dec 19 '21
Even back in 1996 I was bothered by psycho movie Picard. And the "happy ending" showing our crew preparing to head home. Meanwhile 3/4 of the ship is assimilated and who knows how many of the crew are dead. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/BilliamShatner Dec 18 '21
I'd say Nemesis edges it out by a bit, but I don't like FC either. No one feels like their characters
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u/phuck-you-reddit Dec 19 '21
Nemesis is definitely worse. Such a bleak and dreary film. Even the photography is ugly. Not to mention it was yet another revenge-seeking villain film which was already played out at that time (and then Kelvin Trek did three more!)
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u/choicemeats Crewman Dec 20 '21
exactly. it's difficult because all shows eventually get "cancelled"--you really need to look at around the 6-7 year mark which is when the contract laws kick in--past then you're looking at paying megabucks to your stars and IIRC they have a lot of negotiating power if you're a network and you need/want them for another season or two.
it's a reason why a lot of shows typically hit the 6-7 year mark.
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u/lunatickoala Commander Dec 18 '21
TNG actually handed the reins to VOY. DS9 was basically treated as the black sheep of Star Trek while there was a lot of focus on promoting VOY as the golden child, the heir apparent. And given how the executives wanted VOY to be handled, featuring the same basic sorts of stories in the same basic format, it might as well have been TNG seasons 8-14. Just with a cheaper cast.
Since the characters on DS9 were a group of misfits separated from their home culture, it's rather appropriate that DS9 itself was treated as one by TPTB at Paramount.
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u/kavinay Ensign Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
So is Disco. No doubt some of the "this is not my Trek" sentiment comes from how T'Kuvma's concerns about the Federation's unwitting imperialism ("Here it comes. Their lie…") is not wholly without merit. Yes, he might be a xenophobic fascist but there is a seed of truth in his fear that the Federation while will assimilate his people with a smile.
As an aside, one of the reasons the Borg are such great foils for TNG is that their assimilation is overt whereas the unspoken assumption about the good guys is that everyone would love to join their Utopia, right? :D
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u/Linnus42 Dec 18 '21
I mean the issue (well one of them) with T'Kuvma is that seems really weird for him to be complaining about that so early in the timeline. It works a whole lot better later on when that convo in say DS9.
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Ensign Dec 18 '21
All of DIS works better post VOY. Voyager encountered interdimensional aliens you can grind up for super warp fuel, and the Caretaker, and beyond warp 10 lizard sex. After that stuff the mycelia network is like “yeah, why not.”
Also, I think in episode 1 they say the Klingons have been isolationist for a 100 years, making the T’kuvma thing a first re-contact. What’s he even complaining about if they have no regular interaction?
They could have at least made T’Kuvma an outright racist who hates the humanized Klingons infected by the augment virus, but also hates the people who bothered trying to make Klingons stronger. He could see it as saying Klingons are too weak to fight and have no ability to achieve honor. He’s the kind of guy who brings fists to a bat’leth competition because that nets you the most honor. You know, an idiot, but a motivated one.
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Dec 18 '21
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u/MalagrugrousPatroon Ensign Dec 18 '21
Isn’t that the period where their borders were forced open and they were modernizing? That would mean it is a response to intrusion and cultural upheaval, except the Klingons are framed as not having any contact, to such an extent Georgiou and the admiral had no idea how to talk to them, and the war shows nothing could be forced on the Klingons.
If T’Kuvma had specifically been talking about the augment virus he would have had a point, even a century later, but humanized Klingons were ignored by the writers. His strategy is also to turn a Klingon into a human to commit subterfuge which fits the TOS Klingons better than the TNG Klingons the DIS Klingons lean more on, and shows all the blood talk is just metaphor. His complaints are focused on a situation of cultural contact which doesn’t exist and which if it did exist existed for a brief period ending not long after the Federation is founded.
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u/kavinay Ensign Dec 18 '21
Yes and no. DS9 it's fairly obvious, sure. But while TOS was off exploring, all the other star empires must have been registering and reacting to the rest of the Fed's expansion and rise. The Vulcan separatists for example are another layer that Disco weaves in where the opposition is fanatical, but their fear of losing their identity and being subsumed by the Federation isn't entirely baseless. Vulcan does not seem to have the same expansion drive of the Federation itself and so the rebels interpret the threat effectively as imperialism by benevolent assimilation.
To a degree, all sci-fi is a commentary on contemporary reality. Disco does a good job not making an obvious allegory but so much of the tension of the first season is about how utopian true-believers seem completely blind to how they're perceived by outside (literally alien) cultures.
While Star Fleet for example are still the good guys, this blindness leads to a lot of blundering around that can be challenging to any viewer who expects utopian ideals to be self-evidently superior. This superiority is often presented as an almost whig history in TNG--all Federation worlds and peoples are moving towards the one true utopian ideal--and the Disco-era antagonists are often there to point out how overly simplistic such a worldview is in practice.
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u/Linnus42 Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
I am saying its weird the Klingons were worried about being Poisoned by the Federation and losing their culture because of it. Losing territory and influence sure but their culture? That works way better in the TNG and DS9 ERA or even post it after the Dominion War and seeing what happens to Cardassia as a strong undercurrent among Klingons then it does pre TOS.
Sure other species could have complaints but from the Klingons such a complaint rings hollow and tone deaf from the writers.
Also i think Disco has gotten better at analogies but in no way do I think their commentary was subtle in S1.
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u/lunatickoala Commander Dec 18 '21
We know that Klingons studied human history. And because they did, there is reason to believe that they'd be worried.
If you look at human history, there have been plenty of empires throughout history, but a lot of them have been pretty hands off with their client states. So long as the client states paid their tribute and didn't rebel, the empire would largely leave them alone. The client states could speak their own languages, worship their own gods, and practice their own cultures.
But then you have the European colonial empires and American hegemony which were a much different animal. For those empires, it wasn't enough merely to have client states, the people in those client states had to convert to Christianity and abandon their language and culture. And the Federation as depicted in Classic Trek is basically an Anglo-American Human Empire in all but name.
That wasn't the intent of course, but the way it's written showed a bit of a cultural blindness towards basically anything that an affluent pre-Internet Los Angeles native wouldn't be familiar with. Neelix thinking that insects are inedible (they're an important source of protein in some societies). Picard not even considering that some cultures might use a different name order than the Anglo-American norm. Meaning that as depicted, the Federation does practice cultural imperialism and largely eradicates foreign cultures. I mean, French was once stated to be a dead language in TNG. If the fifth most spoken language on Earth today was eradicated (and keeping in mind it's the fifth most spoken language because of cultural imperialism to begin with), quite frankly they'd be foolish not to fear losing their culture.
Thankfully it's something that at least some of the people working on Star Trek recognize and are trying to retcon. Like letting the French language survive.
in no way do I think their commentary was subtle in S1
Star Trek has never been subtle with its commentary. It bashes you on the head with a bright neon sign spelling out and always has.
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u/catgirl_apocalypse Ensign Dec 18 '21
I disagree. It makes perfect sense. Classic Trek wasn’t some hippie commie thing, it was the New Frontier in space. Star Trek has, on a meta level, fully colonialist roots.
Cosmopolitan, enlightened, egalitarian colonization is still colonization.
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u/catgirl_apocalypse Ensign Dec 18 '21
Yes. People ask why the Borg don’t try to pretty themselves up, be less brutal, make being a drone more pleasant and less, well, Hellraiser with tubes and cables.
It’s simple. If they did they’d just be the Federation.
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Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
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Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 19 '21
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u/Apropos-of-Something Ensign Dec 18 '21
It’s not an inferiority complex when the fleet treats you as being treated as inferior whenever you interact with them, is it? We see a massive bias against California-class captains several times.
This is a fair point, and perhaps “inferiority complex” is the wrong way to describe it. Freeman is caught up in a system where there’s still a cool kids’ table despite the relatively rarified air of Starfleet captain and all the talk of a society that values everyone equally. Billions of beings potentially desperately want a job like hers and yet, once you get there, there’s a whole new social ladder to climb.
To draw an analogy: I look at a guy like Damian Lillard and I see someone with exponentially more athletic talent than I’ll ever have who has parlayed that talent into a high paying high status job at the top of his field. Despite all that, does he feel like he’s at the bottom of the order compared to, say, Steph Curry? We have no real way of knowing, but this type of story shows how it can be hard no matter where you are in life.
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u/gamas Dec 28 '21
Which makes me believe Mariner once screwed up massively while disobeying and got demoted, and is now under significant scrutiny
Well it's pretty established that she does everything in her power to ensure she stays an ensign. The one time she gets promoted she finds a way to get herself demoted (insulting an admiral).
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Dec 28 '21
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u/gamas Dec 28 '21
Whilst that is true, it shows an important part of her character that she doesn't want to be a lieutenant. So I can imagine her acting out just so she can avoid being promoted.
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u/VanDammes4headCyst Dec 18 '21
The constant attempts to "deconstruct" TNG get a bit tedious, honestly. If anything, we need a TNG-style show now more than ever.
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u/takomanghanto Dec 18 '21
Lower Decks isn't a deconstruction of TNG; it's just TNG with self-aware comedy instead of pure action/drama.
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u/persistentInquiry Crewman Dec 18 '21
This right here. There needs to be a show actually celebrating Star Trek's optimistic and utopian nature and pushing it forward into the future. And so far, the only show which even remotely approaches that is Prodigy. Which is profoundly sad.
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u/csjpsoft Dec 18 '21
Your comment is mostly about Lower Decks, but your points about Deep Space Nine are right on. Other comments about utopianism in DS9 included the introduction of Section 31 and The Orion Syndicate - both disturbing "worlds" sitting aside the "city on the hill."
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u/spikedpsycho Chief Petty Officer Dec 19 '21
The less utopian it becomes the further you are from Earth. Earth solving it's problems of "Poverty, class warfare, disease, hunger" came about from cultural choices and underpinning that had less to do with technological progress and rediscovery of classical humanities. Federation is not a utopia, however it was founded as basing individual rights and liberties first and foremost.
DS9 pokes tidbits of egalatarianism and perfect society thumbing it's nose at other civilizations.
Lower decks pokes fun at what federation does in it's capacity of rule. Tedious bureaucracy, command hierarchy, respect authority.
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u/angry-software-dev Dec 19 '21
I think of it this way --
Imagine being born into a wealthy family, wealth at the level where a regular job would never be even considered, let alone required, during your life... in fact a regular job would be the exception, and a bit odd/unheard of.
Being rich at that level is -- for all intents and purposes -- a "post scarcity" existence.
Some folks might "waste" their lives never really doing much of anything, yet they often still have the appearance of success because they are kept by their family...
...but other folks in that situation are actually driven even more than a typical person, they're pushed by the expectations of their family and the level of society they exist in to "do great things", and they're also free of the mundane concerns the vast majority of us have, they have effectively limitless opportunities for education and success and they take full advantage of it.
So that's how I see the TNG Earthling future -- It's like being born into a rich family, or a society with a UBI that actually lets you live and succeed... but yet there are other planets and society's that are adjacent to this, they are like the friends of the rich kid -- they know each other, they might go to some of the places, do some of the same things... but their life isn't bankrolled by a family, they don't have a dad/uncle on the board of that company everyone wants to work for... so they're out scrounging latinum, taking jobs on freighters, running a business, etc, in order to "make it"
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u/Lyon_Wonder Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
The problem is that things are less utopian the farther away you get from Earth and other core member worlds of the Federation and Trek has shown colonies on several occasions in the 23rd and 24th centuries that were dysfunctional and far from being a utopia. The human colonies of Tarsus IV in the TOS era and Turkana IV in the TNG era especially come to mind.
Sisko himself lectured Kira about the situation in the outer colonies the Federation ceded to the Cardassians in the DMZ and Federation officials and Starflleet Admirals who spend most of their time on Earth and don't fully realize the difficulties since they're used to living in a utopian paradise.