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Kurtzman is such a hack. The whole “oh you think your society is good well I’ll have you know it’s actually made possible by BAD PEOPLE doing BAD THINGS in the SHADOWS” is the kind of shit that a teenager would think is really smart. Coming up with ways for the Federation to uphold its principles in the face of challenges to them would actually be much smarter than defaulting to a vision of the CIA in space.
And it’s totally fine to explore the idea that the Federation doesn’t always live up to its ideals. That’s the theme of a lot of episodes in every series. But New Trek has lost track of the fact that the Federation has ideals in the first place and its become pulp sci fi slop.
The whole point of Section 31 in DS9 was that they weren’t necessary. If you watched DS9 and took home the idea that the Federation couldn’t exist without Section 31, you need a media literacy course.
One of the main series themes of DS9 was “how do you maintain your morality under challenging conditions, working alongside people who don’t share it”. Section 31 is a challenge to the main cast’s morality that they are supposed to overcome.
There are grains of evil in each of new trek’s productions, only before this it was more hidden. I wrote a big post about this before. But, to me, one of the more interesting things about Star Trek is the story of how humans achieved utopia and how historically contingent it is. In TOS you have a lot of that 1960s vibe, with the cold war and space alien cults that were all the rage in the zeitgeist. So humanity’s elevation comes from a mixture of WW3 and vulcan solidarity. The TNG era keeps all those plot elements and shift them around a bit. The real notable points though is how DS9 made utopia about political action (the Bell Riots), and how Enterprise made it clear that it wasn’t just techno-wizardry (reiterating that neither humans nor even vulcans had replicators before their foray into deep space).
What does Picard do? It makes humanity’s bright future hinge entirely on magical microbes found on space. That’s it. Nothing else matters. If humans don’t find a techno-magical solution on Jupiter or whatever, it will fall to climate change, WW3 and it will become the biggest genocidal empire of all time in a series that already featured multiple versions of space fascism. New Trek already threw the lack of replicators out of the window way back when. I’d argue that Picard is when it all goes from clueless, cynical people bumbling about to them showing the evil of their beliefs.
To be clear Enterprise had military apologia on it. Half the show’s plot hinges on a 9/11 allegory and you’ve got Special Military Forces Guys serving alongside the normal crew from that moment on. Even then I’d wager nobody came out and showed their asses like this. The entire thesis of the DS9 Section 31 storyline is that Section 31 shouldn’t exist. Its a rogue agency. Its genocidal moves don’t even win the war. The minefield, the Prophets, the romulan plot and the cardassian defection are what win the Dominion War. At best you can say that Section 31’s virus gave them an in as to avoid a costly final battle. Even so its circumstantial, as it was in no way Section 31’s intent or its plan.
(reiterating that neither humans nor even vulvans had replicators before their foray into deep space)
Not to pick on your typo but the Vulvans sound like an alien race a horny Roddenberry would have come up with before a producer talked him down
Roddenberry was already horny enough as it is with some of the yikes decisions he made and according to the behind the scenes stories about him.
Didn’t he want the Betazoids to have four boobs or something
He wanted Troi to have three breasts, but the idea was shot down by a female writer on the show, D.C. Fontana. She told him that women have enough trouble with two breasts as it is.I feel like the three brests might have been one of the few times hornt might work out well as a positive force in writing
The deep lore.
ah thats just an alternate name for the orions
that said i maintain vulcans are real and roddenberry was the only human capable of surviving their weird sex ritual thing
I wrote a big post about this before.
Where it it? I looked in your account but didn’t find it in a quick scan 😿
I don’t think there was much more to it, it was just a more verbose version of this.
I watched the Section 31 flick, against all advice and better judgement, and what a fuckin Turd.
even the Abrams Nu Trek Section 31 plotline was more appropriately cynical towards the Trek CIA branch with Into Darkness by having them resurrect ancient space Hitler to come up with plans to do genocidal wars against their enemies and being the actual Big Bad with warships and false flag shit. basically, Operation: Bloodstone, Turbo
the section 31 movie was just stupid, like they’re the scrappy, sexy good guys who have fun being bad for the greater good and secretly saving the universe.
Rich or Mike or someone on RLM put it best, we don’t like in a time where hope and optimism seem possible. It’s so cynical and bleak now that we can’t even imagine a hopeful future of peace and diplomacy and science, it’s gotta have stupid stupid black ops operators doing ahit
Grabbing a comment I made 3 years ago, it still holds up pretty well
Imagining a better future is an inherently revolutionary endeavor. It’s step 1 of convincing society to revolt.
Roddenberry’s Star Trek, while problematic and sexist, was a vision of a better future for humanity. Our late capitalist overlords don’t like this. They love to make dystopian films about climate hellscapes, because it’s a form of manufacturing consent for the future they want. They want to make our society into a place where all we do is relive nostalgia for a past that never existed, rather than built a brighter future for humanity. Facebook Meta is following this path already, launching a few years after Ready Player One. That movie pretends it’s a dystopia, but what they really want you to think is “isn’t all this tech cool?” to prep you to consume more Facebook garbage.
Aka Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism.
Yeah doing something different like peaceful diplomacy? Nah we gotta have the 150 millionth CIA propaganda show with the same beats and plot points. Just slap star trek tint on it
The enterprise attempts a mission of peace and the CIA fucks up any attempts they make at a peaceful resolution
If this isn’t the result any talk about gritty realism that these showrunners like to talk about is moot
