I think “actions have consequences more than two hours down the road” is a good thing in TV.
To me, Trek is an expression of the ideal that humans have the potential to be better than they are, and that once we discard our petty quarrels and differences, we will be able to reach for the stars.
I can’t understand how changing the format slightly makes something “not Star Trek.” Are the movies not Trek? Are the novels? The comics?
I think that DS9 chose to live up to the ideals that defined Trek, and, in fact, to show some of the extended consequences of those ideals, and to show that humanity can deal with those consequences while living with their ideals, too.
I think that Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is Star Trek at its best, despite both not being a TV episode and the fact that you really have to have seen the other Star Trek movies to get why Kirk is so pissed off. On the other hand, I think the reason that Star Trek Into Darknessisn’t Trek, despite featuring the same characters as TOS, has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a film, and everything to do with the fact that it abandons the ideals that I mentioned.
The novels and comics aren’t Trek either, they’re money-grubbing fansploitation.
Imagine, if you will, The Twilight Zone, but nothing makes any sense unless you’re intimately familiar with every previous episode. Would it still be The Twilight Zone?
If it’s still an exploration of human nature and the supernatural, yes. The specific format of the storytelling is less important than its thematic components. I see no reason why a serialized Twilight Zone that properly captures the tone and theme of the original TV show would be any less Twilight Zone-y than one that is non-serialized. Serialized television is - outside of soap operas at least - a relatively new concept. It would have been unthinkable to serialize Trek in the 60s because nobody did that, not because doing so was somehow fundamentally contrary to the core philosophy of the show.
But that is exactly what made DS9 great, that they were able to tell long form stories, foreshadowing our current Golden Age of TV, where long form story is the gold standard and standalone episodes are like dinosaurs. The only non-soap network series I recall doing this previous to DS9 was Wiseguy, widely noted for it’s pioneering work in writing story “arcs” with featured but temporary starring characters. Like today’s cable series, it allowed them to cast actors like Kevin Spacey and Tim Curry who would not normally have done a series.
Back literally to defense of utopias for a moment, has anyone else read the Known Space series I mentioned upthread? At the end of Protector the human Protectors decide what’s best for humanity is no interference by protectors, but where were the protectors during the Kzinti wars? The Puppeteers eventually helped humans win, not the protectors. Did Niven ever address this?
It’s it’s own VERY unusual critter for these times, the pure anthology. Why point out that one example when you know I’m talking about the thousands of shows for the past 60 years that had the same cast every week in different unrelated plots? Every doctor, cowboy, lawyer, cop, family show, whatever followed that format because it syndicated better, not because it told a better story.
edit: FWIW, many pre-TV theatrical shorts like Buck Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy were exactly this long connected plot, it kept people coming back week after week to see the next episode.
Yup, that Musk attack was quite unwarranted. He has never claimed to be building a “private colony for ultra-rich survivalists.” Here’s a guy working at the top of the “conscious capitalism” game and even he gets lumped in with the “right wing survivalist” crowd. That $200,000 is the high-dollar buy-in for wealthy early adapters; as with the Tesla Roadster (and even the S), that early infusion of cash helps build a better future for everyone.
Part of post-Marx leftist thought can also be the perspective of Marxist thought being very much a product of the industrial age.
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Allow me to clarify- I do not mean a Post-Marxist as a system of thought or a historical perspective. I use post-Marx is a signifier of era- since his time, leftists generally accept as true the inevitable collapse of the capitalist economic system. FWIW I do not include Keynesian/institutionalists in how I identify leftist, and that includes folks like Sen. Sanders, and various social democrats that mostly advocate for reform. (Not an insult, I admire and respect him and those folks in general- this includes my mother)
Pure communism is a state-less political concept, and there is no truly unified theory of economy to pair neatly with it. This a space where you’ll find a lot of disagreement among leftists as a whole, owing in no small part to the fact that developing a unified system of economics is really fn hard. So much so that only a handful have ever really had any success.
Capitalism itself is not synonymous with democracy, which is what more directly makes a comparison to communism a false dichotomy. Systems of economy can exist across political ideologies.
I’m certainly not saying any economic system will prevail, but the opposite- that capitalism will fail. This is an important distinction. Certainly no one knows with great confidence what might come after. (And if it comes with Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism I’ll take it!)
All economic systems so far have produced this type of behavior, so it’s not really endemic to capitalism. Moreover, I’d say that most social structures in general do the same. Capitalism does manufacture consent, but I would argue that the presence of various authoritarian governments operating with capitalist economies suggest that consensus among a given population isn’t a mandatory factor. Certainly not in the US.
Again, though, creating a unified theory of economics is extremely difficult, and adapting democratic principles to the underlying economic structure is likewise difficult. The division of labor, for example, creates imbalances which have to be rectified so that those whose work might be more empowering, like a doctor, don’t have a greater say in social policy/economic outcomes than the orderly changing bedpans. Honestly I don’t think there’s an answer to this problem yet.
All hierarchies, voluntary or not, create imbalances in relative power between individuals, so to me the question becomes how does society minimize those imbalances so that no individual or group yields greater influence over the population as a whole. Simply stating “eliminate all hierarchy” doesn’t seem realistic, and I think that humans do need leadership of some sort, but I think that testing new theories of organization against a backdrop of capitalism, while possibly informative, is just as likely misleading.
Of course there is no one way “we all” should live! Any individual or group will have their preferences, so to me the goal is how do we maximize the attainment of those desires without minimizing those of any other individual or group. Parallelism implies that any given object within a system have the same slope. In order for objects of a system to maintain equivalent slope in physical space there must be equilibrium; if two groups of humans are to remain equal, either within the same community or separate, there has to be a force maintaining that balance. Even discounting my personal belief in the eventual collapse of capitalism, as an economic system it is not compatible with economic theories that seek more egalitarian outcomes, and any non-capitalist group would eventually find itself in a confrontation with a capitalist group.
I think what’s most important in regards to personal property is not really a matter of stating “one can own this” or “one can’t own that,” but rather a division between communal necessities i.e. air, water, energy, and items for personal use. I certainly don’t want your toothbrush. And if we have equal access to the means to replace our toothbrushes, well… We spend a lot of energy in the modern world fighting over things with values nowhere near in line to their actual utility. If objects were more closely valued at their actual cost (a comment above captured one scenario of how this might happen with the replicator scenario) many of the things we need to have a decent standard of living can be made essentially free, including energy. I feel relatively confident that if everyone’s basic needs are met, the need for that sort of violence and coercion would be drastically reduced.
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The notion that everyone behaves in the same way and believes in the same things is beyond lazy and unproductive- it’s impossible; completely antithetical to evolution and the role that immediate environment play in human development.
If it’s not clear from some of my other comments, I have no doubt that the transitions to a post-capitalist world will be challenging. We will either meet the challenges or we won’t, and I’m not interested, full-stop, in any solution which includes authoritarian concepts.
Basically I agree with you re: Marx, and I don’t identify as a Marxist per se. But he was totally spot on about inevitable collapse. Capitalists treat the entire earth like a slave, but the laws of science don’t give two shits about capitalists. We can not continue to plunder the world for all it has and expect to survive. When K species grossly violate their available resources, the whole population dies. I don’t understand why anyone thinks we’re different. So to that end, yes. We’ll either do something about it- build a better world, or…
that’s why, despite their possibly unsavory connotations, i’ve always had a soft spot for the fan theories that human life, outside of the most elite Starfleet circles we see on the show, was a repressive military dictatorship. it’s not so much that resources were plentiful and that scarcity was overcome; it’s that every miserable penny is funneled into a fanatical organization driven only by power and tradition. it really does explain a lot, like why civilians would happily embark on an open-ended journey into deep space on a ship which is nearly destroyed every week: because the alternative is the salt^Wdilithium mines.
