#also kirk looks like chekhov and spock looks like the spock from the new movies

[redbootsindoriath]

I’ve finished the third Fëanorian Week drawing.  Only four more to go....  In the meantime, here’s another Star Trek post for you because 1. it’s April Fool’s Day which makes me want to post something funny, and 2. I just recently finished the third TOS season and am in denial about having run out of new episodes.  But now it’s on to the movies!

I’m sure this joke has been made before, but I can’t believe this was literally a plot point in an episode.

Transcription:

[Garth as Kirk:] “Shoot him, he’s the clone!” [Spock:] “The real Kirk would never pass up an opportunity to die!”

[whydoeseverythinghurt]

Someone tell me Lower Decks gets better

Edit: So I am hearing good things from very angry people, and I think that means that it’s fine.

I know that a lot of people like Lower Decks, and I think in isolation, I would be one of them, but this is supposed to be Star Trek, right? I like Rick and Morty’s particular brand cynicism, and hopelessness, and I know a lot of the people working on Lower Decks come from there, but that just isn’t Star Trek.

Disclaimer: I only saw the first episode, so most of this can be discounted if that isn’t an accurate depiction of the show as a whole.

Star Trek started off as a ‘perfect’ utopian future, that was about what its creators thought we should aspire to. But from the get go we are shown that there are many issues with it, and that it is a utopia because someone is always fighting against the bad actors, working to improve life, and deal with all those issues. Star Trek is about reform from the inside.

Kirk and Spock both think the Admiralty, the Starfleet Code of Conduct and even the Prime Directive are needlessly restrictive, so what do they do? They find loopholes.

Spock tells Commodore Decker that he won’t stand for the endangerment of the crew, and if he wants to call it mutiny he can do so the second they get back to civilization, where Spock will be allowed to plead his case. Kirk is told that all the Court Martial business can be swept under the rug if he’s willing to give up his pride, and he says no. He forces them to have to go through the process, so that he can plead his case, but also to demonstrate that the system should work, it shouldn’t ignore issues.

Picard and River find out that the Admiralty are being controlled by worms, and take it upon themselves to stop the damage that they are doing. (Such a Star Trek sentence, I know.)

Deep Space Nine as it progresses makes the show about how the ‘utopia’ is based on colonialist ideals, and leaves behind the most vulnerable in society. In the beginning this is done with the justification that if they help the people suffering and being discriminated against, then they may lose a potential ally, or gain an enemy. The government decides that it isn’t worth the risk, and let’s people suffer.

But Deep Space Nine is not just as amazing as it is because of the Holocaust metaphors, its also because it pushes at the moral fabric of the Federation. It asks the question “What happens when push comes to shove, and your perfect society descends into war?” And it shows the fallout, and it shows the toll on people’s lives, and it shows that even when you aren’t living in a perpetual state of war it’s very difficult to go back.

Voyager asks “What happens when no one is looking? What happens when all you have are your ideals and morals that come from a society you are no longer attached to (that we as the audience know, no longer exists)? Do you sacrifice your morals so that you can get back to your utopia? In fact, do you sacrifice your ideals for your utopia as a whole. Or would sacrificing them make it something other than a utopia?”

Haven’t seen all of them yet, so: Discovery says “What happens when you make the wrong moral judgment (or depending on interpretation, the right one, but no one allows you to go far enough)? What happens when you are the scapegoat that they blame an entire war, on? Even one that has brewing since before you were born. What do you do when they place the blame squarely on your shoulders, and solely at your feet? What do you do when the one person who gave you a chance to prove yourself turned out to be lying the entire time, and actually wanted you to be what everyone else thought you were? 

“What do you do afterwards? How you trust someone again after that kind of betrayal? What do you do when some goodie two shoes, who has never seen the horror that you have, comes waltzing in and trying to apply their morals to your life? How could they possibly win your trust?” That one gets a definitive answer, they show their convictions, even when no one is watching, they say, “we have to do the right thing.”

It goes on to ask several others, (from what I know) which are in some ways similar to later seasons of Deep Space Nine, “What do you do when the utopia you loved and fought and bled, and that people died for, is gone? How willing are you to fight to get it back?”

Lower Decks introduces a character who sees the moral failings of Starfleet, shows them to other people and then encourages them to give up, and not try to make the situation better. They have influence, and could easily seize power, but what do they do? Nothing. They watch as people who should not be in charge remain in power and do nothing about it, and discourage anyone who wants to try. They don’t want things to be different, they want to rebel against their parents. And that’s it, not corrupt institutions, not bad protocols, or worse people in charge. They want their parents to notice them.

That is not Star Trek. Star Trek is about hope in the most dire of circumstances. It’s about persevering and going against the odds, even when you know you’re probably going to die anyway, but you still have to try. 

It is about not just fighting for yourself, but for your family, your people, your crew, caring about the faceless and the nameless, the ‘lesser’, those that cannot fight for themselves. Standing up to and against the institutions which did the wrong thing, which did not protect the people they should have. (The waters get muddy with the different framings of the maquis, but you are meant to be sympathetic to their ideas, and morals, if nothing else.)

Nihilism has its place in Star Trek, (a cynical outlook can be seen as one of the most common character traits across series.) Existential dread has its place too, but it has to be tempered with that hope. And that hope isn’t unwavering, in fact most characters at one point or another lose it, briefly or for longer periods of time, but in those moments they rely on those around them to keep the faith. They continually pass the torch of whose responsibility it is. One of the most important things is that there is always someone who has hope. 

And I would probably like Lower Decks if it seemed at all willing to explore the idea, “Well, what do you do when hope is completely lost? What do you do what there is no one left? And the thing you love is a shell of either what it used to be, or what it aspired to?”

Instead, all that is left of a green character who has never encountered that adversity and has their ideals forcefully beaten out of them. The central authority in their life tells them how they are wrong to cling to them (and then that person is demonstrated to be right.) I would be interesting to see the story if they wished to explore a slow dawning realization that hope is really lost, or even asked, “What do you do when there is nothing to hope for? And no one left to have that hope?”

To me it seems like they heard about Star Trek from parodies, and wanted to make jokes, so they set its central themes on fire, and then didn’t want to explore the implications. Just play in its dead carcass, and don’t you dare think about what it once was.

I know that Enterprise had its issues, but most people say that it improved greatly with the last season (besides the last episode), and say that it could have done more and been better if the network would have just kept it around a bit longer. People have their criticisms of Discovery and Picard, but I get the impression that they truly are labors of love.

Lower Decks gives me the feeling that it is just a blatant cash grab made by people who didn’t know, or understand the property and just had to do something with it. I know that their is diversity in the series, but I wish that I could say definitively that that the woman in the burka was actually meant to show the same sentiments as Chekhov in the Original Series. (As I remember seeing someone suggest as a viable option for how the New movies could handle Anton Yelchin’s death.) My thoughts right now is that it’s just an attitude of “Well, Star Trek is about diversity in thought, culture, and race, so we should make the characters diverse, because it’s a utopian future, right?” With no intention to to continue the way of dealing with current issues through allegory.

I hope I’m wrong. As far as I know it is a good show, but right now I don’t think it’s a good Star Trek one. 

(Although again take that with a grain of salt, because I have seen so little, and I didn’t particularly like the Orville, or what I’ve seen of it. Mostly, because it felt clunky, unnatural, boring and like they took half remembered plot points/storylines and placed new characters into them. The heart was there, but the thought didn’t seem to be.)

Tl;dr: Can someone tell me if Lower Decks has the characters fight back against Starfleet, or the bad elements in it? Or even if it explores why that isn’t an option? Why they have lost all hope?

[imfemalewarrior]

You said a while back that Star Trek is your fave TV show. May I ask why it is your favourite?

So The Original Series is my absolute favorite but I also love Star Trek: Enterprise and The Next Generation. I don’t like Star Trek: Discovery and the new movies are fine but they don’t stick with the overall theme of Star Trek. I will admit I have a somewhat rosy view of the shows but I don’t my rose-tinted glasses on this are hurting anyone. 

It’s my favorite because it was progressive, in my opinion it has aged fairly decently, it was hopeful, it was also blunt, the storylines were interesting and straightforward, but also taught you lessons. The overall premise is really hopeful, even when some pretty dark stuff is happening to the characters; in dialogue they say “on Earth we did away with money” (in the Utopian sense) they say “things got pretty bad for a while in Earth history but we learned and we fixed it and yes we are not perfect but we try to be better.” The Original Series in particular was extremely progressive in terms of casting with Chekhov, Uhura, Sulu, and Spock. Chekhov was Russian and the Original Series was filmed during the Cold War (it *is* from the 60s), Uhura was black during an even more racist time in the US (and served as a role model for Whoopi Goldberg who said she remembered seeing Uhura in the show and went running to tell her family that a black woman was on TV and she wasn’t a maid), Sulu was Japanese played by a Japanese man, and Spock was played by a Jewish man. This was at a time when films filmed around the same period had a liberal use of yellowface to say the least (looking at you, James Bond’s Dr. No). 

It was blunt in messages of “war is bad” and “access to birth control and abortion is good.” Women were shown to be active crew members during a time when we were expected to be homemakers and that’s it, that’s all we were supposed to aspire to be. And nobody in-universe questions it (excluding when they travel back in time several hundred years by mistake to the 60s and a man they meet expresses shock at women working on a spaceship, while Kirk makes it clear they are respected colleagues and are to be treated as such). Yes, viewed through today’s feminist lens the show has problematic portrayals of women (the Khan storyline where a well established crew member betrays her friends and colleagues for Khan after, like, a day; Women that go on missions off-ship tend to be portrayed as needing to be looked after and rescued; stuff like that, problematic but not as bad as it could have been). 

Star Trek TNG also took a much more anti-capitalist route. Star Trek Voyager had a woman as the captain (I haven’t watched it yet it’s on my list tho). Star Trek Enterprise had a woman as the second in command and a woman as head of communications (T’Pol and Hoshi, respectively); as well as women second in command in other ships, and it’s made clear these women are well respected among their colleagues. Star Trek Enterprise had messages of negotiation and peace over fighting and war as did Star Trek TNG, DS9 (haven’t watched but I’ve seen clips about it so), and TOS. Star Trek Deep Space 9 (haven’t watched it yet) had an entire storyline about a women’s rights movement among the Ferengi (an alien race whose culture is pure capitalism and is also sexist) that culminated in that movement being completely successful. Star Trek: The Original Series also had a Woman as head nurse (yes I know it’s not as progressive) but then in Star Trek: TNG a woman played the Chief Medical Officer, and the first actress to do so played a working mother who was written out of the series by being given a promotion to be the head of Starfleet medical when the actress had a commitment to another role IRL, and the next person to be hired as the Chief Medical Officer was also a woman. 

So I think I’ve waxed poetic about this long enough. I hope this answered your question! 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They