warpfactor9

[warpfactor9]

[ID: Digital art on a dark halftone background of Kirk shown from the side in his Wrath of Khan uniform. He's curled into a ball, legs hugged to his chest, and forehead resting on his knees. A few tears fall from his tightly closed eyes onto his slacks. /End ID]

the needs of the one

[warpfactor9]

When attempting to critique the values of a long-running franchise like STAR TREK, it's important to draw a distinction between superficial issues and structural ones.

"Superficial" in this sense doesn't mean "minor" or "unimportant"; it simply means that an issue is not so intrinsic to the premise that the franchise would collapse (or would be radically different) were it changed or removed. For example, misogyny has been a been pervasive problem across many generations of STAR TREK media, which have often been characterized by a particular type of leering-creep sexism that was distasteful at the time and has not improved with age. However, sexism and misogyny are not structural elements of the TREK premise; one can do a STAR TREK story where the female characters have agency and even pants without it becoming something fundamentally different from other TREK iterations (even TOS, although there are certainly specific TOS episodes that would collapse if you excised the sexism).

By contrast, the colonialism and imperialism are structural elements — STAR TREK is explicitly about colonizing "the final frontier" and about defending the borders, however defined, of an interstellar colonial power. Different iterations of STAR TREK may approach that premise in slightly different ways, emphasizing or deemphasizing certain specific aspects of it, but that is literally and specifically what the franchise is about. Moreover, because STAR TREK has always been heavily focused on Starfleet and has tended to shy away from depicting life outside of that regimented environment, there are definite limits to how far the series is able to depart from the basic narrative structure of TOS and TNG (a captain and crew on a Starfleet ship) without collapsing in on itself, as PICARD ended up demonstrating rather painfully.

This means that some of the things baked into the formula of STAR TREK are obviously in conflict with the franchise's self-image of progressive utopianism, but cannot really be removed or significantly altered, even if the writers were inclined to try (which they generally are not).

What I find intensely frustrating about most modern STAR TREK media, including TNG and its various successors, is not that it can't magically break its own formula, but that writer and fan attachment to the idea of TREK as the epitome of progressive science fiction has become a more and more intractable barrier to any kind of meaningful self-critique. It's a problem that's become increasingly acute with the recent batch of live-action shows, which routinely depict the Federation or Starfleet doing awful things (like the recent SNW storyline about Una being prosecuted for being a genetically engineered person in violation of Federation law) and then insist, often in the same breath, that it's a progressive utopia, best of all possible worlds.

This is one area where TOS (and to some extent the TOS cast movies) has a significant advantage over its successors. TOS professes to be a better world than ours, but it doesn't claim to be a perfect world (and indeed is very suspicious of any kind of purported utopia). The value TOS most consistently emphasizes is striving: working to be better, and making constructive choices. Although this can sometimes get very sticky and uncomfortable in its own right (for instance, Kirk often rails against what he sees as "stagnant" cultures), it doesn't presuppose the moral infallibility of the Federation, of Starfleet, or of the characters themselves. There's room for them to be wrong, so long as they're still willing to learn and grow.

The newer shows are less and less willing to allow for that, and, even more troublingly, sometimes take pains to undermine their predecessors' attempts along those lines. One appalling recent example is SNW's treatment of the Gorn, which presents the Gorn as intrinsically evil (and quite horrifying) in a way they're not in "Arena," the TOS episode where they were first introduced. The whole point of "Arena" is that while Kirk responds to the Gorn with outrage and anger, he eventually concedes that he may be wrong: There's a good chance that the Gorn are really the injured party, responding to what they reasonably see as an alien invasion, and while that may be an arguable point, sorting it out further should be the purview of diplomats rather than warships. By contrast, SNW presents the Gorn as so irredeemably awful as to make Kirk's (chronologically later) epiphany at best misguided: The SNW Gorn are brutal conquerors who lay eggs in their captives (a gruesome rape metaphor, and in presentation obviously inspired by ALIENS) when they aren't killing each other for sport, and even Gorn newborns are monsters to be feared. Not a lot of nuance there, and no space at all for the kind of detente found in TOS episodes like "The Devil in the Dark."

[warpfactor9]

[ID: A close-up still of Spock's hands placed artfully on his Vulcan lute, which rests in his lap. /End ID]

currently going absolutely feral over this rn

[warpfactor9]

my name is faith so as you can imagine i feel super normal about this episode

[Video Description: Worf and Data are standing together having a conversation in the conference lounge, the camera cutting between their faces as they speak. /End ID]

[warpfactor9]

doomed yuri on the brain

[warpfactor9]

[ID: A traditional drawing in markers of Data and Geordi shown from the shoulders up on a gray background. Geordi looks at the viewer, and behind him, Data looks down at Geordi with wide eyes and raised brows. A few small speech bubbles with indistinct text are scattered around them. /End ID.]

Drawing of friends☺️☺️☺️☺️🫶🫶🫶

[warpfactor9]

i’ve started watching enterprise and my main takeaway is that every conflict goes like this

t’pol: i recommend exercising caution and patience

archer: 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸

[warpfactor9]

ANDREW ROBINSON as ELIM GARAK with Alexander Siddig as Dr. Bashir in DEEP SPACE NINE, S2.E22 - The Wire (1994)

Maybe the most important scene of ds9 ever to me.

[warpfactor9]

Geordi and Data(in Geordi's vision)

[warpfactor9]

I'm on season 5 and I have many feelings, but first and foremost THIS weirdo is back!

[warpfactor9]

IT'S AN INTENTIONAL REFERENCE I PROMISE

sometimes data looks up at people with these big wet eyes and it's suddenly perfectly clear how he became everybody's favorite robo-boy

[warpfactor9]

i neeeeeed to do more tosposting, i've been on such a daforge kick lately but i miss pavel and sulu and uhura and chapel and janice... maybe it's time for another rewatch

[warpfactor9]

in light of the recent snw chess excitement, i'd like to remind you all that daforge plays too :)

[Video Description: A clip from Star Trek: TNG of Geordi and Data sitting at the bar in Ten Forward. When Picard calls over the comms, Data stands to leave, nodding his assent when Geordi asks him to play chess just before he walks out the door. /End ID]

[warpfactor9]

made a (mostly casually) visorless geordi supercut <3

[warpfactor9]

supercut of data android maintenance (mostly done by geordi) part two [part one]

[warpfactor9]

Thursday at Star Trek Las Vegas!!!

Andrew Robinson was so sweet and I talked to him for a while which was awesome! I was able to get my copy of A Stitch in Time signed ahhhh

Nana Visitor is so so so so nice. I don’t think I will ever forget how nice she was.

I also talked to Brent Spiner and he is so funny hello?!!! He makes a joke in every sentence.

@garak-pussy-indulgence, friends, and I. We served (cardassia) so hard in this photo

@nerys-kira-major and I!!! Best Kira cosplayer

Other photos!!

[warpfactor9]

everyone get butchfemme NOW !!!!!