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The Politics of Star Trek
smitty_one_each writes: Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation has written a breezy overview of the politics of the little-known show Star Trek. His thesis: "...the key to Star Trek's longevity and cultural penetration was its seriousness of purpose, originally inspired by creator Gene Roddenberry's science fiction vision. Modeled on Gulliver's Travels, the series was meant as an opportunity for social commentary, and it succeeded ingeniously, with episodes scripted by some of the era's finest science fiction writers. Yet the development of Star Trek's moral and political tone over 50 years also traces the strange decline of American liberalism since the Kennedy era." The article traces through episodes at each phase of the franchise, exploring literary allusions and lamenting that "Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
Star Trek Politics were always heavy-handed, often nonsensical, and arguably became somewhat to the detriment of the story while Roddenberry was in charge.
So... politics then?
Nazi episode. Roman Empire episode. MAD episode. All in TOS. Also the Native American one, and the one with the American Flag for some reason.
And in TNG, the Nicotine one.
Sorry, but the show was full of cliches and banalities.
Don't forget, many early TNG episodes were originally either TOS episodes or Phase II episodes that were not produced in their intended shows and were adapted for TNG characters/setting, which mainly worked because early TNG was still in its infancy as far as developing that setting and those characters.
We see a lot more consistent politics in both later TNG and in later movies like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but the main characteristic that we see in all Star Trek is that the politics works well when the economy is approaching post-scarcity, where people don't have to worry about basic things like home, food, clothing, and transportation. Those things are either free-free or free to a mimimum standard. Education is also very important, nearly everyon from the Federation clearly has a full and thorough education, which stands out in all the more contrast to Tasha Yar's failed-colony home planet that's more like out of The Warriors, or on Bajoran colonies where people have been refugees for multiple generations.
What I take away from Star Trek is that in an economy where everyone is financially sound and is educated, people can choose to live in different ways from each other and so long as they're not victimizing each other, live-and-let-live applies. Picard's family is very traditional, but LaForge's family, both genders, all sought-out military service. Data's creator Dr. Soong was a madman and given how he seems to have galavanted around the galaxy, a bit of a huckster.
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I always felt Star Trek politics were pretty cut and dried, as each race either directly represented a specific country or ideology Federation: Western world, especially the US, given the diversity of participants. Romulan Empire: Soviet Union, semi paranoid society, fairly closed, state security is fairly powerful and ever present (Tal Shiar = KGB). Mix of military power and secrecy to further their agenda (The plot line of supplying weapons to the Duras is straight out of the Soviet playbook of arming allies with Soviet weapons, AK-47's being the most common). Cardassian Empire: East Germany. Odo is quoted as saying "Not even the Tal Shiar can match the Obsidian Order" in the episode The Wire. Poor, even more paranoid, uses miltary expansion to acquire resources. Obsidian Order = Stasi Ferengi = Captialism/Wall St. where everything has a price. Tholians = Japanese. Exotic technology, very advanced, but xenophobic to the extreme. Borg = China. More intent on taking then innovating, seen as homogeneous mob. Suppresses dissent for the collective/society good. Dominion = Middle East. Average religious fanatic = Jem Hadar (believe in a god and is willing to die for them). Vorta = Mullahs (use the belief of the founders to enforce their will). Founders = Typical Middle East dictator/monarchy, who use religion purely as an excuse to maintain control, and don't care what so ever about their people and throw them away with little regard. Bajorans = Israel. Home occupied, people murdered, scattered to the wind. Rebuilds. Klingon Empire = Probably West Germany, due to overarching militarism, and pride. As seen in TNG, battleground for the ideologies of Romulans and the Federation, similar to the ideological battles in Germany, symbolized by the Berlin Wall. But really any place where there was combat over the ideolgies could represent here (Vietnam, Korea)
> The PD has always seemed to me to be a "I don't want to give a fuck" get out of jail free card
Oh, my. The Prime Directive has been violated, _repeatedly_ in every version of Star Trek. It's much like Constitutional law and like the amendments. It had to be balanced against the other directives, on the spot, by captains and other officers often outside of direct contact with StarFleet and with the Federation. And the interaction of it with justice, with morals, and with StarFleet made for fascinating plots.
Please note: these were fictional _plots_, in a fictional universe. They did not have to be completely consistent. One can hurt onself quite badly insisting on complete consistency in such a universe..
Current status of our welfare systems seems to disagree.
Actually,TNG had a heavy overtone of that. Enough that I remember reading a TV Guide early review (remember that?) which pointed out that the series' society seemed to find anything not in line with Federation thought was mental illness and the author found it a bit creepy that they seemed bent on "fixing" people.
Accept in ST, they never did "no longer exist". There's always been an obvious difference in life style luxury between anyone in the Fleet or the political classes and everyone else.
There is a simple solution to all the melodrama. Have someone fire her ass.... are alwaus calling for public servants to get fired, why not a deadbeat county clerk?
Sorry, but that's utterly impossible. Her job is an elected position; she can't be fired. She has to be impeached (or jailed for contempt, which is what happened). It's like trying to "fire" the President of the US, it can't be done.
Now why the clerk position is elected, I have absolutely no idea. It makes about as much sense as judge positions being elected.
However, there's nothing preventing this bimbo from either resigning, or allowing one of her staff to sign the things. But noooo, she refuses to do any of that, because she says she has to make a stand. She's just like the people back in the 60s who refused to allow interracial marriages.
The Federation is pretty much straight-up atheist organizationally, but does not seem to incorporate this into general policy nor push that on their members. Every series has reinforced this repeatedly. There are still many religions followed by various races both inside the Federation and other governments, Many Star Fleet members have religious or spiritual beliefs, yet the general idea seems to be "we don't know what happens after death so over-all we don't care". Their version of secular humanism still endorses the general idea of "law" and "don't do bad things" without the need for a constant threat from a supernatural entity to keep people from falling into barbarism.
The biggest reason for this, IMHO, is that their society isn't all crowded up and stuck into a confined space like we are. If you feel like leaving all civilization behind and forming your own colony based on whatever philosophy you can. We on Earth are slowly loosing our "freedoms" because there is a very limited supply of everything so it all must be managed. Fishing rights, mining rights, even water rights, are all policies due to scarcity. Star Trek doesn't have this, they are (at least in the core worlds) post-scarcity so there is little reason to fight over this or much else. If you disagree, there is an almost unlimited amount of worlds you can just pick up and go to and do your own thing. This goes back to Roddenberry's original "Wild West" idea; there is once again a vast unpopulated frontier to expand into.
They also don't have to keep "undesirables" in their society. If someone has personality quirks that makes them anti-social, then those people can be moved to somewhere else so not to be disruptive. On Earth we're forced to live next to people who break the law under the belief of their religious system and there isn't much anyone can do about it. If those people had a chance to go somewhere else they would; but there is no place to go.
If you run a business that's open to the public (as opposed to a private-membership club), then you can't discriminate--it's the law. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be in business. It's no different than refusing to serve lunch to black people, or refusing to dispense live-saving medication to black people.
I wonder if the Prime Directive was deliberately intended to be a [non-blatantly] dumb idea that inevitably would result in problems and conflict (remember: this is entertainment). It shouldn't be a good idea. If it were a good idea, then it'd need to get broken in order to support drama.
I'm reminded of Asimov's laws of robots.
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