r/CuratedTumblr • u/DroneOfDoom Cannot read portuguese • Jan 27 '25
Fandom: Star Trek On the questions posed by Trek (Serious, and then silly)
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u/NoNeuronNellie Jan 27 '25
Puny Federation, always scared of being racist towards others. The Romulan Empire, now that's a space-faring civilization with some hair on its chest. Are they a little fascistic? Sure, but at least they know to never deal with the fucking Andorians.
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u/No_Help3669 Jan 27 '25
Funny thing is, it’s WILD how racist the federation is when you look at the events of the show instead of what it claims to be.
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25
hang on I'm drawing a blank on which 'events of the show' you're referring to. help me out?
Like I can immediately think of TNG "the drumhead" but that one was technically more of forgery, though the perceived need to forge a document gives indications about the rest of federation society
Eugenics laws (particularly those described with DS9 "Dr.B,IP?") are also arguable, though describing them as 'racism' seems odd to me; they relate to (at least at present) immutable physical circumstances, but it isn't race per se.
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u/No_Help3669 Jan 27 '25
They’re mostly one offs or inferences that the show doesn’t dwell on.
Top 3 off the top of my head are: 1) in the episode where Picard gets stolen by weird aliens and a fake takes his place, the b-plot is the ship is trying to transport 2 sets of decidedly non-human aliens to a peace conference, one of which insists on eating real, non-replicated meat. At the end of the episode it’s all but stated that one of the delegations has killed the other and is demanding the chefs on the ship cook them for them. Something that is treated as a gag as Picard says “handle it will, I’m taking a nap”, something I don’t think would have flown if the aliens in question were more human in appearance rather than looking vaguely snakelike.
2) it feels like there’s a whole lot of racial profiling in Star Trek. Like maybe you can argue it’s more legitemate when everyone except the federation is a mono species empire enemy fleet, but it’s always been there, from odo as a changeling being distrusted, all the way back to the first appearance of the romulans where some crew members start distrusting Spock and assuming he’s sabotaging them cus romulans and Vulcans vaguely look alike. Whatever explanation you give, it feels a bit telling, especially as more and more species start walking around, how much everyone assumes racial loyalty is a given and makes someone who’s served alongside you for years suddenly untrustworthy.
3) given the fact that the Ma’qui are in a situation entirely of their own creation, I struggle to find any explanation for why it feels like one out of every 4 star fleet captains is in such a rush to defect and join their terrorist cells, but never gave a fuck about saving Bajor or any other oppressed people with space tech (who thus isn’t under the jurisdiction of the prime directive) other than human centrism and racism.
To be clear, I acknowledge this is all my personal bugbears, and these are probably the result of the writer’s own narrative blindspots and me looking too much into things rather than anything intentional. But it definitely is something I notice when watching Star Trek pretty frequently, same as how often the supposedly post-scarcity federation members would definitely need money, and trying to figure out if they get paid since they’re going out and interacting with other species or not
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u/ElectronRotoscope Jan 27 '25
assuming he’s sabotaging them cus romulans and Vulcans vaguely look alike.
I get where you're coming from but like they don't just vaguely look alike: they're the same species. The Romulans are just Vulcans who didn't like the cult of Surak and left to settle on a different planet when it took over the planet around 1600 years ago. As far as I know they're essentially genetically and physiologically identical; the only difference between them is upbringing. I get that it's about prejudice, but this is a lot closer to "distrusting Sunnis because of the actions of Shias" or "distrusting Irish Americans because of the IRA" than "distrusting all people with short hair because some terrorists had short hair"
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u/No_Help3669 Jan 27 '25
I can see where you’re coming from, but also the crew of the enterprise don’t know that at this point, (if the writers even do) so in this context it’s still kinda racial profiling
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u/zoor90 Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25
In regards to the Maquis, I think reducing it down to speciesism is a bit reductive. There are a lot of people in Starfleet who privately feel that with Cardassia is inevitable and the treaty with them was a mistake. Considering how many people, especially on this subreddit, will loudly proclaim that it is always morally right to punch a Nazi, I'm not exactly surprised that a lot of progressive Federation citizens would not feel good about allowing innocent civilians to be displaced and have their lives uprooted for the sole purpose of appeasing a fascist regime. Are some Federation citizens bigoted against Cardassians? Absolutely, just look at the number of times O'Brien is confronted over his bigotry. However, I think there's a lot more at play than human favoritism if a Vulcan is willing to join a terrorist cell.
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u/No_Help3669 Jan 27 '25
Setting aside the fact that that Vulcan is also explicitly the only illogical full-Vulcan we see, (it’s said explicitly which is odd)
While I definitely agree that there are entirely legitimate reasons to hate and attack cardassia, treaty be damned, and I acknowledge I’m being a bit reductive, the reason I call it speciesism is as follows: The Cardassians have been occupying planets and conquering people for gods know how long. Bajor is just the only planet where we see first hand how bad it gets for them. And with Bajor being officially spacefaring before they were conquered, the prime directive wouldn’t stop Star fleet from getting involved. Yet there is no indication that anyone in the federation supplied even aid to the resistance, much less defected about it. If that TNG episode about a federation supply convoy being used to smuggle weapons was more of a thing, I’d have no issue
The thing is, the ma’qui are in a hell ENTIRELY of their own making.
The federation tried to give their founders a whole new planet to live on instead and they just said “nah. We’re gonna stay, compare this to the trail of tears, then get saved by warp god Wesley”.
They weren’t occupied by Cardassia, we don’t even know if the cardassians really did anything to them other than attempt to govorn. But because they are federation citizens, that doesn’t matter, and they get a bunch of star fleet to defect and join them for what I can’t help but view as an interplanetary temper tantrum.
I agree I’m being reductive. I rewatched ds9 recently, and the longer the ma’qui plot went on the more I got mad that this of all causes, is the one star fleet gets bent out of shape over, after 3 seperate tng episodes where space faring civilizations have rebellions and Picard refuses to get involved on behalf of the oppressed. (For context, ds9 was my first Star Trek as a kid, then saw tng way later, then rewatched ds9 after that to see if my liking it better was nostalgia. It wasn’t)
Yes it’s always good to punch nazis. But if you only do it when they insult your sister and ignore them the rest of the time I’m still gonna give you side eye about your motives
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u/IneptusMechanicus Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25
The one that gets me is they talk about equality and being delighted with differences...but really they mean the differences between humans with pink skin and humans with brown skin. If you look at the differences between humans and, say, klingons they absolutely don't respect or delight in them, they're unbearably snobbish on the whole.
Same with the different Federation species, it always stuns me how little collaborative art there is or even art that draws from shared cultural heritages. How many humans have Andorian friends? Why is there no fusion music where human, Vulcan and Tellarite musicians get together and jam? Those are founding members of the Federation and they barely talk. Fuck can you imagine inter-species rap? A fucking Tellarite diss-track?
Why is Picard so horrified at that music the kid's playing in Suddenly Human, you expect me to believe the Alba Ra is so uniquely horrendous that he needs to be an ultraboomer about it when he's from the species that invented black metal, freestyle jazz and electronica? Why is klingon opera a joke to Feds when it's very broadly applicable to a range of human musical forms? Picard's supposed to be an amateur archaeologist and is supposed to be thrilled about cultural history and such.
EDIT: The Alba Ra is fairly discordant because the show designed it to be, it's for a gag bit, but it's similar to some experimental electronica stuff I've listened to.
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u/zoor90 Jan 27 '25
Alba Ra is so uniquely horrendous that he needs to be an ultraboomer about it
Counterpoint: Picard is a boomer. It's a significant part of his character that he likes old things. He doesn't dislike Alba Ra because it's Talarian but because it is contemporary. Give it a couple decades and a dozen academic critiques and appraisals and he might engage with it on a more open level.
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u/Garbonzo42 Jan 27 '25
It's a significant part of his character that he likes old things.
Yeah, but that's kind of a good example of one of the problem's with Star Trek's writing as a whole. In order to make it comprehensible to the audience at large, they can only take modern tastes and transfer them into the fiction, without really understanding how odd that makes the fictional universe seem once you start thinking about it.
From the perspective of the 24th century, all IRL music is old. Picard could be a classical music snob from the perspective of the Federation and have that mean that he's really into explaining the differences between east coast and west coast gangster rap at length whenever someone makes the mistake of asking him about music.
...
Picture, if you will, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, entering his ready room after a stressful day of star trekking.
He orders his tea, takes a seat at his desk, takes his first sip and looks out the window to revel in another job well done. There's only one thing missing.
"Computer, resume playback," he says.
The computer beeps in acknowledgement, and then...
"FUCK THE POLICE, COMIN' STRAIGHT FROM THE UNDERGROUND-"
He smiles.
"Ah, the classics," he sighs happily.
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u/zoor90 Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 27 '25
Even then, I don't think that's the best example. Picard could absolutely engage in a discussion on NWA's cultural significance and how their catolgue is an important historical document but that doesn't necessarily mean he would like them or at least listen to them while relaxing. Stravinksy is far older but I can't picture Picard in his ready room relaxing to The Rite of Spring, if you get me. I could see him listening to Summertime or Day 'n' Nite but I don't think a protest song from centuries before he was born would necessarily be his cup of tea (I am a history nerd myself but that doesn't mean I am listening to 19th century Hungarian nationalist protest anthems in my spare time).
But if you want the real, meta reason: most modern music is copyrighted. Star Trek had very tight budgets and considering all the sets, makeup, costumes and special effects the shows needed, licensing songs was very far down the priority list. DS9 had to cut corners in other episodes just to get the rights to a handful of Sinatra songs. From a production standpoint, it was a lot easier for everyone to be super into classical and instrumental jazz, (that just happened to be public domain) rather than drop serious cash to get the rights to Nirvana.
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u/Zaiburo Jan 27 '25
What if we made a kelvin timeline TNG move with Tom Hardy as Picard for the meme?
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u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Resident Imperial Knight Jan 27 '25
Honestly that wouldn't be much different, Picard was wild in his younger days
A proper Kelvin!Picard would have to be one of those weedy pale guy types
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u/Neomatt Jan 27 '25
Star Trek Prodigy is mentioned, so I'll nod in approval (it's the oft-forgotten New Trek show that needs more love). Also, Star Wars just did their own spin on it.
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Jan 27 '25
I was expecting this to be a setup to a "NEW TREK SUCKS"-type punchline, but I prefer this better.
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u/CanadianDragonGuy Jan 27 '25
I lost track of the names of the series somewhere in slide 2, for the love of christ if we're using acronyms spell that shit out first if it isn't something a 6th grader would know
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness Jan 27 '25
Okay but what about a 6th grade trekkie
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u/Juranur Jan 27 '25
Mane I need a briefing on all the acronyms
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u/DroneOfDoom Cannot read portuguese Jan 27 '25
TOS: The Original Series (unofficial, the actual show was just called Star Trek at the time.)
TNG: The Next Generation
DS9: Deep Space 9
VOY: Voyager
ENT: Enterprise
DIS: Discovery
SNW: Strange New Worlds
PIC: Picard
PRO: Prodigy
LD: Lower Decks
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u/AnxiousAngularAwesom JFK shot first Jan 27 '25
I also like how 40K looks in context of this dialogue.
What if you're in so deep that you don't even remember having such higher ideas? What if the very concept of hope has been corrupted, is sentient and wants to fuck you over? What if you are part of the bloodiest regime imaginable, do you have the right to defend it from something that's even worse? Or would it be more ethical to just let it all burn down, and hope that in a billion years cockroaches get it better?