Star Trek and Idealism vs cynicism

[Bedrockgames]

Agree completely. For me, the best Star Trek always hammered home the moral of the story with words, not 'splosions. "In the Pale Moonlight" is such a great episode because it ends with Cisco essentially trying to convince himself that he can live with what he has done. I'm not so sure that he really can, despite the words used, because he's a fundamentally moral man. I think that the episode would have omitted that ending, if it wasn't a question to be asked in all seriousness.

Normally I am a bit cynical about this kind of messaging in dialogue but it just worked in Star Trek for some reason (maybe it was just earnest enough to pull it off).

Yeah I couldn't get into the new movies (the reboot ones from like 2009 or something) because they felt too action heavy to me. I don't mind a good action movie. With star trek that isn't the primary draw for me.

 

[Scribe]

So, how do you feel about Star trek leaning into cynicism?

Poorly.

Star Trek - Idealism
Star Wars - Space Opera - Hopeful. This is the only one that should be going in any and all directions. I love me my Darth Vader.
40K - Grimdark.

Thats just how I want my Sci-Fi IP's to be run, and thats it.

 

[Ryujin]

Poorly.

Star Trek - Idealism
Star Wars - Space Opera - Hopeful. This is the only one that should be going in any and all directions. I love me my Darth Vader.
40K - Grimdark.

Thats just how I want my Sci-Fi IP's to be run, and thats it.

And, as @Bedrockgames said, we have "Babylon 5" to go into the morally grey areas. Even then, Sinclair and Sheridan were the moral centres of their immediate world. They didn't just blindly follow the rules if they felt the results to be morally reprehensible.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And, as @Bedrockgames said, we have "Babylon 5" to go into the morally grey areas. Even then, Sinclair and Sheridan were the moral centres of their immediate world. They didn't just blindly follow the rules if they felt the results to be morally reprehensible.

Babylon 5 was a very interesting show because it was deeply cynical, and yet had this messianic optimism

 

[Ryujin]

Babylon 5 was a very interesting show because it was deeply cynical, and yet had this messianic optimism

A cynical universe in which some rare few were willing to make sacrifices, right down to The Ultimate Sacrifice, to hopefully make it a better place.

 

[jian]

I thought DS9 originally pitched Section 31 very well - a mostly adversary group who see themselves as hard men making hard decisions for the greater good but who are mostly wrong about everything, and partly exist to pop Julian’s ridiculous 007-based ideas about espionage. That part is almost a tiny and prescient story about radicalisation - our protagonist is attracted to a certain ideology and so a covert radical group with those trappings tries to recruit him, and his response is basically “Hell no” because he’s a decent human being. On a broader scale, Section 31 pokes fun at media glorifying spies and secret police and says “those are terrible people and in real life they’ve generally done much more harm than good”.

So no, I don’t think a series with Section 31 as protagonists is a good idea. Maybe the beginnings, if you pitch them as a SOE-like group who are trying to do the right thing but making up the rules as they go along and in doing so set up a legacy of stupid people doing stupid things.

About cynicism and idealism in Star Trek in general - yes, it’s idealistic and utopian, that’s the whole point. The underlying myth of Star Trek is that we - humans, but also sapient beings in general - can in fact make peace, cooperate, tolerate and support each other, and build a stable society that is all those things and is as powerful and glorious as any empire without its foundation stones being mortared with the blood of the innocent and oppressed (which is the case with every human empire we know of). Any Omelas crap can GTFO of Star Trek as far as I’m concerned. It’s not edgy or clever, it’s foolish and out of genre.

 

[payn]

One thing that has struck me over the years about Star Trek is how the optimism is viewed by fans. Its often said that the Federation has evolved into a Utopian society. However, you will notice that there is absolutely no Utopia outside the Federation. It is filled with savage barbarians, cold calculating beings, and untold numbers of dangers. It is the exceptional crew of the Enterprise (or other ship/station/etc..) that brings light to the darkness. Even when the heroes are wrong, they quickly reverse course and save the day.

You mess with that "exceptional" idea and things start to get real difficult to accept for some of these folks. When you realize that simply being a Federation citizen, and simply being a crew member of the Enterprise, doesnt make one exceptional alone. However, we the viewers are often only given the perspective of the Federation and its Starfleet officers, that we dont have a nuanced perspective. Enter DS9, and suddenly things are not neat, bright, and correct. The source of conflict is both external and internal and you quickly realize there really is no utopia anywhere but where the idealist make it. Which is by far more powerful a message than exceptionalism can ever be. However, that doesnt stop a lot of folks from being very uncomfortable with that perspective.

Dont mistake me for saying NuTrek S31 is good, it isnt, but I dont think the concept of what it takes to maintain a utopian society is one that should be avoided in Star Trek either.

 

[Ryujin]

One thing that has struck me over the years about Star Trek is how the optimism is viewed by fans. Its often said that the Federation has evolved into a Utopian society. However, you will notice that there is absolutely no Utopia outside the Federation. It is filled with savage barbarians, cold calculating beings, and untold numbers of dangers. It is the exceptional crew of the Enterprise (or other ship/station/etc..) that brings light to the darkness. Even when the heroes are wrong, they quickly reverse course and save the day.

You mess with that "exceptional" idea and things start to get real difficult to accept for some of these folks. When you realize that simply being a Federation citizen, and simply being a crew member of the Enterprise, doesnt make one exceptional alone. However, we the viewers are often only given the perspective of the Federation and its Starfleet officers, that we dont have a nuanced perspective. Enter DS9, and suddenly things are not neat, bright, and correct. The source of conflict is both external and internal and you quickly realize there really is no utopia anywhere but where the idealist make it. Which is by far more powerful a message than exceptionalism can ever be. However, that doesnt stop a lot of folks from being very uncomfortable with that perspective.

Dont mistake me for saying NuTrek S31 is good, it isnt, but I dont think the concept of what it takes to maintain a utopian society is one that should be avoided in Star Trek either.

One of the things that TOS gave us was the idea that criminal behaviour can often be caused by mental illness, of one sort or another. Rather than warehousing their criminals, they made a real effort at rehabilitation. The worst cases, like Garth of Izar, required new technology in order to be rehabilitated. And it did really seem to be rehabilitation rather than some form of brainwashing, like the Neural Neutralizer that appeared in the TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind." That was used criminally and the situation was rectified.

 

[jian]

I certainly think we could do with seeing more utopianism (or at least stable, pleasant societies where everybody gets on OK and nobody is poor or oppressed) outside the Federation. It should not be a marker of a functional society that it immediately joins the Federation like Bajor. I mean, I can see why they would - there are some literal space Nazis just next door - but it shouldn’t be a rule or requirement.

Weirdly I think the best example we have is the Klingon Empire, which honestly is at this point an Empire only in name. Yes, it’s politically unstable with a new Chancellor every few years at the point of a knife, but that’s actually how the Klingons seem to like it - it’s not as if the constant turmoil actually seems to negatively impact the life of the average Klingon, which seems no worse than the life of the average Federation citizen. It’s more like elections but, you know, with bat’leths and nobody voting, whoever still has their head attached at the end of the proceedings gets to say they’re in charge but mostly the High Council and bureaucracy keep things running. And everyone gets to pretend that Klingons are this fierce martial race barely held back from conquering the quadrant by their innate nobility and not, you know, a nation of citizens and workers like everyone else.

 

[cranberry]

Can you maintain an ideal by breaking it?

If it's a temporary measure to restore the ideal, then yes.

How many times have we seen the Prime Directive broken/ignored?