Download the JMS/Zabel Star Trek treatment

[Ranger REG]

Yet again proving that utopias don't work.

Of course, it won't work when Starfleet flag officers [and others] don't believe in it.

 

[Aesthetic Monk]

I finally got around to reading the treatment, after meaning to when this thread first popped up. I realize it was written a couple of years ago, and the landscape's changed a bit, and I also realize that it's a pitch, so it's supposed to sound excited. But I just have a hard time finding the treatment all that revolutionary, and certainly, for me, not worthy of the breathless tone it's cast in. There's a line between confidence and smugness, and this one crossed it for me.

I'd also agree with those who see striking B5/Crusade parallels in here. Wouldn't have necessarily made the show bad, mind you, but the B5/C "DNA," to borrow the treatment's words, is there.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yet again proving that utopias don't work.

Well, by its very definition, shouldn't a Utopia work?
If this is true (and I am not certain it is, but I tend to believe so), then the Federation isn't actually a Utopia - it might be close to it, but it isn't actually.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Well, by its very definition, shouldn't a Utopia work?
If this is true (and I am not certain it is, but I tend to believe so), then the Federation isn't actually a Utopia - it might be close to it, but it isn't actually.

The problem isn't really with a utopia per se. For a utopian society to work, it needs two things. The first is the cooperation of everyone in that society towards the utopian ideal. The second, and vastly more important reason as to why utopias don't work, is that they require no outside interference. As soon as there's someone outside pushing, that's someone not cooperating with the utopian ideal, thus breaking it. That's the reason there hasn't ever been one in human history - too many people on the outside pushing in.