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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Section 31 can go fuck itself; a utopia does not need black ops. Otherwise star trek is a bunch of potato sack wearing communist squares lying throughout space.
Who in their right mind thinks Star Trek is a utopia? It’s a post scarcity earth society. But hell, half the races that are admitted to the Federation are only there because they developed FTL travel. Each race (humans included) still have a whole boat load of issues. Greed, hubris, battle junkies, etc. There’s no way it wouldn’t exist to try to keep the facade of something better.
I wrote this up a while back
https://lemmy.world/post/30261184
Still think that’s a very naive take. Just because scarcity has been solved, doesn’t mean everyone is magically altruistic. And even if humans were (hint: they’re not, look at what Sisko did), there are multitudes of other races, who are part of the Federation, who don’t have the same views or morals.
That’s basically the entire reason for Star Trek. To serve as an allegory for societal problems that we’re currently facing. Based on that, it stands to reason there would be a group trying to hold things together in the background.
It’s like watching series like Harry Potter and only focusing on the happy Wizardry, good vs evil stuff and overlooking the plight of things like the house elves, classist society, etc. You may have gotten hooked on one angle while completely overlooking the rest.
I can NOT watch Star Wars anymore without being overwhelmed the economic, spiritual, and political impication of droids that are always just... there.
Sadly, I think it's exceedingly rare for a franchise to ever mature enough to question the foundations of its world building. It seems the role of a franchise is to recycle itself to increasingly younger and more naive audiences until it has lost all value.
The best we can hope for is a spiritual successor offering commentary, like the way BSG is really in conversation with Star Trek (no surprise given the writing staff).
They are not meant to have just solved scarcity, they are meant to have grown beyond being backstabbing self interested people and grown to a better moral state.
Except that’s exactly how they phrased it. Through replicator technology there is no more scarcity of resources, however how you’re measured is more on what you do and produce (reference First Contact). Nowhere did it say that people’s desire for power ever diminished or waned, just that the form of “currency” has changed. That’s also for one planet: earth. It doesn’t refer to the rest of the member planets or how they work together.
How many episodes dealt with the admiralties shady dealings or their power struggles of things, or rogue captains actions. It’s always been there. Even in the TOS days. DS9 even more so.
"Man is meant to be free, but everywhere, he is in chains."
vs
"Fish everywhere are meant to fly in the air, but everywhere they swim underwater."
The idea that man can ethically evolve in the tragically short period offered by Star Trek is preposterous. Star Trek is the dream of progress manifested via technology, but we have the technology to feed the world right now, we have the technology to greatly expand medical care at a low cost, yet we don't because we are designed to be slaves of unjust systems that dominate and abuse.
Still love the show, though.
Why wouldn't it? The Culture series by Iain M Banks has multiple novels about that exact thing. In an infinite universe, the most benevolent of societies can still have enemies.
I think it’s a story device to show that systems don’t always function self-consistently like their facade would otherwise lead one to believe.
I wrote this up a while back
https://lemmy.world/post/30261184