S4:E21 - The Drumhead
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
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SNW Ad Astra Per Aspera for the win!
Truer words have never been spoken
Democracy and democratic norms are not a destination that you arrive at and sit comfortably in .... it's a continuous journey that never ends and as soon as you think you've arrived, you've begun the process of straying off the path.
Always loved how Star Trek made us think of these important social ideas and perspectives.
Episodes like this are why this show means so much to me.
As much as I agree with the general idea, I feel like this exact hard-line approach to freedoms is what got the US where it is today. Daily Mass shootings as a consequence of not abolishing the freedom to own guns, no worker protection as consequence of not losing entrepreneurial freedoms.
I know thats not what Picard had in mind here, but he and his dialogue were written by US authors influenced by this system
And free speech was never absolute. Forget yelling fire in a crowded etc, no sane person thinks that you should be allowed to commit fraud, for example.
Yep, and a large group of people thought their fundamental freedoms were being trampled on when it was suggested they ease off on being racist homophobes, and things just snowballed from there
Indeed.
Philosophies are good things to hold, but you can certainly take them to extremes and end up doing yourself/wider society a disservice.
Yep those chains are actually there for a reason in some cases, like antivaxers willingly spreading misinformation that affects public health, people who encourage others to self harm, swindle the elderly, etc.
Star Trek is famous for saying everything you wish you could say, that you wish everyone was saying, but just can’t find the collective strength to do so.
Losing the Star Trek franchise to the profitable, corporate machine of pumping out dollars… Well, it was extremely incompatible with the message. Star Trek had always had.
CEO of Paramount has openly stated that the Kelvin timeline Star Trek films are no more. But what may come next for Star Trek?
I mean, while the ownership of the franchise is legit concerning and I am worried about where it's going with the end of LD and PRO, at least SNW has managed to get in some good ones, especially Ad Astra Per Aspera and Pelia bluntly calling Star Trek "the whole no-money, socialist utopia thing".
There's certainly been some gaffes, and I've been driven a little nuts by the relationship stuff going on in S3, but there's still strong stuff in that show for now (granted, I've only watched up to S3 E8 so far). At the very least, it got some last words in before we possibly hit a dark age for while.
The Kelvin timeline is a weak addition to the franchise and had no promise outside of nostalgia fan service. Trek holds so much promise for untold stories - why reuse characters and try to tell the same stories?
Paramount has made many recent poor choices but focusing on the good Trek is not one of them.
The Star Trek Academy show is filming now