Mini-rant: I dislike Star Trek so it’s not surprising to me to see this. I used to like it when it was only ToS/TNG (mainly TNG) in my mind with Voyager kind of off in the distance with DS9 further off but as a franchise most of it by sheer volume and weight is now so liberal, so anti-communist, so just bad, so grim-dark and anti-bloomer that ST originally was that I can’t say I like it as a property or universe. I enjoy the TOS films, I enjoy TNG and the TNG films, I like a decent chunk of Voyager and some of DS9 but after that… I fell out of love once Enterprise came out and after seeing the J.J. Abrams reboot of grim-dark trek I just walked away entirely and what I hear only encourages me that I made the right choice. I don’t care what they’re doing now. I did enjoy Lower Decks but that was a fan tribute to ToS/TNG/Voy/DS9 that isn’t even really canon so that’s probably why they could get away with some of what they did.
I felt like DS9 was the show to really showcase how the Federation was NOT communist. Sure, it was socialist; but it had a huge chunk of people living in the periphery of it. There is also the precedent that planets are able to run themselves however they please, as long as they abide to certain “Federation Principles”. What these are we don’t really know but there ARE planets out there that are exploitatively capitalist or just terrible to grow up on that are still a part of the Federation.
This is directly connectable to two historical events:
Death of Gene Roddenberry and control being ceded to other executives who were more liberal.
It was the very first Trek show made following the victory of the US in the cold war, the end of history rhetoric and feeling reaching its height. (While most of TNG was filmed after the fall of the USSR, the first 3-ish seasons were written and shot before that, thus setting a tone among the writers, additionally the impact of the fall of the USSR wasn’t really fully felt until the coup in 1994 which was most of the way through the show’s run) Additionally I believe Patrick Stewart held some sympathies as the time that might have pushed back against any attempts to revise the universe, even if they’d wanted to and I don’t think they wanted to make any major changes during the run of the show.
This can be laid at the feet of Rick Berman really more than anything. Gene Roddenberry was weird, he was leering, but he undoubtedly had some much better politics than Berman and those who followed. In the glow of the victory of capitalism and end of history the whole IP took a very dark turn necessarily on the belief that this was it, this was how things would continue and Star Trek would have to exist in some related context with less utopianism.
Voyager continued or at least didn’t revert these problems though given it’s situation being stranded far outside of the communist controlled space their actions and activities can be more or less justified as frontier and war communism tough stuff. What can’t be as easily bushed aside is the black ops section whatever introduced in DS9, the heavy use of fiat currency among the crew in ordinary situations including gambling, and a lot of other shifts in how the federation is defined and run.
So I agree but I disagree in its inclusion in ST “golden age” canon which is basically just TNG. Hence why I think the IP is not worth fighting over, the liberals won long ago and it’s only ever gotten worse since then. By itself in a vacuum or with TOS TNG is a great if somewhat utopian socialist show. Everything that followed has been decay if not outright plundering in a mirror version of what Russia went through in the 90s of shock therapy and terror.
Mini-rant: I dislike Star Trek so it’s not surprising to me to see this. I used to like it when it was only ToS/TNG (mainly TNG) in my mind with Voyager kind of off in the distance with DS9 further off but as a franchise most of it by sheer volume and weight is now so liberal, so anti-communist, so just bad, so grim-dark and anti-bloomer that ST originally was that I can’t say I like it as a property or universe. I enjoy the TOS films, I enjoy TNG and the TNG films, I like a decent chunk of Voyager and some of DS9 but after that… I fell out of love once Enterprise came out and after seeing the J.J. Abrams reboot of grim-dark trek I just walked away entirely and what I hear only encourages me that I made the right choice. I don’t care what they’re doing now. I did enjoy Lower Decks but that was a fan tribute to ToS/TNG/Voy/DS9 that isn’t even really canon so that’s probably why they could get away with some of what they did.
I felt like DS9 was the show to really showcase how the Federation was NOT communist. Sure, it was socialist; but it had a huge chunk of people living in the periphery of it. There is also the precedent that planets are able to run themselves however they please, as long as they abide to certain “Federation Principles”. What these are we don’t really know but there ARE planets out there that are exploitatively capitalist or just terrible to grow up on that are still a part of the Federation.
DS9 IMO is where the revisionism started.
This is directly connectable to two historical events:
Death of Gene Roddenberry and control being ceded to other executives who were more liberal.
It was the very first Trek show made following the victory of the US in the cold war, the end of history rhetoric and feeling reaching its height. (While most of TNG was filmed after the fall of the USSR, the first 3-ish seasons were written and shot before that, thus setting a tone among the writers, additionally the impact of the fall of the USSR wasn’t really fully felt until the coup in 1994 which was most of the way through the show’s run) Additionally I believe Patrick Stewart held some sympathies as the time that might have pushed back against any attempts to revise the universe, even if they’d wanted to and I don’t think they wanted to make any major changes during the run of the show.
This can be laid at the feet of Rick Berman really more than anything. Gene Roddenberry was weird, he was leering, but he undoubtedly had some much better politics than Berman and those who followed. In the glow of the victory of capitalism and end of history the whole IP took a very dark turn necessarily on the belief that this was it, this was how things would continue and Star Trek would have to exist in some related context with less utopianism.
Voyager continued or at least didn’t revert these problems though given it’s situation being stranded far outside of the communist controlled space their actions and activities can be more or less justified as frontier and war communism tough stuff. What can’t be as easily bushed aside is the black ops section whatever introduced in DS9, the heavy use of fiat currency among the crew in ordinary situations including gambling, and a lot of other shifts in how the federation is defined and run.
So I agree but I disagree in its inclusion in ST “golden age” canon which is basically just TNG. Hence why I think the IP is not worth fighting over, the liberals won long ago and it’s only ever gotten worse since then. By itself in a vacuum or with TOS TNG is a great if somewhat utopian socialist show. Everything that followed has been decay if not outright plundering in a mirror version of what Russia went through in the 90s of shock therapy and terror.