You want to make star trek more of a left utopia than a liberal one. What changes do you make to the federation? What changes do you make to the setting at large?
Instead of the whole liberal neutrality bs with the prime directive we go around liberating oppressed planets posadist style.
This was my first thought too. How could you look down at millions of people starving and not step in with medical technology, food, or even just some fucking replicators for that matter?
Liberals would call that imperialism I guess.
Because the capitalists on that planet would just steal the replicators and build weapons with them
The Federation would also supply the people of the oppressed planets with the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as well as the supplies and weapons to liberate themselves.
Even in the most optimistic scenarios that would still result in countless planetary World Wars lol, in the the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard “The Prime Directive is a most correct philosophy”
Banks solves this in The Culture with Special Circumstances, which "gently" removes the impediments a species might have to achieve post-scarcity (and who are considered absolutely scary psychopaths by the civilisation at large.) This bites them in the arse at least once, when they try to dismantle a divinely ordered caste system only to find out the gods actually exist.
Still SC is what Starfleet ought to be, despite its problems. I hate libs using SC to both sides the culture, or claiming banks wrote it to show the inherant evils of gommunism
SC is actually the far right nationalist branch of the culture, they are moderate left by US standards.
Contact in General is prime directive, as their goal is to help the planets get better, but they often don’t Culture shock them, as Culture culture could basically destroy any pre-built identity.
The culture tends to let a billion die this year, so that in a 100 years, 500 billion can join the culture.
Culture also has open borders and the AI act as benevolent dictators/ Vanguard party.
I think the fact they seemingly allow anyone to visit for indefinite periods is wild,
Also that SC tends to be made up of Immigrants is fairly interesting, like if you grew up in the Culture- maybe you end up in Contact, but you need the outsider perspective of knowing the Culture IS better and having gone through Culture Shock to be willing to manipulate wars and economies instead of simply killing the rulers of a society.
The Culture would manipulate the Federation into shifting to a more Culture view of “why settle planets? How much work really needs to be done?” But the Culture also wants to allow cultures to go their own way so long as they aren’t harming themselves and others too much, based on the Cultures standards, which because the Culture is the bastion of Liberty- they constantly debate if they are truly righteous or just Imperialism pretending to be Anarchy.
the universal translator automatically censors out the word "tankie", replacing it with random gutteral noises
random gutteral noises
That's called Klingon you p'tak
Federation has recently become a communist state and people are still figuring out what that means.
Write it from the perspective of two Party members who are tasked with gathering information on the economic situation in the Federation ahead of a massive redistribution overhaul. Less of a whole-crew focus/ship-as-a-character deal and more of a deep dive into two specific characters and their dynamic.
10% Spice And Wolf microecon chats except about interstellar macroecon, 10% Party politicking, 80% Trek problem-solving with a communist twist.
First shot in the whole show is a tarantino trunk shot except it's our two protags opening up a crate they found on a derelict smuggling vessel that was moving, like, Space MDMA, and they have a conversation about how it isn't contraband anymore and the smugglers didn't have to die for this
A shot-for-shot remake of TNG except Riker fucks men and non-binary aliens exclusively
[Jonathan Frakes voice] I'm here on a diplomatic mission, but that doesn't mean I have no time for hunks.
No I think he should fuck everyone Riker is extremely Bi
One of the main crew members is a Commissar appointed to the ship by The Party whose job is to oversee the crew's ongoing political education. Technically they also have the job of rooting out spies and wreckers, but the society no longer faces capitalist encirclement so these functions are seen as somewhat of a historical footnote.
The ship's other officers are all elected by the section of the crew that they represent, so the bridge staff is one representative each from engineering, ops, security, etc. The captain is similarly elected, and all officers are subject to immediate recall by the crew outside of times of crisis.
Most of the "space ethics" stuff remains the same. The only difference I would give is that the captains would be given far more trust to resolve "prime directive conflicts" themselves, ie being allowed to save underdeveloped planets from plagues and natural disasters. The only red line as far as the Party is concerned is anything that relates to capitalist exploitation or imperialism, so interfering with an existing society's political or economic system is grounds to be purged.
The hallways are filled with art that is 50% posters that look like the Chinese-Soviet alliance propoganda and 50% graffiti-esque art done by the crew in their spare time. The hallway set should never look the same twice, though more diplomatic spaces are probably kept beige to avoid insulting visitors.
More time is spent in The Federation itself. It is revealed that, with lower needs taken care of autonomously, a renaissance has occurred. Massive public art exhibitions and sporting events are the norm, with almost all work being done by machines and what's left being done by groups of volunteers (join your neighborhood's service org today!).
Counselor Troi is the political officer and one of the episodes would be having an actual spy upon the ship and her struggling with a role she never expected to perform
Odo is the political officer, he has his Cardassian powers as a pseudo-NKVD agent, and the only thing he can educate people on is how to transform into a bird or a shovel.
Picard would have a big moustache and start the day off by killing 100 bazillion people. Then he would kick a dog to underline how evil communism was. People would starve because Picard ate all the grain with a comically oversized space spoon. Space-STASI (SPASI?) would be spying on everyone all the time. The Enterprise would be a Trabant and it would break down all the time because communism head made the builders stupid and lazy. Meanwhile the people would be yearning for freedom.
The show would be written to make you feel sorry for the space Nazis killed by Picard's totalitarian regime. You might have differences of opinion with the space Nazis but really they are just fighting for what they think is right and to stop
judeo-bolchevism from taking over all of the galaxy.TNG but:
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The prime directive is interventionist. You can recycle some prime directive plots by saying the Enterprise is not a first contact vessel and is supposed to sit on their thumbs until the experts show up whenever possible.
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Everyone has way more leisure time. Even more plots are kicked off because Geordi was being weird in the holodeck, or Riker came back from shore leave with something sus. Sometimes the entire plot is just trying to plan a surprise party for someone. People don't wear uniforms off-duty.
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The ship is run democratically when there's no emergency. Just ask the computer to run a poll. Some episodes start with them voting on the A plot or B plot, then accidentally they get both. They switch back to military organization whenever there's lasers and explosions.
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Nobody understands capitalism and it's a running joke. They try to play capitalist games and constantly mess up the rules by sharing. Entire episode plots are comedies of errors around trying to negotiate with the Ferengi.
I mean, the uniforms are sick as fuck, I'd wear that shit too.
Yeah, have you seen the ludicrous shit the civilians wear on Trek???
I'd stick with my TNG uniform too
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Yeah less complex civs shouldn't be contacted unless absolutely necessary. Maybe accelerated ala culture?
I'm not sure I agree? There is a difference between extracting value from someone in a weaker position than you and helping that person?
Its not great but honestly viewing it from a 21st century perspective it seems the lesser of two evils.
I'd rather have intervention by benevolent but somewhat flawed aliens than wait around for a global socialist revolution
Someone already wrote The Culture. Also see the Russian novels starting with "Hard to be a God"
