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Liberalism is the air we breath sadly. I find it easy, if correct, to just blame the writers for being libs.
It's more interesting to wonder why TNG could be made in the 90s and isn't being made today, at least to me.
I have to wonder if, despite Great Man theory being garbage, it wasn't just thanks to Roddenberry. A lot of the 90s Trek made after his death (later seasons of TNG, DS9) were better than anything he was directly involved with, but still... he set the tone and the basic parameters for the 24th-century series with early TNG, and I don't think the producers went against that until the later movies at the earliest. Even DS9, the "darker" Trek, was still very clearly about people from a utopian society trying to hold on to their values in a more troubled galaxy.
Fun take: DS9 was made in spite of Rodenberry’s original vision for Star Trek. Roddenberry planted the seeds and his death actually allowed the workers to build from the core that had been established.
Attempts to “stay true” to Roddenberry resulted in Rick Berman fucking around and finding out on repeat with Voyager. Berman obsessed over the letter and not the spirit of Roddenberry and managed to almost kill Star Trek altogether.
my guess is the writers were still in a cold war mindset, but as science and reason oriented people (cuz they write for a utopian sci-fi show), they believed technology would advance us past the cap/com dichotomy we still find ourselves in
Lol no. Roddenberry told them too when he was high off his own farts and prescription lain killers and they continued to be forced to comply from the top down for better or worse and to different extents, like DS9 had less suit oversight cause they were micromanaging Voyager.
I am fine with voyager being the sacrificial dogshit it is because it distracted Rick Berman enough he shut the fuck up and let Ira Behr and the rest of that team make good art.
I am not fine, however, with the amount of abuse everyone involved with Voyager took from Berman. That guy is a fucking monster.
Lower Decks is pretty great and worth watching. I haven’t dug into Discovery yet, I was giving it a couple seasons to find its footing and haven’t circled back to see if it did.
What I’ve seen of Picard struck me as being more comprable to the fall of the USSR to revisionism and corruption. That’s an interesting concept to play with, although I doubt they really approached it with a leftist lens.
This essay made me want to sit down and watch through Picard, however, it sounds fun and I’m the type of person who can watch a sequel without it ruining previous parts of series for me.
I'm through S1 of Discovery and I'm conflicted. One hand, I ripped through the season pretty quick as I found myself wanting to watch the next ep pretty soon after finishing the last one. It's visually stunning and the acting is pretty good.
OTOH... much like you're talking about with Picard, it lacks much optimism. It doesn't "feel" like Trek. Characters other than one or two are pretty shallow and uninteresting.
So I guess I'd say it's decent for a sci-fi show, I just wouldn't really consider it much as "Star Trek", if that makes sense.
Lower Decks has the same advantage as stuff like obscure Star Wars novels have, where the money grubbing Eye of Sauron isn't too focused on them so they can wander off and do interesting shit.
When I first conceived of this essay, I thought it would be much more critical of Picard. I thought that writers and producers had missed the spirit of Star Trek which had captured me from behind the couch years ago. But as I reflected more, I realized that Star Trek changed because we did. It would be difficult for any writer in 2022 to imagine a utopian future.
This is something I've been trying to square with myself for a while. On the one hand, Star Trek isn't Star Trek without the optimism. The point isn't that the Federation/humanity is perfect, it's that it represented both an improvement over our current world, and a constant striving for a better one. On the other hand, how the hell is anyone supposed to look at the real world as it is and then try and extrapolate to a much brighter future? And even if they did, would we accept it?
I do think we need the optimism and utopianism back. Right now it's a constant stream of either backward-looking nostalgia, or dystopian/apocalyptic bleakness, and I personally have had enough of both. I agree with your assessment that the problems with Picard. It's not the fault of the creatives or producers not understanding Star Trek, it's that we collectively forgot why Star Trek mattered in the first place. Would love to get that back.
When I first conceived of this essay, I thought it would be much more critical of Picard. I thought that writers and producers had missed the spirit of Star Trek which had captured me from behind the couch years ago.
But as I reflected more, I realized that Star Trek changed because we did. It would be difficult for any writer in 2022 to imagine a utopian future. We lived through 9/11 and watched our own facade of stability and optimism collapse into bigotry and fear. We saw years of “hope and change” amount to nothing, and watched our leadership abandon its stated principles in favor of impotence and apathy.
This is a huge reason why it’s important for Star Trek to be written by leftists with revolutionary optimism. Roddenberry was more or less a Maoist and that sort of mindset permeates through the writing teams he put together and the culture he left behind.
That culture dissipated over time without a core to it, eventually flickering out with ENT. Rick Berman also sped that process up by driving away almost everyone involved with making Trek interesting because he’s a huge piece of shit.
In the present, a writing team of liberals will inevitably wind up creating doomer content about the future because they are suffering through the harsh material effects brought on by the failure and decay of their ideological project. They believe that the future must be bleak for everyone since it seems so bleak for the liberals of the imperial core.
TNG was possible in the 90’s because neoliberalism thought it had won and in their revelry, didn’t particularly notice that the utopian vision of Star Trek was based in fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Loved the article, great writing.
:dax-stoked:
Roddenberry was more or less a Maoist
He was? Yeah I get that he was way more progressive than most of his contemporaries but I'm not sure I follow here.
Majel Barrett went on record at one point saying he was a Maoist. But as far as I know, we only have her word for it, and only in one quote.
Great writeup, comrade! I cut my teeth on DS9 so looking at the Federation holistically, warts and all, fits like a glove. Picard isn't for everyone, but I love it and can't wait for season 2 next month.
The thing about Star Trek is that it’s never really been about space or aliens. It’s always been about us. The crew plays out little dramas and asks the audience to judge them. And as much as I love TNG, I can’t help but imagine it would struggle to capture an audience if it first aired today. The dramas it performs, ones which assume a better future is possible, are harder to believe than the warp drives which power it.
I am not sure about this, with all the streaming sites pumping out so much garbage it is not that hard to pull ahead if there is quality behind the production.
And that is assuming a Trek like show without the actual Trek franchise weight behind it. In general I remember seeing these arguments years ago when Discovery premiered, the justifications behind the modernization to basicaly justify that "old Trek" wouldn't sell and it was never an appealing argument. In the end that was just literal capitalist apologetics as if gutting creativity is justified in the name of making money. It is now clear that taking the gamble of accepting this new Trek because people were desperate for the TV return proved to be a horrible mistake. Turns out between comprimising and hoping it wont be shit and nothing it was far better to have nothing and let Trek remain dead.
I also think that while this is a good essay it does not even begin to touch some of the more real issues behind all the changes to Trek that are much more tied to material reasons.
The whole complicated relation between CBS and JJ and then his production company headed by Alex Kurtzman is about 70% of the reason behind all of it. There is a lot of information about it on the internet(some truths, some conspiracies).
When it comes to Picard the worst part about it is that Patrick Stewart was adamant that it was all about bringing back Trek optimism exactly because of the Trump/Brexit era, the world needed Trek... well look how that turned out. It is worth remembering PS troubled relationship with Trek during the movie era and the idea of putting all hope on his benevolent view of Trek's ideals was already a silly expectation.
If you want to read more about the movie era I highly recommend Michael Pillar's book FADE IN: From Idea to Final Draft The Writing of Star Trek: Insurrection(pdf here).
My disillusion with Trek was solidified after reading that book and Patrick Stewarts comments regarding the script in it. All the way back then PS was already pushing for Trek to head towards the new dumb action era, he regarded the TV era as basically over.
A few PS quotes from his correspondence with the writers regarding the early Insurrection script in the book.
I don’t agree about our being explorers again. I think that is series material but not movie material. Heresy though this may be, I do not think our movie duty is “to seek out new life and new civilizations...” though it still is “to boldly go...”
Yes, the Romulan question does mean a lot to me. I think it is a deadly idea to have even an ‘overhauled’ Romulan villain. After the Borg Queen it will look as if we just couldn’t come up with any new bad guys. But we must. Could they be the Federation Executive Council? (Gene, stop spinning.) Or a cadre inside the Council? The bad guys are right there in the heart of the Federation. That is certainly contemporary and, God knows, depressingly relevant.
Some 20 years before Picard.
Honestly I think it is a waste to engage with modern Trek philosophy and try to find complicated reasons for why the shows went towards this new direction. The reasons are mostly personal and dictated by the few people at the top. The end.
The whole complicated relation between CBS and JJ and then his production company headed by Alex Kurtzman is about 70% of the reason behind all of it. There is a lot of information about it on the internet(some truths, some conspiracies).
Can you expand on this? Haven’t heard about it before and I’m now incredibly curious.
The Discovery production was a shitshow:
-It was originaly under production by Bryan Fuller who had a completely different vision, it was going to be more episodic and perhaps more extravagant(full CGI crewmembers) but for whatever reason he was kicked from the production and Kurtzman crew took over with a complete mandate to do whatever it takes to save the show.
-The production was so disorganized that they were likely literaly googling for ideas and managed to land on some random Steam game page. Some poor guy called Anas made a game Tardigrades and he sued CBS for copyright over the STD S1 story. The plagiarized characters(looks like they literally copy pasted 3 characters) and setting is pretty fucking obvious and once again you have to be a legal ghoul to not see it. You can have one similarity, two maybe, three is pushing, fucking half a dozen or more is just obvious. Anyway he obviously lost.
-There were many theories whether STD was part of the prime timeline or not and there were some conspiracy theories that it wasn't prime timeline because of a licensing deal with JJ/Kurtzman.
The idea was that some of the designs are different simply because Kurtzman/JJ had a seperate license that gave him some profits from merchandising, however that would require his stuff to be "different".
CBS of course denied all of it, but then even if it was true what would they say? Either way it explains that some changes are completely arbitrary and nonsensical for money only.
Finished reading through this and I now understand Stewart’s part in making Picard the way it was much more clearly. I’ll also be reading through that book you linked this weekend, thanks for sharing a pdf copy of it.
My personal theory is that Patrick doesn't realy care about Rodenberry's vision, to him it is dead since All good things.
At first he wanted to be an action star, RLM talks about this so much, basicaly Nemesis was mostly him. Then I believe with his success as Professor X(specialy Logan) he fancied himself as a much "greater" actor then simply "Picard the diplomat". It makes sense that since Nemesis he would only come back if he was the main star but fans would only tolerate a TNG reboot with at least some of the old cast.
And here we see that he realy would never accept going back to the 80s TNG, it was either a "modern" version or nothing.
The irony I think is that he is so egotistical and/or old at this point that he didn't realize that Picard S1 had some outrageous stuff that would never make it Trek anyway, it realy feels like PS literally only read the script parts related to Picard and called it a day.
The TNG episode where Picard goes to Risa aka the sex tourism planet for a vacation, hooks up with the artifact thief and gets in trouble with Ferengi smugglers or whatever was made because Patrick Stewart wanted Picard to fuck and have punchups with bad guys
I don't think he necessarily ever entirely got the character
I think I read something similar about that episode where he is 1v3 or 1v4 aboard the Enterprise. Starship mine?
