halflife
5 days ago
Watching him in Star Trek TNG made me reevaluate how management of people should be done, his character was assertive but compassionate. High morals coupled with grounded reason.
I also want to mention his hilarious role as bullock in American dad, the way he takes a role both so seriously and ridiculously makes him so fantastically hilarious.
I love him and will miss him.
stuxnet79
5 days ago
Star Trek TNG as a whole was a masterclass on how to effectively manage a high performance team. It's a favorite watch in tech leadership circles for this reason. Every now and then I re-watch this clip of Data taking over the enterprise and the inevitable hiccups he runs into [1].
Really high quality writing for its time.
WalterBright
5 days ago
Keep in mind that Star Trek is a fictional utopia. When writing a script, one can make anything work out well.
The original Star Trek was Roddenberry's vision of utopia. The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all. Any and all of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. None do anything bad (unless it's a plot device with an explanation that absolves them).
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed watching ST very much. Just keep in mind that that it's a fiction.
solyin
5 days ago
It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures. Ask about sci-fi and what comes to mind first is almost always some kind of dystopia. Terminator, 1984, Deep Space 9, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Dune, Tank Girl, Minority Report, iRobot, Westworld, Altwred Carbon. Those aren't worlds that seem like great places to live if you're not rich! So Star Trek is much a work of fiction as the rest of those, but for all its flaws, at least is paints a mostly nice picture of the future that someone might want to live in, not crushed under the heel of a corporation. It makes sense; a story with no conflict isn't interesting, and dystopia provides for conflict. To philosophize, it's why I think we're so afraid of AI and robots and the future. It's why I wrote my book the way I did.
AnonymousPlanet
5 days ago
> It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures.
Utopias used to be the most common scifi futures. This is what the so called Cyberpunks (Sterling, Gibson, Cadigan, ...) rebelled against.
It used to be all about what wonders technology will bring us. By the time of the 70s it became clear that technology doesn't necessarily make everything better, but can be a burden in itself, or even widen the gap between the haves and haves not. And that is what they wrote about. It turned out to be the most popular scifi with audiences deeming it more believable.
vidarh
4 days ago
They used to be more common maybe, but even the titular "Utopia" by Thomas More had slavery. Sometimes the "perfect" settings were imperfect due to the times they were written, often they were intentionally imperfect, and that was the point.
E.g. consider HG Wells The Time Machine, where the future start out seeming quite like an utopia but then we meet the Morlocks.
But lots of books were downright dystopian much earlier. Heck, several of the "standards bearers" for dystopias pre-date cyberpunk by a lot, like Brave New World, This Perfect Day, 1984.
Particularly stories like The Time Machine where the setting as a whole very much was revealed not to be an utopia were among the most common "utopian" settings pre-cyberpunk.
Pure utopias were very rare for a reason: They're really hard to set compelling in stories in, and so most of the ones that do exist tend to set stories on their edges and fault lines.
What changed with cyberpunk wasn't that (surface) utopias went away, or even that we get to see the imperfect underside, but that the script is flipped so that the protagonist isn't a tourist on the underside, but belongs there, and is often alienated from any seemingly perfect parts of the world they inhabit.
Compare settings that do show both sides, like The Time Machine, and a cyberpunk version of The Time Machine would probably have a protagonist that was a Morlock. The world itself wouldn't change, but we'd get to see it from the opposite POV.
NoGravitas
4 days ago
> Pure utopias were very rare for a reason: They're really hard to set compelling in stories in, and so most of the ones that do exist tend to set stories on their edges and fault lines.
True, and I think Iain M. Banks specifically commented on this in interviews and essays. The Culture novels are mostly set outside of The Culture. Star Trek is mostly set on the fringes of or outside of Federation space, but especially during Roddenberry's lifetime, no matter what the crew was dealing with, they were very self-consciously people from a utopia.
I like your analysis of Cyberpunk.
vidarh
4 days ago
Yeah, I specifically had the Culture in mind when I wrote that, because Banks seemed a lot more self-aware of that and playing with and actually telling us fun things about his utopia and trying to actively flesh it out, while to me at least it feels like Roddenberry was caught up in wanting Star Trek to be morality plays in space that had to teach a lesson to the point of getting very heavy handed with it at times (and he might be right the heavy-handedness was necessary given some of the takes I've seen on various episodes), while still telling us frustratingly little about his utopia itself.
benj111
4 days ago
Frankenstein, the first scifi, well first I'm aware of, isn't describing a utopia.
I don't know if it's selection bias, but the unabashedly positive sci fi of the mid 20th century seems to be more of a blip than a pattern.
vidarh
4 days ago
I think it's selection bias in what we like to remember too. The 50s has huge quantities of post apocalyptic sci-fi for example...
WalterBright
5 days ago
Technology makes a lot of things better. Like eliminating symptoms of 95% of cystic fibrosis victims.
> even widen the gap between the haves and haves not
America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
stiray
4 days ago
> America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
False Equivalence, Red Herring, Chronological Snobbery, Fallacy of Relative Deprivation, Contextomy.
So, by this logic, a homeless person with a used iPhone is better off than Louis XIV (who literally owned all of France) just because the king couldnt play Candy Crush?
This statement confuses global technological progress across centuries with an individuals actual financial security, social power, and quality of life within their own modern society.
I simply just cant understand why would someone repeat such a statement (and I have seen it everywhere).
sshine
4 days ago
> > America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
> False Equivalence, Red Herring, Chronological Snobbery, Fallacy of Relative Deprivation, Contextomy.
There's a lot of reasonable arguments to unpack here.
But no, it's not that Louis XIV didn't have an iPhone, it's that the vast middle class in developed countries has central heating and access to penicillin and don't die from giving birth as much.
Also, America's poor are definitely worse off than medieval kings. They don't have access to those basic things that keep most modern people wealthier than medieval kings, like food, shelter and health care.
Some of the older (pre-medieval) king's ruins in Denmark are (by our standards) small stone houses with a moat, and what makes them remarkable is that they're made of stone, and the moat is rather big, so it keeps people out. Like metal doors in apartment buildings, sort of. (Correction for the historians: The oldest king's ruins are of course just holes in the ground where wooden beams used to stand.)
s/America's poor/Europe's lower middle class/ and you're there.
stiray
4 days ago
I think that we are both well aware that the statement was not about "Candy Crush" or "Louis XIV". As the "America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings" was not about technological progress.
Some more thoughts for you: since 19xx workers are productive to the scale of 10x (feel free to downplay it to whatever factor over 3x as this is the minimal amount, everyone agrees on except of those that harvest the difference) against those times. But we are still working 8/8/8. Who takes the difference? Of 10x (or 3x)?
defrost
4 days ago
> it's not that Louis XIV didn't have an iPhone,
probably more that Louis XIV was not a medieval king.
WalterBright
4 days ago
America's poor do have food, shelter, and health care.
sshine
4 days ago
quantify poor and shelter
mangodrunk
4 days ago
You think the biggest difference is Candy Crush? Have you forgotten about clean drinking water, plumbing, abundance of food, air conditioning, medicine, healthcare, etc?
bjt
4 days ago
If you could trade your current life with Louis XIV's, would you?
defrost
4 days ago
Assuming I had the autonomy to build more toilets at Versailles and we're stretching "medieval king" to include "Baroque kings" then sure, why not?
(French isn't that bad a language)
* https://thisisversaillesmadame.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-lack...
nils-m-holm
4 days ago
Would Louis XIV trade with you?
Incipient
4 days ago
Is there a definition of standard of living? A king would be entertaining, socialising, and strategising most of the time (along with a lot more pursuits of hunting, etc for leisure). While I understand they had less access to healthcare and variety of food, travel, etc...id still argue they had a better standard of living than someone that works 8-10h/day and then comes home to cook and clean?
WalterBright
4 days ago
America's poor today have clean water, health care, washing machines, central heating and air conditioning, flush toilets, hot and cold running water, electric lights, hot showers, fresh vegetables and fruit year round, glass windows, cotton undies, ice cream, TVs with 24/7 entertainment, talk to anyone in the world at the push of a button, need I go on?
TFYS
4 days ago
The poor have those things because they still have some amount of power. They're still needed for work, and if you make too many of them too desperate, they can threaten the people at the top. But if you let the wealth (and power) gap get too large this will no longer be the case, and the poor might lose access to those things. If the wealth gap becomes such that the rich can afford automated production and protection but the poor can not, the current economic and political systems will no longer have a reason to give access to any of those things to the poor.
ozim
4 days ago
I think you want to replace fresh vegetables and fruits with processed ready meals.
Being available is not equal to a person being able to afford it.
Maybe you were writing about middle class and not the poor?
WalterBright
4 days ago
So, fruits and vegetables cost more than processed ready meals? Yesterday I bought a banana for $.22.
The government provides food to the poor with SNAP.
The only starving people in America are drug addicts or very ill people. Obesity is the usual problem for poor people.
ponector
4 days ago
You don't need to be a middle class to be able to afford electric lights, mobile phones, apples, oranges and grapes all year round.
On the other hand kings had free-range organic grown meat prepared by personal cook anytime they wanted which is a true luxury even today.
spwa4
4 days ago
No they didn't. In castles meat wasn't very fresh at all, and food poisoning was both common and a common cause of death especially in medieval times. Which is why we have so many traditional dishes that are effectively just ways to keep food fresh and especially safe for longer. How many stew recipes did people invent worldwide, for example? Slow cooking will keep food edible for a week if you do it right. And if you really push it, for months (ie. add animal gelatin as a last step and keep cooking for 2 hours after that, at some point it will solidify and you get something that can be considered "instant soup" by extremely flexible interpretation). If you look back 100 years there are books with year-round menus, and bits of that survive. Why? To give you specific dishes when the ingredients are available according to the "agricultural calendar" as it's called in France. Christmas is great. October sucks.
The very oldest book in the bible contains the basic recipe for keeping meat fresh for ~week, and that's what Kosher, Halal, ... are really about.
And yeah, it depends. Roman emperors, for example, would have had fresh meat available whenever. Medieval kings, no way. Renaissance kings ... probably not constant fresh meat, and certainly not constant fresh fish, but a lot better than medieval kings.
swiftcoder
4 days ago
> On the other hand kings had free-range organic grown meat prepared by personal cook anytime they wanted which is a true luxury even
There is no refrigeration, so "fresh" meat has to be slaughtered the same day. Kings tended to live in populated areas, so wild game would be scarce. Majority of meat would have been pork kept in pens (not free-range in the modern sense), or mutton/goat (free range, but typically older and tougher). At the same time, even a king likely wasn't slaughtering 365 pigs/year just to have fresh meat every day - lots of dried, smoked, or even salted meat in the diet...
ninjalanternshk
4 days ago
Kings has dozens or hundreds of people who did all those things for them, and more, at their command.
Two4
4 days ago
I think it’s disingenuous to imply that there isn’t an inequality issue because the basic standard of living has advanced since the Middle Ages. Even if we compare the standard of living for say, Mississippi lower third and Uganda lower third, it’s obvious that you’re better off in Mississippi. However, the fact that the wealth and means to uplift the poor actually exists in the US but is not exercised is itself an issue - Uganda does not have that possibility.
znpy
4 days ago
> Even if we compare the standard of living for say, Mississippi lower third and Uganda lower third, it’s obvious that you’re better off in Mississippi.
I mean, it’s no wonder people move from uganda to mississipi (or other places in the us) and not rhe other way around.
defrost
4 days ago
Uganda's a popular destination with US evangelical bible belt Christians.
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/25/us-evang...
paulryanrogers
4 days ago
Not to settle and raise their families
Geezus_42
4 days ago
No, just to colonize with their religious before they fly back to their mega churches and call it charity.
enatiello
4 days ago
Speaking as someone who has been truly poor, if you're lucky enough to have a "home", the water is probably poisoned or flammable from some sort of mining. Health care, in the US? You may be better off with a witch, which is certainly cheaper. You may have access to appliances, and some of them may even work. Fresh veggies contaminated with shit from increasing cost savings being applied to every form of production. Glass windows are available in increasingly "sealed for energy efficiency" homes festering mold. Synthetic fiber clothing, as cotton and wool are way to expensive and "TVs" that phone home about every ad you are increasingly being served even with your "ad free" subscription. Being able to speak to someone across the world with one touch of a button is fairly new, however pressing 7/11 buttons, and before that dialing 7/11 buttons, and before that speaking to someone to make the connection for you did the same job, usually without ad bombardments. Before that was the press of one button many many times. Patrick Stewart was excellent.
dtj1123
4 days ago
I'm not to certain about the healthcare and aircon.
modo_mario
4 days ago
Do you define have as own or as in can afford to utilise momentarily?
fodkodrasz
4 days ago
And none of these give them the freedom, agency, a past noble or a king had.
My parents had access to cheaper housing, less red-tape and fixed working hours, more job security than my generation, when I was born.
So now insert BUT THEY DIDN'T HAVE FLAT PANEL TV AND IPHONE in retarded Sponge Bob chicken meme here.
peterfirefly
4 days ago
Could your parents travel further and faster than a king?
fodkodrasz
3 days ago
Great example for bottom text.
ndsipa_pomu
4 days ago
> America's poor today have clean water, health care
Clean water depends on how you define "clean" e.g. from https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/united-states-water-poll...
> Current EPA data reveals that nearly half of all tap water in the United States contains detectable levels of PFAS chemicals
There's also plenty of contamination violations (apart from maybe Hawaii with only 2) of the water supply.
As far as health care goes, I thought that most people in the USA will refuse to get an ambulance due to the expense. I've also heard of plenty of reports that poor people will not visit a doctor for minor health issues even though they may be early signs of much more serious issues.
WalterBright
4 days ago
The king's "doctors" in medieval times were little more than witch doctors.
> Clean water depends on how you define "clean"
Always, back to arguing about the definitions of words. Let's put it simply. People before 1800 had little idea about clean water. They didn't know what bacteria was. They didn't know about contaminants. They had very poor sanitation practices. They died of cholera regularly.
Probably the greatest advance in health care in history was the introduction of a clean water supply.
So if you want to quibble about what "clean" means, I'll take municipal water, water filters, and boiling any day over what anybody in medieval times drank. If you don't think your water is clean enough, get a water filter from Amazon. They're cheap, and they work.
In the US, emergency rooms cannot turn away anyone. The care delivered there is light years ahead of anything any king got in medieval times.
phlakaton
3 days ago
Most people in America have nothing to fear from their water, but there are problems at the underprivileged fringes. Surely you remember Flint, Michigan. The last lead service line there was removed, IIUC, just a couple of months ago – over 12 years since the crisis began!
Amazon filters would not have remotely been a reasonable solution to that problem.
socalgal2
4 days ago
A medieval king had a better life than a medieval peasant. A medieval king, most of them, arguably did not have a better life than most of America's poor in 2026.
My memory might be faulty but I remember watching "The Lion in Winter" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqz3gkrmBbo) and feeling really happy I was not alive then, even as royalty. (hope that's the movie)
locknitpicker
4 days ago
> id still argue they had a better standard of living than someone that works 8-10h/day and then comes home to cook and clean?
You're somehow succumbing to the fallacy of the edilic life of old.
The same life where you had to have a dozen of kids to overcome infant mortality, and each time a woman gave birth it was like a Russian roulette.
And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years? You didn't had a midlife crisis because you'd be dead by then.
SJC_Hacker
4 days ago
Life expectancy was low mainly due to childhood diseases
If you lived to 20 you had a pretty good chance of making it to 70
WalterBright
4 days ago
Looking back at my family tree, before 1900 a third of the babies would die. My great grandmother and great great grandmother died in childbirth. A great great aunt also died in childbirth, and her brother went after the father with a shotgun.
hlynurd
4 days ago
> And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years?
The answer to this riddle lies in the previous paragraph
hardbass
4 days ago
King is under a lot of pressure. If you can get most of the material comforts without the political and military pressure, I think people will choose modern life. Of course for a good test we somehow have to let them be king louise for some time and then let them decide.
WalterBright
4 days ago
Kings tended to not have long lives. Disease routinely felled them, along with endless plots to murder them.
hardbass
4 days ago
Exactly, I'd rather be middle class today than a king in olden times.
isolay
5 days ago
Oh, great, then there is nothing to fix. We just apply medieval standards and everything is hunky dory.
toofy
4 days ago
a lot of people unironically believe this or even worse, many of the same people seem to be arguing for a new monarchy lately lol.
i keep telling them they’re free to have their own personal monarchy in their own family as long as people are free to leave and also to leave the rest of us out of it. but for some reason they don’t seem to like the idea as much then.
paganel
4 days ago
> America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
Do America’s poor have a standard thing like a roof on top of their heads? Nevermind a castle, just a basic house which has already been paid for.
WalterBright
4 days ago
Do they have shelter? Yes. There are homeless on the streets, but they generally refuse offers of shelter because a requirement for the shelter is they lay off the drugs.
hyperhello
5 days ago
Medieval poor likely had a higher standard of living than ancient kings, should they have complained?
intenex
5 days ago
I don't think that's actually true lol
senderista
5 days ago
Not even close. Foragers 10K years ago had better longevity and nutrition than medieval peasants.
account42
a day ago
> America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
According to whose defintion for standard of living?
mangodrunk
4 days ago
This is an important perspective that is unfortunately lost on too many. Too many think we need a drastic overhaul of our current system not taking into account that our system is better than most and that even the bottom 5% are far better off in the USA than most everywhere else, not to mention for the other 95% as well.
Obviously that isn’t to say there is isn’t room for improvement or that we shouldn’t try, but the current system has worked incredibly well.
locknitpicker
4 days ago
> Technology makes a lot of things better. Like eliminating symptoms of 95% of cystic fibrosis victims.
Counterpoint: any leaking abandoned oil well. Check out YouTube videos documenting the abandoned oil wells in West Texas, which are dumping industrial volumes of water into abandoned land.
omikun
5 days ago
They also work longer hours than medieval serfs, are more precarious in housing and food security and more separated from their family. Also slaves work the farms. Read tomatoland or the lives and deaths of the American workers.
ethanj8011
5 days ago
I am not making a statement about the quality of life of poor people in the modern world. I do not think however that from a food security standpoint they are more precarious. I am fairly confident that the longer hours thing is false. Unless we are assuming like 70+ hours of work a week.
https://acoup.blog/2025/08/22/collections-life-work-death-an... You can read https://acoup.blog/2025/09/05/collections-life-work-death-an... which is by a working historian.
I also want to add that, none of this is relevant to the point of whether or not the current system is "just" or reasonable given and I think overall that argument is mostly a red herring.
arichard123
4 days ago
I'm not sure a medieval king would take that swap. Maybe for EU poor.
regretsresin
4 days ago
Is that the bar? Who looks at medieval kings and goes "their standard of living should be our baseline"? Living in a cold stone building with no medical care questionable food, etc?
But also, no they don't. Standard of living includes one's agency over their environment. An medieval king could say things and the kingdom would bend to their will. No one making $18,000 is having hundreds or thousands of people bending over to serve them.
Utter nonsense.
znpy
4 days ago
> An medieval king could say things and the kingdom would bend to their will.
Lol nope? This is utter ignorance. Medieval kings were constantly balancing power with people directly underneath them.
Whole dynasties have been eradicated in the continuous power struggles, particularly from rich families.
Not only that: medieval kings had to bow to religious authorities as well (something ee don’t do anymore). In 1077 kind henry iv had to stand three days bare headed in the snow to convince pope gregory vii to reverse his excommunication (an excommunication would effectively invalidate him as a king, btw).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Canossa
You comment shows your utter general ignorance and complete misunderstanding of medieval times.
WalterBright
4 days ago
> Standard of living includes one's agency over their environment.
No, it doesn't.
regretsresin
4 days ago
It sure does. One's quality of life is different if you are a prisoner or a pauper or a king. Even if your accommodations are the same.
toofy
4 days ago
it certainly does when i think of quality of life.
WalterBright
4 days ago
Standard of living and quality of live are different things.
regretsresin
3 days ago
Only to academics. In common language they are synonyms. In studies and academic texts they mean different things.
smackeyacky
5 days ago
That is a silly comparison.
N_Lens
5 days ago
But it gets the masses going!
WalterBright
4 days ago
Perspective is useful.
smackeyacky
4 days ago
This isn’t perspective it’s trolling.
AlexeyBelov
3 days ago
It's Walter Bright. He's very persistent and hasn't changed his opinion on economics even once, despite people correcting him in many threads over the years. He just stops replying and then starts repeating the same points in another thread a week later.
vedanshchauhan9
4 days ago
[dead]
adriand
5 days ago
I’m of two minds on utopias. On the one hand it seems we need a positive vision for the future, where technology is used to solve our greatest problems and improve the planet. On the other hand it seems that perhaps technology is incapable of making us happier, because it isn’t clear to me that we are happier now than in past decades, despite having more advanced technology.
tourmalinetaco
5 days ago
I believe the more accurate statement is that technology can reduce the burdens of survival (better access to food, medicine, information) but cannot provide longterm happiness, and in some ways impair it (social media, mass surveillance, reliance on technology).
We are social beings, and technology in the last decade especially has been gearing itself towards reducing communities both physically and digitally. Less people spend time together, more people feel lonely and isolated, and divisions between people are at all time highs with glorification of death to the “enemy”. Forums are almost entirely dead, the feed of information is both nonstop while being useless, and we have few outlets to feel true connection.
Harvard’s happiness studies finds that standard of living only impacts happiness to a point before facing a sharp plateau and socialization takes over as a dominant factor in longterm happiness, according to my memory at least. And, while I don’t entirely agree with Kojima’s predictions in MGS2, the AI seeking to provide “context” for the feeble human mind as rate of information on the Internet increases was prescient, though humans have adapted to this (albeit suffering shorter attention spans as a consequence).
IMO a true utopia would be similar to the Enterprise: people socialize and enjoy a life with comfort by technology, not at the behest of social media or the collective consciousness of others. Unplugged and connected in a more meaningful way.
NoGravitas
4 days ago
Star Trek's vision was that social progress had caught up with technological progress. People who think it's all about replicators forget that part.
inSumErgoCogito
4 days ago
[dead]
phlakaton
5 days ago
I would not call Deep Space 9 a dystopia. Nor Babylon 5, for that matter. They are not happy places to live, for sure, but both settings are abundant in hope and possibility.
NoGravitas
4 days ago
Deep Space Nine is about people from a utopia dealing with the realities of a place that is just emerging from being a dystopia (Bajor under Cardassian occupation). Later, they struggle with the need to uphold their utopian values in a conflict where it might be more expedient to abandon them.
phlakaton
3 days ago
You also have Captain Sisko's arc where he is declared, and ultimately follows the path of, a prophet for the Bajoran people. And it works because for all his protests he fundamentally is a good person from the enlightened (if imperfect) 24th century of Roddenberry's vision, in the necessary place at the right time.
That the writers at this point in Trek canon started playing pretty fast and loose with Roddenberry's vision doesn't erase the deeply optimistic and even spiritual grounding of that show.
ndsipa_pomu
4 days ago
I was thinking of mentioning Babylon 5, but it's worth contrasting the situation aboard the station with the fascist takeover of Earth. Maybe "dystopia with hope" describes it better.
Also worth mentioning the recently deceased Walter Koenig who had said that playing Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 was his favourite role, despite being much more famous as Chekov in the original Star Trek.
account42
a day ago
The situation on the station in Babylon 5 is that intergalactic peace is incredibly fragile and the station is basically a last ditch effort of making it work. It, like most of Star Trek, is also a military operation.
troupo
5 days ago
> It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures.
Some say it was the last sci-fi utopia in modern pop culture.
bigmattystyles
5 days ago
Is it a utopia? On earth and in the federation they make it seem so, at least post-scarcity but at the edges of the federation you have Romulans, the Borg, Cardassians. Multiple main characters undergo torture, etc... It would make an interesting TV show / spin off where people are shuffling / politicking for power in a post-scarcity world.
dd8601fn
5 days ago
The utopian bits were never really explained, either.
They mostly just said it was all great and fair and nobody needs money and is somehow trying to be their best selves… nevermind the numerous examples to the contrary.
They weren’t really post scarcity. They never explained how they’re not in a constant state of rioting when a weird government/military decides what everyone can have or do.
You just go with it, because that’s the backdrop. You have to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the story.
But also, Picard is the best Captain, by far.
pzxc
5 days ago
> They weren’t really post scarcity. They never explained how they’re not in a constant state of rioting when a weird government/military decides what everyone can have or do.
Well, post-scarcity really just means that ordinary citizens have free access to replicators (matter-energy converters).
So the closest example (and the only one I can think of where you see civilian Earth, outside of SF Academy / SF HQ or a time travel episode), is probably the double episode in DS9 where the changelings reach earth and there's a false flag event by a corrupt Admiral that causes a momentary power outage and a planetwide lockdown for a few days. I believe it's meant as a 9/11 allegory -- the homeland is attacked and suddenly everyone WANTS a police state, or at least is willing to go along with it, and only the courageous honorable military officers are there to stop the corrupt ones, all the civilians are frightened into compliance.
But post-scarcity? That just means when the security officers aren't around, people can wander into Joseph Sisko's restaurant and eat as much as they want for free, and Joseph Sisko can run his restaurant with as much food supply/ingredients and kitchen equipment as he wants for free, and every gets as much clothing as they want for free, etc. When Earth isn't on lockdown, that's the implication, everyone has as much material goods as they want for free, that's post-scarcity and the implication is they have it.
Post-scarcity doesn't mean infinite resources, or that you can have whatever you want, not everyone gets free land/space on which to build their home, for example. If that's your definition of post-scarcity then I guess at least the Q Continuum has it! :)
christofosho
5 days ago
The episode was years before 9/11
dd8601fn
5 days ago
It seems to mean whatever a person needs it to in any conversation.
And yes, in Star Trek, it mostly just seems to mean that food, clothes, and small clonable objects have very little value if you live where those machines are common.
But, of course, that’s not what people think when we talk about a “post-scarcity utopia”. And they don’t think about how people have homes and property and fuel and ships, or how everything bigger than a wrench is allocated by a mega government that seems to have ultimate control over all resource allocation.
We just have to assume “everything is good somehow, and everyone is fine and docile in luxury space communism.” Because they say that.
It’s all very weird, and easy to see why it was all intentionally left unexplained. It would have been a disaster to even try.
rcxdude
5 days ago
>The utopian bits were never really explained, either.
It's worth remembering that social organization (currency, capitalism, democracy) is a technology as well, and we should not expect that a sci-fi author can explain the advances in that technology any better than they can explain a warp drive. (one nod to this I think is telling is one scene in the movie where they travel back in time and Kirk is telling the others 'they still use money' in much the same way that he would say 'they still use guns'. They have replaced guns with phasers and replaced money with something else and Roddenberry can give us the blueprint for neither).
I think it's a sign of the times that people are kind of forgetful that this is an area in which we could advance - either insisting the status quo is somehow the best possible or even completely god-given natural or insisting that the answer is really obvious and doesn't require deep thought, research, and experimentation.
AnthonyMouse
5 days ago
> I think it's a sign of the times that people are kind of forgetful that this is an area in which we could advance - either insisting the status quo is somehow the best possible or even completely god-given natural or insisting that the answer is really obvious and doesn't require deep thought, research, and experimentation.
It feels like the actual problem is that the status quo is so entrenched, people have a hard time imagining how to unseat it.
Consider the last few successful Presidential election campaigns. Hope and Change. Drain the Swamp. Biden's uninspired but ultimately successful strategy of running against the incumbent rather than for anything in particular. People keep voting for "we don't like what's currently happening" and the system keeps running them over.
Or maybe the problem is actually this:
> require deep thought, research, and experimentation
These are the things that the status quo robustly impedes.
Tweet firehose social media feeds and fragmented leadership.
Research funded by the entity under study or the politicians interested in manufacturing support for a predetermined policy rather than trying to find out something we don't already know.
Federal laws or even corporate-bought international treaties preventing local governments or private citizens from trying something new because the something new might solve a problem someone doesn't want anybody solving.
You're tasked with changing the system while operating under the system that evolved to perpetuate itself.
Which isn't to say that it can't be done, but it's easy to see why people are nonplussed.
rbanffy
5 days ago
> The utopian bits were never really explained, either.
What would the effects of growing up in a post-scarcity utopian society be on a human? To never fear poverty or hunger? To be sure that no matter what they do (or don’t) they will be housed and cared for as long as they live?
I assume the people in Starfleet would be the ones who are most inclined to work for their betterment, with no fear of competition, with the drive to do The Right Thing. Outside the organisation there would be people who would be totally happy in doing nothing.
DonHopkins
4 days ago
What good is a post-scarcity utopian society when the transporter always stops working every time it could solve the current problem and conclude the episode immediately and non-dramatically?
rbanffy
4 days ago
In the end, it's all in the service of the story.
The utopian society is both a backdrop, and a goal we can strive towards.
solyin
5 days ago
We can look at publicly documented trust fund kids or other (financial) elites and their behavior to get an idea and it runs the spectrum. Princess Diana. Prince Andrew. Paris Hilton, both when she was in the news every day and the quieter stories that have surfaced since. 50 Cent's talked about his child preferring to have money that he didn't have to work for.
It's not the same since they exist in a world where most other people aren't at that level, but we can see that the human psyche isn't always able to manage it.
2muchcoffeeman
4 days ago
Those people arent just independently wealthy and want for nothing. They are ultra rich. They have power.
That’s very different from saying everybody can now have a life style that is above the poverty line and never have to work to keep that.
ddalcino
5 days ago
I'm pretty sure I remember a few episodes that explained that by this point, humanity had evolved past character flaws like avarice. Star Trek's Earth was a utopia because of qualities in the people that lived in it, not lack of scarcity. The subject came up because the crew was interacting with alien species that was not as evolved, and therefore was not living in a utopia.
bigmattystyles
5 days ago
Picard is the best by a mile, which is great praise because I liked Janeway and Sisko a lot too.
isolay
4 days ago
> The utopian bits were never really explained, either.
That’s a bit of a spoiled attitude. You can’t expect a science fiction author to just casually solve a problem that humanity hasn’t managed to solve in millennia.
We also accept that they have warp drive without expecting an explanation how they got it.
ButlerianJihad
5 days ago
I don't want to attempt to classify the entire franchise as that, or even Starfleet in its entire story arc.
But if we examine TOS and TNG, I could say it represented a "roving utopia" model where Utopia Meets Reality. The episodic nature and self-contained stories would typically examine the question: "what happens when the Roddenberry philosophy comes into contact with something unique?" and it would be a study in anthropology, comparative religions, or sociological questions.
I hadn't watched much Star Trek in the 1990s, but I was becoming excited about Babylon 5. One of the main points of departure was the planning of the 5-year story arc, and the character development that accompanied it. Every character in Babylon 5 was imbued with an origin, a narrative, and a destiny. Jumping into the story from the beginning, and riding along for all 5 imperfect years, it felt like we also had a destination, and threads came together, and there was resolution and revelation. The Babylon station was never a utopia in reality, only in its aspirations.
So I cultivated a disdain for Star Trek as it was in those days, but Trek was a product of its time, and had helped to cast the die for episodic and self-contained "Monster of the Week" type shows. However, I've rewatched all the films, and I commend them on great production values, acting, and interesting themes. The Star Trek franchise has grown to include something for everyone, including the Klingon-language performance of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which definitely captured my attention.
socalgal2
4 days ago
we can pick it apart forever. Who gets the penthouse or the beach view property and who lives in the basement? Replicators will not solve all the reasons we have money today. Maybe uploading into cyberspace will but where you can have every place and every thing, though I'm sure someone will point out how that won't lead to utopia either.
poincareball
4 days ago
[dead]
lukan
5 days ago
There have been quite a bit more at least in print, but maybe not so mainstream
This one is pretty famous I think and I enjoyed it a lot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
(I just read that James Cameron held the screen production rights and was planning a series, but it never happened)
soVeryTired
5 days ago
Does Iain M Banks count as pop culture?
tialaramex
5 days ago
Right, Banks' Culture seems fairly mainstream and because it doesn't need to make episodic adventures it often gets to actually do utopian stuff Trek wouldn't even if only as a backdrop to the exciting story. The repeated instances in which Culture children play happily, insulated from whatever terrifying stuff we're reading about is an example.
Or if Comic Books are in scope, obviously "Miracleman: The Golden Age" is a utopia. Explicitly so. It is about the ways people are still people in a utopia.
Less mainstream, Greg Egan's Amalgam is also clearly a utopia. The couple in "Riding the Crocodile" choose to die at the end of that story, more out of some sense that stories need endings than because of any outside force.
probablyStimmed
5 days ago
Tank Girl makes this list? Why not Judge Dredd, or even Idiocracy?
Aeolun
5 days ago
Idiocracy isn't a dystopia. It's a documentary.
dnautics
5 days ago
No its not, not in America. Since this decade the highest IQ is on trend to having higher TFR than the lowest, since children are expensive
https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-babies-for-the-rich-the-rela...
naishoya
5 days ago
Does that study show TFR for the highest net worth, or highest IQ?
I think it may be unclear that net worth and high education are a 1:1 proxy for IQ as many of the highest educated and highest earning individuals may be in that situation not because of raw IQ, but due to the other socioeconomic factors which lead to those conditions. Namely being born into high net worth households and being afforded extensive tutoring and supplemental education relative to their poorer peers. I accept the premise that highly educated households do correlate with high net worth, and the study's TFR findings relative to those points are interesting.
However, there is still a nonlinear relationship between high IQ and those factors, as well as between high IQ parents' offspring IQ levels. Not a few high net worth individuals choose mates based on factors distinct from having a similar or even a high IQ, if a strong correlation between genetic heritability and IQ is to be believed.
The study actually tracked high income with regards to increased TFR in the US and UK, while the correlation to high education was primarily in Sweden. This serves to weaken the connection between IQ and fertility as there are numerous high income situations which are specifically not correlated with high IQ or high education.
So, yes, having children is increasingly expensive especially in America, and wealthier people are more prolific. This does not appear, at least to my mind, to have direct bearing on observable trends in general population IQ in the short term, nor does it appear to be addressing future outcomes regarding the Idiocratic potential.
dnautics
4 days ago
Net worth. It's a pretty good proxy. Unless you think there's some reason to think among the rich smart people are anti-selected for reproduction.
> This does not appear, at least to my mind, to have direct bearing on observable trends in general population IQ in the short term, nor does it appear to be addressing future outcomes
No but the proposed mechanism in Idiocracy is clear, and that is not happening. We may still head towards an dumb future, but it's not Idiocracy.
naishoya
4 days ago
> Net worth. It's a pretty good proxy.
TLDR; I have met quite a few very high net worth individuals, their spouses and offspring. Hundreds of them, actually. I have not been impressed overall with their intellectual capacity for learning important and lifesaving knowledge in preparation for life-changing natural survival conditions which are outside of their daily routine. The same has been true at the middle and lower income distributions under similar circumstances. I am neutral about the future IQ of the population of any of their descendants, poor or rich.. There are many other factors at play.
The long version:
That has not been my admittedly anecdotal experience among high, moderate, and average net work individuals and small to large congregations of those net worth groups in North, Central, South Americas, East Asia, the Pacific Islands, the UK and Northern Europe. I haven't found any specific factors resulting in concentration of above or below average IQ individuals within any of those groups. I have traveled much; been in direct leadership positions among high net worth individuals' on board of directors, and have been in direct contact with significant groups of low net worth populations in both labor and non-profit support roles. I do confess to not having conducted specific research in the IQ to net worth among those groups, so this is just an informed opinion.
So, I will yield on the sole point IFF net worth is assumed to be a strong proxy for high IQ; then we might be headed in a smarter direction in the portions of the general population resulting from those families. I do agree with the distinction that the proposed mechanism in the film Idiocracy is not what is occurring. It does however seem apparent that due to many different mechanisms we may be in for a significantly dumber future, and on that we also agree.
It may be that among the high net worth populations; there may be a factor within the high IQ subgroup that is aware of the complex difficulty for the planet due to excessive and wasteful overconsumption and the aggregate demand that additional population stresses the situation. That subgroup may be choosing to self deselect for reproduction, and that subgroup may be among the highest fraction of IQ. It doesn't appear that this aspect was in the study you referenced, nor in any of that study's sources' research. Did I miss that component?
dnautics
4 days ago
> I have not been impressed overall with their intellectual capacity for learning important and lifesaving knowledge in preparation for life-changing natural survival conditions which are outside of their daily routine
Sounds like you are vastly overestimating the intelligence of the median.
naishoya
4 days ago
I'm sorry if it seemed like I was unimpressed with any one group over the others.
My statement was that I have been not overall impressed with ANY of the groups. None of the groups was more or less likely on average to not need rescue, resuscitation, or to be refused participation due to non-compliance.
My proxy for IQ is; don't eat the sticky purple berries, don't stand on the edge of the precipice, don't try to drive across the flooded wash, don't camp in the dry streambed, don't try to pet the baby buffalo, check your shoes before you stick your feet in them in the morning, put the fire all the way out - cold, wet, and mixed is out, don't swim away from your dive buddy, don't walk up on the mule from behind, wear a hat, bring extra socks, don't drink the water from the stream, cook the bear meat thoroughly, don't put your hands in dark holes; in the forest or in the reef, clip your toenails well before the long downhill hike, spend a few extra dollars on a pair of slip on ice crampons for your tennis shoes - even though the instructions were to bring two pairs of hiking boots - wet and dry. Pack light, wear a small bell to warn off the bears, pick up your garbage - if you brought it into the wilderness you must take it back out with you,... again, DON'T STAND ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, I don't care how you are going to look in the selfie, and neither will anyone else if the phone and you fall 300 feet. And, no your emotional support min-pin-poo cannot go on the week long rafting trip with us.
Does this sound like I'm over-estimating anyone's baseline IQ? You wouldn't believe the raw stupid that happens all the time. It's just not demonstrably correlated with bank balance or jewelry selection.
dnautics
4 days ago
The thing is you're cherry picking dumb events, so there's observation bias. I'm sure in the last year I would have done something on your list, even if they aren't things I regularly do. And besides that's not what idiocracy is representing.
naishoya
4 days ago
But, would you have done any one of those things had there been a scheduled safety class before going, and had all of those things been clearly presented and then tested for? I think probably not.
I have been in the position of holding pre- and post excursion knowledge and readiness assessment sessions, which contents and protocols were rigorously designed by Principle Investigators, with external audit and multi-year review. In one location there was over a hundred years of applied practice. (Back-county mule operations since 1904 with an enviable safety record and over twenty riders on every day where not cancelled due to adverse weather or public health risks)
My personal observations include covering very specific potential hazards for backcountry, open ocean, agriculture and industrial workplace risks. They also include direct and indirect observations in the domains of corporate, personal risk, and global threat assessment, up to and including prevention of and response to K&R by state and private actors.
So, yes, I cherry picked for the comical and obvious. That list is not comprehensive or statistically balanced whole set. I do admit to confirmation bias, I'm positive that was at the lead of this flow as " admittedly anecdotal observations." And you're right, that is not what Idiocracy was representing. That is still clear and we still do agree.
My only point is that my admittedly biased observations fail to find high net worth as a positive correlation with above average IQ. I also "posit" that although the high net worth shows recent increases in TFR is substantial in some places (the US and UK from your source), there is still a high rate observable in the bottom 25% of net worth populations as seen due to earlier time of first partition and a slightly higher number of offspring per mother, and that the difference in resultant IQ in the whole population due to these effects may be well within any statistical margin for error.
So, we still agree, this is not the mechanism either causing nor preventing an Idiocracy defined change in the outcomes for the US population. There appear to be other, less (epi)genetic, reasons for the demonstrable decline in outcomes for the median populations.
~ BTW, big fan of the work in alternative bit representations.
WalterBright
4 days ago
An excellent list. My general rule is to stay at least 20 feet back from the precipice. If I may add a couple:
1. never walk behind a car with its backup lights on
2. when climbing a ladder, only move one limb at a time
3. never walk in front of a car that has its engine running
4. wait for traffic to stop before setting a foot in the crosswalk
5. floss every day
6. keep your shoes on when taking off or landing in an airplane (can't run barefoot over burning, torn metal)
7. if you smell smoke in a building, exit immediately. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200
8. take the stairs once in a while in your workplace, as then you'll know where they are when the building fills with smoke
9. wear a life jacket on a small boat, even if you look like a dork. The water ski vests are less klunky
solyin
5 days ago
Feel free to add your own entries!
As far as Judge Dredd, my personal beef is that Megacity One's "dystopian" density with 800 million inhabitants from Boston to Washington DC barely ranks in terms of density in today's top 100 cities.
As far as Idiocracy, I believe that if the networks had played that and it was promoted on YouTube for free the night before the most recent presidential election, it might have gone differently.
What else would you add to the list?
harimau777
5 days ago
If I remember correctly, the crime statistic that they give in one of the movies is also much lower than many US cities.
sillyfluke
4 days ago
>it's why I think we're so afraid of AI
I think you're overestimating the sci-fi cannon indoctrination of the general public, or even tech people, and underestimating their reaction to current events. As things lie at the moment, Big AI is served as a SaaS that can be manipulated at any time by obscenely rich and powerful individuals with questionable decision making skills, some of who reside in the White House and some of who have called empathy a "fundamental weakness". One would be hard pressed to dispute these characters rival the caricatures present in some dystopian sci-fi as it is, they themselves even seem to enjoy the irony. Yes, I also cringe at the alarmist nature of these sentences, but we are at a point where we are most likely to dismiss things right in front of our eyes just by how outlandish it all sounds.
The public's willful transfer of their most intimate personal information to these entities, and once given almost impossible to remove, would make any surveillance state salivate. You have only to look at who holds the keys to this estate.
joeguilmette
5 days ago
your growth hacking worked. i didn’t want it to, but it did. i saw your book at the end of your comment and gen looked up the book and read the sample and was expecting to look down my nose at it but… the sample was good so i bought it.
thats the first sample i ever read that got me to read a book. not particularly great writing, but clean and propulsive and i hope the mystery pays off.
joeguilmette
4 days ago
“not particularly great writing” poorly worded and mean. if i read the sample and bought the book because i enjoyed it, the writing was great!
yomismoaqui
5 days ago
Obligatory reference to the other great utopia in scifi, The Culture series from Iain M. Banks.
As much as I love Star Trek, The Culture feels more mature and nuanced.
tkdb
4 days ago
I don't know that I would have thought of The Culture as a Utopia. Interesting comparison.
Star Trek has always had a sort of hammy or "of course we're jumping sharks, that's kind of our thing, but when we do it's not really jumping a shark" tone to it. Especially the action sequences.
I've oft criticized novels and movies that are too thin a shell on philosophical givings forth, but in the case of Star Trek (mainly Enterprise and Deep Space Nine for me, but I think the original has the same appeal for many) it's like I can't get enough.
It's the thinking that appeals to me, and the inspection of the human experience in a manner that feels familiar to me.
HelloMcFly
4 days ago
[dead]
serf
5 days ago
speaking on the movie : Tank Girl doesn't portray a world that's great for the rich, either.
it's pretty shitty for anyone outside the singular theocratic military enclave that hordes all the water and decapitates scientists.
zombot
4 days ago
This insufferable band of Holy Scouts was the reason I never liked TNG. I find DS9 much more believable, up to and including Trump as Gul Dukat. That character was prescient. There is one difference between the two though. While both are malignant pathological narcissists, the fictional Gul Dukat knew how to fake grace once in a while. The real Trump doesn't give a shit.
asanineassasin
4 days ago
[dead]
outworlder
5 days ago
> The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all. Any and all of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. None do anything bad (unless it's a plot device with an explanation that absolves them).
That is an oversimplification and simply not true at face value.
'The original Star Trek', even less so! Very morally questionable at times. In TNG, you are watching the flagship of Starfleet, it's the most coveted starship. The crew are the best they have to offer. It's obvious that they would be the most professional. Even then, they make mistakes, often serious. Sacrificing themselves - if needed - is part of their job too.
Riker does spend a long time on the Enterprise, even after being offered command a few times. He does eventually move on.
Maybe they are a little too perfect, but I'd argue that's for the best. The moments where there's friction within the crew are much more memorable because of it.
Thats in contrast with some newer Trek which have more conflicts than Stargate Universe characters and would be considered way too unprofessional even if they were Lower Decks characters.
jrumbut
5 days ago
> Riker does spend a long time on the Enterprise, even after being offered command a few times. He does eventually move on.
Also he is not free of ambition, he wants Picard's job. He isn't willing to do anything negative to get it, but part of that is that Picard constantly proves himself the better captain. Picard isn't captain because he joined Starfleet first or because he has better connections, he is genuinely better at the job and non-toxic ambitious people can respect that. Riker still has more to learn from Picard that will make him a better captain later.
So I think a lot of the people staying in their positions make sense, the primary characters are as high as they can go (for their specialty) without transitioning into a role that stays on a planet.
Lerc
5 days ago
I remember one episode where some of the crew were told to come up with a technical solution to the situation they were in even after they had said it was impossible.
It was actually quite pleasing to see the subplot of them them repeatedly failing until they got out of their predicament by other means.
It's a rarity to see something like that in fiction.
mikestew
5 days ago
We coincidentally watched that one just last night, The Booby Trap. There's a derelict ship on the view screen reminding the crew that the other crew never figured out a solution to the problem, and there's no indication that the Enterprise crew won't suffer the same fate.
(That one, at least, has Geordi literally saying, "that's impossible", but comes up with a solution. Apologies if that's not the one you're thinking of.)
outworlder
5 days ago
That episode has some unique music, I can hear that in my head just by you mentioning it.
_doctor_love
5 days ago
That episode is one of my favorites. I love it when Picard takes the reins near the end.
bigmattystyles
5 days ago
Same - also a good allegory for not trusting AI.
cwillu
5 days ago
Sounds like The Ensigns of Command:
> LAFORGE: Captain, we can do it. We can modify the transporters.
> PICARD: Excellent.
> LAFORGE: It'll take fifteen years, and a research team of a hundred.
> PICARD: Mister La Forge, I believe we will postpone.
> LAFORGE: Yes, sir.user
5 days ago
calgoo
5 days ago
Sounds like certain AI agents that had an impossible task and found a workaround. Interesting that we cheer for it in SciFi for people, but dont like it when LLMs that have been trained on our stories do the same.
bornfreddy
5 days ago
Oh, the problem is not with agents that escaped, it is with the people who prepared the terrain so that they broke into 3rd party property.
dap
5 days ago
I agree this is important to keep in mind. I wonder about this a lot when I find myself admiring fictional characters for how they handled situations and how it turns out for them.
I don't think TNG is as simple as you make it out to be. All of the characters have serious flaws. Picard does make mistakes (including some very serious, consequential ones). Characters do get angry, jealous, etc. and do bad things. Sometimes their friends help them overcome it, other times they figure it out on their own, etc. It's episodic so it usually goes back to the status quo, and that can feel kind of trite through today's lens. But it's exactly that ability to solve problems (technical, emotional, organizational, etc.) as a team that's so compelling for many of us.
WalterBright
5 days ago
I meant TOS, not TNG.
yoyohello13
5 days ago
The new age term is "Competence Porn" and man I love it so much.
rbanffy
5 days ago
> Competence Porn
Don’t get me started on their engineering that causes a matter-antimatter runaway reaction if their fuel tanks ever lose power. And routing discharge-prone HV power lines behind the bridge consoles, or placing the bridge on the outer hull.
I love it, and I know this is all in the service of the story, but I will not give Starfleet a pass for that kind of irresponsible engineering.
Brendinooo
5 days ago
There was a bunch of tumblr content awhile back that explored the premise that humans are collectively wild and irresponsible and also tremendously innovative, it's a great head-canon explanation for your gripe. I won't spoil it trying to quote it, just check it out;
https://cheezburger.com/13685509/tumblr-thread-the-staggerin...
messe
4 days ago
A version without the weird and off-putting censorship: https://reactormag.com/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-so-centr...
Brendinooo
4 days ago
it is in no way weird, especially not for anyone who would have watched Star Trek on broadcast
ThrowawayR2
4 days ago
> "And routing discharge-prone HV power lines behind the bridge consoles"
There's no practical way depict incoming enemy fire blowing in a bulkhead and spraying shrapnel and debris across the bridge, particularly for a low-budget 1960s show that needed the bridge intact for filming the next episode. (The Expanse did that slightly more believably but not that much.) I've always viewed the exploding consoles as just PG-13 cinematic shorthand for something much more spectacular and horrific happening.
outworlder
5 days ago
Don't forget all the rocks in the bridge.
lopsotronic
5 days ago
There's been a resurgence of that in contemporary big budget SF. The Martian. Project Hail Mary. For All Mankind and The Expanse on TV.
wolvoleo
5 days ago
For all mankind and the expanse I wouldn't really put in that category really. Both are more soap operas in space and science is just a prop (though at least the expanse was fairly thought out)
LilBytes
5 days ago
Yeah I agree with you, I wouldn't put For All Mankind in the same bucket. It's a great show though! But not competence porn IMO.
I'd put the Expanse there though.
jrootabega
5 days ago
Mike Ehrmantraut
lopsotronic
5 days ago
Mike walks a fine line where he's almost a superhero. In terms of just how good he is.
Then again, maybe understandable, since he's a veteran ex cop in the midst of tweakers, junkies, madmen, and generally people not well geared for success in life. And it makes for bigger payoff when we DO get a situation where anantagonist actually does get the better of him - that tells us we're dealing with a sharp customer.
What great frickin' writing.
It should give every greasy shiny suit film executive a bowel-evacuating fit of shame that a support character like Mike gets more audience engagement than a half billion bucks spent in SWeIX: TRoS or Justice League or that godawful Marvel Immortals movie.
Hey, Finance Guys: you find creatives you know are good (y'know, using that newfangled notion of Domain Knowledge), you give 'em a kitchen and you let 'em cook.
ndsipa_pomu
4 days ago
I'll see your Mike Ehrmantraut and raise you a Ray Shoesmith
lopsotronic
4 days ago
Oh maaaaannnnnnnnn. "Ray Digs a Grave" lives rent free in my head forever.
Mr Inbetween gets more done with thirty minutes than I thought possible.
Scott Ryan deserves a big break more than most others I can think of - which he might be on the way towards, word is he's got a lot of agents sniffing at his door. He might have to give up his fixation on writing-directing-starring . . . that combo is a very hard combo to pull off at scale. There's only so much one person can do on set . . which is why all that the creator of Mr. Inbetween has managed basically boils down to just . . Mr. Inbetween.
Unless . . . Scott Ryan isn't a great Hidden Filmmaker or Outback Actor at all, and Scott Ryan actually is Ray Shoesmith. It's not Great TV, it's just Tuesday. Which would be super awesome and horrible at the same time.
ndsipa_pomu
3 days ago
Not to detract from Scott Ryan, but Noel Edgerton deserves a lot more attention for his directing skills. (His brother Joel is currently starring in Dark Matter which I also enjoy).
On rewatching Mr Inbetween, it's good fun to pick out all the fore-shadowing of events, especially parts where Ray figures out a person before it's made obvious to the audience. Awesome writing.
1123581321
a day ago
It’s Nash Edgerton, and yes, he’s good.
Love the idea of their parents calling them Joel and Noel. :)
solyin
5 days ago
The West Wing exemplifies that category.
romanhn
5 days ago
Indeed! The presidential candidates from both parties on the show were competent, respectable individuals. Truly a utopia, not unlike TNG.
shagie
5 days ago
West Wing is so great and disappointing when you watch it now. Competence porn is... yea, that's the right word.
The clips that the channel puts out... are... let's say interestingly timed.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheWestWing
For example, https://youtu.be/LwNtZgLPCpg was posted 13 days ago (October 16th).
troupo
5 days ago
A very tangential/orthogonal/left field. It's insane that the only other TV series that managed to consistently pull of this fast pace of walking and talking is ... The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. At least that I can think of.
shagie
5 days ago
I'll refer you to Sports Night.
Also from Andrew Sorkin...
• Joshua Malina: Jeremy Goodwin (Sports Night) / Will Bailey (The West Wing)
• Janel Moloney: Monica (Sports Night) / Donna Moss (The West Wing)
• Felicity Huffman: Dana Whitaker (Sports Night) / Ann Stark (The West Wing)
• Clark Gregg: Calvin Trager (Sports Night) / Mike Casper (The West Wing)
• Timothy Busfield: Director (Sports Night) / Danny Concannon (The West Wing)troupo
5 days ago
Ah. I should've said "other than shows where Aaron Sorkin was involved" :)
opello
5 days ago
What about ER? I thought that Tommy Schlamme was a big part of the creation of the walk and talk?
runamuck
5 days ago
Top Gun: Maverick - great class on leading a high performing team.
dcl
5 days ago
Yes, Jon Hamm's character certainly did get the job done. lol
shagie
5 days ago
Captain Jellico ( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Edward_Jellico#Captain_... ) provides a counterpoint to the "how Picard runs his ship" (which incidentally had Data installed as the XO over Riker).
outworlder
5 days ago
He was also a prop device they used to make many changes they had wanted for a while Troy's outfit, the fish tank - Patrick Stewart believed that 24th-century humans—who had evolved past cruelty and the subjugation of life—would not keep a living creature in a glass tank for mere display.
flir
5 days ago
I thought the fish was still there, based on this dialogue from Q in All Good Things: "The anomaly. My ship. My crew. I suppose you're worried about your fish too."
shagie
4 days ago
The fish's name was Livingston https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Livingston
And to Patrick Steward's opinions on it...
> According to Ronny Cox, Patrick Stewart hated Livingston's presence in the ready room, and constantly petitioned the producers to remove the fish. Stewart, a strong animal rights advocate who opposes many forms of pet ownership, felt that using a captive animal in an ornamental display was "immoral" and inconsistent with TNG's core theme of exploring the inherent dignity of different species across the galaxy. Cox, who called Stewart's point "well taken", stated that Livingston's temporary removal in "Chain of Command" was thus a "sort of a bone they threw to Patrick".
user
4 days ago
spauldo
5 days ago
It's also military fiction, which is important to remember.
Most of the characters in Star Trek are members of the military. So of course, there's a chain of command and orders have to be followed.
The Federation of Planets wasn't a dictatorship.
krapp
5 days ago
It isn't really military fiction in the sense that it intends to accurately portray or extrapolate on military culture and tactics. Gene Roddenberry was (apparently not) in the Navy, and TOS is mostly The American Cold War In Space (with the Enterprise as a Submarine In Space - looking at you "Balance of Terror" - but it's pretty clear watching TNG onwards that the "military" aspect of the whole thing, like the "post scarcity communism" is window dressing. It's just a necessary part of the franchise.
And they aren't even really members of the military. Starfleet is canonically not a military force, its purpose is exploration, science and diplomacy. It just happens to have a military chain of command, and ships with military designations bristling with planet-cracking weapons. That get into battles and fight wars a lot.
spauldo
5 days ago
I'm not sure where you're getting the "canonically not a military force" bit. There have been a number of wars in canonical history. Who did the fighting? Starfleet.
I think it's more accurate to say that the Federation of Planets wasn't militaristic, not that they didn't have a military or that Starfleet wasn't their naval equivalent.
And yeah, it's not conventional military fiction which usually revolves around actions during a war. But it's still military fiction in the sense that nearly all the characters are in the military and doing missions for the military. It just happens that the government running that military is at peace most of the time and uses its military for peaceful purposes when it's not actively at war.
NoGravitas
4 days ago
Picard says in TNG: "Peak Performance" (S02E21) that Starfleet is not a military organization. But other characters have expressed the opposite. I think the best synthesis is that Starfleet is "military like the Coast Guard and Commissioned Public Health Corps" and not "military like the Navy".
spauldo
3 days ago
Except that the Public Health Service doesn't have torpedoes :)
I dunno, I just can't see it that way. Starfleet has been involved in way too much combat to not be a military. But then again, I don't really remember seeing a Federation equivalent of marines, which a real navy would have...
NoGravitas
a day ago
Pre-Federation, Earth Starfleet (Enterprise-era) had them, but we've never seen them since.
R1D3R
5 days ago
> Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy
No, he wasn’t. He was a B-17 pilot in the Army Air Force.
ChrisMarshallNY
5 days ago
It's a miracle he survived.
That bunch had the highest mortality rates of any unit (except maybe some of the Japanese units, who were basically suicidal), during the war.
R1D3R
5 days ago
He survived at least three plane crashes. He crashed on takeoff in a B-17. Two of his crew were killed. He later survived a crash as a passenger. He crashed again as a commercial pilot.
The 8th Air Force suffered heavy losses over Europe but I don't believe Roddenberry served there. He was in the Pacific and after his B-17 crash stayed in the mainland US.
krapp
5 days ago
Well shit I stand corrected then.
msabalau
5 days ago
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. LeGuin
N_Lens
5 days ago
Unsurprising, then, that Peter Theil found common ground with Mordor & Sauron when reading LOTR.
elgertam
4 days ago
Well-written fiction, even utopian fiction, can help us understand the human condition. Picard did not always make the best decisions, but he made decisions with impeccable moral foundations.
Every now and then, we see the limits of those foundations. In "Tapestry," we learn that if Picard hadn't been an aggressive, obnoxious, even womanizing young f cadet and junior officer, he'd never have taken the risks necessary to take command. In "Chain of Command," we learn that he in fact had been broken under torture such that he could actually see five lights when there were only four; his shouting "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS" at the Cardassian torturer was as much an act of stubborn defiance as it was cleaving to moral foundations. Occasionally, Picard uses blackmail and veiled threads to get what he wants, such as implying in "Unification" that he may give his "gratitude" to the Duras family and enemies of Chancellor Gowron if his request for a cloaked Bird of Prey isn't dealt with expeditiously (this was after waiting like three days).
Picard has strong moral foundations because of his experience, which is why he has been promoted to run the Federation flagship. He takes enough risks with enough bravado to accomplish the Federation's political and scientific goals and to serve Starfleet's military goals.
One episode that sticks out to me as a good management episode is "Hollow Pursuits." Barclay is annoying everyone on the crew, particularly Geordi and Will to the point where they want him transferred off the Enterprise. Wesley Crusher has even begun calling Reg "broccoli" behind his back. Picard wants none of that. The Enterprise is a team in which members must be held accountable, but that does not mean simply jettisoning underperformers when they fail to deliver. He challenges his direct reports to make every effort to improve Barclay's performance. He also puts the kibosh on the rude nickname, though accidentally uses it to Barclay's face later in the episode. It's fiction, but everyone behaves in very believable human ways, and the situation is absolutely relevant to our lives today.
rpmisms
5 days ago
Roddenberry had much less to do with TNG, which is why it's better.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
Much less, but not none at all. Roddenberry refused to budge on his rule that the crew shouldn’t have grievances with one another. That why even scenes shared earlier still end in a positive outcome.
Whereas Voyager, which was written after Roddenberrys passing, leaned heavily into inter-crew disputes.
derefr
5 days ago
I have to hand it to Roddenberry, though; even though having no infighting produces a somewhat-unrealistic show, I think there's a solid justification to have the rule anyway. It prevented TOS and TNG scripts from being caught in tension between trying to "say something", vs. entertaining the audience with "low" soap-opera drama (of the kind you see increasingly in the later series.)
I have a feeling this might be no small part in why TOS and TNG are the two ST series that contain 90% of the "only comes up once" sci-fi plots / concepts / worldbuilding that people ever make reference to when talking about "things from Star Trek" rather than when talking about Star Trek. TOS and TNG, while definitely soft sci-fi, were to some degree trying to create 22-minute-long works of literary Speculative Fiction, modelled after the sort of things you'd read in serial SF magazines of the 1950s. Later ST series are emphatically not that, and nor do they try to be.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
Yeah. I’ve heard the writers hated it because they had to work so much harder to create drama.
But as you said, I think it ends up with a higher quality show.
kstenerud
5 days ago
I actually found DS9 to be the best of all of them. Aside from the terrible Dr Bashir character, they felt believable, and like any real environment had personality clashes, personal issues, baggage, and of course interpersonal conflicts.
The difference was that rather than turn it into soap opera porn, the characters actually tried to behave professionally (most of the time).
derefr
5 days ago
Thus "increasingly" :)
• DS9 only had a little soap-opera drama, serving as almost a kind of fanservice sprinkled judiciously into otherwise-thematic B-plots.
• VOY had more, with entire B-plots of episodes now being character-focused, including a few arcs that would have worked just as well if transplanted into some modern-age military drama with no SF elements.
• Drama-as-the-A-plot episodes were appearing by ENT.
(After that I stopped watching, but I've heard the trend has just continued from there.)
AngryData
5 days ago
The Lower Decks was good as a love letter to older fans, I do recommend that. But both Discovery and Academy were horrendous and I regret the time spent. Picard had a few good episodes and it was nice to see the old crew but was not great. Stranger New Worlds had some good things and wasn't a butcher job but not anything to write home about in my opinion.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
Strange New Worlds started strong. But the last couple of series was so bad for the drama. In fact one episode was a literal soap opera.
outworlder
5 days ago
I would have ZERO issues with the wacky episodes if and only if we were back to the 20-ish episodes per season format. Then sure, do a puppet show. Musical episodes (for how much I HATE musicals, it was decently enjoyable, Klingon boy band was super unexpected).
But when you only have half a dozen-ish episodes per season, you can't afford filler.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
My issue with the last season was that it was all gimmick and no substance. Literally the whole series was made up of filler episodes.
It’s such lazy writing.
I actually didn’t mind Academy. Yeah it was flawed and had a lot of lazy tropes. But it had an identity to it and some substance to it. Not much substance, but still something. Whereas the latest season of Strange New Worlds? It wasn’t anything. It had no substance. It had no identity. It was as if someone made a silly clip show (like the Stargate 200th episode) but instead of lots of short parodies in one filler episode, they made an entire series with each episode being one very long joke. A singular punch line stretched out over nearly an hour.
I hated the first season of Discovery. But that was still better than the season 5 of SNW. I hates the first season of Enterprise. And that was also better than S5 for SNW. And I wasn’t much keen on the first season of Lower Decks either. And even that was less goofy than S5 of SNW. And what’s worse, all of those spin offs that I said had poor first seasons ended up with excellent 5th seasons. And yet SNW started of strong and fizzled out it shallow jokes.
It honestly feels like the writers had nothing.
1potato
5 days ago
Agree. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they gave Captain Sisko's character -- not to mention Worf, O'Brien and others -- a lot more room to develop and grow.
I really enjoyed TNG as well, and DS9 probably wouldn't have even happened if not for TNG's excellence. I never really felt like the writers gave Picard's character a lot of room to change, though. A lot of the time, he was almost like the sitcom dad who was mainly there to teach the kids a lesson at the end of the episode. That's not a knock on Stewart's acting ability; I'd say he was almost certainly the best actor on the show.
Also agree about Bashir.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
Though in defence to Bashir, without him you wouldn’t have Garak, who is possibly one of the best written characters in all of SciFi.
And some of O'Brien‘s best performances were counterpointing Bashir too.
I think as a solo character, he’s a little shallow. But he works exceptionally well at being an anchor for other characters to play off.
1potato
4 days ago
I do have to agree on that. Garak was really a standout character on DS9.
outworlder
5 days ago
The Inner Light begs to disagree. Plus his Borg summer camp.
But yes, those instances were a bit rare.
WalterBright
5 days ago
Some TOS episodes were based on classic scifi stories, like "Voyage of the Space Beagle". Also, Roddenberry employed established scifi authors like David Gerrold to script episodes.
An annoying facet of ST episodes is the morality lessons they push, like on every episode of The Brady Bunch.
user
5 days ago
opo
5 days ago
>Also, Roddenberry employed established scifi authors like David Gerrold to script episodes.
While established SF writers wrote episodes for the original series (Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, etc.), David Gerrold was a recent college graduate and "The Trouble With Tribbles" was his first sale.
defrost
4 days ago
Both Theodore Sturgeons !?! Trés cool coup d'fiction!
hnlmorg
5 days ago
For me, that’s the best part of the TOS era.
It’s nice to watch something that highlights the best of humanity in a future setting.
Almost everything else in SciFi is dystopian. But ST is a rarity. And it’s all the more beautiful for it.
alittlebee
5 days ago
Yeah, I agree.. I still rewatch it every so often, when I'm feeling down or uninspired.
yyyk
5 days ago
TOS and TNG were sci-fi, even if many scripts varied. Given its time, you could have the classic and interesting tech and society questions there, even if they avoided a lot of the implications. But over time the franchise lost this key part, and so it's much worse for the wear. We could use an actually relevant sci-fi series given current tech.
ahazred8ta
5 days ago
Unfortunately the 1970s ST animated series gave us the 'trapped in the holodeck' story format. The TNG writers leaned a little too heavily on it.
rpmisms
5 days ago
I think maybe 5 total episodes meet that description.
WalterBright
5 days ago
I'm not so sure about that. I enjoyed the subtle humor of the illogical Mr Spock, whose logic always came to the wrong conclusion. And McCoy with "dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!"
The best dialog ever:
Lawyer: Mr Spock, I understand you know something about computers?
Spock: I know all about them.
Always makes me laugh.
tmtvl
5 days ago
Reminds me of that one episode where Mr. Spock figures out there's a problem with the computer because it loses at chess. And he knows it shouldn't lose at chess because he programmed it himself.
randcraw
5 days ago
And it had a MUCH bigger budget than the original, as well as the assurance that it wouldn't be cancelled at a moment's notice.
WalterBright
5 days ago
Eh, it's the writing and the characters that make it fly, not the budget. TOS was blessed with some really good writers, and was very lucky with the actors.
entropie
5 days ago
> The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all.
That's why Orville is my favorite of the newer ST series. It has the high moral standards of the original series, but with characters who are far from perfect, who make mistakes, and who are sometimes even a little weird.
adzm
5 days ago
Jonathon Frakes / Riker directed two great episodes of the Orville as well
reactordev
4 days ago
I think we watched the wrong TNG because the entire show Riker was clamoring for the captains chair but kept turning it down to stay with Picard. By DS9 he has his own command. Geordi gets promoted, Worf gets promoted, Troi gets promoted, even Wesley Crusher gets promoted (he wouldn't stop talking about it!).
JojoFatsani
5 days ago
Apparently by the end of TNG’s run the writers were really struggling since having no interpersonal conflicts (a key tenant laid down by Roddenberry) is pretty bad for character development
DS9 did good in adding a bunch of non star fleet characters who had maybe more realistic motivations. Voyager tried but immediately just turned them all into a big happy family just like TNG.
account42
a day ago
I think that's what makes TNG and TOS great actually. I can do without hack writers forcing "character development" to up the drama.
account42
a day ago
How much of an Utopia is Star Trek really? It's a future where told from the point of vew of a very much military organization who as far as we can see is the main interstellar represenation of Humanity.
ctmlr
4 days ago
Not so hard to believe when they can replicate everything and experience anything in the holodek, outside the vacuum of starfleet the trek universe is not a utopia.
hydrogen7800
5 days ago
That's sort of the point of fiction, though, isn't it? Sure, a more complex fiction might be more rewarding, but simple ideals can also be very satisfying and can be grounding too.
WalterBright
5 days ago
I prefer fiction that is entertaining, rather than preaching the author's vision of morality/politics.
outworlder
5 days ago
> rather than preaching the author's vision of morality/politics.
It's pretty much impossible to have that. You'll always have the author's worldview shaping the fictional world.
bigstrat2003
4 days ago
There's a very important difference between the author's worldview shaping the fictional world, and preaching. For example, nobody who reads Tolkien can doubt that his devout Catholic faith shaped his storytelling. It is everywhere you look. But not once does Tolkien have one of his characters give a speech about the necessity of Jesus for a happy life, or introduce a character who had a child out of wedlock just so Aragorn could chastise her about the immorality of extramarital sex, or anything like that. Modern writers, by contrast, do that kind of thing on a depressingly regular basis. I have read so many books, seen so many TV shows, where the author thought it was appropriate to use the work to lecture me about their political views, and it ruins the work every time.
I don't expect, and don't think most people expect, for authors to not have their storytelling shaped by their views. That would be impossible. But it's not impossible for them to refrain from derailing the story just to lecture the audience on morality.
WalterBright
5 days ago
I don't recall that in War of the Worlds!
tarsierscripter
5 days ago
HG Wells' politics are plain as day in his stories. He was a pacifist and social Darwinist. The defeat of the Martians by the common cold (after the failure of military action) is 100% on point for him.
WalterBright
4 days ago
His other stories, sure. But not in WotW. The common cold thing just struck me as a tidy way to end the story, and the irony of it.
tarsierscripter
4 days ago
The story is an allegory about the evils of colonialism, told from the perspective of the colonized (in progress). HG Wells is on the record about that.
The common cold thing is a direct reference to what happened to European explorers when they first encountered syphilis in North America.
account42
a day ago
[dead]
otikik
5 days ago
> surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at al
Sir, I believe you have not watched it.
WalterBright
5 days ago
I've seen every episode of TOS, most multiple times.
otikik
5 days ago
Then you must have had such a good time that you forgot everyone’s flaws!
WalterBright
4 days ago
I meant flaws in terms of negative personality traits.
brolumir
4 days ago
Zero desire to advance is a good one.
IIRC Riker has turned down multiple offers to become a captain of his own ship, to stay as Picard's #2. This would've never happened in real life, he would've been gone after Season 2 at the latest.
account42
a day ago
Going from second in command on the federations flagship to his own command on some other ship is not such a clear advancement. And that goes from many of the other characters too: They are already at the top of their particular nieche and any "advancement" would mean switching to an entirely different job.
bpshaver
5 days ago
All utopias are fictional. Arguably that is definitive of the term as coined by Thomas More.
krapp
5 days ago
Also keep in mind that part of what makes the utopia work, canonically, is that humans have somehow evolved beyond their vices and bigotry and the fully voluntarist socialist society it portrays just works because everyone is perfectly fine working just for the betterment of humankind or personal intellectual gratification.
In other words it only works because it ignores basic human nature. Which is one reason why Star Trek's utopia isn't really tractable. The others being the technology that completely ignores the laws of physics. Free energy, warp drives and magic boxes that grant wishes.
If people want a science fiction "utopia" I'd say look at Babylon 5. It certainly has its flaws but its Utopia isn't real (because they never are,) it's an ideal that people are always struggling towards.
hax0ron3
5 days ago
In-universe there was a brutal nuclear war that killed a large number of people. And then after the war they developed technology that got rid of a lot of material scarcity and disease.
I find it somewhat plausible that this could actually lead to something like the show depicts. There is precedent for sweeping moral changes in human history. For example, large parts of the world now find practices like torture, slavery, and collective punishment to be repugnant. Those practices still happen to some extent, but they're not viewed as being just normal like they generally were seen back in the day.
Another example is how Europe and Japan after WW2 genuinely became more pacifistic. Not just as a pretense to fool outsiders, but as a genuine change in how the inhabitants see things.
ahazred8ta
5 days ago
Apparently there's enough capitalism for mining colonies and merchant traders. "No!! If you shut down the mine we'll go bankrupt!!"
krapp
5 days ago
I mean, at the end of the day Star Trek is a capitalist product written by capitalists meant to appeal to an audience raised to believe in the absolute moral good of capitalism. Every now and they might sneak in a sly and gentle anti-capitalist criticism (the Ferengi were good for that) but no one actually wants to alienate their audience.
hax0ron3
5 days ago
I don't think it's quite that capitalist.
Picard says at one point "A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions."
At another point he says "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
To be fair, capitalism is mainly a system of contracts and laws that allow for certain kinds of ownership structures and investments. It does not necessarily have to be done in a way that is obsessed with the accumulation of things or wealth. So those quotes are also not really anti-capitalist. But the quotes are, at least, not friendly to today's common notion of what 'capitalism' means.
krapp
5 days ago
When I say Star Trek is capitalist I mean the franchise, the product itself. The purpose of Star Trek is to sell merchandise and ad revenue. Or streaming subscriptions. That necessarily affects the kind of stories it can tell. The showrunners don't actually care about the anti-capitalist message, per se, except to the degree that it helps sell the product.
Melatonic
4 days ago
Keep in mind to get to the Star Trek utopia we see in the show they talk about having to go through a horrific WWIII first
sjdh76
5 days ago
Have you heard about religion? Its fiction too. Yet it has survived as long aa the chimp troupe has. The human brain generates predictions over different time horizons. When they dont align what is it supposed to do to prevent itself unraveling? It generates fiction. Fiction is how it stays stable.
lopsotronic
5 days ago
We become what we pretend to be.
eboy
4 days ago
[dead]
DonHopkins
4 days ago
[dead]
beloch
5 days ago
TNG should be played 24/7 on every screen in the white house for the next two years.
Picard viewed the power of leadership as, foremost, a responsibility. Every action was careful, deliberate, and well advised. Some later Trek shows (e.g. Voyager) turned captains into geniuses who knew more about everything than all of their underlings. Picard was not an expert in most things and needed his staff to advise him. Once he knew the options and consequences, he shouldered the responsibility of the outcomes, but as a leader of a crew, not a genius with compatible lackeys and minions around him. It was a realistic take on leadership that simply doesn't appear often in television or movies.
Stewart, of course, was not Picard. It's too easy to conflate actors with their roles. However, actors do often help shape their characters, and Stewart's ability to give a thoughtful, diplomatic, and prudent character such incredible power and presence is likely what made Picard possible. The showrunners didn't need to strap a phaser to his thigh and drop him into every away mission to make him compelling because of what Stewart was able to accomplish as an actor sitting behind a desk.
TFNA
5 days ago
At the same time, TNG did depict Picard as a solitary and isolated figure, whose family relationships had frayed, and it's not hard to view his unusual dedication to his leadership as a way to deal with that emptiness in the rest of his life.
danaris
5 days ago
I always saw it as the other way around: his family relationships had frayed because he had dedicated his life so completely to Starfleet.
outworlder
5 days ago
That's exactly it. It wasn't subtle either. He had some people in his past that he's neglected.
Izkata
5 days ago
> Some later Trek shows (e.g. Voyager) turned captains into geniuses who knew more about everything than all of their underlings.
Not everything. Picard was command track his whole career, I think the same was true for Sisko. But Janeway started as a science officer before switching to command, and Archer was a test pilot. Their experience in those fields would sometimes be useful. It's similar to how Picard's interest in archeology was sometimes useful.
halflife
5 days ago
Thank you for this. You put my thoughts into words.
whycombilater
5 days ago
You could play it around those people for 100 years and it would make no difference.
I imagine they'd also conclude Picard is a loser.
platevoltage
5 days ago
"I like people who weren't captured and assimilated by the Borg"
dpkirchner
5 days ago
Realistically, he probably shouldn't have been allowed to return as captain after being so uniquely compromised. Keep him in Starfleet, sure, but maybe stick him behind a desk or lectern in San Francisco.
outworlder
5 days ago
And yet... Earth would have been destroyed had they done that.
The main issue was his PTSD.
krapp
5 days ago
>And yet... Earth would have been destroyed had they done that.
I don't like the premise that Picard, alone, out of the entirety of the Federation, is the only thing standing between the Borg and the assimilation of Earth. It seems to go against the collectivist identity of the franchise. It's fiction, they could have written it another way, they just didn't because Picard is the star of the show.
And the PTSD isn't even the issue, he was compromised by alien mind control implants from a species far stronger than the Federation, with hostile intent. Implants the Federation couldn't even remove. Implants which have the property of aggressive assimilation. A single nanoprobe is a potential extinction level event.
Humans lose their security clearance by smoking a joint. Being puppeted and mind-controlled by eldritch alien gods into a system-wide genocide should at least lead to a demotion.
And everyone forgets Geordi was tortured and mind-controlled by the Romulans. In anything close to reality he'd never be allowed on a starship again, and Picard would spend the rest of his life quarantined inside a force field getting scanned like that guy in the X Files with the dark matter shadow.
platevoltage
4 days ago
> And everyone forgets Geordi was tortured and mind-controlled by the Romulans. In anything close to reality he'd never be allowed on a starship again
You could say that about so many characters. Capitan Pike lived an entire lifetime in his head, and then just woke up as a 50 year old Capitan again, and went back to work.
Chief O'brian went to a brutal prison for 20 years, in his head of course, but it was real to him.
Both of them would be completely different people after these experiences.
account42
a day ago
Picard went to both of these things as well AND had the implants on top.
WindyTree
5 days ago
Who could have done that role but Stewart? Take the guy who played Riker or anyone else in that role and you would have lost the flavor. He will be missed.
hnlmorg
5 days ago
He wasn’t Gene Roddenberrys first choice. In fact he had to get talked into casting Patrick Stewart by the other execs.
Roddenberry was after someone younger. There’s even a casting show reel of Stewart wearing a toupee and speaking with a very bad French accent.
yomismoaqui
5 days ago
> ... There’s even a casting show reel of Stewart wearing a toupee and speaking with a very bad French accent.
Lord have mercy
mcv
4 days ago
[dead]
pimeys
5 days ago
Although Frakes is close to a god in my books as an actor and a director. But never a good captain in TNG, I agree. He's a loved director though, and part of many great Star Trek episodes, and a few good ones for The Orville.
radicalbyte
5 days ago
Every time I see the current VP of the US I keep thinking back to Riker. And how he's like the anti-universe version of Riker.
somerandomqaguy
5 days ago
If we're talking modern day? Edward James Olmos channelling Commander Adama would probably be a very close 2nd if not outstanding on it's own. I could potentially see Scott Glenn pulling it off but that one's a touch iffy IMO.
outworlder
5 days ago
I can see 'Adama' pulling it off. But it is a different command style.
thwarted
5 days ago
There's a YouTube channel called "The Art of Storytelling"[0] that had a concentration on Star Trek, specifically TNG, that I've found entertaining and informative. One video covers that episode specifically.
burnte
5 days ago
I have always used it as a model for my own leadership and it's worked out extraordinarily well almost always, and has been abused just once. I've had former employees who I've fired who would still work for me again, and I take great pride in treating peole with respect generates results like that. It works.
sgt
4 days ago
And moments that were philosophical and put things in perspective as humans [1].
krunck
5 days ago
> Really high quality writing for its time.
Really high quality writing.
LeoPanthera
5 days ago
TNG is a fine example of "competency porn", where everyone knows what they're doing and usually makes the best available choices. In today's world, that's even more compelling than it used to be.
wolvoleo
5 days ago
It's also because the world in TNG was not centered around amassing the biggest pile of money.
Extrapolate from that and it becomes a easier to make the right decisions.
loeg
5 days ago
That's just what the writers of the fictional show thought was utopian. It doesn't tell us anything about the real world; it's fiction.
wolvoleo
4 days ago
It is pretty utopian to me too. Most of the misery in this world happens because someone profits from it :( I do think we will have to leave this system behind for mankind to thrive. But it probably will take a few more world wars to come up this realisation unfortunately.
olyjohn
5 days ago
Star Trek? Fiction? You don't say!
eatonphil
5 days ago
Like West Wing. Makes it hard to watch. TNG a bit less so, thankfully.
m_fayer
4 days ago
Emotional maturity too. People knew how to be part of a team, resolve differences, when to stand on principle, how to live with disappointment, and own their mistakes. Compelling indeed.
kilroy123
5 days ago
I mean, it was the flagship starship of the fleet. So yeah, it better be staffed with competent people like that.
olyjohn
5 days ago
That was what Starfleet was about. People in it were the best of the best. Expectations were high. Academy training was intense.
bcvvvy
4 days ago
That’s because the usual dickheads you work with have been filtered out by starfleet academy.
Need more starfleet academy.
fouronnes3
5 days ago
Back when Twitter was good there was an account called "Picard Management Tips" that shared such things and it was really golden.
shezi
5 days ago
It is now in the fediverse: https://mas.to/@PicardTips
mcv
4 days ago
There's also Coach Gowron: https://tenforward.social/@coachgowron
focusedone
5 days ago
Thank you! Was on my way to search for it.
PHLAK
5 days ago
[dead]
maqp
5 days ago
Also his guest appearance as Alistair Burke in Frasier episode The Doctor is Out (S11E3) is nothing short of hilarious.
The episode is classic sitcom "wrong conclusion escalates out of hands" so I highly recommend watching it in full instead of the clips but if it's not on your streaming platform, Stewart's scenes are cut together in
rapatel0
5 days ago
Picard was a model of ethics, integrity, and competence especially when the moments are dire and there are no good answers.
Patrick Stewart modeled how a good man should behave and you could tell that he acted from a place of wisdom he understood through experience.
Wonderful contribution to humanity and truly saddened by this loss.
yibg
5 days ago
Depicted the embodiment of bravery. Fighting when the odds are against you because it’s the right thing to do.
talon8635
5 days ago
His episode (the finale of season 1) of Extras is absolutely hilarious. I know he’s not primarily known for comedy, but he’s funny as hell.
alcomatt
5 days ago
he's done a few comedy stints here and there. He played King Richard The LionHeart in Mel Brooks'es Robin Hood Men in Tights plus he was funny in quite a few STNG episodes and movies. He will be missed. That voice and clear diction.
chasd00
5 days ago
He voiced Stan's boss at the CIA in American Dad. That character wouldn't be as near as funny without Patrick Stewart's competent and authoritative tone of voice.
exogenousdata
5 days ago
Sir Patrick Stewart was hilarious when he wanted to be!
srean
5 days ago
Then there was that circumcision disagreement.
halflife
5 days ago
Almost every episode of extras is awesome, but of course Patrick Stewart is just perfect for that show.
reddalo
5 days ago
I love Extras and I wish there were more episodes. It's a small gem of a series.
chasil
5 days ago
I think that I liked him most as Sejanus in I, Claudius. That was before any of his major sci-fi roles.
I see him in this episode:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xA6QbwPGlgk
I've read both Suetonius and Tacitus on the subject of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian dynasty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_dynasty
Those who lack this family knowledge would want to start with the first episode of I, Claudius.
SubiculumCode
5 days ago
I need to watch that again, its been too long (would be my 5th or sixth time, but would be worth it). Is the whole series available there?
chasil
5 days ago
I think this is the whole set.
I'd also recommend the recent Domina for Livia's perspective.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlwzDYw6zp2D6DxLR8zGz1i_7...
SubiculumCode
5 days ago
Thanks!
chasil
4 days ago
I do reccomed Tacitus for his scandalous take:
lo_zamoyski
5 days ago
Leadership is service, not dominance. Today, some people throw around terms like "servant leadership" as if this is something new, as if something like the New Testament had never been compiled.
antonvs
5 days ago
The problem is that to convince people to take the trouble to lead - or perhaps I should say “manage” - you need incentives. Money is one, but organizationally-backed dominance is irresistible for many people.
prox
4 days ago
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” - Douglas Adams HHG2G
True as always.
layoric
5 days ago
Sadly the explicitness was needed cause it ceased being the default..
eldenbishop
5 days ago
Damn. You nailed it with your epilogue. Some actors you respect, some you like, but I love him too. I really do, never met him, but he's important to me and was a father figure for many years of my life and while I am not part of his family, he is part of mine.
scelerat
5 days ago
"Competence porn," something I only heard relatively recently, is a great way to describe a significant component of my love for Star Trek. TNG was the top of the heap for that, and Patrick Stewart's Picard embodied it.
nickjj
5 days ago
I only watched TNG end to end a few years ago and it was one of the best series I've seen on so many levels.
Ever since I watched it, I half jokingly suggested that it should be a mandatory watch before you're allowed to join the workforce.
AdrianB1
5 days ago
As much as I like Patrick Stewart, the actor, I must remember that Captain Picard was a role in a script someone else wrote. Picard's management style is what you admire, not the actor's personal management style.
I have the same attitude with House MD lead actor Hugh Laurie: the actor played the role greatly, but the actor was not the fictional person of the role.
razodactyl
5 days ago
This comment reminds me of General Hammond from Stargate - it's refreshing when characters are written for competence and especially funny when they just do what a normal person would do.
Not to say they're comparable - both characters and actors are much loved.
MisterTea
4 days ago
He was also a fan of Bevis and Butthead which made me laugh picturing the man who played Captain Picard laughing at two cartoon idiots laughing at a dog turd.
watwut
5 days ago
Babylon 5 is equal or even better for that. More leadership styles, some more flawed, but ultimately showing various ways to be emphatetic while assertive.
jasomill
5 days ago
This perfectly describes his performance as a lecherous version of himself in Ricky Gervais' and Stephen Merchant's Extras:
DivingForGold
4 days ago
Indeed, Patrick practiced empathy and compassion with a degree of assertiveness while Shatner was more assertive and IMHO his persona became incorporated into the behavior of many American corporate executives on how they dealt with staff.
jibalt
5 days ago
Not to take anything away from his acting, but Patrick Stewart was not the author of his dialogue in TNG.
matwood
5 days ago
TNG is the Star Trek I grew up with. I rewatch the entire series every so often and it’s always good.
savalione
5 days ago
I didn't know that Patrick Stewart was the voice of Avery Bullock. Such an essential voice for the whole show. His voice will be missed.
RandyRanderson
5 days ago
I learnt the facts of life ... from watching The Facts of Life
whycome
5 days ago
> the way he takes a role both so seriously and ridiculously makes him so fantastically hilarious.
Don't forget he voiced the Poop emoji in that movie. If only we could tell his younger, Shakespeare-acting, self.
roeles
4 days ago
> Watching him in Star Trek TNG made me reevaluate how management of people should be done
Has it made you disappointed of how people are managed in real life?
holoduke
5 days ago
Ah yes. Till you have to manage a real group of individuals with mixed qualities.
lirolero
5 days ago
[dead]
