We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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You may be wondering ‘which Federation is that?’ Russia? Mexico? No. Star Trek’s Federation. What is more, my problem is more with the Star Trek shows than their fictional interstellar political entity.
It is not the stories I object to, which are adequate though often highly derivative. It is not the acting, which is generally satisfactory and occasionally quite good. It is not the dialogue, which is adequate for the most part with only intermittent trips into the creative quicksand. It is not the special effects, which are seamless and superior (no, not the first series). All these things are okay for the various Star Trek shows such as Next Generation, DS-9, Voyager (I have not seen Enterprise yet), which are collectively the Sci-Fi ‘franchise’ that more or less defines the qualitative median line through the genre.
Like any long running series, the Star Trek shows have had their ups and downs: The first few Next Generation were embarrassingly badly acted but they eventually pulled together as a company of actors. Voyager was for quite a while the ‘lemon’ of the franchise (Trek Fan One: “You wanna hear a Star Trek joke?” Trek Fan Two: “Sure” Trek Fan One: “Voyager”). Yet once they added the sublime Jeri Ryan and gave their script writers a firm kick up the arse, it belatedly became quite a good show (yes, I admit it: Jeri Ryan’s unusually named ‘7 of 9’ pushed pretty much all my buttons in all the right ways).
Other shows do the genre better for sure (Stargate absolutely, Babylon 5 for the most part, Farscape & Earth: Final Conflict intermittently) whilst still others do it worse (Andromeda) or far worse (SeaQuest DSV)…and of course there is the demented Lexx (imagine Voyager, but while stoned on peyote) which is in a class all its own that transcends mere notions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
So what do I have against the Federation? Well simply put, it is an authoritarian collectivist quasi-communist society (the government is clearly paramilitary) with a totally non-monetary command economy. That they have invented a state like that is not my grouse. I do not doubt there will be authoritarian states in the future just as there are now and so why not posit them? Fine… my problem is that somehow the Federation are held up to be the good guys!
There is little sign of any counter-culture within the Federation and what there is are mostly shown as being violent unreasonable terrorists (the Maquis, who in reality are just fighting to prevent their land being occupied as a result of a Federation sell-out). Also, aspects of their military culture are frankly beyond belief (particularly when compared to shows like Stargate or Babylon 5, which actually understand the essential logic underpinning the military mindset). Do these guys ever fire first? And how often has Jean Luc Picard surrendered his ship in various episodes? That is the Star Fleet Flagship we are talking about! Likewise it seems that insubordination, even under fire, is almost the norm! Sorry but with a culture like that, the Klingons, the Romulans , hell, the Tellytubbies, would have smashed the Federation long ago.
Yet it is clear that the Federation’s agents are the very essence of violent interaction under other conditions. Most striking was one episode of Next Generation called Unification, Part II. Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) enters a saloon seeking information. He encounters a female piano player whom he suspects might know what he needs to discover. She suggests he might like to ‘make it worth her while’. In a voice dripping with disdain, he says “I don’t carry money”. He then falls back on sweet talking her and eventually she reveals a Fenegi merchant nearby may actually have the information (the Ferengi are little arch-capitalist gargoyles with large ears. Good little Von Mises fans that they are, they insist on payment in ‘gold-pressed latinum’, none of this fiat money crap for them!) . As charm is not going to work on a Fenegi merchant, Riker roughs the puny unarmed merchant up and threatens him in order to extract the information. Now keep in mind that we are being told to regard Riker as the good guy. A Feregi will sell anything yet rather than even try to buy or barter for the information, Star Fleet’s armed uniformed thug just resorts to violence. This is just one of the more stark examples of why it really bugs me to hear Sci-Fi fans hold Star Trek’s Federation up as some sort of ‘better society’ in the future.
And yes, I really do always cheer for the Klingons.
I love Star Trek and its’ derivatives as much as anyone else who is a part of (as opposed to accidentally existing in) the Twenty-First Century. I grew up with it. As one of the old space radicals of the L5 Society I highly respect Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols for their pro-space work off stage as well as their marvelous original TV series. I’ve even met some of them at ISDC’s (International Space Development Conferences), the premiere meeting place of the space community.
Tonight I saw my first episode of the newest series. I admit that if I had seen it before 9-11 it would not have grated (as much) on me. I was not expecting a “huggy feely they are misunderstood and are just like us” Political Correctness lesson masquerading as a story line.
I can’t be the only one who shed all semblance of tolerating these inane attitudes two months ago. I watched the story and knew pirates are bad people. You kill them. They aren’t poor misundersood sentients who would be nice if you just sent them a Christmas pudding. Pirates are nasty, brutish scumbags who go out on the spaceways and make a living by stealing. You would rob a vessel in space the same way pirates did it in the 17th Century … and still do in Southeast Asia… you kill people. Pirates don’t pull up alongside and say, “Would you be jolly good chaps and give us your cargo and valuables? We’d be ever so appreciative. Ah, now that’s a good fellow! Would you be so kind as to not tell anyone what we look like? Ta ta now!”
It got worse. I nearly gagged when a black character admitted he knew what it was like being treated as “other” on Earth. This was a total farce. He grew up on a slow cargo ship that spent months and years between the stars. He probably never even saw anyone outside his ship family until he was nearly an adult.
Even that is beside the point. Given another two centuries of global travel, communications and capitalism Earthmen will be a polyglot in race and culture. We’ll all be part African and part everything else as well. Visit New York City and see the future for yourself if you don’t believe me. It would require a victory of “multiculturalism” over human nature to preserve races, let alone racism, that far into the future. The lines were gratuitous and given that a black actor was forced to deliver them, real racism. Why do black professionals have to be singled out for the “victim” mantle? Isn’t the Colin Powell/Condelezza Rice image a hell of lot more positive for kids? Screw the victimhood. Teach kids that they CAN, not that they can not try and then blame someone else.
The traders of the story are supposedly rugged individualists who “solve their own problems”. But the First Officer was just an unlikeable strawman for the PC story line and was certainly no Signy Mallory. The Second Officer was just a wimp who’d have been tossed out the airlock by age 10. He spent most of the episode looking like he needed a diaper.
The political subtext was so blatent I couldn’t abide by it. The Free Traders are attacked by alien pirates. They beat the shield frequency codes out of one they capture. Fair enough. Pirates are pirates. I have no problems there. They should have dumped him out the airlock after they got the codes. But it was all done as a set up so the Captain of the Enterprise could pontificate about how the pirates were just misunderstood. The Enterprise arrives just in time to save the traders, negotiate a settlement and show that Law’n’Order and the Great State now Rules The Spacelanes. None of that naughty self-defense now! Then everyone gets out their teddy bears and has a hugfest. Roll Credits.
I really hope the producers notice attitudes have changed. Perhaps they should invite Virginia Hienlein to advise them. If they did the Enterprise crew would just space the pirates next season instead of talk to ’em.
Now… the question that might have occured to some of the more observant readers: how did I see this episode in Europe already when it won’t air here for some time? Well kiddies, that’s another bedtime story. In the next chapter Uncle Wiggly will… oops! Wrong lifetime!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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