There's been a lot of discussion about how lib the newer Star Trek shows have been compared to the episodes of older series like DS9. However, while binge-watching Discovery, I was a little surprised to see capitalism being openly discussed as something hostile to Federation values in a specific scene:
spoiler
I'm talking about the "negotiation" discussion between Admiral Vance and Osyraa, the leader of the Emerald Chain. Osyraa was trying to convince Vance to merge the Federation and the Emerald Chain, who really only planned to use their Federation representative as a proxy for Osyraa and would otherwise continue their current system capitalist exploitation (including slavery):
Osyraa: Hmm. It doesn’t quite taste like the real thing, does it?
Vance: I’ve never eaten a real apple.
Osyraa: Well, how sad. Apples are a thing of beauty. You want to talk about oppression, you should start in your own mess hall.
Vance: It’s made of our shit, you know. That’s the base material that we use in our replicators. We deconstruct it to the atomic level and then reform the atoms. It’s pretty good for shit, and we don’t have to commit atrocities for it.
Osyraa: Well, you’re not being very diplomatic.
Vance: And you’re wasting my time. Are we negotiating or not?
Osyraa: Fine. If the Chain is to unite with the Federation, you need to send the message that our culture is fundamentally valid and ethical.
Vance: And how are we supposed to do that?
Osyraa: By acknowledging that capitalism is already happening within the Federation. When was the last time anyone from around here visited Deep Space 253?
Vance: A while.
Osyraa: 87 years.
Vance: Not by choice.
Osyraa: It’s way the hell out there. But DS253 has been trading with an Emerald Chain mercantile for nearly a century. You need to sanction that trade, and you need to permit the Chain to establish an embassy on the station. That will send a very powerful message.
Vance: Your mercantile exchanges– they traffic in goods that are used for enslavement. Some still have open slave markets.
Osyraa: And I have already submitted a charter amendment to our congress outlawing slavery. And it has enough support to pass. I had to spend a lot of political capital, but it has the support of regular citizens.
Vance: In order for me to sell it to the president, you’d gonna need to step away from the influence you’re exerting on Kwejian and the other 50 pre-warp planets you’ve targeted.
Osyraa: You’re asking very powerful people to give up huge amounts of income.
It's not as overt as Rom quoting Marx, but it is at least nice to see capitalism portrayed as something undeniably negative, and as something hostile to the Federation and its mission.
I'm curious to know what you all though of that exchange, as well as the story arc surrounding it.
Once you learn that Star Trek was originally created to depict an idealized fascism, it becomes a lot harder to enjoy.
A lot of people forget that the idea of having a fascist utopia was considered popular until the Nazis attacked :amerikkka: during WW2. Once the empire recognized it as a threat, it fell off the face of the earth.
Star Trek was originally created to depict an idealized fascism
:cat-confused: ?
Yeah I don't really get this line of thinking. The only remotely fascist thing about it is they copied over present day Earth military traditions, ranks etc. which clearly doesn't vibe with the "space communism" they're trying to project.
Yeah, but then there's overt Space Communist settings with military ranks. It's not like the Soviets eliminated them (though they did kind of reform ranks for awhile.)
Once you learn that Star Trek was originally created to depict an idealized fascism
:downbear:
I think you are confusing it with Starship Troopers.
That's a pretty good exchange. As a Marxist, one problem with it is that it confuses trade with capitalism. Trading or even markets aren't in themselves capitalism and obviously predate capitalism. Haven't watched Discovery passed season 1, so I can't comment on the story overall.
My criticism of nutrek is less it being lib (old Trek could be lib) and more about the tone/attitude. For that reason, I'm a lot more critical of Picard than Discovery where the issue isn't just tone.
Nutrek has things getting worse all the time, and often violence is the answer because the enemies can't be reasoned with.
Also lots of new tech saving the day by blowing things up better.
There's a clip reel somewhere with all of the most optimistic/heartwarming moments in old trek juxtaposed with every time someone mimes, references or discusses offing themselves in Picard. Made me wonder just what the hell happened.
Doesn't change the fact the entire series is vaguely fascist.
Oh so they were moderately Marxist in one scene, so are real fascists.
I'm finishing up season 3 right now, and I definitely like it overall. I don't know why people are so against it, but maybe I'm just not being critical enough or something.
At least half of the hate is based on each person's previous experience as a Trek fan having watched most or all of old Trek.
It is known that nuTrek is significantly better received by people who were not fans or had little experience with it. And that is also another cause of friction, the old fans feel that Kurtzman and CBS basicaly dumped the entire ideology and background of the franchise in order to appeal to new viewers and in the process reduced Trek to nothing but random characters and names of things you know.
The right wing trek fans are basicaly hating on the nostalgia and the "liberalism" e.g all the phobias.
The left wing trek fans are hating on the nostalgia and the scratch-a-liberal-fascist pandering that is basically internally inconsistent with everything that existed before.
STD S1 was basically we love science and math but also we solve problems by trying to blow up an entire home world of another species even though Picard refused to genocide the Borg etc...
S2 was basicaly "do you love TOS? DO YOU LOVE SPOOOCK!????! DO YOU LOOOVE THE ENTEEEEERPRIIIIIISE!!!???" Read than in Rich evans voice x20.
I think RLM realy did a good job explaining how bad the writing was for S2 too as well. That whole season plot made no sense. Mike is also on point that Kurtzman loves "emotional" stuff and that resonates with a lot of people and that demographic also tends to be the polar opposite of old Trek fans.
Left wing fans don't ever say you can't enjoy Kurtzman's shit, just that it would be helpful to understand where you sit on the whole spectrum. You can watch capeshit but it would be very naive to not understand where the whole superhero movie thing sits in society and what messages they bring.
I watched the pilot for Discovery the day it came out. I’m not ever going to watch nuTrek.
