This very much. Post-Roddenberry Trek mostly misses the point.

R1D3R a day ago | parent | next [-]

What do you mean by post-Roddenberry? Most of the TNG era was created without his direct input.

flatline a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes and no. DS9 plays with things at the edges, much like Ian Banks’ novels deal with the behavior that lies at the edge of the Culture and is part of what permits a utopian society to exist at all. It cuts directly to the question of when and if martial force —or other, more subversive mechanisms of power — must be deployed for protection against a force that threatens the existence of an otherwise non-violent society. I think these are criticisms of visions like Roddenberry’s without necessarily undermining them or missing the point entirely. I also think it’s been an ongoing commentary on modern civilization as much as speculative fiction.

Some of the other series and movies miss the point more dramatically for me by just becoming space opera. Star Trek was always political.

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noir_lord a day ago | parent [-]

Your point on the organisation that the Culture setup "Special Circumstances" to solve the "Paradox of Tolerance" problem and Starfleet having similar issues is an interesting one.

Though I'd say that Starfleet is in itself too "noble" to solve the problems that Special Circumstances solves in the Culture universe (though Section 31 isn't and they do feature heavily in DS9).

Frankly I think that Banks was smart enough to realise that if he want to have compelling narratives in a universe where you have near godlike AI's and everyone (including them) is nice, you need that edge somewhere.

Asher's universe which has a similar premise to the Culture (having come after it) solves it differently, some of the AI's aren't nice or even nice adjacent which also works.

	▲	toyg a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Banks was smart enough to realise that [...] you need that edge somewhere. In fact, pretty much all compelling pro-utopia fiction is almost invariably dealing with the fringes of such utopia - both because it avoids getting bogged down in the details of utopia (and risk valid criticism), and because there is no real substitute for conflict as narrative engine. So inevitably you have to go where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

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throwaway27448 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes it becomes space liberalism rather than space communism.

	▲	Avicebron a day ago \| parent [-]
		Hilariously this was also around the time that the Ferengi started being written more sympathetically.