
Star Trek: The Next Generation Was the Last Sci-Fi Show Hopeful About the Future - fraqed
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/star-trek-the-next-generation-future
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api
The most fantastic aspect of Star Trek isn't warp drive, teleportation, or
replicators. It's a competent bureaucracy.

Starfleet seems to be just that: competent, usually very trustworthy, fair,
and honest. Almost equally unbelievable is a society that isn't incredibly
emotionally dysfunctional. There is little in the way of psychopathy,
narcissism, addiction, unhealthy ideological fanaticism, or depression on
display among the protagonists.

Cyberpunk has proven to be the most prophetic of the sci-fi genres by far.
It's done that by being technologically optimistic and socially pessimistic.
So far it seems right on-- technology continues to advance, but globally it
looks as if the normal arc of society is from freedom to despotism followed by
a decay into syndicated criminality. The mafia state -- almost exactly as
depicted in the common cyberpunk setting -- looks like the ascendant future.
If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by
the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los
Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like
contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a
narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.

~~~
Eliezer
I watched "Star Trek: Into Darkness". At first I was like "Kirk should be
fired." Then I was like "Everyone on the Enterprise should be fired." Then I
was like "Everyone in Starfleet should be fired." Then I was like, "Wow, I've
never wanted to fire an entire civilization before, and this movie has given
me a new appreciation for the importance of rules and regulations in real
life."

~~~
api
The competent bureaucracy part is really the lynchpin. Because bureaucracies
are so incompetent, criminal syndicates just run circles around them. This is
why the mafia state looks like the logical endpoint-- basically anarcho-
syndicalism, and it's not a utopia. I think this is also why the most
bureaucratic states -- the USSR and Communist China -- have been the first
into this brave new future. The criminal mammals triumphed easily over those
byzantine dinosaurs.

The bottom line is that we have the scientific method and we have the
discipline of engineering, and those together can reliably produce progress in
the technical realm. We have _no_ set of tools or techniques that reliably
produces progress in the human realm. There are no institutions charged with
understanding and healing us psychologically. The closest we come is to pop
pills, and even that is poorly done -- diagnosis is incredibly unscientific
and haphazard.

I personally blame -- directly and indirectly -- the war on drugs. I am not
one of those people who thinks that dosing everyone with LSD would create some
kind of utopia. I've known too many drug users to think that. But beneath the
pop culture misuse of those substances, there was some _really_ visionary
research into genuinely understanding and even changing deep human psychology
at work back in those days. The ridiculous moral panic that followed had the
effect of shutting down almost all of that research, even some of the non-
psychedlics-related stuff, and leaving us with nothing but talk-talk
psychotherapy and the ham fisted pill pushing approach. To this day attempting
to delve deeply into human psychology in an active way immediately leads into
realms since declared utterly taboo.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
There is a point of view that Stalin and Mao were essentially criminal in a
way that national leaders have not been since the 19th Century. So a Putin and
whatever they have in China actually represents a modicum of progress.
Russia's history at the level of empire is pretty nasty.

We may never be able to get out of our own way. Who knows? Not a big pill fan
( although they've absolutely gotten better for people with real brain-
chemistry problems ) but these days, it's easier than ever to identify bad
sources of information and understand what's gone wrong. My parents' (Silent)
generation had no idea why there was a Depression; mine actually has a few
theories.

The emphasis on LSD as "better living through chemistry" was as much about
advertising-propaganda as anything else. Regardless of any War on Drugs, that
went badly.

------
ufmace
I watched most of TNG, but I don't consider myself to be really into the
series. One of the things that I found odd about it was how externally-focused
it was - everything seemed to be about various alien species and unknown
astronomical phenomenon, with almost nothing about what this Federation that
they all serve is and how it really works. All I remember is drips and drabs
of that, which is a shame, when there are so many ideas that could stand to be
explored.

Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? The fine details of
that would all have massive effects on what the society as a whole looks like.
Can anybody replicate anything on them? Including weapons and drugs? If not,
who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? They presumably
require energy, and where does that come from? Is there a limit to how much
stuff a person can make?

This also gets into the rather odd and poorly fleshed-out idea of a society
without money. Exactly how does this society work without money? Books can and
have be written on ideas around this, but it's just kind of casually thrown
out there, with no exploration of the implications on how the greater society
functions.

~~~
krapp
>Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work?

It takes matter, and rearranges it into something else less boring. Using
science. Ish. Things. Lasers.

>Can anybody replicate anything on them?

Depends on the episode.

>Including weapons and drugs?

I think certain weapons were impossible to replicate but you certainly could
crank out as many guns and knives as you liked. But of course, being a utopian
society, such things would be unthinkable, so it's not an issue.

>If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it?

Nobody. It's a perfect society. Everyone is nice and peaceful because they
choose to be. No wars (with other humans - aliens are fine), no famine (except
for that one thing in the original series), no money (or something). They just
use the replicators and holodecks for aggressive but entirely wholesome and
not at all sexual sports and research and interactive fiction, because the
humans of the future have evolved beyond the need to be interesting. Except
for Barclay. And La Forge, because one time he created a holodeck model of
this girl he had a crush on. Which was awkward when she showed up and he had
forgotten to close his porn folder.

>They presumably require energy, and where does that come from?

...subspace or something. Dilithium. Quantums. Shut up.

>Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make?

Probably just the size of the replicator console thing. And energy. By Voyager
they had entire starships made up of holograms so who knows?

Like a lot of post-scarcity ideas, to me, Star Trek essentially ran on magic.
A lot of that had more to do with the necessities of sci-fi on a low budget
(the only reason transporters existed, for instance, was to they didn't have
to spend effects money on shuttlecraft) than thinking hard about actually
making it work. It just _did._ The holodeck, literally, could create self-
aware sentient beings if you asked it to. Riker got cloned when a transporter
beam reflected off the clouds of a planet or something. The Enterprise got
pregnant and had a space baby. That was a thing that happened.

No one cared enough about science fictional speculation to actually try
fleshing things out, because that would take time, cost money, and potentially
mean taking dramatic risks. Rather, they just came up with a new particle, or
kind of energy, or swirly whatever, of the week that would defeat the monster,
or other swirly whatever, of the week. Now and then they would just drop the
ball on some potentially awesome plot points, like the aliens invading from
subspace that snatched people out of their beds and did surgery on them (real
creepy stuff) or the Ikonian Empire (apparently a big deal, left magic portals
everywhere, completely forgotten about) or the parasites mind-controlling
certain Federation higher-ups (leading to the only head-explosion in Trek
history.)

But the truth is, the "science fiction" was just stage dressing for utterly
banal drama. Probably the books got into it more deeply. The Borg was nice
though, until it wasn't.

Edit: I shouldn't say 'no one cared.' Reading blogs by people like Doug
Drexler, clearly a lot of people cared, just all too often the plot didn't
seem to permit much complexity or insight.

~~~
bane
I think it's telling too that the vast majority of the fanfic I've seen seems
to be fantasy romances between various characters rather than exploration
plots or stabs at technical explanations or something non-banal.

Sure we get the Starfleet Technical Manual, but that was tossed as non-canon
almost as soon as it hit the stores.

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VLM
Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not
"real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more,
no alternative universe type of effect which is so interesting about hard sci
fi.

Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing
pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across
all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures.

If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to
recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony
Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the
audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome.
Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS
being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just
about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and
eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static
configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but
otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is
becoming unknown?).

~~~
mhandley
On the other hand, by the last episode in 1994, I was spending around eight
hours a week in transatlantic multi-party video conferences over the Internet
using IP multicast. That and this little thing called the web had already
taken off. Looking back, a lot changed in the early 1990s.

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gte910h
Sci-Fi is commentary on the present, or the near future.

Even Star Trek (TOS was 60's era Apollo optimisim, ST:TNG was 1980's
"Communism is falling"/We're getting okay with Russia/The Economy is
booming/Roddenberry said so!)

The reason why today's SciFi isn't hopeful is that there are lots of very easy
to see bad ways today turns into tomorrow, and not very easy to see good ways.

I honestly think self driving cars will make life _crazy_ better for instance.
But there isn't Sci-Fi to write about that is interesting enough to publish or
make a show about with that premise. Or for 3d printing. etc

~~~
eudox
>Or for 3d printing. etc

There's The Diamond Age, which is moderately optimistic, and other molecular
nanotechnology-related fiction.

~~~
gte910h
But was written 20 years ago. Certainly within memory of many readers who'd be
alive today, but certainly missing many important themes that could be
explored to extrapolate from today.

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resist_futility
Stargate was pretty hopeful about the future. Although it is somewhat set in
the present it does touch on the future quite a few times.

~~~
evan_
In the one episode where they actually did show Earth's future, it was a
Brave-New-World-esque dystopia fueled by an alien incursion. (Really good
episode in one of my absolute favorite franchises) I agree that it's generally
optimistic but it's hard to say that the characters had any faith in humanity
in general, since they keep the whole program a Military secret.

[http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode)](http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_\(episode\))

------
scotty79
Some one should make a series out of Iain M. Banks Culture novels. I find them
very optimistic regarding technological advancement, its societal influence
and liberal coexistence of minds of very different kinds and power.

~~~
arethuza
I rather liked David Brin's take on the Culture:

"...Culture Universe was among the few to confront straight-on the myriad
hopes, dangers and raw possibilities that might be faced by a humanity-that-
succeeds."

[http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-
lame...](http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/science-fiction-lament-then-
optimism.html)

NB If anyone wants to get a quick taste of the Culture visiting the Earth the
BBC Radio 4 version of "The State of the Art" is available on YouTube:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU)

------
Bzomak
"The Heisenberg uncertainly principle means that transporters like the ones in
Star Trek are physically impossible, at least in terms of the physics that we
understand. But that didn't stop Roddenberry and friends. They just assumed
that human beings would figure out some way to "compensate" for the physical
laws." From what I've read, that's somewhat of a generous and optimistic view.
My understanding was that the transporter was created purely as a money-saving
feature, as they didn't have the budget to create planetary landing effects on
a weekly basis. The Heisenberg compensator circuits were a convenient piece of
techno-babble in an attempt to hand-wave the underlying physics problem of
transporters away...

~~~
AgentConundrum
Via Memory-Alpha:

> _When asked by Time magazine in 1994, "How do the Heisenberg compensators
> work?" Michael Okuda replied, "They work just _fine, thank you."

I suspect the article being referenced is "Reconfigure the Modulators"[1], but
it's behind a pay wall so I can't confirm that.

[1]
[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981892,00.html)

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protomyth
Babylon 5's ending had a lot of downs, but it did end in a good place for
humanity.

------
curtis
When it comes to storytelling, conflict is inherently more interesting than
the alternatives. I can't help but feel that this explains most of what's
going on here.

~~~
api
There are many forms of conflict. Optimistic visions of the future often
portray a healthy, competent humanity vs. some unknown danger, mystery, or
challenge.

~~~
curtis
I agree. But I think those kinds of stories are harder to write, especially
for television shows that need scripts for dozens or even hundreds of
episodes.

------
staunch
Star Trek: Enterprise was incredibly optimistic.

------
davidw
Neal Stephenson makes a similar point in this interview:

[http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/](http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Pretty weird, considering he's rather strongly steeped in the post-cyberpunk
weirdtopian tradition.

------
gmuslera
I think Internet made us not so naive about the future considering how we
really are, specially after we get some kind of power. And the present is
making us even more pessimistic about it.

------
noblethrasher
I can't find it now, but I remember a brilliant comment on reddit that
described the theme of TOS and TNG as being about _“what it means to be a hero
in a utopian age”_.

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DanielBMarkham
_In 1994, technology was a part of our lives, but it did not dominate us
completely. So it was possible for Star Trek: TNG to imagine a world in which
we, as people, stayed much the same, but the worlds in which we traveled
expanded infinitely outward. Technology for the past twenty years has
relentlessly driven inward._

It's so interesting to me that commentators keep making this same point over
and over again, and the only answer we get is "But we'll just make even cooler
tech, and it'll all work out."

I don't think so. I think the time of man is at a close, whether we evolve
past it or self-terminate. Billions of years of evolution has created this
species of hominids that travel in packs. We are, instead, trying to re-make
ourselves in something closer to the Borg. It's not going to end the way we
expect it to.

------
gdubs
I liked mostly all the Star Treks, but it bugged me that the later ones became
so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world I supposed. I loved the
optimistic future painted in TNG.

~~~
lotharbot
> _" the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world"_

Both DS9 and Voyager were completely wrapped up prior to 9/11\. Enterprise
struck me as far less militarized -- though far more competently written (it
gets off to a slowish start, but the later seasons are great). And the
original was probably written in part by people with naval backgrounds (note
how people are constantly handing Kirk clipboards to sign off on, there's a
fire control room that weapons fire is sometimes directed through, etc.)

I think the only thing that fits your pattern is Star Trek: Into Darkness.

~~~
krapp
I believe Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy. I'll probably be downvoted into
oblivion if i'm wrong though. CBA to google it.

------
mercer
Futurama could be considered at least partly hopeful, but I suppose that
doesn't really count?

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stevedekorte
From whose perspective is living a militaristic fascist communist state
dressed in onesies hopeful?

~~~
hitchhiker999
You've never seen the show have you?

~~~
stevedekorte
Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate?

What I see is on the show is a glorified militaristic hierarchy and an
audience of fans whose greatest wish is to be the guy giving the orders. It's
the kind of thing the Star Wars Empire would fund as state propaganda.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Which part of the description do you feel was inaccurate?

Militaristic -- even Starfleet, the main "military" in the federation, seems
to (despite the fact that it fights wars, has military ranks, and military
process like "courts-martial"), maintains a myth that it _isn 't_ military.
The society is so anti-militaristic that it can't even admit that it _has_ a
military.

Fascistic -- Aside from militarism (discussed above), a defining element of
fascism is _nationalism_. It'd be hard to think of a society _less_
nationalistic than the Federation.

Communist -- Rather than a planned economy, people seem pretty free to chose
their own pursuits and applications of productive resources.

State -- while it clearly has institutions like Startfleet, its not clear that
the Federation _is_ a state as we'd understand it, rather than an
international institution with sovereign members like the UN.

About the only part of your description that _is_ roughly accurate is the
"dressed in onesies" part.

~~~
hitchhiker999
The poster clearly hasn't really watched the show, without a doubt spouting
off something that sounded 'edgy' for the sake of it.

Nice rebuttal by the way!

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schultkl
It surprised me to only see Gene Roddenberry mentioned in an aside....

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qwerta
Most sci-fi shows men kind in good form controlling a few plannets around. I
would call it great success.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Just suggesting that we'll control a lot of real estate isn't much of an
optimistic view of the future. Historically, exploration and colonization went
hand in hand with subjugation.

~~~
waps
That's assuming we'll find inhabited planets. Current research seems to
indicate that we'd have to be quite lucky to find 5 terraformable planets (not
supporting life, but could be if artificially managed) in a 10-lightyear cube.

