Posted on 09/27/2012 6:46:06 AM PDT by C19fan
I recently watched Starship Troopers for the first time. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I can’t believe I’d never seen it before. If you can set aside the laboured subtext about militarism and the whole America policing the world thing, it’s a brilliant epic about love and the indomitability of the human spirit. And they’re all pretty hot, which helps. But I had another train of thought watching this movie. It reminded me of a guilty secret, and of a violent change in attitude I’ve had toward science fiction in the past few years, and toward Star Trek in particular.
(Excerpt) Read more at kernelmag.com ...
Case closed.
From IMDB's quotes:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century.
Lily Sloane: No money? You mean, you don't get paid?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: We work to better ourselves.
In my century, we don't succumb to revenge. We have a more evolved sensibility...
What claptrap, such wimpy liberal thinking. I work to better myself everyday and I still make money and I'm sure everyone else here could say the same. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Tasha Yar’s weren’t too bad either.
Except for that scene in Star Trek: First Contact where Geordi LaForge comes face-to-face with his lifelong idol, Zephram Cochran, inventor of the warp drive.
Cochran turns out to be a vain, drunken, unpleasant man. Not at all what LaForge was expecting from the history books. When discussing how this all came about Cochran tells him point blank, “Do you think I did all this for humanity? For the sheer joy of exploration?” He then shakes his head and tells him “I did this because I wanted to get RICH!”
I found it an amazingly honest portrayal of why most important things happened in history.
The book Starship Troopers is awesome but I think Heinlein channeled Ayn Rand for the teacher in the first part of the book. I love reading pages of lectures in a sci-fi book.
The movie, ugghhh. All I can say that was good was the gratuitous nudity.
Sorry but I must disagree Geri Ryan in Star Trek Voyager 7 of 9 I haven’t seen a girl fill out a leather body suit that well since Michelle Phifer played catwoman.
Picard: “We’ve eliminated the need for money. We seek to better ourselves.”
Pure Marxism.
I don’t get the rejection of money. They were on start ships, what was there to buy?
When they were on DS9, the people paid with credits.
TNG was very socialistic. DS9 (my favorite ST series, by far) was much less so. The crew members often carried the local currency (gold pressed latinum) and the utopian, socialist universe of TNG was sometimes, gently mocked.
Cadet Nog: It’s not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake Sisko: (Who is begging Nog for his money, because he has none) Hey - watch it! There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.
Cadet Nog: What does that mean exactly?
Jake Sisko: (Vainly, grasping for an intelligent answer)It means... it means, we don’t need money.
Cadet Nog: Well if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine.
Also, in a society with technology like replicators, that could “magically” produce just about anything, anyone needs out of thin air, and with very cheap energy sources, socialism would not be quite as impractical as it is in the real world, today.
Economics is about how scarce resources are disrtibuted, so when there is no scarcity, economic systems become far, less relevant.
Finally, this is sci-fi FANTASY. If you can suspend disbelief to imagine a world with travel at many times the speed of light, transporters, holodecks, etc., is it that much harder to imagine a world where Socialism actually works. :)
The intramural shower scene in Starship troopers was the best part of the show.
I never could understand in starship troopers the lack of armor and air cover.
Why does the wine growing Picard bother to make wine when there are replicators that make wine? Obviously there is a difference between crap replicator wine and the real stuff. The real stuff has a limited supply so how does it get distributed in TNG? A lottery? Yes basic items would be dirt cheap because of cheap energy and replicators but there are still items and services a replicator cannot reproduce that people still want; for example a luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue in NY.
A quote I found years ago:
I agree with that, and I think that a break from being in production will give the next generation (har. har. har.) of Star Trek creators an opportunity to get some perspective on Star Trek, and let whatever the next thing is return to what made Star Trek so great: Captains who bang green chicks in mini-skirts. - Wil Wheaton
I guess the Starship Troopers staff officers forgot about combined arms tactics. hee hee.
A lot of people would disagree with you. Personally, I always enjoy it as (nearly) mindless fun. The "nearly" part is that it did keep some of the ideas from Heinlein's classic about how a society based on human nature and logic would be organized. Brutal at times, and unfair to some, but effective at keeping the peace and letting people live their lives in safety with their personal property rights assured. But the rest was eye candy and really cool SFX. So if one was hoping for a faithful adaptation your disgust with the film is understandable.
The author of this piece, though, did miss one element of both stories. It was not the US that was policing the world (and the galaxy). In the book Rico's native language was Tagalog (Filipino) and in the film a native of Buenos Aires. The accents of the actors (and that he apparently has never read the book) threw him off.
Star Trek, on the other hand, in all its iterations portrayed a utopian human civilization without money or greed but never bothered, with good reason, to explain the details of how exactly that would or could work. In that respect, Star Trek was even more mindless than SST, the book or the film.
Well, let’s step back a moment and consider our current situation.
Food is cheap. See my tagline. With minimum-wage laws in place (a different discussion, I’m not condoning them), one can eat well on just 30 minutes of work a day.
Housing isn’t what I’d call cheap, but neither is it particularly expensive if you’re willing to move and put in some construction/repair effort. Big problem with housing is most people want it in expensive locations.
Transportation is cheap. Most choose expensive forms or situations, but chosen with care it can be cheap. You can go ‘round the world in a few hours for under a week’s pay.
The biggest ailment of the poor is obesity.
Look at all that in light of “the 47%” doing rather well on near-full federal support, plot the socioeconomic trajectory, throw in “makerbots” and advanced physics, and we may very well end up with Sisko’s society (like it or not).
Just some rambling thoughts. Back to earning money.
The book Starship troopers is a classic.
The movie is pure crap. Thats enough to let me know the writer is a fool.
AMEN! The movie is a travesty of one of the best military books ever. I give a copy to every young ‘un I know who’s about to go to basic or a military academy.
Colonel, USAFR
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