Posted on 03/13/2002 3:13:17 PM PST by ReveBM
Actually, there is a conflict on this topic within the "original series", when extended to include the feature films. In several episodes of the old TV series, there are references to the use of money by people aboard ship. While on board a Space Station, the crew members on "shore leave" have to buy drinks. Uhura asks: "how much for the Tribble". People are heard wagering in monetary units which are simply called "credits". The "parallel universe" Kirk tries to bribe Spock.
However, when we fast-forward to Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home, there is at least one scene that leads the audience to think that money is not used in Kirk's time (the restaurant scene). That might be explained away as a cashless (as contrasted with moneyless) period. Kirk's 23rd-Century debit card would probably not work at Pizza Hut.
I agree. However, I was a bit surprised that the religion question was not the usual set-up for a response dismissing religion as a silly superstition, discredited since the 21st century. We'ver certainly seen that one beore.
You must've missed the Vulcan ritual scenes in Star Trek III - The Search for Spock. Several of the Vulcan guards had prominent "Asian" features. Also, the Vulcan IDIC symbol refers to "Infinite Diversity, in Infinite Combinations". I suppose they managed to evolve beyond the need to be "hyphenated-Vulans"!
One would think a lesser feat of reason of a race devoted to exclusively to logic would be that melanin content in the skin has no bearing on one's capacity for logic.
This was the great curse and silly deus ex machina of Voyager: when things get tough, roll out the tachyons!
I also wished that Enterprise had been pre-transporter and pre-replicator. These two technologies are so preposterous and deus-ex-machina-up-the-wazoo, that they undermine any logic (of which there is very little) in the shows.
Finally, if Trek wanted to be truly PC, then a large percentage of the crew would be Chinese and Indian. Unless of course they are nuked into oblivion before the all-out move to space. Or maybe they didn't fit the genetic profile of the fascist state that is the Federation!
Damn! You sound like you think every "black man" on TV is angry and POed.
In fact you sound like some black guys who think every white guy is out to get them.
Oh, and currently Enterprise is the worst Star Trek of the five. It's stories are too drab and unexciting (might change though).
DS9 is the best. IMHO
"Keeping an open mind" about something and having an opinion about it are not mutually exclusive, though you appear to believe so.
Me, too, and not only for the adventure.
Tonight the Enterprise engineers built their first "phase cannons" and kicked alien bug-eye.
I think that you are missing the bigger issues on ST:E. For example they just had an episode called Dear Doctor. Where they encounter a pre-warp race threaten by an uncurable desease. There is a second less advanced race living on the planet as servants for the first race. After lecturing the humans not to judge the treatment of the servant race, the Doctor tells the Capt that he doubts a cure can be found. But surprise surprise, the very next day he finds a cure and determines that they second race would be better off if the first race died out. So he tells Capt Archer that he wants to withhold the cure. Because, get this, he does not want to interfere with evolution. The Doctor has concluded that the second race might be evolving into something better. And if they are evolving, they might be better off on their own. So he thinks that it would be just great to withhold the cure, let the first race die out. So that maybe thousands of years in the future the second race might be better off. Archer ends up taking the "enlighten" view that they should let the first race die out so that they don't interfer with evolution. In the "Scientific" future they don't want to interfer with blind chance.
They also have an anti-hunting show coming up. Where they visit a planet of hunters. It turns out that the hunters favorite prey is intelligent. See animals are people too.
They did, and they said that they didn't eat real meat. Picard made a big anti-religion speech in one show. Which is why I think Deep Space Nine was so much better. They had crime, vice, and the mob. They had shows dealing with faith, conversion, and other religious issues too.
So if the future society of Star Trek is a free society, and has no money, then how is their government "committing" anything to "Monuments"? What, are people just doing everything that is necessary (sweeping the floors, serving food, etc), voluntarily?
You've given several examples of why Star Trek: The Next Generation was the worst of all the Star Treks. Picard was the liberal ideal of a military officer. And ST:TNG was the liberal paradise. No religion, No money(and by extension no business or private property), and an authoritarian social order with the perfect liberal giving the orders.
In Kirk's day the federation economy seemed to be more or less like ours. They had dilithium miners out there, trying to get rich (battling the horta), and there was that fat slob of a trader who sold them the tribbles. Only in the next series -- with Cpt. Pickard and that idiot "counselor" with the jugs whose job was announcing her feelings -- did the economy vanish, as in a Hollywood scriptwriter's Bolshevik fantasy.
With regard to the capitalism comments on this thread, the transport ship episode showed interstellar commerce, and multiple episodes show businesses in a favorable light. However, it seems entirely appropriate to separate the commerce from the military. To criticize Enterprise for not spending more time showing capitalism is kind of like complaining that "Saving Private Ryan" didn't focus on the merchant marines.
The only thing it has going for it is the opening song. Richard Dean Anderson, StarGate SGI is much more fun. (ShowTime)
I watched all of the B5 series, however, and Crusade. JMS definitely earned his "chops" writing for other series and proved it with his own.
The only problem is that Vulcans only do it once every seven years!
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