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Get your MilSciFi out of my Trek plz
Oct. 5th, 2016 09:30 amBeen going back over the Star Trek fandom lately, reading some fanfics and playing STO (trying to get my shiny Vulcan D'kyr decked out for a spin). It's pretty obvious to see the influences of the nuTrek franchise and other more recent military-oriented sci fi shows in the fandom. A couple of things always starts to pop up in discussions and I'm getting a little tired of them.
1. Carriers and fighters.
The influence from the newer Battlestar Galactica series is obvious. Also evident are the fans of modern carrier doctrine. Now, I'm not going to argue what makes sense in terms of military doctrine or 'realism', since any writer can twist the universe to suit the argument either way. Instead, I'm going to argue based on the kind of story telling for why this is a bad idea.
What do we get when we have carrier/fighter based ships? Ace jockey characters along the line of Top Gun, Starbuck...or Tom Paris. You get a bunch of stories where there will be a reason for your starship and the majority of your characters/crew to not be able to be on-scene while the ace fighter makes his daring run on the death star. Again and again and... yeah.
I watch Star Trek for the exploration and the culture clash/meeting of minds between the cast and the rubber aliens of the week. Even DS9, it was more fun when the story was about political machinations and social commentary of how far a moral person/society can sink to when the situation gets desperate. If I want to read/watch about the pluck of the typical anti-authoritarian maverick (and I don't), it's not going to be in my Trek.
2. Bigger/more is better.
You see this a lot with the nuTrek Enterprise, now with like 10x the size of the TOS Enterprise and 20x the guns. I have to wonder how much of this is due to fanboys and production crew waving their epeens at each other and trying to throw better numbers out for the next Star Trek vs Star Wars debate. Or I'm giving them too much credit even for that, and it's just about how much CGI they can throw onto the silver screen.
And:
3. Militarization, militarization, militarization; no peaceniks allowed.
I see all these forum posts going on and on about how the TNG era was a bunch of hippies went 'Peace at any Price', and that if the TNG Federation had been better armed and militarized, they wouldn't have had the hard time they did with the Borg, the Dominion, etc. I have to wonder if this is a generation disconnect between the generation that came out of WWII and was still feeling the stings of Vietnam, versus the current post-911 generation who're feeling the pressure of the USA's sole superpower status slipping away.
The thing is, it doesn't matter how over-militarized or well-armed the Federation or its ships are on paper. From a story telling perspective (and this applies to both canon and any well written fanfic), their enemy is always going to be bigger and better if there is actually going to be suspense. At no point were they ever going to "fare better" against the Borg or the Dominion or the alien enemy of the week, or those stories would suck!
Also, the 'moar dakka' adherents are missing the whole point to those stories. None of them were about resolving conflict through force. The Borg were defeated in TNG by lateral thinking (TBOBW) and via the theme of individuality versus blind conformity (I Borg, Descent). The Dominion were defeated by cowboy diplomacy (wormhole aliens), normal messy diplomacy (Klingon alliance), moral sacrifice (Romulan alliance), and a stumble on the slippery slope (Section 31). As in the real world, unilateral militarism is not the answer, and shouldn't be the answer.
1. Carriers and fighters.
The influence from the newer Battlestar Galactica series is obvious. Also evident are the fans of modern carrier doctrine. Now, I'm not going to argue what makes sense in terms of military doctrine or 'realism', since any writer can twist the universe to suit the argument either way. Instead, I'm going to argue based on the kind of story telling for why this is a bad idea.
What do we get when we have carrier/fighter based ships? Ace jockey characters along the line of Top Gun, Starbuck...or Tom Paris. You get a bunch of stories where there will be a reason for your starship and the majority of your characters/crew to not be able to be on-scene while the ace fighter makes his daring run on the death star. Again and again and... yeah.
I watch Star Trek for the exploration and the culture clash/meeting of minds between the cast and the rubber aliens of the week. Even DS9, it was more fun when the story was about political machinations and social commentary of how far a moral person/society can sink to when the situation gets desperate. If I want to read/watch about the pluck of the typical anti-authoritarian maverick (and I don't), it's not going to be in my Trek.
2. Bigger/more is better.
You see this a lot with the nuTrek Enterprise, now with like 10x the size of the TOS Enterprise and 20x the guns. I have to wonder how much of this is due to fanboys and production crew waving their epeens at each other and trying to throw better numbers out for the next Star Trek vs Star Wars debate. Or I'm giving them too much credit even for that, and it's just about how much CGI they can throw onto the silver screen.
And:
3. Militarization, militarization, militarization; no peaceniks allowed.
I see all these forum posts going on and on about how the TNG era was a bunch of hippies went 'Peace at any Price', and that if the TNG Federation had been better armed and militarized, they wouldn't have had the hard time they did with the Borg, the Dominion, etc. I have to wonder if this is a generation disconnect between the generation that came out of WWII and was still feeling the stings of Vietnam, versus the current post-911 generation who're feeling the pressure of the USA's sole superpower status slipping away.
The thing is, it doesn't matter how over-militarized or well-armed the Federation or its ships are on paper. From a story telling perspective (and this applies to both canon and any well written fanfic), their enemy is always going to be bigger and better if there is actually going to be suspense. At no point were they ever going to "fare better" against the Borg or the Dominion or the alien enemy of the week, or those stories would suck!
Also, the 'moar dakka' adherents are missing the whole point to those stories. None of them were about resolving conflict through force. The Borg were defeated in TNG by lateral thinking (TBOBW) and via the theme of individuality versus blind conformity (I Borg, Descent). The Dominion were defeated by cowboy diplomacy (wormhole aliens), normal messy diplomacy (Klingon alliance), moral sacrifice (Romulan alliance), and a stumble on the slippery slope (Section 31). As in the real world, unilateral militarism is not the answer, and shouldn't be the answer.
