The latest episode of Strange New Worlds has a character (rather loudly) describe the Federation as Socialist
The latest episode of Strange New Worlds has a character (rather loudly) describe the Federation as Socialist
S02E03
Just sharing this info because it feels good to see it acknowledged.
edit: removed a spoiler because apparently the spoiler tags don't hide the text when the post appears in lists
I haven't watched it yet but that's good to hear! I had to laugh when The Orville had to explain how their society works and they said "None of this was possible until we moved beyond the need to buy and sell things."
Yes it's called a post-scarcity economy. I haven't finished season 3 but I hear at the end of season 3 they have a much better explanation about how Earth progressed into their federation like organization. I think they do stop short of calling it socialism though.
How's Orville? I've heard plenty of praise, but it was mostly from rather suspicious types. And the trailer didn't look promising, with constipation jokes and whatnot
The first season is hard to watch. The second season they dial back the weird humor for a more serious tone with some situational comedy. It's a good season with some real dramatic episodes sprinkled in. The third season was picked up by Hulu. The budget is huge for that season, VFX, costuming, sets and make-up are massively improved. And the episodes are an hour long. This season is really good so far. Really powerful episodes. Probably the best time travel mishap episode of any sci-fi I've seen.
So like any Trek show, it gets better with time. I'd give it a shot!
I saw the episode, glad they are more explicit about it.
Hey, that's pretty cool! This post made me catch up on the newest season.
Star Trek has, from where I'm standing, always had a problem presenting the Federation as the socialist utopia that it quite explicitly is. It feels like some of the series wanted to veer away from that implication, or that a lot of the writers didn't know how to handle writing conflict within a post-scarcity super society. I think we all know how inconsistent it is with money, exchange between civilizations, etc.
Which is a shame, because I watch Star Trek exactly for the fully automated gay space communist fantasies.
Yeah, I made this post in the first 5 minutes of the episode. It's a time travel episode.
Previously we've had time travel situations on Trek that make a joke of it (e.g. haha the heroes of our story don't know what money is), but this time the travelling characters eere a bit more on the nose about how dystopian it is to them that they need currency for food and shelter.
I miss the blatantness of the older series. TNG and DS9 weren't afraid to make it obvious. Especially DS9 it came up a lot because of them having so much more Ferengi involvement. They have a whole episode for unionization of Quarks bar and the Ferengi commerce authority intimidation tactics. It's pretty obvious that is they weren't on a Starfleet controlled base the FCA would have executed all of them in one manner or another.
Star Trek is great, even when the socialist aspect isn't openly mentioned I feel it can push a lot of people further left just from watching it enough. Awesome that they are open to characters stating it, although as good as it is it would only be because the producers think it's financially viable, not for any subversive reasons. Still, if their greed makes them willing to get more people to look into what socialism actually means than that makes the show even better.
I've never understood how someone could watch almost 60 years of Star Trek, in some cases multiple times, and not pick up on the clearly leftist themes within the show. Those people are out there though! When Discovery was first airing you'd see these people crawl out of the floorboards to piss and moan about the black lead character, or the gay characters, like Trek wasn't trying to teach you inclusivity, empathy, and anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist ideals this whole time.