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FuturePastNow posted:The Ewoks all died a few years later when ten billion tons of debris de-orbited onto their moon When I ran a Star Wars tabletop campaign the first thing the players had to do was pick their way through the wreckage of the Death Star that landed on the moon.
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Jan 10, 2017 17:40
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My favorite use of the Prime Directive as a plot device remains the episode of TNG where the cast plays the role of the aliens the government is covering up and they meet some conspiracy theorists. I mean they still conclude that the people aren't ready to know the truth and it's kind of lame, but I really liked the concept.
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Jan 10, 2017 18:36
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As I said, Star Trek toys with the concept of antiimperialism by trading in 'moral ambiguity'. Here's their rationale, from The Next Generation: "The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy... and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are always disastrous." The very basic question here: what is wrong with the Federation's social and economic systems, that they automatically sow disaster at the slightest touch? Note a key detail: Picard does not talk about systemic problems. The Federation's 'philosophy' is that there is nothing wrong with the system. In their view, the inherent problem is with 'mankind' and, so, we have This is the same ideology promoted by Cnut: "Human systems will always be imperfect and prone to being taken advantage of, and there will always be selfish people trying to use the organs of democracy to serve their own interests at the expense of everyone else. These things will never, ever change, unless we all eventually become something other than human, which I guess is technically a possibility some day down the line. But as long as we're all still humans, democracy will always be a constant struggle against these forces." HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:In fact, the "X" is about a new tradition. It brings us back to the point that Rogue One's title refers to the purely made-up title given to the heroes' repurposed space truck. There's no official name for what these characters are.* This is how Rogue One recontextualizes Empire Strikes Back. The rebels now attempt to honor the fallen by appropriating the 'Rogue' callsign - giving it to the fighters in Episode 5, making it official, part of the institution. (The numbers of the fighters count up from Rogue Two, while the first is referred to 'Rogue Leader' out of deference). The gulf between the name and their accomplishments now contributes to Luke's disenchantment with the rebellion, prompting his spiritual crisis in that film. *It's no coincidence that Vader explodes onto the scene at the exact point that the protagonists are all killed, like a vengeful ghost. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 18:38
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To bring this back to the actual act of making stellar conflicts movies, the memories of Garrick "Biggs" Hagon on filming the original and being directed by George Lucas: http://www.starwars.com/news/being-biggs-conversation-with-garrick-hagon TIL: A Bridge Too Far is full of SW people because it was made between location and studio shooting for SW. (So Wes Janson died too in 2016. drat.)
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Jan 10, 2017 18:44
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Serf posted:When I ran a Star Wars tabletop campaign the first thing the players had to do was pick their way through the wreckage of the Death Star that landed on the moon. Sounds like a lot of fun.
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Jan 10, 2017 18:44
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What do you make of Q in that context, SMG? He seems to be Rodenberry's admission that there is something beyond this state and that humanity can be "something other than human." Q identifies this potential as residing within our humanity itself and seems to be a force pushing Picard to become "more human than human."
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Jan 10, 2017 18:52
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Hodgepodge posted:What do you make of Q in that context, SMG? He seems to be Rodenberry's admission that there is something beyond this state and that humanity can be "something other than human." Q identifies this potential as residing within our humanity itself and seems to be a force pushing Picard to become "more human than human." I'm not very familiar with that character, but I do know that the fuckin' Borg were to eventually appear as a dark mirror to the federation. The Death Star as a cube instead of a sphere, hidden within so many Alderanns. The capitalist machine with the utopian fascade, as with Naboo's castle that conceals a mining facility: "But Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons." -Princess Leia "This also is a legacy of Gene [Roddenberry]'s. He felt very strongly that the Federation would not build warships per se, but rather a fleet of scientific exploration vessels with weapons designed for defense rather than offense." -Ron Moore
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Jan 10, 2017 19:05
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Q could be read as a character ethically committed to what we call evil---at one point Picard calls him out that one of Q's "lessons" cost the lives of a handful of people and Q's response is basically "oh grow up." He wants mankind to transcend its self imposed limits and actually, he's the rear end in a top hat who sics The Borg on the Federation initially, as a way of saying "this is what's out there; this is what will destroy you oif you don't evolve." I can't square that with the Voyager episode where he needs Janeway to be his baby's momma though, sorry.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:15
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In Star Trek they're communists, or at least have a universal basic income. They never tell you this, but Captain Kirk calls capitalism barbaric or some poo poo.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:16
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm not very familiar with that character, but I do know that the fuckin' Borg were to eventually appear as a dark mirror to the federation. The Death Star as a cube instead of a sphere, hidden within so many Alderanns. The capitalist machine with the utopian fascade, as with Naboo's castle that conceals a mining facility: As I recall, Q is the one who exposes the Federation to the Borg by teleporting the Enterprise into another quadrant of the galaxy to encounter a Borg Cube.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:16
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All of the cultures Kirk hosed up were bad and deserved to go down TBQH
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Jan 10, 2017 19:17
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Yep, at the end of season 2 IIRC and they almost get murdered for it until Q snaps his fingers.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:18
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WENTZ WAGON NUI posted:All of the cultures Kirk hosed up were bad and deserved to go down TBQH
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Jan 10, 2017 19:26
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Halloween Jack posted:OTOH, I think Gladney is referencing a particular episode where a computer totally controlled the lives of these orange people while making them immortal. Kirk destroys the machine and IIRC leaves them adrift. These are people who don't remember how to grow food, or gently caress. Also the one where space ladies steal Spock's brain, where they also don't know about farming or loving. And Spock liked being their computer. Also he collapses Space Rome and just leaves them to enjoy their thousand years of darkness without saying poo poo about crop rotation or preserving libraries. This one also confirms that Jesus is real and just shows up on other planets sometimes, which is no big deal to Captain Kirk.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:47
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But in the cartoon they free the devil and let him just blast off into space, which is pretty baller.
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Jan 10, 2017 19:48
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Jack Gladney posted:In Star Trek they're communists, or at least have a universal basic income. They never tell you this, but Captain Kirk calls capitalism barbaric or some poo poo. The series repeatedly stresses that 'they don't have money anymore', but it's never entirely clear what that means. But to be sure: "not having currency" is absolutely not the same as "not having capitalism". "There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." "What does that mean exactly?" "It means... it means we don't need money!" -Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Money and capital are distinct, so what you see in Star Trek is a vague brand of 'moneyless capitalism', of the sort promoted by Thomas Greco Jr.: "It is possible to organize an entirely new structure of money, banking, and finance, one that is interest-free, decentralized, and controlled, not by banks or central governments, but by individuals and businesses that associate and organize themselves into cashless trading networks. In brief, any group of people can organize to allocate their own collective credit amongst themselves, interest-free. This is merely an extension of the common business practice of selling on open account – 'I’ll ship you the goods now and you can pay me later,' except it is organized, not on a bilateral basis, but within a community of many buyers and sellers. Done on a large enough scale that includes a sufficiently broad range of goods and services, such systems can avoid the dysfunctions inherent in conventional money and banking. They can open the way to more harmonious and mutually beneficial relationships that enable the emergence of true economic democracy. [...] Like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other networks that are purely social, cashless trading networks will eventually grow exponentially—and that will mark a revolutionary shift in political as well as economic empowerment. ... As trade exchanges master these dimensions of design and operation, they will become models for other exchanges to follow. Then the rapid growth phase will begin, leading eventually to an Internet-like global trading network that will make money obsolete and enable a freer, more harmonious society to emerge." -"Reclaiming the Credit Commons: Towards a Butterfly Society" "This approach to healing capitalism is like reprogramming cancer cells. Once a far-fetched idea, advances in gene therapy now suggest the future possibility of reprogramming the DNA of cancer cells in the body, to stop them from replicating. In the same way, different forms of money could support life, rather than subjecting it to the demands of their own replication. [...] More of us may stop ... worrying about capitalism and the planet, and instead we can adjust our own lives to focus on nurturing the aspects of economy and society that be healthy [sic] and remove underlying causes of disease." -Jem Bendell and Ian Doyle, "Healing Capitalism" SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 20:10
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Jack Gladney posted:In Star Trek they're communists, or at least have a universal basic income. They never tell you this, but Captain Kirk calls capitalism barbaric or some poo poo. They've obviated the need for money, but I'm not sure how it goes further than that other than the replicator.
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Jan 10, 2017 20:19
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:They've obviated the need for money, but I'm not sure how it goes further than that other than the replicator. I just assumed that everyone had some manner of credit that they earned by doing tasks like some sort of online game. The more you provided to society, the more you can redeem in the form of travel, accommodations, or possibly consumer goods/replicator rations. You're a retired starfleet captain of 30 years? You can have your beautiful cabin in the mountains. You're a retired Lt. Commander of 15 years? Enjoy your swanky apartment in New York. You ran a Cajun restaurant for 50 years? We'll make sure you're comfortable. You're a bum that spent his entire life waiting for his weekly hour in a public holodeck to bust a nut in a forcefield? We will make sure you don't starve. . . that's it! How else do you explain people doing mundane poo poo in a post-scarcity world?
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Jan 10, 2017 20:37
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They are all aberrant cast offs who only like using the holodeck 20% of the time, instead of 100%.
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Jan 10, 2017 20:59
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That the only social structure we actually see is military suggests a sort of "enlightened fascism" which seeks to explore rather than conquer. Of course, "that which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
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Jan 10, 2017 21:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm not very familiar with that character, but I do know that the fuckin' Borg were to eventually appear as a dark mirror to the federation. The Death Star as a cube instead of a sphere, hidden within so many Alderanns. The capitalist machine with the utopian fascade, as with Naboo's castle that conceals a mining facility: The Borg are a dark mirror Federation, but as an absolutely Communist bogeyman. They're an imperial collective that erases race, class, and sex, by alternately evoking pod-person zombie ego death and body horror imagery a la Giger, Cronenberg, or Tetsuo, the Iron Man. I find it appropriate that in 90's Star Trek, the closest thing to demonic evil isn't something like Q, who's an inscrutable trickster god, but a post-human, post-capitalist horde of cyborgs that seeks to erase Western civilization through the Singularity.
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Jan 10, 2017 21:03
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Xealot posted:The Borg are a dark mirror Federation, but as an absolutely Communist bogeyman. They're an imperial collective that erases race, class, and sex, by alternately evoking pod-person zombie ego death and body horror imagery a la Giger, Cronenberg, or Tetsuo, the Iron Man. I find it appropriate that in 90's Star Trek, the closest thing to demonic evil isn't something like Q, who's an inscrutable trickster god, but a post-human, post-capitalist horde of cyborgs that seeks to erase Western civilization through the Singularity. As Zizek notes, though, the true image of the communist collective is in the collection of freaks and outcasts - exactly what Rogue One depicts. So you're exactly right that the Borg are a bogeyman - but only a bogeyman. A fantasy of pure evil from Outside. It's worth repeating: "whenever we encounter such a purely evil Outside, we should gather the courage to endorse the Hegelian lesson: in this pure Outside, we should recognize the distilled version of our own essence." The Borg are the totalitarian core of liberalism, assimilating those deemed technologically advanced enough - that is the prime directive, after all. The singularity isn't the threat in Star Trek. The series is all about the worship of the technological singularity as the power that will purify capitalism. The borg merely present the inevitable byproducts of this. The Borg, in Star Wars terms, function exactly like the First Order 'commu-fascists' at the heart of the Republic, or the Geonosians. It's less zombie imagery and far more bug/drone imagery. Zombies don't have a central queen/computer. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jan 10, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 21:24
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Blistex posted:I just assumed that everyone had some manner of credit that they earned by doing tasks like some sort of online game. The more you provided to society, the more you can redeem in the form of travel, accommodations, or possibly consumer goods/replicator rations. It always struck me as being built around Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. There's a human drive to be productive- we want to be able to say we've done something, made something significant of our lives. You might get the occasional person who says "gently caress that" and bangs holograms all day but as long as civilization continues to function, who cares?
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Jan 10, 2017 21:35
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WENTZ WAGON NUI posted:Q could be read as a character ethically committed to what we call evil---at one point Picard calls him out that one of Q's "lessons" cost the lives of a handful of people and Q's response is basically "oh grow up." He wants mankind to transcend its self imposed limits and actually, he's the rear end in a top hat who sics The Borg on the Federation initially, as a way of saying "this is what's out there; this is what will destroy you oif you don't evolve." Q always brought an arch, camp tone to the show (even more than usual). I got the impression that he enjoyed the exaggerated theatricality of his schemes more than the power-trip aspects. Voyager just adapted that to its own generally campy tone. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 10, 2017 21:36
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SMG I wanna read your full leftist reading of Rogue One that shits good and I need it
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Jan 10, 2017 21:58
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I especially like your line regarding the prime directive being the assimilation of those deemed advanced enough: This rings in my mind as commentary on commodity fetishism. By the prime directive it seems that an entire species' value is derived only from the technology they produce. It's quite arbitrary really. But it mirrors us, now. We only really care about a "culture" if we can commodify it, IE assimilate it or what centrists would say: appropriate it. Capitalism grinds down entire cultures into a series of commodities for the upper class to consume thus making the original culture corrupted into a lesser form; devoid of history or meaning or ultimately distinction.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:17
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Q is one of those false gods Kirk would've murdered the poo poo out of. Dude made a career out of deicide.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:35
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Hodgepodge posted:That the only social structure we actually see is military suggests a sort of "enlightened fascism" which seeks to explore rather than conquer. Xealot posted:The Borg are...Tetsuo, the Iron Man.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:35
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wyoming posted:Q is one of those false gods Kirk would've murdered the poo poo out of. Sisko bitchslaps him on DS9, and he never shows up again. One of the many reasons DS9 is the best Star Wars.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:37
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PostNouveau posted:Sisko bitchslaps him on DS9, and he never shows up again. One of the many reasons DS9 is the best Star Wars. Campy theatricality is not something that pleases The Sisko. Kirk would have proven Q wrong about something and then delivered a morality monologue, had a hearty laugh about it with the bridge crew, and moved on to the next weird planet.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:41
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PostNouveau posted:Sisko bitchslaps him on DS9, and he never shows up again. One of the many reasons DS9 is the best Star Wars. Poor Sisko already had to deal with being the prophet of some other alien space wormhole gods; he didn't need Q around laughing it up.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:So you're exactly right that the Borg are a bogeyman - but only a bogeyman. No, I agree. That's why I'm saying they're perfect for 90's Star Trek. This imagined evil that specifically takes the form of a brutalist techno-horde that doesn't care about Beethoven and doesn't value the Federation's symbolic multiculture. It's interesting to compare them to other Star Trek villains - the Klingons (who eventually join the multiculture), or the Cardassians, or Romulans. Or, just comparing them to another vaguely collectivist cyborg race, the Cylons from Battlestar.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:45
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Also something interesting to consider is how the Federation has no new media. Everything is from the 1940s at best.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:49
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Q hosed Avery Brooks UP! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2MEYMMDhKk
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Jan 10, 2017 22:49
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Phi230 posted:Also something interesting to consider is how the Federation has no new media. Everything is from the 1940s at best. Umm, the Beastie Boys are considered classical music by the 23rd century.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:52
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Phi230 posted:Also something interesting to consider is how the Federation has no new media. Everything is from the 1940s at best. They have new media, but it's always the third thing in a list. "The music of Bach, Beethoven, Xal'Bataar." "The writing of Shakespeare, Melville, Zorxx." All new things of value fit within a clear legacy of things Western society already deems of value.
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Jan 10, 2017 22:56
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Pointy spaceship thread is looking awfully round today
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Jan 10, 2017 23:02
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Tying this in (very loosely) to when we were discussing McLuhanism in Rogue One, when the television station my father worked at first bought a smart cart machine (which is would pick up and move tape reals for broadcast, like the "claw machine" in the Imperial media archive planet) the engineers working there called it the M5. The M5 was a computer from the original Star Trek series, that would "replace man, so man may achieve." The engineers called it that because after it was installed several employees were laid-off. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 00:22
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DS9's premise was pretty subversive if you think about it. Sisko comes in as an overseer for a kinder, gentler colonial government and then the colony's gods contact him and are like "these people's religion is 100% true and we're making you its messiah." They delivered on that at least somewhat when Bajor is negotiating to join the Federation and right before signing the Prophets send him a vision saying that Bajor will be destroyed if they don't wait until later to join. Sisko also lost his ship and his wife at the Federation's major battle against the Borg and was haunted by PTSD of Captain Picard as Locutus of Borg. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 01:05
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Xealot posted:They have new media, but it's always the third thing in a list. "The music of Bach, Beethoven, Xal'Bataar." "The writing of Shakespeare, Melville, Zorxx." All new things of value fit within a clear legacy of things Western society already deems of value. I'm not really sure how you get around that without going into walls of jargon though. Consider that people insist there are no cultural products within Star Wars, and then consider how the main Wookiepedian Star Wars musical genre is "jizz-wailing".
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Jan 11, 2017 01:12
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