I like that McFarlane just said “fuck that” in The Orville. He kept the gist — leave developing civilizations alone — but doesn’t even consider allowing them to go extinct for stupid reasons.
Really early on, too. It was one of the things that made me go “oh wait this isn’t just fart jokes in space”.
Though to be fair, the reality is that no matter how advanced we get there’s still gonna be fart jokes in space. That scene in the cafeteria where everyone’s getting Bortus to eat random things seems like a far more realistic vision of a space-faring post-scarcity future.
The Orville is Star Trek if the federation actually had to recruit real people.
Though to be fair, the reality is that no matter how advanced we get there’s still gonna be fart jokes in space. That scene in the cafeteria where everyone’s getting Bortus to eat random things seems like a far more realistic vision of a space-faring post-scarcity future.
This is exactly why I love lower decks, it’s so much closer to how we would probably act in the 24th century vs the heroized live action stuff lmao
The Enterprise bridge crew are the best of the best. Lower Decks is a story about the mediocre of the mediocre
Ehh. Mighta been born that way (even that’s debatable) but definitely not anymore. Tendi is the ass-kicking heir to a pirate dynasty, Rutherford is an insanely talented and obsessive engineer, Beckett seems borderline unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat and explicitly dodges promotions, and Boimler is Boimler.
That’s Star Trek as hell
The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.
Mariner became an ass kicker at Starfleet. Rutherford turned his genius into something caring and kind. Tendi learned to feel accepted for every part of herself and to use her two halves together. Boimler got bold.
A positive environment for people to learn and grow can transform the mediocre of the mediocre into the best of the best. It drew out the hidden talents within them and turned them into badasses
I wanna agree but in this particular case they all had those traits even before the show started (timeline-wise)
Back then Mariner couldn’t be a leader because she was still working out her rage issues. Rutherford didn’t truly know himself and struggled with his implant. Tendi was ashamed to be an Orion and wasn’t usually willing to use her pirate skills. Boimler wasn’t bold.
They were all held back in really important ways.
Im hoping they figure out how to rotate fresh characters into the cast as the originals fade away (ie Tendi), and let the cycle repeat until canceled
Boimler is just American Rimmer
Lower decks is painful to watch
Really? I’m curious, you don’t like the humor or what is it?
Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion given how reasonably popular Below Deck and SNW appear to be, but The Orville, for me, is the best post-2002 Trek thing. This is one of the reasons.
I’ve watched some of the Orville season 1 and I can’t believe that claim. What season does it get good?
Season 1 is wildly uneven. Some episodes are a TV-14 Seth McFarland raunchy comedy in space and others are Star Trek, but with real people. If you don’t enjoy the (admittedly purile) sense of humor, The Orville probably isn’t for you. The show never completely abandons that tone even as it explores more classic Trek style writing.
There are some episodes though, like S01E08 which are played almost totally straight and those are the ones that feel the most like a TNG revival to me.
They save them in tos as well.
Only because Kirk hadn’t banged them yet.
(yes I’m adding to my joke hours later. do something about it. removed.)
In TOS Kirk really leans into not interfering with the “healthy” development of a civilization. If it isn’t healthy in his judgement, he interferes. So, essentially when it comes to Kirk if it offends his sensibilities he assumes free reign change it while paying lip service to the idea of non-intervention.
Colonialism at its finest! The Apple is the absolute perfect example. “But Spock, these people don’t even f*ck! We gotta destroy that lizard cave!”
Yeah, but in TOS we also see what happens if you forget a book about the chicago mob of the 1920s on a developing planet.
And they even had an episode that explained why the Union had a “Prime Directive” and what happened when they tried to introduce new technology to a planet that wasn’t ready for it.
Isn’t that also part of the ST lore? Or did I mix up The Orville and Star Trek canon… :/
I liked We Are Legion where Bob is like “Fuck this! I’m making sure this species thrives, even if I have to kill half the planet to do it.”. Also regarding genocide, the Bobs were like “file as ‘think about this later’ on our TODO list”.
Lol Bob went a level above genocide in the end there. Artificial stellar nova is a bad day for every species in a solar system…
That was one of the coolest scenes I’ve read before. The sheer magnitude of their destruction was unbelievable.
Bob decided to delete the great filter.
For real. Every now and again I go back JUST for that passage. So so good.
I’ve always assumed the Prime Directive was Rodenberry’s attempt to explain why we aren’t being obviously contacted by more advanced aliens attempting to fix all our problems for us, and his awareness how we would likely react to such intervention at the height of the Cold War.
The prime directive came about due to his concerns about western interventionalism. i.e leave other countries alone became dont interfere in the development of non warp capable species’ development.
“You will be remembered for a week or so.”
And logged in ships virus infected logs.
Still more time than Tuvix got.
It’s an interesting space version of non-interventionism. In the real world, intervention is a very complex issue to navigate. Particularly since most forms of national intervention have monetary drivers that make the choice much more about how it benefits the intervening country rather than the intervened.
I think DS9 is the only series to really address Statfleet’s long term effects of intruding onto other cultures and forcing them to change.
I went to a panel on the problems with the Prime Directive at Chicon 8. There was a lawyer there who actually works with international aid organizations on how they intervene. His biggest problem with the Prime Directive is that it’s too simple. They have stacks of rules about how exactly they go about this. There are places where they’re not allowed to go because somebody fucked this up bad at some point in the past, and those people don’t owe them access just because they promise to be better now.
IIRC, there is a throwaway line somewhere (from Data, I think) that says the Prime Directive is followed up by a hundred little rules defining out the specifics, but it’s never treated that way.
Naomi Wildman says it has 47 sub-orders in “Infinite Regress”.
I’ve also seen interesting arguments on wether the prime directive is even moral at all, after all if space fairing civilisations are encountering you then they’re probably going to imminently scoop up all the good interstellar real estate in your viscinity, not enlightening a civilisation is dooming them to be stuck with whatever resources are left when every other civilisation nearby has taken what it wants. (Lets be realistic there’s no way every single group is going to abide by a treaty that grants primitive civilisations pre-emptive territory bubbles)
So the question the Prime Directive poses is: what aspects of the Great Filter do we leave in place?
Do we save a developing civilization from an asteroid they have zero way of stopping?
Do we defuse a political situation that will end in nuclear war and destruction of their civilization?
Well, the second one is a direct result of their own and controllable actions. The first is entirely out of their control and just got dealt a bad hand lol
Yeah, I was presenting two opposite ends of the spectrum. But the Prime Directive is often interpreted to prohibit acting in both of those cases. The question is where is the line?
What about a civilization that has a unique fuel source and they created a massively progressive civilization based on it. But when their technology progressed they suddenly realized that fuel source had subtly poisoned their world and they were doomed to all die? They couldn’t have known before their tech advanced and their tech would never have gotten that far without that fuel source bolstering their progress.
Do you intervene?
We can create lots of hypotheticals that do this same thing and honestly a good % of Star Trek episodes are just this question in detail.
They couldn’t have known before their tech advanced and their tech would never have gotten that far without that fuel source bolstering their progress.
Bruh scientists have been warning people about CO2 for well over 100 years. Ignorance is not a factor.
But it is the ignorance regarding the subject that results in not listening to the Scientists. People are ignorant of the proper definition and use of ignorance.
how about: protect innocent people and dont veer into fascist “nature decided they weren’t good enough to continue living” nonsense
Great filters are strictly hypothetical anyway.
Meanwhile:
GCU The Gravitas Meme is so Last Year: I’m gonna sort out that extension event, then we should probably send a couple of Special Circumstances operatives to guide them in the right direction. In the past picosecond I’ve absorbed and analysed their global information net so know exactly what actions we need to take to give them the correct nudge.
The “correct nudge” has been determined to be “give a specific citizen a cheese danish.”
“More of a set of guidelines” Kirk and Picard in unison with a chorus of “Exactly” from every other Federation Officer or Official except any featured in anything involving a speech about the prime directive by that episode’s primary cast.
Any good captain knows that’s a rule worth breaking. If your options are: a) save a whole planet of people or b) keep your fancy status job in a post-scarcity economy, then you know it’s morally worth it to get court marshalled.
Besides, federation prison is just a sunny beach on New Zealand anyway. The worst part is getting stuck in the delta quadrant but that happened like one time.
I didn’t remember what their prison is, but that makes the choice so much easier. Was that in Voyager?
Yeah, it’s been awhile, but iirc in the first episode Janeway springs Paris from a prison in new zealand because she needs a pilot.
And those examples would involve a speech about the Prime would they not?
Laughs in Bobiverse
