Comment on The horrible morals of a show supposed to teach them

• thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They were always shown as the sort of cool, James Bond/Batman-like agents that everyone admires for getting their hands dirty for the sake of everyone else.

  I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone but you with this take. I’ve certainly never heard anyone say “Oooh, Section 31 is cool, I admire them,” but I’ve had LOTS of conversations about how uncool they are. The main characters don’t like them, they’re ALWAYS an antagonist / obstacle. I understand that’s what you see, but I don’t think the experience you’re having is very universal.

  The lack of accountability for me shows that starfleet does not mind a group above the law, which immediately removes the idea of starfleet/the federation working on democratic principles.

  Star Fleet DOESN’T work on democratic principles, it’s absolutely a military organization, with a military hierarchy and agenda, that has a STRONG scientific and exploration mandate.

  The FEDERATION works on democratic principals, but Section 31 has ALWAYS been portrayed as an illegal, unsanctioned organization working within Star Fleet, that, simply lots of factions and elements with Star Fleet support or align with (Fascists gonna fasc, even in the Utopian future, and people with that minde set are going to be drawn to the closest thing to a military organization around).

  Yes, it echoes with a lot of modern things. But what is the point of making science fiction if all you show is a world that didn’t evolve in over 300 years?

  Um… there’s a LOT wrong with this, as there are all kinds of points to making Science Fiction, and showing all sorts of things. And one of them is VERY MUCH showing the kinds of things that are wrong with our world, starting conversations and raising awareness. There are lots of points to making Science Fiction. You don’t have to like all of them. You don’t have to like Chuck Tingle or Space Raptor Butt Invasion, but it has a point (and it’s actually a really positive one, if you look past all the pounding and dinosaur love).

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  • Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The show, shows them like that, with Bashir literally getting recruited after playing James Bond in the holodeck many times and that’s actually one of the arguments that Sloan uses to justify why he should join. Malcolm Reed, who “surprisingly” is also a british character feeling like he’s the coolest guy ever, who is too cool to even answer when someone asks if he likes the food, turns out to be from section 31 too. And in discovery, a certain emperor joining section 31 after showing a lot of “cool moves” and high-tech gadgets that are probably possible to find in some James Bond movie.

    As for starfleet, if it is a military organisation under a democratic regime, then it has to follow the same laws and regulations. I am not aware of any military group that can blatantly ignore the law and face no repercussions, in any (pseudo) democratic government. And Discovery doesn’t portray it as illegal at all, explaining that it is at the center of almost all of starfleet’s decision (if I remember properly, an admiral explains that all decisions are first processed by a computer owned by S31, to get an automated suggestion of the decision to take). Such a central element cannot be simply hidden, it has to be allowed by the federation.

    As for science fiction, I do not agree. Science fiction is about taking another time/place/context to put the focus on current problems, whether by exaggerating/worsening them, removing them, or isolating them. If you show earth in 300 years and nothing changed, it’s not science fiction, it’s just a fiction that does nothing except change a date. By not showing any difference in how illegal groups like that are handled, the show doesn’t say that it is bad, but instead implies that it is something that never changes. And it is said directly, that S31 existed for a very long time and that it is still here, which implies that it will never leave. Which in turn, encourages apathy on the subject, telling the viewers that it is useless to fight against such groups, they’re just a “constant of the universe”. It is probably not the intended message, but it is the result.

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    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t know if Star Trek ever had a really strong coherent overarching morality, but it certainly doesn’t now. The Disco and newer shows are such a mishmash of different people and a different time that they seem often the opposite of what people thought TOS and TNG might have been. DS9-Enterprise were kind of the “in-between” IMO. So there’s at LEAST 3 different sets of sort of framework for what the canon/story/morals even are that it’s kind of hard to discuss as a whole coherently.

      Then there’s always the people who take stuff as “cool” that the show didn’t want to portray as “good”. There are plenty of media examples of “cool” bad guys. Look at all the Ducat lovers in DS9, he was pretty explicitly intended and they thought portrayed as a villain, but a complex one. The whole last season turning him into a moustache twirling caricature was to try and “fix” this “misunderstanding” by a troubling portion of the fans.

      The whole Prime Directive waffling is well known to fans, and generally there to specifically create conversation about the colonial vs anti-colonial ideals starting in TNG and morphed over time to now. I don’t think the show in a meta sense promotes the prime directive as a good thing - the amount of character struggles and flat out breaking it makes me pretty sure it’s a “no obvious right rule” exemplar.

      Disco and on is generally so poorly written that it’s hard to say if they have a message to push inside the show. Most of what we know is from Twitter posts and interviews cause it’s so hard to tell what’s supposed to be the point of the actual show in many cases. With Georgiou I think they’re trying to tell an anti-hero redemption story of some sort. Some idea that anyone can change and deserves a new chance (I think it’s beyond second here). Take out the extremes for the drama and being a show and this is about as obvious as the prime directive as an ideal. It’s not the worst, but I can’t say it’s always valid either IMO.

      I think you get from Star Trek what you decide to take from it - it’s entertainment first, not moral education.

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