Comment on M*A*S*H in space?
Especially_the_lies@startrek.website 10 months agoThere’s no Burns and Hot Lips versus Hawkeye and Trapper kind of dynamic in Starfleet.
Although I see your point, I have to disagree with you here. Look at the Beta shift vs Alpha shift in Lower Decks. There’s clearly room in Starfleet for both the serious and the goofy, even in a comedy show.
Q is what Hawkeye would be given the power of a god.
Well now I want to see that show!
PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I agree, but I was concentrating on the Roddenberry-verse, since I think we started with the idea that it would be something apart from his conceptualization of the world-building he was doing.
In fact, I think that Lower Decks is a comedy, and one of the organizing features of the humor is poking good-natured fun at Roddenberry’s conceptualization of the universe and the Federation. It’s not outright parody in the sense of Galaxy Quest, but the non-Trekness is deliberately used as a source of humor.
I think that’s the pivot point. The US Army is worthy of endless parody and it doesn’t have to be good natured. We’ve hit a weird part of our timeline where we (as Americans) are idolizing our military as heroic icons. As someone who has been there, I’d rather go back to what we had in the 70s and 80s (not the institutionalized homophobia, but the skepticism of civilians). Starfleet was created at a time of such skepticism, and was set up in deliberate contrast as a near-utopian future. We’re coming to a different place now, where any given soldier is a selfless defender of freedom around the world but Starfleet is getting a more comedic and skeptical treatment.
Anyway, I’d really love to see the idea get a treatment, but it’d be tough to balance the Trekness with the MASHness.