Re: Star Trek background - Reply

Allan Goodall, survey collator extraordinare, wrote:

> The most obvious military is the Federation. The Feds are essentially
an
extension of the American ideal of the US military system. <

Actually, the entire Federation is based on the ideal of the US, what
with the
President, Fed Council and all, particularly in unofficial stuff like
the Franz
Joseph Tech Manual. Interestingly, Steve Cole (of SFB "fame") has said
that he
regards the UFP as being like NATO, with humans dominating it,
particularly on
the military side, like the US. (That's _his_ opinion, not mine)

>Nothing ever breaks, innovation is rampant, and they are always in the
moral
right. In fact, Starfleet is essentially identical in these respects to
the
US military as shown in Tom Clancy's novels, and I doubt if you could
successfully claim Clancy is a leftist. <

Perhaps not, but the influence of StarFleet on Federation politics
(e.g., the Fed
Council members in the 4th movie who wore StarFleet uniforms) is more
like
that of the Soviet Union or China (or Nazi Germany -- I've never seen
much
difference between them other than the ideology they spout), and
economically,
the UFP is very ideal-communistic. This, to some extent, is the result
of the
technology they have; if replicators can make almost anything (including
more
replicators?), and the energy to power them is cheap and plentiful, then
much of
the basis of a familiar economy is gone. The tricky bit is distributing
this
largesse to the universe at large -- that this has happened is the most
"communistic" aspect of the Federation.

> As for Klingons and Cardassians, that's the same Alien problem as
before.
Klingons are just Japanese samurai with the Norse afterlife (well, at
least
Valhalla) grafted on. <

Interesting, because the _original_ Klingons (no ridges) were designed
as
quasi-Russian-commies to compete with the "Free Worlds" of the UFP in a
kind
of Cold War, kept from becoming truly hot by those deuses ex machina,
the
Organians. It was only when TNG was made that the whole honour thing
turned
up. The original Klingons would have scorned honour as a waste of time
and an
impediment to getting what they wanted; the _Romulans_ were the ones
with
the honour fixation, although that didn't stop them from ambushing the
good
guys. That, to my mind, made _them_ the pseudo-Japanese (or was it
Chinese? Someone inscrutable, anyway <g>), but the "characterisations"
of the
two races that were established in TOS got scrambled when TNG came
along.

> Cardassians are Nazis. <

Or Commies. With, perhaps, a touch of Latino macho-ness. As I said,
there's
not much difference between a left-wing dictatorship and a right-wing
one,
except for whose ideology they parrot and who gets the knock on the door
in the
middle of the night.

Phil
--------------------------------------------------------------
"We gotta get out into Space,	     | A sentiment echoed by:
 If it's the last thing we ever do!" |	   Phil Atcliffe  
   -- Return to the Forbidden Planet |	(p-atclif@uwe.ac.uk)