posted
Figured I'd share some things that might be of interest.
1. My page on Trek's canon policy has been updated rather extensively.
2. As posted on my blog, we have version one of the following. I would welcome any comments.
The TNG Space Hippies Theory
A thought I've been toying with for the past few months . . .
As mentioned previously, the first war between the Cardassian Union and the UFP appears to have occurred from 2358-2362.
Consider the first couple of seasons of TNG (which starts in 2364) . . . the crew simply does not appear to be a war-hardened force. If anything, they act more like space hippies then quasi-military officers . . . Riker believing combat training to be a "minor province" in the make-up of a starship captain, Picard avoiding holding actual wargames, and so on. There are several examples wherein the idea of 'a generally-peaceful aim' would be a bit of an understatement. This isn't a bad thing in a time which can support it, mind you, but it was almost as if there was a cultivated naivete at times. Certainly it was a much different era than Kirk's TOS.
I think there is a relationship between that era and the Cardassian conflict. From Mosaic, we know that as of 2351 there hadn't been a war or other significant conflict for decades . . . the word "war" was hoped obsolete.
We also know of the Talarian border skirmishes (where the Talarians, near Cardassian space, are a remarkably low-tech people), the Tzenkethi war (apparently of the early 2360's), and so on.
Also, as noted on the Setlik III page in the Tech Archives, the first known use of the TNG pajamas was sometime between 2349 and 2354.
(And you never know . . . there might be a relationship there, too. The militaristic uniforms of the latter-TMP era, worn throughout the first half of the 2300's, might've helped cause some other races to blink faster than they would if the Federation showed up in one-piece speedo pajamas.)
If war was thought obsolete and evidence of unenlightenment . . . if the Federation hadn't been tested in real war for decades . . . if they showed up in pajamas . . . if they seemed to blink out of a spirit of conciliatory friendliness . . . if Earth was a paradise and the rest of the Federation seemed to be following suit quite nicely, with troubles minor . . . then the Federation's adversaries might've taken these things as a sign of weakness. "They are unprepared."
(Certainly if some backwards fartcatchers like the Talarians start rattling sabers with you, you know that you're not projecting anything resembling fear, nor are you absorbing such a society as a member anytime soon.)
In short, I would argue that the first half of the 24th Century saw a steady decline in the rather more martial philosophies of the mid-to-late 23rd Century. Those more martial philosophies were borne of the cold war with the Klingons at the time.
(Indeed, I think the Klingons are why the remarkably TNG-esque Earth Starfleet of the early 2150's were able to become the mid-23rd Century Federation Starfleet. Sure, the Romulans brought everyone together in war, but it was the decades-long cold war with the Klingons that really kept the Federation on its toes.)
After Organia and the eventual peace with the Klingons beginning in the 2290's, there just wasn't the same impetus anymore, and by the early-to-mid-2300's the hippyism had begun. To be sure, we know that during the 2340's the Federation got worried about the Cardassians, but worry is not a direct lead-in to a return to martial philosophies.
It's possible that no one recognized that three separate "western" powers challenged the Federation at the same time for the same reasons . . . this may simply have been viewed as a necessary 'taming of the west'.
In short, the Federation became complacent, and despite a brief spat of trouble with a few rabble-rousers in the west, they really never had much cause to question their complacency.
With the end of the western conflicts of the 2350's and early 2360's, then, it was a new dawning of the Age of Aquarius . . . harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more false or dark derisions, and so on. After all, the west was tame and they'd all soon see the light, the Romulans were being quiet, and by damn even the Klingons are friends! The only real worry was the Ferengi, but even they turned out to be a non-threat.
In other words, the early 2360's resembled the late 1960's in the United States. Sure, there were still hardasses around, but even the hardasses were pleased that the trials of the 2350's were over and might've secretly hoped that all would be well for a long long while.
Of course, as we now know, the idea was wrong. The return of the Romulans in late 2364 got a few balls rolling, but it was the "kick in our complacency" that the Borg produced (thanks Q) which resulted in a scare real enough that the non-warship-building Federation came out with the Defiant Class.
(Had the Federation encountered the wormhole and the Dominion circa 2364, I don't think they would've had the spirit to win.)
============
In any case, that's the general gist of my idea as to why there's such a gap between the attitudes in early TNG versus late-TNG / DS9. The ideals are still there, but there's a more realistic approach that, while perhaps not working as well at times, has certain merits.
Of further interest would be the period around 2380 or so, with the end of the devastating Dominion War. I can't help but wonder how the Federation's attitude would be circa 2400.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Anyway, nice analysis there. I especially liked the specualtion about the uniform change. The "kick in the complacency" probably also brought about the return to a more militaristic uniform.
Fleeting thought here.... What about O'Brien? He seems older than most of the crew and served in the Cardassian war, so he is a bit more hardened than most (and definitely not a space hippie!). I'm not sure what to say about it, but perhaps his displayed rank change could be explained using this theory as well.
posted
While I generally find the argument plausible, I'd say that comparing the early TNG era Starfleet to the 1960 US doesn't really lead to the conclusion that "Had the Federation encountered the wormhole and the Dominion circa 2364, I don't think they would've had the spirit to win". The US seemed just as capable of eyeblink-fast remilitarization then as it was in the 1940s.
And neither of THOSE cases was a matter of a defensive war for survival, but of offensive action in support of policy and worldview. A life-or-death combat would probably galvanize the population. Or the tiny fraction of it that needed galvanizing, anyhow. I rather doubt Earth itself became any more aggressive during the Dominion War than it was during the early sixties - which was Admiral Leyton's point, really.
It is actually possible that Starfleet as of the 2360s was rather too militaristic and full of itself for its own good. Rather than Space Hippies, our heroes could have been faithful servants of the 1850s British Empire, with silly uniforms and all. Violence was not their way because they knew that they'd whupped enemy ass in the past, and could whup it in the future, there thus being no need to whup it in the present.
The immediate past in the 1850s may have been a time of peace in Europe, but in the worldwide scheme of things these people were engaged in countless and constant wars. As those were fought against natives wielding sharpened avocados, though, they just fed the pride and prejudice of the Victorians.
Of course, the Crimean War showed how much of that self-confidence had a basis in reality... Whereas Starfleet's military muscle performed well enough when actually tested, regardless of being in a spandex sleeve.
posted
I wonder if there weren't also uniforms from the pajama era that we never saw, such as ground uniforms resembling the marine unis from "The Siege of AR-whatever". It's very possible that O'Brien wore something akin to that during his time on Setlik 3, and we just never saw them.
posted
The theory sounds nice. I only disagree about a few points (that wouldn't invalidate it as a whole).
In my view Earth Starfleet may be just as militaristic as the UFP Starfleet in the time of TOS. The only ship we really know is Enterprise NX-01, a ship mainly built for exploration.
As for the idea that the 2360's reflect the hippie time in the 1960's, I don't think that the whole hippie idea was born out of complacency. Rather than that, it was a radical answer to a permanent threat (nuclear weapons) and a concrete conflict (Vietnam), at least on the political side. Rather than that, the 1990's may mark an age of complacency.
I see the border conflicts with the Tzenkethi and the Talarians as so limited that the average Federation citizen and most of Starfleet would hardly take notice of it. We should compare them rather with some forgotten conflict like in East Timor than with the Vietnam War.
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posted
Sorry, Guardy, I don't think you're answering your own question. You put it quite succinctly at the beginning - essentially "why do the crew of the E-D come over like space hippies when they've just come out of a fairly-major war?" But then you don't answer it, going off on some tangent about the first half of the century.
Indeed, you pretty-much contradict yourself by first going on about the militaristic impression of the TOS movie uniforms and the effect they might have on other races (which is very humanocentric thinking, BTW - just because we perceive that uniform style as militaristic, doesn't mean any other species would); you then go and set the growth of space-hippy-thinking in the same era that these uniforms were worn.
And, lastly, criminally, you go on about space hippies but don't make even ONE joke about Volkswagen New Beetles! For shame!
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Of further interest would be the period around 2380 or so, with the end of the devastating Dominion War. I can't help but wonder how the Federation's attitude would be circa 2400.
You mean something like Star Trek: Renaissance, in which the Federation and Starfleet overcompensate after the Dominion War by becoming needlessly militaristic and paranoid, meddling in the affairs of their neighbors in the name of preserving their own security? Where Starfleet is so consumed with local brushfires and defensive actions that the development of a revolutionary new form of FTL travel for limited but practical use, the quantum slipstream drive, is employed primarily as a method of rapid deployment of tactical assets within the Federation rather than as a means of launching a new wave of exploration? Where the Federation becomes so fearful of potential allies that one faction ends up sabotaging peace negotiations with the Dominion (the equivalent of the Khitomer Accords) and driving the Dominion back into isolation in the Gamma Quadrant? The Renaissance project may have fallen apart, but I'm still quite proud of the stories and development we did in our first three years.
</shameless plug>
To answer the subject question, though, I'm not sure we can fully answer the incongruity between the space hippy attitude and the Cardassian "wars". For one thing, O'Brien was consistently referred to in DS9 as a "combat veteran", as if he had major fighting experience prior to the Dominion War. I really don't think that would make much sense if the Cardassians were still just a low-level conflict, as Guardian suggests.
However, on the flip side, if the scope of the Cardassian conflict were limited to just a handful of sectors, then there would be only a very small number of Starfleet personnel who experienced major combat, and thus it would be very unlikely that any major change in attitudes would spread throughout the whole fleet. Or put more simply, the Cardassian conflict wasn't big enough a threat to force a re-think in the bureaucracy of Starfleet Command. So basically, the whole space hippy thing was, by the time TNG started, massive willful denial. Thus, Q set up the little invitation for the Borg to come visit.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Willful denial? Yes. But also slightly unrealistic. Why do we have the whole space hippy scenario? Because of Gene Roddenberry. He, like many other creators of TV shows, had one good idea. After twenty years of subsequent failure, he got the chance to revisit that one good idea. . . and he blew it. In the interim he'd forgotten a lot about human nature, and how human nature makes for good drama. His idealism infected TNG from the start (I mean, I don't know who thought up Q and the Ferengi as baddies, but the latter especially weren't much cop).
That's why we have a first half of the 24th century which we still to this day don't know all that much about, but which seems to have been an era of space hippydom as we've been discussing. It was only when GR got sidelined from his own show that things started to change. . . and instead of bad drama we got lazy drama. That's when little details like the Cardassian War get retconned into the mix.
Ignoring all the pathetic bits of late-eighties new-ageism that give us the space hippy assignation in the first place, there's a lot to recommend this early 24th century. It looks to me to have been a golden age of exploration, judging by the explosion in starship numbers.
TOS managed to do 70+ episodes of exploration-based telly that hardly ever had the characters involved in a war they themselves actually were a part of.
TNG remained exploration-based. Whether they did it as well as TOS did with nearly two and a half times the number of episodes. . . I think they did. And the occasional threat from a Big Bad only added spice to the mix.
DS9 wasn't about exploration. They did a bit, but it was more of the nature of "so-and-so go off in a runabout and. . . ooh! Next week, a Maquis episode! And a Dominion one after that!" But it did at least do something different, so really the next spin-off was a step backwards. . .
Voyager did exploration badly. Nothing new, and you knew that you didn't have a Jem'Hadar or a Cardassian episode to look forward to.
Enterprise started off with boring Voyager-style exploration, then turned into the hunt for Osama Bin Xindi. The last season did show some promise, but again very little of it featured exploration, it was more DS9-style arc-based drama.
And that's why there's no Trek now, nor will there be in the foreseeable future. You can try to do some DS9-based spinoff like MM details, but in all honesty it'll probably just end up like Enterprise season 3 (fun as it was). I mean, really. Quantum Slipstream-fuelled, Quantum Torpedo-blazing, rapid-reaction fanwank. That's all it ever seems to be. Is it a realistic portrait of the post-Dominion-War Federation? Maybe, but a lot of the themes of what the war was doing to the Federation, its people and its attitudes were already covered in the show itself! (examples: "Homefront/Paradise Lost," "Nor the Battle to the Strong," "Siege of AR-558," the Jack Pack eps)
Or you can just try to get back to what you think is the basics of the show - the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to Voyager and Enterprise (seasons 1 & 2).
To sum up: Trek needs rebooting, really. Someone has to go back and look at what made TOS great, and what made TNG great (especially the mix of TOS-style with occasional other stuff: you may love the Borg in TNG, but they only appeared what, about half-a-dozen times in 175 eps? Yet we still all watched the other 170, even if it did sometimes feature dudes in mini-skirts and THAT GODAWFUL COLONY OF CUNTING FREE FUCKING SPIRITS). The idea of JMS, say, doing such a reboot might make some of you quiver with indignation to the point of disintegration, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
You've got a point Lee. SciFi is all about two things now:
1 - how much you can pour into the CGI budget
2 - writing spripts that can fully utilize said CGI budget.
The rest can go hang, as long as the studio gets a shitload of money selling to the networks.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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posted
I'm glad my post got the mental juices churning in the thread! That was precisely what I'd hoped to see.
Timo:
I do like the thought that perhaps the 2360's Federation (Starfleet) was pompously overconfident a la the 1850's British Empire. But, that thought only carries us so far before we hit trouble. For instance, the Admiral telling Picard (in "The Wounded", IIRC) that they couldn't afford new hostilities with the Cardassians.
While I've never taken that to mean that the Federation would crumble if the Cardassians came knocking, it does imply that the situation was significant enough that they didn't want to get involved like that yet again.
Aban:
Given the landing party's assault uniforms from ST5, in addition to the big rubber-looking combat suits from "Siege" and "Nor the Battle...", I'd like to think that there was indeed something else in the fleet wardrobe during the mid-2300s. But, the only time we've really seen anything similar in the TNG era was the all-black outfits from "Chain of Command", the episode with the genderless people, and so on. In other words, we never got to see the "we're gonna kick your ass" outfits, just the "no, nobody's here, nothing to see here" outfits.
Bernd:
True, my notion of a less militaristic Enterprise-era is based on, well, the Enterprise herself, and thus primarily Archer. But, I'm unaware of anything which would support the idea that he's a lone hippie in a military.
To be sure, Reed felt there should be a bit more militarism aboard the ship in the early seasons, so there were at least some more militaristic people in the fleet. However, I think it's made pretty clear in "The Expanse", when Archer and the Admiral discuss bringing in the MACOs, that Starfleet of the 2150's considers itself quite distinct from the military.
And yes, you're quite correct that the origins of hippiedom as I've laid them out are quite different, and I didn't mean to suggest that I thought they were of the same sort of origin. The 1960's hippies could perhaps be thought of as "armageddon-hippies", a counter-culture attempting to resist the daily threat of annihilation, increasing strife, and the related wrongs they perceived.
With the Federation, I'm referring to something more along the lines of "eloi hippies" (with apologies to Verne) . . . in a paradise where all is taken care of and where people are so separated from the objective facts of their existence, the politics of the people will often hang a left. We get a lot of this sort of fundamental disconnect with the basics of life even today . . . people who have grown up just running over to any of a hundred McDonald's-esque locations don't really have a firm grasp on what it takes to feed a population . . . or to ensure that population's security. They feel the Morlocks (usu. government) should do these things, but as they don't understand how it all works they get upset about issues of supply lines, cost, or (in the case of security) armed conflict.
In an era where the people fancy themselves enlightened and have replicators in every home, where cost doesn't exist per se and a paradise has been created on Earth, I can't help but worry that this sort of eloi hippiedom would become commonplace. Sisko's speech about the Maquis . . . to paraphrase, "Earth is a paradise, but there are real troubles out here that have to be dealt with realistically" . . . is, I think, an allusion to that sort of thing.
(To be sure, Taylor's Mosaic makes it clear that there are 'traditionalists' on Earth living amongst the somewhat anachronistic cornfields (or, in the Picard family's case, vineyards), and such traditionalism does give me a bit more confidence even if it does involve some absurdities like making girls like Janeway take 'girlish' things in traditionalist schools . . . but still, the fact remains that such objective philosophies probably constitute a minority in the 24th Century, especially on Earth.)
As for the Cardassian Conflict being like Viet Nam . . . maybe, maybe not. I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was analogous (IIRC I didn't even mention Viet Nam, though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to do so.)
Lee:
Actually, I didn't mean for the post to ask why they acted like hippies in the 2360's having just come out of a war. My post merely provides an explanation for why they were acting like hippies in early TNG.
My sense of the Cardassian war, and the dates I give it, is fairly unique as far as I know. I like it, though, because to my mind it can serve as explanation for that early-TNG attitude.
By referencing the early 2300s, I don't think I'm going off on an unrelated tangent. Had I simply said "oh, they just had a war and thus started acting completely un-warrior-like", it would've made little sense. The Mosaic reference to decades without major conflict is an integral part of the idea.
The uniforms bit is not integral, just a little extra evidence for the philosophical change . . . but you're completely correct in that my view is rather Earth-centric. However, the similarities of the military mind in the major races of Trek would seem to suggest that there would be few races whose view of what looks like a military uniform would conform to the look of leotards, weiner-wrapping speedo banana hammocks, short skirts that let your dangly-bits flap about, and so on. The best evidence against my uniforms idea, though, is TOS. At least in "The Cage" they had those field jackets covering up the bright happy colors.
And yes, I didn't make a new Beetle joke. But, if it makes you feel better, I did keep thinking of Woodstock and people in those funny-looking Volkswagon vans.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: This all strikes me as pretty silly.
You're absolutely correct. Clearly, the true cause is Roddenberry's dislike of militarism in general, and in his Starfleet in particular. But, that sort of thought wasn't shared by Meyer, and wasn't fixated upon in the minds of Piller and Berman and others who took up the mantle, and thus there was a bit more militarism injected later after Roddenberry's passing.
All that having been said, I thought it would be more interesting to try to find an in-universe reason for the difference. It's more complicated than simply pointing to a few people's statements and ideas, but (to my mind) a much more interesting challenge.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Okay, wow . . . I had to go look at my message to see what you were talking about, 'cause I was like "of course it's Wells, duh!". No idea where I got Verne from.
Please pardon my neural flatulence.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
With all this talk about space hippies, I thought we were going to discuss TOS "Way to Eden."
But seriously, folks.
Here is a comment from another board about Star Trek wars paralleling 20th Century Earth.
quote: As far as DS9 goes, ST history is just a fictional expansion of real history into a sci-fi, galactic, scope. The elements are all the same:
Dominion War -> WW II First Federation-Cardassian War -> Korean Conflict Internal Cardassian Politics -> Internal Soviet and Russian Politics Bajoran-Cardassian Conflict -> Colonial struggles throughout the world. Sanctuary Districts and Bell riots -> Slums, urban decay, and urban riots. Klingon Honor Code -> Bushido Federation-Klingon and Federation-Romulan conflicts -> Cold War End of Federation-Klingon conflict -> Chernobyl and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Using Korea, or, better yet, Vietnam, as a parallel for the Cardassian war with the Federation may be a good point to throw into the whole "hippie" Starfleet mindset at the beginning of TNG.
Korea and Vietnam were on the news daily, yet Americans still went on with their lives. Sporting events weren't cancelled, athletes weren't drafted, NASA was still shooting for the moon, etc... Contrast this with WWII when everything was geared toward the military, some sporting events were on hiatis and athletes were either being drafted or were nearly drafted (they were going to shut down major league baseball for the duration of the war until the tied turned).
The Vietnam War, while tragic and devastating, really didn't impact the lives of most Americans. There are numbers of people who were in the armed forces during the late 60s and early 70s who never saw combat because they were stationed elsewhere than southeast Asia.
Maybe the Cardassian war is like that. It was devastating. It was tragic, but it was confined to the outskirts and border regions between the Federation and Cardassia. People back in the core worlds really didn't feel the impact of the war and weren't bothered by it. This feeling was also reflected by Starfleet. "Yes, sure, there is a military campaign going on WAY OVER THERE, but, for the most part, it's minor and we have no problems. The Klingons are friendly and the Romulans are avoiding all contact."
The mindset changed with the Dominion War when core Federation worlds such as Betazed were occupied and Dominion allies were able to send a suicide attack to Earth and Starfleet Command.
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