Star Trek (spoilers are likely)

[zompist]

no one expected how computers, the Internet, smartphones, and like would just take off in an overwhelming fashion, affecting the entire planet, within a matter of decades.

Well, yes and no. It wasn't a staple of '50s or '60s sf. But I can think of two earlier examples that largely did predict the ubiquitous internet: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1887), where the tech in question was telephones; and E.M. Foster's "The Machine Stops" (1909), where humans live in isolated rooms, connected and tended by the near-omnipotent Machine. For that matter, George Orwell's 1984 (1948), though it looks retro today, included invididual surveillance of all citizens by the central authorities (through their TVs), and the state's near-complete control over information via centralization.

[xxx]

1984, which gives an astonishing description of the modern world,
is nothing more than a caricature of the totalitarian states of the 20th century (Stalinism to be precise),
which are in fact the models for today's world...

[Raphael]

Watch again...the characters say "Computer!" and there is a notification sound that the computer waits for their follow-on instruction. This suggests that the computer is not actively listening until called to do so.

That still requires the computer to constantly listen and check every sound it hears to see if it matches the pattern on file for the word "computer". Even if we assume that the computer itself is perfectly benign, it's still interesting to imagine what someone hacking into the system might do with that functionality.

1984, which gives an astonishing description of the modern world,
is nothing more than a caricature of the totalitarian states of the 20th century (Stalinism to be precise),
which are in fact the models for today's world...

Nah, Stalinism mostly didn't care that much about promoting consumerism. And full-fledged Stalinism didn't have different political movements within the same country viciously fighting each other on all communications channels.

[Emily]

It's a bit weird that I watched and re-watched TNG era Star Trek for decades and never once thought about how creepy a computer system listening to everything you say in your room would be in real life until Amazon started selling Alexa.

Watch again...the characters say "Computer!" and there is a notification sound that the computer waits for their follow-on instruction. This suggests that the computer is not actively listening until called to do so.

in order to hear you say "computer" it has to be listening. "active" vs "passive" listening in this case aren't about whether it's listening but just about when it's programmed to respond to things you say

[xxx]

Nah, Stalinism mostly didn't care that much about promoting consumerism. And full-fledged Stalinism didn't have different political movements within the same country viciously fighting each other on all communications channels.

Stalinism promoted productivism, the paternalist version of maternalist consumerism...
and although the various Soviet movements had less impact on the media, they were also more violent...
but the culture of propaganda and the totalitarian will, including on language and thought, has flourished in modern societies, even if paternalistic values have given way to maternalism, which is much more devious when it comes to opposition...

[Moose-tache]

It's a bit weird that I watched and re-watched TNG era Star Trek for decades and never once thought about how creepy a computer system listening to everything you say in your room would be in real life until Amazon started selling Alexa.

Watch again...the characters say "Computer!" and there is a notification sound that the computer waits for their follow-on instruction. This suggests that the computer is not actively listening until called to do so.

in order to hear you say "computer" it has to be listening. "active" vs "passive" listening in this case aren't about whether it's listening but just about when it's programmed to respond to things you say

I have to agree. You can ask to "locate Commander LaForge" and it will do so. Clearly the computer is capable of collecting information without being prompted by the subject of that information. Saying "computer" just begins a command prompt.

In general, Star Trek is creepy as hell. Routine suicide followed by usurpation by a copy (but don't forget cloning is icky!), holoprograms where you can fuck your coworkers (but make room for gay panic!), and of course, the fact that at any time another you could show up and yoink your girl out from under you because you stood her up on Risa eight years ago.

[alice]

In general, Star Trek is creepy as hell. Routine suicide followed by usurpation by a copy (but don't forget cloning is icky!), holoprograms where you can fuck your coworkers (but make room for gay panic!), and of course, the fact that at any time another you could show up and yoink your girl out from under you because you stood her up on Risa eight years ago.

Been reading Rye again, have you?

[Raphael]

Been reading Rye again, have you?

Possible, but some of these points might be so easy to figure out that there's no need to read anyone to get there.

[Moose-tache]

Yeah, Trek itself sometimes talks about how freakin' weird it is to be in Star Trek, but they can't really get into it, obviously. Lieutenant Barclay single handedly raised a lot of questions about how weird it is.

[masako]

Watch again...the characters say "Computer!" and there is a notification sound that the computer waits for their follow-on instruction. This suggests that the computer is not actively listening until called to do so.

That still requires the computer to constantly listen and check every sound it hears to see if it matches the pattern on file for the word "computer". Even if we assume that the computer itself is perfectly benign, it's still interesting to imagine what someone hacking into the system might do with that functionality.

Yeah, sure, it's interesting to think what someone might do with that functionality in the same way it's interesting to think what they might do with a whoopie cushion or a flamethrower.

In general, Star Trek is creepy as hell. Routine suicide followed by usurpation by a copy (but don't forget cloning is icky!)

I'm always amazed how folks drill down on little details that are not much more than set-dressing as a timeline-altering device that changes the fabric of the story.

You could quite easily switch-out all the techy stuff in Trek for magicky stuff and get the same stories. All the "treknobabble" could be supplanted by Harry Potter-esque spells and incantations in a pretty seamless switcheroo and absolutely none of the actual story would be altered.

[Ketsuban]

Part of the problem is that transporters were added to Star Trek to save money, because drawing a bunch of yellow squiggles on the film was cheaper. The Orville pointedly doesn't give them to the Planetary Union (because if you have them you have to contrive a reason they can't be used to rescue people in jeopardy, like the per-episode toggle on whether you can beam through the shields or the ever-popular "radiation says no") but uses their presence or absence to communicate "these guys are advanced".

[Travis B.]

no one expected how computers, the Internet, smartphones, and like would just take off in an overwhelming fashion, affecting the entire planet, within a matter of decades.

Well, yes and no. It wasn't a staple of '50s or '60s sf. But I can think of two earlier examples that largely did predict the ubiquitous internet: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1887), where the tech in question was telephones; and E.M. Foster's "The Machine Stops" (1909), where humans live in isolated rooms, connected and tended by the near-omnipotent Machine. For that matter, George Orwell's 1984 (1948), though it looks retro today, included invididual surveillance of all citizens by the central authorities (through their TVs), and the state's near-complete control over information via centralization.

Of course, consider that in the late 1960's the idea of an individual owning their own computer was laughable, yet by the late 70's/early 80's very many people already owned their own home computers. This in a span of what, a decade or so?

[Travis B.]

Of course one could say the same about the smartphone - the idea that one everyone could have a fully-functional computer that could do things such as video calls that fit in the palm of your hand was not really conceived of as a serious near-future proposition at the start of the naughts, but very much was one and the end of it.

[Raphael]

Part of the problem is that transporters were added to Star Trek to save money, because drawing a bunch of yellow squiggles on the film was cheaper.

Thing is, even if you accept the plot or production need for some kind of transporter, there's no reason why the fictional science involved has to be about taking people apart and putting them back together again. It could as well have been about opening a hyperspace portal and then directly moving people through that hyperspace portal. That would have neatly sidestepped the "it just kills you and builds a replacement elsewhere" issue.

Credit for that particular insight does, of course, go to Rye.

[Moose-tache]

In general, Star Trek is creepy as hell. Routine suicide followed by usurpation by a copy (but don't forget cloning is icky!)

I'm always amazed how folks drill down on little details that are not much more than set-dressing as a timeline-altering device that changes the fabric of the story.

You could quite easily switch-out all the techy stuff in Trek for magicky stuff and get the same stories. All the "treknobabble" could be supplanted by Harry Potter-esque spells and incantations in a pretty seamless switcheroo and absolutely none of the actual story would be altered.

I respectfully disagree. Good science fiction, and Star Trek is no exception to this, invites us to think about how these technologies work, and their impact on people's inner and social lives, as part of the story. The teleporter being a suicide booth is actually touched on in a number of episodes as a basis for some philosophical questions, as are other questions surrounding teleportation that would not be possible if we accept the teleporter as magic. Tuvix, for example, was not the victim of a wizard, and if he were, the story would not be the same.

The problem is that any trolley problem ultimately boils down to autobiography. The crew of the Enterprise D are weird about drugs and cloning because those are things that were in the news in the Bush senior years. The teleporter is not supposed to be magic, but it also cannot be a technology that exists independent of the imaginations of the show's writers. We are invited to look closely, but when we do we inevitably see people staring back at us, not cogs and gears.

[masako]

Tuvix, for example, was not the victim of a wizard, and if he were, the story would not be the same.

What would have been the practical difference? If Janeway (or someone else) had equal powers to separate him back into Tuvok and Neelix, the ethical/moral quandary would have been absolutely identical.

The crew of the Enterprise D are weird about drugs and cloning because those are things that were in the news in the Bush senior years.

I can easily point to all of the other series having episodes that touch on these same subjects, and that's without mentioning that TNG (including the movies) went all the way through the Clinton years without really covering sexual harassment or infidelity, so I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.

[chris_notts]

Each series has had bad episodes, storylines, and acting, but DIS seems to be rife with all of that. I honestly feel quite cynical about the whole thing, almost like the series was rushed and hobbled together to help launch the CBS/Paramount streaming service.

Michael Burnham is a joke of a lead character. Not because she's female, or black...but because many if not most of her actions seem contrary to what everyone else is working for. She seems less "Federation/Starfleet" than the Romulan refugees in Picard.

I just can't with Discovery. I gave up. Season 1 was interesting... Burnham had potential with her human pretending to be Vulcan + disgrace thing, but they just wasted it and all the other bad decisions snowballed. The magic mushroom drive seemed stupid from the beginning. No one could die without being brought back from the dead a few episodes later. A psychic child destroyed the universe. You can host a trill symbiote even if you're the wrong species via the power of love and magic, no medicine required.

At the end, the plot was like a stereotypical cheap Mexican culebrón, with a similar level of acting and writing.

[chris_notts]

Strange New Worlds is really good though. You need Paramount to watch it, but they're trying really hard to do TOS with bigger budgets, modern technology and modern sensibilities, and they're mostly succeeding in making something really good. It's definitely the best of the new series, probably followed by Lower Decks as #2, then Picard, then Discovery trailing by several miles.

[masako]

I just can't with Discovery. I gave up. Season 1 was interesting... Burnham had potential with her human pretending to be Vulcan + disgrace thing, but they just wasted it and all the other bad decisions snowballed.

I stopped watching after S1E4. I was hesitant from the announcement of the series, it being ANOTHER prequel, and yet another secret (or yet untold) Spock sibling.

The magic mushroom drive seemed stupid from the beginning.

This bothered me too, but AIUI, was a consequence of the show being developed by Bryan Fuller, who has apparently has an intense fetish with mushrooms, which was also on display on Hannibal, a show that he also ran, and admittedly, I very much enjoyed.

No one could die without being brought back from the dead a few episodes later.

Yes, consequences be damned, huh. Steve Shives (on Youtube) has mentioned this type of thing being one of his main issues with Voyager, but it seems even more prevalent in DIS, but I might be biased.

A psychic child destroyed the universe. You can host a trill symbiote even if you're the wrong species via the power of love and magic, no medicine required.

I think of this stuff as a consequence of the people running DIS not being Trek fans, a few of them expressly so. JJ Abrams has said that he never watched it, and Akiva Goldsman cut his teeth writing Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin, which, are some of the worst movies ever put to film IMHO.

Strange New Worlds is really good though. You need Paramount to watch it, but they're trying really hard to do TOS with bigger budgets, modern technology and modern sensibilities, and they're mostly succeeding in making something really good. It's definitely the best of the new series, probably followed by Lower Decks as #2, then Picard, then Discovery trailing by several miles.

I mostly agree with this, but SNW S2E9 is supposedly gonna be a musical, and I gotta say, that's def the shark being jumped for me. LD is good fun, but has such a different vibe that to me it's far more an homage to Trek than actually part of Trek.

[Raphael]

LD is good fun, but has such a different vibe that to me it's far more an homage to Trek than actually part of Trek.

Not sure if I agree, but I can see your point.