No. It fits Captain Angel’s perspective as an edgy pirate pining after their lover, but Starfleet is full of hopeful, enthusiastic scientists who are in space because they want to be. They love exploration for exploration’s sake, and are on a ship full of people who likely have similar interests.
Angel’s perspective is warped by their passion; I mean, they’re literally in the middle of hijacking a Starfleet ship to get their lover back. They think their dependency on love is universal, when in reality most people are more emotionally stable than them. Although it probably helps when you’re in Starfleet and have an incredibly supportive working environment and not, you know, a pirate crew.
Starfleet is driven by love and passion, just not in the toxic way that Angel is. Its a passion for exploration and discovery, and a love for your comrades and fellow lifeforms. Angel is right, she just goes about it in entirely the wrong way.
True enough; it’s a very different framing, but there’s still love there, still passion.
I think a big difference is that Starfleet folks tend to be more intrinsically driven. Space isn’t something that needs to be “made bearable” (unless you’re McCoy I guess)—space is cool in its own right, tons of things to see and people to meet. But on top of that, the Federation has such a high tech level and quality of life that living on a starship is pretty luxurious.
Well that, and a hot drink. Tea, earl grey perhaps?
Prune juice. It’s a warriors drink.
You wouldn’t trust a strange person so why should you trust a strange fart?
PruneVigilance Juice
An atmosphere helps though
Beat me to it
Hexbearians are everywhere 🤣
I had a hard time liking this character just because she seemed mostly there to advance the love triange plot and love triangles are so boring to me.
Doubt any of us could really say, as we haven’t spent much time in space.
Any one who has, please speak up.
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Full disclosure, I am not an astronaut, nor do I have full context behind the quote. I think that curiosity and exploration would help. Also, warp drive made all those planets a whole lot less lonely
Depends on what we mean by “space”, but IMO this sentiment is much more contemporary than what someone living in the space-based luxury we see from Starfleet would think.
CATS. CATS ARE NICE.
That was ONE study, on ONE starship. And the person they questioned was an ANDROID! And the rest of the crew was rolling their eyes the whole time.
Felis Catus
is your taxonomic nomenclature
An endothermic quadruped
carniverous by nature…This sounds so much like Mariner that I’m questioning if it’s a real quote that I’ve forgotten about.
Yes, but only because starships don’t have holodecks yet when this takes place.
How did we get from “in the future, humanity can build a utopia if we leave conservatism in the past and boldly go to explore the wonders of space” to “the power of friendship and believing in good® is the only thing saving humanity from the cruel world we have built”?
I mean, it fits the Americanized capitalist realism of new Trek, but it’s depressing. When did we downgrade back to platitudes and traditionalist values?
This is an entirely over the top interpretation of what is happening in the scene the OP shared where a villainous character is trying to exploit what they perceive to be a weakness in one of the protagonists.
However, if you want to get into it, the biggest factor in any tone shift from TOS to now was DS9. That’s where we see the Federation abandoning humanity to the whims of the Cardassians for the sake of a treaty. That’s where a Starfleet enforces martial law on Earth and an admiral attempts a coup of the Federation government. That’s where we learn it’s illegal to engage in genetic modification, even when it would reverse a person’s intellectual disability. And, of course, DS9 introduced the concept of Section 31.
The seeds were always there, though. Even in TOS we learn that the governor of the colony Kirk grew up on had half the population executed because there was a famine and not enough food for everyone. We see a Federation professor who taught at the Academy introduce fascism to a planet because he believed it to be the most efficient philosophy for advancement. We see a planet that’s heavily implied Starfleet maintains a base there strictly for sex tourism, and we hear Federation delegates debate the issue of whether or not they should allow a planet whose resources they’ve been exploiting to even join the Federation. Kirk and the Klingons fight a proxy war using the native population of a pre-warp world before Kirk gets sad and just abandons his side. It’s even heavily implied that women cannot rise to the rank of captain in Starfleet.
The only Trek that resembles your interpretation is TNG, but even there we learn of human colonies with roving “rape gangs” like the world Tasha Yar grew up on.
It’s ok that the whole world of Star Trek is not at the same level morally. I also understand writers are just people and they are influenced by the time and place they live in. But I appreciate it when they at least try to continue to elaborate the utopic aspects. I love thinking about what could be better in society and how it would work (and that’s what I like about TNG). Thanks for the analysis of DS9, by the way.
it’s pretty hot anywhere near a star, tho
Love and drugs yeah. I think she is onto something
Someone’s never had garlic bread, I see.
I dunno lady, have you tried sitting in the ships sweet spot?
I dunno, drugs are pretty good at doing that.
