With the release last year of “Star Trek,” and its subsequent haul at the box office, it was shown that the Trek universe was able to be massively modified and not be destroyed in the process. In the case of the movie, time travel was used to change established Trek history and create a whole new timeline. Since then, I’ve noticed new “Next Generation” novels have been published; while the novels are not canon (and from my reading of a great many of ’em a few decades ago, they tend to not be all that good, either), they show that the notion of now having two distinct and separate Trek timelines is possible. So it is at least vaguely possible that another Trek movie could be made starring the Next Gen crew, with perhaps some mention of how sad it is that Romulus has been trashed and Ambassador Spock disappeared into a black hole.
This being the case, I propose that its possible to write a novel set in the Next Gen continuity that involves a successful revolution in the Federation. The Fed is described as largely being a product of the human race, and the humans of the 24th century are a product of their history. Their history includes the genocidal Eugenics War and World War III, which led to a one-world government. As shown in “First Contact,” Earth after the mid-21st century WWIII was pretty well trashed, with, apparently, civilization and certainly the planetary economy in a state of collapse.
As history has shown, after major natural or man-made calamities, the survivors can be gathered together and unified around political or religious notions that in saner times would gain little traction. It appears that the post-WWIII humans of the Trek timeline have gathered around fascist/Marxist economic and cultural systems. One really good analysis of this can be found here:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html
My story idea is predicated on the analysis linked above being accurate, and from my own watching of Trek over the years, I can hardly argue against that. Corporations are seemingly non-existent. There are few private transports, and those that are shown are almost invariably used by pirates, black marketeers, criminals of various types. The few times Fed civilians have been shown, they do not seem to live in the lap of 24th century luxury, but in small, meager facilities often enough lit by candles. There’s no Federation Phaser Association; private ownership of weapons seems non-existent. Given the vastness of the Trek universe and the easy availability of transport, few enough civilians ever seem to actually go anywhere; in a world far greater than ours, their lives seem smaller. Hell, in Deep Space Nine the Fed government is almost overtaken by the military on a whim… implying that the military is already overly powerful in Fed affairs, and there was little to no aftermath shown. While the Fed might not be a tyranical dictatorship along the lines of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it seems like 1984 with a smiley face. How is this done? While there is a thriving black market – as there always is whenever the government clamps down on free enterprise – the implications seem to be that the Fed citizenry are largely pretty docile. Even after coming together following WWIII, humanity would have distinct factions, especially several hundred years down the line. So are the citizens programmed? Brainwashed? Humans out on the frontier are generally shown to be more… well, human than the meek subjects of Earth. Sort of a more subtle vision of the world of “Firefly.”
The Federation, at leas the Fed of the Next Gen era, reminds me greatly of that other sci-fi group, the Jedi. Both are touted as being great and wonderful keepers of the peace. But both are substantially nastier and more evil than the propaganda suggest. And like the Jedi, the Fed might well *deserve* to be taken down.
So what I’d be interested in is a novel or series of novels that explore that culture, and eventually lead to a rebellion. Millions of humans on Earth rising up to throw off the Marxist attitudes and free themselves. Perhaps the rebellion begins on a farming “collective” on the Moon, with input from the M-5 computer located there… you know, the one that was a pen-pal to Data, and was Mycroft to Data’s Sherlock… hmmm…
The question would become, what would the various established characters do? Picard is kinda easy to guess… he’d come down on the side of Authority, at least initially. He’s a very patrician sort of guy… you can see him defending the order that has done so well for him. Riker? He might be conflicted. Worf? Oh, hell, he’ll join the rebels.
Virtually *every* interstellar organization in Star Trek has been shown to have a revolt. The Romulans, Klingons, Cardasians, the Dominion, even the Vulcans have all been overturned from within. It’s time for the same to happen to the Federation.
23 Responses to “Star Trek: Revolution”
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In the original series, they showed how they dealt with “criminals.” They used technology to alter the minds of “criminals.” It seems to me that the same will happen to anyone who poses a big enough threat to the “peace.” Then you throw in the future Federation’s time enforcement wing (Star Trek: Enterprise), and a revolution would have next to no chance at succeeding.
A good writer would be required to pull this off, to build a successful Fed-revolution while not ignoring canon. The “Fedolution” would have to take years to build up, using perhaps hired Romulan cloak-ships for communications and Ferengi financial backing (the Ferengi being capitalists would *probably* want to see the Fed made free…. more customers), and operated out of Klingon space.
Information would probably be the key… let the civvies know about what they’ve lost, what they coudl have, how they’re being screwed over by the existing order. If the brainwashing machinery is in common use – it could be basic school equipment, frex – it could always be tampered with. As for the timecops, the recent movie shows that the timeline can be massively messed with. And distant-future Fed has been very poorly explored. For all we know, the revolution was a crashing success, and future-Fed Star Fleet is the result.
Maybe in the alternate timeline the Federation becomes the Trade Federation
BTW, if you haven’t read it, Asimov’s “The End of Eternity” is about a time enforcement organization which made sure that history “ran smoothly”.
I’d start off with the end of the Dominion War. Clearly, the entire quadrant has been devastated, and such devastation would almost certainly lead to political changes in all the factions of the quadrant.
The Cardassians are devastated and will be focused on rebuilding for the foreseeable future.
The Klingons were on the winning side, but the war took a heavy toll. As I recall from DS9, Starfleet figured that the Klingons would take at least a decade or more to recover and the Klingons weren’t exactly gaining any more power before the war started.
The only two real powers left are the Federation and the Romulans. I suppose some writers might use the aftermath of the war as an opportunity for the reunification of Vulcan and Romulus, but I doubt that would occur. The Romulans were no where near ready for reunification and I suspect that the devastation in the wake of the war would be used by hardliners in the Romulan government to expand the empire’s territory and influence.
As for the Federation, didn’t they speed up the admission of new members during the course of the war? I can’t see that being good for the politically stability of the Federation and it would only give Romulans hardliners an excuse to expand the empire in response. Also, the Federation compromised some of its cherished ideals during the lead up to the war and during it in order to survive. That will likely get people questioning those ideals and wondering if changes should be made. Clearly, some in Starfleet want changes as evidenced by the coup attempt, and the aftermath of the war would be a ripe time to start doing that.
And what about the Dominion? It just lost a major war and nearly lost their “gods” (the Founders) too. What would you do if you heard that your gods nearly died? You might start questioning if they really were gods. I think the Dominion is in for some tough times on the home front, possibly civil war or war with other factions in the Gamma Quadrant. Since the wormhole is still open, any trouble in the Gamma Quadrant will eventually hit the Alpha Quadrant and likewise for trouble in the Alpha Quadrant spreading to the Gamma Quadrant.
The aftermath of the Dominion War has left plenty of ripe material for Trek writers to use.
I think a quote from DS9 fits this post perfectly:
“I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We’ve never harmed you. And yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You’re only sending them replicators because one day they can take their “rightful place” on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it.”
Commander Eddington to Captain Sisko
I suspect that quote could apply to present day politics in America too, eh?
> The only two real powers left are the Federation and the Romulans.
The Romulans would not seem to be a real power anymore. At the very least, they’re in serious trouble… they’ve lost their home solar system and very probably the bulk of their population and powerbase. The whole supernova thing was ill defined… the movie seemed to indicate that it was *not* the Romulans home star that went off, but some other more distant star (this was, to me, the biggest annoyance of the movie, as it and te noion of stopping the blast with a black hole makes no sense). The graphic novel prequel, which may or may not be canon, was explicit that it was not the Rom home star, but something lightyears away… which means that the Romulans lost not only their home star system, but likely half or more of their entire empire.
Now, the buildup to the rebellion could easily have begun during the Dominion War. As with WWI, this would be the first time that a vast number of Terrans would have gone travellin’ to distant parts. They’d return home with a broader view of the galaxy, and that would probably also include a lot of people thinking about true freedom for the first time.
A thought occurs… the holodeck. What role does that play? WHle true freedom seems strictly limited, perhaps the Fed keeps the masses sedated with ready access to fantasy worlds through either holodeck technology or perhaps direct access to the brain. Sure, the real world sucks, but you can always jack in and boff a bevy of Green Orion Slave Women when you get home from the state tractor factory…
I haven’t really kept up with Star Trek (though I remember really liking NG towards the end). But is my impression that DS9, after the first couple of seasons, was the most sophisticated of all the franchises?
> I suspect that quote could apply to present day politics in America too, eh?
Sadly, yes.
DS9 was just all kinds of awesome, IMO. To my mind, it was clearly the best of the series… it got the hell away from the girlie-man utopia of TNG, and wasn’t near as intelect-insulting as V’Ger was. Enterprise had promise, but IMO squandered it with crappy stories until the fourth season when it suddenly grew a pair… but by then it was far too late to be saved.
DS9 was a superior Trek because it was, if certain people are correct, lifted from the initial scripts for Babylon 5. And B-5 kicked substantial ass. That was a series where capitalism was in full sway, big government was nightmarish and obviously so, humans acted like actual humans, people had the right to go whereever, whenever they chose, and could and did buy personal starships. And they actually had *toilets!*
I always root for the Bad Guys in science fiction shows. I preferred the Empire to the Republic in STAR WARS, the Zeon to the Federation in GUNDAM. Anakin was right!
My question: In a world with replicators and holodecks, why would anyone go anywhere or do anything?
The new Star Trek movie leaves open a very interesting possibility;
At the end of the movie Romulus still exists, although Vulcan has been destroyed.
So, is the Federation going to tell the Romulans that their sun is going to explode a lot of years down the road, or wait and let them find that out the hard way? Also, the Klingons are a real wild card in this alternate timeline, as no one has run into the Organian treaty yet, and if either the Federation or Klingons show up at Organia without the other side being there, there won’t be any Organian treaty at all.
Also, there’s that possible future Spock/Uhura baby to consider, as well as Kirk realizing he is now enslaved by that green Orion woman.
Also, is Old Spock going to tell Young Spock who he is, and warn him about getting shot in the face by a flower and going all hippie, so that Kirk has to beat the crap out of him to get him back to all cold and normal? Or warn him that someday someone may try to steal his brain, and McCoy will have to run him around with a really dorky remote control?
In fact, Old Spock can give Kirk all sorts of useful advice, like watching his weight and blowing away the Botany Bay on first sight. 😀
> I always root for the Bad Guys
They are almost invariably the more interesting characters.
> In a world with replicators and holodecks, why would anyone go anywhere or do anything?
Ah, but we don;t know what level of access the proles have to these technologies. They might be reserved for the political elect.. Star Fleet officers and the like. Notice how on the 1701-D there were more than a thousand crewmembers but the holodecks were always open? One would think the off-duty crew would be swarming them. Unless they don’t *get* *to.* Civvies might well only have access to the best systems as an incentive for proper behavior.
> the Klingons are a real wild card in this alternate timeline
Indeed. The reason given (in external sources) as to why the NCC-1701 is not only more technologically advanced than the TOS ship, but is in fact twice the size of the original, is because of the scan data the Kelvin’s shuttlecraft brought back of the Narada. The scans provided data that advance the state of the art in advance of where is “should be”.
But the Klingons… they had the Narada locked up in one of their shipyards for a quarter century. So the Klingon state of the art should be *way* more advanced. With full physical access to 24th century Romulan, Federation and Borg technologies, when Kang, Koloth and Kodos come a’knockin’, the Enterprise won’t stand a freakin’ chance.
> Virtually *every* interstellar organization in Star Trek has been shown > to have a revolt. The Romulans, Klingons, Cardasians, the Dominion,
> even the Vulcans have all been overturned from within. It’s time for the > same to happen to the Federation.
At what level of history have these revolts occurred? Do they happen during “medieval” or pre-modern or early-modern times, early technology times (the equivalent of 1850-1950), or post-space (or interstellar) travel times? This leads us to some thoughts on what the writers were contemplating when they staged the revolts.
Medieval or pre- or early-modern revolts are local political things, typically with economic incentive being sought in the long term. Early technology revolts are pretty much the same, but economic advantage is sought immediately (medieval kings would kill so their new grandchildren could marry well). These sorts of revolts are fairly well understood and accepted by even Hollywood.
Space-travel era revolts suggest a totally different view of society. What they suggest to me is that the writers believe society and culture need to be re-ordered immediately so that the proper paradise may be attained. We have reached a certain level of paradise by being able to travel to the next planets, but society is still not functioning “properly.”
The huge down-side to that is the writers EXPECT to have massive death and destruction. They have inserted cheerfully into their history a man-made calamity to the extent of Black Death in Europe. Do they really feel that a devastated society is going to work to get back into space while basic needs remain unmet? Will the populace work hard so that a small group will be permitted to travel in space? What does this tell us about the sanity and social expectations of Hollywood?
All this is part of the reason I’ve let the entire ST thing fade out of my life. ST after TOS offers a regulated (and space-faring) life (much like DC comics of the 60s, come to think of it).
> At what level of history have these revolts occurred? Do they happen during “medieval” or pre-modern or early-modern times, early technology times (the equivalent of 1850-1950), or post-space (or interstellar) travel times?
These all occured in the TNG and post-TNG eras, with the exception of the Vulcans who had a cultural revolution in the “Enterprise” era. The Klingons were pretty much in a *perpetual* state of revolution.
>What they suggest to me is that the writers believe society and culture need to be re-ordered immediately so that the proper paradise may be attained.
Meh. More likely, the writers decide that since conflict is the heart of drama, and warfare is the highest expression of conflict, and since last season we had three wars *between* spacefaring civilizations, this season we’ll have a war *within* a spacefaring civilization.
Keep in mind, with interstellar empires of the scale of the Fed, the Klingons or the Romulans, the total loss of the capitol planet may well bring the government down, but it won’t bring down the overall physical infrastructure. Somewhat akin to if Jihadis nuke Washington, D.C and take out all three branches of government, the US government will go into complete chaos with the clear possibility of a whole new order emerging… but D.C getting vaporized isn’t going to matter much on a *practical* level in Peoria. Hollywood is still going to crank out crappy movies even if D.C or even NYC vanishes.
Besides:
I’m over-analyzing again. I think that happens to guys like me: too much time spent worry about the history of systems. Also, I’m doing what I tell others to avoid by taking Hollywood too seriously.
However, this does suggest to me that there is a more clear link between the English Civil War and the American Civil War. Both were undertaken in order to change the culture of the country. Before I give this any more thought, I’m going to read the next chapter in “Magnesium Overcast.”
Yeah, the Klingons do seem to be eternally revolting. One wonders what keeps the culture together. There may be a sense of humor that’s not made explicit, or there’s an unexplored pub culture (in which Klingons can come together for cooperation and contemplation over some good Klingon ale).
(Hey, what’s the photo? I’ve stood clear of much of popular culture for the last decade or so.)
> (Hey, what’s the photo? I’ve stood clear of much of popular culture for the last decade or so.)
I *think* it’s a Ranger stationed on Earth in the B5 universe long after the series main timeline. Now that I think about it, it’s been a while since I last watched B5…
> I *think* it’s a Ranger stationed on Earth in the B5 universe long after the series main timeline.
Indeed so. It’s Brother Alwyn, a character who showed up once in the Season 4 finale. 500 years after the events of B-5, a war breaks out on Earth that results in massive planetwide nukings and a collapse of the planetary civilization. The rest of the universe apparently just sorta shrugs and moves on, quarantining the planet. 500 years after *that,* civilization is about at the Renaissance level, being covertly aided by Rangers who have come to Earth and have taken up the roles of monks. They subtley aid the reconstruction by collecting artifacts… some of which they have manufactured specifically for the purpose.
The point: sometimes wars happen and planets get trashed… and civilization hums along just fine without ’em.
there are some things I never could figure out about star trek that would prevent a rebellion..
the lack of enlistedmen.. everyone seems to be a “graduate of starfleet academy”. to be successful a rebellion would have to have enlistedmen…who have technical knowledge to be able to run the show, without the “leadership indoctrination” that happens at the academy. enlistedmen tend to be more practical and straightforward..exactly the people to convince to eliminate an aloof and hard to understand academy elite.
the lack of an actual combat-oriented force…even when they were at war they seemed to throw naval officers with pistols at the problem of infantry warfare. they have “security officers” (again, all officers..no enlistedmen) but Shore Patrol is not the same as Force Recon Marine. you can’t have a rebellion if the primary means of force is in the hands of the starships in orbit.
you could have some typical “end of the federation” event that they can’t solve due to the prime directive…and the enlistedmen promptly destroy starfleet and federation headquarters, and fix the problem with proper applications of brute force.
What is the era that you (pl.) feel is the historical model for the society developed by the writers of the various ST incarnations?
To me, it appears to be early-colonial America.
The original series was explicity sold as “Wagon Train To The Stars,” so there’s a lot of “old west” to it, with the inclusion of good old fashioned capitalism and free spiritedness. There is no such historical model for the TNG era, however. Closest I could come to an analogy would be “brave New World”, “1984 With A Smile,” or perhaps some delusional, blinkered utopian vision of the Soviet Union.
> DS9 was just all kinds of awesome, IMO. To my mind, it was clearly the
> best of the series… it got the hell away from the girlie-man utopia of
> TNG, and wasn’t near as intelect-insulting as V’Ger was.
In the Pale Moonlight.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/In_the_Pale_Moonlight
In the Cards.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/In_The_Cards
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Inter_Arma_Enim_Silent_Leges
The best episodes of Post-TOS Trek, all DS9.
> Enterprise had promise, but IMO squandered it with crappy stories until
> the fourth season when it suddenly grew a pair… but by then it was far
> too late to be saved.
They could’ve done the Earth-Romulan War, and instead they waste the show on the “Temporal Cold War.” Feh…
> DS9 was a superior Trek because it was, if certain people are correct,
> lifted from the initial scripts for Babylon 5.
Later DS9 was superior because of the episodes written by and influenced by Ronald D. Moore, the force behind the 2003 Battlestar Galactica.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore
> And B-5 kicked substantial ass.
http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html
> There is no such historical model for the TNG era, however.
Consider that TNG might be 1920s Europe. Technology of transport was adequate for the trips expected, and the society was (in broad generality) stagnant and structured. The economy was tending toward socialism — ignoring the usual British loathing of Marxist communism — and there was tension on every border, but it was friendly tension. Direct comparisons are damn near impossible, of course, but as a general guideline this feels pretty good for TNG.
DS9, which I did not watch frequently, felt more like a colonial fortress adventure of the late 19th century. Gunga Din, and all that.
I watched Voyager twice — the first and about the fifth episodes — and never went back to any ST after that. My general impression of it was that Voyager was TNG written by socialist feminists who felt left out of the real world — and so they created their own, separate from all other ST environments.