Star Trek
r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
New to Star Trek and wondering where to start?
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1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
3 Be truthful
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If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.
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Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episodes, as well as previews for upcoming episodes. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/quarks.
7 Meta
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Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 11-21 | LD 5x06 | "Of Gods and Angles" |
| 11-28 | LD 5x07 | "Fully Dilated" |
| 12-05 | LD 5x08 | "Upper Decks" |
| 12-12 | LD 5x09 | "Fissue Quest" |
| 12-19 | LD 5x10 | "The New Next Generation" |
In Production
Strange New Worlds (2025)
Section 31 (2025-01-24)
Starfleet Academy (TBA)
In Development
Untitled comedy series
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
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Social ownership of what? Resources? Means of production? Neither of those means anything when replicators are a thing.
There are a million different definitions of socialism depending on who you ask. I gave one above but I'm not claiming it's the only one. However it is ultimately an economic model, and it doesn't make sense to apply it in a world where economics is meaningless because the laws of thermodynamics have been broken.
Then explain what the Orion syndicate does for a living. Or how can ferengi pursue profit. Or how captains owned private transport ships and need to take things from one place to the other.
There's always people who want more than they have, and know who's going to provide them that.
Because the writers recognized that too many story tropes would be entirely unreasonable in a post scarcity world and so wrote in a bunch of stuff that really makes no sense if you think about it too hard. Like why would someone pay for a drink at Quark's when every residence on DS9 has a replicator? Because the writers wanted DS9 to be a frontier town and a frontier town needs a saloon.
Also to be clear, everything I was saying in my above comments was primarily in relation to the Federation. I recognize there are parts of the galaxy where replicators are not common.
Because the scarce resource at Quark's isn't the food or drinks, it's the atmosphere and the experience, i.e things the replicator cannot provide. Quark controls the holodecks too, but even if he didn't the scarce resource would be authentic (not replicated) food and experiences. It's been shown pretty regularly on the shows that some people prefer non-replicated food, non-synthohol drinks, and real people. It doesn't really matter in that context if those are technically indistinguishable from the real thing (but even in canon there is a measureable difference between them and some things the replicators can't do).
I don't really believe there could ever be a post-scarcity world in which we don't create new scarcities to demand.
Hot take: The Expanse (mostly referring to the books here) handled a post-scarcity technocracy much more believably.
Again, the Ferengi are a bad example since they aren't part of the federation. But my point was simply that this stuff wasn't thought through. Why do the Ferengi exist? Because the writers wanted some capitalists to use as a contrast to the Federation.
I firmly believe that ST's worldbuilding mostly handwaves the questions of economics and scarcity, at least within the Federation. The writers didn't want to come up with good reasons for these things that actually make sense when you think about them.
It's a great franchise, but we shouldn't try to apply real-world economic ideas to it when that was so clearly not at the front of the writers minds when they created it.