I was watching the TV yesterday, it being what I often do in the early evening (and later evening, for that matter), and I came across an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I like Star Trek:TNG (as we like to refer to it), it was a much better version than the original in so many ways. The special effects were better, of course. The acting was superior. The sets were less cheesy. All in all, it was a better show. Proven by the fact that it lasted almost twice as long as the original series.
It took me a season or two to get to like it. The first season seemed to be mostly a flashier version of the original, just updated FX; same old stories and themes, stilted acting, and shallow characters. But it changed and grew and greatly improved.
Anyway, the episode I watched was called "The Masterpiece Society" (Fifth season, 13th episode) and it naturally got me to thinking.
The episode involved a possible destruction of previously unknown colony on a planet thought to be uninhabited. The colony was originally set up to be someone's idea of a perfect ordered society. The people were all genetically designed to fit within the society. Not by gene manipulation but by selective breeding, it is hinted. The exact method, or methods, are not explained because they aren't essential to the story. What is essential is the concept of a perfectly ordered society where everyone is perfectly suited to the position they were intended to have in the society.
Now, I saw no janitors, plumbers, mechanics, maids, cooks, or any of the rest of the people who fill those absolutely necessary but mostly ignored jobs which every society has and needs in order to function. These stories always wrap around the elite, the leaders, of a society and never mention the farmers who provide all the food which overflows the tables in the palaces, do they?
Come to think of it, we rarely see those people in any story about the greatness of any civilization.
That's ok, it's the vision of harmony and paradise that we are supposed to be seeing and which will be threatened. And it was. Threatened, that is. First by a catastrophic event which would damage their biosphere beyond repair and kill them all and then by the tainting of the society by the freedom of will embodied by the crew of the Enterprise. In the end, some leave the "perfect society."
Seems that paradise is only paradise if you don't know you could have choices. And that maybe human beings were never meant to live in paradise. That paradise is just an illusion, something to strive for. Something we really wouldn't want if we actually attained it.
But there was a hidden story, a lesson, underneath the obvious one. That people would think they were happy and fulfilled as long as no one showed them another way.
And wasn't that the real meaning of the Biblical story of Eden?
A Night Unremembered
13 years ago
9 comments:
I read the book instead..."Brave New World"
The social and behavioral scientists have tinkered with your thesis here: that choice and variety contribute to the happiness quotient.
Several short stories come to mind.
Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the stories he wrote while living in Italy. A reverse Garden of Eden story.
A Portable Phonograph about the end of the earth and four people left in a cave, making choices.
Ignorance is bliss?
Bliss must be overrated.
I think my thesis was/is that is that each of us have our own version of paradise and some people may appear to be happy (even believe they are) within it... so long as they do not know of other possibilities. But no one's Paradise is everyone's.
I found these articles interesting: http://volokh.com/2009/05/09/when-and-why-did-the-federation-turn-socialist-a-question-i-hope-will-be-answered-in-the-new-star-trek-movie/
http://volokh.com/2007/09/19/how-federal-is-star-treks-federation/
(Oh, and TNG lasted well over twice as long as TOS (although not if you count TAS), with just as many episodes in DS9! And yes, I do have them all...ha)
Steven, very good articles. Though I might argue that it was primarily Earth that was socialist and not all planets within the Federation (we kept seeing market places throughout Federation worlds and then there were the traders like Harry Mudd) so the Federation might be socialist in nature (common acceptable currency: Federation credits and a hinted at Federation run economy)at its core (its "home" planet, if you will), the entire Federation was not. And, of course, it was not discussed or portrayed as such. Everyone was happy and productive and free of want or worry. And free to pursue their dreams without, apparently, much fear of failure. Though the possibility of failure and a criminal underworld was more than hinted at in the Voyager series.
I remember one of the captains (kirk or picard) sanctimoniously saying "our culture has evolved past money!"
But yeah, like one of the articles mentioned, money did get snuck in, especially in DS9. That was the interview with Ron Moore, who wrote quite a few episodes of both TNG and DS9, and went on to make BSG2003, which (according to my wife and me) is one of the best shows ever made, bar-none.
I don't know, I kind of like Babylon 5 for that honor.
Clever man.
:-)
And what Charlotte Ann said.
Pearl
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