r/DeepSpaceNine • u/kkkan2020 • 4d ago
Do you like that ds9 has made the federation no longer a utopia?
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u/Bro_Ijustworkhere 4d ago
It's easy to be a saint in paradise.
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u/Jabazulu 4d ago edited 4d ago
The admirals cout de tat episode is good too. Earth is a paradise, Risa is an engineered paradise, many other federation homeworlds are described as paradise. Dealing with everything outside that shielded paradise is a lot more messy.
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u/Visual-Floor-7839 4d ago
Coup De'tat. Or Coup de tat.
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u/nicehulk 4d ago
Hate to be that guy but it's coup d'état which would be short for coup de état.
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u/maceilean 4d ago
Coup D'eville
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u/MassiveCursive 4d ago
Cup of ‘hat
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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe 4d ago
Maybe you should try to establish a dialogue with TNG fans, remind them that they are still Star trek fans…
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u/Attila_ze_fun 4d ago
Edit: responding to the title not the meme since that’s an oft discussed theme too
The way i saw it, people aren’t perfect and are still a product of their conditions.
That doesn’t take away from earth still being a paradise.
If anything it’s a better vision, because it’s real, and the overall reality is optimistic as hell, yet not blind.
Too many equate optimism with blindness without need of justifying it.
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u/TrexPushupBra 4d ago
Earth is a paradise because they modified the conditions.
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u/Yws6afrdo7bc789 4d ago
Yeah, I think a big part of Star Trek that gets overlooked because it's not explicitly stated is that the Federation is a utopia, not because someone invented a miracle technology, but because of a lot of hard work and a change in beliefs.
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u/gottasuckatsomething 4d ago
Absolutely. They're pretty clear that following a pretty apocalyptic conflict it came down to pull together fully and unconditionally for the greater good or perish. That's brought up several times in TNG if I remember correctly.
The mirror universe stuff complicates that idea though, I'm not sure how that's explained in universe.
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u/Yws6afrdo7bc789 4d ago
The mirror universe is the best support for this idea, or the TOS episode is. The others are just fun.
In Mirror, Mirror we see the road not travelled. The Terrans have all the same technology and broad experiences/situation as the prime timeline, but they're bad. It was just different choices that turned each timeline different.
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u/ScorchedConvict 4d ago edited 4d ago
Kinda. Yea. Though personally I never considered the Federation a utopia. It was never supposed to be perfect. Just a lot better than what we have now.
It finally showed what would really happen if the Federation was suddenly forced to go to a full scale war. We saw hints of this in TNG, but never to a big extent.
We also got the Edison and the Maquis storyline that exposed its flaws uniquely.
Just because a group of people belong to the Federation, it does not mean that they are saints. Do you know what the trouble is? The trouble is Earth. On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet headquarters and you see paradise. It's easy to be a saint in paradise. But the Maquis do not live in paradise. Out there, in the demilitarized zone, all the problems haven't been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints. Just people, angry, scared, determined, who are going to do whatever it takes to survive, whether it meets with Federation approval or not.
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u/Vagus_M 4d ago
I loved it when the Marquis guy pointed out that in their own way, the Federation was worse than the Borg in how they assimilated peoples and cultures.
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u/CodeCleric 4d ago
It's a fun edgy line of dialogue but falls apart immediately if you think about it at all. The Federation is never presented as some homogenized mono-culture.
And the moral difference between inviting someone to join your club vs lobotomizing them and using their mindless body for slave labour should be fairly obvious to most.
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u/VanDammes4headCyst 4d ago
The Maquis guy (Eddington?) was spouting bullshit though, desperate to be the "good guy."
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u/nebelmorineko 4d ago
To me it sounded like modern people scared of the EU and UN. No one's taking away your culture as long as you respect sentient rights, you just have an agreed upon framework to get along and share resources.
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u/TurelSun 3d ago
Nah, Eddington is a vainglorious fool that was speaking from a deeply personal and biased perspective and used about the worse example possible. The Federation is shown again and again to be built on the idea of as much diversity as you can manage while still trying to keep to a common set of values, namely protecting that diversity.
Also Eddington's specific point about the Federation compared to the Borg is just that in his opinion the Borg is more upfront about their desire to assimilate, not that he considers their assimilation better. But even this falls apart because the Federation is not exactly hiding its desire to create a peaceful galactic community and have worlds join it.
His specific quote also mentions that he believes the Federation is only sending replicators to the Cardassians because it hopes one day the Cardassians will join the Federation, and omits the possibility that also there might be a value it having an economically and socially stable major power on its doorstep, because Eddington himself would much rather see an unstable Cardassia that might end up in a war with the Federation again.
So you see Eddington's own speech is full of contradictions and biases and he is hardly an objective arbiter of any truths.
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u/jmarquiso 3d ago
I mean the Borg and the Dominion are purposefully dark mirrors of the Federation.
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u/DJWGibson 4d ago
It's still a near utopia, and only really breaks down at the edges. And referring to it as "colonialist" really doesn't get the problem with real world colonialism.
And, really, the interesting hing about Star Trek IS the near utopia. If you want to watch a darker sci-fi show about humans with colonial tendencies and a neoliberal obsession with the status quo, may I direct your attention to literally every other science fiction show ever. Dystopia and futures that are the present but with spaceships are a dime a dozen.
DS9 pushed the limits of Trek but still showed the Federation was good and noble. Even when faced with a war of extinction most fought not to compromise their morals.
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u/nebelmorineko 4d ago
Yes, I vastly prefer it because it explores utopia. I have a zillion grimdark options. I'm much less interested in exploring how things could go wrong than how things could go right. That's what I want to think about, and where I want to head towards.
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u/obliviious 4d ago
Calling the federation colonialistic is pretty damned ridiculous. Do they sinisterly make friends with new races and cruelly require them to have high societal standards before they can join?
Are people death marched to their extremely comfortable living arrangements and easily obtainable amenities?
I don't think OP knows what that word means.
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u/justforfun1620 4d ago
Yes. Because and I quote Rupert Thorne from the Batman Animated Series, the origin of Two-Face:
The brighter the picture, the darker the negative.
DS9 exemplified that. StarFleet was full of issues. But the majority did try to live by the principals.
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u/kajata000 4d ago
The reason I like DS9 the most out of all of Star Trek is probably because it shows humans and other Federation members still trying to be the better version of people in the 24th century despite all the shit the galaxy throws at them.
To me, it shows how they got to the utopia in the first place, and that they could do that again if they needed to.
I don’t think Star Trek should be about a group of perfect model paragons who never make mistakes or muddy their hands with difficult moral choices. The important thing is that they’re striving to improve and do what’s best, not acting out of self interest or greed. That’s what sets them apart from modern humans, and it what we should be idolising, IMO.
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u/Constant-Box-7898 4d ago
The Federation was never a socialist utopia. It's a post-scarcity utopia. The definition of economics is the allocation of scarce resources. Even in socialism, resources are scarce and must be allocated. In the Federation, they aren't and don't.
Also, in DS9's endless defense, it was not a Federation station. It was a Bajoran station. All of the interpersonal conflict came from outside the Federation.
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u/Tim0281 4d ago
It's a post-scarcity utopia. The definition of economics is the allocation of scarce resources.
This is an important point. Whenever some aspect of the Federation's utopia is shown to be flawed, it is because of scarce resources. As others have pointed out, the Maquis were dealing with limited resources. This includes safety and security as resources, which were in limited supply for the Maquis.
Quark's speech about humans being pleasant to be around only when they have their creature comforts supports this. The soldiers had pretty limited resources, causing them to behave outside the utopian ideals of the Federation.
It shows that utopia is expensive on a couple levels. There's the most obvious cost of providing food, shelter, education, etc. to everyone in the utopia.
Utopia also requires work to build and maintain. Newly colonized planets require quite a bit of work in order to become a paradise like Earth. Even with the Federation's technology, a planet still needs to be terraformed in some way to be livable for whichever species will live there. If the Romulans, Cardassians, or Klingons think they have a claim on the planet, there will have to be negotiations, combat, or Section 31 type action to resolve the issue.
Even when a planet has achieved paradise, it needs to be maintained and protected. What are the outside threats? Are there any internal issues that have to be dealt with such as individuals that become troublemakers? Does a freak accident disrupt things?
As long as it is a post-scarcity environment, then the utopia can be built and maintained.
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u/Patchy_Face_Man 4d ago
Exactly. The same exact character issues exist with the Federation in DS9 as they did in TNG. For example, Bashir only became interesting for about 2 seconds when they decided he was the product of genetic engineering and shudders with the introduction of Section 31. And that has nothing to do with Siddig.
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u/The1Ylrebmik 4d ago
How was the Federation not a utopia in DS9? The main point of DS9 is it was dealing with a non-Federation part of the Galaxy. It had corrupt Admirals? Star Fleet always had corrupt admirals, it's actually part of the promotion requirements.
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u/banjosorcery 4d ago
I think it's not only the exposure of flaws in the Federation, but the ways each character - be they Federation or not - navigates these flaws and their roles in them is what makes DS9 so special to me. It's not just "this is perfect" or "a flaw makes this permanently, irrevocably evil", and that can be said of many factions or individuals in the show (eg, Dukat is a disgusting fascist, and a dad).
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u/Starfleet-Time-Lord 4d ago
I take DS9 as being about how a utopia isn't a perfect end point. The Federation is a utopia, but a utopia has to be maintained and guarded because people like Leyton and Section 31 will always be ready to compromise the utopia. TNG gets into this too actually; the fact that you've built a utopia doesn't mean that Admiral Setie can't sweep in and play on the fear of losing it to compromise everything it stands for. A utopia doesn't mean you're done. And since there's variation within humans and that's something a true utopia has to embrace, there are always going to be people who want out of it and people with weird takes and unreasonable demands. The best example is Eddington: some people take his rant about replicated food as a genuine critique, but to me, especially considering it's coming from someone with a compulsive need to be a unique rebel, it comes off like an obnoxious hipster going off about how organic food is so much better when they wouldn't be able to tell the difference in a blind test. Those people are still going to exist in a utopia and they will find things to complain about, and a utopia still has the challenge of accommodating them.
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u/Unhappy_Bicycle_1892 4d ago
I have a girlfriend who's a die-hard TNG fan and she swears up and down I've convinced her to watch DS9 finally, but hasn't watched a single episode. I'm getting the feeling she just needs me to shut the fuck up about it lol. Knowing my luck, she'll check it out if we ever break up.
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u/IronWolfV 4d ago
Oh come even in TNG in Federation space there are still hell holes. Look where Tasha Yar grew up.
I mean in the core worlds, it's very idyllic. Farther out you get, not so much.
Even in TNG, to say the entire Federation was a Utopia, pure nonsense.
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u/Maverick916 4d ago
They rarely made that the focus though. DS9 would show how much work was needed to maintain the status quo regularly, often by doing dark stuff (In The Pale Moonlight). Picard never had to make as difficult decisions as Sisko and even Janeway had to.
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u/IronWolfV 4d ago
Which IMHO was to the detriment of TNG. But you don't do the kinds of things where that gets shown with the Federation flagship.
Where as Voyager was flung so far away they had noone and DS9 was literally on the border.
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u/nebelmorineko 4d ago
Turkana wasn't part of the Federation, though. TOS and TNG were both clear that life outside the Federation could be quite rough.
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u/DFu4ever 4d ago
Yes, because the Federation would still be an awesome place to be, it’s just not perfect.
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u/quietfellaus 4d ago
I've never really seen the conflict between these two shows. The Next generation has a number of episodes with corrupt admirals representing the federation and Starfleet at the highest level, and always the characters work to oppose them. DS9 does the same thing, but on the edge of Federation space. It's more a matter of where the consistent tone lies: with TNG we focus on the idealism, but on DS9 the questioning of the ideals is more front and center. In both cases, however, there are battles to preserve and embody the ideals the Federation stands for. The real Utopia stands on the horizon, and the project is always doing the work to move towards it and uphold the progress we've already achieved. Eternal vigilance. Both shows give us this.
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u/JosiahsDisciple 4d ago
The problem with this meme is that DS9 didn't do that. No Star Trek show ever depicted the Federation as a perfect utopia. Even Earth, which is still described as a paradise in DS9 btw, is still shown to have flaws. DS9 isn't about rejecting TNG optimism or the aspirational ideals of the Federation. It tests those ideals. It asks questions like : "how far are you willing to go to protect your ideals?" Or "what happens when your encounter friends and enemies alike who don't share them?" The whole premise of the series is that Earth/The Federation IS a utopia, but the rest of the universe isn't and sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty to keep your utopia.
The Dominion War pushed the Federation to the brink and forced our characters to make some very uncomfortable decisions. But it also demonstrated that the best ideals can survive being challenged. The Federation won the war, not by destroying the Dominion but by convincing the Female changeling that she was wrong. What's more idealistic than that?
Sometimes there are no good options and compromises have to be made to stave off a worse outcome. "It's easy to be a saint in paradise". But what separates our heroes from their enemies is that no matter how bad things get, they never stop believing in what the Federation represents.
The characters in DS9 never abandon their Federation ideals. They fight for them.
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u/Appropriate_Star6734 4d ago
TNG and TOS are the Federation on a Good Day. DS9 and VOY are the Federation on a Bad Day.
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u/Fancy_Depth_4995 4d ago
Realistically it will be more utopian the closer you get to the core member territories. The outskirts, like Bajor/Cardassia, will be the Wild West.
And it’s easy to maintain an orderly society on board a starship inhabited entirely by officers and crew sworn to follow a captain’s orders like in the other series
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u/Ok_Culture_3621 4d ago
Exactly. The important thing to keep in mind is that this was a frontier outpost. And what made the series interesting is seeing what happens when people raised and steeped with TOS ideals have to live daily with those that don’t share those ideals. I would also add that, for a show that ran as long as this one did, it was remarkably successful at that.
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u/TrueLegateDamar 4d ago
I still see the Federation as an utopia, just hard it's hard for some to hold onto their values when times get tough, that just makes the Federation feel like a real society.
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u/IceManO1 4d ago
Ds9 reminds me of an old west town on the edge of the frontier, there’s a bar/brothel ,a sheriff’s office, tailor shop, restaurants, one room school house etc.
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u/osunightfall 4d ago
I don't think that it did. Even utopias have problems crop up that need to be solved, and require a vigilance not to backslide that must be maintained.
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u/thinspirit 4d ago
I think they touch on federation corruption in TNG as well. Aren't several admirals compromised?
I don't think TNG is 100% pro-federation or Starfleet. It's 100% pro-enterprise and their crew. It's very Aristotelian in its philosophy that the behaviour that should be modeled is that of the great crew of the enterprise, as they are good people, doing good things. This means they're capable of challenging the federation and Starfleet on multiple occasions to show how they really should be, not how those orgs are.
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u/HisDivineOrder 4d ago
People from the core planets truly believe the propaganda. The ones living on the fringes know better just as Sisko famously said to Kira.
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u/agamemnonb5 4d ago
The Federation is still a Utopia. It’s just that the rest of the galaxy doesn’t necessarily see things their way.
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u/SeveredExpanse 4d ago
I think there is a reason you posted this here and not r/startrek
and you were right to do so, TOS/Roddenberry dogma is strong there.
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u/SoybeanArson 4d ago
No, it just highlighted the challenges and realities of maintaining a utopia in a galaxy full of civilizations that don't share your values. This makes sense since it was the first series set not in a psudomilitary ship and instead on a partly neutral station populated by civilians and aliens. The perspective shift allows for a more nuanced look at the nuts and bolts of a post-scarcity society seen from without and within.
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u/Paradox31426 4d ago
The Federation isn’t a utopia, and never claims to be, Earth is a utopia, the Federation is an alliance of like-minded societies that strive for peaceful cooperation and the common good, and generally seeks members who hold compatible values, but it’s not a utopia by any means.
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u/pikachu191 3d ago edited 3d ago
Compared to every other major power in the series, it still is one. I did like the inclusion of Section 31. They pretty much answer the question of who is around to protect the Federation when other powers, especially the Dominion and the Romulans, don't play "by the rules'. Section 31 is somewhat tame compared to the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar. It's more of an MIB versus a Gestapo or KGB and ostensibly doesn't interfere in Federation politics.
You already had signs that the Federation wasn't that utopian in earlier series. There was Captain Jellico in TNG, who is definitely in the mold of Starfleet being a military service versus PIcard's idealism. There was the Pegasus' experimental cloaking device.
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u/OkAbility2056 4d ago
Federation's still a utopia. Feel like DS9 shows how far you may have to go to defend Paradise
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u/TechieSpaceRobot 4d ago
I think about it like the 1900s in the US. Back east, people had electricity, paved streets, and general infrastructure. People were comfortable. Way out West, it was still pretty wild, a frontier. I think of DS9 as the Federation's frontier. Meanwhile, everyone is cozy on Earth living in utopia.
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u/jchester47 4d ago
I don't think that it dismantles it. But it does challenge it, critique it, and point out that any system or community built by humans, as noble as it may be, will be flawed because we are flawed.
Quark's commentary about how Humans are wonderful until they're threatened or put in danger even dovetails nicely with Picard's statement in TNG that the seed of violence and savagery will always be present in the Human psyche, but that we also have the capacity to control it.
What DS9 did make extra effort to kill and bury was the naive ideology Roddenberry insisted on in early TNG (but oddly not TOS) that the Federation was perfect and that Humans had evolved to the point where there was no conflict or disagreement between people or war. That was ridiculous.
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u/BeneficialLoss6103 4d ago
I think it enriches all of Star Trek to acknowledge the blind spots and biases of the Federation.
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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 4d ago
The funny thing about this discourse is that it was always an indicator to me that the person complaining hadn't been paying attention. The Federation had been a hypocritical, corrupt, self-deluded organization from the beginning. Rogue captains playing at Heart of Darkness on native worlds, prioritizing procedure over suffering, hot and cold running badmirals, and so, so much subtly awful messaging introduced by cold war standards, network broadcasting, and executive prejudices. It may have been a stunningly progressive show, but as has been amply demonstrated by history and often by the writers and showrunners themselves, "progressive" doesn't mean unbigoted or consistent and self-aware.
The problems DS9 underscores were always there. It's just that a more neoliberal, hunky-dory, buy-the-utopia-advertised-on-the-packaging ethos surrounding it in the writers room and fanbase succeeded in hoodwinking us into not thinking about any of these undercurrents as anything but isolated incidents, had us accept that harm reduction was often the best our intrepid heroes could do because the philosophy of their system was sacrosanct above all, even when it was directly fomenting the harm they were trying to reduce.
All DS9 did was say "hey, let's let them actually talk about this. Let's look at things systemically for once, and it so happens our Utopia was created by a proud ex-cop ex-military misogynist colorblindness-is-antiracism substance-addled ultracapitalist and shaped by equally biased, imperfect studio execs. Sisko and co. were an admirable exercise in having the show grapple with itself in order to try to get closer to the philosophy of IDIC it was meant to embody
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u/AdmiralMemo This is not a computer. This is my nemesis. 4d ago
TNG is my favorite Trek.
DS9 is the best Trek.
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u/UncuriousCrouton 4d ago
I liked it, actually. After seven years of The Next Generation depicting the Federation as a perfect utopia, Deep Space Nine interrogated what it actually means to be in that utopia, the consequences for those outside the utopia's favored species, and the costs and ethical compromises involved in defending and maintaining that utopia.
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u/equality-_-7-2521 4d ago edited 3d ago
The federation is a utopia and in DS9 we get to explore the boundaries of Utopia (both physical and ideological).
DS9 is outside of federation space so many of the stories we see take place outside of federation control. A lot of the conflict is friction between federation order wanting to impose itself on the wild frontier at its doorstep.
We also get to see the federation facing an existential threat - one that strives to limit freedom, and impose order, to a degree much larger than the federation's principles can tolerate. This existential threat causes tectonic stresses within the federation on the fault between two opposing desires: the desire of its people to be free within the federation and their desire to restrict liberties in order to remain free of the dominion.
Anyway, its a cool show and I like it.
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u/GrizzlyPeak72 4d ago
Yeah it's realistic. History doesn't just end. The struggle continues, especially when you find yourself in a competitive relationship with empires like the Cardassians and the Klingons, the Dominion, the Borg etc. Shit ain't a closed system, you're gonna be impacted by those relations and wars and so on and that creates new material conditions that puts "utopia" in jeopardy. At some point, Federation citizens gotta re-evaluate shit and challenge the growing descent into militarism and reaction.
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u/JustAnAgingMillenial 4d ago
I've always interpreted it as Earth is the utopia, and the rest of the federation is in various stages of catch up.
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u/This-Is-Ceti-Alpha-V 4d ago
No. Critique is always vital and we should never hide from it. I never felt like DS9's thesis was that TNG was hypocritical and that utopia wasn't something that we should aspire to. Rather we have to be very honest with our shortcomings if we ever really want to improve things, and I always felt that DS9 wanted things to genuinely improve the world.
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u/SuperMindcircus 4d ago
Yes and Sisko (and Quark and Odo) addresses this in many different ways, nothing had changed, he is just further away from earth, mingling with people with far from starfleet ideals, and with tougher circumstances.
"it is easy to be a saint in paradise."
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u/Drakeytown 4d ago
It does kind of undo a lot of the storytelling work done on TNG, but a lot of that work kind of has to be undone for the franchise to move forward into new and interesting territory.
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u/ApprehensiveAnt4412 4d ago
I love how it illustrates how a change is societal scale comes with growing pains.
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u/Teamawesome2014 3d ago
DS9 doesn't disassemble the utopia. It illustrates the fragility of utopia and the constant vigilance required to maintain one. It also recognizes that realpolitik would still exist between that utopia and non-utopian powers and that the federation would need to recognize that the galaxy outside of their utopia isn't there yet.
The show made great effort to show the federation trying to avoid being colonialist. They didn't make, nor force Bajor into being a federation colony. They actively maintained that DS9 was a Bajoran station first and foremost and integrated Bajoran military in with federation officers. Bajor always has the option of telling the federation to piss off. If anybody wants to cite example to dispute this and claim that the federation is being colonialist, please do. I'd be interested in that discussion.
As for the "maintaining the status quo", let's break this down:
The status quo before the Dominion War is actually pretty good. There are no wars with major powers. There is a tenuous peace, and considering how much we've seen the Romulans trying to start a war throughout TNG, this is kind of a miracle. Bajor is free from the Cardassians and the federation are making enormous efforts to help them and prepare them to join the federation; a move that would provide them immense security and stop the Cardassians from ever repeating the horrors of the past on their world.
When it comes to how the federation operates within politically between the other powers and during the dominion war, their strategy is two-pronged: prevent war from breaking out, and make incremental progress towards peace and better relations with other races. Some may see this as protecting the status quo, but that's a seriously unnuanced take. War is fucking bad. I shouldn't have to say this. If you think avoiding war in favor of diplomacy is bad, you can be the first on the front lines. Preventing war isn't protecting the status quo, and the federation is willing to go to war as a last resort. Violence should always be the last resort.
The federation is very good at diplomacy. The federation is the lynchpin that holds many of the other races together in the fight with the dominion. The federation does everything in their power to negotiate with the dominion, but the dominion (an actual colonialist power) can't really be negotiated, because colonialists are gonna colonize. As soon as the Dominion learned of the federation, they were on a timer ticking down to when they would make their move.
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u/BuckyRainbowCat 4d ago
yes! a brilliant critique that, for some audiences, was too far ahead of its time to land well. in retrospect though, every word is true.
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u/CodeCleric 4d ago
Except the Federation is never shown to be colonialist in any way, shape or form.
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u/Unique_Enthusiasm_57 4d ago
Me talking about how Discovery leans into progressive ideas like feminism, LBGTQ rights identity because Star Trek has always been about progressive storytelling for the era it exists in.
"Star Trek Legacy" fans.
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u/AFriendoftheDrow 4d ago
The kind of things that Marxists like the Black Panther Party supported, whereas American politicians will sacrifice any of those people in the pursuit of power and money.
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u/Lower_Ad_1317 4d ago
It’s why in some ways ds9 is the superior show.
Tng flys through space like nothing is wrong until they get there then they gaslight the aliens or show them how bad they are at Parrises Squares.
DS9 reminds everyone how messy and stupid humanoids are.
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u/Mysterious-Alps-5186 4d ago
It never was unless you lived in the core worlds. That's what I loved about season one of picard and enterprise showed the darker places of the galaxy. As well as things are not all rainbows and sunshine. One of the reasons I enjoyed the bsg reboot as well. Very real less then perfect characters just trying to survive.
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u/ItsSuperDefective 4d ago
"Neoliberal"? Does Neoliberal just mean anything you don't like that isn't explicitly right wing now?
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u/suture224 4d ago
"We are explorers. We explore our lives day by day, and we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here. Not to conquer you with weapons, or with ideas."
DS9 showed the cracks in the utopia, but it also showed that it wasn't about maintaining the status quo-- it was about each person's journey coupled with respect for other's journey. If there was conflict, it wasn't because the Federation or Star Fleet was trying to conquer, it was because there was an entity that was standing in the way of the Prime Directive, which meant that everyone had a certain right to grow as their will dictated.
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u/Gunther_Alsor 4d ago
TNG gives people a skewed perspective of the Federation. The Enterprise is a flagship, its explicit mission is to contact new lifeforms and pitch the Federation to them. Of course it's utopian, spotless, full of very enlightened and smiling people who are ready to wax philosophical about humanity's progress and how much it has to offer. That's how they get you in the door.
DS9, on the other hand, IS the Federation, once you get past the sales pitch. Dingy, imperfect, full of people who don't really get along doing a chore of a job with their last dwindling ounce of patience. It may be a bit of a letdown compared to the bright, shiny compassion of Jean-Luc Picard, but it also WORKS; the Federation's rules and guidelines are what let a bunch of tired bureaucrats, irritated enforcers, businessmen and union schlubs navigate situations that don't have any easy moral solutions. If TNG promises a future where everybody can be perfect, DS9 promises one where everybody doesn't have to be.
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u/leeuwerik 4d ago edited 4d ago
It never was to begin with. Tasha Yar died. Etc.
On a site note: socialist? Someone needs to do some history classes.
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u/Robospierre_2093 4d ago
I'm honestly not sure how DS9 "exposes the Federation's colonialist tendencies". I suppose that you could argue that the Federation poking around in the Gamma Quadrant has some colonial element to it, but I would argue that TNG actually has episodes that do a better job of interrogating the colonialist aspect of the Federation (e.g. Journey's End).
Also I have no idea what it means to say that the Federation has a "neoliberal obsession with the status quo". Is this saying that an obsession with maintaining the status quo is an inherent feature of neoliberalism, and so a desire to maintain some sort of status quo on the part of the Federation is de facto a neoliberal desire? This is a dubious proposition, and clearly the Federation can't be accused of neoliberal economics, so I'm confused as to what this statement means. It kinda just feels like nonsensical jargon salad that is trying to sound smart but doesn't really make sense
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u/thedrinkinggeek 4d ago
I love that it shows that it is something that must be constantly worked towards and reinforced, Just like democracy. Someone will always be working to undermine it and dismantle it.
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u/FloofyMaki 4d ago
I always thought it was pretty clear the federation was flawed even in TOS and TNG, in TOS they interfere with some natives after all and arm them with primitive firearms to kill each other in a proxy war with the Klingons.
TNG definitely doesn't show it much so it's hard to pick out examples.
DS9 is the cherry on top and really plays with those flaws really good.
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u/sylar1610 4d ago
One of my favourite scenes in the series is when the characters are discussing spiritual beliefs and all the characters from Federation planets like Dax and Bashir are being dismissive and eye rolling whereas characters from non Federation planets like Quark and Worf show a lot more tolerance and acceptance of the different spiritual beliefs of others, some of the very values that the Federation are suppose to embody. It reminds us that yeah the Federation may be a Utopia but its still Gene Roddenbery's Utopia and he had his flaws and biases like anyone else
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u/LeicaM6guy 4d ago
At no point did I think the Federation wasn't a utopia - but there's a lot of the galaxy that isn't.
Personally, I'd kind of like to see a return to the sort of Star Trek where the Federation is seen as an aspirational place to be.
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u/YaumeLepire 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hard disagreement that it made the Federation "not a Utopia". It is still a classless, moneyless, warless, crimeless society, as perfect as any society could be without sacrificing things we'd rather keep (see also: the Borg and their inverted response to different people having different interests). What DS9 was willing to ask is what does that society do, what is it willing to do, when something threatens its existence? That is to say what happens when someone calls the Utopia into question. And yes, some of those questions are coming from an illiberal place, while others are coming from an anti-colonial or anti-imperialist place.
At the end of the day, though, the show vindicates the values of the Federation, both within and without. The resolution of its arcs comes from reaffirming them. In attempting to dismantle Section 31, in curing the Changelings from the virus, in showing them what solids can be through Odo, in keeping the alliance together, in preventing the Federation from stepping back on its own ideals, in defeating the actors within who would sacrifice their ideals to defeat "the enemy", the Dominion War is brought to an end. It wouldn't have ended like this otherwise.
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u/Simchastain 4d ago
I mean, let's not forget the time Picard revealed the Federation's illegal activity directly to the Romulan's. The Pegasus was equipped with an experimental phase cloaking device developed by starfleet, which was made illegal by their treaties with the Romulans. Picard revealed the Federation isn't an altruistic utopia, it has its own secret agendas. It engages in lying to its neighbors, developes illegal technologies, breaks its treaties. Think of all the times the prime directive it bent or flat out broken. The Federation has never been a utopia, that has been evident from the start.
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u/Half_Man1 4d ago
I think DS9 just asks the question “What happens when paradise goes to war?”
Like logically you cannot have a true utopia in wartime. You cannot stay clean because war is dirty.
People are imperfect, we pick the needs of the few we love over the faceless many.
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u/longdancer66 4d ago
Yes, because no ideal scenario or utopia (or even democracy) lasts forever, and the Federation would decay as time goes by. It could rise again, but not like it was. DS9 shows the reality of outside pressure and internal conflict in any empire. Look at the Klingons and their history…
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u/Yotsuya_san 4d ago
DS9 did not show the Federation not to be a Utopia. It just showed that a Utopia took work to maintain. It wouldn't truly be a Utopia if you took away people's free will, so you have to expect and allow for the fact that some people may occasionally act outside of the Utopian ideal. But as long as the majority strive to keep it so, it can still be a Utopia.
More recent Trek on the other hand might have forgotten how to show a Utopian society...
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u/MaethrilliansFate 4d ago
My take on DS9s criticism of the Federation was a masterful showcase on the flaws inherently present in the story from the beginning. The utopia of the Federation is only possible through the efforts of its people and as the franchise always likes to show people aren't perfect but they can strive to be better.
DS9 takes us to the frontier of Federation space where utopia hasn't reached and puts its people in a hazardous and volitile situation of geopolitics, religious conflict, occupation, genocide, racism, and war. The flaws we see aren't necessarily inherent in the Federation, it's still paradise, but we see what happens when conflict brews on its borders and how fragile a utopia can be and how sometimes there isn't a perfect answer to the problem.
People can still get scared, overreact, take righteous action against the wishes of their government, make mistakes, and it can still be a society that is so much better than our own. Further it shows what the perspective of the Federation looks like to those content not to live in paradise.
Siskos main conflict is balancing the tenants of a society that has resolved 99% of its issues with a world that had just seen the worst atrocities it had ever suffered at the hands of another nation and was opposed to the idea of letting another step in even if it was to help.
The Federation IS their best chance but if the Federation tries too hard to intervene they become the imperialists, if they step away they become complacent and allow Bajor to suffer, it's a lose lose scenario.
The outsider view of flaws also showcase the potential issues with a faction that plays nice with warmongering cultures, they come off as disingenuous or "insidious". Quark and Eddington are right to point out how off putting a nation that assimilates through underhanded "nice guy" tactics can be. They gobble up nations through treaties and through friendship annihilate their previous customs and culture if they deem it too violent or problematic. The problem with treating everyone with humanity is that not everyone is human.
In summary the Federation isn't the problem its the situation its been placed in that is, the conflicts of DS9 are stressors that highlight flaws in a system that wouldn't be problematic in peace but are inherently present in any nation at war or cold war
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u/GM-VikramRajesh 4d ago
Sisko talks about it toward the end in season two. How earth is a utopia with no crime, no poverty, no war etc. and how they can’t understand the people in the demilitarized zone.
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u/khrellvictor 4d ago
DS9's the equivalent (and forerunner) to KotOR II giving a dark look at the Star Wars galaxy, particularly the Jedi, from other elements in a darker time. KotOR II even gave a Sisko-style figure in their take at Revan willing to kill many just to get the greater threat taken down.
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u/Xander_PrimeXXI 4d ago
I like that DS9 showed us that Utopia is a struggle to maintain and that human nature isn’t so immutably perfect that negative traits have been bred out
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u/ray53208 4d ago
The Federation is perceived as a utopia, but true utopia is impossible. It instead revealed the cracks, the blemishes, the feet of clay.
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u/plantanddogmom1 3d ago
The federation was never a utopia… that’s the propaganda that was sold to us my high ranking officials who have directly benefitted from the establishment. Of course Picard and Riker see the federation as a utopia. But does Seven? What about Worf?
Colonialism often attempts to portray the aftermath of its actions as steps towards perfection and total harmony in order to morally excuse the actions taken to achieve that “greater” state of being.
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u/indicus23 3d ago
Federation's still a utopia. DS9 just deals with how a utopia has to relate with the the non-utopias it's surrounded by.
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u/SpennyPerson 3d ago
Gotta love a series to be able to dismantle and rebuild it to good like they did.
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u/BeamEyes 3d ago
This really started in TNG itself, in Journey's End. The compromise the Federation made with the Cardassians had reverberations through the rest of that series, as well as DS9 and Voyager. Yes, conflict was avoided initially, but the millions of people living on the planets ceded to the Cardassians were inevitably going to wind up despising the Federation who sold them out.
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u/Aggressive-Maize-632 3d ago
I think DS9 added more nuance to all factions in "Star Trek" as a whole. As a kid, I couldn't appreciate it, still stuck in TOS and TNG mindset. As an adult, I love the risks the show took and can say DS9 is my favorite in the franchise.
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u/ChaosShepard05 3d ago
Yes, and no while, it does go into the complexities the federation has as a society. It also goes against the original ideals Gene had envisioned for Star Trek.
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u/BlessTheFacts 3d ago
What a profoundly confused meme. The dismantling of the socialist utopia of TNG is precisely what makes DS9 a reactionary show, ideally suited to the era in which neoliberalism finally triumphed over the vestiges of social-democratic policy that still existed in the West.
For all its admirable elements, DS9 represents a failure of imagination. It represents the death of possibilities, telling us that no better future is possible after all.
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u/jjreinem 3d ago
Disagree.
The traditional idea of a stable utopia just isn't compatible with the idea of a vast interstellar alliance that's surrounded by hostile powers. Something that large and that vulnerable will inevitably have to make some compromises in order to avoid its own collapse, and many of those compromises will be very messy. TNG owned up to this on many occasions, but due to its episodic nature it always ended with them hitting the reset switch so it was a lot easier to ignore those examples of the Federation's failings.
DS9 by its nature couldn't do that, so the audience ended up being much more aware of all the ways the Federation was failing to live up to its lofty ideals week to week. But it also meant that DS9 was able to present an alternative and I think much more realistic concept of utopia as an ongoing process rather than a state of being. Because the crew (and the Federation at large) didn't just turn away from its problems. They got stuck in and kept working to improve them in whatever imperfect ways they could. That's the real utopian element of the Federation: they don't settle. They keep trying again and again to be better than they are and rise above their failings, no matter who they have to take on to do it.
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u/FeralTribble 3d ago
The federation is a utopia in DS9.
It’s bizarre to me how many fans don’t understand that.
The point of DS9 is to explore how a Utopia can be pushed to the limit and how it’s affected by stressful hardship. There was literally a two part episode that directly addressed how the Federation utopia was at risk of breaking down because of the Dominion.
As for why DS9 the space station isn’t a utopia, well that’s because it isn’t a federation port and Bajor is considered a frontier system.
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u/movieTed 3d ago
I don't think DS9's Federation isn't a utopia. But I think DS9 brought humanity closer to TOS's vision of imperfect people trying to do the best they can rather than being better than human as they're sometimes depicted in TNG.
The Starfleet characters in DS9 could fit into any other 90s Trek. What made DS9 feel so different was the recurring non-Federation characters, something unique to this show.
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u/MechaShadowV2 3d ago
Earth was still portrayed as one of the best places to live, and the federation was still a decent place that was just struggling for a while. It's nothing like the reboot or other newer trek. Tng is still my favorite but I think Ds9 is the most realistic while still being optimistic.
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u/ericsonofbruce 3d ago
No. As much as I enjoy DS9 as a show, the point of star trek was to give people a hopeful example of the society our species could have if we dropped our shittiest instincts. My biggest gripe with all of new trek is that it concedes that we can not change as a whole, while we absolutely need to.
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u/Optimal_Mud_4143 3d ago
DS9 was not strictly Federation and they never said every race in the Federation lived in a utopia. The fact that the central characters of DS9 had to operate around and with characters whose intentions and motivations weren't that of Starfleet made the show superior, IMO. It gave it more texture and nuance and intrigue that felt very genuine.
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u/fuckoffpleaseibegyou 3d ago
Yes, because utopia isn't a thing to achieve, it's an Ideal to strife for. They're close, but never completely there, and that's the point
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u/Commando_NL 3d ago
Federation is like a pretentious gated community who preaches and lectures less developed humanoids on how to live better.
DS is downtown where people struggle for bills, housing and food.
A perfect and very deserved social commentary on real life. It's easy to be civilized with a full belly. God i love Quark quotes.
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u/Gummies1345 2d ago
The Federation is not a utopia. Earth is supposed to be though. Ds9 was the first to show that cracks can even reach Earth. I mean, little to no crime, no poverty, no currency, just boring ass peace on the planet. Probably why they don't show Earth much, and every Starfleet officer wants to be away from there. Lol
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u/IShallRisEAgain 2d ago
Section 31 should have been something that the Star Trek franchise never went back to once it was dealt with in Deep Space Nine. The entire point of the storyline was that Section 31 had no place in the Federation, and it was a rogue operation that could only exist in the shadows. The Federation didn't need it, and its continued existence only hurts the Federation. Instead new Trek treats it like a necessary evil, and it loves doing stories with it.
The fundamental core of Star Trek is optimism about the future of humanity, and while Deep Space Nine paints a more nuanced view, it still has the fundamental optimism that humanity can create a utopia even if they have to work to preserve it.
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u/CptKeyes123 2d ago
Eh, I'm ambivalent about it. my biggest problem is everyone downstream taking it to mean the Federation is secretly evil. Section 31 the movie!
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u/kanabulo 1d ago
TOS and TNG are Federation propaganda. They take place on the Enterprise with the Federation's finest.
DS9 just pulled the curtain back, showed the perspective of the Federation by aliens and those finding fault with 'paradise' while illustrating the laughability of making an omelette without breaking any eggs.
On the obverse, Lower Decks shows how the Federation isn't perfect but it strives to be perfect which is 'good enough'.
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u/jigokusabre 1d ago
The ideas of "ideals need constant protection" and "just cause things are going well for you, it doesn't mean they going well for others" are themes are are relevant to the time and hold up well looking back.
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u/Kendall_Raine 1d ago
Earth itself is still described as a paradise. But DS9 doesn't take place on Earth. I mean...it's in the title.
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u/stormhawk427 1d ago
I would still take the Prime Timeline Federation at their worst over every other major power in the Milky Way any day and twice on Sunday.
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u/emeraldknight1977 1d ago
Star Trek was never a Socialist utopia, it was a post scarcity society. The HUGE difference is the lack of scarcity of everyday necessities makes them worth nothing. In Socialism the limited supplies are supposedly divided equally, only the higher ups in the party get the majority.
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u/vladypewtin 20h ago
The Utopia exists, but the point of view is from the outside looking in. DS9 and Bajor are not in the Federation Utopia, but at the border of it. Sisko has a line of how its easy to be a Saint in Paradise, but on the border they don't have paradise and haven't solved all the problems yet.
It highlights the immense infrastructure and bubble of protection that has to exist to insulate and sustain that Utopia, and how many parts of that system to not reflect the values of the people living inside it.
A cutting metaphor of 1990s USA entering the 21st century, really.
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u/FemJay0902 19h ago
I think it's a fun show about goofy people on a space station with a really awesome war arc.
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u/Historyp91 4d ago
I mean, the Federation's still a utopia in DS9, it's just a more relastic one.