The Neitherblog

Went to this lovely event today (“Beyond Uhura: A Conversation on Star Trek, Afrofuturism & Representation”), with special guests Ronnie Rowe, Jr. (Lt. R.A. Bryce, Discovery) and Dorothy A. Atabong (L’Vanna, Starfleet Academy).

that's her daddy!! that's his baby!!

feeling very called out right now.

just that very queer feeling of living your whole life trying to match the expectations of people who fundamentally don't care about who you are as a person. stifling your personality, always following behind that one person who made you feel safe, but that you still can never show all of yourself to.

In the most recent episode especially, but really with all of Starfleet Academy and a decent chunk of New Trek, there's this theme going on of asking the question, is the Federation actually good?

And the thing is, I think this is actually an important question that all of Trek in some way interacts with, even if it just waves the flag like the original series or Lower Decks. And I think there are some Star Trek fans who, in a world where ambiguity is being beaten out of everything all the time, aren't reacting very well to it.

And I think because SFA is directly engaging with that question and trying to be as deep and honest about it as possible, some people are deciding the questioning means the writers have given up on the answer being yes.

But I think if you watch with an open heart and an open mind you'll see something much more interesting, and I think probably necessary about now: a set of values that isn't afraid to put the strongest cases against it in the mouths of characters we see on screen.

See, the thing about Nus Braka is, he's an asshole.

But he is a SMART asshole, and one that knows the Federation is rebuilding itself, brick by brick, planet by planet. And the thing about the Federation, which as we know runs on the Root Beer Doctrine, is it has a way of stealing the oxygen from the room of exactly assholes like Nus Braka.

I think it's very easy to fall for his shtick, because it sounds kind of like what we say about the US sometimes, and because the Federation can kind of seem like the US sometimes, but the Federation is NOT the US.

It's sooooo much weirder than that. The Federation is a conglomerate of species who have signed on, with more sincerity than any Earth nation ever has, to something quite like the "rules based international order" that we on Earth have occasionally paid lip service to, but never really been that sincere about. And on top of that, layers of doctrine that are worth fighting for: respect for civil discourse, post-scarcity economic values (it's the galaxy outside the Federation that uses latinum), and the Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations creed.

But again, Nus Braka is an asshole.

The fact that he's a smart enough asshole to twist the story around and convincingly make the Federation sound like an empire does not make him right. And the biggest reason that I'm sure the show knows all this and is doing it on purpose is Caleb Mir.

The thing about Caleb is that he is sort of the one person who just happened to be at the spot of the exact place the rocks were falling as Federation rules-based thinking was splintering against harsh realities that wouldn't go away, and he saw it all with a terrible clarity that only a child can.

And he does not trust Federation ideals.

But he's surrounded by people who do. And through them we are hearing the real story of the Federation: that it isn't really a collection of species: it's a unique thing itself, that's shared between them. The reason the Federation is rebuilding itself is because its member states believe in the good their merger can do. They believe they can make the galaxy a safer place again. They believe they can solve the dilithium shortages that plague the post-burn alpha quadrant.

And they believe in the power of stories to fuse them back together.

Caleb's job in the story is to not buy it... yet. Unless I have wildly misjudged everything about the writing design of this series, that's why he's here and what's going to happen is that the show is going to teach him, and through him, hopefully, US, to believe in what he does.

And in times like ours, this is exactly what I think Star Trek should be doing: finding a convincing way to tell us that it's still worth it to build on a dream of a better tomorrow, even when it feels like building a sandcastle on a beach filled with children who think knocking them over is peak comedy.

Two captains🫶

It's also, I suspect, one of the sources of criticism because Star Trek has historically indulged our sense of multiculturalist triumphalism, telling us that once we really get rid of these bad systems we're going to do so, so well forever, and in order for Academy to have any story at all, that can't have happened.

So the Burn happened.

And the Federation collapsed. And a generation of galactic citizenry grew up in a world where hope was in short supply, and not just because dilithium was too. Cultures regressed. Disasters went unanswered. People suffered. People lost their way.

Star Trek: Academy is about rolling up your sleeves and putting it all back together, and you know the real reason I think this is awesome?

Because people are starting to read the lore as if we weren't going to make it without the Vulcans.

Like any time I see someone talk about the human first contact lore of the Star Trek timeline, they almost feel obligated to point out that it doesn't look likely that we're going to get this hand up from the space elves, that our future looks more like Zefram Cochrane's present than the future he helped create.

So, potentially controversial opinion here, but about the best thing Star Trek could do right now is give us all a good kick in the ass, in the sense that Academy is set in a time a lot like ours, actually. One where if you're a certain age you remember when it felt like we were ALMOST THERE in terms of world peace and everything but it fell to pieces, and if you're a young person, you look at people with those memories and think "clearly you have nothing to teach me, you're from the good world".

And if you're older, Starfleet Academy grabs you by the shoulders and says "look you sad tired hippie, I know the last decade has made you mostly give up, but there's a new generation growing up and asking 'what could I do with my one precious life' out there and if you're not telling them what we care about, why we care about it, and how to rebuild it, then nobody else will!"

And if you're younger, Starfleet Academy (successfully, I hope, I'm in the first category so it's not mine to call it) sits down and almost whispers, "look, I know the older generations are in many ways responsible for all the crap you have to put up with... but not all of them were doing that on purpose. Most of them were trying their damndest NOT to let happen, and it did anyway. But the thing is, they DO remember how a lot of things work you've never even see happen, and if you can learn about them, you can do better than they did. And I'm not kidding about doing better. Not 'as good', better."