Bitchy History - Lecture 2： The End of History and Humanity’s Evolution

00:00:00.800 All right, so we're going to be starting off today on the second lecture in my series.

00:00:06.420 This is the lecture on, obviously, the next generation.

00:00:10.160 So we're going to be talking a lot about how this show dealt with the end of the Cold War.

00:00:15.820 We're also going to talk a little bit about some of the episodes, the specific episodes that they had,

00:00:21.440 which covered specific issues that were going on in society at the time in the late 80s and early 90s.

00:00:28.120 uh so for those of you who are here who are new I see a couple of new names in the list uh my name

00:00:34.500 is Meredith and I have a degree in a master's degree in global and colonial history and I

00:00:40.680 somehow got to write my entire master's thesis on the topic of Star Trek so uh I guess I'm kind of

00:00:47.360 qualified to talk about this regardless of what that last hate comment on YouTube had to say about

00:00:51.980 it, uh, which go look at it. It's hilarious. They chose to argue about the one thing that is

00:00:58.760 literally unarguable about from the original series. Anyway, uh, it was really funny. And

00:01:04.520 they were like, you shouldn't have a master's degree. It should be taken away from you because

00:01:07.820 you got this wrong. Spoiler. I didn't get it wrong. It was the one thing that like everyone

00:01:13.700 agrees on. So, all right, let's get started. All right, so sometime in the 80s, right, we're in

00:01:21.880 the process of making all of the original series films. We're getting into all of those, and

00:01:27.400 Paramount starts asking Roddenberry to make a sequel to the series. He's less than enthusiastic

00:01:32.720 about it. He's not in the best of health at the time, and he's produced, and producing a show

00:01:38.280 takes a lot of energy, especially in the very hands-on way that Roddenberry tended to do so.

00:01:44.780 He was an extremely hands-on producer. He was very nitpicky about the details. One of my favorite

00:01:51.160 stories about this is that one of my favorite episodes of the original series, The Trouble

00:01:56.240 with Tribbles, he hated that episode. He came on set and was really angry about them having fun

00:02:01.860 while making an episode. So Roddenberry, not my favorite person. But even though he's not

00:02:08.280 really enthusiastic about it. Eventually he does give in and he decides to go ahead and start

00:02:13.600 producing a new series. And they start producing this in 1986, 1987. It debuts in September of

00:02:21.940 1987. Not every fan was actually super enthused about this. Obviously the Star Trek fandom was a

00:02:29.000 very strong fandom at the time. They'd managed to keep the show from being canceled during its

00:02:35.220 original run but a lot of them were not super excited about the idea of a new Star Trek my mom

00:02:43.060 was one of those in fact she was in optometry school when the show when the second series came

00:02:47.520 out and the night before the episode she says that you know all the other students were talking

00:02:51.820 about it saying they didn't think they were going to like it they can't make a good Star Trek again

00:02:55.320 it's just it's not going to happen right and then the next day after the episode aired everyone was

00:03:00.940 like, oh my god, did you see that? It was so good. I love Q, I love Picard, I love Crusher, I love

00:03:07.760 Riker, whatever the character was that they liked the best. They were very excited about it.

00:03:13.680 Now here's a really interesting thing about making this, writing this thesis that I wrote,

00:03:19.720 was that when I started on the thesis topic, I knew that I was in very safe territory with the

00:03:25.700 original series. There had been a lot of stuff written about the, you know, the academic rigor

00:03:32.360 of the first series that was from the perspective of film studies, literature studies, even history,

00:03:39.140 that this was a very accepted idea that the original series had academic relevance.

00:03:44.880 That wasn't always necessarily the case for the next generation. In fact, when you kind of look

00:03:51.940 at the existing, um, the existing academic literature for the TNG, um, it, it kind of

00:04:00.500 looks like this. They're just, there isn't much going on. It's just a gigantic tumbleweed. Uh,

00:04:07.960 there's just not many people have written a lot about it, which is kind of odd because, you know,

00:04:14.160 it, it's part of a series that everybody agrees has historical relevancy and people just didn't

00:04:20.860 do anything with it. I got a little bit worried while I started to delve into my research on the

00:04:26.700 series simply because I did not know you know what was going to happen. I knew that DS9 had

00:04:33.660 a lot of cultural relevancy that it really delved into the history of the period that it was written

00:04:39.480 in. But if TNG didn't it kind of felt like I couldn't justify my thesis at all as a whole

00:04:46.820 or I'd need to rework my thesis proposal a bit. And so very interestingly, I was having a bunch

00:04:52.920 of meetings with my advisor that summer, and we were kind of picking apart some of the major plot

00:04:57.720 points of the show. And while we were doing that, I was trying to kind of put my ideas about the

00:05:04.840 show into words. And I said something like, well, I guess the show is a lot less shooty than the

00:05:10.380 original series. It's a technical term, shooty, which I guess could be a commentary on the kind

00:05:17.180 of boredom that people thought might come from the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the

00:05:21.820 Cold War. And immediately we kind of just looked at each other and we both go, oh my god, it's the

00:05:29.840 end of history, right? So we talked about that a little bit in our last lecture that the end of

00:05:35.420 history was this book written by Francis Fukuyama about what the world would look like after the

00:05:41.640 end of the Cold War. And we'll get into that in just a second. So when Gene Roddenberry decides

00:05:49.440 to make this series, he has kind of a new, and like I say, it's a new vision entirely. He's still

00:05:56.280 going with the same concepts that he was working on in the original series, which is that it's

00:06:01.620 about a message, not about the plot necessarily. But it is a kind of new version of humanity. It's

00:06:09.700 taking place about 100 years after the original series, right? And Gene Roddenberry's view of the

00:06:17.140 future is that there is a humanity that was a better humanity available for people at this

00:06:23.500 time. Herman Zimmerman, one of the production designers for DS9, said that Roddenberry's

00:06:28.660 concept of the future for for the next generation was the Hyatt Regency approach which I really love

00:06:34.960 it was kind of bland it was very optimistic it was very bright it was like booking a hotel room

00:06:40.880 at the Hyatt Regency in any town it all looks the same uh all of this quote from Jonathan Frakes as

00:06:46.820 well Jean believed that in the 24th century there would be no hunger there'll be no greed all of the

00:06:51.700 children will know how to read Jean believed that in his core if not if not only was it not only

00:06:57.800 was expressed in his writing, it was expressed in how he described the show he wanted to make.

00:07:02.240 So The Next Generation is set in a world that is even more further settled into a very liberal

00:07:08.600 utopia. There's this captain who is much more enlightened than Kirk in some ways. He's much

00:07:15.660 more likely to engage in a debate than throw a punch, something that Patrick Stewart wasn't

00:07:20.220 necessarily happy about. He always kind of wanted some more action hero-y roles in the show, and he

00:07:25.920 did get that later in the films. The fact that the world and the next generation was already

00:07:31.840 settled into a liberal utopian society doesn't mean that the show was any less critical of

00:07:38.580 American society. It was still commenting on American society at the time, but the general

00:07:44.800 themes are going to be more about political philosophy, post-Cold War political philosophy

00:07:50.660 specifically. It's really the central theme that's going to connect the whole series together.

00:07:55.920 So now, again, let's talk about the end of history, because this is really what tied

00:08:02.480 this chapter of my thesis together. Francis Fukuyama writes this essay in 1989, so it is

00:08:09.600 written a couple of years after the TNG starts, I will admit. It doesn't line up completely.

00:08:18.220 But I never posited that people were reading the end of history and specifically using

00:08:22.360 it for uh for inspiration. So Fukuyama posits in the essay that we are reaching the end of history

00:08:30.600 and he believes that civilization is reaching the end point of mankind's ideological evolution

00:08:36.440 and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

00:08:42.920 Um he was very very optimistic about this obviously. Basically though when you hold

00:08:49.960 Star Trek up to a mirror, the version of the late 80s and 90s that it reflects is almost point for

00:08:56.360 point the future that Fukuyama is writing about in this essay. Let's talk a little bit about some

00:09:05.960 of the points that Fukuyama believed in and talk about how they represented those in the series.

00:09:12.840 So Fukuyama believed that the class issue had been ended in the West. Not, not true. But obviously

00:09:21.720 he had a very optimistic view of this. And we can see this reflected in episodes like

00:09:27.140 The Neutral Zone from season one of the show.

00:09:36.960 Then what will happen to us? There's no trace of my money. My office is gone.

00:09:42.840 What will I do? How will I live?

00:09:47.560 This is the 24th century. Material needs no longer exist.

00:09:54.280 Then what's the challenge?

00:09:58.560 The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself.

00:10:03.540 To enrich yourself. Enjoy it.

00:10:07.020 so of course in this particular episode they have some people who have who are uh brought

00:10:15.300 out of cryostasis that had been frozen since you know uh very optimistically the 20th century or so

00:10:22.240 and uh but they are worried about the fact that they can't access their money they can't access

00:10:27.300 all of this stuff but they that's not an that's not an issue in the 24th century uh so they are

00:10:34.040 not worried about class. The class issue is ended, just like Fukuyama predicted.

00:10:41.360 Now, in The End of History, Francis Fukuyama also goes in to talk about how many of the wars and

00:10:46.920 revolutions fought since that time have been undertaken in the name of ideologies, which

00:10:51.300 claim to be more advanced than liberalism, but whose pretensions were ultimately unmasked by

00:10:56.380 history. And in The Next Generation, what we see is there is almost no problem in this world that

00:11:02.900 can't be solved by a good speech and appealing to the liberalism that Fukuyama assumes is this new

00:11:09.220 universal homogenous state of society is how he phrases it in the essay. So he really believes

00:11:15.760 that everyone is going to come to the conclusion that liberal democracy is the correct form of

00:11:21.580 government, that it's just it's going to unmask all these other forms of government as being awful

00:11:26.600 and everything will just be great. There won't be all of these these conflicts that we had

00:11:32.220 prior to this ideological war that we had going on during the Cold War. Now, there is a little

00:11:39.500 bit of conflict in the TNG, obviously. It appears it's there, but most of it does kind of go along

00:11:47.460 with this theme of, well, eventually we will understand that there is a better way than having

00:11:54.020 wars. We can do things more diplomatically. So, there's three main focuses in this, right? So,

00:12:00.660 TOS had the fights with the Klingons. That was its main area. Of course, by the time we get to TNG, 1.00

00:12:08.860 the Kitama Accords have been in place for quite some time. We are at peace. We're going to see

00:12:14.460 that, you know, liberalism is becoming a little bit more of the guiding purpose of the Klingon

00:12:21.480 Empire, which is interesting. At least when it comes to Gowron, maybe a little bit. I'll show

00:12:27.320 a clip in a minute. We also have a conflict with the Cardassians that is more or less being solved 0.88

00:12:32.860 through treaties at this point in time. Obviously when we get into DS9 that's going to be a different

00:12:37.320 story entirely. But I'm going to start by showing you a clip here from the episode The Wounded which

00:12:43.500 is an excellent episode of Star Trek The Next Generation if you have not watched it. It starts

00:12:48.740 off with of course a captain's log. We are on a mapping survey near the Cardassian sector. It's

00:12:53.740 been nearly a year since a peace treaty ended the long conflict between the federation and

00:12:58.420 Cardassia. So while Roddenberry's view of the future still included some conflict, most of it

00:13:04.880 is handled through this, you know, peaceful negotiation through treaty, thus the unmasking

00:13:12.140 of these other cultures and other ideologies as not working. So you can see this particular

00:13:18.540 scene from The Wounded in which

00:13:20.700 Picard talks about

00:13:21.880 doing things in a way that is less

00:13:24.900 military.

00:13:29.560 Thank you, Chief.

00:13:33.800 I'd just like to say, sir,

00:13:35.780 he was a good man.

00:13:37.760 What he did was terribly wrong,

00:13:39.020 I know that now.

00:13:40.380 But I'm still proud to have served with him.

00:13:44.540 Thank you, Chief.

00:13:46.700 And well done.

00:13:47.940 That'll be all.

00:13:53.500 His loyalty is admirable,

00:13:56.780 even if it is misplaced.

00:14:02.620 The loyalty that you would so quickly dismiss

00:14:04.880 does not come easily to my people, Galmar said.

00:14:08.720 You have much to learn about us.

00:14:11.860 Benjamin Maxwell earned the loyalty

00:14:13.700 of those who served with him.

00:14:17.400 you know in war he was twice honored with the federation's highest citation for courage and

00:14:25.000 valor and if he could not find a role for himself in peace we can pity him but we shall not dismiss

00:14:35.640 him you are welcome to your opinion captain i for one am grateful he is under lock and key

00:14:44.200 One more thing Gullmer said

00:14:47.160 Maxwell was right

00:14:51.700 Those ships were not carrying scientific equipment, were they?

00:14:57.380 A research station within arm's reach of three Federation sectors

00:15:02.240 Cargo ships running with high-energy subspace fields that jam sensors

00:15:08.340 If you believe the transport ship was carrying weapons, Captain

00:15:13.720 why didn't you board it as maxwell requested

00:15:17.620 i was here to protect the peace a peace that i firmly believe is in the interest of both our

00:15:27.400 peoples if i had attempted to board that ship i'm quite certain that you and i would not be having

00:15:33.260 this pleasant conversation and the ships on both sides would now be arming for war

00:15:39.380 All right. So even when there is a potential for a shooting war, a potential for military intervention in a situation, TNG depicts the solution as being found through negotiation, through enlightenment, through Captain Picard saying, I am here to protect the peace.

00:15:57.360 I am not going to get involved in a shooting war or start anything that hearts our attempts at

00:16:04.140 peace. But, you know, trust but verify. There's a little bit of that Reagan quote there, which is

00:16:11.160 that we are going to keep an eye on you because we don't really trust that you are doing what's

00:16:16.540 right. So then, of course, we have the Klingons. So we have a lot of episodes that feature around 0.96

00:16:23.640 Klingon culture, Klingon politics in TNG, a lot of them focusing around the character of Worf

00:16:30.600 obviously. And in season four we have a two-part series Redemption and Redemption Part Two

00:16:36.680 in which they are getting involved with a Klingon civil war. They are trying to put

00:16:42.780 Gowron in as chancellor. He is trying to prevent a war from breaking out and they want this

00:16:51.600 the civil war to end with Gowron being the chancellor of the Klingon of the Klingon High

00:16:57.080 Council. And when by doing this they are establishing a chancellor who is friendly to

00:17:03.700 the Federation who is also more involved in more of a democratic government as well bringing the

00:17:10.140 Klingons closer to Federation ideals. And I really love how that is shown in this particular scene

00:17:17.260 in redemption part two

00:17:18.700 no but it's our way it's the klingon way

00:17:31.980 i know

00:17:35.460 but it is not my way

00:17:39.600 this boy has done me no harm and i will not kill him for the crimes of his family

00:17:48.740 then it falls to come

00:17:50.320 no no you gave me his life and i have spared it

00:17:59.600 as you wish

00:18:09.600 Request permission to return to duty, sir.

00:18:19.400 Granted. 1.00

00:18:21.000 So in this scene, Worf decides that he does not want to do things the Klingon way. 0.94

00:18:29.600 He wants to do things his way, the Federation way.

00:18:33.940 And as a result of this, we also see that Gowron is willing to bend to that as well.

00:18:39.440 Dauron is willing to say, okay, we will do things the way you want to do them, the way the Federation

00:18:44.720 would approve of them in this instance. The idea that this is going to, this has some impact on

00:18:50.880 the way that the Klingons are going to run their government. Now, the one big shooting conflict 0.97

00:18:58.360 that we have in TNG is, of course, with the Borg. Now, what's really interesting about the Borg

00:19:04.760 as a villain in this show is that we actually don't see a lot of military conflict with them

00:19:13.060 in many episodes. There are only two main episodes of direct conflict, which is the

00:19:18.400 Best of Both Worlds Part 1 and Part 2, which are fantastic episodes. But it's really interesting

00:19:25.760 how they defeat the Borg in this particular case. And it is not because of military might,

00:19:32.960 It is because of this vaunted concept of Western individuality, which is, of course, part of what Fukuyama thinks is superior to the rest of the world.

00:19:46.100 Data, I'm picking up increased neural activity in Captain Picard, localized in the prefrontal and parietal lobes.

00:19:53.000 The Borg might be trying to terminate their link with him.

00:20:01.480 Negative.

00:20:02.960 the subspace signal configuration is unchanged what is causing the increased

00:20:07.720 neural activity is unclear no it's not it's him it's Picard

00:20:21.020 Troy to bridge data has made first contact with Captain Picard can you

00:20:26.540 communicate with him data I have been unable to create a neural path around

00:20:30.440 board implants sir it is captain picard himself who has somehow managed to initiate contact

00:20:37.080 right so this idea is that even though he has been made part of the board consciousness he

00:20:43.240 his his sense of self his individuality is so strong that he is able to fight back against

00:20:49.560 this overwhelming control matrix that the borg have him in uh which is very you know very much

00:20:56.120 this idea that our individuality is what makes us strong. So we see this in another episode as well.

00:21:04.120 This is probably, I think this is one of my favorite Borg episodes. This is an episode called

00:21:08.600 I Borg, an episode when faced with one of their worst enemies the crew has to kind of work to

00:21:14.680 overcome their prejudices and try to help this Borg three of five overcome his programming and

00:21:22.680 regain his individuality and this is kind of the ultimate success of western liberal ideals over

00:21:29.560 ideological forces like the Borg. So this is represented very clearly in this particular

00:21:36.280 exchange that I'm going to play for you here. Captain Picard is trying to trigger the Borg's

00:21:42.520 programming and kind of prove that he is still a Borg and it does not go the way that that Picard

00:21:48.680 it is expecting.

00:22:01.260 Lieutenant, you may wait outside.

00:22:11.120 Locutus.

00:22:18.680 Yes

00:22:22.640 I am Locutus of Borg

00:22:27.260 Why are you here? 1.00

00:22:29.500 This is a primitive culture 1.00

00:22:32.840 I am here to facilitate its incorporation 1.00

00:22:37.160 identify yourself

00:22:39.920 Hugh

00:22:42.140 Identify yourself

00:22:44.140 We are Hugh

00:22:47.600 This is not a Borg identification 0.99

00:22:50.160 Third of five 1.00

00:22:55.380 This culture will be assimilated 1.00

00:22:58.320 They do not wish it 1.00

00:23:01.940 Irrelevant

00:23:03.280 They will resist us

00:23:06.620 Resistance is futile

00:23:08.940 Resistance is not futile

00:23:14.920 Some have escaped

00:23:18.740 They will be found

00:23:20.160 It is inevitable 1.00

00:23:21.800 All will be assimilated 1.00

00:23:24.880 Must Geordi be assimilated? 1.00

00:23:30.420 Yes

00:23:30.740 He does not wish it

00:23:38.940 He would rather die than be assimilated. 0.99

00:23:43.540 Then he will die. 0.98

00:23:47.260 No. 0.99

00:23:49.900 Geordi must not die.

00:23:53.280 Geordi is a friend.

00:23:55.960 You will assist us to assimilate this vessel. 1.00

00:24:03.180 You are Borg. You will assist us. 0.82

00:24:07.500 I will not.

00:24:08.940 What did you say?

00:24:13.260 I will not assist you.

00:24:16.980 I? 1.00

00:24:18.240 Geordi must not be assimilated. 1.00

00:24:21.160 But you are Borg. 1.00

00:24:26.020 No.

00:24:28.520 I am Hugh.

00:24:31.600 Alright, so he has come through.

00:24:33.900 He's got individuality.

00:24:35.240 He has a name.

00:24:36.240 So this episode particularly exemplifies what Fukuyama means when he talks about the unmasking of the failures of ideologies that stand at odds with Western liberalism.

00:24:49.680 Fukuyama is saying in The End of History that Western ideologies of liberalism are, regardless of what other ideologies might come along, inevitable.

00:24:59.220 They are, in fact, what is futile. Resistance is futile to the idea of Western liberalism and individuality.

00:25:14.660 Now, one of the other factors that comes into the creation of this series is the fact that Roddenberry really wanted to remove almost every militaristic element of Starfleet as much as possible.

00:25:29.220 After all, if Western ideology, if these concepts are inevitable, why would the Federation have to

00:25:35.220 force it at the point of a phaser? You can do things without going to the military extremes.

00:25:42.500 A long intellectual debate can do the job just as well as any military action can do it.

00:25:50.660 So Roddenberry wanted the focus of the Federation and Starfleet to return to this concept of

00:25:56.020 boldly going the act of exploration rather than a focus on war on warmongering. It's often so much

00:26:03.700 that writers got really really annoyed with Roddenberry. Herbert Wright one of the producers

00:26:08.820 on Star Trek said that so many times Gene took the guts out of the villain. I'm talking about

00:26:14.820 the actual conflict. Instead they just had a serious argument and that is very true of TNG.

00:26:20.980 obviously DS9 when we talk about that next week that's a very different series as far as that goes

00:26:27.060 uh to be fair DS9 was made after the after the death of Roddenberry so he didn't have as much

00:26:32.580 impact on it um we're gonna have debates instead and that's how we're gonna solve our problems

00:26:38.660 like enlightened people of the future uh particularly I like this scene uh from the

00:26:45.220 the drum head uh which is a great episode of the show as well tell me captain actually becoming

00:26:53.040 one of them being forced to use your vast knowledge of starfleet operations to aid the

00:27:00.040 just how many of our ships we've measured at nearly 11 000 one wonders how you can sleep at

00:27:09.060 night having caused so much destruction i question your actions captain i question your choices

00:27:18.020 i question your loyalty

00:27:22.340 you know there are some words i've known since i was a school boy

00:27:27.300 but the first link the chain is forged the first speech censured the first thought forbidden the

00:27:35.460 first freedom denied chains us all irrevocably. Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie.

00:27:45.700 All right, so he gives this, obviously we have this villain who's supposed to represent this

00:27:50.340 very McCarthyistic worldview that is going after people, that is on a witch hunt to find people

00:27:58.420 that they believe are not loyal to the Federation. And his response to this isn't to start a fight,

00:28:02.900 It's not to start a revolution, it's to give an impassioned speech quoting the villain's father, which really makes her mad.

00:28:09.960 But so the point of this show was supposed to be on the progressive message of Star Trek being more important than the conflict or anything that maybe the production company might have wanted to see on the screen.

00:28:22.500 The point for Roddenberry, just as it had been in the original series, was the message, not necessarily the entertainment.

00:28:29.680 one of the other features that Fukuyama believed would come with the end of history

00:28:36.640 was that in the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy

00:28:41.260 just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history I will say I think that this one

00:28:47.400 might actually be the most accurate of all of Fukuyama's predictions because when you look at

00:28:51.680 Hollywood damn we don't make anything new anymore it's all just um it's all just rehashes of old

00:28:58.100 stuff, right? It's all about nostalgia. But the next generation really seems to mirror this belief 0.97

00:29:03.900 that this is going to be the case for society. When we look at the next gen, a lot of times it's

00:29:09.820 been critiqued in the past by fans for having a very stagnant view of popular culture in the 24th

00:29:16.440 century. We look at many different scenes in the show in which we see that they are kind of

00:29:22.560 obsessed with nostalgic classic media. We've got episodes in the in the holodeck where we see them

00:29:31.140 acting out Sherlock Holmes, westerns, we see that Picard is really invested in this Dixon Hill

00:29:38.240 character who is kind of a Raymond Chandler noir private detective. We also see you know copies of

00:29:46.640 the plays of Shakespeare being put on set. And we see that most of the concerts and plays and

00:29:54.820 things that they have on board the Enterprise are things like Brahms or Mozart, Chopin.

00:30:02.440 And those are things that are being popularized in the show. Now, of course, obviously, there is a

00:30:09.780 major reason for this. One of the main reasons being that, you know, they were using things that

00:30:14.240 were out of that did not have any copyright on them anymore. So they were do often using this

00:30:20.820 for budgetary reasons, but also this idea that, you know, we've already created all the great

00:30:28.440 works. We don't have to create anything new. So, you know, we didn't really see music from the

00:30:34.200 1980s or 1990s being used in the show, which to be fair, would have dated the show a lot,

00:30:40.080 but they are sticking with the classics in this particular, in this particular series.

00:30:49.360 We can see that, you know, even the omnipotent godlike character of Q ends up kind of commenting

00:30:54.960 on this in the, in the final, final episodes of the show, the series finale. He says, you know,

00:31:02.980 in all good things that mapping stars and studying nebula are not the exploration that you have been,

00:31:08.040 that you should be doing that you're meant for um you can you know instead of using the last

00:31:13.880 seven years to change and grow you've squandered them which is a little bit of a criticism i feel

00:31:19.000 um of of the entire concept of the next gen i sincerely hope this is the last time that i find

00:31:27.080 myself here you just don't get it do you jean luke the trial never ends we wanted to see if

00:31:36.520 you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons and for one brief moment you did when i

00:31:43.560 realized the paradox exactly for that one fraction of a second you were open to options you had never

00:31:50.360 considered that is the exploration that awaits you not mapping stars and studying nebula but

00:32:00.120 charting the unknown possibilities of existence q what is it that you're trying to tell me

00:32:15.640 you'll find out

00:32:18.920 in any case i'll be watching and if you're very lucky i'll drop by to say hello from time to time

00:32:26.280 And of course, a huge part of this is, of course, the implication of there's going to be more Star

00:32:38.520 Trek, we're making more Star Trek. But also it is that criticism that, okay, this version of Star

00:32:43.660 Trek was pretty dull. It was a lot of mapping stars and studying nebula and having big long

00:32:49.300 speeches about uh about enlightened ideas of political philosophy um and end of history it's

00:32:56.440 dull that's what q is saying he's is showing his sentiment that fits completely with what

00:33:02.340 fukuyama is seeing uh when he says in this essay i can feel in myself and seeing others around me

00:33:09.160 a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed uh the idea that it would be nice to have

00:33:15.300 new things, to do these new, have new concepts. Roddenberry was creating what was kind of a

00:33:23.320 Pollyanna-ish view of the future, where everything was fine, everything was good. It very closely

00:33:29.280 mirrors these very optimistic views of the future that Fukuyama had in the end of history.

00:33:36.220 A world of stability, a world without the need for conflict or major extremism,

00:33:40.900 and it didn't really feel particularly realistic to the world around it in the 90s that we were

00:33:47.220 actually witnessing. Fukuyama had, like I said, very optimistic ideas about what was going to

00:33:53.060 come, but the 90s were not bearing that out particularly. So now I want to talk about real

00:34:00.920 quickly just a few specific episodes that kind of cover some major issues that were ongoing at the

00:34:08.260 time. Now I will say we'll do more of this next week with DS9 because they have far more episodes

00:34:16.380 that are topical in this way. TNG didn't go out of their way to kind of rip stories from the

00:34:23.740 headlines the same way that the original series or DS9 did, but they did a little bit of it.

00:34:30.900 Now before I make it seem like I am just incredibly positive about everything that TNG did, I do want

00:34:37.100 to talk about one major misstep, which is, well, it's the women's uniforms, right? Most of the 0.99

00:34:45.480 women's uniforms are fine, right? But by the 90s, we should have moved past this kind of absurd 1.00

00:34:52.280 sexualization of women's characters, especially in a sci-fi series. But we did not. Marina Sirtis,

00:35:00.020 really, who played Deanna Troi on the show, was really very, very unhappy with a lot of the

00:35:06.260 costuming work that she ended up in. And of course she was not the only one. We also have Crusher

00:35:11.500 wearing some very questionable outfits, especially when they're like doing exercise classes for some

00:35:17.880 reason. It was weird. It was very 80s. But I particularly love this quote said, unfortunately

00:35:23.360 what happens if the girls have cleavage, they cannot have a brain because the two don't go 1.00

00:35:27.740 together. So when I got the gray space suit and got cleavage, she lost her brain matter. There's 1.00

00:35:33.160 a lot of complaints about how Deanna Troi's character was handled on the show and how they

00:35:37.600 put her in these, these ridiculous outfits, uh, that we really should have moved past by this

00:35:42.900 point in time. Um, I remember she calls the, there's a quote from an interview with, uh,

00:35:49.680 Marina Sirtis talking about the very first episode of the show, uh, where she's wearing kind of the,

00:35:54.660 the iconic mini skirt and she calls it the cosmic cheerleader outfit. Uh, she's not,

00:36:00.000 happy with it. Again, the miniskirt worked in the context of the 1960s as a very feminist icon. 0.93

00:36:06.960 By the 90s, putting a woman in a miniskirt on the, you know, on the bridge of a spaceship just

00:36:14.320 didn't really make sense anymore contextually. So there's a lot of problems with their handling of

00:36:20.560 women in this show. Obviously, they had more female main characters, they had more variety in

00:36:26.880 the roles that women played on the show, but they still had some very peculiar ideas about women and

00:36:32.960 were a little bit problematic in the way they dealt with them. I will say especially Troy.

00:36:37.740 Troy is repeatedly the focus of either mental or physical assault by male characters. We have

00:36:45.860 episode The Child where she is forcibly impregnated. We have an episode, we have the episode

00:36:52.100 Violations in which she is literally uh mind raped by a character by a male character uh and we have

00:36:59.340 the episode The Man of the People which also contains a very similar uh similar plot line as

00:37:04.560 well so there's a lot of that going on in this show uh and I will say one of the my major major

00:37:10.960 gripes with uh another female character Crusher is that they put a lot of emphasis on her motherhood

00:37:16.820 as well, which fine, whatever. I don't necessarily have a problem with that. It's just really weird

00:37:22.480 to have one of your main female characters be so obsessed with her, well, kind of dopey kid. 0.91

00:37:30.040 A little bit, a little sexist, in my opinion. Now, back near the beginning of The Next Generation,

00:37:36.500 Rick Berman, ugh, boo, writes a memo for the production studio that lists off story areas that

00:37:43.340 they were recommended to focus on for the series. David Geralt who was one of

00:37:47.840 the writers for TNG said it read like somebody had flipped through the

00:37:51.020 newspaper and picked up stories from the headlines. Rick specifically said that

00:37:55.280 we suggest you consider stories dealing with these issues poverty, hunger,

00:37:58.940 terrorism, and child abuse. So there is a lot of kind of episodes that deal with

00:38:04.840 little factors of issues that were going on in the 90s. We didn't have any

00:38:08.540 clear-cut things like the Vietnam War to really focus on so they had to go for

00:38:12.800 slightly more esoteric concepts. One of these is, of course, the episode The High Ground from

00:38:18.700 season three. This is one of the most blatant discussions of a contemporary issue at the time.

00:38:24.840 It dealt with the issue of terrorism in a setting that intentionally made viewers think of the

00:38:31.160 conflict in Northern Ireland with the IRA. So this episode raised questions on the ethics of

00:38:38.220 terrorism, if terrorism is a necessary part of a fight for independence, draws a lot of parallels

00:38:43.960 between the American War of Independence and the struggle that is ongoing on these two planets.

00:38:50.140 You can see from these quotes here, how much innocent blood has been spilled for the cause

00:38:53.560 of freedom in the history of your federation, doctor? How many good and noble societies have

00:38:57.920 bombed civilians in war, wiped out whole cities, and now that you enjoy the comfort that has come

00:39:02.300 from their battles, their killing, you frown on my immorality. Or comparing himself to George

00:39:07.920 Washington. The only difference between generals and terrorists is the difference between winners

00:39:12.800 and losers. If you win, you are called a general. If you lose, you're a terrorist, right? I will say

00:39:19.600 the most disappointing part of this episode is the fact that they totally misled us about what

00:39:25.720 was going to happen in 2024, as you'll see in this clip. I'm finding it difficult to understand

00:39:32.620 many aspects of Ansata conduct. Much of their behavioral norm would be defined by my program 0.90

00:39:37.740 is unnecessary and unacceptable by my program as well data but if that is so captain why are

00:39:45.680 their methods so often successful i've been reviewing the history of armed rebellion and

00:39:50.740 it appears that terrorism is an effective way to promote political change yes it can be but i have

00:39:57.240 never subscribed to the theory that political power flows from the battle of a gun yet there

00:40:02.600 are numerous examples when it was successful. The independence of the Mexican state from Spain,

00:40:08.560 the Irish unification of 2024, and the Kenzie Rebellion. Yes, I'm aware of them. I saw that 0.76

00:40:13.820 the Irish reunification of 2024. We did not get that, strangely enough. I think maybe Ireland

00:40:20.260 might be a little disappointed about that. In the end, this episode didn't really satisfy the

00:40:25.320 writing staff. Michael Piller, who was the showrunner at the time, felt that the statement

00:40:29.800 on terrorism was very unclear. It was very murky that they really weren't making a good strong

00:40:35.380 statement on the issue. They didn't really say anything new. The primary writer for this episode,

00:40:40.220 Melinda Snodgrass, was very unhappy with the choice to make the analogy related to Northern

00:40:44.860 Ireland. And unfortunately for the franchise, Snodgrass was not the only person who took issue

00:40:50.720 with this. The High Ground was actually never aired unedited by the BBC in Great Britain until

00:40:58.220 2007. And even as of 2019, which was when I was doing the research, a lot of the research for

00:41:06.260 this thesis, the episode had still not aired unedited in Ireland due to the controversy

00:41:13.640 over what they saw as a pro-IRA message. So they didn't exactly, this didn't exactly endear them

00:41:19.520 to stations in the UK. Another episode that I think they're really interesting and very ahead

00:41:27.920 of its time message was The Host which is also in season four where we introduce a new species

00:41:34.640 to the series. This is going to be revisited a lot more in depth in Deep Space Nine. This

00:41:40.560 version of the Trill is not nearly the same as what we'll see described in Deep Space Nine. They

00:41:45.680 really change a lot of concepts about these characters. But the Trill are a symbiotic

00:41:50.320 species. There is a host which serves as a shell for a kind of worm-like symbiont species. For

00:41:55.680 those of you who have watched Stargate SG-1, it's a weird vibe because this is supposed to be seen

00:42:01.760 as a positive, not a negative. Due to the nature of the bond, a symbiont can move from one host

00:42:08.000 to another host and stay alive. This becomes an issue in this episode because of course Dr.

00:42:14.560 Crusher is having a relationship with Odon, uh, Odon the first, who is at the top of this page

00:42:21.300 here. He is injured and dies. The symbiote needs to be transferred over to a new host.

00:42:26.860 Uh, there's a lot going on in this episode, not the least of which is the fact that Dr. Crusher

00:42:30.960 gets it on with Riker, which, well, while he's playing temporary host to Odon, uh, which is

00:42:36.880 super weird. I don't think anybody wanted to talk about that in an HR meeting after the episode was

00:42:41.620 over. Um, but then eventually the Trill is put into its next permanent host, uh, who is a female 1.00

00:42:51.180 instead of a male, uh, which is very, very interesting. There's a very interesting scene

00:42:55.860 towards the end. And I looked for a video version of this. I couldn't find it. Uh, and I didn't want

00:43:01.940 to have to go and screen record it off of, off of T off my TV. So, um, I am still Odon and I still

00:43:08.680 love you. I cannot imagine that ever changing. So Odon goes to Crusher and says, hey, I would

00:43:14.720 still like to be in a relationship with you. Crusher is not able to get past the change of

00:43:20.600 gender. She says that perhaps it's a human failing, but we are not accustomed to these kind of 1.00

00:43:24.960 changes. I can't keep up. How long will you have this host? What would the next one be? I can't

00:43:30.000 live with that kind of uncertainty. Perhaps someday our ability to love won't be so limited.

00:43:35.580 So insofar as the LGBTQ issues in this episode, it's really ahead of its time in many ways. 0.57

00:43:43.280 This idea that gender is kind of on a spectrum or that it doesn't matter what body that the 0.57

00:43:50.620 symbiont is in. It's still the same person. However, of course, Crusher finds herself

00:43:55.280 unable to deal with this. But at the same time, she says, this is a me problem. It's not a you

00:44:01.600 problem you've done nothing wrong i'm not ready for this level of of change i can't handle that

00:44:10.400 um that you know maybe maybe one day we'll be able to get past this so this episode really raised

00:44:16.160 issues of sexual orientation gender transition far earlier than many other shows did uh they don't

00:44:22.880 you know it's kind of dealt with in a very hand very you know um subtle way but it is it is there

00:44:31.600 And then of course there is the more obvious episode that deals with issues of sexuality and

00:44:38.000 then gender which is outcast which happens in season 5 episode 17. This dealt with really the

00:44:45.440 ethics of conversion therapy long before it was a major topic of political debate in America.

00:44:52.160 Jerry Taylor who was the author of the writer of this episode says that this is the episode she is

00:44:57.520 proudest of in her entire career on Star Trek because the message of about intolerance was

00:45:04.400 incredibly important to her. So this episode centers on a race known as the Genii. They are

00:45:09.560 completely androgynous. They see the concept of gender as something very primitive and taboo.

00:45:14.820 They're not, they don't like it. This episode follows a character named Sorin who has a crush

00:45:21.880 on Commander Riker because everybody has a crush on Commander Riker. This flirtation between them

00:45:28.900 ends up revealing that Sorin has secretly identified as female since childhood. So she's

00:45:35.220 very regressive in her culture for having a gender instead of being androgynous. It's a 1.00

00:45:42.340 violation of the laws of her planet. She is eventually arrested and tried by a tribunal 0.93

00:45:47.040 for the crime of having a gender identity and ultimately she's found guilty and given a treatment 0.92

00:45:52.960 to cure herself cure her of this you know horrible thing that she has has chosen to do 0.55

00:45:59.780 the episode gives the viewers a great speech on the idea of sexual orientation and gender identity

00:46:04.960 which is very ahead of its time you are aware

00:46:09.120 I pursued. I insisted. I didn't understand your ways until she explained them to me and rejected

00:46:18.500 me. Nothing happened between us. I asked you forgiveness. I behaved inappropriately.

00:46:30.840 Is this true? No. Sorry.

00:46:39.120 I am tired of lies. 0.86

00:46:45.080 I am female.

00:46:47.700 I was born that way.

00:46:50.500 I have had those feelings,

00:46:53.740 those longings,

00:46:55.860 all of my life.

00:46:58.540 It is not unnatural.

00:47:01.980 I am not sick because I feel this way.

00:47:06.220 I do not need to be helped.

00:47:09.120 I do not need to be cured.

00:47:16.700 What I need,

00:47:19.120 and what all of those who are like me need,

00:47:23.980 is your understanding

00:47:26.520 and your compassion.

00:47:33.040 We have not injured you in any way,

00:47:35.540 and yet we are scorned and attacked and all because we are different

00:47:42.820 what we do is no different from what you do

00:47:48.920 we talk and laugh

00:47:54.660 we complain about work

00:47:59.100 and we wonder about growing old we talk about our families and we worry about the future

00:48:08.320 and we cry with each other when things seem hopeless

00:48:14.720 all of the loving things that you do with each other that is what we do

00:48:24.000 and for that we are called misfits and deviants and criminals what right do you have to punish us

00:48:36.920 what right do you have to change us

00:48:41.580 what makes you think you can dictate how people love each other

00:48:54.000 So it's a great speech from Soren's character. It unfortunately does not have a happy ending this

00:48:59.560 episode. Soren is, of course, found guilty and given conversion therapy treatment, which was,

00:49:07.280 you know, very shocking ending to the episode, but a very strong commentary on the issues of

00:49:13.320 LGBTQ rights during the 90s. Very, very advanced for its time. And one other episode which they 0.74

00:49:21.920 attempted to do some commentary on an issue that was becoming a topic in the 90s is the episode

00:49:29.260 Force of Nature from Season 7. This is essentially a very early attempt to discuss the impacts of

00:49:37.100 technological impact on the environment, things like climate change, where the plot is that warp

00:49:42.180 drives are damaging subspace near a particular area of space. It championed kind of environmental

00:49:48.760 issues, but nobody actually liked this episode. The fans didn't like it. The writers didn't like

00:49:54.920 it. Ultimately, it addressed this contemporary issues, but writers thought it was too heavy

00:50:00.460 handed. They couldn't really make the stakes understandable for the audience, and the characters

00:50:06.000 were not relatable because they were spending too much time trying to focus on this environmental

00:50:10.220 issue. So they didn't, they attempted. They made an attempt to deal with this issue, but

00:50:15.360 it just didn't really work for them. So real quick, I want to talk a little bit about TNG's

00:50:25.440 legacy. So TNG did all the things that Roddenberry wanted it to do. It reinforced the idea of

00:50:33.100 humanity as kind of fundamentally good, enlightened. It showed us what we could become

00:50:40.040 if we, you know, got to a future where poverty, greed, war, all of those things were eradicated.

00:50:47.520 It really thrived on philosophical debates rather than action, which was even more obvious in TNG

00:50:53.860 than it had been in the original series. And it planted a lot of subtle seeds for deeper

00:50:58.900 conversations about equality and inclusivity as well. It became kind of a cultural touchstone.

00:51:05.420 It reinvigorated the entire Star Trek franchise, obviously.

00:51:10.380 It's going to influence countless fans and writers and scientists as well to kind of envision a brighter future and move towards that.

00:51:19.220 And many of those issues that we just talked about that were explored in TNG, environmentalism, social inequality, global cooperation, they remain very critical today as topics.

00:51:31.540 So it really hasn't aged out.

00:51:35.420 One of the things that I think is the most important about this era is this

00:51:41.280 particular quote and how much impact it had on me watching it.

00:51:46.360 Commander, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a

00:51:56.420 weakness. That is life.

00:52:00.180 So very important, I think, message that came out of this show that we still

00:52:05.360 keep trying. You keep striving even if you do everything right and you fail. And one of the

00:52:11.480 biggest influences in science fiction that's going to come out of this era is Michael Piller. Michael

00:52:16.940 Piller joined TNG in its third season, 1989, as its writer and co-executive producer. Roddenberry

00:52:25.000 did pass away during the course of the series being created, so Michael Piller really steps in

00:52:31.360 as the new showrunner. And his influence is going to help shape The Next Generation and Deep Space

00:52:37.180 Nine and Voyager, because he's the co-creator on both of those as well. His emphasis was really on

00:52:44.200 writing from the inside out. He said that he encouraged scripts that explored characters'

00:52:49.220 internal conflicts and made them a lot more relatable and human. He believed in very

00:52:54.140 character-driven stories. So under his guidance, we end up with episodes like The Inner Light and

00:52:59.540 the best of both worlds, which are very standout examples of tying these emotional stakes with

00:53:05.620 very high level science fiction concepts as well. But his biggest contribution and the one that I

00:53:11.920 think has had the most impact to Star Trek and the world of science fiction was his open script

00:53:18.800 submission policy. So Pillar implemented this on TNG. He invited underrepresented writers to pitch

00:53:26.140 scripts to become writers on the next generation, which led to a lot of fresh ideas, the discovery

00:53:32.200 of new talent, and it made some of the most well-known writers and show creators and show

00:53:39.520 runners of today and put them where they are. His work for DS9 especially, we will talk more about

00:53:47.060 next week, really focused on moral ambiguity and some of the darker aspects of utopian ideals,

00:53:53.300 which I really appreciate. DS9 is my favorite of the of these series that we're talking about

00:53:58.420 in this lecture. So he's really one of the key figures that made Star Trek as successful

00:54:03.780 as it was in the 1990s and really just created Star Trek as we know it today.

00:54:11.620 And this is a few of the writers that became part of TNG and as a result have ended up becoming

00:54:18.980 incredibly important to the history of science fiction uh from the run from next generation to

00:54:23.700 voyager we see we see people like ronald d moore who's going to go on to create battlestar galactica

00:54:30.980 we will talk a lot about that when we talk about voyager because i think there's some very funny

00:54:34.900 history about um how battlestar galactica just ended up being a giant screw you to um to the

00:54:41.220 show runners on voyager but that's that's for a later episode uh later lecture we also see people

00:54:47.700 like Renee Achevarria, who is the showrunner for Carnival Row, which was a great series,

00:54:52.180 canceled far too soon, which also dealt with a lot of discussion of cultural issues and

00:54:59.300 socio-political issues. Naren Shankar is the showrunner for the series The Expanse. Mike

00:55:04.980 Taylor, the showrunner for Defiance. All of these got their start with the open submission policy

00:55:10.660 that Michael Piller put together. This really created a new generation of science fiction writers.

00:55:17.700 And now before we finish this lecture, I want to talk about the movies, the Star Trek Next

00:55:25.480 Generation movies. I'm sure there are some relevant discussions to be had about these films,

00:55:31.900 but frankly, I don't think we have time to unpack the movies enough to get past some of these

00:55:37.140 scenes. I'm only showing you scenes from one particular movie here, but I'm showing you

00:55:41.900 these scenes to help you understand why we aren't talking about the films. I don't think I can get

00:55:46.440 past this I've been shot at into the lake out of the ship that's come to

00:56:06.020 abduct us what's that a panic about in the event of a water landing I have been 0.86

00:56:12.600 designed to serve as a flotation device and have you noticed how your boobs have

00:56:24.220 started to firm up not that we care about such things in this day and age 0.98

00:56:29.540 thank you data I have an odd craving for the blood of a live kolar beast this 1.00

00:56:45.320 environment must be affecting me again and if you noticed how your boobs have 1.00

00:56:50.420 started to firm up and

00:56:59.540 look there's a lot of fun scenes in the movies unfortunately on my last rewatch of these films

00:57:29.180 I took copious amounts of notes trying to find a really good discussion point for these for my

00:57:34.220 future book. I couldn't. I'm sorry I can't get past in the event of a water landing I can be

00:57:39.980 used as a flotation device. I have questions. A lot of questions. Anyway. All right now does

00:57:47.800 anybody have any questions because I would love to answer them if you do.

Bitchy History - January 19, 2025

Lecture 2： The End of History and Humanity’s Evolution

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