Skip to main content

Star Trek Propaganda II: The Wrath of...


Imagine the idea raised in the last post—that Star Trek was inspired by Federation propaganda—as the basis for a story plot with a twist. What would Star Trek look like if it had been inspired by Klingon propaganda?

What if a series of Star Trek existed in which shooting first and asking question later was always shown to be the right choice? Where oppressing aliens was shown to be sensible? An episode could feature a bleeding-heart Klingon wanting to treat an alien races as equals, only to have them betray him and eat his liver or something—him dying without honor. A series in which the honor of personal combat is always shown as mattering more than anything else? Episodes could feature lives full regret from those who failed to die in battle or from having rejected the Klingon way.

Or what would Star Trek look like as Romulan propaganda? Stealth and treachery are commended and always work out for the greater good…Or Cardassian...the state always knows best? Or Ferengi, greed really is good—pick whatever enemy of the Federation you like for a dose of their propaganda wrath.

Imagine stories in which everything in Star Trek has all the same basic players, but everything is fundamentally different because all the characters and situations are designed to show one of the alien societies, one of the enemies of the Federation, is fundamentally right. That would change the flavor of everything.

My only regret is, I don’t think the Borg would ever need to create propaganda…

ttp

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The AI "Image of the Beast"

Imagining the "Image of the Beast" from the book of Revelation is an AI is not new to me. Thinking that such an image could be an Artificial Intelligence is as least as old as the 1981 Christian apocalyptic film with that title  (which I don't consider a quality production, but it does exist). And I've also found a few Evangelical Christian sites who repeat the same idea (which I won't reference here) and even link it with the notion of technological singularity . However, I do have what may be prove to be some distinctive twists on the notion. First off, while I don't usually quote Scripture on this blog, I'm going to make an exception. Let's examine the Bible reference to "the image of the beast" itself. Revelation 13:14-16 (NKJV): "And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he is granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the...

7 Ways to Deal with the Problem Magic Poses Christian Fantasy Writers

First off, what is the problem with magic for Christians? Or sorcery? Or witchcraft? (Are all of those things even the same?) An entire book could be written on this topic (perhaps I'll do that someday) but to keep this as brief as possible, the short reason this is a problem is the Bible has nothing good to say about the practice of magic (neither does extra-Biblical Christian tradition). No translation of Scripture will record the 12 Disciples watching Jesus walk on the water and say, "Wow, that was magical!" Nor is the mana falling from heaven in Israel's wilderness wanderings described as some kind of powerful spell that Moses used, nor even is his rod described as "magic," even though Moses had the power granted to him by God to turn it into a serpent at whatever time he chose. No, the Bible describes events like these as "miracles," or "signs," or "wonders." On the other hand, when the Bible talks about "mag...

Story Combat Realism Part 3. How to Train a Samurai, Spartan, or Knight.

At the end of my last post of this series that deals mainly with the psychological factors of combat, I noted that Spartans, in spite of battlefield courage that implies they are natural-born warriors, were in fact the product of superior training. Note that this kind of highly-trained fighting professional is a different sort of fighter than found in warrior cultures who emphasized battlefield rage. This type of elite training was not just a characteristic of Spartans, it was also true of a number of other renowned warriors from times past, including samurais and knights. To take the last first, the conventional training of a knight began at age 7, when he became a page. Pages served knights in their company, but also learned to ride and fight with wooden swords and blunted lances. They practiced horseback fighting while riding piggy back and were continually exposed to weapons training. At age 14 a page became a squire, who now trained with both wooden and sharpened weapo...