> Allan Goodall, survey collator extraordinare, wrote:
> The most obvious military is the Federation. The Feds are essentially
Actually, the entire Federation is based on the ideal of the US, what with the
President, Fed Council and all, particularly in unofficial stuff like the
Franz Joseph Tech Manual. Interestingly, Steve Cole (of SFB "fame") has said
that he regards the UFP as being like NATO, with humans dominating it,
particularly on
the military side, like the US. (That's _his_ opinion, not mine)
> Nothing ever breaks, innovation is rampant, and they are always in the
Perhaps not, but the influence of StarFleet on Federation politics (e.g., the
Fed Council members in the 4th movie who wore StarFleet uniforms) is more like
that of the Soviet Union or China (or Nazi Germany -- I've never seen
much difference between them other than the ideology they spout), and
economically,
the UFP is very ideal-communistic. This, to some extent, is the result
of the technology they have; if replicators can make almost anything
(including more replicators?), and the energy to power them is cheap and
plentiful, then much of the basis of a familiar economy is gone. The tricky
bit is distributing this
largesse to the universe at large -- that this has happened is the most
"communistic" aspect of the Federation.
> As for Klingons and Cardassians, that's the same Alien problem as
Klingons are just Japanese samurai with the Norse afterlife (well, at least
Valhalla) grafted on. <
Interesting, because the _original_ Klingons (no ridges) were designed
as
quasi-Russian-commies to compete with the "Free Worlds" of the UFP in a
kind of Cold War, kept from becoming truly hot by those deuses ex machina, the
Organians. It was only when TNG was made that the whole honour thing turned
up. The original Klingons would have scorned honour as a waste of time and an
impediment to getting what they wanted; the _Romulans_ were the ones
with the honour fixation, although that didn't stop them from ambushing the
good
guys. That, to my mind, made _them_ the pseudo-Japanese (or was it
Chinese? Someone inscrutable, anyway <g>), but the "characterisations" of the
two races that were established in TOS got scrambled when TNG came along.
> Cardassians are Nazis. <
Or Commies. With, perhaps, a touch of Latino macho-ness. As I said,
there's
not much difference between a left-wing dictatorship and a right-wing
one, except for whose ideology they parrot and who gets the knock on the door
in the middle of the night.
Phil
> In message <s418133a.065@wpg.uwe.ac.uk> Phillip Atcliffe writes:
If you read the Constitution of the Soviet Union, you'll find it really isn't
very different. Oddly, their constituition doesn't ever mention the Communist
Party and makes a great deal of the freedom to vote and other BS...
[I may, of course, be confusing the old USSR constitution with the
constitution of the old RSFSR. That's the Russian Socialist *Federated* Soviet
Republic...]
B5, as I've said, is far, far worse in not even making a token effort to
disguise the American governmental hierarchy that it uses for the whole of
Earth. Very irritating. Where did the Mother of Parliaments disappear to? What
happened to the U.N.?
> >Nothing ever breaks, innovation is rampant, and they are always in
[ROTFL, Allan]
> Perhaps not, but the influence of StarFleet on Federation politics
...and seem sometimes to form a hereditary militocracy. It often
struck me that just about everbody on the Enterprise-D bridge had
a parent as a Starfleet officer. Riker certainly did, LaForge did, the
irritating Wesley Crusher had *both* parents... didn't the Picards stretch
back to Trafalger as naval officers?
More lazy writing.
> > As for Klingons and Cardassians, that's the same Alien problem as
Something else that afflicts both ST and B5 and, well, just about everything
else is the inability to portray alien cultures as *diverse*.
All aliens are monocultures, while humanity is not. This is really underlined
in a truely terrible B5 episode where everyone is running about explaining
their religeons to each other, and each alien race has one religeon, while
humanity has about a hundred.
I think, just to drag this somewhere vaguely on-topic, that this
should be avoided in any medium, including game-background. So the
Kra'Vak, there's no diversity to them at all? All the same bunch of stock
psychotic predator aliens?
> Interesting, because the _original_ Klingons (no ridges) were designed
Ah, back in the days of "Captain Kennedy's Space Patrol". I often think of B5
as TOS's true inheritor... I've seen more than one source refer to Sheriden as
"Captain Clinton".
> It was only when TNG was made that the whole honour thing turned
of the
> two races that were established in TOS got scrambled when TNG came
This goes to the heart of the "all aliens are monocultures" thing.
All aliens have inflexible codes of honour and tradition. Yawn.
Oh, the Mimbari have an infleible code of honour that our characters can
expoit? I am surprised. And so do the Centauri, and Klingons and Ferengi etc.
etc.
> David Brewer wrote:
Lots of interesting stuff deleted which I think is pretty way off topic,
but.....
> All aliens have inflexible codes of honour and tradition. Yawn.
I wouldn't wipe this out as being so unrealistic! Having lived in Japan for 10
years, and being referred to legally as a 'Registed Alien', and I have to
carry a card to that effect, there are so many instances here where things are
done because '<Japanese> have inflexible codes of honour and tradition'!!!
Anybody who has lived here for more than 5 years (anything less than 3 years
is still the honey moon period) can tell many, many MANY bizaare stories..
My own original Helios Assention notes ( Rising Sun, get it?) based so many
bizarre alien behavior on stuff I've lived with.....
> X-Mozilla-Status: 0010