I know a strictly military-focused show goes against Roddenberry’s vision, but what are the chances that we could see some sort of war-focused Trek in the future? The scenes in “Under the Cloak of War” (SNW 2x08… yes I’m a few weeks behind) fascinated me. What would a MAS*H-style show look like in Trek? Could the show tell the story of the war exclusively from the medical perspective? Until now, we’ve only gotten glimpses of war shown through the eyes of our main characters (O’Brien, Nog, Chakotay, Burnham, M’Benga, Chapel, etc) and we’ve gotten fleet-level looks of battles, but very little on-the-ground coverage of war.
I’d prefer the setting to be some war set some time after PIC–something we as an audience know nothing about. What are your thoughts, Lemmy?
I agree, but I was concentrating on the Roddenberry-verse, since I think we started with the idea that it would be something apart from his conceptualization of the world-building he was doing.
In fact, I think that Lower Decks is a comedy, and one of the organizing features of the humor is poking good-natured fun at Roddenberry’s conceptualization of the universe and the Federation. It’s not outright parody in the sense of Galaxy Quest, but the non-Trekness is deliberately used as a source of humor.
I think that’s the pivot point. The US Army is worthy of endless parody and it doesn’t have to be good natured. We’ve hit a weird part of our timeline where we (as Americans) are idolizing our military as heroic icons. As someone who has been there, I’d rather go back to what we had in the 70s and 80s (not the institutionalized homophobia, but the skepticism of civilians). Starfleet was created at a time of such skepticism, and was set up in deliberate contrast as a near-utopian future. We’re coming to a different place now, where any given soldier is a selfless defender of freedom around the world but Starfleet is getting a more comedic and skeptical treatment.
Anyway, I’d really love to see the idea get a treatment, but it’d be tough to balance the Trekness with the MASHness.