« Y'know what would be really useful? | Main | Templar is colored, and it's about time. »

March 19, 2006

Call my agent to set up negotiations, Viacom.

You know what I'd watch?

Star Trek: Dregs.

The Earthlings on Star Trek are always depicted as living in a perfect Communist society. A Marxist wet dream, a world free from want, with every basic need and entertainment automated or synthesized, without prejudice, on demand. And I kind of have to wonder why no one stops for a second to consider the kind of monsters a society like that would raise.

Not every member of every race can be an overachiever on Star Fleet's honor roll, right? For every Wesley Crusher, there have to be hundreds of spoiled brats convinced anything they can't press a button for or have sparkle to life in a replicator atom by atom isn't worth having. The world is already filled with basement trolls living off of their family's resources. Imagine their population explosion in a world where the interplanetary state is the one doing your laundry and paying the DSL bill. And it won't even ask you to fill out a job application at Denny's every four months.

And what about the ones with misdirected curiousity, the kind of people who aren't motivated to achieve in a framework where the lazy are rewarded on equal terms with the extraordinary, but still need their busywork? What could their own epic boredom drive them to do?

And the perverts. Don't try to tell me there aren't any perverts. I wanna see how the guy stockpiling holographic photos of Klingon shoes gets through the day, hogging the holodeck and running the STOMPED BY THE WARRIOR GODDESS program eighteen times in a row.

Someone ought to make a show.

Posted by Spike at March 19, 2006 09:33 PM

Comments

Barclay was sort of like that. He made perverted holodeck programs and didn't want to do anything but that.

Posted by Eric F. Myers at March 19, 2006 10:33 PM
12.215.223.203

Yeah, but Barclay was a sympathetic character because his programs were creative and fun. I'm picturing the Star Trek equivalent of the rabid Potterites with this idea. Y'know, can't deal with anything even remotely resembling criticism, utterly perverted, and hopelessly unoriginal.

Posted by Fortunato at March 20, 2006 10:08 AM
64.80.188.2

There was something that occurred to me a few years back: We know that the replicator builds things atom by atom from a stored pattern, right? That should mean that every time you get, say, a hamburger from the replicator, it's the exact same hamburger, down to the atomic level. The exact same shape and consistency, every time. If you're the sort of compulsive that focuses in on, say, the slightly non-circular extended edge of the burger, and eats that first, you'll do that with every single burger.

Or maybe there are, say, ten different burgers stored in the replicator's memory, and it picks one randomly when you order a burger. You know some folks will have a favorite. Maybe they'll keep ordering burgers till their favorite comes up, or they'll offer to swap with other people.

Maybe soem guy with a burger-7 obsession takes a ride on a small ship, where to save memory space, they've deleted surplus patters, so he can only get burger #1. Oh, the petulant tantrums!

Posted by Avram at March 20, 2006 10:27 AM
209.11.50.210

NICE PLANET YOU HAVE HERE, MS. SPIKE.

I remember reading that Harry Mudd was the most popular guest character from TOS. A pervert with misdirected curiosity if ever there was one. And proof that Roddenberry accepted that greed and venality were always going to be with us, just maybe not leading us anymore.

Plus, all those fistfights in TOS are absent in TNG, so I imagine the bratty wuss factor creeps back into the Federation sometime after Kirk.

Posted by Yamara at March 21, 2006 08:16 PM
68.173.2.36

Post a comment