The Next Generation

I was thinking about the difference between creative writing and essay writing. And where does this sort of blog post fit in? So I’ve decided I’m going to lead with the conclusion that I’ll explain at the end: The Next Generation (TNG) at its best (not always) tries to answer the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ by examining all the ways the question can be asked. It explores the virtues of liberalism, and while it shows the value of social progress, it fails to acknowledge the paradox of unfettered freedom (granting equal rights to those who wish to deny you those rights).

That was a mouthful and poorly constructed sentence, but second drafts are for losers. I wrote a long description of characters and themes, but it’s a bit long winded. I’ll include it at the end, but here’s what I want to say:

If you want to learn what TNG is about, watch The Measure of a Man. It involves Data, an android and is pretty much a very good computer attached to a complete mechanical body. He has no goal and serves with the crew to explore the universe. A scientist has decided that he should more or less dissect Data in order to build others so that their superior abilities can help Starfleet and humanity in their exploration.

Long story short, there is a space trial, where the the characters must debate at what point Data may and must be called another form of life and not just a machine. It seems like such a passé idea now, but if you look at it in the context of even 10 years ago, it seems controversial. Then keep in mind it was written more than 30 years ago. Okay, yes, it’s basically the idea behind Caves of Steel (one of my favorite books), but it places the argument in a more pure, platonic setting of a trial.

Okay, now I’m now going to give you all the nitty gritty. I would most like to talk about the plot, but to get there I’m going to give an overview and talk about characters.

The basics:

The show takes place roughly a century after TOS, and it has taken that time to formalize practically everything. But, like its predecessor, the show is about a crew of mostly humans on a starship as it explores space. However, all the details are examined. Now you have the Federation (also its charter as conditions on membership), the prime directive and food replicators. The Federation is separate from Starfleet (whose Enterprise is the ship we follow), and different planets have their own starships. The only one that’s really talked about is the Vulcan Science Directive.

The characters:

Let’s talk about the main characters, and I’m going to skip a few because I want to keep this short… well, medium, not too long.

The captain is Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, the most highly billed actor in any Star Trek. He’s supposed to be the philosopher king or, rather, philosopher captain. He is very well read and very thoughtful. In one episode, he takes over for a diplomat. He always stands up for the Federation’s values, namely that all intelligent life must be respected and preserved, and that diversity and uniqueness is important. What is the meaning of life for him? He wants to explore, find out the diversity of life and study history (amateur archeology being his hobby).

Rivaling him as most important character is Data. Data is an android, the only one of his kind. He’s also a lieutenant commander (because they use navy/military ranks for some unknown reason). He’s like Spock somewhat, in that he’s a perfect calculating machine and is enormously strong. He’s unlike Spock in that he has no emotions, and he spends the series trying to become human. What is the meaning of life for him? He wants to become human. He wants to have children and have weaknesses.

Deanna Troi is the ship’s psychologist. She is half betazoid and therefore empathic. She can’t read minds, but she can feel people’s emotions. That is her domain, in that she cares a lot about how people feel and react with each other. I’m going to go on a tangent now because this may seem a bit nebulous (as if everything already isn’t). Her abilities change depending on how the writers feel. Sometimes she knows someone is lying, sometimes she doesn’t and what could’ve been resolved in two minutes becomes a whole episode, and her abilities are strangely quantified. What I mean by that is that Data, who doesn’t normally feel emotions, gets an ‘emotion chip’, and all of a sudden she can feel him. She is at the same time both an interesting character and the most problematic because her ability implies universality among humanoid species (if I recall correctly there are some nonhumanoid species she can read and some humanoid species she can’t, again writer dependent). And I would criticize that more except it’s actually addressed. And with that same thought process applied, you can guess that Data gets similar emotions because humanoids will create what they know, just that emotions are not understood yet (despite it being the central characteristic of the betazoids). So, as I have asked for all other characters, how does she look for meaning in life? If you’ll notice, all of the main characters will have similar goals because they’re Starfleet. That isn’t too relevant in TNG but will be relevant in Deep Space 9. She wants harmony and personal felicity between people. That may seem a little vacuous, but it’s while she explores the galaxy. Her career is on her mind, and part of the meaning of her life is seeing where life takes her.

Worf is the Klingon that serves along with the rest of them in Starfleet. He takes over for Tasha Yar as the security officer… and her story is kinda interesting, but she died after the first season (while Worf gets continually dunked on because his answer is always force and that’s no good in TNG) so most of her story didn’t get developed until much later. Yada yada yada, Worf has a longer character arc, especially in the later seasons. Despite being raised on Earth, he can’t give up his Klingon heritage. In certain ways, he fetishizes Klingon culture and reveres it to a degree other Klingons don’t. But on the other hand, his faith in Klingon religion and ritual unifies the empire. Speaking of which, that’s the main question for him. The Klingon equivalent of Jesus, Kahless, comes back, but it turns out he’s a clone from some DNA they have. He has a choice, whether he believes what is more important, authenticity or pragmatism. That is, whether he should denounce Kahless because he is not evidence of the genuine and miraculous afterlife, or should he worry more about the Klingon empire uniting behind their returned prophet.

Wesley Crusher is the last one I’m going to talk about. He’s the son of one of the officers and is allowed to apprentice as someone important. I don’t quite remember what seasons they are, but some seasons he appears, some seasons he doesn’t. I mention him because there’s this weird relationship of sons and fathers, both between Crusher and Picard and between Riker (the first officer I didn’t mention) and Picard too, where Crusher is the kid, young and stupid, Riker is the 30-ish man, bold and aspiring, and Picard is the wise man, older and more philosophical. I mention Crusher especially because the seventh season kinda sucks, but Crusher gets a conclusion that matches with the themes of the series. The wanderer, an alien of seemingly infinite knowledge, recruits him into exploring the universe in ways that are far beyond human capabilities. He finds his purpose in the universe.

I’m sorry to skip Riker, Geordi LaForge, Beverly Crusher and Guinan, but chest la vie. Guinan gets half of her character development in one of the movies, so uh, it would have to be long if I didn’t skip over it.

The plot:

TNG’s first season is awful and boring, but it lays down some of the ground for the better seasons, except for the second episode. Never, ever watch the second episode.

Anyway, back to the first episode (and letting anything else go to waste), the crew of the Enterprise go to a planet on the outer reaches of the Federation. On the way there, the ship is intercepted by a power they later recognize as originating from a being of unimaginable power, Q, who can cause anything at all to happen with a snap of his fingers. Q states that Jean-Luc is on trial for the human race because of all the atrocities they have committed, dating back to what was considered the worst time for humanity, between now (the early 20th century) for a century, when there were (will be? would be?) nuclear wars, eugenics wars and great inequality.

So, I said most of the ideas/background of Star Trek isn’t really covered in TOS, but it’s explored a lot more in depth here and in DS9. Human society was (will be/would be) devastated, but they were saved and slowly got to where they would be with the help of the Vulcans and the desire to explore and better themselves.

Anyway, it’s mostly a sideshow. A weakness in having a team of writers and having the story written over such a long time that very few long-term plans pay off. One of them is whether Q is impulsive and bored, given how boring omnipotence and eternal life is, or whether he’s cunning and has a long term plan, which is what the first and last episode of TNG would have us think. Every other episode would have us think he’s arrogant, cocky and kinda stupid.

There are two other big plot threads, the Klingons and the Borg. As far as the Klingons, you can get it mostly from the TOS part of this blog series and the part about Worf. The main idea is that they are searching for an identity in a universe where they’ve been outclassed by civility. Where do their loyalties lie? Is it with the 24 royal houses? Is it with the empire as a whole? Is it with them as individuals? Oh, by the way, Worf’s father was supposedly responsible for selling out a Klingon base which ended up with a massacre. But it was actually the father of the current leader of the council at the head of the Klingon Empire, and revealing the truth (simultaneously clearing his own name because the son pays for the sins of the father) is the choice Worf has to make.

The difference between this and TOS is that TNG makes very few judgments about cultures. TOS does. Kirk and Spock unabashedly call the Klingons a bunch of barbarians. TNG doesn’t do that. Even though the Klingon empire may be anathema to the Federation, it is another culture, and Picard respects that. He cares more about doing what’s right. There’s more detail to it it, but that’s what I can say without going in to a lot more detail. I’m being long-winded enough.

The Borg are the most intriguing villain of Star Trek, at least until Voyager. The Borg are a technologically advanced species from an entirely unexplored part of the galaxy. They are alien in a way that no one else is. Every single mind in their civilization of every single being is hooked up to their massive gestalt consciousness. Each drone as they are called has the voice and consciousness of every other Borg inside their mind at the same time. So each of them have trillions of other beings inside of them and their beings are inside trillions of others.

However, no drone is differentiable from another. And what they do that’s so threatening enough to make them an antagonist is that they go around the galaxy and absorb entire civilizations with the goal of achieving perfection.

So why is this antithetical to the Federation? Well, besides the Borg trying to absorb them, what do they do? They destroy uniqueness in the name of preserving it by forcing it into their collective. Their motto, after all, is ‘Resistance is Futile’, indicating that they are perfectly conscious of what they are doing. But more than anything else, all of the major powers are roughly on the same level of technological and social development, but the Borg are so powerful and vast that they can easily do what they say. However, humans are almost minor enough to not really warrant the Borg’s attention.

So the Borg only really come up two times. The first is when they invade Earth. They assimilate Picard to be their mouthpiece… in order to make the people of Earth more at peace with their upcoming assimilation. It’s pretty early on, but, uh, that doesn’t seem very Borg-like? I’m not sure.

The more important episode happens substantially later when a Borg ship crashes, and one drone survives and are cut off. The crew of the Enterprise discover a virus that, if the drone gets reabsorbed into the collective, could destroy it all. Because they see the Borg as the closest thing a non-theistic society can conceive of as evil, the decision seems simple. However, as time goes on, Picard develops empathy for the drone and refuses to condemn the whole Borg collective to death, even if they would do the equivalent to humans.

I remember reading the introduction to a Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess said in the introduction if artists and writers knew the answers to everything, they wouldn’t be writing. It’s fairly obvious now that I’m older, but it seemed particularly novel and interesting when I was younger. I think that was the philosophy of the writers of TNG. They wanted to ask questions, and it is harder to get any satisfying answers. However indisputably, it shows the better word that we can achieve. with cooperation, care for each other and curiosity.