It surely cannot have been that long holy hell it's been exactly that long. I think of Manhunt as being a recent thing. I suppose that's only true in comparison to its predecessor.

Time is weird, man. In my head Diqiu is still the newest hottest newest thing... and that was introduced four years ago.

>Oh man, I remember that now that you've said it. That was in the
>Motion Picture novelization, wasn't it?

Indeed, which is the only reason anyone remembers that novelization. It was very high-concept at the time, right up to and including the in-character introduction from Jim Kirk.

>I remember thinking,
>the first time I read that, that it was the weirdest damn book
>when it got to talking about that stuff. Like the part where Kirk
>notes that a lot of people think he and his colleagues are weirdbeard
>retros for still having surnames.

Right?

Star Trek isn't what I'd consider the best venue for the "future societies will be very, very different in fundamental ways from our own, let's explore what that could possibly mean" sub-genre of science fiction, but you have to give them some points for trying.

>(And then there's the whole question of how the IP for the stuff
>that's being replicated is handled, which never comes up in any
>Star Trek property I can think of offhand. I suppose if you
>were a sufficiently idealized future engineer you'd work for free.)

Well, I mean... I've said this before, I think, but it bears repeating: Star Trek is primarily an aspirational series when it comes to the United Federation of Planets. It's purpose when it comes to the utopian aspects it presents isn't so much to say "here is a twenty-point blueprint for how we can make a post-scarcity society work" but rather to say "if we all pull together, and be our best selves, and inspire others to be our best selves, maybe one day we can build a world where people are all about science, and exploration, and art, and culture, rather than a world where we are all constantly knifing each other for a few more dollars."

I mean, don't get me wrong. I've had many long and fun hours trying to game out and argue about exactly how the UFP really would work if one took it seriously. I would love to watch a two-part episode whose plot synopsis was "The crew of the Enterprise attend an economic symposium. Data presents a paper on the sociological consequences of matter replication in the late 2200s. Picard gives a talk on artisanal crafts in a post-scarcity economy and hosts a wine tasting with the products of his family vineyard. Riker has a three-way with a statistician and a mathematician."

But I'm what you'd call a niche audience.

>>That job must be so immensely fraught. I remember that TNG episode
>>where some of their dudes get busted on a world that is right on the
>>cusp of warp. Great episode.
>
>I don't remember that one, but there was an episode of
>Enterprise with a roughly similar premise. It... well, it
>didn't suck, which is more than you can say for a lot of the first
>season, really. :)

I recall that one as well! Not a bad yarn.

Really, I've been going through Enterprise again lately, because Netflix has almost all the Star Treks and with Discovery coming up I was like "I should look at the other prequel series again."

And you know what? My opinion of it has improved. It is still the weakest of the Treks, and that's something considering some of the shit Voyager pulled, but there's some really good concepts in there and they're occasionally executed very well. And Jolene Blalock acts the hell out of T'Pol, which, again, is saying something considering some of the scripts they handed her.

I remember the b-plot in an otherwise very shitty episode where Archer is being implored by a less technologically advanced race to share all his cool toys with them. And he's thinking to himself "I would love to help these guys, these are good people and they deserve it, but they have zero experience with this kind of stuff; we'd have to stick around for years and make sure they don't blow themselves up because they're not used to working with antimatter, and... oh. Oh NO. This must be what the Vulcans feel like ALL THE TIME when we ask them for shit. Goddammit! Those pointy-eared motherfuckers are right." And T'Pol is standing there not-smirking at him in that way Vulcans have of not-smirking.

And I just thought "huh! Genuine growth. Archer's knee-jerk 'man, FUCK the Vulcans' attitude has actually had a narrative payoff. Good job show. I would watch a show that continually delivered at this level."

-Merc
Keep Rat