It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures. Ask about sci-fi and what comes to mind first is almost always some kind of dystopia. Terminator, 1984, Deep Space 9, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Dune, Tank Girl, Minority Report, iRobot, Westworld, Altwred Carbon. Those aren't worlds that seem like great places to live if you're not rich! So Star Trek is much a work of fiction as the rest of those, but for all its flaws, at least is paints a mostly nice picture of the future that someone might want to live in, not crushed under the heel of a corporation. It makes sense; a story with no conflict isn't interesting, and dystopia provides for conflict. To philosophize, it's why I think we're so afraid of AI and robots and the future. It's why I wrote my book the way I did.

> The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all. Any and all of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. None do anything bad (unless it's a plot device with an explanation that absolves them).

That is an oversimplification and simply not true at face value.

'The original Star Trek', even less so! Very morally questionable at times. In TNG, you are watching the flagship of Starfleet, it's the most coveted starship. The crew are the best they have to offer. It's obvious that they would be the most professional. Even then, they make mistakes, often serious. Sacrificing themselves - if needed - is part of their job too.

Riker does spend a long time on the Enterprise, even after being offered command a few times. He does eventually move on.

Maybe they are a little too perfect, but I'd argue that's for the best. The moments where there's friction within the crew are much more memorable because of it.

Thats in contrast with some newer Trek which have more conflicts than Stargate Universe characters and would be considered way too unprofessional even if they were Lower Decks characters.

I agree this is important to keep in mind. I wonder about this a lot when I find myself admiring fictional characters for how they handled situations and how it turns out for them.

I don't think TNG is as simple as you make it out to be. All of the characters have serious flaws. Picard does make mistakes (including some very serious, consequential ones). Characters do get angry, jealous, etc. and do bad things. Sometimes their friends help them overcome it, other times they figure it out on their own, etc. It's episodic so it usually goes back to the status quo, and that can feel kind of trite through today's lens. But it's exactly that ability to solve problems (technical, emotional, organizational, etc.) as a team that's so compelling for many of us.

All utopias are fictional. Arguably that is definitive of the term as coined by Thomas More.

The new age term is "Competence Porn" and man I love it so much.

It's also military fiction, which is important to remember.

Most of the characters in Star Trek are members of the military. So of course, there's a chain of command and orders have to be followed.

The Federation of Planets wasn't a dictatorship.

Captain Jellico ( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Edward_Jellico#Captain_... ) provides a counterpoint to the "how Picard runs his ship" (which incidentally had Data installed as the XO over Riker).

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

Ursula K. LeGuin

Roddenberry had much less to do with TNG, which is why it's better.

Apparently by the end of TNG’s run the writers were really struggling since having no interpersonal conflicts (a key tenant laid down by Roddenberry) is pretty bad for character development

DS9 did good in adding a bunch of non star fleet characters who had maybe more realistic motivations. Voyager tried but immediately just turned them all into a big happy family just like TNG.

> The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all.

That's why Orville is my favorite of the newer ST series. It has the high moral standards of the original series, but with characters who are far from perfect, who make mistakes, and who are sometimes even a little weird.

That's sort of the point of fiction, though, isn't it? Sure, a more complex fiction might be more rewarding, but simple ideals can also be very satisfying and can be grounding too.

Have you heard about religion? Its fiction too. Yet it has survived as long aa the chimp troupe has. The human brain generates predictions over different time horizons. When they dont align what is it supposed to do to prevent itself unraveling? It generates fiction. Fiction is how it stays stable.

> surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at al

Sir, I believe you have not watched it.

Also keep in mind that part of what makes the utopia work, canonically, is that humans have somehow evolved beyond their vices and bigotry and the fully voluntarist socialist society it portrays just works because everyone is perfectly fine working just for the betterment of humankind or personal intellectual gratification.

In other words it only works because it ignores basic human nature. Which is one reason why Star Trek's utopia isn't really tractable. The others being the technology that completely ignores the laws of physics. Free energy, warp drives and magic boxes that grant wishes.

If people want a science fiction "utopia" I'd say look at Babylon 5. It certainly has its flaws but its Utopia isn't real (because they never are,) it's an ideal that people are always struggling towards.

At the same time, TNG did depict Picard as a solitary and isolated figure, whose family relationships had frayed, and it's not hard to view his unusual dedication to his leadership as a way to deal with that emptiness in the rest of his life.

> Some later Trek shows (e.g. Voyager) turned captains into geniuses who knew more about everything than all of their underlings.

Not everything. Picard was command track his whole career, I think the same was true for Sisko. But Janeway started as a science officer before switching to command, and Archer was a test pilot. Their experience in those fields would sometimes be useful. It's similar to how Picard's interest in archeology was sometimes useful.

Thank you for this. You put my thoughts into words.

You could play it around those people for 100 years and it would make no difference.

I imagine they'd also conclude Picard is a loser.

He wasn’t Gene Roddenberrys first choice. In fact he had to get talked into casting Patrick Stewart by the other execs.

Roddenberry was after someone younger. There’s even a casting show reel of Stewart wearing a toupee and speaking with a very bad French accent.

Although Frakes is close to a god in my books as an actor and a director. But never a good captain in TNG, I agree. He's a loved director though, and part of many great Star Trek episodes, and a few good ones for The Orville.

If we're talking modern day? Edward James Olmos channelling Commander Adama would probably be a very close 2nd if not outstanding on it's own. I could potentially see Scott Glenn pulling it off but that one's a touch iffy IMO.