[horatio]

I hope they would. But they can see my faces just like I can see theirs. I am e.g. all for religious freedom and against the Islamophobic scum that becomes stronger and stronger in Europe ... but I am totally fine with forbidding people to wear burqas in the public space. It's a matter of meeting yourself as fellow-citizens eye to eye and that's why I'd appreciate it if hooded cops were a matter of the past. Guess what, I might even decide to use my civil right to demonstrate one day if I don't have to fear anymore to get beaten up.



About Trek, assuming that he isn't a robot, why hasn't he opened his helmet? Because it would have ruined his cool look.
That's my main issue, empty effects and the lack of a vision. It wasn't the former which made Trek last for decades, it was the latter.

[kevin]

Obviously, in your picture there.........................those officers need those for protection in some circumstances.

Now, OK, they could have had him open up his face covering it (maybe that's how they could have cameod the Shat? but it still wouldn't have made the place a paradise) but using that alone to make a judgement about the entire planet is as fallacious as listening only to Picard's glowing platitudes about it as well - you've got to take a look at it ALL and there's mixed messages about a few things really.

Obviously since we're not meant to ask questions about some of it in the first place. But the clues are there buried in through accidental and deliberate depictions and dialogue.

Like the eternal discussion over Trekonomics in the Federation.

[horatio]

I don't mind that they are protected, I mind that they cover their faces. That's what they have in common with the anarchist mobs they sometimes fight against and I appreciate neither, be it hooded cops, hooded anarchists or women behind burqas.
How can an open society be possible if people disguise themselves?

Well, let's take a look at it all: Robocop, brawling cadets, abusive stepfather, McCoy's vita. Not as bad as Ferenginar but not a really nice place either. I prefer the heaven and hell dialectics from previous Trek incarnations. Make it an issue and don't just paint it so indifferently as background.

[kevin]

It isn't an 'issue' in the first place. It's an artificially inflated one.

In TOS and the TOS films alone you have crew members drinking, flirting, cursing, brawling in bars, screwing hookers in friendly ports, oogling scantily clad women, grumbling about being forced back into their jobs against their will, arguing about politics, getting arrested in bars ALL the while they still manage to run a major power based on the ideas of exploration and live in a lovely Earth. It's seldom at the forefront of any given story..........but it's in there in the background.

If all that is going on just on one ship in the fleet, do you really think it's not all going on back on Earth as well? I can hardly believe it's all isolated onto the Enterprise.

Let's face it.............23rd Century humans were just a lot more fun than their 24th Century counterparts!!

Partaaaaaay in the 23rd C!!

[horatio]

So in TOS the vision is in the background and in the foreground character brawl with Klingons in one episode.
In ST09 there is also a vision in the background, elements of it are e.g. Kirk's or McCoy's family life.

[kevin]

Oh, they had a less than perfect life...............boo-hoo.

How mollycoddled is the 23rd/24th Century that nothing is expected to ever go wrong for people or that they can spend their whole life getting things their way? Seriously, how whiny are they? Oh wait, it doesn't work that way at all............let's ask Riker, whose dick dad dumped him when the going got tough.

Those 23rd Century folk would probably kick the *** of those in the 24th, I gotta tell ya. They were much hardier in the 23rd Century.

[horatio]

About Riker's dad, the episode clearly implied that he erred. I failed to notice any such tones when Spock marooned Kirk or executed revenge. What an irony that the movie is partly modeled on another movie that points out the futility of revenge.

Hard? Having a 16h day like Picard or bearing the responsibility of command like Kirk is hard.
Beating up a farmboy, robbing your ex-husband or having an economic system that forces people to work somewhere despite phobias is not hard, it is wicked. Which brings us back to the fascistoid cop and thus closes the circle.

[kevin]

In your head, sure.

But you want to live in la-la land where everyone can do only what they love all the live-long day and everything is wonderful and Earth is a golden Field of Dreams.

That's fine - it's the very nice Berman era reinterpretation and extension of the earlier Roddenberry redefinition of his own future ideals (back from when people were also allowed to act like slightly more real people - read the above screwing, brawling and drinking - and it's popular enough, but is it any coincidence that by the 24th Century everything is artificial? The synthehol, the meat they eat, even the environment of Earth herself thanks to the modification systems?), but since I've never been a hardcore Roddenberryian on that particular issue anyway, I can get by without the propaganda.

Besides, it was a bit late for an apology from Kyle Riker by the time he did it.

[horatio]

I never took you for somebody who has this drill sergeant attitude and thinks that doing wicked things to people is great because it hardens them up.

[kevin]

I never used to either, but then I look around me more and more in the world and I see indolent people who think they are entitled to an easy life just................because.

I don't think it's a healthy proposition.

Life is sometimes about taking knocks and having to get on with it as well. Or starting out with a bad hand and turning it around by working................or getting a push from some other event in life. Something that I am increasingly convinced some folks in modern society (especially the West) think is not something they should have to deal with either.

It's not wickedness - besides, in the film McCoy doesn't even say he is scared of space.......he says he has a fear of flying. Much like the fear of transporters he had in TMP. Yet he still got made to transport up instead of shuttle. Was that wicked of Kirk to make him?