If the United Federation of Planets Were an International Organization

Yesterday, a bluesky discussion focused on whether the Federation of Planets was essentially the UN with US domination or something else. 
While I have written far more here about Star Wars, I have actually used Star Trek more in my teaching, and I have watched far more Trek (there is simply many more hours of Trek content).  Plus having written about NATO (the ebook is less than $18!), I have a few views on the matter.

To start, what is the United Federation of Planets and what is Starfleet?  The Federation is an alliance of planets, more so than it is a true federation a la the US.  Not even a confederation like Canada.  How so?  The planets still have their own foreign policies--we see plenty of meetings of diplomats from members to various proceedings.  Note, diplomats, not just leaders or representatives.  Just as I always like to make fun of Texas secessionists for having their embassy in Texas when it should be in Washington, DC or London or some place beyond the territory of the "country" it is representing, federal units (with the funky exception of Quebec) don't have embassies and ambassadors.  This is a short cut, a bit of evidence, for the basic idea that the units in the federation are more independent, more akin to nation-states than they are to units in a federal country.  So, yeah, the name is deceptive.  

Starfleet adds to the confusion because it is the military (despite denials) of the Federation.  This would make the Federation appear more like a country if it had a monopoly--if Starfleet was the only armed force within the federation.  However, I seem to remember various planets within the fed having their own armed starships including Vulcan.  

So, despite the name, the Federation is not akin to a single country.  It is easier to dispense with the idea that the Federation is the European Union.  How much of the series and movies are about economic regulations and subsidizing agriculture?  Ok, more directly, the European Union, despite many attempts, does not really have a military, and it does not have a common foreign policy.  The EU forces that have shown up in Bosnia and elsewhere only do so (this will be brutal, sorry) after NATO has done all of the heavy lifting. It was NATO that ended the Bosnia conflict, it was NATO that compelled Serbia to let peacekeepers into Kosovo, it is NATO deterring the Russians from attacking the Baltics, and so on.  In trade negotiations, the EU acts as a single actor and with great power.  In other stuff?  Not so much. 

Which leaves the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  Clearly, from the name and from Gene Roddenberry's idealism, the United Federation of Planets is just a spacey UN, right?*  The stuff above that makes the Federation not a country but many countries or nation-states works toward the UN idea--a bunch of different sovereign entities constantly negotiating, sending diplomats hither and yon to settle all kinds of issues.  The big questions are what is the Federation for and what is Starfleet for?  The classic answer is collective security: to deter aggression by any member against any member by providing assurances that any target of aggression will receive assistance from the rest of the community.  Until Alexander Wendt has his way, the entire imagination of the role of the UN is focused on members.  The UN is a universal organization...on Earth--the only countries that are not in the UN are Taiwan and ... depending on how you count the Vatican and Palestine and various unrecognized separatist folks.  The key things about this notion of collective defense are that no member is excluded from its protection, and it is not aimed at any particular aggressor. 

The UN does not have a standing military, but has "sent" massive interventions when the membership have agreed, to thwart North Korea's aggression in 1950 (because the Soviet diplomats were stupidly boycotting the UN Security Council at the time) and Iraq's in 1990-91.  In both cases, it was really the US military and some allies under a UN banner in the former and nearly so in the latter.  One could argue that Starfleet is mostly a Terran/American endeavor and its activities are simply under a federation banner.  But again, the aim is at members.  In the original Trek, maybe some of it was aimed at fostering peace among members, but for most of Trek's history, Starfleet was aimed at protecting its members from non-members.

Which gets us to NATO, which is not really a collective security organization, but a collective defense organization.  It is not so much aimed at protecting Greece from Turkey, but all of the members from external threats--mostly the Soviet Union/Russia but also terrorism, maybe China, etc.  "An attack on one is an attack on all", Article V, the heart of the alliance, is aimed at outsiders. All of NATO's military endeavors have been on the border of or entirely outside the territory of its members.  Kind of like how much of Starfleet's activities are at the borders, patrolling nearby neutral zones, or going beyond to intervene, despite the Prime Directive, in non-members.  How many episodes are akin to the Kosovo effort?  A boodle. 

Of course, the parallel is not perfect, since Starfleet is a coherent military organization from the academy to the command staff and in between, which NATO is not.  Its captains may buck orders (Kirk more so than others, but all of them did so), but not because their home country/planet had different rules than the Federation for operating in place x or y.  That is, the Steve and Dave book on the Federation would focus far less on the political systems of members states and far more on the personalities of individual ship captains, compared to our work on NATO (our book and articles focused mostly on whether countries had coalition governments or not, what kinds of coalitions they had, and personality of presidents and prime ministers only kicked in if there were no coalitional bargaining).

Of course, there is no perfect parallel between the Federation and an existing Terran international organization, but given the focus of the Federation and the activities of Starfleet, NATO appears to be the closest, and I didn't even discuss enlargement.

 

 

 

*  I'd argue that Babylon 5 comes a lot closer to that, but that is a post for another day. 

 

Failing the Kobyashi Maru with Pride!

Today, Mrs. Spew, College Spew, and myself went to the the Star Trek exhibit at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa.  It was a heap of fun, but not quite the same thing as the Star Wars experience we did three years ago.  There were far less artifacts from the making of the movies, although there were some.  The experience was mostly the same--you are given a doo-hickey (like a watch this time, I forget what shape it was last ime) that you press against a variety of interactive things along the way.  In the Star Wars experience, it was about identity and what kind of Jedi (or Sith) one might be.  Here, it was to determine which specialty one should have in Starfleet: Command, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Comms, whatever.  Didn't provoke as much thought as the identity theme of Star Wars.  But it did get me interested in watching the Enterprise series led by Scott Bakula. We started watching long ago but then stopped after a few episodes.  Apparently, it got better.

Overall, the experience was good, but too crowded as there were many lines for the various interactive activities.  Still, some were quite cool, including being teleported:

Pondering Star Trek: Into Darkness

I saw ST: ID yesterday as part of the TRIP workshop, as the planned outing to a lake for canoeing or a hike met the reality of one of the longest and most powerful downpours I can remember (aside from those I played ultimate through).  And I left ST: ID wondering if it was really good or really bad.  So, look beyond the break for my first attempt to think it through.

Trek Travesty

Rankings are always so rank.  But they are blog-bait.  I liked Yglesias's post on the new movie versus the tv shows, and then he had to screw it up somewhat with his ranking of ST stuff.  So, let's get to the re-ranking:*

* Note, I am not involved in ST, so Wuffle's Law does not apply.

First, the movies. Y has ST II: Wrath of Khan first, which is indisputable, but ST VI Undiscovered Country before ST IV: Voyage Home?  Really?  I guess one can debate that, but ST: The Motion Picture deserves to be last for the simple fact that this slowest, most unoriginal, most boring Trek movie should have killed the re-birth of the franchise.  I dare anyone to watch the movie again.  Ug.

Second, the TV series. He has Next Generation > Deep Space Nine > Voyager > Original Series > Enterprise.  Really?  Voyager is better than Classic Trek?  I dare anyone to name an episode of Voyager that they can remember by name or even by description.  City on The Edge of Forever, Let that be Your Final Battlefield (a standard for my ethnic conflict classes), Naked Time, Trouble with Tribbles, Devil in the Dark, Amok Time, Omega Glory, and so on.  Sure, there was heaps of cheese and some truly awful (Spock's Brain), but many thoughtful, interesting, challenging episodes.  What do I remember about Voyager?  That it was damned annoying.  Next Generation had better acting and effects than the Original Trek, but its length meant that it had uneven parts, like whenever the writers got lazy and had a holodeck adventure.  One ep of that would have been fine.  Having the occasional B  or C plot would have been fine, but way too often it was used because writers were lacking in imagination. A mysterious but wise bartender?  Um, ok. DS9 was excellent most of the time.  Enterprise?  I stopped watching after a few episodes, but it apparently got better.  My ranking would be   Classic Trek for its highlights and not for its Spock Brain-iness > TNG (which took about two seasons to figure itself out, just remember how Troi started out) > DS9 (bonus points for Quark)  > Enterprise (because it caused me less pain) > Voyager.

Third, the Episode rankings is just wrong in so many ways.   Four of the best ten are Voyager or Enterprise?  I think not.

Fourth, villians.  Q was heaps of fun, and Gul Dukat and Khan were epic in their ways.  I actually think the Borg are over-rated.  Started out good but got over-used.  Lore?  Really?  Evil data?  Thanks but no thanks.

Fifth, best crew members: the list here is Spock > Data > Worf > Kira > McCoy > Riker > The Doctor > Hoshi Sato (?) > Geordi > Dax.  Ug.  The top five are probably right, although one could reorder them a bit.  Riker?  He was pretty vanilla until the last couple of seasons, if I remember correctly.  The Doctor?  Yes and no.  The actor was great and snarky, but the premise and then how he got used?  Not so much.  I think the list is missing one Scottie, is it not?  I would change the bottom five of this list to be Scottie > Dax > Odo > Geordi > the average of Sulu/Chekhov.

No ranking of the Captains?  Picard > Kirk > Sisko > Scott Bakula (for Quantum Leap street cred if nothing else) > Janeway.


Update: I caught my typo but so sad that my fingers typed work and not Worf at first.  Probably guilt-induced.

Trek Omissions

Matt Yglesias has written a great piece on the Trek universe.  He went further and bolder than I ever did, as I have seen all of the movies but missed some episodes of Deep Space Nine, gave up after a while on Voyager, and only watched a few episodes of Enterprise.  His views are not terribly controversial (the holodeck was lazy writer crack), but he puts all of the shows into a good context and one that raises a big challenge for the new movies.  The first JJ Abrams ST movie was thrilling but tossed aside the entire universe that had been previously created with the time travel stuff.  This led to fun stuff, like Spock + Uhura, but it means that this timeline lacks the richness of created by the decades of previous stuff. 

Yglesias calls for a new TV show: "It’s a scandal that the golden age of niche television is passing us by without any representation from the franchise that practically invented niche television."  And I agree, but now JJ Abrams may have screwed that up--if there were to be a TV show, in which universe would it exist?  How would a TV series fit with this on-going movie series?  I don't know. 

All I do know is this: I hope the third movie in the new series is not "Into More Darkness" because, as I have said before, darkness for the sake of darkness is just darkness.  I am already not looking forward to the fact that the next set of Marvel movies are covered in dark sauce--Thor: the Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (it is darker in winter, right?). 

So, if a new Trek series were to be Star Trek: The Dark Days, count me out.

Silly Sunday A Day Early

So much goodness in a video game ad. Such a great riff on a Classic classic Star Trek episode

My Inner Geek is Outed

Ok, sequestering sucks and shows that American government is broken.  But it also demonstrates the joy of the nerd-dominated National Security community I follow on twitter.  How so?

Twitter went nuts when President Obama said he could not get the Republicans to do what is right because of his finite powers, that he could not do some sort of Jedi mind-meld!




He mixed his space franchises--Jedis may have Vulcan-like abilities, but the mind meld thing is of Star Trek.  So, this sent twitter on a wonderful spiral for awhile

 My contribution: "these are not the references you are looking for"

My favorites:

RT @jpodhoretz: "By Grabthar's hammer, you will be sequestered."
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) March 1, 2013

RT @angelaisms: "Dammit Luke, I'm a doctor, not your father!" #ObamaSciFiQuotes
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) March 1, 2013

"I think you will regret staking out that claim, Mr. President." --Gene Roddenberry
— Anna Holmes (@AnnaHolmes) March 1, 2013

Some would say that Obama did know what he was talking about:

BREAKING: Via @technosailor: There IS a #JediMindMeld: j.mp/XLlzR7 Is POTUS bigger SW geek than we ever realized? (@digiphile)
— Robert Stephens (@rstephens) March 1, 2013

but if you pay attention to the "force meld" in the expanded universe, that is not what he was trying to convey today.

Still, good times.

Updated: Obama's White House realized what he did and grabbed it with both hands:

Curing Writer's Bloc With ...

From here.

Star Trek in the Rear View Mirror

I am a fan of both Stars Trek and Wars, but I do really enjoy this take:

Why The Star Trek Universe is Secretly Horrifying -- powered by Cracked.com

Apparently, no creativity in the future as all of the holodeck sequences are pre-1940?
Oh no, the ST fan just broke out the Prime Directive (which I never thought about in the same context as Spidey!).  A losing argument, of course, since it is violated far more than it is respected even by Picard.
Best line makes one thing of Apple stores and North Korea in same context!

Equal time for Star Trek fans who mock Star Wars:

Why the Ending of 'Star Wars' is Secretly Kind of Dumb -- powered by Cracked.com

Oh, what the hell, a third thanks to Charli Carpenter:

VW Wins Again

Just delightful:

Oh, and you need to watch it twice as the various dogs, well, you will see.

SW Parody of the Day

HT to Ain't It Cool: Blaxploitation meets Star Wars:

Ranking the Raiders

With the new Star Trek movie raising the obvious and expected question of where it ranks in the ST pantheon,* I will focus on another franchise instead: Indiana Jones. I was inspired to this also because Last Crusade was on last night, and I was surprised to see how close it came to usurping Raiders as the best of the series. There is no question that those two are the best two of the four. Whether Crystal Skull is better or worse than Temple of Doom is less clear. I guess I will figure it out sometime in the next 800 words.

Raiders has something that the rest cannot match--it was the first, and it set the bar mighty high. It also has Karen Allen throughout the entire movie, rather than just a few bits here and there--one of things elevating Skull. Indeed, that raises one of the big questions that may drive the entire ranking: the female co-star.

So, Love Interests: Karen Allen/Marion Ravenwood (Raiders, Skull)> Allison Doody/Elsa Schneider (Crusade) > Kate Capshaw/Willie Scott. Admittedly, Karen Allen would always win here because she was also in my other favorite movie of all time.

• Karen Allen/Marion was simply the best: spunk, humor, cunning, an ability to imbibe and yet try to escape. She was the most pro-active of the love interests (a term to separate Cate Blanchett from the rest), owning her own business, trying to escape, etc. She was fun in Skulls, but did not have as much to do. Still spunky and funny.
  
• Allison Doody had more complexity in her role than the rest, as she had to be desirable, smart, and yet fatally flawed due to her greed. She was conniving enough not only to fool Indy, but also to trick Donovan who knew she was not to be trusted. Not only did she chew on Indy's lip, but she made it easy to believe that both Henry Jonses would, well, partake of her charms. Plus she carried off the accent well, given her Irish background. Indeed, this is one of the closest categories, depsite my deep fondness (ok, enduring crush) for KA.
  
• Kate Capshaw got quite a lot of backlash, in part because she ended up being Mrs. Speilberg, but also because her character was whiny and superficial. But then, you were supposed to find her annoying. So, I think her work was fine, but she was annoying, so that makes her a less attractive/favorable love interest than the other two.

The Object: Ark of the Convenant > Holy Grail > Shankara Stones > Crystal Skull. Ordinarily, I would say that the Holy Grail would make for a better target for Indy and his competitors, but it is not clear how its powers would be as advantageous to the Nazis as the Ark. The Ark clearly was a weapon of war and not only melted the faces of the Nazis but also sent bolts of something through the other soldiers, contained spirits of some kind and erased the markings on its crate. The Grail resonated because it is the Grail--the most famous missing object and capabile of inspiring obsession and great comedy. Ranking the Stones vs. the Skull was harder, but the unintentional comedy involved with the skull marks it down.

Bad Guy: Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman-Raiders) > Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett-Skull) > Mola Ram (Amrish Puri-Doom) > Walter Donovan (Julian Glover-Crusade)

1. Belloq had more personality than the others. He made a reasonable, if not entirely convincing, claim that he was just a darker version of Indiana Jones. And he was able to use this knowledge to call Indy's bluff when he threatened to blow up the ark. He also tried to protect Marion.
2. Blanchett comes in second here mostly because the other two villains are pretty lame. She was not given that much to work with, but ran with it well. Spalko was a committed commie, smart and pretty dangerous. Yet, she could not defeat Mutt (Shia LeB) in a duel.
3. Mola Ram was actually pretty scary. Not that bright, but scary--sharp fingernails and everything.
4. Walter Donovan was just a greedy businesman. Obsessed by immortality but stupid enough to trust Elsa at the end.
   

Second Stooges: A key category where Raiders stands out. Ronald Lacey as Major Toht, the Gestapo torture guy, was the scariest, but also had the best comedic bits, like the numchuk-like device he used to hang his coat. Vogel, the prominent Nazi in Crusade, was simply not that scary or funny or interesting.


Least Unintentional Comedy: Raiders > Crusade > Doom > Skull.

• Skull: We can perhaps forgive Lucas and Speilberg over the aliens and skull stuff because they were playing on the 1950's movies that featured such things, just as Raiders was like a 1930's serial. But, Indy surviving an atomic explosion in a refrigerator was funny for the wrong reasons. It was just too silly.
  
• Doom: Similarly, there is the sequence where he leaps from the plane and survives due to the liferaft as parachute. There are other parts of the movie as well that are funny for the wrong reasons.
• Crusade: Old knight.
  
• Raiders: I don't think there is a sequence in the movie that is unintentionally funny. Let me know if I am wrong about that.
  

Best Action: Raiders > Crusade > Doom > Skull. This is where Raiders and Crusade are the tightest because Crusade has a lot of great action sequences back to back to back, just like the first movie.

• Raiders has the opening scene in the Amazon, the fight at the bar in Nepal, the fight on and around the plane, the long fight sequence on and below the truck (just amazing in a world with limited CGI), and the opening of the ark (kind of an action scene).
• Crusade had the battle in Venice, the motorcycle joust, the fighter plane sequence, and the fight against and on the tank.
• Doom had a great musical opening number. Some people don't like it, but Anything Goes was fun. And the battle on the rope bridge was good, but the mining cart ride was a bit over the top (unintentionally funny), although the battle in the mine itself was a good one.
• Skull: the sequence at the beginning in the warehouse was ok, and the jungle chase was pretty good, but pales compared to the truck race in Raiders and the tank battle in Crusade.
  

Best Icky: Snakes (Raiders) > Bugs (Doom) > Ants (Skull) > Rats (Crusade). The snake scene is just great action and pretty terrifying, even if you can catch a glimpse of the glass separating Indy from the Cobra. The bugs were really, really icky in Doom, and that counts for something, even if they were not dangerous. The ants were very nasty and reminded me of a classic old movie about killer ants--but I forget which one. But, given the bugs in Doom, the ants were a bit repetitive. Still, pretty cool. The rats, beside the bit about getting in Elsa's hair while in the water, were just rats.

Best Prof Moment: Of course, one of the best aspect of Indiana Jones is that he is a professor. The coolest prof in filmdom--not hard, given that most are portrayed as lechs. So, Crusade > Raiders > Skull > Doom. In Crusade, he climbs out the window to avoid office hours. If only I could unlock the sliding glass door to the balcony, I could climb down, too. Alas. Raiders (and Crusade) had Indiana Jones lecturing, with rapt attention from his admirers. Skull had the nice bit of racing through Yale and Mutt (Shia) saying "You are a teacher?" "Part-time" was the response, with the rest of his prof hours spent on research and service. Not even a glimmer of prof in Doom, which perhaps did Doom the movie.

Hardest To Turn Away From: This is a Sports Guy standard--which movie must you completely watch if you stumble upon it while switching channels? Raiders > Crusade (although it is pretty close since Crusaders is quite re-watch-able) > Doom. Doom is still fun to watch, but has enough scenes that are not as fully engrossing so switching the channel is possible. I have not seen Skulls enough to evaluate yet.

Where Do We Stand? Raiders was tops in all categories except for Prof moment. Indeed, Crusade is not as close as I thought it was after re-watching it last night. Crusade's flaws, although minor, were enough to create some separation. Crusade was 2nd in almost every category, except had worst bad guy and worst icky moment, but best Prof moment. Doom actually held up pretty well with mostly third places against tough competition and a better icky moment than all but Raiders. But severe downgrade for no prof moment. Skulls was consistently inferior--either third or fourth, except for Cate Blanchett and I may be giving that character more credit for her as an actress than the role and its impact. Will be seeing Skull a few more times in the next few weeks since it is on the HBO-equivalents up here and will be better able to assess.

Perhaps I gamed the rankings, given my pre-existing preferences, but I think that these criteria help to clarify what might have been a somewhat obvious ranking ;) As an Indy fan, I enjoyed all four, despite the critical reviews of Doom and Skull. They were all good rides, but Raiders and Crusades were excellent movies. And neither Doom nor Skulls did as much damage to the franchise and the canon as Jar Jar Binks, midichlorians, and the fact that Leia remembered her mother in Return of the Jedia who died when giving birth to her in Revenge of the Sith. Of course, I still enjoyed all of the Star Wars movies, even the prequels, especially as there were some fun politics disguised by bad dialogue and some bad acting.

To conclude, I still remember the ad campaign for Doom: If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.





* Ok, in ST, I would say that the new movie is 3rd, with Khan and Whales ranking 1st and 2nd. Hard to remember the different NextGen movies, but I would guess that the New Contact (Borg/time travel) would be fourth, and then ST6 and then the various odd number and Next Gen that blur, with the key condition that the worst ST movie is the first. Almost surprising that they were allowed to make any new ones.

Geek Squared! Star Trek and Public Goods

I have a modest spoiler so don't read below if you care about the content of the curriculum at Vulcan Junior High.





Ok, not to give anything away in the movie, but in an early sequence where the various Vulcan kids are being tested on all kinds of knowledge--math, biology, physics, etc--there was one clear social science reference--non-rivalry & non-excludability. These are the defining characteristics of Public Goods, and are central concepts in Mancur Olson's classic Logic of Collective Action. Olson famously (famous enough to make it into the 23rd century and all the way to Vulcan) argues that it will be difficult to cooperate to provide Public Goods--when one's usage of a good does not reduce its availability for others and where non-contributors cannot be excluded. In such cases, free-riding is not only likely but the logical course of action.

Olson's insights here, while often contested, have shaped how we think about political mobilization, the need for government/coercion, and especially the environment. Why recycle? If I do it and no one else does, my effort is wasted. If everyone does it but I do not, then the planet is clean and my marginal waste is irrelevant.

It is especially ironic that Public Goods appears in the new (and rockin') Star Trek because the logic of collective action largely produces a pessimistic, cynical outlook towards human nature and the possibility of cooperation but ST is all about an optimistic vision of the future. Perhaps the new writers of ST mythology, JJ Abrams and the gang, are trying to square the geek circle--that we can overcome the collective action problem and that we will so that we get this amazing future of the Federation of Planets, in which Starfleet is explicitly referred as a force for humanitarian efforts and peacekeeping. Indeed, for a minute, it sounded like the conventional perception of the mission of the Canadian Forces before Operation Medusa in Afghanistan in 2006 (first major combat for Canada since the Korean War).

Of course, Olson and his successors provide a variety of ways out of the collective action problem: small groups can mobilize as their members perceive their contributions as mattering; individual entrepreneurs can see it in their interests to facilitate and even underwrite cooperation; and the like.

To sum up, it was just a fun movie that made a very interesting and deliberate reference that is far more intriguing to me than the volume of a cylinder--another example in that sequence in the movie. This is not the first time that Star Trek has overlapped with social science, and it will almost certainly not be the last, given the box office success it is having. Live long and prosper, indeed.

Ask The Reader: To Wiki Or Not To Wiki

While my readership is not large enough for polls to work out, I will be asking for your thoughts when I am seriously confused. Which should be almost every day.

The question du jour is: Some people have posted my name on Wikipedia with a short, positive but inaccurate (although not entirely wrong) summary of my career. Should I revise it, so that it is accurate? How much shameless self-promotion is too much?

I will ponder this today while watching the ads before the trailers before Star Trek.