FUTILE RESISTANCE

Picture this.

A visiting starship is orbiting around your planet.

An examination of their starship notes that it is heavily armed and quite capable of not only wiping out all life on your planet but probably capable of extinguishing your sun itself.

Resistance is futile.

The landing party wear nearly identical uniforms and obey the orders implicitly of their commanding officers and are heavily armed.

Those little weapons appearance that they wear beguiles their sheer destructive power. They are obviously a dangerous species. You greet them under whatever circumstances they say when the occupants materialise on the planet.

Their idea of peace seems the opposite of how they present themselves. Clever technology means they can appear anywhere they like at will.

No home is safe. No inhabitant safe from being plucked out or destroyed. They say they are on a peace mission and talk of this organisation they are part of that has the co-operation of other planets like yourselves.

Even the nearby formerly hostile Klingon empire finally conceded and joined their ranks.

Resistance is futile. What do you do? Denying co-operation is all right. They'll return and give the proposition to a future generation who will probably agree their terms.

These terms, supposedly apply to your planet's inhabitants conduct while supposedly allowing you to keep all your own customs as well prevents you having access to any technology to enhance your culture.

No advanced space travel techniques. They'd probably hold off providing vital medicines as also being too advanced. They'll get you in the end by waiting for a more belligerent political regime.

Rumour has it that they favour world governments simply because it has only one voice. A weak voice that has to answer to all the various factions beneath it. You can go on as before providing you do not instigate war with other planets.

They will not involve themselves with local interplanetary disputes. With these people who are so powerful, what hope have you got to resist?

Resistance is still futile.

In return for your co-operation, similar starships to that big one orbiting your planet will visit regularly and offer their 'support' to your people. They have laws prohibiting their interference with your culture and won't supply technology, even if it saves lives.

They do offer to do the job themselves to repair any geological problem. No doubt this is to demonstrate their superiority as well ensuring dependency. You don't tell them that you've heard from other space-farers that these laws are frequently violated when it suits these arrogant starship captains.

You've also heard of their crew's sexual lusts that have resulted in hybrids of their people with other species. Their closeted gambling habits that are used to teach them negotiation skills. Summary executions by officers that don't leave them open to prosecution because it's part of their job.

Dissension among their higher ranks over decisions that both demonstrate strength and weakness in equal order, leaving other races guessing as to what is really going on. They are also on the lookout for uninhabited planets for colonies of their own people to take up residence. The galaxy has suddenly become a much smaller place. Worse, your part of the cake has suddenly got extremely small.

Resistance is futile.

What do you get for these services? You are not entitled to their technology unless your own scientists have already designed and have working similar machines themselves.

You are basically left in a backwater knowing that there are other races over head that you will never be able to compete with on an equal level. As you will never catch up, scientific development falters. There are no targets to aim for when it's already been done before. Radical scientific thought is lost.

Rumour has it that out of the billions of people there are less than a handful involved in any meaningful research. In the end, you don't have any choice. If you want to go even one small step up the ladder you have to accede to their wishes as if they are your own. Resistance is futile to these people who prefer to negotiate with words backed up with horrific destructive fire-power.

It takes a brave leader to turn them away. Returning to greet a later generation would also leave advancement even longer. There's enough there to give any planet's Government and inhabitants the heebie-jeebies. From the above, I give you the case for the Federation of Planets and their military strike-force, Starfleet.

This combined organisation make the warrior Klingon Empire easy to handle. The Klingons ruled with an iron glove but you knew where you stood with them. In some instances, they've even provided superior fire-power to other cultures.

The Cardassians have some odd ideas about justice and punishment as well as a desire to plunder a planet but you knew where you stood, even as a slave race. Fortunately, the Cardassians never strayed far from their home star systems. Even the nearby recent visits of the Borg wouldn't have been totally disastrous.

Although free will might be gone, at least your species would survive as part of a collective than be wiped out. The Dominion from another galaxy quadrant appear to be fairly benevolent from what you've heard, providing you don't challenge their authority. Rather like the Federation in many respects. At least with them, there is the possibility of advancement.

The Federation only offer peace, not advancement or development. The Federation is a secret menace as it grows across the galaxy. It's learnt to avoid obviously superior species after being frightened off by them. At the same time, it covertly observes primitive species developing under the excuse of understanding their own development as if their own history is indecipherable.

They take over interplanetary affairs cheaply and rarely use their massive fire-power to make the point. In short, you don't know which way this Federation is likely to turn with or against you under certain conflicts. Given the choice, they back off. Washing their hands of the whole affair. Strong principals but not backbone.

This is the Roddenbury dream of peace in the galaxy in Star Trek. Peace only works when all parties agree and its enforcers can't be challenged. The film The Day The Earth Stood Still also demonstrates this ethic. Who in their right minds would want to face off an army of Gorts? Where it doesn't work is when superior forces like the Borg and the Dominion enter the scene with their own ideas.

It was even found wanting when those worm-parasites took over half of Starfleet's admiralty in Conspiracy, when they had no security precautions against such an invasion. Is it any wonder that Dominion personal are infiltrating so easily?

Even the Marquis demonstrates that policy is an ass when the Federation back down in the effort to make a peace with the hostile Cardassians. Of course, a lot of the above encounters with similar technology empires has happened since Roddenberry handed over responsibility to his Next Generation production team. They in turn, by stating that they will stick to Roddenberry's principals, are now finding it uncoiling under 80s and 90s sensibilities.

In reality, Roddenberry's ideals are proving impractical far worse than any interference. They are skipping around the problem rather than addressing the possible solutions. Looking at this approach would give a greater depth to the Star Trek shows than the endless meandering it currently does.

There is less need to seek out new life and new civilisations but to sort out the internal problems it currently has in terms of amending the Prime Directive and giving equal rights to all its citizens. It needs to give them the chance to move in different ways than their culture developed.

It's amazing how the Federation just stepped back regarding Kaelonian II ritual suicide in Half-Life saying its none of their business. They have no backbone in making a stand to enhance the welfare of planetary cultures within their own Federation while simultaneously doing so with non-Federation worlds.

There is a time to not interfere and there are times when Federation members should be offered viable alternatives that will allow their cultures to expand. The only planets that seem to benefit the most are those that embrace the Federation culture are the oldest serving. Of all the planets noted, only Risa appears to have got its collective head (!) together and become a tourist centre and sex den. Other cultures just stay within their own star systems with only a few of its people making a point of going elsewhere, either as ambassadors or joining Starfleet.

The non-Federation Ferengi are regarded as odd, not only because of devotion to money-making, but by how they travel the cosmos for profit. The problem lies with the Prime Directive of non-interference. Obviously, you wouldn't give an unstable culture phaser technology. The war applications of transporter technology could be curtailed to monitored control.

Without anywhere to direct beaming, it's an effective disintegration device. Warp technology would allow a culture to spread quicker than they are able to cope with. The problem is in preventing even stable cultures from benefiting from the technology.

Each culture should benefit on its own merits, not stuck to a singular rule. Any cultural contamination has already been done when Starfleet officers meet another race. Easing them up to speed in a shorter time would be a sensible approach than be a headmaster who denies them everything. To deny is to place any civilisation in a backwater and inferior casting.

The Federation is doing precisely what it halted in other civilisations when it first started spreading through the galaxy. It either needs to change its approach or be replaced. Anyone reading so far is going to think I'm a Star Trek hater. Not so. There have been a lot of good stories over the 30 years but it is loosing its direction simply by holding on to the 'Roddenbury Myth' that peace will always work. The best way to re-enforce the myth is to attack it and see how it stands up.

The Americans love resurrection of old ideas in new ways. The 'Roddenbury Myth' is in need of a re-birth if Star Trek is going to survive as a franchise. It needs to examine the state of the galaxy it has created for itself and question the suitability of its survival.

Failure to do so is going to ultimately have Star Trek in its own scrapheap for failing to adapt in case it upsets a few fans. Taking chances will strength Star Trek, not standing on its laurels.

Geoff Willmetts

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