james tiberius “sorry for having great tits and correct opinions” kirk

(idea from @frogayyyy!)

TNG Doodle Kit, 1994.

3x4 - And the Children Shall Lead

My one problem with Star Trek is that no one is ever consuming contemporary media. As in media that's contemporary for their time period. Everyone is always reading old novels and practicing classical music. They study Klingon Opera or read old Cardassian mysteries. No one is ever like really into obscure Klingon Nightcore. Nobody is reading shitty Ferengi pulp novels. There's no kids media of any kind. Where is space Sesame Street or junior novels about gaining superpowers from a warp core accident? What about comic books? Nobody is playing crappy indy holodeck games. It's always some recreation of a historical battle or just lounging in a mud pit at some alien spa. Someone give me angsty Bajoran protest music. I need some rebellious teens producing the worst most cacophonous death metal techno that they recorded in an empty cargo bay. I need contemporary pop culture in Star Trek.

This is one of the things The Expanse did really really well and I wish Star Trek would take a hint.

Star Trek has tried this a few times but not done it well. DS9 had an episode with a brand new board game some aliens brought, TNG had the weird VR game about putting disks into vortexes that was a mind control plot, Voyager had an episode with a kids holodeck program.

No, that's not what I mean at all.

The Expanse had background music that was Belter pop, in Belter creole. There was a children's cartoon (Misko and Marisko) that is referenced a few times - one of the kids has a backpack with an animated M&M on it.

It doesn't need to be a whole episode, and in fact, that doesn't generally work. We need music and books from the last hundred years. Kid's cartoons. Pop songs that get stuck in your head. The extreme sport of slingshotting.

The closest we get are Bashir's holonovels - and none of those are set more recently than the 20th century.

A culture with no pop culture is simply unrealistic.

I know this isn’t the approach they’re likely to take, but if you think about it the post-scarcity Federation Earth would have a wildly different media environment.

I definitely think people are still making art, and lots of it, but the thing about our current media industry is that it’s an industry. Would there be big-budget blockbusters, super-famous actors, tons of resources spent advertising and promoting the newest releases?

Or would most film and theater and music essentially be indie productions? Without the profit-generating scaffolding, would all theater be community theater? And there really couldn’t be a media monoculture, in that environment, with every new album or novel or holodrama starting on a near-equal promotional footing.

(That said, I also firmly believe that the Children’s Television Workshop is still putting out new episodes of Sesame Station, and will do so until the heat death of the universe)

Rewatching Enterprise I rediscovered 22nd Century Earth was still making movies and even had award ceremonies for them! I was shocked!

For the 24th century I think the holodecks are where the media is having the biggest boom, Janeway’s gothic holonovels, Vulcan Love Slave 1, 2(The Revenge!) & 3, Bashir’s Legally Distinct James Bond (the Broccoli Estate still holds sway in the 24th century somehow) are all popular media. Maybe going to the holodeck is like going to the movies, given that even in post-scarcity they’re not exactly everywhere outside of newer starships and starbases (tho with the advent of holoprojectors that don’t need a dedicated room….)

There’s those headbands from Equinox that I wonder if they weren’t related to the orgasm game, and if between that and Riker’s harpsichord mini-ladies that is how we consume visual media then.

With so many member and non-member worlds It’s hard to imagine what could take the space water cooler by storm, something new and undiscovered?

Thinking about that Keyboardist in Unification Pt 2, I bet she knows all the recent hits (Akut and Melota notwithstanding) and Jono in Suddenly Human had the right musical tastes (to the detriment of those quartered around him.

Bottom line there is some media consumption in Trek, but it’s few and far between and I had to dig at some one-off characters.

why do i feel like so often in Star Trek the dynamic is:

ALT

This made me smile