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Star Trek: very Short Treks | Skin a Cat
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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I'm taking it at face value that old earth figures of speech and idioms would be problematic on a TAS bridge with the nomaly going on, they addressed that by the cat person responding that "there is more than one way to disembowel a human", we wouldn't like people casually throwing that around. It's also tongue in cheek as illustrated by the knickerstonians and the ship blowing up. It's meant to be silly.
The tapestry of star trek (and science fiction) has always included silly and over the top alongside the serious, thought provoking and intelligent.
Cornering the star trek parody and comedy market with their own product is genius btw. Like how Elvis's manager sold "I hate Elvis" shirts.
Jokes can usually include a message, and often are more effective at delivering that message than a serious monologue with full citations.
Therefore, saying something is meant to be silly or a joke does not do anything to address whether the message behind that joke is a good one or not.
One could argue that "Skin a Cat" makes a more profound point amidst the silliness. Which is that (as Azetbur has pointed out) "the Federation is nothing more than a homo sapiens only club".
Obviously there are real world reasons why human (and primarily American) cultural references abound in Star Trek, but it's always irked me that, for instance, there would be an entire class of Starfleet vessels named after cities in one United States state - ie, the California class. Why not have all the ships in this class named after towns in, say, the ShiKahr district of Vulcan instead? I think that would do a better job of world building, representing the Federation as a body that's more than just a bunch of humans with a handful of token aliens. Or, better yet, have all the ships ships named after smaller cities in a range of UFP member planets?
edit: typo
The US centricity is actually an interesting topic in-universe. Especially because the federation should try and work hard to make member worlds feel equal. Having so much Americentrism would alienate the aliens. The federation has done a bad job of this 😆
Of course the real answer is that the people that make it are American and it's probably largely for American audiences and therefore producers and writers feel like they need to show people things they are comfortable with. And when they do show other cultures they are seen through an American lens. Which is why the Irish were so cliche that O'Brien even teleported the straw around their feet when they beamed into Picard's enterprise. 👨🌾
Which Lemmy am I in? Which way to the daystrom institute?
c/DaystromInstitute is next door on the same StarTrek.website instance.
Some of this meta discussion about American exceptionalism might also fit in the c/Quark’s community - if you want to broaden to the point that the discussion is likely to run less than 50% Trek.
Ships named after Vulcan cities wouldn't make much sense, since Vulcan still has their own fleet of starships. I'd be interested to know if other Federation worlds are the same. I bet at least Andoria is, because they wouldn't have wanted to mothball their fleet while their most contentious neighbors maintain theirs.
One of the concerns also brought up by characters in the past is that joining the federation would lead to them losing their cultural identity. It's very possible this is part of the problem. Even Captain Vendome, with his entirely Bolian bridge crew, is still captain of a ship named after a city in California.
Hopefully this will be explored as T'Lyn integrates into the Cerritos crew.
It also doesn't really surprise me. With admirals like Buenamigo naming new ship classes, this is what you get. Star Fleet needs to work on diversity among their flag officers