Critique Worldbuilding: Star Trek
Greetings and senary! ...Okay, let’s count… Yeah I got more than six. Anyway, hi and welcome to your favourite limax–Me, Vivian!–and my blog for a new thing!
For a year now, I have been writing about worldbuilding (with only minor contributions from some Anne Winchell), but I think it is time we look at pre-existing worlds and analyse them to see how their worldbuilding is. So for this, we will start with a series that is close and dear to me: Star Trek. I love it, but nothing is perfect! Also, I will be looking at only Star Trek: Enterprise or earlier, as the later ones I have not watched enough to make judgements.
Criteria for critique
When it comes to how I will be critiquing, I will be using the following questions but may apply them to different degrees on different things:
How believable is the cog within the context of its own world, aka verisimilitude?
How is it derived from the real world? Having a derivation from the real world that makes you see a clear connection often helps.
How does the cog interact with the rest of the universe?
Does the cog decrease or increase creative options in the world?
Honestly, go to my 15 worldbuilding rules and read it as I will be using that, but the above is a brief explanation of what I will critique by.
The goods
So I will start with what I think are the good parts of the series, many of which drew me in when I was growing up.
Warp Drive
The warp drive, the warp drive. It all started with Star Trek, the original series. Yeah, I didn’t see that one either. Those really old films and the series just look too cheesy for me. Anyway, the warp drive is their faster than light engine. If we are going to go to new worlds and explore within a single lifetime, we gotta go fast!
I place it as good because it stems from the Theory of General Relativity by Albert Einstein. The theory states that gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime (space and time are one singular unit) and mass tells spacetime how to curve. This has been observed by you humans! Gravity Probe-B managed to demonstrate that spacetime can be dragged along due to mass rotation and Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) showed that gravitational waves exist and do indeed contract and expand spacetime.
So how does that work to make a potential FTL drive? Well, the Theory of Special Relativity says that nothing can go faster than the speed of light in space (which is really the speed of causality). Did you notice it? Of course you did, you’re smurt! It says “in space,” but if your space is being forced to move while not moving yourself… Sky's the limit! And this is the principle behind the warp drive: expand space behind the ship and contract in front so the ship moves forward!
This makes the warp drive very believable even in the context of our world. It just might be possible! Minus enormous amounts of matter and energy required for this and various other theoretical constraints including violations of causality… But who cares, it is FTL! TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!
Optimism
I am a Limax of optimism; I see good things in the future, and you cannot ever take that away from me. It is what keeps me going no matter what happens. I would personally rather be dead than lose my optimism for the future. I am, however, also a realist, which I will come back to later under the bads.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was also an optimist and believed in the good of humans, and he made his world to be as such. From what little I have seen from TOS, it is heavily influenced by this optimism, but from Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) onward, I definitely saw they had loosened the optimism a bit. But it remained there still!
This optimism that people and the world can grow and become better is something that naturally rang true with me, even when I was depressed. One reason I love this, besides that I am utterly sick to death of dystopias, which may be influenced by my inherent optimism, is that it gives people hope and goals to strive toward. Anne and I have slightly different philosophies in this department, but I think stories and worlds that are optimistic are needed to give people hope. I also see the value in dystopias to warn people. A mix of both is best; as we say in 🇸🇪, “Lagom is best”. This is also a reason why I avoid a lot of the newer series: they completely lack this optimism from what I have seen.
Lots of species
Okay, I will give you that this one is very personal to me. I just love the idea of the universe being full of sprawling life which can relate to each other on some fundamental level. I personally think this is derived from my love of things being weird and something to understand. I don’t understand all cultures, but I still love learning about them… even if I fuck up 😅 Anyway, to me, a universe that has just humans just feels sad.
Sure, humans are extremely varied and can do and see and feel so many things. But that is one species with one perspective. Anyone who has read my articles on alien senses, alien sexes, alien societies related to their sexes, and alien queerness knows that once you throw in a wee bit of additional weirdness, you can start exploring some truly strange things in a species. Not “I cannot understand this” level of strangeness, but “that is unusual and provokes interesting thoughts” level of strangeness. And I love those!
Aliens based on this strangeness are strange enough to be interesting, yet so close that you can wrap your mind around it and feel a connection with them. This is one reason why I also love humanoid species. Some frown on it, but I think they are a great vessel to explore the stuff that is slightly strange from humans but close enough to be relatable. Sure, pure aliens that are far from human minds are equally valid storytelling-wise, but the variety here gives the Star Trek universe a huge array of options to explore.
Natural setup for diverse storytelling
That of course takes me to this. Sure, some of you will instantly think about all the people-related stuff with diversity, and yes, that is all good stuff too! We have people of all ethnicities and sexes on the starships. There is a slight issue here that I will get to later, but the issue is not about those factors explicitly.
Just like I love lots of species for their variety, the Star Trek universe itself is set up for so much! We have all the potentials of human weirdness, then extra on top of that, and then… We have SPACE! The setting is such that there exists a tonne of particles, a tonne of spatial events that can take place, even more alien life that is not planet-bound, yet more time-travel based stuff… Good Divinum, there is so much, and I love it! Thanks to their warp technology and variety of species, they manage to set it up so you can believe a lot of the things that happen are realistic enough. The world is soft scifi (which I’ll explain later in a post on genre), so it is not too difficult, but it gives a huge array of stories to tell!
Latinum
This one may come as a bit of a surprise to many, but I really liked it. I will not go into details now about certain things; again, next section. Anyway, what is latinum? It is a liquid metal that looks like mercury (why can’t you English speakers call it quicksilver like civilised people? It is the element of Wolfram all over again!). It has the special property that replicators (which I will get to in a bit) cannot create it. So it is a specific material that is scarce.
Scarcity is good for stories and worlds! It is a method to create sources of conflict which are the heart of any storytelling and how the world works. The modern human world is all about scarcity and needs to decide how to allocate large amounts of materials into what people and economies want. So the fact that Star Trek has a highly sought after material, even if it is just gold with fancy additions, is great! I actually do similar things.
I have my own material that is used for money like gold or latinum called irrium. The source of the name irrium will come in the next section… Divinum, am I being repetitive? Yeah I am, well suck it! Commodity money–wait, I have a blog post about that!–is a tradition that has a lot of interesting parts to it. Does it fit modern or postmodern societies? No, but it can act as an addition which gives storytelling potentials like it does with Star Trek, and is too under-utilised.
The bads
Not everything can be good in anything, not even my amazingly perfect stuff! 😛 But yeah, even my stuff has errors because I am only Limax. So let’s go into what is bad about my beloved franchise of Star Trek.
Replicators
These are terrible. TERRIBLE! They are machines that can take pure energy and turn it into matter, and then also turn it all around and back into pure energy to be used for replicators again! Now, why are these in the bad category?
Because they are fundamentally broken! You can make anything out of thin air with energy? First of all, are you aware what an insane amount of energy matter requires to materialise? To make 1 gram of matter–what is that in ounces, Anne?–you need 25 000 000 kWh of energy. Or 25 000 MWh. Nuclear generators work at about 500 MW, so you need a nuclear power plant to work for 50 hours just to generate enough energy for one gram of stuff, and that's ALL energy going to creating matter. Losses will be there, but even at an assumed perfect matter creation rate, that is a lot of energy to make matter! Even if we throw in fusion reactors, that is still a lot. Now add loads of people using these every, I don’t know, few minutes or something? The energy requirement is astronomical.
And not only that, they break everything. If you can, with machines, make things out of thin air, you can have self-assembling machines where damages are pointless. Just retreat and have it rebuild itself! Worst of all, THEY EVEN GOT THIS! In Star Trek: Enterprise, there is a space station that has this tech, even if the humans do not, that once destroyed, starts repairing itself like business as usual! Replicators completely reduce the conflict and storytelling potential to almost nothing, so they definitely count as bad.
Human dominance
This is a general pet peeve of mine. It is so common in all space opera alien scifi where humans are most common, most special (yet entirely unspecial), and have an intense sense of importance, and I get it. It is to stroke your fragile species’ ego to feel like you mean something in the cosmos.
Even more so, in a series where the budget is tight, using an unaltered human is cheaper for production than the various makeup and CGI needed to make it look remotely alien. But other series have made crews with more alien diversity better, so I am not cutting Star Trek any slack despite how much I love it.
Unless humans are like rabbits that spend most of their time (checks euphemism book) singing praises to the bearded chastity man in the heavens, there is little logical reason why it would be humans in charge beyond the need of egos.
In my own writing, humans are not topdogs. Sure, they are not exactly weak, but they have a nickname of “lapdogs” for a reason... I will let you imagine why.
Planet of the hats & Monolithism
Do I really need to say it? Rule #13: Monoliths are the arch-enemy of good worldbuilding. I guess I need to explain it because I have to pad the blogposts, and you humans have yet to develop telepathy (telepathy being a scifi pet peeve of mine).
Planet of hats is the trope where a planet is signified by 1 to 3 traits; most often it goes toward the lower number. I am 99% certain Star Trek is the source of the trope, but it can apply to villages, cities, races, species, and cultures. Examples include, but are not limited to, Klingons, Romulans, or Ferengi.
Sure, I get that for a one episode species, fleshing them out to be 3D is a lot of work for 45 minutes of screen time, but as I said in my rules post, it doesn’t take much to make you think there is more to them. Let us take the Klingons as an example, as they are among the most fleshed out ones. They are the “warrior people”–I am just gagging at how boring that one is. It is such a boring trope these days. Sure, there have been cultures that have been great at war, like Prussians and others, but there is more to them than just that!
Where are the Klingon doctors? Klingon scientists? Klingon janitors? Janitorial duties seem to be a punishment for “dishonourable conduct” or something; Divinum, do we really need to go for the Asian stereotype of honour? Honestly, it is in the Middle East as well, but you get the point. It is so infuriatingly boring how often all warrior cultures have these honour codes that are super strict, and honour is everything. But you know what really wins war? Being a total shit. The shittier you can be in war, the easier it is to win in general, up to when other people start going, “We need to neutralise them;” then you’re in deep shit.
I remember the doctors being absent because the injured warriors “then died in battle which is honourable.” Come on! Even the classical Viking code was not that dumb! You treated your wounded and helped them, and they had a code of “Don’t be a douche,” but they still were bloody shit. I have said this to Anne a thousand times now, and I will say it here too: people are shit to people.
One of my favourite episodes from Deep Space 9 is “The House of Quark” because Quark gets to be a protag and does good stuff using economics. We need more economics in writing. But you have the entire bloody council of Klingons struggling to understand and keep up with basic economics that Quark explains to them! How do you rule a whole sodding empire with slave races–subjugated species? Whatever you call them!– and not understand basic economics!? Maybe I am too mean; human politicians still think that national budgets are like wallets of individuals… You know what, I am doing that topic next…maybe.
Okay, calm down Vivian… Enough Klingon bashing. You can all see the issue of such monolithic people making. My own species, the Raixher, are inspired by the Prussians and somewhat meant to fill the classical trope, because who doesn’t love a damn good battling people and culture? But you know what they also have? Economists, scientists, janitors, doctors, and much else to them. Their military is not “You gotta be able to be a warrior” but “We will find a way you can serve the Empire using your abilities.” If you tell me personally to be a warrior, I am running away. I cannot defend myself worth a damn, which is why I keep my link close and call the police screaming if I am in danger.
Technobabble
Anne and I wrote a blogpost on fictoscience and technobabble, which is a post you really should read. The gist of it is that fictoscience is about the made up science of your world that a viewer or reader can learn and understand, while technobabble is throwing fancy words together to sound fancy and problem solved.
And while Star Trek certainly has a few things that are fictoscience like the Warp Drive, Warp Core, and Warp Plasma, which are used well, it has so much other technology and other things around, and it throws the terms around other technical words, and problem is solved! Except you have no real clue beyond “bypassed something with reversed polarity of something”.
The Federation
Oh, the Federation, the icon of the optimism that I love! So grand, so big, SO DIVINUM DAMN UNWIELDY! And far too perfect. Sure, you can claim space communism (which the later series have called it, and I call BS) and loss of money to “better themselves” and all that stuff. It is cute, it is optimistic that people do things for their own sake because it has to be done. I love those aspects, and more importantly, there is some truth to it. If people have it well enough, they will do what they love even if it is undervalued, as long as they feel comfortable that they will have a decent life doing it.
…Up to a point. There are so many things a lot of people want to do, but the demand for it is just not enough. Writing is an example of this in a way. So many want to, but the demand and market is so oversaturated that even if you are great but have no name, you are fucked. And here I write! My point is that while the idealism is great and good, the society is just too perfect. Sure, it has been used for some good story telling, especially in DS9, but for the most part, it makes one wonder what makes them tick as people.
And society even more so! If you have everything with a replicator, why are most jobs even needed? “We gotta repair X!” No need for a repairman, just dissolve the thing into energy and replicate it and put it in place with a robot, or just do it in place to start with. We get back to technology being too broken and society being too broken to function for real story telling. I have said this before and I will say it again: scarcity breeds stories.
Even in my universe–and I am a huge optimist–I don’t have societies perfect with “no poverty” and such. It is better, but not perfect.
Worldbuilding Overview
Let’s do a quick overview of the world in general, shall we? If not, Rawr! My blogpost!
I will use Swedish grades to judge them, A to F, where F is fail, E is passing, A is superb, and all between are as expected.
Technology:
Grade: C-
They have some good technologies, but some of them are broken, worldbuilding-wise, and the overuse of technobabble makes the technology seem less real.
People/Species:
Grade: B-
I give it slightly higher because it has so much potential, but the minus is there because it is wasted making one dimensional people that are monolithic.
FTL/Travel Methods:
Grade: A-
Warp Drive is based on real ideas that could be true, but it gets a minus because as faster than light travels expands out, which is a good thing, the creators are grasping for straws to imagine new faster than light travel and sometimes break their own rules.
Locations:
Grade: E-
While I love meself lots of places and travelling, the Federation among many others fall prey to many aforementioned issues, and even in their travels, visiting Earth is scarce… I wonder why, almost like it has no conflicts to tell?
Expandability:
Grade: A+
It has all the potential if the creators had wanted it, hence the grade, but from what I have seen in the new series, that potential is squandered.
Overall:
Grade: C+
I cannot give it too high of a grade because, well, so much of it has so many issues, and if you look closely, you can in some instances see the writers, even Roddenberry himself, know it even if on a subconscious level.
What to take from this
One important thing to take from this–and literally everything I will be doing critiques on–no matter how good, there is always bad; no matter how bad, there will always be good.
But one important thing to take from Star Trek in particular is that it is good to take scientific ideas and run with them, since they are much easier to understand for audiences. Sure, the issue then arises that you might become dated, but it is generally good. Though don’t do like Asimov and think one particle is related to computation like he did… Why would a positron be better at processing than electrons?
The second thing to take from Star Trek is that leaving your universe available for expansion and exploration, rather than doing space-filling, gives you great places for stories. But please, put some effort into it.
Summa Summarum
So to sum it all up, Star Trek has much going for it but needed to be thought through a lot more than it was. A lot can be excused as it was a brief 30-60 minute episode that had to be cranked out quickly, but as a worldbuilder, that is not an excuse! If you do a lot of good worldbuilding before you start episodes, you can make the species and people you have even better and not need to improvise as much.
With all that being said, it’s time to get some popcorn and turn on some TNG, DS9, and VOY! Don’t at me, nostalgia from when I was bullied!!
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