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Note: This article was originally published as a freelance piece for Space.com. They have removed the article from their website, so I've reposted it here.
So where are all the average Joes and Janes? I've been through the Star Trek canon and back, and I've found that the visible Trek universe (or at least the parts where humans live) is for the most part a pretty elite place. Most of the important characters are captains, high-ranking officers, experts in engineering, ace pilots, and so forth. So where are the plumbers? City-to-city shuttlepod drivers? Blue-collar factory workers? People performing manual labor? Do they exist in the 23rd and 24th centuries? If so, where?
For the moment, let's talk just about humans and Earth in particular, since we've seen a certain amount of gritty turmoil outside humanity that exists for larger story purposes — the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, for example.)
Perhaps the easiest assumption would be that technology on thriving planets like Earth has taken over many tasks involving physical labor. Assembly lines would presumably be even more automated than they are today, requiring less human intervention. Robots could perform the tasks that many would call mundane, leaving the door open for people to pursue loftier goals.
Of course, that brings us back to the question of what drives the Federation's economy, if there is one. (Trek has claimed that money doesn't exist on Earth, but some form of economics has to exist in the Federation, doesn't it?) But the nature of the Federation is another column in itself — which we will tackle comprehensively one of these days.
The point here is that, really, most of Star Trek hasn't cared to examine life's more routine tasks, because Trek is about exploring space, not about the mundane aspects of daily life. But I'd still like to take a moment to go under the surface and see if I can figure out where all the non-Starfleet non-elite are.
On The Original Series, I always found it amusing that 90 percent of the time the average Joe meant you were the expendable, nameless guy on an away mission, or someone who happened to be too close to an energy stream when the M-5 computer decided to go berserk. As you know, these guys usually wore red shirts and got vaporized, speared, blown up, struck by lightning, etc. — pick your method of untimely death. Who were these guys? The stories didn't care, because they were minor incidentals to story and who they were wasn't the point. So today we look back and laugh at the "red shirts" as a quirky franchise in-joke.
But TOS was based more around its three central characters. In the newer incarnations of Trek, we eventually got a little bit more latitude in coverage among supporting characters, and we'd occasionally get characters who were closer to ground level.
Probably best known for his status as the resident everyman was Chief Miles Edward O'Brien on The Next Generation and later Deep Space Nine. He was an enlisted man — not an officer like the vast majority of Trek characters up to that point, but an engineer whose job seemed less to define him so much as simply be a part of him. As DS9's run continued, he was the average family man that probably most people in the audience could more easily identify with. He wasn't running the operations of a war or bearing the duties of a religious icon like Captain Sisko, and when it came time for him to move on, he took up a teaching job and returned to Earth to enter a more civilian life.
Trek tends to see things in a chain-of-command sort of way, which is why one of my favorite episodes of The Next Generations is seventh season's "Lower Decks," about four junior officers on the Enterprise who watch as a larger authority deals with a diplomatic crisis. It was a rare glimpse at the other end of the chain of command.
Last season on Voyager featured another rare-but-welcome example in "Good Shepherd," about misfit crewman, including one whose work performance was significantly under par.
Which is something else we rarely see. Very few people on Trek are portrayed as underskilled or incompetent. They generally are powerful, competent people. This is understandable, but given the real world where it takes all kinds, I find myself wondering, what happens to the people who aren't up to Starfleet standards? Where do they go? Just what exactly is the standard of education on Earth, anyway? High, presumably, but not everyone can be getting straight-A's.
Human society: Just how perfect can it be?
Roddenberry's universe is famous for having painted a utopian view of the future, but my question is: Exactly how perfect are people in the future? The fact of competition and life is that not everyone is going to get what they want, and there have to be some losers out there somewhere, even on Earth in the 24th century. The losers in society aren't getting much exposure on Star Trek, and maybe that's because they don't make for the kind of Trek story most people are thirsting for.
Unless, of course, it's in an alternate universe. In Voyager's "Non Sequitur," Harry Kim ends up in a parallel universe where he meets an apathetic version of Tom Paris, whom Kim labels "a loser and a drunk." We don't typically get to see many citizens of Earth that match this description. The word "drunk" implies the possibility of alcoholism. Is there alcoholism among humans in the Trek universe? Perhaps medicine of the era has erased the physiological problems associated with excessive drinking. We do know that real alcohol exists and is occasionally consumed (though, it would seem, less frequently than synthehol, a concept I still don't entirely understand). For that matter, who smoked the last cigarette in recorded human history? What are the real vices of the 24th century?
And what about divorce? Is everyone happily married or happily single? In the parallel timeline of TNG's finale, "All Good Things..." Picard and Crusher had been married ... and divorced. I'm not entirely sure, but it could very well be the only mention of divorce in the Trek canon.
Maybe this is all just pointless (but hopefully interesting) rhetoric. If we want to see those kinds of mundane issues, we'd turn on a TV show set in contemporary time, wouldn't we?
But you can't look me in the eye and tell me that even in 2360 there's no crime. Sure, there may be a lot less of it, but who is committing crime and why? Sure, we'll get a rogue murder mystery, but it's generally at the hands of a sci-fi problem or at the very least the mentally disturbed (the Vulcan killer in DS9's "Field of Fire" or Ensign Suder in Voyager's "Meld").
An early scene in Voyager's pilot episode, "Caretaker," features Janeway making a deal to get Paris out of a prison colony in New Zealand. If prisons exist, it follows that so does crime. But where, what type, and why? We may never know.
And if there's no economy as we know it, I'd like to know what it is that motivates the average citizen (if we can define such a thing) to get out of bed every morning and do something productive. Does Sisko's father, a chef in New Orleans, open his restaurant and serve customers for free? That's pretty noble. How are people being compensated for their time? Is the work alone really enough? Part of me seems to doubt it.
This all plays like the old cliché of whether a tree in the forest has really fallen if no one was there to hear it. If we never see the non-elite population of human and Federation society, is it really there? And if it is, how does it work?
I'm inclined to say that as far as Star Trek is concerned, just barely.
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5 comments on this post
Latex Zebra
I always wonder about the guy doing the cleaning in Star Trek the Search for Spock.
He may be the only menial worker seen within the Federation.
Brian
I've thought the same thing, Jammer, about Sisko Sr's restaurant... although for me an even better question than what motivates him as the owner in what motivates the lower staff like the waiters and back room cooks (such as the people who normally polish the clams when Captain Sisko is not on leave and doing it every night). I mean Sisko Sr seems to enjoy what he does and sure I can see how being the one in charge of such a restaurant could be preferable to sitting around at home everyday... Deciding the menu, inventing new recipes, mingling with customers... sounds reasonably rewarding. But the presence of the waiters brings to the forefront in almost self contradiction in Trek economics. I don't have a problem with this, as the DS9 writers were stuck with the establish lore that people work for free in order to "better themselves" in the Federation, but as Nog (and through him Ronald Moore) says in a skeptical way, "what does that mean exactly?" (I've read some comments by Moore indicating he was skeptical of it as well and I agree with his decision in ds9 to rather than try to either change to established more or devote episodes to try and rationalize it he just doesn't pay much attention to it, but does at least admit to the viewers by that little joke at the lore's expense that perhaps that bit of lore wasn't fully thought out..., but in Jake's reply "it means... it means we don't need money" seems to me to say... but it doesn't really matter, just think orbit as a little quirk in the Trek universe, and it's not really worth our time or yours or fitting to the nature of the show to spend time having monologues try and rationalize this quirk either.
The waiters really show why that was the best route for the show to take, rather than to try and defend the idea that while some people would chose to find fulfillment and betterment of themselves by building and owning a restaurant, or maybe becoming a university professor, or a "landscape architect", others would decide their true calling in life is to take people's orders and bring them food and clean up after them. If they wanted to devote one line or two to the issue I would have had Sisko Sr. say something to a waiter like "Keep up the good work John, we can't have nice restaurants without waiters but you've put in your time and done a good job, I've spoke with the local Restaurant commissioner and you've almost built up enough Contribution Points to qualify to have your own restaurant in a year or two!"
But even that may be opening a can of worms that is best left closed. Finally, I see Next Generation (and this is not a bad thing as it worked well for that show) as something of a future fable or "fairy tale" in a sense and that like Picard said about money seems less questionable in that series than the DS9, which is more like a future epic or something... still by no means "realism" or trying to be but pays more attention to what the circumstances of reality in such a future would entail.
Jason R.
Sisko's restaurant, although a seemingly trivial plot point, opens up a huge can of worms in terms of Rodenberry's foolish vision of a moneyless future. As Brian, notes, while Sisko may choose to run a restaurant out of enjoyment, what about his wait staff? They wait tables to "better" themselves? Really?
Now I have heard apologists for this idiocy explain it by suggesting that the existence of effectively infinite power coupled with replication would render scarcity a thing of the past. So if you want a big screen TV or even a ship, you just replicate it.
But this explanation fails when you examine it too closely. Forget about Sisko's restaurant for a minute. What about Robert Picard's vinyard? What if I want to open a vinyard in France? Can I just replicate one in my backyard in Milwaukee? If not, who decides which families get to own and operate vinyards? Does the Picard family get to sit on their family land forever?
The writers of DS9 understood how inherently foolish all this was, which is why they wisely jettisoned much of Rodenberry's utopian vision.
zzybaloobah
The "everything via replicators" excuse only goes so far, past that, you need "a medium of exchange" aka MONEY. Some examples:
In DS9's "In the Cards", Sisko wants a Wilie Mays baseball card. How can you allocate something like that without money? Somehow, someone has to determine who wants it bad enough to get it -- and has done enough positive things to afford it.
For Sisko Sr. restaurant -- you could have holographic wait staff -- but discriminating customers would likely want real people. Again, it's something people would pay for. Live music, theater, and sports probably retain value vs recordings. And are inherently in limited supply.
Apparently, people don't like replicated food either (though that's harder to figure out. If transporters work, you'd think replicated food would be indistinguishable from "real"). So, there will always be a market for fine wine.
And ST isn't even consistent on commodities. Given cheap replicators, who pays to ship cargo -- even high-quality self-sealing stem bolts? Apparently, there's still a nuts-and-bolts economy out there as well. Again, requiring a medium of exchange.
We can quibble about how you get "money". Maybe it's a social credit score (ugh) issued by a benevolent government (or Big Brother). Maybe it's in trade from someone else. The point is, some things are still in limited supply, and society has to figure out some way of distributing those limited goods.
Maq
As I remember we relatively recently almost got a moneyless country. Cambodia under Pol Pot. That was though on the other end of the Utopia.
Roddenbery had seen and been part of another hell (WW2). I am not sure he ever considered the aspects of national economy. He dreamt about a society where everyone was happy and that we could from our mistakes.
It was some years ago since I watched TOS. For some episodes you really need the nostalgy bonus in order to enjoy them. Others are really good. But it is all stand alone. I do not remember that national economy was any greater issue.
Later, partly in TNG more in DS9, a federation society appears. How do they handle this utopian idee? It is mentioned but quite often they leave the theme quite fast.
The explanation is always more or less "we have enough, everyone is happy.".
I try to forget this moneyless utopia as much as I accept the warp drive and other peculiarities.
Probably in the same way as the script writers. Although they are on strike now. SNW season 3 gets delayed. Most writers probably strike for more money. It would surprise me if the "trek writers" have other, higher ideals.
To be honest, I really hope the continue not trying to deal with this topic. That would be very difficult and probably result in max one *.
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