New Battlestar Galactica show includes class struggle?

The original series had class struggle too. Hordes of starving lower classes crowded into transport ships while the rich lived it up on luxury space yatchs, under the watchful eye of the military police state. [/geek]

Don't tell me how the new series of BSG ends - I've only got to halfway through season 1 at the mo. And yes xconorx, I'm fruity.

Oh I see, I meant the Original BSG. Haven't really watched much of the new one even though my GF insisted on getting it on DVD!

Re B5, there's a strike by dockworkers in Season 1 but it really shows the contradictions a union official (however well-meaning) ends up in. She tries to restrain the very radical workers, while "representing" them to the station commander. Very interesting.

Still, all this pales into insignificance compared to the military state of Star Trek TNG which has all the hallmarks of a Stalinist state.

Is a proletarian position like

Except Its called the united federation of planets, the president is always referred to as a diplomatic figurehead and they don't have money....

In TNG they don't, the only space faring civilisation wth a monetary economy is the ferengi, who bought there technology from rogue traders, though that theory kinda got eroded in DS9 and Voyager somewhat. Though DS9 did pretty much explicitly show a revolution originating in the US in the mid 21st century.

In fairness though your kinda assuming that every space faring civilisation must go through some sort of historical arc, which is pretty much the ''theory'' behind posadist mentalness.

Now do star wars!

Nope the federation maintains the council headed up by the president which forms a rough executive body they're in Paris, well according to generally accepted canon they are anyway. They are largely figureheads tho they exist to carry out diplomatic functions and ratify the membership of new words or solve diplomatic disputes within the federation itself. The federation consists of over a 100 worlds and many more colonies, theres no indication that any of these societies are run by starfleet since they all have seperate governments. Also referring to starfleet as ''the military'' is somewhat misguided, Starfleet consists of the military space fleet and deep space exploration vessels but no major ground forces of any type.
In fact while starfleet remains to some degree the ideological core of the federation it is absent from nearly all levels of civil administration, so not a particularly stalinist model being used there.

Transporter technology is subject to rationing and generally starfleet makes big play of its free press as demonstrated in a rather tiresome fashion throughout the later series of DS9. Interstellar communication is carried out through subspace relays, but theres nowhere I could find that descries them being run by starfleet.

This is only visible in outying sectors, such as the neutral zone between federation and cardassian space, or is used by foreign powers. The federation itself does not have a black market running throughout it, since a black market would be pretty pointless if you have holodecks and replicators.

They don't have battleships, enterprise was pretty much the federation flagship and largely a diplomatic vessel to boot albeit an armed one. The defiant is the federations first stab at a full on miitary vessel designed for combating the borg, and you don't get kids on it. Star Trek has a heavy theme of individualism running through it hence the principle enemies or races deemed morally reprensible are all highly collectivist (eg the borg, the Q continuum etc), and technological progress to warp drive for humanity comes through the actions of an individual.

Star trek is simply a standard constituionally liberal state, (the federation charter is pretty much based on the UN charter for example) with a big dash of technological utopianism added in. Although it is clearly hinted that in order for this utopianism to be expressed a revolution happens in the mid 21st century getting rid of the old order so to speak, current society being pretty much deemed to have ended up in nuclear war and dystopia beforehand.

uring the whole run of Star Trek, there are hardly any mentions of actual elections, whether to the central government or individual planetary ones. I'd imagine the structure of Federation Council and President still exists - we see this in DS9, I believe - but for all practical purposes, real power is in the hands of Star Fleet. What's even more interesting is that T'Pau (in TOS) is famed for being the only person who turned down a seat on the Council - one wonders how one can turn down an elected position? Don't you have to stand for it? Even one of the Presidents says he never sought the position. There does seem to be circumstantial evidence that these people are appointed rather than elected through any kind of process familiar to liberal democracy.

LOL Antieverything, I'm not making a serious political point, I'm just pointing out that the Star Trek Federation is not consistent with being a liberal democracy. Of course, this assumes that the Federation Council is a legislature similar to a Senate or Parliament.

It is, of course, entirely conceivably that people in real world workers' assemblies may be put forward for positions on committees or councils without necessarily having volunteered themselves. However, I'd imagine that they would have to agree to taking it up! However, the most important point about such assemblies and councils is that they are not the ruling bodies - the assemblies themselves are, and the committees carry out the decisions of the assemblies - hence the recallability of delegates.

Someone do Farscape now.

Yup

This thread has AIDS. It should be put down accordingly.

Today is a good day to...

Not enough beard or slouch yet but yeah basically in 20 years time that will be me, although i'm hoping to go for more of the crazy old cat man aesthetic, rather than fat science fiction geek chic.