3w ago

Andor v. Star Trek: How Star Wars gets government right

When it comes to science fiction, no franchises loom larger than Star Wars and Star Trek. While both offer visions of far-off galaxies, future societies, and the occasional knife fight, only one understands how government really works.
While Star Wars: Andor shows a government we can actually recognize—full of ambition, fear, incompetence, and petty power plays—Star Trek paints an unrealistic future where public servants are heroically selfless and competent.

Uploaded to YouTube by ReasonTV.

Gotta love this guy's costuming.

8 comments

Star Trek is intentionally and specifically utopian, so that's kinda the point :)
- OP believes human society can't change and evolve.
  OP maybe thinks there's been no progress in human society, and we may as well be living in the 1400s.
  OP is a pessimist.
  
  Don’t fall for the trap of thinking that someone has to implicitly agree with something to discuss it. I will avoid making sweeping assumptions about you in return.
  Read the other post I’m about to make because I was way too tired to finish it last night.
- Except for the times it isn’t. Some of the movies, some moments in TNG and DS9… and effectively since 2016.
  
  Sure, of course. I really meant the flavour of Trek which Roddenberry originally conceived of.

While both offer visions of far-off galaxies, future societies
Star Trek occurs almost only within the Milky Way, and Star Wars occurs “a long time ago”.
It's full of shit since the very first paragraph 😅.

I thought this was an interesting (and funny) way to think about it. And this guy seems to have made a bunch of costumes out of table cloths, which is actually pretty resourceful.
But two things stick out to me about this viewpoint. He doesn’t compare Star Trek to Star Wars, he compared Trek to what is shown in Andor specifically. But there’s no appreciable difference between the Empire shown in Andor and the Empire in all other Star Wars media. It’s written so much more maturely, but nothing notable changed.
The other thing is how he managed to wear a Monster Maroon uniform without mentioning the corruption and hypocrisy within Starfleet on full display in The Undiscovered Country. Gene Roddenberry famously hated that movie, but it proves that utopia doesn’t just happen. You have to keep protecting it (from without and within).
The way Starfleet is portrayed is what changes radically from generation to generation. And lately, not for the better. Another whiff is failing to mention The Orville, which is also a “trying our best” utopia with a visible human layer to it that addresses a lot of the shortcomings of the TNG-era portrayal.

8 comments