Gene Roddenberry regarded The Federation as portrayed in his Star Trek as a perfect society. A society without poverty where everyone was working for the betterment of humanity and money was a thing of the past. Religion, at least Earth religions, played little role in The Federation and politics is never discussed. His creation sometimes got the better of Roddenberry however, with cracks in the Utopian facade, arrogant bureaucrats, miners wanting to get wealth, etc, occasionally appearing. After Roddenberry’s death in 1991, writers were free to show that The Federation, like every human society that has ever existed, has pluses and minuses. The Federation in its realpolitik treatment of Federation settlers on planets claimed by the Cardassians, caused the birth of The Maquis, a clandestine organization dedicated to defending the rights of the settlers by military force.
Commander Eddington’s speech was a good reminder that the Federation was not utopia.
I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We’ve never harmed you, and yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You’re only sending them replicators because one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you’re worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it.
No matter the technology, humans are humans, and what Quark said about us rings true:
But the grand thing about us is that most of us strive, very imperfectly, and with much backsliding. to be better, the saving grace of our species, and perhaps why God bothered to create us.
“The root word of “utopia” comes from the Greek words “ou” meaning “not” and “topos” meaning “place,” which together literally translate to “no place.” This reflects the concept of an ideal society that does not actually exist.”
Love Star Trek though, we’d be in the stars by now -if Adam hadn’t fumbled the ball.
I have come to despise Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a liberal progressive socialist utopia because such a place always has a snake on a forbidden planet. We need a Star Trek showing mankind bringing Christ to the stars (though I suspect He’s already there).
Scene from a pilot of Roddenberry’s broadcast as a TV movie on 23 April 1974. My sister thought it a hoot. Some of us were chuckling about it the next day in school, “eyes down, Dink!”
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6M37EPouA