Dear Lemmy, **why** Star Trek??
Every single large server in this federation has at least one Star Trek community. There is even an entire server dedicated to Star Trek.
Not only that, these communities are some of the most active I've ever seen. There is no other franchise I know of that dominates the federation as much as Star Trek does.
So, what's the correlation with Lemmy and Star Trek? Why not other sci-fi series? Please, are there any connections?? Is this all coincidental?
Well there you have it.
FTFY
Federate the Dominion? Are you joking?
Apologies to his bat-eared grace Weyoun!
I see what you did there
I think it's nerds. /s
I think a lot of the lemmy userbase are at least somewhat techy (also see the Linux communities), and a lot of techy people like Star Trek.
Techies are Trekkies!
Eh, more like Trekkies are techies. I would consider myself somewhat of a techie, definitely nerdy, and very much into sci-fi, but I really don't give a shit about Star Trek. I've seen a lot of it, just because I've had a couple girlfriends that really enjoyed it, but otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched any after my childhood.
Now, if HBO were to do a hard R version, I'd probably get into it.
There's a fun documentary called How William Shatner Changed the World about all the scientists and inventors who have been inspired by Star Trek.
I wish that title was different. Bill doesn't need his ego stroked anymore.
It’s ok, whenever you get annoyed about his ego, just go watch the clip of Ole’ Bill trying to pontificate after his trip to space and Jeff Bezos cutting him off. The look on his face is so sad and frustrated.
Yeah, not the best, but still a really fun documentary.
Tech nerds are Trekkers!
I never really thought about it before, but it seems obvious now. Trekkies and open source tech folks would have a massive overlap, and Lemmy kind of exists perfectly within that intersection of utilitarian principles. So of course we would all find each other here.
I'm convinced that Trekkies and open source tech are concentric circles.
The top voted posts of the last week are programmer humor jokes that have 400+ upvotes but like 4 comments its weird why don't yall talk
The Star Trek community has been going strong for nearly 60 years for a reason - Star Trek rocks.
When it started in the 60s (and continued especially strong with TNG in the 80s), it was unique in depicting a hopeful look at how things could be rather than a reflection of how things are, differing from how most shows do social commentary. It's refreshing.
Star Trek is attractive to people who want to see a world where people work together toward great things in a post-scarcity utopia, with current day conversations of race, nationality, sex, gender, etc. being so far in the rear-view mirror that they're non-issues. Plus cool technology. I think that appeals to the Lemmy crowd.
Another key point I feel is often overlooked about Star Trek is the "Gulliver's Travels" component of (at least pre-Kelvin) Star Trek. Every show, every race was secretly a fun-house-like caricature of humanity's worst traits, with the humans of the show demonstrating growth past that point. You laugh at or shirk away from them, but really it's modern humanity that is being depicted (Ferengi as capitalists, Klingons as warmongers, Romulans as subversives, etc.) And then we see what we could be, the hope that you talked about, in future humanity
It seems like such a creative way to do social commentary. We get to see our present failings in aliens, and then contrast it with how the crew (future humanity) carries themselves. Sometimes it's very clunky and heavy handed (like that TOS episode with the half-white/half-black aliens), but it's still good. My favorites are every time Picard monologues about their values to an alien race in TNG.
Even if you already share the values, it's fascinating to hear them laid out so clearly.
It helps that Stewart is such a fantastic monologist. It's like hearing something complex about biology or ecology from David Attenborough. They both have such an effortless ability to communicate difficult subjects.
Do you include Wesley as an alien in that instance? Because that monologue is solid.
I'm going to say yes. Every teenager is an alien.
Good take.
Shut up, Wesley
Picard monologues are in fact what I appreciate most in TNG!
I really love it when it's especially heavy handed. That's my shit.
That's very interesting. I think you've sold me on watching the show.
The original series is very 1960s and I wouldn't recommend for a jumping in point. I'd go with next Gen for that, it's the quintessential trek more so than the original having had 3 spinoffs in the 90s and defining most of the canon. Here's the issue though, the first 2 seasons of tng really suck. Like maybe the worst 2 seasons of the whole franchise. I'd check out some best of lists for those seasons and maybe sprinkle a couple random ones in, they did 26 hour long episodes per season and there are some amazing clunkers there, bad episodes are part of trek and you've gotta learn to enjoy them, but those first 2 seasons are rough.
But if you hang in there, you get rewarded with a Riker's Beard
How's Giant Spock doing?
Still vibin
https://startrekviewingguide.com/
To me, Trek is a mash of three great communities, each nerdy in their own way:
This article scratches the surface of it.
Thank you for the article. I'll need to look more into this in the future.
I think you personally posting more than the other Lemmings combined might have something to do with it...
Well, you see, Lemmy is full of nerds and communists.
Workers of the worlds you mean?
I get your point and I thought about it too before posting but Rom in fact used the correct quote without alterations: https://youtu.be/Qag2bOBUVfQ?si=sCKNeq5xkSckQUzI&t=62
So others have already talked about how great Star Trek is. I agree with them, but I think that literally everyone has missed the point of your question:
https://startrek.website
It's its own lemmy instance. It was spawned from the migration away from reddit, and it's stayed alive since. So combine an active former-reddit community with lemmy and a good reason to all rally around, and finally the final ingredient of federation, and the Star Trek related rooms will always be on every server, and they'll always be populated.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. The Star Trek sub's total abandonment of Reddit and conversion to a standalone Lemmy instance during the Blackout was a big deal and a big driver of traffic in those days and beyond.
Star Trek is big in the Threadiverse for the same reason that Earth is big in the Federation. They were a massive force in the early days.
And it's a great example of how viable lemmy is as an alternative. Not sure about random subs, but any of the really nerdy ones could make the jump.
Both this and all other answers are good for different reasons. From what I'm reading, the beliefs and politics displayed within Star Trek are beyond progressive for the time it came out, while also shaping sci-fi. This creates a very committed fan base that when Reddit started acting up, they were able to move a large chunk of their user base away to Lemmy, since Lemmy is filled with similar-minded people.
Why is the show about gay space communism popular on the gay space communism network?
quark might be bisexual, true, but he is definitely a capitalist... but we won't hold that against him
You decide to talk about bisexuality and DS9 and somehow your mind goes to quark instead of fucking Garek??
Quark is also one-time transgender, so I guess that counts as genderfluid, although we prefer not to talk about that episode.
that's why
The French line at the bottom 😄
Soon we'll all be sorry.
The funny irony is that assimilate is a slur in Canada due to its rich history of genocidal intent, to the point someone got into legal hot water because they had a novelty star trek license plate containing it and people thought they meant basically our equivalent of the n word.
They had to explain to a bunch of people including the news what they actually meant and they were like "we don't care, change it" which is especially rich coming from a culture and government which still continues assimilation-styled (as well as actual killing) genocide to this day.
Asking why Star Trek dominates the Federation? tsk tsk tsk
Like some kind of... Dominion?
Most of the internet was started with Star Trek boards. If I recall correctly, one of the first emails ever sent was about Star Trek
Also credited with the first widespread fanfics of a TV show, I believe.
I haven't thought of this in years but back in the '90s I participated in an email fantasy RPG where we all roleplayed Romulans. One person would write a chapter from their character's POV and email it to the group, then the next person does one, and so on, so the story unfolded in unexpected ways. It was actually pretty fun.
That sounds like such a an awesome early internet thing.
It was. And then of course this one guy asked me if I wanted to take it private so our characters could have their own little love subplot. And uh... I said yes.
Now THAT also sounds like early internet too...
Including the one that is the reason we call laughably stupid perfect characters Mary Sue.
And first male pregnancy fan fiction, fan fiction rings, shipping wars, and so on. House wives created the world AO3 writers live in today
Do you know of a wiki or link to this about trek boards and first email? Search engines now a days are getting on my nerves about not showing what I typed into it.
Wow, didn't know the roots were that deep...
You answered your own question, brother.
We may never have a good answer for why the gay nerdy communists love the colorful scifi communist space adventures
If you're trying to say the way ryker throws his leg over a chair is the cause of me becoming a communist programmer then I have to tell you that you are sorely accurate.
Because Trek fans were the first to organize conventions. They started out small in the late 60s. Now every single weekend, somewhere on this planet, there's a Trek convention being held. The conventions also raise massive money for charity. They are the nerds other nerds want to be, in terms of organization. I'm here for the memes.
Sorry, but there were science fiction conventions before Star Trek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_World_Science_Fiction_Convention#:~:text=The%201st%20World%20Science%20Fiction%20Convention%20%28Worldcon%29%20was,%22%20NyCon%20I%20%22%20by%20Forrest%20J%20Ackerman.
You are right that Star Trek conventions were the first time a single show was the focus of a convention, and the Star Trek conventions lead to things like ComicCon.
I did not know that, thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_World_Science_Fiction_Convention#:~:text=The%201st%20World%20Science%20Fiction%20Convention%20%28Worldcon%29%20was,%22%20NyCon%20I%20%22%20by%20Forrest%20J%20Ackerman.
Ah yes, the nostalgic leftist scifi show that defined generations is popular amongst the left leaning members of the nostalgia generation.
Nah. It's all that O'Brien poundcake.
I prefer the cellular peptide cake myself.
With mint frosting!
Wait but which O'Brien? Miles? Or the clone Miles that was meant to infiltrate the peace talk? Or the Miles from 7 hours in the future that just replaced the present day Miles? There's just so many to choose from, it's so hard
Or mirror O'Brien that thinks nothing of kidnapping Jake Sisko even after Real Sisko saved his life on multiple occasions.
Guess.
Same reason Linux is popular on Lemmy. Lemmy is essentially an explicitly leftist community that appeals to people nerdy and techy enough to leave Reddit and join a smaller platform. Linux is a FOSS, ie leftist techy OS. Star Trek is leftist Sci-Fi.
Nerds, tech, and leftism all congregate on Lemmy.
ELI5...what's leftism?
In my experience it is a very very loose collection of ideologies that share the common idea that there is no innate hierarchy between people and that helping others does not necessarily erode your own place in society.
Edit: Oh, it was an ELI5, then a leftist is someone who thinks other people in their sandbox does not make the sandbox worse.
A leftist is someone who, in the French national assembly, sits to the left, as seen from the lectern: Supporters of the Ancien Régime (monarchists) sat to the right, revolutionaries (of every colour) to the left.
As such the core tenets of leftism are Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, in short, enlightenment values later coalescing into humanist values, as well as the metric system. Which is why the US cannot into leftism.
please. it's proper name is the correct system.
For me, the defining characteristic of leftism is trying to achieve social equality through redistribution of wealth and power from those who have plenty to those who don't have enough.
there is also a lot of communities about programming and linux
there's only 1 common denominator here. we are all nerds
do you have horticultural tips for growing big bananas?
Yes! Bury your seafood waste, like prawn shells and fish heads, next to the tree and you will get large sweet bananas (assuming watering and general feeding). Applies to most fruit trees.
No but I did buy a pill from a pop-up ad.
bird shit
@Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net
I'm not going to poop on their bananas
Guys guys, they're talking about us!
Thr "federation" you say? ;)
Almost like it's some kind of federation...
United Federation of Poindexters
Because I want to see Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism happen in my lifetime.
Shall spandex onesies envelop us all.
So say we all!
Wait...
But not during the movies.
The Lemmy community is disproportionately made up of either computer nerds or queer people.
Star Trek is basically the most popular nerd IP that hasn't been successfully brought into the mainstream, and is known for being progressive.
Wat?
For real. It's been at least top 3, and arguably top 2, for scifi my entire life.
Star Trek has been at the top for nearly 60 years. In the US at least, you can turn over a rock anywhere and find a Star Trek fan.
I get what they're saying.
Star Trek is still nerd niche compared to Star Wars or MCU.
Sure but what a way to use the word "mainstream"
Yeah, IDK. As a huge Trekkie, I’ve been nothing but pleased that Trek forced its way into the mainstream without changing its progressive this-is-for-everyone values.
im not a trek fan but i hear that a lot dont like how it became more action oriented than it should be. is that a true criticism?
Star Trek has always been more about diplomacy than violence.
It is a trek between the stars, not a war.
That said, it contains action, but it wasn't the main selling point.
Very much so, yes. That's what turned me off of Picard, for instance (and the whole "Earth is back to being a shithole after a single android attack" thing).
The very obvious subtext of every good Star Trek episode and plot is that just talking things through is a good way to solve most problems. Newer writers don't seem to have gotten the memo, and instead try to cram as much generic hollywood garbage as they can into the series.
That's only an issue with some of the new trek series, not the classic ones from last century. I'm not really concerned with paying attention to the new ones at all.
I guess I mean this in a relative way.
I can talk about Star Wars and basically everyone I know has a lot of context. Most people have watched a good amount of it. Even people who are explicitly not nerds know about it. Same with most comic stuff.
Meanwhile Star Trek is still a lot more niche. People know the bare basics of what it is, but that's about it. With the exception of my SO, I've met a grand total of two people who watch it.
Also if someone knows a lot about Star Wars or Marvel they don't necessarily know a lot about other nerd IPs. Meanwhile the people who knew about Star Trek also knew about shit like Farscape, Dark Matter, and other IP that just gets confused looks from most people.
That was pretty true for a long time but it's changing as of the last decade or so
I fucking love Star Trek and have since I was a kid 20+ years ago
Most people like the concept of post-scarcity space socialism...
Who would've thought people don't want to work until they die on a dying planet, huh?
Star Trek (esp 90s Trek and esp TNG) is extremely formative for most Gen Xers and Millennials. It's unapologetically nerdy and has themes of tolerance and empathy, and establishes a utopian vision for the future that (to most people) is unfathomable. When we're not on Lemmy, we're talking about Trek with people in person.
because star trek has long been welcoming to gay and trans people for their inclusiveness and the fediverse is home to a lot of nerds and gay or trans (or both) people. 💕
Actually, I would go one further and say Star Trek is axon of almost ALL people.
I recently started watching TNG for the first time since I was a kid (mostly thanks to the rosa memes). The show is incredibly progressive, especially for a show that came out in 1990. I just watched a race last night where Riker “fell in love” with a member of an androgynous species that were not gendered.
The whole thing was about the individuals struggle to realize their gender identity.
It's wild to me that I have friends who say dis is too woke because it has real gay, trans, autistic, etc. characters, but they love TNG. Really? You sure forgot a lot of the episodes.
TNG had Data allow his child to choose their own gender.
TOS had one of the first televised interracial kisses.
Say it again so the kids in back can hear ye
No Dominion in my federation!
Exactly. The question that answers itself.
Aye-yai Cap-ten!
Two words.
Fully automatic gay space communism.
Star Trek just kinda kicks ass.
What, you haven't seen Deep Space Nine?? Cmon what're you doing? Fix that!
star trek mods successfully moved their communities from reddit back then. afaik the only other community with similar success is the piracy community.
Trek fully embraced the principals of piracy. "You wouldn't download a car"? Motherfucker, here's a replicator.
Stargate would like to talk to you about replicators.
Successfully pulling off a lift-and-move like that was huge. I wish more niche/fandoms had followed suit instead of staying put.
Unfortunately, outside of the meme zone (i.e. !risa@startrek.website) there isn't a whole lot of engagement anymore. Once the blackout was over, the reddit communities opened back up.
I mean, look at r/DaystromInstitute versus !DaystromInstitute@startrek.website – it's not pretty.
Well that sucks. I am guilty of really only following Risa, mostly due to big gaps in my watch history and wanting to avoid spoilers for the newer shows. I'm not surprised though... Reddit had (and still has) tremendous amounts of inertia.
Yeah, but DaystromInstitute kind of sucked. They didn't have enough of a sense of humor. It didn't need to be Risa, but they took themselves way too seriously.
There was a post the other day about how Reddit never took anything seriously and how the top comments were always predictable jokes that stopped being funny years ago.
It was nice to have places like Daystrom, Ask Science, etc. that were curated for serious discussion.
I'm not saying they should have all been jokes and memes, I'm saying they were a little too "everything must stick to a canon that isn't especially coherent sometimes."
The fact that the biggest star trek sub on reddit has been censored to a degree that it drove away many trekkies might also be one of the reasons. I got a lifetime ban there simply for stating that I do not like DIS and PIC because in my opinion they oppose everything star trek stands for.
Really? I was banned for a similar reason.
Someone asked the question on that sub, "Why do people hate on Discovery". And I answered.
I wasn't edgy. I wasn't trying to insult. I explained, I gave definitions, I made examples. Apparently the moderator wanted my post to be censored because I wasn't being "honest and truthful with myself" and used words and terms that weren't allowed, such as "Mary Sue".
I quoted Drumhead.
The mod really didn't like that.
Lol.
Sounds pretty similar to my experience. It really felt like CBS was paying the mods to make sure nobody could express critique.
From what I've seen of Lower Decks I really dig it and it seems to fit in quite nicely IMO
That's the only new Trek show I've seen since DS9
The new Trek movies were pretty meh IMO
honestly, y'all should both give strange new worlds a shot. to me they're the closest we've ever gotten to TOS. even moreso than TNG. and i agree that the other new treks were ass.
Agreed. I was soooo doubtful about SNW after discovery. Picard season 3 was fantastic, but the first two seasons were hot garbage
Sorry for being imprecise, I specifically meant DIS and PIC. However, SNW I found to be pretty good and I agree it has a certain TOS feel to it! (except the musical episode, which was quite bad imo)
I've heard good things about strange new worlds and I've been meaning to check it out
Sorry for being imprecise, I specifically meant DIS and PIC. However, I can´t stand how fast they talk in LD, sadly that makes it pretty unwatchable for me.
I almost hate to break this to you...
Because Babylon 5 ended in 1998 and the reboot isn't even in production yet. Also MGM doesn't have the faintest idea what it's supposed to do with Stargate.
Are you telling me there aren't enough star trek communities?
Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-approximate-number-of-Star-Trek-fans-worldwide
There's also the song 99 Luftballoons which includes the line "Everyone's a Captain Kirk."
Not exactly a positive analogy, but it shows how deeply embedded it is in a collective culture.
Star Trek has more historical weight behind it. It more or less created modern scifi fandom. It's probably so widely beloved because it's unlike most scifi in that it's hopeful. It sells you on the idea of a better future where everything could go right, where we can explore space and be chill with everyone. Other scifi franchises sell you on window dressing or a bad future full of the same problems we have now.
People like Star Trek because they want it to be reality in a way that other scifi stuff just doesn't do.
and it's positively liberal compared to The Culture series but obviously far more mainstream. there isn't a real radical reordering of society and humans are basically bioessentialist almost to a fanatical degree, but the fully automated luxury communism itself just seems so radical compared to any visions of the future dropped on us by the ruling classes of today
Judging from how some people talk about ai idk if most people even leftists would like to live in the culture. But yeah, the books turned me into a transgender communist so I'd recommend them based on that
Good explanation, thanks!
c'mon, it's right there
Yeah, I see it now. 😅
Federation. Star Trek. IT. Linux. Programming socks. Gay. Furries.
This sums up the vocal group here. There are others, but these seem to be the most common.
Jesus, just call me out by name if you're going to be so specific
I mean, it's a really good build.
But will it compile?
Well it would if you had all the right libraries, but it looks like one of them has a new version that made a breaking change. Shouldn't be more than 5 minutes' porting work if you know C++.
Sounds like you're trying to summon a nerdy Captain Planet
By your powers combined, I will run Arch Linux!
I use Arch Linux, by the way
Communism
Lemmy is filled with leftists and geeks. They're the same demographic.
Star Trek is post scarcity. It is more evolved than your politics.
Our world is already post scarcity too for basic needs like food and housing. We're just terrible at actually getting them to people since most countries are still capitalist, so they prioritize capital/profit over human lives and rely on what's basically slave labour from less developed nations to make the ruling class richer.
Under capitalism, food isn't produced to eat but to make profits. When it's not profitable to sell, they would rather dump foods, starving the people than to plainly donate.
We produce enough foods to feed the entire population. But the sole purpose of food is to not feed the people, but to feed the greed of the producers, the farmers, the corporates.
Capitalism created an artificial scarcity of food where we produce too much food for the obese and throw the rest away to rot in front of the poor.
And yet the political commentary displayed in the series is blatantly leftist in nature, and was written in the context of modern Capitalism.
Just like showing a dystopian hyper-Capitalist cyberpunk future is a commentary on the dangers of modern day Capitalism, showing a more "enlightened" post-scarcity Communist society as a hopeful future is also commentary on modern day society.
Sci-fi is pretty much just political, as it's all speculative fiction based on different possibilities of modern society abstracted to a future setting.
Lemmy is socialist by nature, and so is Trek, but also it's Trek, one of the two most iconic Sci-fi franchises available, Reddit was basically the same way but with Star Wars, but for some reason there seemed to be far too many people on the dark side and simping for the empire and Vader.
The “Empire did nothing wrong” stuff was pretty weird indeed.
The Plagueis Tragedy even made it huge on r/Place one year.
That was just for the meme
Alot of them are living in an empire they've been conditioned to be okay with after all.
iirc George Lucas himself said that Star Wars is an allegory for the Vietnamese (Rebel Alliance) resisting American imperialism (Galactic Empire)
Gah,..remember the top voted thread in every post was a pun thread. Hilarious days.
Also the Empire was only consolidated to fend off enemies from outside the galaxy that only the darksiders could see. ;’D
Anecdotally I have the impression a lot of North American Lemmy users are technology professionals and enthusiasts in their 40s and 50s and therefore many would also be Trekkies from the 20th century.
Hey, some of us are in our 30's too!
Hiya, youngblood!
Some may say even those in their 20s are here!
It's a communist utopia
https://imgflip.com/i/89tj4h
Obligatory.
space gay
Others have brought up other reasons, but one I haven't seen is simply the depth of material to work with. Trek has had multiple multi-season series and tons of movies, which means you can basically find the right image for any meme if you watch enough of it.
You never watch enough of it!
lemmy is created by and for techy dorks, star trek is for the same audience. Many of us are also communist or otherwise leftist, and star trek has done more for us than any other media. Major Nerys Kira, after which one of hexbear's admins is named, was an explicitly violent terrorist who helped liberate her people from a fascist occupation, and she never gets mistreated because of it. Queer content on star trek has not been perfect, but was beter than anywhere else on TV for a long time because they had freedom to explore different ideas about gender and sexuality(when berhman wasn't breathing down their necks) due to sci-fi having the excuse of being a fictional alien species. THe first inter-racial kiss on tv was from star trek, another point in the shows favor. There's also a whole episode where a characrer becomes a Marxist, so coolest shit ever made.
. I could go on for hours, but the bottom line is that it's just peak fiction.
Everybody raise your hand if you were radicalized by Star Trek ✋
✋🏻
Specifically the story of Sean Aloysius O'Brien. Kid-me's entire worldview changed that day.
That episode absolutely slaps
Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
(Also, DS9 was the best.)
This is correct.
I'm not that into Star Trek but until other scifi communities I'm actually into get as active as Star Trek, I'll be hanging out with the trekkies.
Babylon 5 is our last best hope, or we could look further afield - Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive far, far away, amongst the stars.
Nerds.
Can't star trek across the fediverse without multiple space docks.
Just watch for the Klingons on the starboard bow.
It's worse than that, it's Threads, Jim!
Scrape ‘em off, Jim!
Man, there's a dedicated instance for yiff.
Compared to that, star trek is a million times more popular lol.
But, like other people have said, it's a huge thing. Star Trek is one of, if not the most successful TV universe. It crossed into movies, comics, books, toys, everything. The "brand" spans most of a human lifetime so far, and has done so with a surprisingly minor degree of fuckery that insults the fan base.
So you end up with generations of fans, across all kinds of demographics.
It's science fiction. And there's not many
hives of scum and villainyplaces online that are more sci-fi friendly than lemmy; even mastodon isn't quite as sci-fi loving.But you may be missing that star wars has a ton of related C/s as well. There's dedicated sci-fi C/s scattered around. Compare that to genres like fantasy or westerns, and you start to see the trend leaning that way.
But, you're right that it is a disproportionate thing. The only "brand" that seems to be as universal as trek on lemmy is LOTR, and that's a foundation of fantasy as a whole.
I think open source is a very Star Trek-ish Idea, so it's natural that people from that community like a show with similar values.
The United Federation of Planets
But in this case with servers running Lemmy
It's not my thing but I appreciate just how much depth and substance Star Trek has to it and the sci-fi theme is a perfect fit for most people who frequent Lemmy.
star trek is optimistic about the future and that's basically nonexistent in post-cold war SF
Because Star Trek (the old stuff, not the new stuff) is for nerds, and Lemmy is also for nerds.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets is the interstellar government with which, as part of its space force Starfleet, most of the characters and starships of the franchise are affiliated.
I had to scroll way too far for this.
Ok but what is star trek
Exactly, I have never seen anyone actually talk about it except here
60 years worth of shows, novels, books, games, and movies. The original series follows the USS enterprise, flagship of the United federation of planets, as it explores new worlds. Most episodes are self-contained, where they face off against some threat or mystery on the planets they visit. The sequel series star trek: the next generation follows a later enterpise from 200 years after the first one, with roughly the same formula for episodes. There's also Deep Space Nine, centering on a space station near the newly liberated planet Bajor and a newly discovered wormhole to the distant gamma quadrant of the galaxy. This series focuses on many episodic adventures like before, mostly from visitors to the station bringing some curiosity or scheme, but it also has longer plot lines focusing on diplomacy and peace keeping, ultimately leading to the dominion war, a battle for control of the alpha quadrant with the most powerful force in the gamma quadrant, the dominion. Voyager is another sequel, following the star ship voyager after a powerful alien sends it to the unknown delta quadrant, and they have to survive and find a way home so far from everything they know. Enterprise is set well before the original series, and follows the early years of the Federation through it's first flagship. There's also discovery and strange new worlds, set shortly before the original series.
To this day the government is still trying to create a lot of the tech from Star Trek. They are actively working on warp technology, replicators for food and clothes etc and Star Trek was the basis for a lot of today’s computers (i.e. no tubes like old tvs and computers before the invention of the desktop computer).
One time the government actually approached the producers and wanted to know how they got the doors to open and close automatically like they do. Genes answer “there’s two men holding onto broom sticks, one on each side, when the actor walked up to the doors they would pull the broomsticks and make a ‘whooshing’ sound as they opened and closed them “
Now we have that tech on 90% of retail shop doors. Star Trek was the basis for a lot of tech we use now.
It's popular, very memeable, has a long history, and most importantly: there's 2-3 series of it running right now. So it's topical and being engaged with.
it is a giant, hot garbage dump of memeable content. i love it
Other sci-fi series? What "other sci-fi series"?
EDIT: I wasn't asking for recommendations, and honestly nothing you can offer will measure up to the glory that is Star trek. Soz all, LLAP 🖖
Firefly 🥺
Expanse holds pretty true. Still doesn’t have it all like Trek tho.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, of course!
Sadly, it turns out that Kevin Sorbo is a massive douchebag. As someone who grew up with Hercules, finding that out was extremely depressing.
Happily, Lucy Lawless (Xena) is almost exactly opposite, so those shows don't have to be all bad.
From what I remember he didn't go completely bugfuck insane until after Hercules.
And he has a massive ego, hence the 'God damn I look good.'
Also, Andromeda was marginally acceptable in Season 1 and awful for the rest.
But I suppose we have Gene to thank for it, just like Star Trek.
What about Earth Final Conflict?
The Orville, of course!
Twilight Zone?
As others have said, Federation.
I expect it was a random first arrival bias.
This is actually something i also noticed when i switched to lemmy from reddit. In reddit its all star wars and here its all star trek. I lean more in the star trek direction so im happy here
It's only logical.
You do understand the entire structure of this Network is based on Star Trek, right?
How?
Lemmy was built by and for people who like Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism morality plays.
Because that community decided to leave and start a place here when things blew up. Other communities didn't. They're active, so people hang out there. There's a fairly low barrier to entry for new folks to participate (a lot of people have watched some Star Trek).
Really, having an active community say, we're leaving and setting up shop here goes a long way. I wish my niche subreddit had done so as well.
I’d been hearing talk of Lemmy as a potential Reddit alternative around the third party app debacle, but nobody seemed to be taking it terribly seriously until I saw the Star Trek subreddits open startrek.website for themselves.
That got me interested. It was the first instance I can remember of one of the bigger communities I followed just up and moving like that, and it made the whole thing feel more real.
question 2: how to join
What do you mean "no other scifi series"? Muad'Dib Muad'Dib Muad'Dib
Come to think of it, I'd love seeing Dune memes
Because Star Wars destroyed their own Empire
Federation.
Fediverse: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Fediverse: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the
starship EnterpriseInstances of Lemmy.ItsTheir continuing mission: to explore strange newworldsthreads; to seek out newlifememes and newcivilizationsplaces to post them; to boldlygoshitpost where no one hasgoneshitposted before.It's sci-fi with good character development and moral conundrums. It doesn't take itself too seriously and doesn't rely on flashy graphics. The characters are supportive of each other. Like if you took utopian leftist drama kids and told them to make a sci-fi show about humanity trying to do it's best.
Because we have strength of the soul
By my count there are 914 different episodes/movies, that’s a ton of content!
Resistance is futile.
Also didn’t the two big subreddits permanently shut down and move to the fediverse?
We come to serve
C'mon you gotta love the original Star Trek series at the very least. I mean it was a milestone and it's still my favorite of all the Treks out there.
The fact that it has so many communities (for Trek in general) shows that it really resonates with people across the board. I can't think of many other shows that have achieved that. Its the mix of science fiction and adventure with very human emotions and problems that make it so appealing, I think.
Your instance will be assimilated
TIL you can have text formatting in headlines on Lemmy. Cool! ...I think.
it's a series about having autism
Why not?
everybody calped