Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.
Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
3. Be diplomatic.
Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
4. Assume good faith.
Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”
5. Tag spoilers.
Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.
6. Stay on-topic.
Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.
Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
view the rest of the comments
I saw this pointed out in an episode reaction thread, but I'm pretty sure "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" marks the first time the Federation has been explicitly, on-screen referred to as "socialist". Fans, of course, have been calling the Federation socialist/communist for a long time. I think it started kind of crystalizing in 90's Trek, particularly on DS9 and with Picard's little speech about not using money in First Contact.
It's kind of a throwaway moment in the episode, but it feels big to actually use the word? I suppose modern audiences are much more comfortable with the word than they would have been in the 90's.
I felt the same way. This reminded me of Discovery's Admiral Vance openly admitting to ending capitalism being a goal of the Federation.
As a fan / supporter of the "Federation is post-capitalist" theory I actually found that moment a bit disturbing in context. Pelia is ancient and, although clearly eccentric, I think we're certainly meant to understand her as being a "wise woman," so for her to comment that the whole post-scarcity thing may just be a "fad" to me came across as questioning more than supporting, although maybe I'm just being a bit defensive.
To be fair, she's apparently been around more or less for the entire length of human civilization. She's lived under lots of different economic systems, and from her point of view the Federation was basically founded yesterday. Skepticism makes sense in that context, even if she generally approves. We the audience know that by the time of TNG, DS9, and Lower Decks (I have not watched enough Discovery to know if the far-future Federation is still portrayed this way), the Federation has if anything only gotten more post-capitalist, so I don't know that we're meant to read her skepticism as wise. I mostly took it as her being defensive and a bit flippant.
I don't think most people in the Federation think of it that way, I think Pelia (somewhat derogatorily) thinks of it that way.