#fuck the eugenics wars. trek doesn't need some cosmic balance. people can just decide *i want to live on a utopia. let's build it*

[the-lady-general]

Strange New World's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Warhammer 40,000, the musical [audio not found].

This is from a lovely and very, very thinky Discord conversation. Thank you, guys! There's more thoughts I need to get out of my head, specifically because I've hit my personal limit of what I think the Federation can get away with as a utopia, and also because I didn't want to bore a server full of trekkies with my 40k thoughts.

TLDR: I've often said that when the fridge logic hits, ENT becomes better than what the writers intended. I think SNW has the opposite problem: When the fridge logic hits, it hits me with a spiky baseball bat. Everything I didn't like is under the cut, don't go there if you want to avoid it.

Here's the intro to the Eisenhorn omnibus, the oldest Black Library book I could reach on my shelf. I'll quickly transcribe the parts I've highlighted, explain what I love about it, and then I'll get right back to what it has to do with Strange New Worlds.

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"For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. [...] He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. [...] But for all their multitudes, [the vast armies of the Imperium] are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. [...] Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war."

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Fun Fact: This is where "grimdark" in speculative fiction comes from! Thanks, The General Situation of Northern England in the mid-80s!

So, it all starts with a soul-eating machine. The soul-eating machine kills ~ 1,000 people per day. It is the only way in which humans get to go faster than light, because the not-quite-corpse and soul-eating machine arrangement is basically a lighthouse for hyperspace.

The Imperium is living in the shadow of a great, bright, and optimistic past. It came out of an advanced civilisation that had gone through many destructive wars on Earth. The Emperor was a man of science and reason and wanted humanity to live in prosperity, unhindered by wars or prejudice. He abolished religion in favour of humanism. He wanted to build a utopia for all mankind. Absolute dogshit parent though.

Ultimately, he built the soul-eating machine to justify the utopia, and when he wasn't in a position to object, his successors strapped him in and slapped the go button. Utopia postponed, blame those damn heretics/mutants/aliens.

That was the decision that led to the grim dark future without escape. Do you dare *not* fed the soul-eating machine? Do you dare unplug the not-quite-corpse? It's how it has always been. It could be worse. It's every single wrong one human could possibly inflict on another for everyone, for ever. It could be worse. It'll never get better. It steadily gets worse. It could be worse. It's always two minutes to midnight and no sacrifice ever stopped the clock from ticking. It could be so much worse without the soul-eating machine.

It is unbearably bad.

By contrast, here is an excerpt from the Charter of the United Federation of Planets, as seen on Voyager (or Memory Alpha in my case):

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"We the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in the fundamental rights of sentient beings, in the dignity and worth of all lifeforms, in the equal rights of members of planetary systems large and small, …"

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So Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow had a Starfleet security officer who was ready to sacrifice her career only two episodes ago in order to reunite a little girl with her parents. She goes back in time to stop an unknown event that leads to the destruction of Earth. She is confronted with baby Hitler who lives in a vague yet menacing government(?) bunker in Toronto and tells him he is *exactly* where he needs to be.

*record scratch* Sorry. That was a bit flippant. So again, from the top:

La'an travels back in time, with Sam Kirk's brother from a different timeline. She is reluctant to open up to him because of her family trauma (separate & discrete from her childhood trauma), but notorious charmer James T. Kirk (from the USS Iowa, not to be confused with James T. Kirk from Iowa, US) helps her out of her shell. They realise that someone is trying to prevent the Eugenics Wars, having already successfully delayed them until 2023. Deciding that the Eugenics Wars were the one and only factor that led to the United Federation of Planets, La'an and Kirk then decide that they must make sure the Eugenics Wars happen at any cost.

(They do not know that the one and only factor leading to the formation of the United Federation of Planets were the Vulcans witnessing humanity's first FTL flight, nor that Zefram Cochrane was motivated by greed to build the warp 1 engine.)

They find Khan Noonien-Singh in the secret Toronto bunker of the Noonien-Singh Institute, a vague yet menacing organisition with unspecified goals. Khan expects La'an to kill him, but instead she hugs him, tells him he is exactly where he needs to be and leaves him alone in his bunker slash prison question mark.

*record scratch* I mean, La'an goes through quite some emotional distress once she realises that the fate of humanity and all Federation members rests on her shoulders, and that restoring the Iowa, US timeline means killing Kirk from the USS Iowa timeline (and, presumably, everyone else from that timeline, but we're not worried about them).

(They're not aware that there is already an alternate timeline in which James T. Kirk was born on a spaceship that is happily co-existing with the Iowa, US timeline).

La'an is even further distressed when she is faced with the choice of killing Khan and preventing the Eugenics Wars and WWIII, but realises that she can absolutely not kill an innocent child. She tells the innocent child he is exactly where he is supposed to be before leaving him with a loaded gun in a top secret, vague yet menacing bunker in a room that would be declared unfit as a human habitat BY THE UK because it doesn't even have a window.

*record scratch* I mean, La'an saves baby Hitler, gives him a weapon and a justification for starting the bloodiest and most destructive wars in Earth history, and she is expressly forbidden from seeing a counsellor about this at the end of the episode.

*record scratch* I mean, a Starfleet security officer leaves seven children too young to make their own healthcare decisions to be genetically manipulated by a vague yet menacing government(?) organisation. The fact that this is to bring about the bloodiest wars in Earth history makes this better, somehow.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow says that the only way in which the United Federation of Planets can exist is by soul-eating machine. It postulates that suffering must act as the catalyst for the utopia. I find that horrifying. I already found it horrifying when Gerne it.

But this is the second time SNW has strapped a child into the soul-eating machine. Except this time, were strapping *seven* children into the soul-eating machine, and we're not even asking them for consent, let alone informed consent.

This is framed as utterly vital.

It is unbearably bad.

If the Federation can *only* exist if its defenders are ready (if unwilling) to feed children into the soul-eating machine, then it cannot be worth it. If the condition for utopia is the suffering and deaths of millions it *cannot* be worth it. It'll endlessly retread what it has always done, it'll swing from one sacrifice to the next, it'll keep shifting who constitues an acceptable sacrifice, and 10,000 years down the line they'll look at their not-quite-corpse steering a soul-eating machine and wonder where it all went wrong.

The Federation is about the dignity and worth of all sentient life. Everything else must be in service to that.

Don't we already live in a utopian world that builds it's utopia for a few billionaires on the suffering of the many? Does the story about the post-scarcity utopia really have to haggle the ratio in favour of the many instead of going balls to the wall UTOPIA FOR EVERYONE YES EVEN THOSE PEOPLE? Star Trek is the setting that *should* save everybody! Even those people!

Fuck the soul-eating Federation. It's dignity and respect for ALL life or it's self-righteous garbage.