Survival Arts

Opening shots in a libertarian culture war: "What Ever Happened to TV?"

L. Neil Smith has some interesting things to say about the state of television. Take this interesting tidbit about the Star Trek franchise:

Star Trek: the Next Generation came along and I watched it, too. In many ways it was a tremendous improvement over the original series, although the world it was set in would have been a fascist nightmare to live in, the hero was more bureaucrat than ship's captain, and the "final frontier" was being settled under strict military and political supervision, after the timid Canadian or Australian models—which is to say not much at all—instead of the robust and energetic American model.

The best episodes of the series were those involving the Klingon civil war, when it became clear almost immediately that the Klingons were the only decent, honorable, heroic, and worthwhile people in the galaxy. Maybe that's why the socialist creators of the series had it terminated. There has to be some reasonable explanation. To this day, Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) says that she doesn't know why they did it.

The essay continues to state that The Libertarian Enterprise will, from now, be taking on a much broader mission, to take back popular culture from assorted fascists and other scumbags. See "You Can't Fight a Culture War If You Ain't Got Any Culture" for some background reading.