I’ve heard it described as “competence porn”.
I’ve always thought of competence porn as something more like Suits or House M.D, where the entire point is to see cool smart people doing call smart things and vicariously feel cool and smart yourself by watching them do it. In Star Trek, the crew’s competence seems incidental, but at least to me it doesn’t feel like the point of the episodes is to show off how competent people are - it usually seems like either some sort of philosophical enquiry, a straightforward action/suspense, interpersonal drama, or some combination of them. So while competence does feature in the stories, I feel like it’s handled with a lot more depth and realism than straight up pornography of competence. Star Trek is like competence erotica~
TNG is the epitome of competence porn. With the exception of Barclay, everyone is pretty much extremely capable at all times except when the plot includes some space shenanigans that make them less so, like turning into kids or losing your psychic powers.
Barclay seemed to be very competent albeit unsure of himself while also nobody believing in his abilities.
Didn’t Barclay do some impossibly smart things to help Voyager?
Yeah he had the misunderstood savant role in Voy. He single handledly developed intra-galactic communication.
That was my favorite character arc in Voyager. Barclay redeeming himself for all of the wild shit he did in TNG by sticking up to his superiors and pretty much getting kicked out of Starfleet in the interim.
Yeah he even had to go behind Adm Paris’s back to do so
And I’ve always objected to that description.
Bringing an alien weapon of unknown capabilities on board and then test firing it right next to the ship’s main reactor is not even the most stupid thing the super smart experts of the Starfleet’s flagship did. It is a miracle the Enterprise hasn’t been blown to its constituent subatomic particles at least a few times.
I actually had this discussion about one of my coworkers.
Very competent, very capable, and very poor risk assessment.
If you’ve ever met someone who is highly intelligent in general and absurdly skilled in their field, that’s actually pretty realistic. Geniuses are just as prone to sporadically making incredibly stupid decisions as the rest of us.
This meeting could have been a PADD message
Do they have padd messages? Or voicemail? I’m sure they must, but they never show it.
There’s constant mentions about “I read your report”, so yes, I assume they communicate most routine things by mail.
Ever notice a meeting room in Star Trek that has more than a handful of seats? They know about meeting productivity.
Well, I think that meeting room they are in there has a dozen seats at least. They just sit close to the end.
That’s true. I think they may use it for diplomatic gatherings. But for the actual officer meets there’s usually never more than a half dozen there.
Enough seats for the senior staff
There’s room for 4 on each side and one at each end. So 10 max.
Yeah, you’re right. I could have sworn there were more at times when they had diplomatic envoys, but maybe that was another room.
And it won’t be something that could have been an email
This is almost as great an achievement as warp drive.
Have you never had a meeting that bypassed the project manager? Where the three or four people who will actually figure out the technical details start a call and hash everything out in 15 minutes, after weeks of 1 hour meetings that everyone has avoided for months? Every meeting would be like that in a utopia; no more middle managers, just people who know what they’re doing.
This is the best hot take.
