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
With the exception of Barclay, everyone is pretty much extremely capable at all times
No
What? They’re also all abnormally competent.
Mariner’s uniform makes it look like she has a giraffe neck.
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.
It’s competence porn. Every leader is actually the best person for the job, and they defer to the SMEs when it matters. Can you imagine if all your bosses were actually the best person for the job?
Honestly, maybe slightly justified by the nature of the setting? The number of ships that seem to exist in universe, compared to the number of entire planets full of people to draw crew from, is so low that one must imagine that the entry requirements can be exceptionally high. One could also imagine better technology might imply better education technology as well as more refined techniques for using it.
Young officers also do rotations in each department and find out which one they’re best suited to so it makes sense for each department head to be great at what they do.
Then there’s Barcley.
And I think Voyager had a few junior level crew that were having performance issues.
I mean Reg is the one who found a way to make contact with Voyager, he’s just terribly socially awkward so slotting him in Engineering works out
Early on in TNG he was kind of fucking up at his job though. Later on he became more competent yet still socially awkward.
True, although if we had fully functional holodecks I’d probably end up spending an inordinate amount of time in there too
Voyager’s command staff also had to merge an undisciplined terrorist crew into a rigid military organization. Pretty sure all the trouble makers in Learning Curve were Maquis.
It is definitely the nature of the setting, especially in the TNG era. They even covered what it would take to get into Starfleet Academy, which would be the equivalent of trying to get into an official US military academy.
There is also an issue with the scale of Starfleet during that time. Starfleet was depicted as far smaller in TNG than expected or with that came out during DS9. Picard also hints that Starfleet is desperate for skilled crew by the time of Picard.
Starfleet was pretty much wiped out at Wolf 359, I guess.
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If your bosses were the best person for the job
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If the SMEs and Dept Heads got there by merit and not because they’re a kiss-ass, banged the boss, or being a nepo-baby
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If people only speak when they have relevant information to add, not because they’re in love with the sound of their own voice, have such a fragile ego they can’t comprehend they’re not the smartest person in the room
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Everyone knows the goal and doesn’t dick around with chitchat asking how the weather is, or how their weekend was
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I’ve had that, and it’s amazing. Besides the salary, it’s what I miss the most from my old job.
Captain Picard is absolutely not the person a traumatized child should talk to about their dead parents.
(Especially not if Locutus is the reason they died.)
I think mfed112@discuss.tchncs.de has it right in another subthread. Star Trek: TNG doesn’t quite reach the level of competence porn. Scotty does, though. Guy who is delighted to be sent to his room so he can catch up on his technical journals? Yeah, he’s hyper competent.
Grand Admiral Thrawn of Star Wars is full out competence porn. Most of Timothy Zahn’s novels are.
“You mean we could have already done this meeting already a dozen times before?”
“A dozen, a hundred, it’s impossible to tell.”
And they all turn up on time.
To paraphrase Picard from that one episode where they find the frozen people:
This is the 24th century, material needs no longer exist. The challenge is to improve yourself.
They’re there because they see it as a way to improve themselves. So they want to be on time whenever they don’t have other issues that are part of a storyline.
Well so would I if I had a stage manager. A craft services table would be nice too!
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.
only in the EMHs Daydream.
This is almost as great an achievement as warp drive.
And it won’t be something that could have been an email
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.
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.
Omg is this the real reason why I lose it when my standup goes past twenty minutes into the umpteenth digression that is totally irrelevant to my work?
