Star Trek Lower Decks

Dvandom

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There does need to be a balance between "Only these few 20C cultural things survived" (Trek), and "Everyone's making Seinfeld references" (Orville), though. Recent series (LD, SNW) have done a decent job of letting a few more 20C cultural things slip into the Trek future.

---Dave
 

wonko the sane?

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To be fair: there might very well be a good number of muslims in modern trek, but they aren't required to abide by the dress code; what with having to abide by starfleet's dress code... and a hijab might very well slow down throwing on the spacesuit during a hull breach. Oh, and no one will try to kill you for not doing it.
 

PrimalxConvoy

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Funny thing is, it wasn't ALL that consistent even back in the day. Sure, Sisko was considered a bit of a kook for loving the ancient sport of Baseball, but the TNG department heads regularly had poker nights and Worf played FOOTBALL* as a youth.
Right? In Voyager, Chipotle** was often doing his "spirit quests", right? I hope, moving forward, ST keeps the idea of (humans) retaining most of their past culture. Otherwise, what's the point?

*As I'm British, you'll have to forgive my linguistic imperialism.

**As I'm also a person with a terrible sense of "humour", you'll never forgive me for sometimes imagining Mirror Universe Janeway as a ràcíst who often confused Mexicans with native Americans and referred to one of her crew members as a restaurant chain...
 

PrimalxConvoy

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I noticed her first in the trio of Betazoid spies ep but I'm sure she appeared before then.

But I feel like maybe it's a fashion choice over religion. Like, where do earth gods fit in the expanse of an alien universe? There are more celestial beings out there, like the space koala.
God is arguably the final frontier. They're always going to move the goalposts to remain out of reach, right?

Also, I don't think crew would be allowed to wear non-standard clothing purely for "fashion", so only something deeply cultural/religious or vital for life support or comfort would be allowed perhaps?
 

PrimalxConvoy

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To be fair: there might very well be a good number of muslims in modern trek, but they aren't required to abide by the dress code; what with having to abide by starfleet's dress code... and a hijab might very well slow down throwing on the spacesuit during a hull breach. Oh, and no one will try to kill you for not doing it.
Most Muslims don't kill each other for not wearing a hijab. Most of my Muslim pupils wear them but one or two don't.
 

Copper Bezel

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God is arguably the final frontier. They're always going to move the goalposts to remain out of reach, right?

Also, I don't think crew would be allowed to wear non-standard clothing purely for "fashion", so only something deeply cultural/religious or vital for life support or comfort would be allowed perhaps?
I think as a hair thing it might be exempt regardless. T'Lyn's got that headband carried over from her Vulcan attire and Nog had the little drape behind his ears. Religious things have been explicit exemptions like the Bajoran earrings, but there's also Worf with his discomfort sash and family crest that had cultural significance that was not necessarily religious.

The Betazoid episode was the first time I noticed her too, and also the first time I noticed one of the medical staff wears a Geordi-style visor.
 

Ungnome

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Also, I don't think crew would be allowed to wear non-standard clothing purely for "fashion", so only something deeply cultural/religious or vital for life support or comfort would be allowed perhaps?
Seems to be the case. Mr Scott would wear a kilt as part of his dress uniform, several Bajoran officers wore their traditional earring even with their standard uniform and Worf was almost never seen without his Baldric.
 

Cybersnark

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We see Tuvok being a dick about uniform regs on Voyager, but that was explicitly depicted as Tuvok personally putting his foot down (nobody else cared, and Tuvok walked back his stance at the end of the episode). Starfleet in general seems pretty relaxed about uniform variations (of necessity, when a portion of your personnel are either nonhumanoid or have environmental requirements).

The Betazoid episode was the first time I noticed her too, and also the first time I noticed one of the medical staff wears a Geordi-style visor.
I think we saw the hijab girl (and know we saw a VISOR-wearer) in the first episode, getting off the same shuttle as Tendi.
 

The Predaking

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You also have to remember that the uniforms aren't standardize across the Star Fleet. They vary a lot depending on where you are stationed, so I would imagine that it's up to the captain or first officer on what's to be worn. Like Troi wore whatever she wanted for 5 seasons on TNG, and then Jelico made her wear a proper uniform.
 

Dekafox

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When everything is replicated, changing uniform designs is just a press of a few buttons. There's no supply chain restrictions, so when someone in regulations wants to look useful, time for a new uniform design or reg!

Or this:
rsto-SS040.jpg
 

PrimalxConvoy

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They're was that time where Riker kept telling that feisty Bajoran crew member to take off her earring, but that might just be down to him not liking her and/or making an escape of her by punishing her. Basically, such cultural extensions are "a right, not a privilege"?

I also wonder if the hijab character is a reference to this?

Also, there's also a discussion about the hijab girl here.
 

Monique

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I know that in the TOS era the idea from Gene was that humans would have had to outgrown the idea of religion to achieve the civilization of peace and enlightenment that he was pushing for in Star Trek. That seems to have shifted over the years. Honestly I'm conflicted on it, historically religions are kinda shitty and oppressive and that goes double for the Abrahamic ones. So the idea that religion has been abandoned in the future is a nice one because you know, it makes sense that in a better future people abandoned the tools of control and oppresion that have divided them for centuries. But its made for this era of people and people want to see themselves in things and especially do not want be told that their deeply held beliefs are something they need to outgrow to progress

As for the Bajoran in question, that was Ro Laren. Picard eventually made an exception for her to wear her d’ja pagh despite the fact that it violated Star Fleet uniform code, which I think was kind of a big thing at the time? It wasn't allowed for everyone at the very least. Lower decks on the other hand has shown that at least on the Ceritos the code is applied less strictly I guess and different classes of ship have different uniforms ontop of that. At the same time that Orion on DS9 mentioned the only reason he had his multi-key was that people knew so little about Orion culture that he was able to convince the staff on DS9 that it was a religious thing.

So seems like wearing stuff comes down to commanding officers but its not a garanteed thing. Meaning Captain Freeman probably had to okay that Hijab but on another ship she might not be allowed to wear it.
 

Copper Bezel

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I know that in the TOS era the idea from Gene was that humans would have had to outgrown the idea of religion to achieve the civilization of peace and enlightenment that he was pushing for in Star Trek. That seems to have shifted over the years. Honestly I'm conflicted on it, historically religions are kinda shitty and oppressive and that goes double for the Abrahamic ones. So the idea that religion has been abandoned in the future is a nice one because you know, it makes sense that in a better future people abandoned the tools of control and oppresion that have divided them for centuries. But its made for this era of people and people want to see themselves in things and especially do not want be told that their deeply held beliefs are something they need to outgrow to progress
I don't think it's just that. Like, it is also that, TNG made an attempt to idealize its characters and society according to a particular mold and every subsequent Trek show has made some attempt to draw its characters back toward something relatable to the present day. That's a real thing that's happened.

But in my own life as an internet atheist, I've had my feelings toward minority religions change quite a bit since around 2010 when the split started to happen between what would become what are now the pro-science secularists and the anti-SJWs. I feel like what I now recognize is that any restrictions placed on minority religions tend to be for the benefit of the religious establishment with its ties to nationalism etc., especially by enforcing cultural uniformity and removing symbols of difference from the mainstream, and I don't want to carry any water for those guys. The way to break down the oppressive control that religions have over people's lives is to fight theocracy and force people to engage with religious diversity.

So I do expect religion to become less important in people's lives over the long haul, and I certainly want it to, but paradoxically, I think the best way to end up in a place where no one feels the need to wear religious symbols in the real 24th C. is by explicitly allowing them to do so in our fictional one (and our real 21st). And Starfleet is a pseudo-military with ranks and things and sometimes treated as 1:1 with real-world militaries in many aspects of the daily lives of Starfleet officers, but it's also an office serial like NCIS or whatever where the characters' entire lives have to happen at work so that we get to see them in the show, so a lot of the restrictions of real militaries where people to get to go home for months at a time between tours of duty don't make sense in Trek.

There's also the tangle of culture and religion, because religion is an invented category for a subset of culture that corresponds roughly to the parts of life nineteenth century Christians associated with the church. Like, we only ever talk about Klingon "tradition" rather than "religion", but everything attaches to mythic stories that many Klingons seem to believe, which kinda sounds like they're all deeply engaged in religious practice all the time, while the Bajorans' whole thing is "religion" but it's based on legendary elaborations built up around real aliens that exist and interact with them, but it's "religion" because they say the word "faith" a lot....

The thing that makes it really easy for me in Star Trek though is that like in Ungnome's examples, it's cultural significance rather than the "religion" label that seems to make the difference. If everyone on your planet is given a trucker hat upon reaching age of majority and wears it for the rest of their lives, you can probably wear it while on duty too.
 

MrBlud

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If you truly want to wear a hajib (or cross or dastar, etc) you should be free to do so. However, it should be a genuine personal choice and not forced upon you by family, law, or wider society.

Where one draws the line and separates those things is…thorny.
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
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Yeah, but if that pressure comes in any form more pointed than the pressure to wear whatever jean cut is in style this year, the scarf itself is probably among the least of your problems. 😣
 

Cybersnark

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The "different uniforms for each ship" thing seems to have been started by STO (and thus carried over into the Secret Hideout era). Classic Trek was pretty consistent about Starfleet uniforms being standardized across the fleet (the only time it wasn't was in Generations, because the costume department just didn't have enough new-style uniforms).
 

Ungnome

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Other than every ship having its own insignia at least. The delta shield was originally only worn by Enterprise crew members.
 

wonko the sane?

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I think the idea behind the shields was to make it easier to identify crew members from other postings. And we know the uniform lack of uniformity is almost entirely because of the costume department.

Really, I don't mind how they incorporated it, because it at least lets each series stand out visually from each other. Related by brand, but not held back by brand, if you get my meaning.
 

The Predaking

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The "different uniforms for each ship" thing seems to have been started by STO (and thus carried over into the Secret Hideout era). Classic Trek was pretty consistent about Starfleet uniforms being standardized across the fleet (the only time it wasn't was in Generations, because the costume department just didn't have enough new-style uniforms).
Weren't the uniforms for other ships different in TOS? Even the insignias were different for each ship weren't they?
 


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