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| Date | Episode | Title |
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I'd argue that the theme is less about following orders and more We are all individually flawed and are at our best when we follow our shared values - which is represented by both Starfleet and the utopian setting as a whole.
I can see the argument (for fiction and real life), that as we trust institutions less, our focus becomes more on individual judgement rather than collectivist ideas. It also tracks for me that as this occurs in real life, our media would reflect individualism more and more.
Sure, and if the core of the article is "today's values are somewhat different than those of the 90s"...yes, they are, just as the values of the 90s were different from those of the 60s. I think there's an interesting academic discussion to be had in there, but I don't think this article is it.
Were the earlier series not focused on shared values to more or less a similar extent too?
Kirk has usually been given the reputation of being a rule-breaker, often ignoring Starfleet rules when they are in conflict with his values. Even off-camera (in DS9 I think) they attribute him 17 temporal violations, and I think he has been accused of violating the prime directive multiple times.
That's a good point. I think this contrast between individual (often flawed) human judgment vs collectivist ideals has always been a theme. In TOS, you see Kirk calming McCoy's knee-jerk reactions almost every episode. In TNG, it was Yar or Worf. In DS9, probably Kira.
Even then, I would say the collectivist ideals (i.e. Starfleet regulations) were more often portrayed as overly-cumbersome in implementation, which leads to someone like Kirk violating the rules in place of the ideals that they stand for. For example, how many naïve (but well-meaning) diplomats do we see in TOS or TNG? However, rules being restrictive or imperfect in an effort to support larger agreed-upon morals can still be trusted, compared to corrupt power structures, which cannot.
Kirk doesn't really violate them, also you can tell that the writers don't really have the rules of star fleet worked out in season 1 or even 2.