One thing I miss in Star Trek is contemporary popular culture.
I mean, yeah I get that everyone has read Shakespeare. Everyone likes movies from the 1950’s. But where are the 23rd century romantic comedies? The 22nd century holo-adventures?
The benefit of having such a vast universe as Star Trek is that there’s nothing stopping them from having one character be really into listening to Bolian jagalaggaflaxen pop. Some other characters could have a heated debate on who’s going to win the finale of that reality show on Balancar where one of the contestants are partly eaten every week.
Where are the celebrities? Not everyone in Starfleet will have a picture of Zefram Cochrane on the wall in their quarters. There has to be people that attend concerts, read new books and read trashy magazines to find out if Bkex and Marla Quartz are having a baby.
References I like to this effect: B’Elanna reading Klingon romance. Julian and Garak discussing modern theatre.
I’ve often wondered this about the music in particular. I haven’t watched much of the 90s series, but from TOS and TNG it feels like what they have is:
- Classical stuff, like Mozart
- Folk/hippie music played on bicycle wheels
- Whatever that late 60s/Fifth Dimension-sounding stuff is that Uhura sings (and that Prime subtitles surround with the number 6 for some reason)
Where is the classic rock? The soul? Stuff from outside the US, too? Did that get lost in the 1990s dark ages and it was never recoverable?
I would love to live in Trek universe, but I’d miss the fuck out of varied music.
The rest of Star Trek is equally focused on classical music as well. The Klingons are known for opera, so that’s also quite classical.
There’s an episode of Voyager where we get to hear some more modern Klingon music. It sounds more like noise, because it’s supposed to be annoying stuff from teenagers, but it’s still interesting to get a glimpse of something new.
The Bajorans have some... flutes.
my favourite recurring joke is that people in star trek are secretly big time into trash. Picard basically plays an unhealthy amount of LA Noire. B’Elanna reading klingon romance was not a unique incident, we have Quark catching Odo reading some raunchy stuff, and Jadzia buys Bashir straight-up porn at Nog’s yard sale, because of course she does.
we also get some neat insights into the holo industry in the episode where the Doctor’s holo novel gets published without his consent and becomes a big hit in the alpha quadrant
what I personally would like to see explored: how do people in deep space keep up with pop culture? I assume people either stock up on entertainment when they visit a starbase or the internet of the future is really fucking good. Do trends reach Deep Space 9 a little later than the rest of the federation? Does Quark sometimes order a new holosuite programme two years after it came out? And how do cultural influences work? Is somewhere out there a romulan ensign who got his hands on some old YA novels and smuggles it back home, creating a cult following the federation doesn’t even know about until the political landscape changes?
