What's irrational about being afraid of robots?

Robots are fucking terrifying.

I think Roddenberry thought that like most things, by the time we got to the 23rd Century, robots as we think of them (R2-D2, C-3P0, Robby the Robot, et. al.) would be more like Norman (or later on, Data). Remember, his vision was a "wagon-train to the stars" and I guess he felt that technology would have advanced sufficiently that robots were not nearly as necessary for doing things when you have nearly-sentient shipboard computers, sensors, scanners, graviton generators, and transporters.

And as to Rand and Uhura and the short skirts -- nothing wrong with that!

Bender Bending Rodriguez sez: "The Great Bird of the Galaxy can kiss my shiny metal ass."

If only Majel Barrett had been Number One, none of this would have happened.

Yeah, that Twiki... He coulda caused some crap for Buck.

Thinking a little meta, I would suppose it was a budget constraint. It may also have been a general rule at the time that showing robots made it automatically a kids show, so they had to give the bots a negative spin. Just some guesses.

He was also anti-spacesuit.
I think there was only one ep of the show where someone actually went out on a space walk.

@annalee:
I think Star Trek would have been a much better show (not as popular) if they had.

Based on this criteria, I think Geno wasn't all that pro feminist either as his female costume choices were strongly anti women in pants, too.

My guess is that in a society that was created where all men are equal, money is obsolete, and they are in the pursuit of a common greater good they would need to find something for all people to do. If no one has to work for money, there is no war and robots are doing all the work, than humanity would sit on its ass wasting time (read Childhoods End for an opposing view). So they need to have all people engaged in things from being a Captain to fixing the toilets to make sure that humans are reaching their individual potential and being a useful part of socitety. Plus, it didn't take much to throw Data out of whack and turn him into a real douchebag, so perhaps they were avoiding that.

Roddenberry had a very conformist view of the future. Notice the Borg are bad guys and humans of the 23rd/24th century are morally opposed to both genetic engineering (ala Doctor Bashir and Kahn) or biomechanical improvements, other than Picard's robot heart. So long as you don't look different, being cyber is OK.

There were no Renegade Humans who wanted to be Borg or modify themselves to look weird because they could. Apparently, humanity's future has done away with Body modification and any other sub cultures that make life interesting and unique.

RE: short skirts. They weren't Roddenberry's idea. His original concept had men and women wearing the same uniforms. An idea that was pretty groundbreaking at the time. The network added the short skirts because they felt the show was lacking that certain special something.

"M-5 will crush your mighty starships!"

Good morning Dave...

Afte 2001, I can see why Rodenberry might have felt that AI was not his cup of tea. The ST ships have always had about as much AI as my TV remote control. Gawd, at least have some cleaning bots moving about.

I always thought it was weird there was that one episode of TNG where Wesley accidentally invents sentient nanobots--and that this was never mentioned again, as far as I know. Somehow robots and AI don't seem to want to fit into the Star Trek universe except as anomalies and isolated incidents.

@ManchuCandidate: the skirts where not Genes idea. Depending on who you talk to anyone from NBC to Grace Whitney herself is the reason for skirts being added.

You can tell it was a last minute thing because even as late as the first season there where still women wearing the original pants uniform.

@Little Time Bomb: That "special something" continued into TNG (at least the first episode) where male crewmembers in the background wore the miniskirt/skant uniforms, which, thank goodness, vanished very quickly.

[memory-alpha.org]

@Falconfire:
Oh well, I guess I can lay that one to rest.

@qmech: You're right. Gene wasn't anti-robot, he just had no budget.

He defintely was anti-computer, or at least any computer more sophisticated then the Enterprise's. Let's see, Kirk logic bombed Landru, the M-5, Nomad and the Norman androids. He blew up the Armageddon computer of Aminear (sp), Vaal, Dr. Corby's androids, Lee Meriweather, and he fixed the busted asteroid pusher computer, and the Yonada computer. Perhaps it goes back to the computer trying to frame him in Court Martial?

If Kirk had been around in Data's time, poor data would have been dead in 42 minutes.

@Gyrus: There's not a huge amount of cultural complexity going on at any level. Notice that every member of every alien species shares its species' cultural values: all Klingons are the same, all Ferengi are the same, etc.

There is a vague rational behind it, but Roddenberry was definitely drawing cultural portraits in broad strokes.

Nit: That thread isn't from the Cool Sci Fi forum. It originated on the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup. Cool Sci Fi is just running a gateway for clueless n00bs who don't know what Usenet is.

@Garrison Dean:

Agree. The whole point of the Federation is that people work for the sake of working, robots would mean there's no work for them to do.

Umm, what about Data? I think he was one of the most protagonistic robots of all! Granted, he was an android -- but literarily, I think he is serving the same function.

Perhaps it is because, deep down, Star Trek is pretty conservative and conventional sci-fi.

@Lampbane: Seriously though, there should have a been at least a Roomba roving the halls of the Enterprise. Who wants to go th Star Fleet Academy just so the guidance counselor can assign them to starship cleen up detail? No thanks, I'll stay in Futristic San Francisco.

Because sentient robots will ALWAYS rise up in an orgy of mayhem, death and destruction and seek to wipe humanity out....I don't trust them, never will.

And if that freakish robot gnome AZIMO comes anywhere near me I am going to reprogram him using an axe.

Its them or us people.

@ManchuCandidate: And anti black/jew, since there was only one black person per show (two if you count Klingons=Black)

There are a number of robots in TNG and Voyager. TNG, specifically was the tiny ball sized robot that stopped a planet side facility from overloading, much to Anti-Robotics feeling Geordi.

Also, I distinctly remember an episode of Voyager where robots or androids worked as "slaves" in a Garbage disposal barge/center.

The technology of the late 60's would have made it extremely difficult (read expensive) to create something that looked and behaved like a robot on the screen. Unless you dress a man up with air conditioning ducts, and that would have been laughable.

Perhaps Roddenberry didn't hate robots, he simply could not afford them.

ALL the Robots were over on LOST IN SPACE.
"DANGER WILL ROBINSON" !!!!!!!

You are imperfect. Must sterilize.

I, for one, extend warm greetings to our future robot overlords.

I tend to think that any civilization that creates independent, sentient robots without a killswitch is pretty quickly doomed. Skynet and Hal being obvious examples, the thinking machines from the Dune series as well.

Like having a stop replication line in your nanites to prevent grey goo.

I dunno about Star Trek, but Mass Effect has an interested concept of Genocide against AI (or synthetic intelligence, as some protesters claim for Synthetic Intelligence rights)

Although it also presents a decent case against, in that Synthetic Life has no reason to suffer the presence of organic life, because we'd just be a nuisance, taking up resources.

Yep, as said above, the post TOS/TAS shows displaced their robot need/love onto hologrammatic lifeforms, such as the EMH Mark I's used in V'GER's "Author, Author", and the holoprograms used for adventure, storytelling and sexual release.

Why use metal, when a powerful enough CPU can shape matter into any form desired, and put a consciousness responsive to every whim? You know there must be Federation locales that don't use safety protocols (like the Hirogen and their shipwide Danger Room play), whose participants live in those worlds for extended periods of time. No one asks if the holograms are tired, or want some other life, because as soon as that free will pops up, maintenance routinely deletes it.

Now *that's* the issue they never explored deeply on the TV shows -- what happens to a culture when it approaches that Talosian event horizon, when dreams come fully true, when that culture has no economic constraints against indulgence?

If the will of the Borg could be translated into hologrammatic form, wouldn't they live in the hearts and minds of all sentient beings dependent on holograms for entertainment? I always wondered why the Borg never used soft power -- memes, culture -- to let their nanoprobes invade slowly. They wouldn't have needed a Locutus if they just took over prime time....

It was probably a combination of the vision of a futuristic conformist utopia and the (at the time) new and strange field of computer technology. It wasn't long ago that computers were a radical, amazing and in some cases terrifying new tool. The idea that that tool could go the way of atomic technology and become destructive was very real. It was relatively unknown if computers could become too powerful to control. Where computers are now is very far from their 25 year old ancestors, and the path that they would go along could not be predicted during their rapid cultural emergence.

"Twenty years of groping to prove the things I'd done before were not accidents... seminars and lectures to rows of fools who couldn't begin to understand my systems... colleagues, laughing behind my back at the 'Boy Wonder;' and becoming famous, building on my work - building on my work!" -Daystrom

Am I the only one who thought that Daystrom completely losing his shit was one of the greatest pieces of acting ever, or am I alone in that regard?

Please, IO9, find a vid of Daystrom going insane!

Twiki not Twiggy.

@pink_clerical_collar: what happens to a culture when it approaches that Talosian event horizon, when dreams come fully true, when that culture has no economic constraints against indulgence?

The Q.

To all --

It seems to me that the "evil that robots do" was simply convenience for the creation of conflict for storylines. I would like to suggest that the real reason that robots were not a constant presence most probably was that it would have been relatively expensive to create and maintain a set of reasonably believable ones, by 1960s television standards. I think it's fair to say the original Star Trek owed a lot to Forbidden Planet, and creating a staff of up to date (for 1966) Robbie the Robots would have been a serious challenge on a television budget. Clearly the aim of Star Trek was to go "to the next level" of television SF, and for that I have to credit Roddenberry (and Gene L. Coon -- remember him?) in doing, despite Roddenberry's obvious character flaws, whatever they could to create a quality product.

The Questor Tapes was the 1974 pilot that introduced a very Data-like character in the person of Robert Foxworth. It seems pretty clear that Roddenberry resurrected some of his ideas there for Star Trek TNG, (with or without David Gerrold's help).

So, tempest in a teapot, I say.

Driods are so STAR WARS anyway... I never felt like Star Trek lacked a machine or robot presence. Hell, the Enterprise-D main computer was a practically a robot character, just one without a body.

@pink_clerical_collar: Holograms in ST became sentient all the time. Some kidnapped the TNG crew. Some became mentors for the Deep Space crew (Lou Vega I think). Some were neurotic (All Voyager EMHs...)

Then again, if there were Holodecks during Kirk's time, I'm sure he'd stay in there 24/7 >_>

@Trongasm: Now there's a poll question, which giant war ship (The Enterprise-D IS a warship compared to Federation Standards) is the hottest. Enterprise or Rommie?

I never thought Star Trek was all that rigorous about future science and technology, at least in the original series. They were going back and forth between metric and imperial measures then.

Reading too much meaning into a television show developed as a western in space in the 1960's does bad things to your brain.

I'm no so concerned that Star Trek was anti-robot so much as it was anti-Irish. In the fourth episode, "The Naked Time," Lt. Kevin Reilly, speaking in an embarrassing stage-Irish accent, takes over the ship, declares himself the new captain, and tells everybody they get free ice cream.

In the meanwhile, in Shore Leave, when Kirk is given the opportunity to live out a fantasy, he happily beats to death an Irishman named Finnegan.

...and anti-Italian too. Not once did I see Italians on the show. Well except for that mobster Rocco... but he was from another planet. ;-)

@maxsparber: "...Lt. Kevin Reilly, speaking in an embarrassing stage-Irish accent, takes over the ship, declares himself the new captain, and tells everybody they get free ice cream."

That is definitely the first thing I would do if I took over a federation starship. Then I'd disable the deflector dish so it couldn't be transformed and used against me by the lactose intolerant crew members.

@ Trongasm: Y'know, the Enterprise-D gave birth to something... did anyone in the canon universe ever follow that up?