Isn’t shatner maga scum?
Edit: apparently not. Who the hell was I thinking of?
I think (but don’t remember specific instances) Shatner is conservative leaning but I guess the canadian perspective makes him very different to MAGA.
You are probably thinking of Robert Beltran? he went open about MAGA shit on twitter shortly after jan 6 IIRC.
That makes sense of it. It was years ago, and my memory was diluted by my contemporaneous stress. Thank you for making me feel a little saner.
You are also thinking of Shatner lol but his ego makes everything confusing.
Nah, he’s a good Canadian.
Okay, he’s rich, out of touch, and a total dick to his coworkers. But I’ve never seen him express any particularly bad political views.
Possibly lt broccoli
A few years back, I was speaking to a roommate. I complained that the (then) new Star Trek had forced diversity. He immediately shut me down, “Star Trek has ALWAYS been like that”. He was a huge fan of Star Trek
Why would you even complain about that in the first place?
People tend to think that “forced diversity” is something being pushed from the top, but the people who own Hollywood are literally paying money to the right wing who limits diversity.
My personal belief is that there are simply a lot of homosexuals and trans people in the art world. Whether it be make up artists, actors or screenwriters, i think aaaaall of this is a lot more normal amongst creatives than it is among the regular population.
So obviously, its gonna show up more in movies and shows, than in real life. Because the people making the art knows these actual people.
People tend to forget when watching a movie, that just like when looking at a painting, they are in fact watching someone else art, and they are welcome to just not look at it, or find artists that more aligned with their bigoted views.
yup its literally hollywood execs, doing rainbow/ diversity" capitalism , cons think its an agenda by hollywood which are traditionally right wing pushing it as we must include gays, womens, pocs as the forefront of movies and show to show society “they arnt racist”, they only care because most viewers are left leaning , right wingers dont watch anything but copaganda type shows. you can tell hollywood is still pretty racist since they barely represent asians other than stereotypes. shang chi wasnt groundbreaking for asians , maybe for SImu liu, its stereotyping because he barely had any roles after that.
As a person of color I can tell you that white liberals limit diversity more than white conservatives.
Citation needed.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
He wasn’t wrong. Racists didn’t put Trump in the White House. Apathetic centrists and moderates did. And no, it’s not just about him. Buy it’s the one of the more salient example of modern moderates allowing horrible shit.
Methods of Direct Action was the name of my punk band in high school.
Joking aside, anyone who thinks actions to change an unfair system is the problem, is obviously a fascist in disguise.
There’s the money conservative and the scared conservative. Scared conservative is racist. Money conservative only sees the colour of money
Allowing for gradations for different levels of assholes, ofc
its a variant of rainbow capitalism, i called "diversity " capitalism the execs push the race and gender swapping because the audience is mostly left leaning so they think it gives them more views on thier films or show. when in fact the audience dont care about it and some are irked they did this on purpose while making a shitty show.
Whatever you say, day-old account. Unless you have some examples to share?
Except people weren’t complaining about forced diversity, which is also known as “representation”.
Star Trek (TOS) never needed to BE about diversity, because it was set in a utopian future where racism, and sexism weren’t problems anymore. You had an entire multi-racial cast on the bridge of a starship so just from THAT you knew that racism wasn’t a problem in the future. There was no more war, poverty, disease or crime. Conflict only came from humanity’s meetings with alien races.
TOS Star Trek never needed to beat you over the head every 5 minutes with how gay someone was because that wasn’t a problem in the 23rd century. Nobody gave a shit.
Are you one of those people who believes Discovery had a coming out as nonbinary plot
What does that even mean?
some people believe that star trek discovery had a story arc about a character coming out as non-binary.
Wasn’t that arc about a lesbo character, in fact, becoming binary? They had to merge two to save one.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think the best way for Trek to handle queer issues is to just put queer people on the bridge. A gay Riker equivalent or a trans woman who talks about her past with the same discomfort but honesty as how Picard talks about his is what I want. And in that vein I’m still on my first watch of TNG and it’ll be a while before I get to nutrek.
But I’m not going to pretend that to a certain portion of the population TOS wasn’t seen as being overly preachy on race. But seeing as I haven’t gotten to TOS yet either, I will say that in modern day I do think TNG was a bit preachy about disability and I’m glad they were.
honestly i think DS9 strikes a better balance. and it too was disliked at the time for going against what star trek was.
I mean, the one with the half white half black face dudes was not subtle
Where do you consider TNG being preachy about disability? Not arguing, it’s just been a while since I’ve watched it beginning to end and this might be something I failed to pick up on.
Geordi’s blindness is a plot point at least once in an episode that’s basically exactly what people act like episodes involving queerness are. Where he has to hold a eugenicist’s hand through accepting that he doesn’t mind that he was born blind and that he even has some advantages thanks to his visor. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very good episode, and people did need it laid out like that, but it’s very much not the “we’ve moved beyond such concerns” in a way that say having a ranking officer use a wheelchair would be.
I will say something they did right was that his visor gives him headaches. It’s very in line with what folks with cochlear implants or very strong eyeglass prescriptions describe.
Ah, that’s fair, I was a child when I first watched the series so I don’t think I ever really registered the visor as a disability given that being blind doesn’t hinder him at all, besides the aforementioned headaches that rarely come up.
My biggest complaint about academy is the same as everyone, poor writing. But since everyone also wants to bring up the ‘woke’ panic as well being why it’s so bad, I disagree. It isn’t the package that is bad, it’s the packaging.
Don’t give ‘the Gay™ character’. Give me a good character who is gay.
Why are you forcing me to care about a character because they are gay? What a wasted opportunity. You had a not so subtle anti-archetype klingon who had the heavy handed writing of being into science, medicine, and openly gay and intentionally written to be anything a klingon is not. What shitty writing. They had all the opportunities to make me love the character for who they were, their personality, their true choices and internal struggles, and make me care about them as a whole person that happened to be gay because that is who they are. Make me love their choices about being gay, not tell me I should love them because they are gay.
More than that, previous iterations of trek knew how to do it right. Most people bring up DS9 because it was done so well. We loved the characters for who they were, and who they were happened to be gay. Academy told us to love them because they were gay, and just happened to also be a character.
Edit: lol. Getting downvoted because people think this is some anti-gay post?? It’s about bad writing and forced caring.
In my opinion, for recent shows The Orville did it best. Bortis is easily my favorite character. So well written and so much fun. And the whole arc with his kid was some of the best scifi tv trans writing out there. That is where academy could take a lesson from on what I mean about loving the character who happens to be gay rather the telling me to love the character because they are gay.
The thing was in TOS that kiss, in-universe, was no biggie. In DS9 with all the gender and sexuality shifts in the Trill scenario, it again just ‘was’. When it was a big deal, it was some alien culture being backwards and the Federation being an example of doing it right.
STD was oddly self-congratulatory. “First ever non-binary character in trek!” they proclaim as people were able to respond with just so many examples of previous non-binary characters. The character despite being a human, being on Earth, had to make a big deal of “coming out” and a big outpouring of support in-universe to balance out the trepidation of coming out. Which should have just been a very mundane scenario, you want the character to be non-binary, fine, they are, people will be respectful but it will be a boring mundane fact rather than some big deal.
Yes, there are those that are flipping out over too much representation that are done consistently with star trek. Probably the most fair point was that someone probably wouldn’t be out of shape, but by that logic, Picard shouldn’t have been bald, so…
It… insists upon itself?
lmao did they really? didn’t riker bang a non-binary alien (or try to at least)?
Actually, as I recall the entire society was ‘non-binary’ and that specific alien wanted to come out as female. And of course Riker banging was a green light after she declared herself female. Probably not the best choice to have Riker banging her as part of the narrative, but yeah, that was famously an example of them trying to address a point by inverting real-world, the ‘norm’ is non-binary and the ‘unusual’ one is gendered and the Federation serves as the model of ‘we respect your people either way, you should too’.
That’s right, the entire species had evolved past having gender. That makes it even sadder/funnier that ST:D tried to claim it.
Is where they officially declared that Trek was doing a non-binary character for the first time.
The Star Trek universe’s first non-binary character
wow, not even the first crew members or first actors, they tried to claim it for the whole Star Trek universe. unbelievable. I think Dax would like to have a word with them.
It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.
I recently learned that Shatner and Takei don’t actually use social media and all the posts you see from them are just some employees that were instructed to speak in their style.
It’s possible on a regular basis.
However, as with other high profile accounts, one expects that messages that are high profile would be cleared with the person under whose name the official account is made.
Not at all. Chapelle told that joke about hearing that “his” “official” Twitter account was having beef with Kat Williams’ “official” account. During one show when both of them were in the audience, he went over to Kat and told him the situation - to which Kat replied, “wtf is Twitter?”
Yeah. I wish people like him, sulu, and stephen king would abandon it already though.
Looking at the downvotes, I don’t think anybody realized you meant “abandon Xitter,” not “abandon using their platform for the greater good.”
Lol! That’s too bad
Yeah, I always thought he was kind of a douche, but I guess his heart is in the right place.
I think Shatner is complicated because (a) he’s 95 years old, and can’t be expected to be fully “in touch,” and (b) he has definitely had some questionable people handling his social media over the years.
I just had to double check and holy crap I did not realise he is 95!
true, and he went with BEZOs into space as a tourist and became disappointed after, only for bezos to laugh for no reason after spraying him with ALCOHOL.
Yeah, it’s shatner so
youone expects him to be crass, andyouone forgets he was the first star trek captain. and agreed with the ideas being shown on screen (unlike, IDK, Barclay’s actor)Jeffrey Hunter was the first Star Trek captain.
Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realise the starring role of the TOS series , Captain Kirk was played by Jeffrey Hunter. How many episodes was he in?
Captain Christopher Pike was played by Jeffery Hunter in the first Star Trek series, but was only in the pilot or something before Shatner took the reins. If you were sincerely asking.
The first pilot that wasn’t aired. It’s what got turned into the Talos IV episode with Pike, they used that footage for his “dream” life
If you were sincerely asking.
not really. When people are thinking about their favourite captain, especially before the revival, Jeff was never in the running. Hell, Bakalar is barely in the running.
I agree. It’s one of those nerd pedantic facts that people throw out.
Huh? What’s up with Barclay’s actor?
Right wing propaganda guy. Dwight Sclutz
Boy, do I wish I hadn’t read this comment. This makes me sad to know.
What really gets to me is that he’s fucking Mung Daal in Chowder, whose actor is was a literal kid. God knows what kind of poison lies he fed that boy. I really liked him in chowder too.
No more! I had no idea of that, either! I friggin loved that show! I am now double depressed. I wish to know no more!
Aw man v.v
@Skullgrid @Maestro Never meet your heroes.
I’ve actually done pretty good meeting my heroes, they’re mostly down to earth types.
That speaks as much to your excellent choices in hero’s as to the hero’s themselves 🙂👍
Sooo many of them too. I just can’t rewatch Hercules or Lois & Clark.
fits, hes always a wierdo that needs a psychological help in the show, probably a wierdo in real lfie. he played the same wierdo character on sg1, 1st season i believe as the “virtual reality guy”
just, don’t ask him how many horses he owns
I wouldn’t say woke is against norms, rather against traditionalism. Traditionalism itself is often abnormal, even within its own culture.
Agreed. People should dislike modern Star Trek for it’s bad writing, not because it’s progressive.
I mostly agree, but with shows like Starfleet Academy, the writing is bad in part because of the forced inclusive themes. You’re broadly correct: these could be handled with tact for a better show. I still think these themes are handled best when they give the audience room to consider nuanced and complex ideas. Don’t shoot me, but instead of a classic New Generation episode I’m going cite an episode of The Orville - “About a Girl”. Bortus and Klyden have a baby, who is born female. They try to argue that she should be allowed to remain female, but ultimately the court rules that she undergo the Moclan gender reassignment procedure.
This touches on contemporary issues but also doesn’t present the situation as “this side is 100% right, and this side is literally Hitler.” The audience is actually left wondering, where does this sit in the contemporary debate? If a child is born one sex, should they be given the right to remain as that sex? Or should a court be allowed to step in and reassign sex? The episode also brilliantly explores the difficult dynamic between Bortus and Klyden, and doesn’t portray one as a cartoon villain and the other as a male Mary Sue.
This is where New Trek fails horrible. Zero nuance. Everything is presented in the first 10 seconds as “this is good, this is bad. Accept the message we are feeding you are you are a bad person.” That’s not Star Trek. Most importantly, that’s not interesting. It’s not good storytelling. It might appeal to people who really like circlejerking about that particular issue, but that’s a minority of people.
I agree completely with your point about the Orville. It was really well done.
I don’t agree with your assessment of New Trek, however. I know it’s all very variable and I don’t want to generalise, but even if we accept this:
Everything is presented in the first 10 seconds as “this is good, this is bad. Accept the message we are feeding you are you are a bad person.”
Then, I have to point out the obvious: if it’s so lacking in nuance, then yes, if you don’t accept it you are a bad person. For example, if it’s saying, “gay people are ok and normal”, there’s no subtlety to that because it’s not something anyone in the future will hopefully give a shit about. And if someone in their society did, then yes, they would be in the wrong. 100%.
But this is exactly my point. “Gay people are ok and normal” shouldn’t be a plot. It’s like a “murder is bad” plot. Yes, murder is bad. We know. That’s just not an interesting theme to explore. Maybe if it were presented as a trolly problem, where a crew member were forced to kill someone in order to defend their own life, or the life of a friend, that could be an interesting plot. Forcing the viewer to explore the tension of morality between killing or being killed, or taking an innocent life to save another innocent life. That could be interesting television.
We could apply this to a “gay” plot as well. What if the crew met a civilization that were on the brink of extinction for some reason, and they had outlawed homosexuality for reasons of survival. The crew could explore the tension between individual liberty and existentialism. Someone might argue, “our civilization doesn’t deserve to survive if we strip people of such basic human rights.” Another might argue, “if our civilization is to survive we must make hard decisions as we have always done during war and other crises.” They might argue it’s only “temporary,” and someone else might argue, “it’s been 30 years!”
The issue is driven by one-dimensional plot.
Trek expresses gay people being normal. It’s explicitly not the plot. There’s no plot point about it. The plot is about kids (for a certain Steve McQueen value of “teenager”) being in school and battling Space Foes. I’m picking on “being gay” as a point because I imagine it’s what the people who cancelled the show had an issue with, but I could well be wrong.
There was no exploration of the things the right-wing hate in Academy. They just exist. There’s no ongoing plot about anyone’s sexuality, or if you think there is then it’s dwarfed by the same plot with other straight characters.
It sounds so much like saying you can’t have a gay character unless there’s an interesting moral plot point about why they’re gay. That’s not what Academy did.
If these themes are ancillary and not the one dimensional focus, no problem. In Ko’Zeine, the entire episode arc hinges on Darem being gay. It is the plot. To make it worse, there was never any ambiguity. The writers telegraphed the “correct” outcome from the beginning and never let the viewer stew in any kind of reflection or moral dilemma. We knew exactly what the outcome would be and the only reason we watched was to see how we would reach the only “right” conclusion. That’s not good storytelling. It’s a poor choice of plot. So would be a “murder is bad” plot. The issue isn’t a gay character existing. We have plenty of examples of gay characters existing in media in which “the right” takes no issue. See Six Feet Under, Will & Grace, Willow in Buffy, Remy in House, and a thousand other examples.
The issue is the poor writing. I levy similar criticisms of any writing like this. If these episodes revolved around “I’m short,” or “I’m ugly,” or “I’m fat,” they would also be uninteresting. There needs to be more complexity and moral ambiguity to provoke thought. I don’t watch Star Trek for the flashy lights. I watch it for the interesting dilemmas. Academy is the very lowest brow Netflix slop I could imagine.
Ko’Zeine,
None of that episode hinges on Darem being gay, though? What would have changed if he was straight? It’s not the plot. The plot is that he has responsibilities to his home world and has new found family with Star Fleet.
I appreciate you referencing the Orville’s most pivotal episode. And honestly, the twist involving Klyden’s reasoning for reassigning Topa, as a trans sci-fi nerd, broke my heart.
Spoilers about the most crucial arc of the story
That’s the perspective that a lot of people don’t have when they see that episode. It’s easy to take Klyden’s lawyer’s argument as legitimate when he makes the point of comparing it to the cultural version of a cleft lip.
And then Haveena walks into the room. And she proves, conclusively, that she is a woman and she would never choose to be anything other than what she is. That her gender is a gift. And then, later on, we see the hidden planet of the female Moclans, and it is so radically different from Moclus that you’d hardly believe this is the same species.
We see Moclan men testing weapons anywhere they please above civilian airspace, and the backdrop is an industrial wasteland because they never developed ecocentrism… because safety laws, industrial regulation, and other ‘soft’ ideas went unobserved and unvalued.
Contrast the Hidden Planet, and we see Moclan women, dancing in a style that they invented, revering the planet that protects them. We see women warriors carefully watching the Orville’s crew as little girls play in the street. It feels indescribably very… honestly, African. I can’t put my finger on why, but it does.
All of those differences are deliberate. And they were set up very, very early.
Can you give me a practical example of Starfleet Academy lacking the kind of nuance you would like to see?
A specific example would be “Vox in Excelso.” Jay-Den learns the Klingons have become an endangered people after the Burn, General Obel Wochak rejects the Federation’s offer of asylum on Faan Alpha because accepting it as charity would dishonour them, and the episode resolves that by staging a fake battle so the Klingons can claim the planet “by conquest”. To me, that lands too neatly. The episode tells you very quickly that the Federation position is the sensible one and the Klingon objection is mostly pride that needs to be worked around, rather than really sitting with the possibility that their view of dignity, sovereignty, and survival might have more weight than the script gives it.
Another example is “Ko’Zeine.” Darem is pulled back to Khionia for an arranged royal marriage to Kaira, and the episode is clearly building toward the conclusion that suppressing your real self for duty and tradition is tragic and wrong. That is a fair theme, but the show signals the moral endpoint so early that there is not much room left for genuine ambiguity. Kaira ends up being understanding, Jay-Den is framed as the voice urging honesty, and the traditional path mainly exists to be rejected. Compare that with something like older Trek, where you were more often left to wrestle with whether duty, culture, and individual freedom could all make a legitimate claim on the character at the same time.
So when I say the show lacks nuance, I do not mean it should avoid these themes. I mean it too often starts from the answer and then builds the episode backwards, instead of letting the conflict stay uncomfortable long enough for the audience to think. And when the story concludes, they make it VERY clear which way the audience is expected to land. They do not allow for any ambiguity or moral disagreement. They present the “right and true” path, and make it clear that any deviation is wrong and immoral.
I am not disagreeing with you, but old trek does this all the time.
In season 5 episode 17 (the one with the J’naii androgynous race) the setup is exacly the same as Ko’Zeine: from the start you get the answer that suppressing your true self is bad. The J’naii are seen as bigoted and the federation position as the right one. I do not think there is any ambiguity about which side the viewer is supposed to take. The only difference is the end result. Or look at how Dr. Crusher treats Klingon ritual suicide in season 5 episode 16: their culture is treated entirely as a stubborn, barbaric hurdle to be overcome by the ‘sensible’ 24th-century human perspective.
And TNG is also full of examples of “the federation knows best”. In Season 7 Episode 13 the federation works around a similar problem with the forced migration on the holodeck. Or Season 2 Episode 18, where the enterprise force the merge of the Bringloidi and the Mariposans. Or when in Season 1 Episode 8 we dismiss Edo society position immediately as immoral despite them living in a paradise society.
That’s fair, and to be clear, I do not think the point is that old Trek was always perfectly nuanced and new Trek never is. Of course old Trek had plenty of episodes where the writers clearly had a preferred moral conclusion. The difference, for me, is in how often it still let the opposing view feel internally coherent, emotionally serious, and worth wrestling with before the resolution arrived.
Take The Outcast. Yes, the episode clearly wants you to sympathise with Soren, but the J’naii are not just framed as sneering idiots for 45 minutes. Their position is tied to a broader social order, Riker cannot simply speechify it away, and the ending is bleak rather than triumphant. Same with Ethics. Crusher is obviously the more humane voice, but Worf’s position is not treated as random barbarism. It comes from honour, fear, identity, and a real cultural framework, which is why the conflict works at all. You can disagree with how those episodes land while still admitting they spend more time inside the conflict.
That is really my criticism of newer Trek. It is not that it has politics, or even that it has a preferred answer, because Trek always has. It is that newer Trek too often signals the answer immediately, flattens the dissenting side into an obstacle, and then resolves the issue in a way that feels morally pre-approved. Old Trek could be didactic too, but it was more willing to leave the audience sitting in the mess for a while. That is the distinction I am getting at.
I understand your point, but I think you are having a lesser opinion of new trek because you are missing some of the messages they want to share with the viewer.
In Ko’Zeine the conflict is not between self and tradition, but more about the internal conflict of Darem. The enemy here is his own crippling self-expectation, not society. I think this conflict resonate a lot with modern morality topics such as LGBTQ+ acceptance.
In Vox in Excelso is the same: the fake battle is a compromise. Both the federation and the klingon knows it is a farse. But they go with it anyway as a way to preserve their own self representation in a post burn galaxy. To me Vox in Excelso is political realism. The klingon are not treated as an obstacle to be tricked, but as political partner in a mutual charade. In the episode this is explicitly framed as a klingon solution to a klingon problem.
In Ko’Zeine the conflict is not between self and tradition, but more about the internal conflict of Darem. The enemy here is his own crippling self-expectation, not society. I think this conflict resonate a lot with modern morality topics such as LGBTQ+ acceptance.
Either way, I feel the narrative is pre-approved, telegraphed at every opportunity, and leaves no room for ambiguity. I’m sure this theme does resonate with some people, but it’s not good storytelling. It doesn’t resonate beyond that small group.
Re Vox: I agree with your description of the storyline, and I am not disputing that is how the story was told. My point of contention is that the correct outcome was pre-approved. We all knew the “right” choice from the moment the choice was presented. There was never any doubt that the Klingons were wrong. Never any sympathetic exploration of the reasons for their cultural beliefs. Never a moment of critical self-reflection for the viewer. We were told up front “the Klingons are wrong, and we are going to take you on a journey to show you WHY the Klingons are wrong, and how we solve this problem of them being wrong.” It is more akin to an action movie than a Star Trek episode. We all know who the good and bad guys are, and we’re just excited to see shooty lasers on our journey to the foregone conclusion.
That’s a lot of words to not provide a single example from a show of what makes “forced inclusion” different than “inclusion”
Someone asked that question two hours ago and I replied with two examples. It’s underneath my comment. I’m not sure which application you’re using to browse Lemmy but you should be able to see it.
I saw that but I didn’t see anything about what makes inclusion “forced” in one series but not in another.
I thought I did a reasonable job of explaining the narrative distinction in my comment. Maybe you could be specific about which part you don’t understand, or which part with which you might disagree?
yeah sure so im curious to know what “forced inclusion” means and how we’re supposed to tell it apart from regular inclusion.
Which part of my explanation did you not understand or disagree with?
I can’t speak for the other poster, but the way I see is is that “forced inclusion” is where the script directs viewer attention to it in a protracted, unnatural manner that is not pertinent to the plot. For instance, the script may be as blunt as a character saying “Wow, I can’t believe you made it this far despite being a [marginalized out-group],” or it could be a little more subtle by offering a stereotyped representation of [marginalized out-group] without any kind of deeper exploration. i.e. Tokenism
Star Trek, for the most part, dove into social subjects deeper, more meaningful way than other media at the time. Like other users have pointed out, TOS confronted racism and gender roles head on by placing a black female character on the bridge. By never drawing attention to those traits, the show issued such a strong rebuke against racism and male chauvinism that no more needed to be said. In my view, that is inclusion that is not forced upon the viewer; it is implied, but unless the viewer is explicitly looking for it, they’d never notice.
Yeah, nothing is organic. Feels like it’s not normal to the characters too, because they have to keep explaining it to themselves.
The message is not the issue, the inability of the writers to insert it in the story is.
I find the actual problems they face to be more organic than other series, there’s always at least a semi-good reason why the threat of the week is occuring rather than something stupid like flying through enemy territory with no shields or some rando just beaming out your ships main computer being a huge weakness that no one ever thought might be a problem.
i was pointing it out alot on nutrek videos, some people dont believe its bad writing lol. have you seen them act lately, or the writing. its wierd how kurtzman sees the live action as transformer style/copaganda of nutrek but with the animated is more in line with old trek.
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn’t an issue at all.
Uhura was a bridge officer who was a black woman, and nobody cared or even noticed because in-universe there was nothing special about that.
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn’t an issue at all.
Is Jay-Den being gay not exactly that? Nobody cares in universe. But somewhat it is a big thing for a lot of people for no reason at all.
It is exactly that. Same with the meltdowns over Adira.
I like how in Discovery a character came out as non-binary and everyone is like “ok cool” and that was that and it was never brought up again (because why would it be)?
You can tell by the absolute meltdown conservative spaces had about that five second clip that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
It got there, sure, but that coming out was a bit rough, because they treated it as a “big deal”, they were afraid of coming out and ultimately did, but seemed to harbor anxiety that should have not had a place anymore. They got over it (I assume, I actually kind of lost track of Discovery), but at one point it was too big a deal.
Also, out of universe, they were a bit annoying about bragging about being the first non-binary representation in Star Trek ever, which just seems disrepectful of the times it came up before.
I don’t believe any of this is supported by what we saw on screen. Do you have evidence to support these claims? Even just a single line of dialogue for each claim would be helpful.
I’d have to rewatch, but I recall as they picked Adira up from 32nd century Earth, despite being a fully grown up person, went by feminine pronouns. Adira had to work up to come out, rather than being out from the onset.
I recall because I was very confused on Adira’s introduction because they kept yelling from the rooftops about how progressive they were by having a non-binary character, but Adira and everyone around Adira kept using feminine terms. I distinctly recall a ‘coming out’ moment which seemed to be played with trepidation.
The fairest thing I could say is that 32nd century earth was no longer “federation” and so maybe they had a big old conservative backslide and so Adira’s plight was due to the gloomy setting of isolated Earth with the loss of FTL travel.
Nothing from the show itself? A transcript or youtube clip?
Ugh, fine.
“Adira, who joined us from Earth, may be able to guide sto Federation headquarters one she regains her own memoris”
“Is there any way the symbiont was joined with Adira against her will?”
Basically, Adira spends episodes 3 through 8 rolling with feminine pronouns, keeping their non-binary nature a secret.
Adira doesn’t come out until Episode 8: ADIRA: Um, “they.” Not… not “she.” I’ve never felt like a “she” or or a “her,” so… I would prefer “they” or “them” from now on.
STAMETS: Okay.
ADIRA: Um, and I’ve never told anyone but Gray.
Adira kept their non-binary identity secret and took them 5 episodes to work up the nerve to declare to the first person other than Gray. I think the traditional trek move would have been from episode 3, right out the gate, first reference to this new character would use non-gendered pronouns because, well, why would they feel they need to keep it a secret?
But that’s not what they did with Uhura. They never hung a lantern on her being black or a woman. She was just there and it was such a normal thing it didn’t need to be addressed in-universe.
Having a character “come out” means the world is one in which people are hiding in the closet because of a social stigma. A world in which that stigma doesn’t exist doesn’t require a character to come out.
Huh? How is Stamets supposed to know if nobody tells him?
Don’t spend 5 episodes uses feminine pronouns for the character then have them “come out” as non-binary. Just establish their pronouns from the outset, and don’t make a big deal outside the show about how brave they are for having an NB Trek character.
You don’t normalize something by pointing out that it’s strange.
Got it, you’re saying you are happy to see the inclusion of a non-binary character, just upset that it wasn’t communicated a few episodes earlier?
It’s that they are treating it as something weird. Uhura’s race and sex weren’t treated as weird because why would it be? There wasn’t anything especially special about Geordi being a blind helmsman when TNG premiered, because making accommodations wasn’t anything special - it was normal.
What Discovery did was performative inclusivity, which is a more subtle form of bigotry. It’s pointing at someone and calling them weird and claiming moral superiority for tolerating their presence.
Pretty much. And maybe in the off-screen bragging about it, at least say first main character or first crew member (someone argued about Dax, but I’d say that character was gendered, just fluid over the long term), not ‘first character ever’, since you had a number of instances, and pretty much dead-on a whole species dedicated to exploring gendered versus non-binary in TNG. That’s one habit of Discovery was leaving people wondering if they even watched the shows that preceeded them…
There should have been no good reason for Adira to only tell Gray despite their clear desire to be recognized as non-binary.
Or, alternatively, they could have established that 32nd century Earth cut off from the federation had backslid to MAGA-sensibilities to explain why far future human feels the need to tiptoe around their identity until they come to terms with the culture of the federation that might have been lost to Earth.
Trek writing has never been consistently good. Half of TOS is unwatchably bad. TNG sucks until Riker gets more hair. DS9 sucks until Sisko gets less hair. Voyager’s all over the place (even though it’s my favorite). Enterprise is mostly bad. Only the even numbered TOS movies are good. Only the first two TNG movies are good.
I say this with a genuine love of Star Trek, but the quality of the writing has varied greatly over each individual series.
Agreed. Season three TNG is peak Star Trek. That said, and at the risk of being flayed by the Star Trek community at large, I think DS9 was the best series, taken as a whole.
Subjectively agreed, although ds9 is not as suitable for random watching since some characters have like real arcs and there’s a plot (which we can probably thank b5 for)
As a Star Wars nerd, I feel this so intensely. It sucks when you love the setting, but the actual writing is a crapshoot.
You hold up Andor, Rogue One, and the Animated Clone Wars Saga next to the Sequels, the Christmas Special, or Revenge of the Sith, and it makes your heart hurt.
…holiday special: don’t colonialise life-day…
Discovery writing is all over the place I agree, but Starfleet Academy writing does not look that bad to me. What is so much worse then previous trek? If we do not cherry pick the best of the past against the worst of the new, writing is better or on the same level of what we saw before.
This summarizes everything wrong with Trek:
Why is she running a ship like she’s in a vegan cafe in Portland? Why does she need glasses hundreds of years in the future?
What happens to all the straight people in the future? a killer virus?
What’s the primary romantic relationship in that show again?
The science fiction and adventure part of the show is absolute garbage. If it has been good, people would be able to have their cookie while being lectured to about what they should believe.
These days it seems like most things getting called “woke DEI crap” are totally in line with the norms of society, but someone wants to change that.
Yeah, loopy religious people who want to take society back to the middle ages.
it applied to all SCI fi show both pre-STD(DISCOVERY) thats what really got thier panties in a wad, when kurtzman made all the women have lead roles.SG1 wasnt spared either, as recently Invincible was called woke, just because the female general in coalition took command of the ship (the planet of ragnarrs) to refreeze the beasts.
there was definitely a concerted effort around 2020(thats when woke became super prominent in comments of shows like star trek) around election time to illicit more voters to side with conservatives through propaganda.
Invincible was called woke, just because the female general in coalition took command of the ship
And don’t forget, Mark first GF is now black! The horror!
i was going to mentioned that, since they race swapped her. sandman was another example of race and gender swapping people, Death was suppose to be a goth white chick, and LUCIFER was gwendoline instead of a blond white guy. they alway attribute terrible writing to DEI/WOKENESS
I never thought of it like that. Fuck, that’s depressing.
99% of what you hear people like that accuse others of is pure protection. They’re telling you what they want to do without realizing it, so “woke agenda trying to brainwash our kids!” could be translated into “we want to brainwash kids toward our ideology.”
I remember a coworker saying something about trans people and how we can’t say anything anymore because it all has to be about them or something. I never got the impression this person was bigoted. It seemed completely out of character. I said something like (“They just want equal rights and the same respect as you and I. What’s the issue?”) Maybe people should worry more about weather or not their kids are learning the life skills they need to survive and less about weather or not their kids see two dudes kissing in a movie. Mom and dad need to untighten their buttholes. Even if I don’t understand something, I try to be empathetic and understanding to those who are different from me. I wish everyone else did.
They’re trying hard to change it. Almost like they have a playbook of some kind…
I did Nazi that coming
Pretty sure “woke DEI crap” is universally understood as pandering. And everyone is pissed at stories being written specifically to scream woke crap at you instead of just incorporating diversity in, as it fits the story itself, and moving on with a good show.
the moment maga calls something woke… I embrace that game/tvshow/movie/book. they all turn out to be pretty good (other than a few gacha games)
Sometimes they’re accidentally right about something sucking, but always for a different reason than culture war BS. Ghostbusters 2016, for example.
don’t remind me of that abomination. that 2016 movie doesn’t exist. erase it from my memories.
i noticed that to, STD was one, the show sucked bad. they almost are selfaware, they said terrible writing but then said it is due to wokeness and having women in the show. SG1 was an oddball it got called woke/lib by both tankies and conservatives. right about lucifer in sandman being casted by gwendoline, shouldve been the way in mythology and comics. but comes up with wokeness as the reason.
Yeah, that movie was so ass. My perfect summation of it. We rented it, my daughter picked it out. Like ten minutes in, she says something like, “This is so terrible, I am going to my room.”
Now, normally, she will just ignore whayever is on and play on her phone or whatever and ignore it, this, she actively wanted to flee from.
It was actually impressive just how bad it was. It’s like they were trying to make it unbearable to watch. The fact that it carried the name of an all-time classic made it so much worse.
I was reading your comments thinking, it wasn’t that bad guys. One quick google search revealed I was thinking about the 2021 movie and had completely blocked all memory of the 2016 one. You’re spot on, it was atrocious!
I disagree, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call received way more hate than it deserved. I really enjoyed it and I have rewatched it a bunch of times, more than I’ve rewatched Ghostbusters 2. Holtzman is my favorite character and I love the goofy dance she does with Abby. And I love Chris Hemsworth’s character, he does big goofy handsome guy really well.
It was way better than the last 2. I watched Afterlife once and I have no interest in watching Frozen Throne at all.
I’m with you. 2016 may not compare to the original, but it was a solid comedy with a good heart. The bloody meltdown parts of the internet had over it was insane.
Meh. Leslie Jones’s character was the laziest “sassy black woman” stereotype I’ve ever seen. Whoever wrote that drivel isn’t fit to work on a 3rd rate sketch comedy show let alone a big budget Hollywood movie.
Holy fuck, how many of the things have they made? Jurassic fucking Park over here lol.
JP series with chris pratt is also bad, but i dont see conservative complaining about that, oh becauses the one as the lead, and not someone J Lawrence. i bet they love him even more now that he identifies as a far right christian.
My only issue with that movie was the timing of a few jokes (they made them longer than they should so they stopped being fun) and that the trailer spoiled half of the jokes. The movie itself is cool.
The newest ones? their only redeeming quality for me is Egon’s granddaughter. The kid is really good. Everything else is just the dumbest nostalgia bait ever (even having the mom’s boyfriend a literal stand in for the kind of fan the movies pander to).
I can see where some of the jokes drag on a bit, but I’m personally ok with that. I’ve rewatched it a bunch of times when I use the elliptical or stationary bike at the gym. I feel like the extra laughs give my abs a workout 🤷♀️ lol. I laugh my ass off at “The power of Patty compels you!!” and “Is it more or less disgusting if I tell you it came out the front?” every single time. I adore Holtzman so much.
For me, the new ones don’t have a redeeming quality, that’s not the kid actors faults though. Afterlife came out when we still weren’t going to theaters because of COVID. I was very excited for it and I bought it at full price the day it came out on iTunes. I watched it that night and the first thing I remember saying after it was over was “what the fuck was that shit?” All that nostalgia baiting cash grabbing was gross. And the CGI Egon at the end made me feel sick to my stomach, it felt disrespectful to Harold Ramis. I can’t even bring myself to be interested in Frozen Empire.
I often see people complain that a franchise “forgot” what they are supposed to be about and IMO, that is exactly what happened with ATC and FE. They completely forgot that GB is a raunchy horror comedy and made a family friendly coming of age “scary” movie. It’s an entirely different genre.
Its how I pick media these days too. Now that SFA is over, what are we watching?
Please don’t make me get a Truth Social account to mine for our viewing list.
There have been a few examples I can think of where they’ve called something woke and it was legit pretty mid or outright bad. But usually that’s down to it being a game by committee by people who only interact with marvel level writing, like Dragon Age: Veilguard which is just shit or Mass Effect: Andromeda which honestly just kinda mid.
From what I’ve heard, Shatner is normally pretty right-wing about issues. Maybe fiscally, but not socially. Maybe I’m misremembering, or conflating his character on Boston Legal.
I guess it shows people can be complex.
He’s been critical of Trump and I’m pretty sure he defines himself as apolitical. I’m not sure where you’re finding that he’s right wing, but I’m open to being proven wrong.
Upon further research, he seems hard-core apolitical.
I must have assumed he was like his character that he played on Boston Legal - who was clownishly right-wing.
Sorry about that improper assumption, and thanks for calling me out on it!
I appreciate you vibe checking Shatner anyway. I learned
Anybody who calls themselves apolitical doesn’t recognize how much politics affects us, and in my book, thay makes you kinda dumb.
He can be apolitical in public, and I wish more idiot celebrities would be. You and I don’t need to know his politics. It doesn’t help anything in the grand scheme of things.
Eh, being apolitical doesn’t mean you’re unaware of how much politics affects us. It just means it’s not a subject you’re interested in, which is perfectly acceptable.
having no interest in politics is only for the extremely priveleged, so they’re either dumb or theyre assholes
He was the commencement speaker at my college graduation and he talked about how society was destroying the planet. It was a real downer message but at least it wasnt maga talking points
and also, the guy is almost 100 years old now. Any person that old with progressive views and stances is very uncommon in my book. At least the ones from now, maybe it will change when it is our turn.
shat is part of the problem, outspoken anti-trans
I’m not defending him, but let’s be honest with ourselves here. He was born nearly a decade before World War II. It’s amazing that he’s this progressive, plus he actively supported African American rights. And if you don’t believe me, why not hear it from Nichelle Nichols herself. Credit where credit is due.
He is.
Doesn’t mean we can’t take him out of context and use his words to advocate for more than just the things he thinks they advocate.
He has it right here. That he doesn’t fully know that is his problem.
He’s such a straight white cis man! (Apparently that’s a slur to him.)
How dare you use the Star Wars term!
Startrek XXX… I had a different joke in mind but now I just want Startrek 10 the movie staring Vin Diesel 😎
Pretty sure that was just Star Trek Beyond, the movie where the crew defeated a horde of ravenous space insects by blasting Beastie Boys hit single “Sabotage”.
Star Trek X was Nemesis, but who’s counting?
spoiler
Never mind; I just checked the release dates: the 10th Star Trek movie was actually Galaxy Quest.
“You said ‘class warfare’ twice.”
“He likes class warfare.”
Hey see - that wonderful thing in the past is similar in some way to the dogshit we produce now. Therfore the problem is you!
the gender ran across 4 series. DS9 had jadzia(other host) preferred women and shes a women still with those feelings, and another where a female dominant race from the gamma quadrant fled DS9 through the wormhomle, and a similar one on enterprise show(where the explosion disaster caused by the suliban), Genderless insectoid Xindi.
Nutrek through kurtzman isnt very good and not very subtle with exposing mysogyny/genderphobia .
The gender episode was so ahead of its time. It introduced some ideas that I didn’t even know there were concepts for.
In the early iterations of the 1960s smash hit Star Trek, audiences were shocked and titillated to see a white male officer in a romantic relationship with a black woman officer.
This continues to be shocking today, as modern audiences are not ready to see any (fully clothed) woman in any form of Sci-Fi media doing anything at all.
I guess i’m in the minority of people who thought Janeway was the best starship captain as a kid. She’s badass and she drinks coffee.
I agree, I love Picard don’t get me wrong but Janeway was always my favourite, she kicks ass and is just fucking cool
With you 100% on that. I love Picard, but it’s Janeway I’d trust to get me through the delta quadrant.
modern audiences are not ready to see any (fully clothed) woman in any form of Sci-Fi
What? Pluribus was the biggest new Sci Fi TV show last year, was liked by critics and audiences, and won a bunch of awards.
Same with Silo and Foundation. This is like “reverse racism” but sexism instead.
Exactly. Star Trek takes place in utopia - and the creators’ version of utopia is one with equality, freedom, and respect for all. If someone’s version of utopia doesn’t align with this, I think that says a lot more about them than it does about how “woke” Star Trek is
i think what got thier panties in a wad was STD, because it had a certain demographic playing lead roles over men. then it became DOCTOR WHO, whittaker and then ncuti(but him mostly), why because a certain election was under way that year, while STD was in thier 1st/2nd season, and it annoyed the hell of cons with all the women in the lead roles and then they started attacking every trek video they see. Janeway wasnt SPARED TOO but that took years for them to use mental gymanstics.
Their utopia also highly resembles communism as a classless, stateless society
Yeah, and it shows how hard it is to build a utopia even when intentionally trying to remove class, when oligarchies are motivated to prevent that, and in a post-scarcity reality, which we don’t yet have.
