So I do like Star Trek a lot, especially TNG, DS9, and Below Decks. Voyager and TOS are fine. Space socialism is pretty good and I can't get enough of it. There are a few common tropes that irk me. tho.
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Baseball is cracker Amerikkkan nonsense - You telling me that all these different species and planets get together to chill, and the vibe they're gonna channel is Ohio?? Football (soccer) or some version of hockey make a lot more sense, you can pick up and start playing immediately. I can't imagine Worf wanting to learn all those pointless rules about balls and strikezones and fowls. Sisko is arguably the best captain of any series, and I really get pulled out of an episode every time he drops some awful baseball trivia. It's only slightly better than Nascar. I actually know one Scottish person who really likes baseball, and he's literally the worst person I know.
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The tribunal - It's so damn common. It seems like every season there's got to be a court-martial, hearing, or appeal against a Starfleet decision. I guess Law and Order is big there. It's probably a minor critique, but it does reinforce the ideology that Western courtrooms are fair.
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Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.
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Poker in TNG - Poker has to be the worst form of entertainment, and I genuinely like maths. I blame TNG for reigniting the poker craze of the 90s and ruining all my guy friends' personalities.
if i could personally reboot star trek and make only one major change it would be this
modern star trek is just liberalism + unlimited energy sources and instant matter/energy conversion
i would even be happy if there was more explanation between "and then WW3 happened" "yadda yadda mad max then vulcans came and we did global unified liberal democracy"
should be "ww3 happened, global war communism established in the aftermath, pockets of misery persisted, hail mary warp ship launched by an opportunist living in a commune, vulcans come and are impressed with unified global communist government rebuilding the wasteland and do aid programs"
that would build a foundation for what United Earth and later the federation really came from. the strict pacifistism and bio-essentialism make sense form a lore perspective (icky genetically enhanced warlord armies and global nuclear war) but where did the communism come from?
A lot of people believed at the time that communism would just sort of manifest once scarcity effectively stopped existing.
there's lots of people that still believe this
once energy becomes "too cheap to meter" or we develop at home fabricators with cheap feedstocks...boom...communism!
people forget you need a social revolution too or else now you just have capitalists controlling the fusion reactors and fabricator tech and can turn that shit off at the push of a button what are you going to do about it serfs enjoy your "free" fabricated mush and be happy you have a tiny stipend to live off of or the robotic hunter-killers liquifiy your brain with a micro explosive shaped charge