this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Risa

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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Kirk made out with Uhura on prime time network television. Proportional to that time, it was probably the wokest thing ever.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Or just having a black woman on the bridge as a senior officer next to the captain

Or a Russian as a helmsman

Or a Japanese asian man next them

Or a freaking Scotsman yelling nonsense from the boiler room

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was the first televised interracial kiss.

At least in the USA if not the world.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (24 children)

That's what bothers me for a long time now and I'm glad I'm not alone: I like the stories but a black woman on the bridge? Really? But it's ok, she was born in Africa so she's not necessarily a former slave. What bothers me more is a later development: A Russian on a supposedly American ship! Even if it's not explicitly American, there are Americans on the bridge and they sure as hell won't serve with a Russian! What do they think? The cold war is over? But I have great hope in the planned new series. I hope the Next Generation won't be that woke.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just imagine what they could come up with in the future. A female captain? A black station commander? No way, Star Trek has gone down the gutter. I'm not watching TNG. They can stick their wokeness where the sun don't shine.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Go back even further! The cage almost canceled the entire show because a woman was merely implied to be captaining the ship for a quick while 😰😰

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

And NBC threw a tantrum because of Uhura's and Kirk's kiss, which was made more ridiculous because the backlash they expected never came. I wonder how often they self-censored without any reason.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The wasn't just implied to be anything, she was second in command. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally for inclusion and diversity and stuff but a woman second in command is where I draw the line.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My favorite TOS episode was the one where they showed the clear superiority of the aliens with the white/black faces over the aliens with the black/white faces. The genocide part went a bit far, but in the end those black/white face guys had it coming.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

You almost make it seem ridiculous by calling it black/white faces. It was the whole body! They wear gloves so you didn't see it but it wasn't just the face. That in mind, the white/black skinned were totally in their right. The genocide didn't even happen, it's just made up like most genocides are. The black/white people just prevented worse from happening.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like they were never a Trekkie to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (13 children)

They rarely are. They're usually just someone who watched Star Trek and thought it looked cool. When it comes to the actual ideas and equality and giving people chances? Nah. The amount of "Trekkies" I've met who are aggressively for the death penalty for people who they politically disagree with or who are disgustingly racist? Phenomenally high.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Speaking only for my own experience, my exposure was with TNG as a kid before streaming and everything. It was always on in syndication daytime and late night and it was more interesting to me than other choices.

I didn’t know or understand anything about the message of the series. The more recent movies didn’t really highlight it for me at all either.

Now, however, we watched all of Strange New Worlds, we’re halfway through Discovery and just finished Picard and in retrospect it’s obvious that it’s always been a core part of the show.

Without the prior exposure and context? It might seem a little heavy handed but anybody who would consider it “woke” or too PC is likely a hard-right conservative, not a Trekkie.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

OG startrek was probably the "wokest" thing on TV in the sixties. And a bunch of grouchy old men that no one cared about bitched about it back then too.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They had a black woman in a respected, professional position with an officer's rank. The same with an Asian man.

They tackled race relations (in an admittedly very silly way) when no one else would touch it.

They had one of the first onscreen kisses between a white person and a black person.

Starfleet was created as a military force, but dedicated to peaceful exploration and science at the height of the Vietnam war.

Can you even imagine what today's Republicans would say about it back then? There would be a boycott of the network the first time Uhura was onscreen and it wouldn't have finished the season because there were only three networks.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

As a rather left leaning Person I have no problem with New Trek beeing "woke" in general.

I fucking hate Discovery, to a point that I had to give up on it after season 3. Picards first 2 season where almost as bad (I like the third season, more or less).

The problem is not so much the wokeness of those series, it's that it's just bad storytelling.

The way how "woke" ideas are implemented just feels like pandering to the audience. Homosexualyity, Non Binary characters, enviromentalism... I approve representation for all of those and would have loved to see them integrated in a meaningfull way. But the way they were handled it felt wrong to me, as if they were forced into the story rather than emerging from it organicly.

Edit: I have since I posed this done some reading. While I still stand by this, I do see how Queer topic at least been handled with respect in Discovery. Still embeded in a badly told story, but hey, it's something and I see how that is not nothing.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

Well, as someone who's gay, I'd say that the representation from Stamets and Culber didn't feel forced or unnatural. If Stamets were straight and Culber were a woman then nothing would change. If Adira wasn't non-binary then nothing would change. If Grey wasn't trans then nothing would change. Stamets was on screen for like two episodes before you ever find out that he's gay. Culber on for one. Adira doesn't mention that they're non-binary until halfway through Season 3 and the reaction is literally just "Okay" and they move on. Grey only has two throwaway lines mentioning a previous transition. Their characters are all well established without their sexuality or identity having any impact on the show. It would all be the same characters but straight. The show goes out of its way to demonstrate that being gay, trans or non-binary has literally nothing to do with the content of your character.

I am getting slightly tired though of seeing people who aren't part of the community saying that the representation of us 'feels forced'. Our mere existence isn't forced. Moreover, are you really the one who gets to judge this? After people trying to kill us for decades, and then using us for marketing purposes, now y'all wanna judge whether our existence is "forced"?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

A gay couple in a series today is as forced as a black woman on the bridge in the 60s. The people who complained about the latter are the same kind of people who complain about the former today and not even notice the latter. It's also the same kind of people who won't notice either in the future and complain about what ever. Star trek handled political topics very well from the beginning by showing it as normal and making it a topic in allegories, sometimes making it explicit like when Kirk and Bones talk about how the "cold war on earth in the 20th century never got hot" or how wrong the Vietnam war "was".

You want your star trek before it was political? You can't be talking about TOS, not even the first pilot. Maybe the intro?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't LGBT+ be included unless its meaningful? I dont like that "pandering" argument. It is too easy to misuse, too subjective.

I want them included in bad shows as much as in good shows. I want a random background person to be gay just as much as an important character. Best case would be if we didnt even raise an eyebrow on seeing a LGBT+ character and rather critizise their acting or plot instead of blaming "pandering". I dont hear anyone call forcing a unecessary romantic straight subplot into a plot for "pandering".

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I dont hear anyone call forcing a unecessary romantic straight subplot into a plot for “pandering”.

That line needs to be screamed from the heavens. For every single person who claims that "Oh their sexuality or identity feels forced" they seem to have no problem with stuff like Hulk and Black Widow having a relationship, or baby t-shirts saying surprisingly sexual stuff (or at least innuendo). Or saying that their kids are dating someone else simply because their child dares to be friends with the opposite sex.

It's exhausting. Everytime there is a gay character it has to meet some random standard that does not exist for any straight characters.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Best case would be if we didnt even raise an eyebrow on seeing a LGBT+ character

This is what I’ve liked about Discovery in particular. It feels to me like it’s just organic and normal. They don’t highlight or make a spectacle of the LGBT+ characters’ gender/identity and it’s just there, normal and regular, just like in real life.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The same people would be upset to learn that Rage Against the Machine is politically charged and not just nonsense you can bop your head to.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't care what anyone thinks.

I'm really enjoying the new series, and if you don't like them, turn them off and watch something else. You can let people enjoy things.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The problem is that most modern trek TV shows have terrible writing. I tried so hard to like discovery

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't want this serialized shit.

I've seen 4 generations of the show, all were episodic. All of a sudden, everything is serialized. Fuck that. Give me self-contained, 43-45 minute stories I can watch in any order and not be like "wait, wtf is going on?"

DS9 and Voyager (and the new season of Lower Decks is doing it too with the mysterious ship plot) have been able to have both an overarching story line while still being episodic. Why can't Picard or Discovery do that?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah I’m pretty sure that is what is turning me off the current shows. I don’t mind the representation, since that’s a core element of Trek and has been since the first show.

Just that the shows, especially discovery, felt very lecturing and on the nose. I don’t want literal current day talking points in space. I want to see a future where those issues have been overcome and it is normal and no big deal.

Though I may be biased because I hated the stamets character, or rather the whole engineering department.

Neurotic gay scientist who is always preoccupied with his emotions and personal life but is also as an afterthought the smartest guy in the galaxy, featuring snarky butch lesbian wonder engineer who is preoccupied with being obnoxious kinda gets old after some episodes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I think it's starting to turn around.

Discovery - I stopped watching after season 2 cause I thought it was so bad

Picard - season 1-2 terrible. Season 3 pretty good

Lower Decks - all good

Strange New worlds - only watched S1, not my favorite but will definitely watch S2

Prodigy - never saw it so IDK

I think Discovery and Picard really ruined the reputation of modern Star Trek. Overall I think it's at worst it's average.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To each their own. I had a different experience.

I found Picard 1-2 was great fun. Haven't seen season 3 yet.

Lower Decks is awesome. I love the myriad references.

Strange New Worlds pretty much reignited my dormant ST passion and reminded me why I loved TOS and TNG. Interesting Sci-Fi stories are the main thing I want out of Star Trek because that's what it was all about when I was a kid watching TOS returns. The stories can be implausible and corny with clunky dialog, I don't care. Just make me go "hmm" or make me wish I could explore the galaxy and I got my fix. It's why I still like TOS and TNG.

Just started Discovery last night. Only one episode in. First impression, "Why you gotta do my Klingons dirty like that, what the actual fuck??"

I appreciate that it is so cinematic in style. Feels like watching some of the original movies. But goddamn with the Klingons. The discontinuity is incredibly jarring. Although I will admit I am really wanting to find out what happens next.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The klingon redesign pissed everyone off, myself included. They toned it back significantly in season 2 and the Klingons aren't as in the forefront as they are in season 2 so it's less noticeable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I felt compelled to pause the show about ten seconds after they appeared just to go see if it was just me having a wtf moment.

I'm glad they at least listened to viewers at least.

(Not that it is a bad design for alien creatures and their ships... in isolation)

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Picard is the worst offender for sure. Discovery is just the Michael Burnham show loosely set in the star trek universe.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Cool, never seen a gold colored Enterprise before.

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