I swear people that don't watch trek think it's just about lasers and technobabble.
I know people that refused to watch Discovery because 'they made it all woke and now it's all about women'.
What?! You have problems with adventures of Commander Mary-Sue? 😜
I can practically imagine the upcoming scene:
Q: Ever wondered why you don’t belong? How you cannot fit it?
Burnham: stoic glare
Q: It’s because you are…. MY DAUGHTER
Burnham: stoicest of glares
Fade out to commercials
Burnham: I've been raised by Vulcans, that's why I'm always acting logical. Next scene: Burnham starts another intergalactic war with her erratic behaviour.
Eh idk if she was ever portrayed as logical the same way Vulcans often are, more like emotionally distant masquerading as logical. I'm not the biggest Disco fan (except season four) but I felt she did a really good job of playing a human who was raised in a society where people don't express themselves.
HEY! That's Captain Mary-Sue! Honor and respect her promotion and the fact that the then-current captain was willing to step aside... conveniently.
Also that no one gives a rats ass about protocols anymore or she would be in the Briggs instead where she belongs
This. I don't watch Discovery anymore because I couldn't stand a lot of the characters but it had absolute nothing to do with progressive views.
This! I could not stand the characters, just not my group of people I guess, which is fine. I don't hate the show, it's just not for me and I'm ok with that.
It's got a very TOS-style of writing and story to it.
I remember seeing a fair few people pitch a fit about the Burn, for example, even though "angry man has a tantrum and nearly blows up the universe", and "child with godlike powers" are common TOS plots.
They tried something new, which I don't mind them for, but I don't think it mixed well with people being used to more TNG-styles plots, and the writing not being that great. Still, it managed to help kickstart the modern revival of Trek, and gave us (non-wheelchair) Captain Pike, so it wasn't all bad.
I do have issues with the fact modern Trek when they do things like put Elon Musk into dialogue alongside Zephrym Cochran and the Wright Brothers, or when they put the Jan6 riots into a video montage about the failures of humanity. It immediately dates the show in a way that 90s trek never felt dated, and it assumes it knows how people in the future will feel about today's events. Look at how well the Musk reference has aged.
I'm not saying you can't reference current social issues and make a statement on them, I'm just saying that if you make the smallest effort to use allegory, even if it's obvious, it will age better than literally showing modern footage.
Luckily, the Musk thing can be handwaved by the fact that it was Mirror Lorca saying it. Maybe over there, he was a good guy?
Otherwise, agreed.
I don't know the exact context but Thomas Edison was a cutthroat businessman yet people still reference him alongside the Wright brothers. Same for Henry Ford and Walt Disney.
The fact Elon is not an inventor at all, at best a visionary investor, seems more at odds with the other names.
While Musk very quickly turned into an obvious shitheel in the time between that episode being filmed, and that episode airing, I think it seems obvious that without his influence in power generation and space travel spheres, assuming no one else took on that role in the same time, we'd be in a world that is largely changing in those aspects right now.
I think without his influence, we have much less innovation in energy or in space tech in the last several years.
Especially related to space travel -- without Musk's influence in space travel, the US space business basically died with the Shuttle program. MAYBE something else state sponsored might've replaced it, or some corporate/government mix, but .. my guess would be that putting it all in perspective in the Star Trek universe, there's probably a reasonably direct line that can be traced from Elon's influence with SpaceX in the early 2000's to Cochrane's warp drive.
Of course, that's all speculation because we don't know what would've happened without a SpaceX.
I'm not defending him, I'm defending that he put significant influence into things that are affecting our world right now, and that would also be relevant to the mid 2000's era of Star Trek.
Honestly, the riots are probably fine, since anyone with no context would just see it as generic protest footage, or something along those lines.
Some massaging a few decades from now could tie it to the 2025 sanctuary city riots, or some other historical event instead of Jan 6 with barely any changes at all.
The Elon Musk reference definitely aged poorly, though, although having some diversity in views around historical inventors could be pretty interesting in its own right. Someone might hate Cochrane because he ended up with the credit for the warp engine, even though he didn't build it, and only did it for the fame and money, while others might respect him for his contributions to humanity, and being instrumental in Earth's official First Contact with aliens.
The Sanctuary City riots are a perfect example of doing a great job of tackling social issues without tying it directly to a specific contemporary event. I would have preferred a fictional near-future event than an event that had barely just happened, much less one that we still haven't felt the full effects of yet.
I think in that particular case, it's quite fine to pass judgment that this was a very bad thing.
Just like star trek often talks about ww2 and nazis and are rightfully portrayed as the bad guys. Just because the riots were more recent doesn't make them any less relevant.
Trek regularly makes judgment calls on specific topics -- racism is bad, violence is bad when there's an alternative.
IDIC
I refused to watch it because I couldn't stand the main character tbh. For someone who was supposed to be in what is essentially the space navy, michael sure was an insubordinate POS. Maybe it got better but I couldn't sit through more than 2 episodes.
Honestly the disrespect for the command structure shown in a lot new trek stuff is why I have such a hard time watching it.
Don't get me wrong, I was furious with Michael almost the whole way through!
I think they were trying to tell us the story of someone that struggled with starfleet principles but ends up finding their way and becoming a great captain, but she just pissed the fans off.
She did get a bit better, I now give her a pass because she told her boyfriend that if starfleet told her to she would just kill him.
She's still the least suitable captain of any show though, in my opinion.
Good to know she's insufferable for most of the show. I don't think I want to give it another crack lol.
I didn't mind some of the stuff that came out Strange New Worlds, and I enjoyed S3 of Picard way more than I thought. I'm hoping this ends up just being a case of really really bad growing pains for star trek. TNG's first 2 seasons were pretty crap, but it got way better eventually. Maybe new trek will continuing improving
I'm not sure how much attention William Shatner has ever been paying attention to anything.....
When I was younger, I watched Star Trek for the lasers and technobabble and I really enjoyed it. Then I got my first job interning at a government aerospace engineering lab. One of my bosses was an ex-Navy engineer, and we got to talking about AI drones and all that.
He told me that he was opposed to anything that made war less bloody because it would make going to war easier and easier, less and less costly. He made that argument through the lens of this Star Trek episode, wherein two planets go to virtual war with one another in a bid to preserve their culture and wind up in a centuries-long forever war. It was a short anecdotal conversation, but one that stuck with me and I still think about it today. Probably one of the first times that I realized that science fiction wasn't just there to entertain me with cool characters and settings, but to really make an argument about what society should be.
I haven't seen the new series yet. Hopefully they carry on that legacy well.
Star Trek has been utopian space communism from the very beginning.
Science fiction has always been a vehicle for exploring woke ideas. Separating an issue from its current context allows the audience to set aside their biases and look with fresh eyes.
Woke started out being used in a positive manner by people of color to describe social awareness, then conservatives decided to use it as a mockery of those who dare to ask for a more caring and supportive society. The right didn't come up with that term.
Absolutely. Woke was a term exactly as @EatALime@kbin.social defined it, social awareness, but it quickly became “stuff I don’t like or agree with” for conservatives.
no it isn't. it means being aware of systemic oppression. don't let those asshats get away with redefining it.
Star Trek in 1966: *has a bridge crew containing a black female, Russian man, and faaaabulous Japanese man, each of whom holds the rank of full Lieutenant on their own abundant merits*
In Nichelle Nichols' autobiography she talks about how the network insisted the scene be filmed both with and without the kiss, and of course, being good loyal actors, they complied. But, on takes without the kiss, something always seemed to go wrong… Shatner flubbed a line, the boom was in the shot, the cameras weren't quite set up correctly… eventually they ran out of time and were forced, "reluctantly", to submit only the takes with the kiss. I recommend Beyond Uhura. Also Kate Mulgrew's "autobiography" of Captain Janeway is a great read too. :)
And then, just as now, many said “I wouldn’t have a problem with it if they weren’t rubbing it in my face!”
*American television. IIRC British television had an interracial kiss over a decade earlier.
And a Russian and Japanese crew member at the height of the Cold War. Not just as background, but as one of the main crew.
Well, main-ish. They were still basically side characters to kirk, spock, and mccoy
This and the wooosh with RATM's music, have me thinking a lot of people experience media differently than I do. Just a series of unrelated pictures or sounds that make a feeling. These themes seem core to the show and presented fairly directly. Or I maybe watch too much TV and need to get outside more :)
There are people out there that take TV commercials at face value. Who do you think they are made for?
I've got a friend that fast forwards through films and only plays the parts with fight scenes, car chases or explosions then he will tell people the film is shit if there's not enough of them.
I found out recently that there are people who will watch shows and just fast forward to the next scene if they get bored.
This is true in the sense that illiterate people experience books differently than you do.
A reminder that Paul Ryan, a GOP vice presidential candidate and former house speaker, claimed to like RATM before abandoning his support after getting a smackdown from Morello himself
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‘Make It So’: ‘Star Trek’ and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism
Beginning in 1966, the plot of “Star Trek” closely followed Posadas’s propositions. After a nuclear third world war (which Posadas also believed would lead to socialist revolution), Vulcan aliens visit Earth, welcoming them into a galactic federation and delivering replicator technology that would abolish scarcity. Humans soon unify as a species, formally abolishing money and all hierarchies of race, gender and class.
I'm sure they also watch Starship Troopers and completely miss the fact that it's a satire.
That's also the problem with any kind of forum that satirizes conservatives on the internet: sooner or later, it will get flooded with right wingers who completely fail to understand that they're being made fun of, and who will start posting the satirized content in all seriousness.
Eventually, the original people who started the venue leave, and what's left is just another right-wing echo chamber.
I think it's the problem with any good satire. It's such good satire that it just becomes the thing it was caricaturiazing.
Isn't that what happened with r/thedonald? I'm preeeetty sure it started as satire first.
Same thing with Robocop and American Psycho and Fight Club and Wolf of Wall Street and Taxi Driver and Wall Street and Glengarry Glenn Ross, etc.
Two things happened:
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culture wars are at an all time high due to right wing lies and attempts to push everyone not like them back into a culture of fear and hiding. So they are more sensitive to stuff they would not have batted an eye over before.
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stories no longer have men controlling everything and having all the authority/adventures
Also what happened is that things that where highly political and controversial at the time are now "normal" and so conservatives don't see them as political anymore because the Overton window have shifted (for the most part), so now they attack the new "unthinkable" progressive "agendas".
Kind of like how TOS was almost flagrantly progressive at the time, with women not only being equals on the bridge, but being allowed to wear what they wanted, like miniskirts, without having to dress like the men, but today, it's seen as an artefact of the times, and as a sign of the comparatively regressive attitudes of the day, rather than the feminist icon it was when the show aired.
I hate this reaction to removal they want, I'm a big fan of the placement card at the start of these things that say "What you are about to see is wrong and shouldn't have been done," but not that removal of the content. I think it's way more powerful to put that content warning placard before a show from the '90s as proof there are still things that need to be done and it's not a "distant" past thing.
Edit, I guess '80s for this episode.
Frakes recently renewed his call for the episode "Code of Honor" from season 1 to be completely removed from reruns, home video, and steaming platforms. He made the call in the past. So while they might not ever remove it, some people would like it to be removed.
"But I was told or I was under the impression that it had rubbed so many people the wrong way that it was pulled. I think they should take it out of the rotation. I think it is a great time to make that kind of -- as small as it is -- to make that kind of a statement would be fabulous."
Also, I just realized I posted this on the completely wrong article that I thought I was, I thought I was posting to a different topic about Frakes' request to remove the episode after finding out it was on Paramount's streaming service.
which episode was that? pulling it is a dumb decision. just put the damn thing in context. i'm not going to pretend I didn't do something stupid decades ago just to try to look good now. people (and franchises) grow and change.
Code of Honour
A.k.a "Dark men from Space Africa steal our white women"
In fairness, apparently when the episode was first pitched, they wanted the alien race to be reptiles, but it was subsequently changed to just be black people wearing tribal African clothing.
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Ah, thanks for the info. I'm here from all and have never watched any trek but I have been considering giving TOS a try out of curiosity.
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I'm not defending the straw man in this screenshot of a tweet, but this is a bad comparison. Roddenberry created a world in which the ideas of equality, freedom, diplomacy, and justice could be explored organically. He shifted the underlying economic motivations for the existence of political systems. He fought constantly with the studio system and his own writers to bring about a revolutionary vision of the future.
Since Roddenberry's death, Star Trek: The Franchise has been slowly oscillating downwards: away from a universe whose observation reveals the objective value of virtue into one in which virtue is paid lip service at the cost of strong "physics" -- that is, the sense of a coherent universe. Star Trek is now a product researched, marketed, designed, produced, tested, distributed, and defended by committee. Where once we had revolutionary subversions of what was allowed on television, we now find performative affirmations of popular lifestyle. If you have to compare yourself to 90's broadcast television in order to feel revolutionary, you're not.
The use of "woke" and "political" in this hypercontextualist style is so vague as to border on non-expression. Reacting to a reaction to a reaction to a reaction to a form of expression in which my reply wouldn't be allowed due to a character limit is not critical thinking. We can do better than this. Roddenberry already did.
The use of "woke" and "political" in this hypercontextualist style is so vague as to border on non-expression.
The use of "woke" is vague?
Unfathomable, no way anyone would use the term "woke" in a vague way, especially not a presidental candidate.
Edit: Or here -- https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/star-trek-starship-enterprise-democrat-woke-david-marcus
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You're completely missing the more useful point. The right says "woke and political," implicitly referencing the complex change I described above. The left quotes the right saying "woke and political" as an implicit dismissal of civil rights, diversity, representation, etc. Both of these lazy-ass anachronisms suck big huge elephant dicks and ruin the political discourse in the media.
The right says "woke and political," implicitly referencing the complex change I described above.
You are entirely making that up.
Here are 200+ different things that are "woke" according to Fox: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/200-things-fox-news-has-labeled-woke
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I don't think the output of a media outlet is a useful handle on what individuals mean when they use politicized terms. To put it another way, if you're going to quote Fox you should also quote HuffPo.
It's a huge number of examples of that right wing individuals using "woke" in a vague way.
Show me one example of a right wing individual using "woke" in a specific way.
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You're misreading me and moving the goalposts. There is a media trend which can be (very poorly) described as "woke and political." One of the reasons why people who are bothered by this trend should refrain from using this code/shorthand is that it allows other people to project hate onto it, which is, in my view, equally shitty. Outlets like Fox deliberately court this behavior because it drives engagement. You shared their viral content for them. I wonder if you even viewed one of their ads on the way.
Yeah I'm browsing the fediverse but I don't know how to install AdBlock on my browser.
"woke" has always been vague, on purpose. It's so you can retcon any "implicit" meaning you want, as you tried to.
Right wingers don't use "woke" in a specific way and we both know it, that's why you can't muster a single example to back up your claim.
I'll even help you out: here is a time when a right wing individual specifically defined "woke":
"To me, it means someone who believes that there are systemic injustices in the criminal justice system, and on that basis they can decline to fully enforce and uphold the law,"
There is nothing to do with the writing quality of any TV show in there.
How does creating a product through research and committee equate to being "woke?" Countless products have been and are created to appeal to specific audiences. If you just define any product that is designed by committee, researched, focus tested, and made to appeal to a certain lifestyle or segment of the population, then everything is woke.
Country music is woke because it's made to appeal to rural audiences who believe in rugged individualism. The Fast and Furious movies are woke because they're made to appeal to people who are part of the car culture and like racing and modding their cars. Sennheiser headphones are woke because they're designed for audiophiles who are willing to spend thousands of dollars for the best audio quality.
And blaming bad writing on some vague undefined notion as "woke" makes no sense. I don't like Discovery. My criticisms are based on plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, characters and plots not being inconsistent, episodes ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. It's the same kinds of criticisms I have towards any bad movie/show/book. For example, the Michael Bay Transformers movies were bad. Why were they bad? Plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, people ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. The quality of those movies have nothing to do with the presence or lack of "wokeness." Saying that Discovery is bad because it's "woke" is like saying Michael Bay's Transformers movies are bad because they have explosions.
TNG, DS9, and Voyager had great writers. They deftly wove in contentious issues designed to invoke introspection and consideration of one's own positions, prejudices, and biases. They appealed to people of all political persuasions because they didn't cast judgement. "Oh that's what you believe? Well here's a whole planet built on those hypothetical principles. Here are some cool things, and some terrible things. Make up your own mind."
Star Trek writers today have all the tact and nuance of an angry baboon flinging faeces at the viewer while screaming "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" Without exploration of the plentiful and beautiful nuance in life, what's left is a sermon. A preachy, dire, boring sermon. And who better to lead the ceremony each week than the Maryest of Sues, Michael Burnham.
Comparing TNG with whatever the fuck we have today is an insult to Star Trek, and Trekkie Bill knows it.
You've got an interestingly warped memory of these past episodes. Much judgment was cast, and tolerance of the intolerant was never a theme.
and tolerance of the intolerant was never a theme.
I'm sorry but this is bullshit. I cite episode 1-2, season 1. Q places Picard and the Enterprise on trial for the misdeeds of the human race. This character and plot re-emerges many times throughout this show and others. As recently as Picard season 3. Q's accusation is that the human race is guilty of crimes. He calls humanity a "dangerous, savage child-race." He's right, of course, which is what gives the theme gravitas. Picard's ongoing game with Q is a form of atonement rather than a test. The theme is that us humans are clearly fallible, and guilty of much, but also capable of heroism and feats of bravery and altruism.
Star Trek isn't Star Wars, with a baddie and a goodie. The three shows I cited explore the grey area between what you think is right, and what someone else thinks is right. They are powerful and thought-provoking precisely because they don't treat the audience like children, or parishioners in their pews. "Tolerance of intolerance" was one of the central themes in Star Trek, because the writers demanded we explore the nature of our morality ourselves. As a Star Trek fan I'm surprised to be explaining this to you.
That’s fair. I think the writing in the original is rather ham-fisted. I suppose there’s no one way to describe Star Trek. With such wildly different writing quality between shows we each have enough ammunition to prove any thesis we like.
I had made a reference to Battlefield some time ago, to my viewing partner for the new shows, and she didn't remember the episode, so we watched it. The takeaway that I got from watching it now, is that mostly Kirk spent the episode yelling at the others about how humans are far superior to the aliens, with very little room to debate that.