this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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I recently started watching TNG for the first time since I was a kid (mostly thanks to the rosa memes). The show is incredibly progressive, especially for a show that came out in 1990. I just watched a race last night where Riker โfell in loveโ with a member of an androgynous species that were not gendered.
The whole thing was about the individuals struggle to realize their gender identity.
It's wild to me that I have friends who say dis is too woke because it has real gay, trans, autistic, etc. characters, but they love TNG. Really? You sure forgot a lot of the episodes.
If you think about it, Discovery is probably the least progressive of the entire franchsie, but it caught the ire of conservative-minded people because it presents as normal things earlier shows would have made a point to explain.
It's the same way TOS had entire episodes dedicated to race, and yet in the 90s many people decsibed Sisko simply existing while black as "pandering to the PC crowd".
To quote captain Kirk: "Some people can be very frightened of change."
Agreed. I think the actual problem people have is that it's not just placeholder characters. They have depth and motivations and yeah, they're normal people, whether you like it or not. They're not there as token representation or to push a specific plot point. They just are. It's like star trek has moved on from showcasing how humanity could be different overall, to showcasing how things could be different for individual people if other people would just stop being dicks about every little thing. They don't have to push as hard, but there's more depth to the representation.
TNG had Data allow his child to choose their own gender.
TOS had one of the first televised interracial kisses.