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'.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Discovery has problems (I still like that show), but being woke it not one of them...
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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*
Not to mention, it featured the first interracial kiss on television.
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!”
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And a Russian navigator at the height of the Cold War.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about Chekov! Editing my comment now. Thank you!
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
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.
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Since the beginning!
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?
This is true in the sense that illiterate people experience books differently than you do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Way before '89. More like when it first aired.
Star Trek was so ahead of its time
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