And without Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek, she wouldn't have been hired by NASA and then we wouldn't have had Sally Ride, so she is a legitimate space hero.
That's a simple enough message to even get it from Warhammer 40k - Gender? Skin colour? Disabilities? Doesn't matter, pick up a Lasrifle and start shooting xenos
The one I always feel like I need to warn people about is the treatment of Rand in The Enemy Within. Particularly since that happens so early in the series.
"When I have a problem that phasers can't solve, I just kiss a beautiful alien. Then suddenly, I have a completely different problem!" - Jason Tiberius Kirk
Edit: I may have drifted into the Kelvin timeline...
They were even more upfront about it in TOS for some issues too.
I remember many instances where they say "We have women in our crew in the future." It's not like DISCO flaunted around saying "we don't hate gay people in this ship."
Like I understand that DISCO isn't everybody's favorite, and sure it has some issues, but all the flak it got for being "woke" and "preachy" was weird to me.
Part of Kirk's whole thing was preachy speeches, and Picard had many moments too.
Saying discovery is woke with their crew split in two parts, the queer ones all packed together and then the "normal" ones, seems like a stretch.
The gay couple basically adopts the non binary one who is in a couple with the trans one, are friends with the gay engineer, but barely even talk to the rest of the crew? Ah and sex scenes between straight people but the most the gay couple gets is sitting next to each other, brushing teeth and a small kiss (not that it's a bad thing on its own, it forced the writing to actually show a relationship and not just a bunch of sex, which is positive)
That did really bother me, shoehorning all the queer people into their own little box after being far more progressive in previous seasons. Literally anyone else on the crew could have adopted Adira (who I didn't really care much for as a character anyway, she was basically SNW Uhura but not as good an actor), but they had it be Stamets and Culber. How about making it, say, Detmer?
but the most the gay couple gets is sitting next to each other, brushing teeth and a small kiss
While you're absolutely right, I think the record should show that tooth brushing scene is one of the sexiest scenes in television history. Those two have some serious on-screen chemistry.
It’s not like DISCO flaunted around saying “we don’t hate gay people in this ship.”
Well, after DS 9 it would just be repetitive. Also TNG spent a few episodes on this exact point, but it wasn't a main topic.
But people tend to focus their complains about things being "preachy" when those things put the preach above the story-telling. DISCO absolutely had this flaw in some point or another. Never for very long, though, so it really wasn't a main characteristic. Anyway, when a show is simply good, almost nobody gets bothered by the preaching.
The only issue disco has ever actually had is their serialized episodes. People hate on the other shit cause they're bigots. Its still good Trek. The story is just less flexible.
Everything with Pike and crew and pretty much everyone except Michael is decent Trek. Deus ex Burnham in every century Starfleet exists in is boring as shit and the nacelles not even being attached to the ship anymore is veering into Star Wars level of nonsensical ship design.
I don't care about the woke nonsense. STD has very few redeeming qualities. Bad writing, bad acting. They spent little to no time flushing out the characters. I guess they didn't have time what with the universe about to end every 10 minutes. I only watched for Anthony Rapp, Doug Jones and Michelle Yeoh. Everyone else was a stinker or didn't get enough screen time.
I havent gotten past the original series yet (I started with that), so far Star Trek seems like the entire point is to get into complex social and political issues that other companies would be too scared to cover.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
EDIT: I only noticed the username after I posted this, since it's clear this is what you were making reference to ha
I ask this because 9/10 times someone talks about how Star Trek was "always woke", they are usually just salty people don't like Discovery and trying to pretend that most people who criticized it were bigots.
The other 1/10 times it's someone who doesn't even watch Star Trek trying to hijack the sub to push a bunch of performative culture war nonsense. However that usually involves a Tumblr post implying the Klingons were socially progressive because of how Kor treated Jadzia Dax.
In the defense of people who constantly post the meme, they've never given enough thought to Star Trek to consider that some random Tumblr screen grab isn't accurate.
I'm always stunned how many people on this subreddit come off as vocally progressive, but don't bother actually watching the show. I guess that would take a modicum of effort.
For anyone who wasn't there, this moment was revolutionary, at the time.
"What should I even say if my friend comes out to me as Transgender?!" wasn't something everyone knew an answer to.
Having any character (Klingon or otherwise) handle learning that their friend's gender has changed, and react in a healthy way, on screen, on prime time television, was an important positive moment for a lot of clueless future-ally scifi fans.