Bait
Bait
151 comments
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The thing I love about this, the thing I always find funny whenever this comes up, is that these midwits are just too dumb to make the obvious argument. The argument that is "in their face" and "being shoved down their throats."
There is a rational, coherent argument to make their point. It's one I disagree with. It's one that, in my opinion, can only be made in bad faith with no purpose other than to be a concern troll, but it's there.
They always bring up Adira, Gray, Jett, Stamets, Culber, and anything else that's gone up their ass but never any of the actual social commentary because they're so thick it went over their heads and they didn't even notice it. You can see it in this thread. They mention the characters and people respond with "but they're just existing, how does that bother you?" They just bring up the characters again to a response of "yeah, we heard you the first time, what are they doing that bothers you other than existing?" And it just goes in a circle.
There was never an episode of ToS where Uhura talked about how hard it was to be a black woman as a bridge officer, because it wasn't. That's the whole point. In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine, a black female officer is completely unremarkable. Whenever they wanted to engage in social commentary about race relations in the 60s they had to invent an allegorical race, time travel, or use some other device to make their point.
The same thing is happening in the newer series. All those characters are just existing. Their sexuality and gender identity is completely unremarkable in the future Star Trek shows us. If those dipshits had two brain cells to rub together they would see the new series are full of allegories about not just tolerance, or even acceptance, but appreciation for beings with non-conforming expressions of self. If any of that did manage to trickle through their thick skulls they probably just twisted it into "yeah, people shouldn't make fun of me for having a relationship with a waifu pillow."
If they weren't so stupid they could easily give a half dozen examples and say "it's too much," "I got it the first time," "focus on something else for a change," or whatever other bullshit justification they came up with to oppose these themes. It would be a bad faith argument that I would disagree with but at least they could pretend they're not bigots, instead of their current position which seems to be "I've got no problem with these people, I just don't want to see them."
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And, on the flip side, there's also their total blindness to many examples of old Trek being decidedly unsubtle. They just will not address those, because to do so would completely undermine their point—and they're not interested in the truth, really. They just want their anger.
I don't know how someone can be a Star Trek fan and not get it. It's an attitude diametrically opposed to the core spirit of the franchise. How do these people enjoy a show about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, but they can't stand the presence of different humans?
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TBH, I initially had a strange reaction to Discovery. It seemed to me like it was virtue-signalling and pandering to an audience to increase viewership or profit. Similar to how you sometimes see fake stock-photos of a business where they contains exactly one person from every ethnicity. I think the word I'm thinking of is "tokenism." I still watched it for a couple seasons, and it was decent. I didn't really realize at the time how prevalent and dangerous bigotry still was in the U.S.. Now I think it's probably good some shows and movies over-represent minorities.
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It seemed to me like it was virtue-signalling and pandering to an audience to increase viewership or profit.
Until people stop seeing minorities as different, then these kind of labels are going to get applied just because they exist. If a cast of non-minorities doesn't raise an eyebrow, then a cast of minorities shouldn't either. Base such labels on the way the characters are written, not because they exist. Stopping bigotry requires not caring about sex, gender, or sexual orientation.
I didn’t really realize at the time how prevalent and dangerous bigotry still was in the U.S
Bigotry is a worldwide issue, not just in the US. The problem is often implicit discrimination, where someone is subconsciously influenced by bigotry and isn't aware they're doing it. It never gets resolved because people get defensive when it's pointed out to them. Stopping it requires prioritizing doing the right thing over being right.
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The one argument that Star Trek has gone woke I agree with is that the characters are all tripping over themselves to make make Tilly captain despite her obvious incompetence for that position. Contrast that with Barkley who everyone recognized needed self improvement to progress.
Otherwise I totally agree. Star Trek has always been progressive when it comes to race, religion, etc.
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Just one example of the extremely poor writing
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In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine a black female officer is completely unremarkable.
Interestingly, in the unaired TOS pilot Pike did in fact remark on a female officer (albeit Una rather than Uhura), saying he "can't get used to having a woman on the bridge".
Of course, being unaired, the episode's canonicity was pretty questionable. Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
(n.b. None of this is intended to negate the point you're making. It's just a strange little thing that could have been brushed aside as an artifact of the show not quite having figured out what it was yet, had not modern Trek gone and affirmed it.)
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Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
That never happened. Discovery was the only show that used a scene from The Cage but it wasn't that clip. If Memory Serves did a "last time on Star Trek Discovery" segment that used clips from that episode. It gave backstory on Talos and Pike's relationship with Vina. The clip of Pike making a sexist comment was not used, and has never been used in any other show to date.
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Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
They did? Are you sure you're not just thinking of that meme?
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I don’t mind wokeness if the story is good, but to crash a story to champion wokeness is unacceptable to me.
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Lmao first interracial kiss, champion of non-binary, trans, and gay people for the super obvious if you used two or more brain cells when watching metaphor characters sprinkled all over the seasons.
Sure, go ahead and say this hasn't always been star trek.
This is like people who think Starship Trooper is a Gung-go military action thriller... I'd ask if you'd like to know more, but if you did, you wouldn't be this dumb.
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I'd argue that if your sci-fi isn't pushing boundaries with that sorta stuff, it's not doing its job.
PS: Buenos Aires was an inside job
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... We are talking about the TV show with an episode where they show it's wrong for aliens with black and white skin to discriminate against the same aliens with white and black skin, right? Just making sure we and the "the story is bad because wokeness is at the forefront" comment are on the same page.
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Just to set the record straight, that was not the first interracial kiss on TV.
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If the story is bad it's because of bad writing.
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I'm sure that you feel like you're saying something very profound, but for most people that's just gibberish.
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I'm sorry... It must be hard living with condition like this.
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Have you spoken to a therapist about getting past your own insecurities?
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Let That Be Your Last Battlefield wasn't that bad.
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Oh ffs can we cut this crap?
Yes, there are legitimate bigoted Star Trek fans. It's the Internet. You can find an abundance of any extreme niche. I'm honestly willing to bet I could find an abundance of furry star Trek fans fairly easily also, despite furries as a whole being vanishingly rare in real life.
However it's a lot more common to see legitimate criticism of Star Trek painted as bigotry, often by people who clearly aren't really that big fans of the series.
You couldn't criticize Discovery for the first year it came out without being called a bigot, and a lot of the people doing so would clearly have 0 idea about the greater Star Trek universe. I remember reading a multitude of comments calling Burnham the first female Captain or first black captain, saying how female senior officers were quiet and unassuming until Tilly came along, and a bunch of other shit that was objectively wrong.
I feel like most implied accusations of bigotry these days are low faith effort attempts to stifle criticism by newer fans who just can't handle criticism. It's exhausting and super toxic.
Finally Lower Decks is a grabbag of woke tropes but was met with widespread and is the most popular NuTrek among hardcore fans. That should tell you something more is going on.
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Who said you can’t critique Disco?
This is about a very specific, very silly objection, levelled by people who have found themselves indoctrinated into a mode of thinking that alienates them from the people around them, because of a manufactured fear preying upon alienation many of us experience in our modern world.
I’ve had plenty of objections to aspects of Disco, especially during season two, but scattered throughout the series, and no one has ever called me a bigot for my hot takes. If you’re presenting your critiques in such a way that people are assuming you’re bigoted, perhaps you should reevaluate how you’re constructing your criticism.
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Oh God and the gaslighting.
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Ooooo I can do this too!
STD had shit writing, unbelievable performances, and stands as a monument of what not to do making Trek. They did inclusion pretty well however, which I think opened the door to future, positive choices in the franchise.
SNW did all these things correctly. (I'm 100% not biased because I'm crushin on Captain Angel)
Picard S2 is legitimately the worst thing ever made in Star Trek. It physically hurt to try to finish it, and remains to this day the only Trek I skipped episodes of.
LD is just perfect. No notes.
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It's definitely true that some people with legitimate criticisms get misread, but I think it's inaccurate to say that it's "a lot more common" to see legitimate criticism construed as bigotry than actual bigotry.
Just look at this thread, there are a bunch of people whining about queer characters being forced in your face just for being a part of the show. The bigoted fans come out in force with talk of "STD" (ugh) all the time, which is what created that expectation in the first place.
I feel like dismissing all the bigotry out there (including in this very thread) as "it's just the internet" while dwelling on a few dumb comments you read in the past (probably on the Internet?) is disingenuous.
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Ffs. Let's look at this thread.
The top comments are by far just assholes. They dismiss and demean people like high school bullies. They are overly cruel, and blatantly attempt to justify that behavior like pretending their targets are just deplorable who deserve to be treated like this.
I find it disingenuous that you focus on the comments downvoted to hell and completely handwave away this obviously shitty behavior.
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Beau of the Fifth Column does great videos talking about how Trek has always been liberal
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I remember seeing people complaining about "woke adaptation" with The Sandman, and Neil Gaiman always reply on Twitter he was ok with that, is like people can't believe there is authors or works who is being left-right stories, people acted like he was controlled, mind-washing or something.
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The Sandman is such a hilarious example of something to get upset about being too woke, too. "This adaptation of a comic written that featured gender fluid characters in 1989 has been corrupted by the woke mob!"
Brain worms.
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It is.
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Out of curiosity, does Lemmy/AP have a way of doing tags like reddit, seems like a feature worth having.
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It is top of my list of wanted features.
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In my opinion STD is just badly written with the focus on timeline breaking technology and a Mary Sue.
There is nothing wrong with LGBT characters if they fit to the story (not just people with the superpower of being gay).-
Why even have gay humans? I thought the sexy point of sexy star trek sex was interspecies sex? Remember when Trip got pregnant? Riker boned the 3 fingered mitten hand doctor after he was captured? Troy and Crusher both got mind raped! Even data has sex! See, no need for this silly human on human stuff.
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I read the Mary Sue link you provided but I can't figure out what character you're suggesting is "portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and generally lacking meaningful character flaws." (from your link).
I agree about the timeline stuff and also that the LGBT representation was excellently done and not any character's "superpower" or anything.
(Also the official initialism for Disco is "DSC" (or "DIS" on Memory Alpha) but never "STD")
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"Star Trek Syphilis" it is then .
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I've only just started discovery, and knowing how ST almost always has bad first seasons I'm giving it some slack. I'm not a big fan of the Klingon redesign but my main dislike is the less episodic nature of the show. That was my issue with the last seasons of ENT as well. I'll keep watching it but I do really prefer the more episodic nature with occasional multiparters.
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I meant especially Michael Burnhams abilities as a human. Her short and unbelievable backstory on vulcan, her super vulcan logic where she outsmarts experts in their fields, her exceptionally fighting skills and so on.
Maybe not all checkpoints could be marked here, but I think she was written in the wrong genre.
Maybe a superhero movie (with a better backstory) would be more appropriate.
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Honestly, agree.
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If Kurtzman did anything with it, that trek is likely garbage and ignorable. If someone else wrote and directed without Kurtzman sticking his mystery box horseshit in it, I'll give it a shot. Lower decks is great. Strange new worlds is sometimes fantastic, and sometimes very fucking stupid, which brings it in line with trek in general, so I like it.
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They had a black woman as a high ranking officer on the bridge in the 60s.
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151 comments
Star Trek was literally always woke.
The first episode of Trek I ever saw was the ToS episode with aliens that had half-white and half-black faces and were engaged in a race war over which side was which. It has never been subtle, and for good reason. Nuance generally doesn't work well with bigots. If you want to get people to examine their beliefs you need to shove the mirror in their face.
The only thing that's changed is what is getting shoved in your face. ToS doesn't make you uncomfortable? Good for you, you're not a Jim Crow level racist. Some of the new stuff makes you uncomfortable? Maybe you think about why it makes you uncomfortable instead of complaining about it.
A little off the point: I actually think it's less in your face. In the episodic series when they did something along these lines it was usually the main focus of the entire episode. With the newer serialized seasons it's usually a b-plot. They can devote a little more time to the b-plots when they have a whole season to resolve the main story but it's still not the main focus.
What about Discovery felt like it had a spotlight on it more than "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"? Or that TOS put a diverse cast front and center on the screen, including folks hailing from nations that were currently/recently enemies of the USA at the time? I grew up watching TNG, and the way Geordi turned the concept of what it meant to be 'disabled' on its head felt really pointed, even for child me. Likewise the dehumanization of Data.
I'm happy to gripe about worse writing, but if someone wrote a shoddy story that included a couple giraffes (because giraffes were more popular nation-wide), I wouldn't get mad about "giraffe messages" in entertainment, I'd get mad about shit writing.
hey look its the guy from the meme
Classic Trek literally had black&white people (ToS) as an analogue for racism, and a race of socially genderless people as an analogy for gender identity (TNG).
I prefer Classic Trek for sure, but it has always centred its wokeness. Writers just constantly inventing new races to talk about the social issues of the day.
I do wish the newer Trek was a bit drier. That's what I miss the most: the boring episodes without any action happening, just characters talking and building out the universe, and yeah, wrestling with social issues.
I never had the feeling that wokeness was shoved in one's face. Disco has other problems that are very severe. Because it's shit. But not because of wokeness.
You're being downvoted, but I just wanted to let you know you're not alone in noticing what you have. There is indeed a significant difference in the approach of classic Trek vs. what we have now. In the past, the story was the focus, and the wokeness was an addition to it. Now, the woke seems to be the focus, and it's at the expense of the storytelling.
I actually hate the word "woke." I'm about the most left leaning person I know and agree with the liberal messages in all Trek. But it really has destroyed the storytelling in the new stuff. It should primarily be a science fiction show, not a morality lecture.
I'm not going to argue with anyone who disagrees, I'll just accept the downvotes, I just wanted to show a little support.
I get your point. You're saying that "subliminal" wokeness is better than "in your face" wokeness because the later messes with the core of the series.
Honestly, I agree. Unless it is a show dedicated to social issues like racism, sexism or homphobia, try to keep the wokeness subliminal. Just show that it's fine for these things to happen, that it is normal and acceptable, that it isn't a big deal. Don't make it the whole show, it's just awkward.
I prefer when they show me what reality should be like. LGBTQ people in our social groups as if nothing special was happening at all. Once it becomes preachy and brainwashy, I'm out.