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So I'd completely wiped this from my memory ... but Elon Musk is Star Trek canon now?
Like even if Musk doesn't do anything justifying him being remembered by Starfleet ... in the Star Trek timeline ... he did??
SpaceX pretty much kept US Spaceflight alive between the time of the Space Shuttle, and... whatever comes out next. Tesla corporation has proven to the rest of the car manufacturers, and other startups, that the way of the future is not via burning fossil fuels.
Elon showed the world what a shitheel he was after that.
So, I'm pretty sure that this dialogue was written before Elon became the obvious shitheel that he is now. And, as many point out, mirror universe Elon Musk might've been even more instrumental to their world, than ours.
It was really disappointing and cringy. I thought the show came out after the Thailand cave incident where he said people who were helping rescue trapped children were only in the country because they were pedophiles, but I just looked up the dates and the first season of Discovery came out a year before that incident. I waited a while to get Paramount+ because I didn't want yet another streaming service on top of Netflix and Hulu.
The Musk references aged very quickly. It's not great to name off living people as future historic figures when they are still alive and able to wreck their legacies.
The cave thing was worse than you remember: he got in an argument on twitter with a guy telling him how dumb the submarine idea was, so the smart reply was to call the guy a sex tourist... and it was obviously the cave expert called in to supervise the entire rescue.
Nevermind how that was an ad hominem to begin with lol.
This is a bit of a spoiler, but the guy who mentions Musk is actually from the evil mirror universe. So the second guy from the mainline universe is confused as to why Musk is on that list. He was probably a bigger figure in the mirror universe.
Eh. There are a bunch of other references to him even after Lorca returns to his universe. For example Tilly was on musk high school iirc.
I don’t think I was ever more ashamed and disappointed of trek than when they whipped out those lines, billionaire worship in a show about a socialist utopia. A fucking embarrassment
I'm with you on this. I actually think it speaks to something Disco kinda didn't do well on ... being a bit to mindful of its real life present.
Like the Stacey Abrams thing. I'm sure some loved it but I think many are very fair in asking Trek to not be so directly connected to the real world like that. If she wanted to be on the show ... cool ... I think the Voyager style cameos were done well where they weren't really central to the scene but were just there and you'd be forgiven to not notice ... more of an easter egg than something central (even if for only a moment).
I'd forgotten all about these Musk references but boy have they unnecessarily aged and tarnished the show in retrospect, and, honestly, made the writers look a bit too much like influencers trying to get engagement with their writing than focusing on the core philosophies, values and story telling.
Ummm ... you're maybe underestimating Lorca here. His mission was to fit in and he was clearly capable and motivated to do so. He most likely would not have made references that weren't accurate for his new mirror universe. Just a little bit of reading and cultural awareness would have enabled this.
Plus, I don't recall what the actual reaction to this was, but if it was anything other than confusion, the reference made sense in-universe.
Keep in mind that in the Star Trek canon, Joe Piscopo is regarded as the greatest comedian of the 20th century. It's already an extremely weird alt timeline.
Also on Discovery, Tilly mentioned attending Musk Junior High School, so yeah, apparently. Both of these mentions would have been before he bought Twitter, I’m not sure if the writers would be so quick to name drop him today.
Which is the problem with name dropping someone from the present.