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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'.
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 commercialsBurnham: 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.
Eh idk if she was ever portrayed as logical the same way Vulcans often are, more like emotionally distant masquerading as logical. I'm not the biggest Disco fan (except season four) but I felt she did a really good job of playing a human who was raised in a society where people don't express themselves.
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.
Also that no one gives a rats ass about protocols anymore or she would be in the Briggs instead where she belongs
Burnham, whispering
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.
This! I could not stand the characters, just not my group of people I guess, which is fine. I don't hate the show, it's just not for me and I'm ok with that.
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.
For me it was all the screaming.
And crying!
Sounds like humanity hasn't evolved from modern day.
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.
Doesn't Tilly mention going to a school named after him?
While Musk very quickly turned into an obvious shitheel in the time between that episode being filmed, and that episode airing, I think it seems obvious that without his influence in power generation and space travel spheres, assuming no one else took on that role in the same time, we'd be in a world that is largely changing in those aspects right now.
I think without his influence, we have much less innovation in energy or in space tech in the last several years.
Especially related to space travel -- without Musk's influence in space travel, the US space business basically died with the Shuttle program. MAYBE something else state sponsored might've replaced it, or some corporate/government mix, but .. my guess would be that putting it all in perspective in the Star Trek universe, there's probably a reasonably direct line that can be traced from Elon's influence with SpaceX in the early 2000's to Cochrane's warp drive.
Of course, that's all speculation because we don't know what would've happened without a SpaceX.
I'm not defending him, I'm defending that he put significant influence into things that are affecting our world right now, and that would also be relevant to the mid 2000's era of Star Trek.
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.
Don't get me wrong, I was furious with Michael almost the whole way through!
I think they were trying to tell us the story of someone that struggled with starfleet principles but ends up finding their way and becoming a great captain, but she just pissed the fans off.
She did get a bit better, I now give her a pass because she told her boyfriend that if starfleet told her to she would just kill him.
She's still the least suitable captain of any show though, in my opinion.
Good to know she's insufferable for most of the show. I don't think I want to give it another crack lol.
I didn't mind some of the stuff that came out Strange New Worlds, and I enjoyed S3 of Picard way more than I thought. I'm hoping this ends up just being a case of really really bad growing pains for star trek. TNG's first 2 seasons were pretty crap, but it got way better eventually. Maybe new trek will continuing improving
When I was younger, I watched Star Trek for the lasers and technobabble and I really enjoyed it. Then I got my first job interning at a government aerospace engineering lab. One of my bosses was an ex-Navy engineer, and we got to talking about AI drones and all that.
He told me that he was opposed to anything that made war less bloody because it would make going to war easier and easier, less and less costly. He made that argument through the lens of this Star Trek episode, wherein two planets go to virtual war with one another in a bid to preserve their culture and wind up in a centuries-long forever war. It was a short anecdotal conversation, but one that stuck with me and I still think about it today. Probably one of the first times that I realized that science fiction wasn't just there to entertain me with cool characters and settings, but to really make an argument about what society should be.
I haven't seen the new series yet. Hopefully they carry on that legacy well.
didn't even notice, I just like the stories and visuals.
plenty of people do watch it just for the lasers and/or technobabble.