Don't get me started on ds9. A black captain? A trans lesbian officer? A gay interspecies couple? The federation using fear from war as an excuse to become a police state? Can't believe they made my colorful space communism show woke.
I can't be the only one who remembers Trekkies legitimately bitching about Tuvok because "Vulcans aren't black."
Like... really? You've been there and checked this out for yourself? Or is it that most (and not even all) of the handful of Vulcans you saw so far were white?
Tuvok is the best depiction of a Vulcan in all of Star Trek too and I will die on this hill (Spock is half human, so I am not counting him). Tuvok seemed to me like he found humans (and Neelix) to be illogical, difficult to understand, and somewhat annoying; but nonetheless he couldn't help but like them as well, though he wouldn't admit that to them (tangential hot take: Vulcans claim to suppress their emotions, but they still make decisions based on emotion and rationalise them as being based on logic after the fact)
You know what really grinds my gears about Vulcans? According to Trek lore their blood is green because they evolved using copper atoms to bind oxygen in the blood. But if that were the case they should have hemocyanin, and their blood should be blue.
I know for a certainty, however, that any inhabitable worlds we might find in the future will definitely look like a sound stage populated with Styrofoam boulders
Anyway, hardcore fans are dumb. I should know, I was one
Tuvok is black!?!?! I thought he was a Vulcan! I suppose the next thing you are going to tell me is that Odo isn't a Shapeshifter?
A gay interspecies couple?
Rick Berman:
I've seen DS9 multiple times, but I have no clue what you're talking about on some of these. Please enlighten me.
A trans lesbian officer
Are you talking about Jadzia/Ezri-Dax? If so, neither are trans. The parasite, Dax, in them has no gender but can go to different hosts that have genders.
A gay interspecies couple
Are you talking about Odo and Kira? While Odo doesn't have gender, I wouldn't call it a gay interspecies couple. That's kind of a stretch.
Edited for format
A trans lesbian officer
That is a popular fan interpretation of Jadzia. I can see some similarities, but I don't think the Trill are even as much as an allegory for transsexuality. That interpretation is very reductive and dismissive of the transsexual experience.
A gay interspecies couple
Garak and Bashir were originally written with gay subtext. Producers put a stop to that before anything actually developed between the two characters.
Pretty sure the downvoters didn't finish reading that...
They sure didn't and only frothed as soon they saw WoKe.
Didn't even get down to "unrelentingly woke" smh
You hated Discovery because it was too woke.
I hated Discovery because it wasn’t woke enough.
We are not the same.
I hated it because half of the characters annoyed me and the other half didn’t have enough screen time
I fucking loathe the series for introducing "Frieza" (the half mecha character), and IMMEDIATELY killing her off. Finally a somewhat interesting character, and they get fucking rid of her. Pisses me the fuck off
I hated Discovery because it was written like a chorus of monkeys with typewriters and not a single one of them got close to Hamlet.
At least they got the "travel the galaxy on shrooms" part correctly.
I hated discovery because of spore drives and logic extremists.
I dislike it because of "shit wrapped in shiny", and the black lead woman only capable of doing one expression of emotion: You put it up my ass! But wait! maybe I like it?
Yeah, really. There wasn't much enlightened future stuff going on and they pointlessly killed (and then returned, but still) one of the gay guys for shock value(?). It's just so poorly written that neither that nor any of the empowerment messages landed for me.
I was more annoyed at the klingon subtitle style/font being difficult to read quickly. Each one talking like a kid who just shoved a whole pack of Big League Chew in their mouth from all the prosthetics also bothered me.
I loved Discovery
The fact that they successfully branded "Not Being Racist" as being "Woke and cringe" is.. some ol' bullshit
So Bald IS a hairstyle!
I just couldn't get into Discovery or Picard because they felt... weird? Not that it wasn't like Star Trek in the stories or that it was "woke," but it just didn't have the same vibe as what I grew up with. Lower Decks has the vibe, but not the tone or anything else. I need to check out Strange New Worlds. It looks like it might be what I'm really missing.
Both Picard and Discovery were season long plots without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible. Add some poorly done melodramatic scenes about how the leads are the most important people ever without showing why (and in a lot of cases showing the opposite) and we have two series that were just a slog to watch up to the point that I stopped.
Both sounded good on paper. Both had great casts. Both seemed to suffer from terrible writing and direction.
without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible
The other series are episode-based with some random simple overarching plotlines thrown at them so they don't feel repetitive. Yes, those plotlines can't sustain a series, but that was never the goal.
I can't talk about Picard, but Discovery has a series of really interesting ideas that were completely destroyed by the overwhelmingly bad details. The plots are not exactly terrible, they have some more complex issues, and the insistence on emotional solutions to galaxy-wide physical problems is a recurring issue there (to the point that in season 4, where a "My Little Pony" plotline makes sense, it feels empty and repetitive).
I just watched Season 2 of Picard and all I could think the whole time was "TNG crew would have wrapped this up in 1 or 2 episodes..."
Yup, in order to make Discovery and Picard work, the writers had to give everyone the idiot ball.
Trek is at its best when it's competence porn.
As a note, to be in star fleet requires 4 years at the start fleet academy. You need to be somewhat good at your job and somewhat disciplined to even be considered for a slot on a ship.
Yes, watch Strange New Worlds! It really does get at the vibe and tone of TNG and the other 90s Trek shows. It's a breath of fresh air
I've heard good things about that enough that I had already decided to watch it in abstract, but you have just tipped me over the edge and I've decided to actually give it a try. Thanks for the push, I will think of you when I do watch it
I bounced off Picard because the only thing I liked about it was Jeri Ryan.
I liked the whole alt-dimension humans are evil shit in Discovery, but everyone is so fucking weepy the whole time. It's depressing. I don't think it helps that everything seems to be filmed in tiny green screen box sets so everyone has to stand still or they run out of room.
I'm not sure where you're getting the green screen box thing for Discovery. They didn't use a whole lot of green screen. They built fairly massive sets that were all reused for other shows. The screens that you see in the show as well, like the see through ones and the ones in the consoles, are not added in post. They mass bought those screens and they actually function in real life. Honestly the amount of CGI used in Discovery, at least outside of space based stuff and effects like transporters/phasers/progammable matter is pretty low. Even then the green screens that they did use were replaced by the video wall for Season 4 and 5.
SNW is TOS and TNG modernised. Some character arcs span across some episodes but the episodes by themselves are self contained (maybe with the exception of the end of the seasons).
There is room for totally random episodes that can experiment, do crazy things, and most important, expand characters.
They both had dogshit writing. Deeply bad. Criminally stupid.
I find many of these shows and movies that are accused of being woke is because they create protagonists without flaws, out of fear of making non traditional characters look bad I guess? But protagonists without flaws are boring.
I'm trying to think what Burnham's fatal flaw is, or her deadly sin. It's mostly stuff that has happened to her and she has to overcome but that's not the same thing. Interesting protagonist have flaws like hubris, vice, hypocrisy, greed, something that makes them more real. You look at characters like Rey from star wars and again, flawless except for her past, which again is something that happened to her not something she is.
That's why people didn't like when Han Solo didn't shoot first. Yes Han Solo is overall a good guy, but he's also ruthless and a gangster when we meet him. If he's already a flawless good guy at the start,that just sucks. Anakin as well, good but arrogant and controlling
I think i agree with the general premise that flawed characters are more interesting, and i also feel (with no data to back up that feeling, so bear with me) that these 'woke' characters sometimes fall into a pitfall where they're just so boringly written that it does feel like the writers are either afraid of being perceived as 'punching down' or (edit: finishing this thought) want to misguidedly write a perfect character for the sake of superficial representation of some group.
That said, for this show in particular (i have watched TNG/DS9/Voyager but not Discovery), is it a valid criticism for this captain that couldn't be applied to the older series? Picard's flaws are heavily understated - sure, he was a violent little shit off screen when he was younger, and he can be a little more of a hardass than called for occasionally, but I always felt he was pretty consistently portrayed as the voice of reason, and his flaws were only relevant in a couple episodes. I think I would say that's also true of Sisko and Janeway, though Sisko has a lot more nuance to his pragmatism that is really interesting as DS9 continues.
You're not wrong. Picards biggest flaw that people point towards is either not being great with kids or just emotionally stunted. Janeway has so few flaws overall that the only one you'll hear follow her around is "Genocidal" because of Tuvix. Most of her other flaws are episodic like with hunting the Equinox.
Edit: Even then, her flaw in hunting the Equinox is that she cares too much about Starfleet to let them abandon their morals. She's so aggressively pro-Starfleet/United Federation of Planets that when tasked with not getting home for 200 years (it was 70 years at max warp without ever stopping) she put Starfleet morals first and stuck her crew in the Delta Quadrant. Multiple times. So her flaw is shes too Starfleet.
Picard doesn't have many flaws but the writing doesn't usually make him the main character. TNG is more a problem solving show than a character drama. When they have character drama it's usually the B story.
When we do have a Picard centered episode they usually remove him from the rest of the crew. So you could say his main weakness is dependency on a crew. (Diehard in space doesn't count)
No issue with what you're saying but I will say that Burnham does have some fatal flaws that are throughout the show and not past things she's overcoming.
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As you mentioned, hubris. Throughout the entirety of the series she thought she knew what was best or had to shoulder every single responsibility single handedly. Spock openly mocked her for it in front of other crewmen during Season 2 and other crew constantly kept saying that she does it or doesn't need to.
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She's hypocritical as hell but that seems to be a thread through most Starfleet officers. Hypocrisy when it serves you. Look at the Prime Directive for every ounce of proof you'd ever need for any other Captain and hypocrisy but she does it pretty regularly too. Again something Spock pointed out in Season 2.
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She's hot-headedly emotional because she was a human raised as a Vulcan. She suppressed the everlovingfuck out of her emotions and by the time she was embracing her human side and starting to cope with those emotions she was already well into adulthood. A significant crux of the show is that Burnham has trouble regulating emotion because its new to her. People point this out as a complaint saying she "cries too much" but her character is literally someone who feels things more overwhelmingly because she was never raised to cope. Every season is her overcoming that little by little with Season 4 being all of that coming to a head. Her listening to Rillak and trying to do everything she could that she felt was right while also not doing the stupid shit like abandoning Starfleet to go save Book without asking for permission that would have been granted or freaking out over her biological mother and letting those emotions cloud so much of Season 2.
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My only major critiques for Discovery are that they walked back a Calvin-verse reboot after fan backlash (my interpretation), and that the theatrics usually don't mesh well with the action-oriented flow of the rest of the episodes around it.
The reboot thing was, to me, overly clear with the changes in aesthetics and technology. Especially the Klingons. And I get it: it's hard to dazzle audiences through vibrant creative direction, with decades of canon on your back. All that older stuff has compromises from old effects tech and budget baked in, so breaking from it is incredibly tempting. But the fans will not let you do this: just ask the Dr. Who production people. So we get some really oddball stuff happening in the first few seasons.
To the latter point, we get moments like: "The ship is going to explode in one minute, so let's argue for at least ten before we deal with that." This kind of thing happens a lot in Discovery and a binge-watch would have you thinking that the ship's counselor is either dead or contemplating transporter suicide. The dissent between characters feels valid most of the time, but other times is just jarringly out of character or contrary to self-preservation as to break suspension of disbelief. But there's usually angry, loud, arguing dissent. Which is a shame since these same episodes are hitting the mark on every other metric, IMO.
My response to the first five episodes was very much "It's like the writers are justifying a councilor being on the bridge crew."
To be fair, other characters step up to fill the void, but it's too little, too late.
Gene had a rule for TNG that conflict should not be between the crew. There are a few exceptions, but it's pretty consistent. I think that limitation made the writers more creative and greatly enhanced the series.
What's the "gay agenda" reference for TNG?
I also don't think the TNG cast is particularly overly-emotional.
Plus TNG didn't retcon Klingon appearance, it had been that way for like 10 years already by that point, from the TOS films.
The TNG cast is pretty human. They don't avoid anger, happiness, frustration, empathy, sexual tension, etc.
To the chuds of 4chan, showing a normal range of human emotion is over emotional, which this greentext is mocking.
First one that comes to mind is "The Outcast". Not really gay, but for anyone who is triggered by anything different they would consider it "woke".
There's also:
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The Host which has Crusher dealing with falling in love with a Trill who moves hosts. It can be seen in some very specific ways as a trans allegory and just challenging heteronormative assumptions about love and attraction.
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The show really pushes a lot of 'Found Family' stuff which ends up being super popular in most LGBTQ+ media because we're disowned by other people. (Data accepted and accepting himself as part of the crew, Worf and Alexander aren't too awesome but Deanna steps up a bit there. You've got Wesley who's kind of adopted by most of the upper ranks after a while.
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TNG is purely "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" which people see as gay agenda because they wanna collapse anything pro-diversity as just being LGBTQ+ because they have fragile pathetic minds.
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Q is aggressively queer coded. The hyper dramatic and flamboyant personality, the penchant for being a theatrical whore, openly flirting with Picard (and Riker) in such a way that you genuinely aren't sure if he's joking or not, he rejects every type of rigid norm from humanity, Voyager and a few other things even hinted in such a way that due to his ability to change form he's above gendered norms too and sort of gender fluid. Not to mention being the campiest motherfucker this side of the Alpha quadrant. "It matters to me. YOU matter to me. Even Gods have favorites, Jean-Luc. You've always been one of mine." There's also his deep fucking loneliness, something that a metric fuckload of people in the community suffer from. Part of a whole but ostracized and on the outside? Yea.
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Frakes claims that he lobbied for his love interest in The Outcast to be played by a male actor, but queerphobe Berman nixed it.
Yeah, I was gonna say I don't remember anybody being gay in TNG. Am I missing something?
Oh, and IMO the cast of TNG is the opposite of emotional. They are calm and collected 90% of the time. 5% is Riker being horny, and the other 5% is Picard losing his shit over the amount of lights or something.
Thanks for that review. Seriously, well said.
retconned Klingons to look super weird
TBF the Klingons were retconned in TMP
From now on, every Star Trek show should change the appearance of the Kinglons and the Trill. And also add a new color of Andorians.
Polka dot Andorians
DO IT YOU PUSSIES
Discovery did update the look of the Ferengi for the 32nd Century, looked kinda cool in my opinion. I can handwave a lot of stuff from Season 3 onwards of Discovery because it's nearly a thousand years ahead of what TNG/VOY/DS9 are at. Things gonna change so meh, tweaks like that don't bother me so much.
I will 100% admit to absolutely fucking hating Discovery when it was originally launched. The Klingons were one of the reasons although not a primary one. Took a while for me to come around and even now I'm like "Eh, I don't mind it." I did appreciate trying to alien them up a little bit more while trying to keep some stuff the same. Season 2 had an okay blend of that.
was there even one gay character in TNG?
Riker is clearly pan
I'm going with Alexander.
Clearly they never understood old-trek
The only question I have about Discovery is: do you think Michael Burnham is ever capable of crying?
She cant. She came back from the future, like a Terminator, and stuffed her past-self glands with tardigrades, so her pre-tears are transported to a micro verse that needs salt water for reasons.
I liked the series. Not my favourite. But I like it.
I liked it overall, but my god, stop finding a reason for Michael to cry. It's every fucking episode.
I loved it
Yep. This greentext is all just "dont threaten me with a good time". Let anon fawn over one another's griftcoin acumen and wallow in their oblivious unfuckability.
Short of DS9, Discovery is my fav ✨️
heck yez
It really is amazing to me that anyone can be familiar with Star Trek and at any point claim it's gotten too political. Like what show were you watching? Are you just some weirdo who went to Memory Alpha and memorized a bunch of Star Trek trivia but never watched an episode?
There were probably fewer non-political episodes than political ones. TOS had political episode after political episode, intentionally challenging TV executives so that they could talk about issues of the day. TNG continued this and added many social issues as well. DS9 was basically all politics for its last four seasons. Voyager was more in the TNG mold, and then Enterprise had an entire season that was an (IMO bad) allegory about 9/11 and the War on Terror.
I watched them all, and I loved them all too. I had opinions and favorites, but now that I'm done with everything Trek I just wish I could watch it all for the first time again.
The difference for me, was that 90's Star Trek had great role models. NuTrek has none.
It had weak women with goofy hair. Rick berman was a boil on the ass of star trek. That puss bucket is responsible for a ghost rape and a forced pregnancy episode. I can find fault with any of the treks but at least the latest batch has real people and not robots. Not that the actors in 90's were robots but that is how their parts were written. Even seven acted like a robot in a skin tight spandex.
Nice try
TNG was actually woke whereas discovery just danced woke items in front of us to distract from the abhorrent writing
Noone who complained about discovery was a Nazi. We wanted star trek and got a dumb CGI fest pretending to be trek
If you really want to know why eetharr discovery, then watch "the Orville" and you'll understand
