2y ago

Ah yes, famously apolitical Star Trek

76 comments

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'.
- 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.
  
  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.
- Discovery has problems (I still like that show), but being woke it not one of them...
  
  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.
  
  For me it was all the screaming.
  
  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 commercials
  
  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.
- 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.
- plenty of people do watch it just for the lasers and/or technobabble.

Star Trek in 1966: has a bridge crew containing a black female, Russian man, and faaaabulous Japanese man, each of whom holds the rank of full Lieutenant on their own abundant merits
- And a Russian and Japanese crew member at the height of the Cold War. Not just as background, but as one of the main crew.
  
  Well, main-ish. They were still basically side characters to kirk, spock, and mccoy
- Not to mention, it featured the first interracial kiss on television.
  
  In Nichelle Nichols' autobiography she talks about how the network insisted the scene be filmed both with and without the kiss, and of course, being good loyal actors, they complied. But, on takes without the kiss, something always seemed to go wrong… Shatner flubbed a line, the boom was in the shot, the cameras weren't quite set up correctly… eventually they ran out of time and were forced, "reluctantly", to submit only the takes with the kiss. I recommend Beyond Uhura. Also Kate Mulgrew's "autobiography" of Captain Janeway is a great read too. :)
  
  And then, just as now, many said “I wouldn’t have a problem with it if they weren’t rubbing it in my face!”
- And a Russian navigator at the height of the Cold War.

I'm sure they also watch Starship Troopers and completely miss the fact that it's a satire.
- Same thing with Robocop and American Psycho and Fight Club and Wolf of Wall Street and Taxi Driver and Wall Street and Glengarry Glenn Ross, etc.
- That's also the problem with any kind of forum that satirizes conservatives on the internet: sooner or later, it will get flooded with right wingers who completely fail to understand that they're being made fun of, and who will start posting the satirized content in all seriousness.
  Eventually, the original people who started the venue leave, and what's left is just another right-wing echo chamber.
  
  I think it's the problem with any good satire. It's such good satire that it just becomes the thing it was caricaturiazing.

Since the beginning!

This and the wooosh with RATM's music, have me thinking a lot of people experience media differently than I do. Just a series of unrelated pictures or sounds that make a feeling. These themes seem core to the show and presented fairly directly. Or I maybe watch too much TV and need to get outside more :)
- I've got a friend that fast forwards through films and only plays the parts with fight scenes, car chases or explosions then he will tell people the film is shit if there's not enough of them.
  
  I found out recently that there are people who will watch shows and just fast forward to the next scene if they get bored.
  
  That sounds so sad.
- There are people out there that take TV commercials at face value. Who do you think they are made for?
- This is true in the sense that illiterate people experience books differently than you do.
- Conservatives are famously media illiterate. I honestly don't get how a sentient being, much less one that pretends to be human, can be so intellectually vapid. Like, I'm lazy so i get not wanting to actively study even for stuff i am interested in (I'll learn Japanese! one day.), but to be so disinterested in the things you actually do to enjoy?
- A reminder that Paul Ryan, a GOP vice presidential candidate and former house speaker, claimed to like RATM before abandoning his support after getting a smackdown from Morello himself
  https://ew.com/article/2012/08/15/paul-ryan-pop-culture/
  https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tom-morello-paul-ryan-is-the-embodiment-of-the-machine-our-music-rages-against-246033/

Star Trek has been utopian space communism from the very beginning.
Science fiction has always been a vehicle for exploring woke ideas. Separating an issue from its current context allows the audience to set aside their biases and look with fresh eyes.
- Calling it "woke" like the right does is pejorative.
  
  no it isn't. it means being aware of systemic oppression. don't let those asshats get away with redefining it.
  
  Woke started out being used in a positive manner by people of color to describe social awareness, then conservatives decided to use it as a mockery of those who dare to ask for a more caring and supportive society. The right didn't come up with that term.
  
  They don't get to fucking own the word "woke"

Two things happened:
culture wars are at an all time high due to right wing lies and attempts to push everyone not like them back into a culture of fear and hiding. So they are more sensitive to stuff they would not have batted an eye over before.
stories no longer have men controlling everything and having all the authority/adventures
- Also what happened is that things that where highly political and controversial at the time are now "normal" and so conservatives don't see them as political anymore because the Overton window have shifted (for the most part), so now they attack the new "unthinkable" progressive "agendas".
  
  Kind of like how TOS was almost flagrantly progressive at the time, with women not only being equals on the bridge, but being allowed to wear what they wanted, like miniskirts, without having to dress like the men, but today, it's seen as an artefact of the times, and as a sign of the comparatively regressive attitudes of the day, rather than the feminist icon it was when the show aired.

‘Make It So’: ‘Star Trek’ and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism
Beginning in 1966, the plot of “Star Trek” closely followed Posadas’s propositions. After a nuclear third world war (which Posadas also believed would lead to socialist revolution), Vulcan aliens visit Earth, welcoming them into a galactic federation and delivering replicator technology that would abolish scarcity. Humans soon unify as a species, formally abolishing money and all hierarchies of race, gender and class.

Star Trek was so ahead of its time

It's a shame they didn't go for that goofy andorian costume.

I'm not defending the straw man in this screenshot of a tweet, but this is a bad comparison. Roddenberry created a world in which the ideas of equality, freedom, diplomacy, and justice could be explored organically. He shifted the underlying economic motivations for the existence of political systems. He fought constantly with the studio system and his own writers to bring about a revolutionary vision of the future.
Since Roddenberry's death, Star Trek: The Franchise has been slowly oscillating downwards: away from a universe whose observation reveals the objective value of virtue into one in which virtue is paid lip service at the cost of strong "physics" -- that is, the sense of a coherent universe. Star Trek is now a product researched, marketed, designed, produced, tested, distributed, and defended by committee. Where once we had revolutionary subversions of what was allowed on television, we now find performative affirmations of popular lifestyle. If you have to compare yourself to 90's broadcast television in order to feel revolutionary, you're not.
The use of "woke" and "political" in this hypercontextualist style is so vague as to border on non-expression. Reacting to a reaction to a reaction to a reaction to a form of expression in which my reply wouldn't be allowed due to a character limit is not critical thinking. We can do better than this. Roddenberry already did.
- How does creating a product through research and committee equate to being "woke?" Countless products have been and are created to appeal to specific audiences. If you just define any product that is designed by committee, researched, focus tested, and made to appeal to a certain lifestyle or segment of the population, then everything is woke.
  Country music is woke because it's made to appeal to rural audiences who believe in rugged individualism. The Fast and Furious movies are woke because they're made to appeal to people who are part of the car culture and like racing and modding their cars. Sennheiser headphones are woke because they're designed for audiophiles who are willing to spend thousands of dollars for the best audio quality.
  And blaming bad writing on some vague undefined notion as "woke" makes no sense. I don't like Discovery. My criticisms are based on plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, characters and plots not being inconsistent, episodes ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. It's the same kinds of criticisms I have towards any bad movie/show/book. For example, the Michael Bay Transformers movies were bad. Why were they bad? Plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, people ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. The quality of those movies have nothing to do with the presence or lack of "wokeness." Saying that Discovery is bad because it's "woke" is like saying Michael Bay's Transformers movies are bad because they have explosions.
- The use of "woke" and "political" in this hypercontextualist style is so vague as to border on non-expression.
  The use of "woke" is vague?
  Unfathomable, no way anyone would use the term "woke" in a vague way, especially not a presidental candidate.
  Edit: Or here -- https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/star-trek-starship-enterprise-democrat-woke-david-marcus
  
  You're completely missing the more useful point. The right says "woke and political," implicitly referencing the complex change I described above. The left quotes the right saying "woke and political" as an implicit dismissal of civil rights, diversity, representation, etc. Both of these lazy-ass anachronisms suck big huge elephant dicks and ruin the political discourse in the media.

I hate this reaction to removal they want, I'm a big fan of the placement card at the start of these things that say "What you are about to see is wrong and shouldn't have been done," but not that removal of the content. I think it's way more powerful to put that content warning placard before a show from the '90s as proof there are still things that need to be done and it's not a "distant" past thing.
Edit, I guess '80s for this episode.
- What's been removed?

TNG, DS9, and Voyager had great writers. They deftly wove in contentious issues designed to invoke introspection and consideration of one's own positions, prejudices, and biases. They appealed to people of all political persuasions because they didn't cast judgement. "Oh that's what you believe? Well here's a whole planet built on those hypothetical principles. Here are some cool things, and some terrible things. Make up your own mind."
Star Trek writers today have all the tact and nuance of an angry baboon flinging faeces at the viewer while screaming "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" Without exploration of the plentiful and beautiful nuance in life, what's left is a sermon. A preachy, dire, boring sermon. And who better to lead the ceremony each week than the Maryest of Sues, Michael Burnham.
Comparing TNG with whatever the fuck we have today is an insult to Star Trek, and Trekkie Bill knows it.
- You've got an interestingly warped memory of these past episodes. Much judgment was cast, and tolerance of the intolerant was never a theme.
  
  and tolerance of the intolerant was never a theme.
  I'm sorry but this is bullshit. I cite episode 1-2, season 1. Q places Picard and the Enterprise on trial for the misdeeds of the human race. This character and plot re-emerges many times throughout this show and others. As recently as Picard season 3. Q's accusation is that the human race is guilty of crimes. He calls humanity a "dangerous, savage child-race." He's right, of course, which is what gives the theme gravitas. Picard's ongoing game with Q is a form of atonement rather than a test. The theme is that us humans are clearly fallible, and guilty of much, but also capable of heroism and feats of bravery and altruism.
  Star Trek isn't Star Wars, with a baddie and a goodie. The three shows I cited explore the grey area between what you think is right, and what someone else thinks is right. They are powerful and thought-provoking precisely because they don't treat the audience like children, or parishioners in their pews. "Tolerance of intolerance" was one of the central themes in Star Trek, because the writers demanded we explore the nature of our morality ourselves. As a Star Trek fan I'm surprised to be explaining this to you.

76 comments