What's your Star Trek hot take?
What's your Star Trek hot take?
Mine is that Discovery should have been a series taking place in the Picard era.
The Wrath of Khan ruined Khan's character.
Khan was introduced in the episode Space Seed, where his crew of genetically-enhanced tyrants are discovered hibernating on a ship, having been kicked off Earth centuries before. It’s a wonderful episode about opposing moral perspectives, and we get the positive and negative views on both.
You could say it’s about slave/herd morality versus master/strength morality, or you could say it’s about compassionate humanism vs tyrannical domination. Both these perspectives are given their space in the episode.
Khan talks about how they were actually persecuted for their reproductive schemes, how that’s an infringement on their freedom. That makes him somewhat sympathetic, but at the same time he accepts nobody’s rules except his own.
The most interesting part is how the crew of the Enterprise are actually enamoured with the strength, charisma, and freedom of the tyrants. The final scene (after they defeat Khan) show the crew almost lamenting how they can’t do the kind of tyranny that Khan does. They want it, they kind of respect it, but they acknowledge the importance of equality and rule of law, so they almost-grudgingly agree that they did the right thing by defeating him.
When they defeat Khan they exile his crew once again to a harsh planet.
Ultimately the episode demonstrates why fascism will always be alluring to men and women, and also why it’s important to make sure that it doesn’t take over.
Then we get The Wrath of Khan. Khan is no longer charismatic. There’s no philosophical discussion. Just a revenge story. And this is somehow the version of Khan we remember!
You could argue that Khan’s vengeful turn is what happens when the spirit of freedom is crushed and ostracized. That would make a good arc, and a good psychological study. But none of that is discussed. He’s just a bitter, resentful loser who will stop at nothing to hurt Kirk. Khan as a character is ruined, and the story isn’t even ten percent as good as the episode where he was introduced.
Edit: I had the name of the episode wrong.
This is such an interesting take, because I have such a different one!
I maintain that, in his anger, in his vengeance, he was right. Being exiled to Ceti Alpha 5, when no one knew that Ceti Alpha 6 had exploded years ago and destroyed the habitability of Ceti Alpha 5 (oh my God, no one thought to check on the marooned Khan and his people in fifteen years?) means that he was a victim. And there was no justice.
I still thought of Khan and his people as charismatic and strong and intelligent- but victimized by Kirk, they were correct to seek revenge. What was done to them was not justice. It was cruel and unusual punishment. I also found it a testament to their strength that they survived for 14-and-a-half years on that hellhole.
Loved your comments. Love the different perspective!
I'm not necessarily saying he was wrong (although his mission is a race to the bottom). And yeah, the victimization could explain his deterioration from a great man to a warped vengeance-seeking psycho. But as a character there was nothing interesting going on there. He's just a generic Bad Guy, for the plot.
But I like your points. It's nice to see some Khan appreciation!
Mine is that Ahsoka has become a bit overrated over the past decade. Yes, we grew up with the clone wars, we saw her grow into a fantastic character, and yes she deserves the attention she's getting. But everything she's in now seems to be just to get adult fans nostalgic for their childhood. I'm worried that I'm going to stop caring the next time Disney makes a new property about her. It's hard seeing my childhood die in front of me while I watch.
Moral of story: stop making sequels. I want another season of Andor!
Edit: I might be illiterate
This is the best comment in the whole post. No apology necessary.
Confirmed, Star Wars and Star Trek are in the same universe!
Yes, but one was in a galaxy far far away
You’re not wrong though
🙊🫣
I can't fucken see shit on the new ship sets except for on SNW. They all adopted Klingon lighting or something and even my glasses leave the scenes like the end of GoT.
Enterprise is better than people give it credit for.
If the theme song were magically, retroactively changed to Archer’s Theme, the show would automatically be considered twice as good with no other changes.
should have gone 7 seasons, too.
The cast and special effects were great. If the writers trusted the premise that this was going to be a straight origin story without temporal cold war bullshit, the series would have been a lot better.
The Romulans as the big bad for the series was there the whole time.
The TCW was a network mandate. So was dumping the TCW.
Enterprise is a great series marred by some the worst writing for a female character in the history of science fiction.
Picard should have died in season 1 of PIC and the rest of the seasons should have concentrated on the new crew gallivanting across the galaxy in their newly christened ship, “The Picard”.
SNW should never have killed off Hemmer.
Cumberbatch was miscast as Khan.
Totally agree about Cumberbatch.
Cumberbatch should have been Gary Mitchell. He's got the right vibe for a man losing touch with his humanity as he's consumed by his godlike abilities, and a movie expanding on Mitchell would cover more new and interesting ground than plagiarizing Wrath of Khan.
The entire franchise should be handed over to Simon Pegg.
He has the most thoughtful understanding of what Star Trek is suppose to be since Ronald Moore, Jeri Taylor, and Ira Steven Behr.
would like to read more about this. I know he's a fan, but I'm just cringing at the idea of the Cornetto trilogy expanding into Delta Quadrant...
Tasha should have stayed.
Jeffrey Combs is awesome. That is all.
That take is hot as an Andorian winter, pink skin.
Shran is one of my favorite recurring characters in any series. So is weyoun.
Do...people not share our opinion?
not sure if that’s a hot take…
The 90s aesthetic doesn't make the second gen series unwatchable, but damn if it isn't hella distracting. (It's the hair. And the wardrobe. But mostly the hair.)
Picard was the best captain, but Sisko was the best.
I'd call Picard "Sir", but I'd call Sisko "daddy".
That's...I have to admit that is true for me also.
Someone needs to do a "Hawk" edit of DS9 where it's exactly the same except Avery Brooks is wearing sunglasses in every scene.
Keiko wasn't that bad of a character. She wasn't a great character, but the biggest problem was that her actress, Rosalind Chao, had very poor chemistry with Colm Meaney, who in turn had great chemistry primarily with Alexander Siddig, and also with several other actors. This wasn't a problem when she was cast in "Data's Day" as the bride to be with nervous bride energy, if anything that's an asset in such a short time frame. But then expecting that to work in what is supposed to be a long-term marriage is what led to perception of her being all MIIIIIILES all the time.
Now, I don't know that mid to late 90s Star Trek producers would have been on board, but they should have written an amicable divorce plot for the O'Briens. Miles and Keiko clearly grew apart from each other over the course of the show. Between her extended trips to Bajor and the way she all but threw Miles at Kira, they were already about 85% of the way there anyway. A divorce would have been a great way to resolve that issue, and use Star Trek as it was always intended: to explore real life issues in a scifi universe.
Wow that is hot.
Vulcans are a completely unbelievable race. There is absolutely no logic to being so diafainful to other races yet it's pretty much universal amongst Vulcans.
I don't know, I actually like the whole flawed idea of vulcan logic. Throughout the different shows we come to understand that 'vulcan logic' isn't some weird alien "their brains work differently" thing. They used to be violent and emotional, and they came up with a social system that helped solve that, and ushered in an age if peace and progress.
But "logic" isn't a meaningful method to live a life, it's a very specific tool for certain types of problems. Even our primitive earth philopshers have identified many problems with thinking that we could live life purely logically, as Hume puts it "Reason Is and Ought Only to Be the Slave of the Passions”.
So we're not seeing a bunch of transcendent android minds, we're seeing the equivalent of a bunch of recovering alcoholics clinging desperately to a worldview that they cannot question, but that is itself "illogical". So their disdain for other races is partly a consequence of their general directness and not holding back criticism, but also an anxious defence mechanism of people who know that even their indoctrinating school system and constant peer pressure might not be enough if Vulcans feel like it's okay to like humans or whomever, because that's only one step away from "well, if they're doing okay why can't I fall in love and cry and laugh!" and that way lies bloody civil war and a return to barbarism.
Which is why Old Man Spock is the best vulcan. As he said, "Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end." In his old age, he learned to understand and value the role emotion plays in our lives and how logic is best when it works together with emotion. That T'Lyn seems to have learned this from him specifically and is going down the same route makes me really happy.
A culture behaving illogically is the most realistic thing in the world.
So much of the Vulcan culture is just exhausting.
Rewatching The Search for Spock... there is an insane amount of religion in Vulcan culture.
The Vulcans do a lot of ritualistic and mystical stuff but the difference is the shit they do seems to actually work.
We first see planet Vulcan during Amok Time. Spock pops the one stiffy he's allowed every decade so they rush him home to get laid only for his wife to invoke her right to a cucking ceremony.
Next time we visit Vulcan, they're inches away from awarding Spock the medal for Most Dead Inside but he's disqualified at the last minute.
The Search For Spock is entirely about reuniting Spock's soul with his dead and resurrected body. Mind you, Spock died of radiation sickness from fisting a warp core in the previous movie. His torpedo casket miraculously soft-landed on the Genesis planet, and existing there as a corpse resurrected and quickly aged his body but kind of as a caveman, no education or socializing. He had copied his mind into McCoy. So they go get his body, and bring his living yet blank body and the guy his mind is in to Vulcan. Sarek then asks T'Pau to do the brain FTP ritual. She replies "What you ask hasn't been done since ages past and then only in legend." It's played as if Sarek is just now springing this on her, like he didn't call her up at the start of this going "Hey they're gonna go get my son's body, can you do the brain FTP ritual for him?" He puts T'Pau on the spot and yet they've got the two slabs and the gong there all ready and she nails it on the first try.
BREAKING NEWS: I was making a joke about it being the File Transfer Protocol ritual but in re-watching that scene they call it the Fal-Tor-Pan ritual so it canonically IS the FTP ritual and now I'm going to bed because my day won't get better than that.
To recap: They have a ritual for "Here's his blank but living body and a guy with his mind in him, could you fix this?" just ready to go. This scenario has come up at least once before in Vulcan history so it's still in their high priestess training manual.
And it WORKS. They're not a bunch of superstitious faith healers they produce demonstrable results. It involves robes and gongs and magic words and priestesses standing around but it's all real (in-universe). How much of it is for the sake of ceremony and how much is science is up for debate but they get it done.
As much as it is fun to revisit legacy characters and settings, they need to do a complete break, TNG style, and set a show somewhere where we can have new adventures with new characters. Lower Decks is somehow the closest to doing this and it's a member berry show. The constant revisiting (and retconning) is slowly suffocating the franchise.
Yeah, somewhere in the 26th century when time travel is the final frontier would be cool. An entire ship of historians infiltrating alien history.
Could be a combination of Loki and Dr Who.
Measure of a Man is legally and philosophically nonsense. It doesn't grapple with any of the history of questions around consciousness, and there has got to be dedicated JAG officers on the Enterprise who are better equipped to handle the case.
I'm 100% with you on this one. Riker takes off Data's arm and turns him off and that judge is like "you make a good point!"
Get Crusher in there to put her in a coma and amputate her arm and see how inhuman she feels.
Riker takes off Data's arm and turns him off and that judge is like "you make a good point!"
Everyone except that ass scientist who made a case that Data isn't a person was faking being convinced and/or being convincing. To prevent the ruling from being overturned.
How about the position they put Riker in? "You will prosecute this case and you will do a good job of it and if you don't I'll immediately rule in favor of the prosecution."
They need to actually give a full look into the economics of the federation. Yeah, it's space communism. But I want more specifics.
There's a recent episode in Lower Decks where they liberate a planet from capitalism..... by essentially taking all the "worthless" gold and jewels and giving it to Space Pirate Royalty to broker a peace deal between them and the Federation.
I don't doubt that the majority of the occupants of said planet are now happier not having to grind for capital...., but apparently having capital is still an immensely useful resource that the Federation is happy to, uh, quietly commandeer in lieu of payment for its, uh, services to the planet(?)
I still need to catch up on the latest season(s?) of lower decks. And given the fact that lower decks is a comedy, and borderline non-canon, I'd take that with a giant grain of salt.
Energy-to-(organic)matter conversion + futuristic power generators makes feeding your population a triviality. That simplifies just about any economic system, which takes a lot of the complicated stuff out of government and class hierarchies.
But Star Trek is a fictional utopia, much like Communism.
In reality, corruption would still mess up government in a “real world” Star Trek. I’m a casual Trekkie, but I don’t recall much detail about the Federation’s or Earth’s government structure. Do people still vote? Is it a benevolent military dictatorship? Who knows? And who cares? It’s not really relevant to the themes of the shows.
Star Trek is founded on liberal ideas popular in the mid-20th century that humanity could achieve unity and peace if it just cast aside superficial differences like race and gender, allowing us to focus on exploring the universe once we’d gotten over fighting each other. That’s the very core of the entire franchise and I’m fine leaving it that way, unscrutinized, since it clearly doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s like how the force is best left a mystical property of the universe in Star Wars, rather than science-ized with medichlorians.
That simplifies just about any economic system, which takes a lot of the complicated stuff out of government and class hierarchies.
Right, but they very clearly don't get all of their food out of a replicator, nor do they use the holodeck for things like hair cuts. There is still people who serve as cooks, waitresses, barbers, etc despite the technology being there to not need those jobs.
And that's what I want explored in more depth.
I’m a casual Trekkie, but I don’t recall much detail about the Federation’s or Earth’s government structure. Do people still vote? Is it a benevolent military dictatorship? Who knows? And who cares?
I've been dipping my toe in the books. At least in the first book for PIC, The Last Best Hope, they very clearly still have political struggles for power, corruption, tribalism, and voting. It ain't a dictatorship, but the goals and views of the government leaders aren't wholey benevolent.
A particularly good example was the Federation council member Olivia Quest. She's a rep from a border planet, whos been facing some issues with the romulan star going supernova, and all the immigrants that are mayhaps being sent their way. So she raises a big stink over any and all help towards the romulans. It's self serving, selfish, and tribalism, but she was voted in and she wasn't alone.
All of this is very familiar to real life. But it's the exact kind of details I want, but on one of the shows. They made it interesting in the books, they could just as easily make it interesting in the show.
That’s the very core of the entire franchise and I’m fine leaving it that way, unscrutinized, since it clearly doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Maybe the tech of replicators/transporters/holodecks should be left unscrutinized, because ultimately it relies on technobable for it to be compatible with a suspension of disbelief. But I don't think the same goes for the societal structures of the federation. It worked in the Last Best Hope, I think it could work on the screen.
Lower Decks deserves 7 seasons x23 episodes per season, with better quality animation for the space-based visuals
The Tholians are the scariest alien race in the series.
More exposition! Explain yourself.
For me, the Borg were boring until First Contact, where they became scary. Invasive. Not just lumbering Frankenstein's monsters with good shields.
But I want to hear more about your thoughts on the Tholians.
The Borg came about when I was very young, so they were incredibly scary to me.
I recall the Tholians from a Game Boy game I had, but they were no big deal. It was when they were featured on Enterprise that they became scary to me. They're so different and we don't know a whole lot about them (I haven't seen any Trek after Enterprise, no spoilers please). That's what makes them scary to me.
oh boy. here we go.
Faith of the Heart is great. the arrangement is a little weak but the tune itself rules and the words capture Archer so well i was shocked to learn it was a cover and not purpose-written for that
The Wrath of Kahn is just ok. it's less Star Trek and more an action movie celebrating the characters that we love, which makes it just the same as the later movies everyone hates. the only ones that are really feature-length Trek are Motion Picture and The Undiscovered Country. Into Darkness would be listed there too if the plot didn't keep getting hijacked by Wrath of Khan nostalgia baiting, ironically
the soap opera vibes in Discovery make sense in universe. they never really got a chance to be a peacetime exploration vessel and then it turned out their captain was secretly a space Nazi. compare and contrast how Pike treats them and the Enterprise crew- he seems to be aware of this and treats them with kid gloves. whether or not that was intentional and/or if it makes for good TV is left as an exercise to the reader
Dear Doctor was a good episode. they didn't condemn those people to die, they offered them a multigeneration treatment that just kicked the can down the road. it's not about the decision so much as the decision to not make a decision (which granted, Rush tells us is still a choice). it's messy but that's the point. Cogenitor is the episode that deserves the hate. it may very well be the single worst episode in all of Trek
The problem with Dear Doctor is that the premise is pure gibberish. Evolution isn't an intelligent force that makes decisions, it's not a predetermined path, species don't go extinct to benefit others, and evolutionary changes don't affect the entire population simultaneously. However, every one of those is treated as true for the episode and then they made it clear that the events were the inspiration for the creation of the Prime Directive. If not for that last part, it would probably be dismissed as yet another bad take on evolution from Trek, but that it's specifically intended to be one of the most important moments in Starfleet history is what makes it stick out.
A few quibbles.
-
I would argue that Insurrection also qualifies as a feature-length Star Trek episode. It has good moral quandaries, an interesting sci-fi premise, all the hallmarks of classic Trek.
-
Code of Honor is the worst Trek episode.
-
My hot take is that there is no way in hell an entire planet of people could be armed with planet destroying weapons and not immediately go around blowing up other planets.
You're telling me that there's never been a single rogue captain in Starfleets history that has just not started unloading photon torpedoes and plasma blasters and all kinds of crazy shit on a random planet just to see what the fuck happened?
Think of the mining potentials if nothing else? You can just sift through the wreckage rather than digging.
Wake up sheeple
Those impulses were edited out in the eugenics era. I believe we can't survive future weapons without it.
We have ships with city destroying weapons now. Rouge captains and crews don't go around turning cities or even islands into glass just because.
I loved Voyager and don't understand the hate. I'm more of a Star Wars fan, however, and not that knowledgeable regarding Trek.
I used to love Star Trek until that Tuvix episode. I'm mixed-race, and when they hauled him off to be killed I saw them hauling off me.
Damn. Thanks that's a perspective I'd never have thought of. Though I'd also have kept Tuvix around.
Honestly, there aren't enough good actors on the show. Picardo, Mulgrew, Phillips, and later Ryan carried the show... everyone else was kind of just... there. Couple that with very hit and miss writing and it's easy to see why it doesn't live up to the previous shows... but it was still a pretty good show when they weren't going action heavy. Or throwing weird salamander sex in there.
"Spock's Brain" has been memed as the worst episode ever, one of the ones we pretend doesn't exist.
My hot take is that it's not actually that bad. It's not a top tier episode, but it's perfectly serviceable. The worst actual thing in the episode is the sound effect used for the medical device to keep brainless Spock alive. I'll grant that. Otherwise, the central conflict is average Trek stuff. The scene where McCoy gets an ancient medical database downloaded into his brain is actually really neat.
I am convinced the legacy of an especially bad reputation of this episode is because it appeared on a few "Worst Episode" lists because of the personal taste of the authors and very few people actually watch TOS for themselves, but instead absorb it through articles. So it just became accepted that the episode was outlandishly bad.
My hot take is that the dominion war was hot garbage. Just episode after episode of the least fun parts of trek for me. It has some stand out episodes, but it drags and I basically stop rewatches in the late seasons. I also think Sisko's ending sucks, he should have stayed with Jake. Lastly, the prophets were way better before they introduced Pah-Wraiths and made them way more mystical.
It think the Dominion war works but as a framework for some of the more complicated choices the characters need to make. It also give us a chance for decisions to not play out in an hour episode.
It gave us the most interesting human klingon stories since TOS. Allies with different views and where the klingon perspective has more value.
I agree the actual battle scenes and episodes are usually week.
I also agree Sisko and the wraith / prophets stuff was terrible though. Though I always hated the prophet stories not just the end. I would have loved to see a better ending to Dukat and Winn than blasted with space magic.
Star Trek just isn't good at big wars. Single battles where "Oh shit there's a borg cube coming" can be tense and exciting but I'm way more into the ethical dilemma or space mystery mind screw episodes.
I think that's the main problem with Enterprise. Someone fresh out of Voyager's writing room said the phrase "temporal cold war" without thinking about what those words meant first, and then they said "Fuck it, let's go full Starship Troopers."
Not much of a hot take, but Ronald D Moore was my favorite writer of the franchise.
That's a stupid question! (Hopefully my display name and or avatar show up to put that into context)
But my hot take is that I actually liked the second season of Discovery that everyone else on the planet seems to hate.
Season 2 of Disco is the ONLY season of that show I really liked.
I liked most of it, TBH.
S3 was kind of weak for me, but it wasn't terrible. The finales, though, ugh!
Vulcans and Romulans having hand sex together is WRONG and doing it out where any child could see it on broadcast television is INDECENT!!
If the Borg ever watch The Matrix, the galaxy is theirs.
wouldn't they just laugh/smirk at the idea of enslaving humanity as a power resource? Or do you mean conquering their enemies by placing them into pleasant simulations before assimilating them?
The pleasant simulation thing. If word got out that the Borg were handing out you own personal Holodeck, planets would be seeking them out for assimilation.
Star Trek should not be as expansive as it is, because the sheer volume discourages new viewers from engaging with it more than casually. It's the same problem as one piece.
New IP pls
Oof.
Porgs > Baby Yoda
Moopsy > both
I love that famous quote from Teal’c, “Get off your encountersuited butts and Remember the Cant!”
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country really does a lot of the original cast dirty.
In what way?
Both Uhura and McCoy display shocking incompetence in their jobs. As a comms officer, Uhura should know basic Klingon, something that has been retconned in later iterations of comms officers. McCoy should have the medical knowledge to treat Klingons the same way he should be able to treat a lot of other aliens on Enterprise.
Scott and Chekov are slumming it on the Enterprise. Scott has been shown to be a great engineering marketing, so it doesn't make sense that he is still chief engineer on the Enterprise. Maybe Starfleet still doesn't trust Scott after Scott disabled the Excelsior, but Scott should be doing something bigger. Chekov was a first officer on another ship before coming back to the Enterprise as second officer. Chekov should be a captain by now.
Spock is going some high admiralty shit in this movie while being a captain, since he can't get promoted over Kirk. At this point, Spock should have transitioned to being an ambassador as part of this movie.
Kirk is really washed up career wise in this movie. He's only bring drug along because of Spock. He also is set up as a patsy for the bad admirals. It shows how low his star has fallen when he was used as a pawn rather than be an active participant in the politics of what is going on.
I never liked Star Trek and never will.
TNG is boring as hell, genuinely, and a complete abandonment of the space opera formula that gave TOS its charm. The entire TNG cast is dull and equally as robotic as Data, who gets far too much emphasis every episode. It's exhausting and repetitive to constantly show Data making the same head and eyebrow movements, demonstrating emotions like irritation while everybody pretends he doesn't have emotions, and everybody prefacing every sentence with "Captain..." Frankly I think TNG was written to appeal exclusively to nerds who get off on watching people do things robotically. The only interesting character is Q because everybody else's dead performance makes him look like a superstar.
Star Trek seems bland to me. I'd rather have Star Wars because at least they have sabers and other cool shit in it's lore.
Star Trek is nothing but just boring exposition and picked at for quotes and memes.
They appeal to different aspects of entertainment. Other than being scifi franchise from the 70s that have lasted through today they are completely different types of shows.
I don't want to bash you for likeing Star Wars but I'm the exact opposite in what I want. I find Star Wars dull and uninteresting and love the dialog, mystery, and problems of Star Trek. (I can't deal with nutrek)
I think it's like pizza vs sushi. You can like one, both, or none but one is never going to satisfy if you are in the mood for the other.