In the very first episode of Star Trek: the original series, we see a white Captain reporting to his black Admiral boss, a black woman on the bridge just a couple years after Jim Crow was abolished, wearing a short skirt (a symbol of feminist liberation at the time), a Japanese helmsman on the bridge only 20 years after the internment camps, a Russian crewmate on the bridge during the Cold War [edit: actually did not appear until Season 2 but the point stands], and the foundation of the modern concept of queercoding.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see male crossdressing crew members, a female officer on the bridge in charge of security, a literal ship’s counselor stationed at all times on the bridge, a single mom raising her teenage son on her own while juggling a full career in medicine, a blind mechanic whose “disability” is shown to be a strength, and an angry, all-powerful godlike being who is revealed to be simply a petulant child masquerading as a deity.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, we see a black man gain a powerful command position, respect the hell out of the customs of a religion he didn’t understand, show respect and equal treatment to members of three other alien races he didn’t understand, appoint a female guerilla fighter who defeated imperialist fascists to a position of authority within his administration and defer to her judgement in areas of her expertise, accept his friend’s gender change, and tell his son he loves him.
Star Trek has always been woke. You just grew up to be a bad person.
S-tier satire of the conservative “Trekkie” (please Gene, I hope you’re being satirical). Real comments like that always make me think of Douglass Adams’ “rules” on growing old:
Anytime someone says Star Trek’s progressivism was never “hamfisted” I usually just point them to the after school special that is Let that be your Last Battlefield:
I would have thought my comment made you think of every digit of pi, because that’s also something you didn’t read all of before replying to me. Seriously, if conservatism were applicable, why would my thesis be trashing Voyager and Enterprise, and pretty explicitly pointing out that Enterprise is overall even worse than Discovery? Shows that came out when I was little, I might add, and about 20 years before I increased my lifetime watching history of Star Trek beyond a single digit number of episodes across all shows.
Plus, I never said older Star Trek shows didn’t have bad writing, but you chose a bad example. Let That be Your Last Battlefield isn’t hamfisted, it’s just a clear narrative about racism, obsession, and hatred that aired before there was any grass growing on Dr. King’s grave, but it admittedly doesn’t resonate with people who are so jaded they consider an objective and unambiguous moral position intrinsically corny and trite. I guess To Kill a Mockingbird is just a hamfisted after-school special too, huh? Do you know what Let That be Your Last Battlefield doesn’t have, though? I do: it doesn’t have an undercurrent of insincerity, nor does it have characters whose narrative function is contradicted by everything they say and do. In that way, DS9’s Meridian is not far from being a Discovery episode.
Star Trek has, at various times, televised episodes that were boring, nonsensical, transparently insincere, objectifying, hamfisted, acted poorly, or rife with grating and unnatural dialog. It wasn’t till Voyager that these became consistent (especially boring and nonsensical, which are rarely absent). Enterprise and Discovery very consistently share most or all of these qualities in abundance, though I will damn Discovery with the faint praise that it doesn’t really have characters whom elderly perverts shoehorned in to add sex appeal, like T’Pol or Seven of Nine (or arguably Troi, though she also got legitimate character moments whenever Gene Roddenberry and/or Rick Berman were distracted by sexually harrassing someone else).
Discovery isn’t the worst Star Trek, that honor goes to absolute trash that is Picard, but it’s still a bad Star Trek. And again, let me be clear because you probably skipped to this paragraph, that’s not because it’s “woke”. It’s not bad because it has LGBT characters (some of whom aren’t killed off immediately), it’s bad because they don’t have anything recognizable as personalities and still have a closet to come out of. It’s not bad because a the captain is a black woman, it’s bad because they can’t decide whether she’s a Starfleet captain, Jesus Christ, or the Rambo fantasy from UHF. Throwing the public a bone with representation for marginalized minorities is not the act of kindness it should be when what they’re being represented as is incompetent and unprofessional dolts who speak in monologues and act like they have lead poisoning. For wokeness done correctly, see Lower Decks, a show I intensely dislike but recognize is overall good. Discovery isn’t aspirational, it doesn’t have challenging ideas, it doesn’t incite emotion, it doesn’t make you think, and it doesn’t have any heart, at all. Discovery is really not a woke show in any substantial way. It’s still better than Enterprise, Picard, and TAS because the bar is so low it’s in the mantle.
I never understood that episode. I’m sure there’s some sort of metaphor there but I just couldn’t figure it out
It was clearly about how marijuana makes your children communist
I’m mainly responding to your quote about new things being against the established order and my view of NuTrek is extremely biased since I mainly get my information from RedLetterMedia but do you think NuTrek ackchyually can sit on its own laurels?
I did watch Picard’s 3 seasons and I think it highlighted pretty well the problems with NuTrek:
I could probably come up with more issues, but it’s been a bit and I’m never rewatching Picard. NuTrek is a far cry from the old thinking man’s trek and is really watered down.
I agree completely. Which is why I love Academy. It’s silly, it’s got heart, it tires to build up the power of care and chosen family, and it meta pokes fun at itself. It’s like they tried to make lower decks into a mainline show.
Which was exactly what we needed after the lens-flare, torture-porn, throw-every-shred-of-history-out-the-window bullshit we’ve had for a decade.