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.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the wokeness complaints. They aren’t about who or what is presented in current trek, but how it’s presented. For example, instead of playing out insightful allegories that let viewers figure out the message, thereby crediting us with intelligence, the characters in Picard S2 walk around LA saying, “Wow what a terrible century, there’s so much social injustice.” That isn’t good storytelling, it’s a combo of lecturing and virtue signaling, and the fact that it’s the right message doesn’t change that.
Trek is known for allegory, but routinely abandons it for time travel stories. Star Trek IV and Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” and “Far Beyond the Stars” all examples that tackle societal issues very directly, and they’re all highly thought of.
To be clear, I think Picard features possibly the worst writing in modern Trek, so I’m not setting out to defend it on all fronts. But the idea that addressing societal issues head on isn’t a valid approach for Star Trek doesn’t add up for me.
In that case the issue is hamfisted storytelling, not progressive ideas. So calling it “woke” is pointing the wrong direction.
But that’s just it. Pushing progressive ideas through ham-fisted storytelling is the wokeness people complain about.
It is also when these things are blatant. Original Star Trek was progressive not because it showed a black person’s struggle for equality, it was progressive because it showed black people as equal.
A perfect example is DS9’s lesbian kiss. The short version, Trill are a joined species consisting of a humanoid host with a standard lifespan, combined with a very long-lived symbiote that can live for many host lifetimes. The resulting personality is thus a blend of the host and the symbiote.
In this specific episode, there is a rule in Trill society that if two Trill are romantically involved, that relationship has to end when either of the symbiotes move to a new host. The explanation is otherwise two symbiotes would just stay together forever through multiple hosts and never grow or learn. Anyway, one of the show’s main characters is a Trill female and in this episode encounters another female carrying the symbiote her symbiote was once married to. So this is a forbidden romance they are both tempted to. It’s explained that the previous relationship one of them was in a male host and the other one a female host. Now they are both in female hosts, and this is not brought up even once. The fact that they are both women is not even mentioned. It is completely and totally ignored.
THAT is a non-woke progressive presentation of the idea.
It’s not trying to get the audience to empathize with the black person who can’t sit in front of the bus, it’s just showing the black person sitting in front of the bus and making it not a big deal.
I agree that this is valid criticism. The Star Trek writers have clearly gotten lazier over the years, opting for hamfisted, blatant, “see? we’re being woke in this scene” rather than allowing you to think for yourself.
However, the complaint here is laziness and not the nature of the message. I’d even go so far to say that due to the complex storytelling of earlier series, there’s a large continent of the fanbase that didn’t realise their progressive nature, and are objecting to how it’s woke now.
So basically I think there’s two complaints here: a valid one that you’re making: “lazy writing is terrible and arguably less effective”, and another one coming from, shall we say, those unburdened by an overabundance of schooling that are objecting to progressive ideas that were always there, but they only notice it now with the lazy writing.
Hard disagree.
People are criticizing 'woke’ness- you’re assuming that’s idiots who don’t want to see progressive storylines but somehow didn’t notice that Uhura was a black officer when it was assumed black people couldn’t do much more than cook and clean.
I think the reality is that people are happy to take progressive storylines, but people strongly resent the specific combination of progressive storylines delivered ham-fisted which one might call ‘wokeness’.
I’m saying that for myself too. I am STRONGLY in favor of inclusion. I have NO problem seeing any race, gender, sexual orientation, etc of character on screen, and I want to see all groups represented fairly.
A great example of that was The Expanse. It’s part of the overall series plot that since humans went to space, former national borders no longer applied much so cultures mixed together. So you get this major disconnection between name ethnicity and physical appearance ethnicity (IE, Japanese guy with a French name, Black character with a Japanese name, etc) and nobody bats an eye. One of the first plots revolves around a man and his husband who are going to retire together and nobody gives a shit they’re gay. Like it’s not even brought up, it’s just ‘me and my husband are going to retire on Mars’ and this is treated as a perfectly normal thing that a man of advanced years would say.
Like myself, I bet you’d find a lot of the same people unhappy at ‘wokeness’ in Trek have NO problem with The Expanse- because it’s not woke, it’s inclusive.
Now full disclosure- I’ve not actually seen any of the new Trek- didn’t have Paramount+ until my partner wanted to watch Landman and nothing I heard about any of the new stuff made it sound like a must-watch. So I’m speaking conceptually on wokeness.
But in my experience, wokeness is pretty much the same no matter who’s writing it or in what venue. It’s NOT the same as inclusion.
BTW- if you haven’t watched The Expanse I highly encourage you to do so…
I’ve seen (and read) The Expanse, and you’re right, it’s fantastic. One of the authors has also repeated gone on record as doing his best to fight the patriarchy.
Then again, I am pretty sure, when we walked around e.g. the medieval times, we would bubble out the blatantly ovious as well.
“Look, those idiots don’t know about bacteria. Dumbasses.”
That was McCoy’s attitude about dialysis and 20th Century medicine in general, which was well in keeping within his crotchety nature and was slightly comical, not meant to preach that 20th Century medicine is backward. But if we went to medieval times and called them dumbasses for not knowing about modern biology, that would be showing our own ignorance.