Star Trek was literally always woke.
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The first episode of Trek I ever saw was the ToS episode with aliens that had half-white and half-black faces and were engaged in a race war over which side was which. It has never been subtle, and for good reason. Nuance generally doesn’t work well with bigots. If you want to get people to examine their beliefs you need to shove the mirror in their face.
The only thing that’s changed is what is getting shoved in your face. ToS doesn’t make you uncomfortable? Good for you, you’re not a Jim Crow level racist. Some of the new stuff makes you uncomfortable? Maybe you think about why it makes you uncomfortable instead of complaining about it.
A little off the point: I actually think it’s less in your face. In the episodic series when they did something along these lines it was usually the main focus of the entire episode. With the newer serialized seasons it’s usually a b-plot. They can devote a little more time to the b-plots when they have a whole season to resolve the main story but it’s still not the main focus.
There’s also an episode where literally Abraham Lincoln shows up, talks to Uhura, and comments on how much things have changed in the future. Real subtle stuff!
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Respectfully, no, I’m not going to “try to be less judgemental.”
I see a show that continues it’s long tradition of inclusiveness and respect for all people by including characters that are sexual and gender minorities. I then see people who claim to be fans, not just of the show, but also of what it has always been trying to do, complaining about it doing what it’s always done.
I’m going to judge. I have judged, and I’ve found you wanting.
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You seemed concerned when you tried to tell me what to do.
Concerned enough to claim a
blackgay friend to excuse yourself.deleted by creator
What about Discovery felt like it had a spotlight on it more than “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”? Or that TOS put a diverse cast front and center on the screen, including folks hailing from nations that were currently/recently enemies of the USA at the time? I grew up watching TNG, and the way Geordi turned the concept of what it meant to be ‘disabled’ on its head felt really pointed, even for child me. Likewise the dehumanization of Data.
I’m happy to gripe about worse writing, but if someone wrote a shoddy story that included a couple giraffes (because giraffes were more popular nation-wide), I wouldn’t get mad about “giraffe messages” in entertainment, I’d get mad about shit writing.
What about Discovery felt like it had a spotlight on it more than “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”?
um are you forgetting the extremely gratuitous scene in the first season where two men brushed their teeth SIDE BY SIDE
for real though you won’t ever get an actual example from the show from these guys because it doesnt exist
I think they’re talking about that Discovery episode where they encounter a planet of Enby people and Burnham falls in love with one of them. So woke. They even kiss.
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NuTrek wokeness, which constantly gets overstated and rubbed in the viewers face
it would help your case if you could give a few examples of this happening
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Maybe you could refresh my memory with an episode or some more details because I don’t remember it that way. I remember Adira stating their pronouns, everyone accepting that and using those pronouns and never mentioning it again. I’m pretty damn sure there wasn’t some Jordan Peterson type that refused to get with the program.
I’m also pretty sure there wasn’t any focus on Stamets’ and Culber’s “gay” relationship. Their relationship was part of several story elements but the gay aspect was not. Please remind me of any plots involving their relationship that would have to be changed if one of them was a woman.
You are the one making a big deal about these characters because you can’t get over their simple existence.
Adira: I’ve never felt like a “she” or-or a “her,” so…I would prefer “they” or “them” from now on.
Stamets: Okay.
And that was the end of it. Horrific, isn’t it? I’m sure Nacktmull would have blocked the characters for trolling if they could.
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I’m confused how you got to this conclusion because in my opinion, Discovery is pretty much a masterclass in treating their queer characters as normal. Stamets and Culber’s relationship is core to a lot of episodes, but the fact that they are gay is not—I can only think of a single time the word “gay” is even said. They’re full characters in their own right that just happen to be in a relationship. Queerbaiting would be if they hinted at a queer relationship but didn’t show it, but they show it plenty. They aren’t perfect either, they literally almost break up. They’re whole people.
And Adira and Grey… Adira has to come out, yes. I don’t know what’s wrong with that. You seem to think it should just be a “normal thing” that isn’t discussed, but coming out is an inevitable part of the non-binary experience. People in Star Trek aren’t mind readers, and seem to still assume binary pronouns by default. So it’s only natural that if someone wants other people to use they/them pronouns for them, they have to come out, even in the future. I think the fact that Adira was able to come out in a single brief scene and then it’s never mentioned again is great and not unnatural at all.
And Grey’s transition is alluded to as something that happened in the past, but is literally never directly mentioned in the plot. I don’t think the word “transgender” is ever uttered. He seems like the perfect trans character for you, his transness has nothing to do with who he is and is never directly mentioned but he’s just accepted for who he is. What’s wrong with his portrayal?
Its funny too because being a trill recipient makes the allegory very “conservative friendly” . They literally gained dozens of lifetimes worth of memories where their gender and birth sex were male and female. Normal trill symbiote candidates go through training in order to better retain their sense of self after they bond and better separate the memories. Adira did not have that training and was not ready for this or even the right species for it.
Riker absolutely lost himself while he had a trill implant and became the trill. Meanwhile Adira has a few hundred or more thousand years of being a mother, being a father, giving birth, and presenting as male and female and over that kind of time span even seeing gender roles and norms change and evolve. After all that they decide you know what I dont think Im quite a girl anymore but Im not a boy. Even a gender absolutist would have to give it to them.
there is a huge spotlight on their gender identities in the main plot and there is even a 2020 style pronoun talk
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Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.
I certainly agree that there’s more crying than I’m used to in Trek, but I wouldn’t call that wokeness (unless the crying was about a reason that was “woke”, I guess?). Mostly I chalk that up to popular entertainment dripping with CW style shows (for the worse, of course). That said there was a fair amount of crying/emotional outbursts from Sisko and others on DS9, especially if we take the Maquis into account - like Sisko said, it’s easy to be a saint in paradise. Doesn’t jive with the perfect crews we’ve seen on the Enterprises, but like DS9 being a run-of-the-mill station that got swept up in religious politics and galactic war, Discovery was “just” a bleeding edge science ship that went through hell, so it does kind of make sense that people would be more than a little traumatized and outburst-y.
Totally agree that the casts being treated like it was normal is a great message to send without focusing on it, but they did touch on it occasionally. In the TNG pilot itself, Geordi and Crusher talk pretty openly about his blindness IIRC, and he says something to the effect of “I was born this way”, and he rejects potential “cures”, showing how comfortable he was with what others would consider a curse.
Also there most certainly episodes reassuring Data he was part of the crew. An entire episode reassuring him he was sentient, right? It was central to his (and others’) growth over the series. Whether he was truly a sentient being or not definitely draws parallels to dehumanization in the real world, and was pretty blatant about it.
Plenty of folks on TNG had to talk through their problems - that was pretty much the point of Guinan, in a lot of ways, and even having a Betazoid on the bridge. Feelings and emotion were being pretty openly explored in a way that’s just different to the way things are now. Mental illness has over the decades been normalized in a way that is kind of incredible. Again though, the amount of crying does irk me (that much I agree with, especially when shit is literally on fire). I just don’t consider that to be wokeness in my face, just shoddy writing.
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Thank you for saying that: it’s been interesting to see things from another perspective.
I never had the feeling that wokeness was shoved in one’s face. Disco has other problems that are very severe. Because it’s shit. But not because of wokeness.
hey look its the guy from the meme
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The thing I love about this, the thing I always find funny whenever this comes up, is that these midwits are just too dumb to make the obvious argument. The argument that is “in their face” and “being shoved down their throats.”
There is a rational, coherent argument to make their point. It’s one I disagree with. It’s one that, in my opinion, can only be made in bad faith with no purpose other than to be a concern troll, but it’s there.
They always bring up Adira, Gray, Jett, Stamets, Culber, and anything else that’s gone up their ass but never any of the actual social commentary because they’re so thick it went over their heads and they didn’t even notice it. You can see it in this thread. They mention the characters and people respond with “but they’re just existing, how does that bother you?” They just bring up the characters again to a response of “yeah, we heard you the first time, what are they doing that bothers you other than existing?” And it just goes in a circle.
There was never an episode of ToS where Uhura talked about how hard it was to be a black woman as a bridge officer, because it wasn’t. That’s the whole point. In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine, a black female officer is completely unremarkable. Whenever they wanted to engage in social commentary about race relations in the 60s they had to invent an allegorical race, time travel, or use some other device to make their point.
The same thing is happening in the newer series. All those characters are just existing. Their sexuality and gender identity is completely unremarkable in the future Star Trek shows us. If those dipshits had two brain cells to rub together they would see the new series are full of allegories about not just tolerance, or even acceptance, but appreciation for beings with non-conforming expressions of self. If any of that did manage to trickle through their thick skulls they probably just twisted it into “yeah, people shouldn’t make fun of me for having a relationship with a waifu pillow.”
If they weren’t so stupid they could easily give a half dozen examples and say “it’s too much,” “I got it the first time,” “focus on something else for a change,” or whatever other bullshit justification they came up with to oppose these themes. It would be a bad faith argument that I would disagree with but at least they could pretend they’re not bigots, instead of their current position which seems to be “I’ve got no problem with these people, I just don’t want to see them.”
And, on the flip side, there’s also their total blindness to many examples of old Trek being decidedly unsubtle. They just will not address those, because to do so would completely undermine their point—and they’re not interested in the truth, really. They just want their anger.
I don’t know how someone can be a Star Trek fan and not get it. It’s an attitude diametrically opposed to the core spirit of the franchise. How do these people enjoy a show about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, but they can’t stand the presence of different humans?
In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine a black female officer is completely unremarkable.
Interestingly, in the unaired TOS pilot Pike did in fact remark on a female officer (albeit Una rather than Uhura), saying he “can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge”.
Of course, being unaired, the episode’s canonicity was pretty questionable. Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
(n.b. None of this is intended to negate the point you’re making. It’s just a strange little thing that could have been brushed aside as an artifact of the show not quite having figured out what it was yet, had not modern Trek gone and affirmed it.)
Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
That never happened. Discovery was the only show that used a scene from The Cage but it wasn’t that clip. If Memory Serves did a “last time on Star Trek Discovery” segment that used clips from that episode. It gave backstory on Talos and Pike’s relationship with Vina. The clip of Pike making a sexist comment was not used, and has never been used in any other show to date.
Until SNW used the exact clip of him saying that as archive footage.
They did? Are you sure you’re not just thinking of that meme?
The one argument that Star Trek has gone woke I agree with is that the characters are all tripping over themselves to make make Tilly captain despite her obvious incompetence for that position. Contrast that with Barkley who everyone recognized needed self improvement to progress.
Otherwise I totally agree. Star Trek has always been progressive when it comes to race, religion, etc.
Good post
I assume they’re returning to their truck to retrieve some sort of accelerant.
Jeepers, that’s dark, Boss.
General Order 24 would seem to apply.
Why is your name in red? OP is blue, what’s red?
(Using Voyager)Admin on your (our) instance.
Probably “admin”.
Thank you, Lieutenant.
I remember seeing people complaining about “woke adaptation” with The Sandman, and Neil Gaiman always reply on Twitter he was ok with that, is like people can’t believe there is authors or works who is being left-right stories, people acted like he was controlled, mind-washing or something.
The Sandman is such a hilarious example of something to get upset about being too woke, too. “This adaptation of a comic written that featured gender fluid characters in 1989 has been corrupted by the woke mob!”
Brain worms.
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Star Trek is one of the things I still hang onto as optimistic about the future. We can make a better world for everyone and overcome racism, capitalism, transphobia, etc. We can build something better and reach for the stars. And that’s always been the message. The characters have advanced technology like ships and teleporters, but what’s really advanced is how they are as people. They’re curious, educated, accepting people who want to explore the universe for the sake of it.
I also hang onto the X-Men. That was also important to me growing up, seeing how the characters could come together to defend themselves against hatred. I grew up in a really conservative area so I’m always gonna be grateful to Star Trek and X-Men (and later all sorts of books) for keeping me sane as a kid
Star Trek and X-Men were a huge part of my childhood and teen years as well, so I 100% get where you’re coming from.
Only tangentially related, I really do wish Marvel would take a back to basics approach with the X-Men so I could get into them again. I know a lot of people love the Krokoa era, and I’m happy they have it, but for me it is too dense and too far removed from what I grew up with for me to be able to penetrate. I know they’ve got an upcoming sea change happening, so maybe then.
In all honesty, most people that hate current trek don’t hate it because it’s too woke, they hate it because it’s just generic trash. Classic trek didn’t care much about big space battles, loads of pew pew and great action shots. Classic trek cared about great stories. The ships were places where people actually worked and lived together.
Current trek (anything after enterprise) has horrible story lines, horrible dialogue, is mostly about dump action pew pew and CGI, ignores 50 years of history, is all about fuck this, fuck that and fucking fuck you and honestly: it isn’t woke: it’s only virtue signalling.
Classic trek was woke by making great stories about real issues in society. New trek is just a sad shadow of what it used to be.
I was never bothered by new trek being too woke because it isn’t.
To quote a really shitty show: sheer fucking hubris.
Current trek (anything after enterprise) has horrible story lines, horrible dialogue, is mostly about dump action pew pew and CGI, ignores 50 years of history, is all about fuck this, fuck that and fucking fuck you and honestly: it isn’t woke: it’s only virtue signalling.
To claim that all iterations of modern Trek are a homogenous unit cut from one singular cloth tells me that either you haven’t actually even attempted to watch even half of it, or you’re completely blinded by personal biases. Either way, your opinion would be easy to discard even if it wasn’t a rant only tangentially related to the original post.
Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have been pretty good at scratching the classic itch I think. But yeah I do agree that picard and discovery suffer from a problem that a lot of Marvel and DC comics these days suffer from. They dont slow down and spend every arc going from a threat THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING to another threat that WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. So many universe ending events.
I think you only watched Discovery and Picard.
Lower Decks is brilliant. But Discovery and Picard was enough to make me hate new trek. What else is there? Prodigy is just a trashy show for kids. Well for stupid little kids it’s good enough. You don’t need quality writing for kids /s
PS: Yes I’m angry at the enshittification of star trek.
Prodigy is great for what it’s trying to be. If you don’t like kids shows that’s fine, but Prodigy is still teaching a new generation about Starfleet ideals and I think that’s awesome. Strange New Worlds is also pretty decent.
the enshittification of star trek.
Star Trek started using their monopoly power as a platform to squeeze their business customers for the benefit of shareholders?
Well lol, very loosely yeah kinda. Very similar processes. Instead of being in the control of creatives who love the franchise, the franchise is owned by a corporation through a monopoly (IP ownership) who just try to diversify the portfolio and suits just hire anybody that sounds like they make money. And nobody else is allowed to make star trek. The Orville was better Star Trek than new trek but it competes against the name recognition of the brand.
what does this have to do with the meme or are you just kinda doin your own thing over here
Personally, I think the sandwich is the ideal food delivery system.
So you’re saying I should be chewed to death with Dijon mustard? I don’t get why every time I barge into a thread and drop a completely unrelated turd of a reddit brained opinion someone like you always shows up to bully me.
look I’m not here to kink shame you
Yeah I quickly started hating Discovery and Picard. “Not my Star Trek” lol, they had to make it like grimdark and postmodernist.
What is REALLY good is Lower Decks though. Absolutely brilliant even though it’s a cartoon comedy it feels like TNG.
Strange New Worlds is more like classic trek, it’s not bad like Discovery.
I agree. StarTrek was always woke in the truest sense of the word. In my opinion the new shows are just not good - Neither as StarTrek nor as general entertainment. Except for maybe Strange New Worlds which certainly has shown some potential.
Yeah, there’s a difference between a well written stories that take on social issues and really breaks down the ethics of them in an interesting and entertaining way and a poorly written story that’s trying to do something vaguely similar and completely fails to accomplish anything other than just mentioning that social issues exist.
It’s a weird feeling where I agree with what they’re trying to do but it’s so painful to watch them constantly fail.
A bad thing about the anti-woke thing is it’s hard to criticize things that have good intentions but have bad execution without being lumped in with the assholes. And I feel like poor writing won’t improve when there’s that excuse of “well they’re just hateful anti-woke assholes” to fall back on.
Okay so what’s your take on the core dilemma presented by the villain in Prodigy? Given an apparent choice between isolation and extinction, what do you think the right resolution is? Personally I think the conflict mirrors the real world isolation of Sentinel Island. And with the Sentinelese in mind, it starts feeling culturally insensitive to say isolation has no cultural excuse.
Or do you think the question posed by Prodigy is overly simple?
Well said. I don’t think new Trek has been too “woke” (whatever that means because no one can define it). The only one that was over the top was that kid who was non-Trill that had a symbiont. For being in the 31st century (or whatever) they focused too much on his they/them nonsense. You’re not suppose to mention it. When you make a thing of it, it doesn’t come across as normal. That’s like TOS making a big deal of a black woman working on the bridge. Sure, in reality it was a big deal at the time, but being set in the 23rd century it should be normal by then.
New Trek sucks for all the reasons you said. God awful writing, poor dialog, and plenty of bad actors. No character development. I can only remember a few characters names from Discovery. The rest I just physically describe: chick with metal on half of face, robot chick, darked haired guy and blonde chick who stood in the back of the bridge sometimes, and chick with African name.
I only continued to watch it for Stamets (after he chilled out), Saru, and Georgiou.
Out of curiosity, does Lemmy/AP have a way of doing tags like reddit, seems like a feature worth having.
It is top of my list of wanted features.
Lol what does the original say?
I grabbed someone else’s edit. I assume it’s just a “do not disturb” sign.
Oh ffs can we cut this crap?
Yes, there are legitimate bigoted Star Trek fans. It’s the Internet. You can find an abundance of any extreme niche. I’m honestly willing to bet I could find an abundance of furry star Trek fans fairly easily also, despite furries as a whole being vanishingly rare in real life.
However it’s a lot more common to see legitimate criticism of Star Trek painted as bigotry, often by people who clearly aren’t really that big fans of the series.
You couldn’t criticize Discovery for the first year it came out without being called a bigot, and a lot of the people doing so would clearly have 0 idea about the greater Star Trek universe. I remember reading a multitude of comments calling Burnham the first female Captain or first black captain, saying how female senior officers were quiet and unassuming until Tilly came along, and a bunch of other shit that was objectively wrong.
I feel like most implied accusations of bigotry these days are low faith effort attempts to stifle criticism by newer fans who just can’t handle criticism. It’s exhausting and super toxic.
Finally Lower Decks is a grabbag of woke tropes but was met with widespread and is the most popular NuTrek among hardcore fans. That should tell you something more is going on.
Who said you can’t critique Disco?
This is about a very specific, very silly objection, levelled by people who have found themselves indoctrinated into a mode of thinking that alienates them from the people around them, because of a manufactured fear preying upon alienation many of us experience in our modern world.
I’ve had plenty of objections to aspects of Disco, especially during season two, but scattered throughout the series, and no one has ever called me a bigot for my hot takes. If you’re presenting your critiques in such a way that people are assuming you’re bigoted, perhaps you should reevaluate how you’re constructing your criticism.
Oh God and the gaslighting.
Valid Criticisms:
Max drama deviates from star trek standard format
non episodic / arcs within arcs make it hard to jump in and follow
Everyone talks too fast (lampooned on SNW | LD crossover even!) Deus Ex (Time Travel | AI | Etc.)
MultiLithium gets really explody if you cry hard enough.
Not Valid:
Everything is too (Gender | Sexual Preference | Skin Color) for ST (these people have a vacation fuck planet, and regularly bone holocharacters, get over it we all know if Kirk had a holodeck he would have died in that thing).
Mushroom warp is stupid (fuck you I loved mushroom warp).
You just reminded me of a bingo card Reddit Risa had during Disco S1:
ha! That’s excellent. I was not in a position time-wise to watch DSC S1 when it actually aired, so I missed all these shenanigans. In retrospect it’s probably the best trek to binge (which I did) since many episodes feel more like parts of a movie instead of being self contained. I’m a fan of all trek, even Enterprise. :D
Do people genuinely not like ENT?
From my perspective, I didnt start to appreciate it until the final season and then I wasnt even that bummed because I knew I wouldnt have to hear budget rod Stewart sing over an old Timey map with crew member power point transitions
It’s definitely true that some people with legitimate criticisms get misread, but I think it’s inaccurate to say that it’s “a lot more common” to see legitimate criticism construed as bigotry than actual bigotry.
Just look at this thread, there are a bunch of people whining about queer characters being forced in your face just for being a part of the show. The bigoted fans come out in force with talk of “STD” (ugh) all the time, which is what created that expectation in the first place.
I feel like dismissing all the bigotry out there (including in this very thread) as “it’s just the internet” while dwelling on a few dumb comments you read in the past (probably on the Internet?) is disingenuous.
Ffs. Let’s look at this thread.
The top comments are by far just assholes. They dismiss and demean people like high school bullies. They are overly cruel, and blatantly attempt to justify that behavior like pretending their targets are just deplorable who deserve to be treated like this.
I find it disingenuous that you focus on the comments downvoted to hell and completely handwave away this obviously shitty behavior.
My instance has downvotes disabled, so if those comments are downvoted to hell I wouldn’t know. As a result they show as reasonably highly upvoted on my end. Even if those opinions are controversial, the number of upvotes they get (plus the fact that there’s several such comments, even here) show that there’s lots of people who share the opinion. We just happen to be in a community that tends to be biased towards Discovery, so those opinions are in a minority here. Go to other communities, and suddenly people will be complaining about “woke Trek” left and right and getting majority support.
People came at you because you responded to a meme about bigots complaining about wokeness, which even you seem to concede exist, to make a complaint about how legitimate criticism gets construed as bigotry—which the meme in the post is not an example of. It comes across a little like a self report. It’s like if you make a post saying “Nazism is bad” and some conservative randomly responds “this is hate speech against conservatives”. You were talking about Nazis, not conservatives, but their response comes across as them admitting they’re a Nazi.
That said, people came at you really aggro. It’s easy to get caught up in labeling people as bigots and then get carried away in the dunking. I don’t want to handwave away that fact.
Thanks for that last part.
The reason I immediately jumped to the bullying is because I feel like I’ve seen this story a million times. Someone loudly proclaims some extremely popular moral opinions. In the process, they then proceeded to insult whatever morally defunct out group.
At first it seems great. After all, bigots/Nazis are horrible people that need to be put in their place.
However, over time, the definition of bigot/Nazi widens to the point where it essentially becomes meaningless, while the vitriol towards whatever group becomes more and more unhinged.
I remember on reddit there was a sub called justneckbeard things. It started by roasting toxic neck beards. However by the end they’d just be posting pictures of obese nerds, making wild and completely unfounded moral assumptions, and then using those assumptions as a justification to bully people.
I honestly don’t think most of the people complaining about bigots are here to protect tolerance. I think they’re just toxic people who enjoy being cruel.
