•  roscoe   ( @roscoe@startrek.website ) 
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    8 months ago

    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?

    •  Malgas   ( @Malgas@beehaw.org ) 
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      48 months ago

      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.

    • 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.

  •  phoenixz   ( @phoenixz@lemmy.ca ) 
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    148 months ago

    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.

      •  LarmyOfLone   ( @LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee ) 
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        8 months ago

        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.

          • 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.

        • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

  •  cuchi   ( @cuchi@startrek.website ) 
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    128 months ago

    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.