I never thought of it like that. Fuck, that's depressing.
It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about.
5 months ago by daggermoon to c/startrek
daggermoon 71 points 5 months ago
CmdrShepard49 54 points 5 months ago
99% of what you hear people like that accuse others of is pure protection. They're telling you what they want to do without realizing it, so "woke agenda trying to brainwash our kids!" could be translated into "we want to brainwash kids toward our ideology."
daggermoon 19 points 5 months ago
I remember a coworker saying something about trans people and how we can't say anything anymore because it all has to be about them or something. I never got the impression this person was bigoted. It seemed completely out of character. I said something like ("They just want equal rights and the same respect as you and I. What's the issue?") Maybe people should worry more about weather or not their kids are learning the life skills they need to survive and less about weather or not their kids see two dudes kissing in a movie. Mom and dad need to untighten their buttholes. Even if I don't understand something, I try to be empathetic and understanding to those who are different from me. I wish everyone else did.
TachyonTele 39 points 5 months ago
They're trying hard to change it. Almost like they have a playbook of some kind...
samus12345 14 points 5 months ago
Sometimes they're accidentally right about something sucking, but always for a different reason than culture war BS. Ghostbusters 2016, for example.
RamenJunkie 9 points 5 months ago
Yeah, that movie was so ass. My perfect summation of it. We rented it, my daughter picked it out. Like ten minutes in, she says something like, "This is so terrible, I am going to my room."
Now, normally, she will just ignore whayever is on and play on her phone or whatever and ignore it, this, she actively wanted to flee from.
samus12345 6 points 5 months ago
It was actually impressive just how bad it was. It's like they were trying to make it unbearable to watch. The fact that it carried the name of an all-time classic made it so much worse.
dkppunk 6 points 5 months ago
I disagree, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call received way more hate than it deserved. I really enjoyed it and I have rewatched it a bunch of times, more than I’ve rewatched Ghostbusters 2. Holtzman is my favorite character and I love the goofy dance she does with Abby. And I love Chris Hemsworth’s character, he does big goofy handsome guy really well.
It was way better than the last 2. I watched Afterlife once and I have no interest in watching Frozen Throne at all.
cygnathreadbare 6 points 5 months ago
My only issue with that movie was the timing of a few jokes (they made them longer than they should so they stopped being fun) and that the trailer spoiled half of the jokes. The movie itself is cool.
The newest ones? their only redeeming quality for me is Egon's granddaughter. The kid is really good. Everything else is just the dumbest nostalgia bait ever (even having the mom's boyfriend a literal stand in for the kind of fan the movies pander to).
usernamefactory 4 points 5 months ago
I’m with you. 2016 may not compare to the original, but it was a solid comedy with a good heart. The bloody meltdown parts of the internet had over it was insane.
Texas_Hangover 0 points 5 months ago
Holy fuck, how many of the things have they made? Jurassic fucking Park over here lol.
Tollana1234567 0 points 5 months ago
i noticed that to, STD was one, the show sucked bad. they almost are selfaware, they said terrible writing but then said it is due to wokeness and having women in the show. SG1 was an oddball it got called woke/lib by both tankies and conservatives. right about lucifer in sandman being casted by gwendoline, shouldve been the way in mythology and comics. but comes up with wokeness as the reason.
vaultdweller013 1 point 5 months ago
There have been a few examples I can think of where they've called something woke and it was legit pretty mid or outright bad. But usually that's down to it being a game by committee by people who only interact with marvel level writing, like Dragon Age: Veilguard which is just shit or Mass Effect: Andromeda which honestly just kinda mid.
TransNeko 1 point 5 months ago
I actually liked Andromeda (the story concept) the game play was dog shit. if they had fleshed out the combat a bit more, used a different game engine, and published it not as a Mass Effect IP but as a stand alone game... it would have been golden.
EatMyPixelDust 5 points 5 months ago
Yeah, loopy religious people who want to take society back to the middle ages.
Tollana1234567 2 points 5 months ago
it applied to all SCI fi show both pre-STD(DISCOVERY) thats what really got thier panties in a wad, when kurtzman made all the women have lead roles.SG1 wasnt spared either, as recently Invincible was called woke, just because the female general in coalition took command of the ship (the planet of ragnarrs) to refreeze the beasts.
there was definitely a concerted effort around 2020(thats when woke became super prominent in comments of shows like star trek) around election time to illicit more voters to side with conservatives through propaganda.
richieadler 1 point 5 months ago
Invincible was called woke, just because the female general in coalition took command of the ship
And don't forget, Mark first GF is now black! The horror!
Tollana1234567 0 points 5 months ago
i was going to mentioned that, since they race swapped her. sandman was another example of race and gender swapping people, Death was suppose to be a goth white chick, and LUCIFER was gwendoline instead of a blond white guy. they alway attribute terrible writing to DEI/WOKENESS
Skv -2 points 5 months ago
Pretty sure "woke DEI crap" is universally understood as pandering. And everyone is pissed at stories being written specifically to scream woke crap at you instead of just incorporating diversity in, as it fits the story itself, and moving on with a good show.
StillPaisleyCat 98 points 5 months ago
It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.
DickFiasco 40 points 5 months ago
Yeah, I always thought he was kind of a douche, but I guess his heart is in the right place.
ValueSubtracted 67 points 5 months ago
I think Shatner is complicated because (a) he's 95 years old, and can't be expected to be fully "in touch," and (b) he has definitely had some questionable people handling his social media over the years.
Tollana1234567 8 points 5 months ago
true, and he went with BEZOs into space as a tourist and became disappointed after, only for bezos to laugh for no reason after spraying him with ALCOHOL.
joelfromaus 3 points 5 months ago
I just had to double check and holy crap I did not realise he is 95!
Skullgrid 32 points 5 months ago
Yeah, it's shatner so you one expects him to be crass, and you one forgets he was the first star trek captain. and agreed with the ideas being shown on screen (unlike, IDK, Barclay's actor)
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 2 points 5 months ago
Jeffrey Hunter was the first Star Trek captain.
StillPaisleyCat 4 points 5 months ago
It’s possible on a regular basis.
However, as with other high profile accounts, one expects that messages that are high profile would be cleared with the person under whose name the official account is made.
Skv 2 points 5 months ago
Not at all. Chapelle told that joke about hearing that "his" "official" Twitter account was having beef with Kat Williams' "official" account. During one show when both of them were in the audience, he went over to Kat and told him the situation - to which Kat replied, "wtf is Twitter?"
daggermoon 1 point 5 months ago
I do recall an interview with Brent Spiner where he said something to that effect. I figured he (William Shatner) wrote some of them. I forgot about that.
cygnathreadbare 1 point 5 months ago
I really dislike Takei's one (Jay Kuo) because of how shamelessly he uses it to promote his own substack sometimes.. and because of a specific substack post of his where he said "oh no it's so bad Arizona got abortion banned.. but there's a silver lining, maybe they'll learn to vote blue the next time" or some shit like that.
+3M people losing their body autonomy and the first thing you think is "hey this can be a good thing for our campaign"?? fucking ghoul...
TachyonTele 8 points 5 months ago
Yeah. I wish people like him, sulu, and stephen king would abandon it already though.
TachyonTele 3 points 5 months ago
Lol! That's too bad
Glytch 40 points 5 months ago
Trek writing has never been consistently good. Half of TOS is unwatchably bad. TNG sucks until Riker gets more hair. DS9 sucks until Sisko gets less hair. Voyager's all over the place (even though it's my favorite). Enterprise is mostly bad. Only the even numbered TOS movies are good. Only the first two TNG movies are good.
I say this with a genuine love of Star Trek, but the quality of the writing has varied greatly over each individual series.
GalacticGrapefruit 14 points 5 months ago
As a Star Wars nerd, I feel this so intensely. It sucks when you love the setting, but the actual writing is a crapshoot.
You hold up Andor, Rogue One, and the Animated Clone Wars Saga next to the Sequels, the Christmas Special, or Revenge of the Sith, and it makes your heart hurt.
ContriteErudite 8 points 5 months ago
Agreed. Season three TNG is peak Star Trek. That said, and at the risk of being flayed by the Star Trek community at large, I think DS9 was the best series, taken as a whole.
jj4211 2 points 5 months ago
Which is one of the reasons why Discovery and Picard at least are problematic (I haven't seen Academy).
As you say, a lot of the old stories aren't really that good. What happens when they had a bad story, or maybe less 'bad' and just didn't engage with you? New one next week.
With Discovery and Picard? Well the whole season is the story, so if it doesn't engage with you, you are pretty much out for the season.
Personally, I never felt there was really enough narrative "meat" in their stories to warrant a season long arc, and so it felt a bit stretched for time for the perceived "a story needs to fill a binge" market.
Strange New Worlds primary win was returning to episodic, to give a story a chance to shine or fail in a digestable amount of time and move on. Was at its weakest when Season 3 kind of devolved to a weird arc.
BarbecueCowboy 1 point 5 months ago
Star Trek writing just depends on making sure the main characters have exactly the right hairstyle. They tried real hard to find it in Discovery, maybe with a few more seasons we would have got there.
chiliedogg 35 points 5 months ago
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn't an issue at all.
Uhura was a bridge officer who was a black woman, and nobody cared or even noticed because in-universe there was nothing special about that.
Kirk 21 points 5 months ago
I like how in Discovery a character came out as non-binary and everyone is like "ok cool" and that was that and it was never brought up again (because why would it be)?
You can tell by the absolute meltdown conservative spaces had about that five second clip that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
chiliedogg 2 points 5 months ago
But that's not what they did with Uhura. They never hung a lantern on her being black or a woman. She was just there and it was such a normal thing it didn't need to be addressed in-universe.
Having a character "come out" means the world is one in which people are hiding in the closet because of a social stigma. A world in which that stigma doesn't exist doesn't require a character to come out.
Kirk 2 points 5 months ago
Huh? How is Stamets supposed to know if nobody tells him?
EDIT: Also Uhura's Blackness and femaleness were most certainly addressed in-universe in a longer scene than I shared above.
jj4211 2 points 5 months ago
It got there, sure, but that coming out was a bit rough, because they treated it as a "big deal", they were afraid of coming out and ultimately did, but seemed to harbor anxiety that should have not had a place anymore. They got over it (I assume, I actually kind of lost track of Discovery), but at one point it was too big a deal.
Also, out of universe, they were a bit annoying about bragging about being the first non-binary representation in Star Trek ever, which just seems disrepectful of the times it came up before.
Kirk 3 points 5 months ago
I don't believe any of this is supported by what we saw on screen. Do you have evidence to support these claims? Even just a single line of dialogue for each claim would be helpful.
Tiresia 1 point 4 months ago
It would be a big deal for someone to only come out as nonbinary when they're old enough to be an ensign on a starship. How many times in high school did they say "No, I'm not nonbinary, I'm just a girl"? How many times did they insist to their parents on getting a girly thing because they wanted to fit in with a feminine friend group?
Social anxiety is always a valid emotion, even if you know the society is progressive enough that it isn't really a big deal.
encelado748 11 points 5 months ago
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn’t an issue at all.
Is Jay-Den being gay not exactly that? Nobody cares in universe. But somewhat it is a big thing for a lot of people for no reason at all.
encelado748 10 points 5 months ago
Discovery writing is all over the place I agree, but Starfleet Academy writing does not look that bad to me. What is so much worse then previous trek? If we do not cherry pick the best of the past against the worst of the new, writing is better or on the same level of what we saw before.
JasSmith 5 points 5 months ago
I mostly agree, but with shows like Starfleet Academy, the writing is bad in part because of the forced inclusive themes. You're broadly correct: these could be handled with tact for a better show. I still think these themes are handled best when they give the audience room to consider nuanced and complex ideas. Don't shoot me, but instead of a classic New Generation episode I'm going cite an episode of The Orville - "About a Girl". Bortus and Klyden have a baby, who is born female. They try to argue that she should be allowed to remain female, but ultimately the court rules that she undergo the Moclan gender reassignment procedure.
This touches on contemporary issues but also doesn't present the situation as "this side is 100% right, and this side is literally Hitler." The audience is actually left wondering, where does this sit in the contemporary debate? If a child is born one sex, should they be given the right to remain as that sex? Or should a court be allowed to step in and reassign sex? The episode also brilliantly explores the difficult dynamic between Bortus and Klyden, and doesn't portray one as a cartoon villain and the other as a male Mary Sue.
This is where New Trek fails horrible. Zero nuance. Everything is presented in the first 10 seconds as "this is good, this is bad. Accept the message we are feeding you are you are a bad person." That's not Star Trek. Most importantly, that's not interesting. It's not good storytelling. It might appeal to people who really like circlejerking about that particular issue, but that's a minority of people.
Kirk 9 points 5 months ago
That's a lot of words to not provide a single example from a show of what makes "forced inclusion" different than "inclusion"
EDIT: Before anyone bothers clicking through the replies, he never actually explains himself or why he's parroting a common right wing buzz-phrase to discourage the presence of minorities in media.
JasSmith 2 points 5 months ago
Someone asked that question two hours ago and I replied with two examples. It's underneath my comment. I'm not sure which application you're using to browse Lemmy but you should be able to see it.
encelado748 8 points 5 months ago
Can you give me a practical example of Starfleet Academy lacking the kind of nuance you would like to see?
JasSmith 9 points 5 months ago
A specific example would be “Vox in Excelso.” Jay-Den learns the Klingons have become an endangered people after the Burn, General Obel Wochak rejects the Federation’s offer of asylum on Faan Alpha because accepting it as charity would dishonour them, and the episode resolves that by staging a fake battle so the Klingons can claim the planet “by conquest”. To me, that lands too neatly. The episode tells you very quickly that the Federation position is the sensible one and the Klingon objection is mostly pride that needs to be worked around, rather than really sitting with the possibility that their view of dignity, sovereignty, and survival might have more weight than the script gives it.
Another example is “Ko’Zeine.” Darem is pulled back to Khionia for an arranged royal marriage to Kaira, and the episode is clearly building toward the conclusion that suppressing your real self for duty and tradition is tragic and wrong. That is a fair theme, but the show signals the moral endpoint so early that there is not much room left for genuine ambiguity. Kaira ends up being understanding, Jay-Den is framed as the voice urging honesty, and the traditional path mainly exists to be rejected. Compare that with something like older Trek, where you were more often left to wrestle with whether duty, culture, and individual freedom could all make a legitimate claim on the character at the same time.
So when I say the show lacks nuance, I do not mean it should avoid these themes. I mean it too often starts from the answer and then builds the episode backwards, instead of letting the conflict stay uncomfortable long enough for the audience to think. And when the story concludes, they make it VERY clear which way the audience is expected to land. They do not allow for any ambiguity or moral disagreement. They present the "right and true" path, and make it clear that any deviation is wrong and immoral.
encelado748 12 points 5 months ago
I am not disagreeing with you, but old trek does this all the time.
In season 5 episode 17 (the one with the J'naii androgynous race) the setup is exacly the same as Ko'Zeine: from the start you get the answer that suppressing your true self is bad. The J'naii are seen as bigoted and the federation position as the right one. I do not think there is any ambiguity about which side the viewer is supposed to take. The only difference is the end result. Or look at how Dr. Crusher treats Klingon ritual suicide in season 5 episode 16: their culture is treated entirely as a stubborn, barbaric hurdle to be overcome by the 'sensible' 24th-century human perspective.
And TNG is also full of examples of "the federation knows best". In Season 7 Episode 13 the federation works around a similar problem with the forced migration on the holodeck. Or Season 2 Episode 18, where the enterprise force the merge of the Bringloidi and the Mariposans. Or when in Season 1 Episode 8 we dismiss Edo society position immediately as immoral despite them living in a paradise society.
GalacticGrapefruit 4 points 5 months ago
I appreciate you referencing the Orville's most pivotal episode. And honestly, the twist involving Klyden's reasoning for reassigning Topa, as a trans sci-fi nerd, broke my heart.
Spoilers about the most crucial arc of the story
That's the perspective that a lot of people don't have when they see that episode. It's easy to take Klyden's lawyer's argument as legitimate when he makes the point of comparing it to the cultural version of a cleft lip.
And then Haveena walks into the room. And she proves, conclusively, that she is a woman and she would never choose to be anything other than what she is. That her gender is a gift. And then, later on, we see the hidden planet of the female Moclans, and it is so radically different from Moclus that you'd hardly believe this is the same species.
We see Moclan men testing weapons anywhere they please above civilian airspace, and the backdrop is an industrial wasteland because they never developed ecocentrism... because safety laws, industrial regulation, and other 'soft' ideas went unobserved and unvalued.
Contrast the Hidden Planet, and we see Moclan women, dancing in a style that they invented, revering the planet that protects them. We see women warriors carefully watching the Orville's crew as little girls play in the street. It feels indescribably very... honestly, African. I can't put my finger on why, but it does.
All of those differences are deliberate. And they were set up very, very early.
moopet 1 point 5 months ago
I agree completely with your point about the Orville. It was really well done.
I don't agree with your assessment of New Trek, however. I know it's all very variable and I don't want to generalise, but even if we accept this:
Everything is presented in the first 10 seconds as “this is good, this is bad. Accept the message we are feeding you are you are a bad person.”
Then, I have to point out the obvious: if it's so lacking in nuance, then yes, if you don't accept it you are a bad person. For example, if it's saying, "gay people are ok and normal", there's no subtlety to that because it's not something anyone in the future will hopefully give a shit about. And if someone in their society did, then yes, they would be in the wrong. 100%.
JasSmith 1 point 5 months ago
But this is exactly my point. "Gay people are ok and normal" shouldn't be a plot. It's like a "murder is bad" plot. Yes, murder is bad. We know. That's just not an interesting theme to explore. Maybe if it were presented as a trolly problem, where a crew member were forced to kill someone in order to defend their own life, or the life of a friend, that could be an interesting plot. Forcing the viewer to explore the tension of morality between killing or being killed, or taking an innocent life to save another innocent life. That could be interesting television.
We could apply this to a "gay" plot as well. What if the crew met a civilization that were on the brink of extinction for some reason, and they had outlawed homosexuality for reasons of survival. The crew could explore the tension between individual liberty and existentialism. Someone might argue, "our civilization doesn't deserve to survive if we strip people of such basic human rights." Another might argue, "if our civilization is to survive we must make hard decisions as we have always done during war and other crises." They might argue it's only "temporary," and someone else might argue, "it's been 30 years!"
The issue is driven by one-dimensional plot.
moopet 4 points 5 months ago
Trek expresses gay people being normal. It's explicitly not the plot. There's no plot point about it. The plot is about kids (for a certain Steve McQueen value of "teenager") being in school and battling Space Foes. I'm picking on "being gay" as a point because I imagine it's what the people who cancelled the show had an issue with, but I could well be wrong.
There was no exploration of the things the right-wing hate in Academy. They just exist. There's no ongoing plot about anyone's sexuality, or if you think there is then it's dwarfed by the same plot with other straight characters.
It sounds so much like saying you can't have a gay character unless there's an interesting moral plot point about why they're gay. That's not what Academy did.
ConstantPain 4 points 5 months ago
Yeah, nothing is organic. Feels like it's not normal to the characters too, because they have to keep explaining it to themselves.
The message is not the issue, the inability of the writers to insert it in the story is.
CheeseNoodle 9 points 5 months ago
I find the actual problems they face to be more organic than other series, there's always at least a semi-good reason why the threat of the week is occuring rather than something stupid like flying through enemy territory with no shields or some rando just beaming out your ships main computer being a huge weakness that no one ever thought might be a problem.
Tollana1234567 1 point 5 months ago
i was pointing it out alot on nutrek videos, some people dont believe its bad writing lol. have you seen them act lately, or the writing. its wierd how kurtzman sees the live action as transformer style/copaganda of nutrek but with the animated is more in line with old trek.
SaveTheTuaHawk -4 points 5 months ago
This summarizes everything wrong with Trek:
Why is she running a ship like she's in a vegan cafe in Portland? Why does she need glasses hundreds of years in the future?
What happens to all the straight people in the future? a killer virus?
resipsaloquitur 43 points 5 months ago
“When did Star Trek get so woke?” — My idiot former boss.
daggermoon 20 points 5 months ago
Back in 1965.
Nierninwa 4 points 5 months ago
I believe it was also an old Shatner tweet (well, if memory serves, he technically asked when it got political) Surprised to see this shift from him. It’s a welcome one but I’m still not sure if I should trust this.
Tollana1234567 3 points 5 months ago
the gender ran across 4 series. DS9 had jadzia(other host) preferred women and shes a women still with those feelings, and another where a female dominant race from the gamma quadrant fled DS9 through the wormhomle, and a similar one on enterprise show(where the explosion disaster caused by the suliban), Genderless insectoid Xindi.
Nutrek through kurtzman isnt very good and not very subtle with exposing mysogyny/genderphobia .
DaGreenGobbo 3 points 5 months ago
"You said 'class warfare' twice."
"He likes class warfare."
BlackLaZoR 1 point 5 months ago
Hey see - that wonderful thing in the past is similar in some way to the dogshit we produce now. Therfore the problem is you!
LillyPip 28 points 5 months ago
The new trek was cancelled because some people hated it and had outsized influence.
So thanks, those of us who liked it don’t get any more of what we liked because a few dicks had outsized influence.
I don’t get to enjoy something because you didn’t like it. Thanks.
You could have just not watched it, but instead you had to ruin it for me too.
Fuck you. We all need to stop watching these fuckwits who think they know more than us. Unsubscribe from these channels. Stop watching them. They’re ruining our ability to watch things.
e: I mean the snarky review channels and podcasts. Especially those that always hate everything. You know the ones. The hate influencers.
It’s hard to find creative media that lasts more than a few seasons now. Many good things are cancelled after 1 or 2 seasons. Junk media (celebrity or ‘live’ series) are renewed basically forever tho.
homes 18 points 5 months ago
The show felt unfocused and confused. The characters, like the storylines, were kinda all over the place and didn’t really seem to know where they were going. Too much effort seemed to be put into the show’s set and setting, and not enough effort went into the things that went into the sets and settings. It had a lot of potential, but it all of it never really seemed to come together.
homes 13 points 5 months ago
On one hand, I would say that it was, by far, the worst first season of any Star Trek show so far. On the other hand, I don’t think it deserved to be canceled. Just heavily reworked, much like TNG after its first season.
But Kurtzman has a pretty poor track record, and it’s just been getting worse and worse and worse. With the exception of Lower Decks, which was exceptionally awesome. seriously. That show was fucking amazing, and I really miss it.
Academy has a great premise, and I actually really like all of the actors and the prototypical concepts for the characters, but the rendering of all of them is just a total mess. it’s hard to say what to do with all of them because, honestly, I hardly even know where to start. There’s just so much… I don’t even know where to start. It’s a lot. It’s like I have all of the ingredients for a really awesome Thanksgiving dinner, but someone put them all in a blender. And now I have to deconstruct the whole thing and start from scratch. Like, it’s all there, but someone makes it all up the wrong way. I don’t know.
I didn’t know the show was canceled. That’s too bad. It deserved another chance. You could tell all of those actors were working really really hard, and they all had a lot of talent. Honestly? I think that they deserved a lot better.
bold_atlas 9 points 5 months ago
Yeah unfortunately nothing works like it did during TNG-era anymore. There's no more syndication, no soft continuity resets, no time to try different things. Every season of a show has to be a 12 hour movie, with every episode integral to the last. You just can't do that for more a handful of seasons before show runs out of steam dramatically. Shows have be in the groove from the start or they're just going to be cancelled.
It's why I don't even bother torrenting any series anymore. It's a failure of the modern enshitified financified mega monopoly dystopia rather than the shows themselves though.
homes 0 points 5 months ago
Well… yes, but not anywhere near as bad as this. This was like a bad GHB trip, crazy nightclub setting and all. For any new television show, there are at least a couple dozen foundational elements that set the overall direction of the show and where it’s going, but for this show, all of them were crazy haywire, pointing in a bunch of different directions none of them coordinated. For a normal TV show, when a few of them don’t really work out, they can be re-oriented or smooth out or whatever, but that is made easier because they’re all kind of heading in the same direction. With academy, none of them were ever heading in the same direction, none of them really knew what they wanted to be or what they were even about, or where they were going, so there’s no way to smooth them out or rework them, because any new version of them is still gonna be going in some random direction and wouldn’t know what they were going to be.
If I were the one who was in control of all of this, the first thing I would do, besides firing Alex Kitzman, would be to reboot the show entirely. To make sure that, from the start, everything was coordinated and aligned, and everything was all heading in the same direction, and everything knew what it was, everyone knew what they were or at least where they were headed, and what they were eventually going to be, and we were all on the same page. That everything made some sort of sense, or at least would eventually makes sense, and that we were all on a journey to the same destination. Because, if anything was extremely obvious about this show, it was that nobody had any sort of destination in mind.
Luck, I get what you’re trying to say. Star Trek is very famous for having terrible first seasons for their shows. But this one… This one was different. This first season be lied the fact that no one was thinking of the same thing. No one had any sort of central planning for where they were going. Everyone working on the show was thinking of something different, and there was never any possibility of it all coming together at the end, and we saw that because, at the end of the season, it really didn’t come together at all. At the end of the season, every character, every storyline, every different location, ended up somewhere completely on its own. And nothing really ended up, making any sense at all. And, for every other Star Trek show, during its first season, they were at least able to resolve it in one way or another. All the arcs came to a conclusion, all the storylines ended up in one place, and everything was resolved. But in this case? We were no better off than when we were in the beginning. Lost and confused.
RamenJunkie 6 points 5 months ago
They DESPERATELY needed more episodes. Like they had this whole War College thing (don't get me started on the stupid name), and then suddenly it was just kind of gone.
We got ten episodes, 4 were dedicated to.Caleb/Nus/Metaplot.
Two were centered on SAM, one on Jay-Den, and like 1.5-2 on Tarima. Genesis and Darem basically shared 1.5 episodes.
homes 4 points 5 months ago
OK, so with modern TV production, that’s never gonna happen. What they need to do is find some way to transition the style of storytelling to 10 episodes per season. I honestly don’t know how they’re gonna do that, but they need to figure it out. And Alex Kitzman certainly doesn’t know how to do it. So they need it first of all get rid of his ass. He sucks his whole production team sucks.
They also need to get rid of their visual effects team. I really am sick to death of this hyper realistic unreal presentation of this needle in your brain CGI graphics. I hate it so much.
I really think they need to take a break for a little while and figure out how to adapt the 90s storytelling style to contemporaneous production style. Kurt‘s been tried and failed, and they need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to do it again. And if the price we have to pay is waiting a few years before we get more Star Trek, I’m willing to make the sacrifice.
Herr_S_aus_H 6 points 5 months ago
This is the one thing I will never understand. If you don't like something just ignore it. If you think you are in the position that your opinion matters in any way you can declare why you don't like something once and then move on. All those grifters and their brainless drones consume stuff they don't like willingly and regularly. People who are of sound mind don't do something like this.
Skv 1 point 5 months ago
Only happens when said grifters are trying to be online entertainers and can't manage to scrape enough proper shit to present and discuss since bashing something new repeatedly gets noticed much better.
daggermoon 4 points 5 months ago
Sorry, what happened?
Adderbox76 4 points 5 months ago
The new show was cancelled because not enough people watched it.
"Outsized influence" my ass.
Money talks. You think if the show hit the top ten in the streaming Nielsen stats that they'd cancel it because some people "didn't like it"? Get real.
People are allowed to like something. People are allowed to dislike something. If enough people like it, the show gets enough viewers to continue. If not. It doesn't.
People who don't like it aren't obligated to watch it just to prevent it from being cancelled for your sake.
Tollana1234567 -1 points 5 months ago
academy? kurtzman ruined every trek he showrunned, if they dint figure it out with STD, SNW, AND picard they arnt going to with academy. they are running out of Ideas for a trek show. making the show only 10-12episodes per season hurts it as well.
Mohamed 27 points 5 months ago
A few years back, I was speaking to a roommate. I complained that the (then) new Star Trek had forced diversity. He immediately shut me down, "Star Trek has ALWAYS been like that". He was a huge fan of Star Trek
NutWrench 18 points 5 months ago
Star Trek (TOS) never needed to BE about diversity, because it was set in a utopian future where racism, and sexism weren't problems anymore. You had an entire multi-racial cast on the bridge of a starship so just from THAT you knew that racism wasn't a problem in the future. There was no more war, poverty, disease or crime. Conflict only came from humanity's meetings with alien races.
TOS Star Trek never needed to beat you over the head every 5 minutes with how gay someone was because that wasn't a problem in the 23rd century. Nobody gave a shit.
captainlezbian 11 points 5 months ago
Now don't get me wrong, I think the best way for Trek to handle queer issues is to just put queer people on the bridge. A gay Riker equivalent or a trans woman who talks about her past with the same discomfort but honesty as how Picard talks about his is what I want. And in that vein I'm still on my first watch of TNG and it'll be a while before I get to nutrek.
But I'm not going to pretend that to a certain portion of the population TOS wasn't seen as being overly preachy on race. But seeing as I haven't gotten to TOS yet either, I will say that in modern day I do think TNG was a bit preachy about disability and I'm glad they were.
BradleyUffner 1 point 5 months ago
True, but that was one episode, not every scene of every episode.
Manalith 2 points 5 months ago
Where do you consider TNG being preachy about disability? Not arguing, it's just been a while since I've watched it beginning to end and this might be something I failed to pick up on.
captainlezbian 6 points 5 months ago
Geordi's blindness is a plot point at least once in an episode that's basically exactly what people act like episodes involving queerness are. Where he has to hold a eugenicist's hand through accepting that he doesn't mind that he was born blind and that he even has some advantages thanks to his visor. Don't get me wrong, it was a very good episode, and people did need it laid out like that, but it's very much not the "we've moved beyond such concerns" in a way that say having a ranking officer use a wheelchair would be.
I will say something they did right was that his visor gives him headaches. It's very in line with what folks with cochlear implants or very strong eyeglass prescriptions describe.
BogeyTheSwear 16 points 5 months ago
Why would you even complain about that in the first place?
People tend to think that "forced diversity" is something being pushed from the top, but the people who own Hollywood are literally paying money to the right wing who limits diversity.
My personal belief is that there are simply a lot of homosexuals and trans people in the art world. Whether it be make up artists, actors or screenwriters, i think aaaaall of this is a lot more normal amongst creatives than it is among the regular population.
So obviously, its gonna show up more in movies and shows, than in real life. Because the people making the art knows these actual people.
People tend to forget when watching a movie, that just like when looking at a painting, they are in fact watching someone else art, and they are welcome to just not look at it, or find artists that more aligned with their bigoted views.
Tollana1234567 -1 points 5 months ago
yup its literally hollywood execs, doing rainbow/ diversity" capitalism , cons think its an agenda by hollywood which are traditionally right wing pushing it as we must include gays, womens, pocs as the forefront of movies and show to show society "they arnt racist", they only care because most viewers are left leaning , right wingers dont watch anything but copaganda type shows. you can tell hollywood is still pretty racist since they barely represent asians other than stereotypes. shang chi wasnt groundbreaking for asians , maybe for SImu liu, its stereotyping because he barely had any roles after that.
richieadler 6 points 5 months ago
Citation needed.
Rodrios 3 points 5 months ago
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
grrgyle 1 point 5 months ago
There's the money conservative and the scared conservative. Scared conservative is racist. Money conservative only sees the colour of money
Allowing for gradations for different levels of assholes, ofc
UltraMagnus 26 points 5 months ago
Exactly. Star Trek takes place in utopia - and the creators' version of utopia is one with equality, freedom, and respect for all. If someone's version of utopia doesn't align with this, I think that says a lot more about them than it does about how "woke" Star Trek is
CaptainSpaceman 13 points 5 months ago
Their utopia also highly resembles communism as a classless, stateless society
LillyPip 6 points 5 months ago
Yeah, and it shows how hard it is to build a utopia even when intentionally trying to remove class, when oligarchies are motivated to prevent that, and in a post-scarcity reality, which we don’t yet have.
Tollana1234567 2 points 5 months ago
i think what got thier panties in a wad was STD, because it had a certain demographic playing lead roles over men. then it became DOCTOR WHO, whittaker and then ncuti(but him mostly), why because a certain election was under way that year, while STD was in thier 1st/2nd season, and it annoyed the hell of cons with all the women in the lead roles and then they started attacking every trek video they see. Janeway wasnt SPARED TOO but that took years for them to use mental gymanstics.
ATS1312 3 points 5 months ago
I'm of the unpopular Opinion that SNW was @ boring rehash of anything I could get from any other show that already exists, and Academy was something fresh. All these irate chickenshits would love SFA if it just had the serial numbers filed off, except that "its woke" because it acknowledges that people just fucking exist.
But hey, can't jeopardize the popularity of a thing that's someone else's "property," not even if that's what it takes to live up to the actual legacy of the Original. Just leaving it to the community would actually let us make something beautiful, as we have done before, so that can't be allowed.
I guess we're just gonna get more Original Series fanfic that lands hollow for me, maybe a hunting-terrorists spy flick, and another mindless cash-grab movie whose screenplay will probably be mostly written by AI.
No more moral questions, no more interesting discussions of what an identity means, no more of what makes science fiction worthwhile as a genre - we have ships to explode - IN SPACE!!!!!1!!
Prodigy, a show written for literal children will be more interesting a topical exploration than a Larry Ellison property.
Tollana1234567 3 points 5 months ago
i dont think SNW was that good, the acting is too wooden, and some of the endings in seasons were like"is that it"? prodigy and lower decks were way better. With ellision in control of trek IP, fans that are usually "left" leaning, how are they going to justify watching and supporting someone like ellison.
MentalEdge 36 points 5 months ago
He is.
Doesn't mean we can't take him out of context and use his words to advocate for more than just the things he thinks they advocate.
He has it right here. That he doesn't fully know that is his problem.
kieron115 29 points 5 months ago
I'm not defending him, but let's be honest with ourselves here. He was born nearly a decade before World War II. It's amazing that he's this progressive, plus he actively supported African American rights. And if you don't believe me, why not hear it from Nichelle Nichols herself. Credit where credit is due.
samus12345 10 points 5 months ago
He's such a straight white cis man! (Apparently that's a slur to him.)
explodicle 3 points 5 months ago
How dare you use the Star Wars term!
NigelFrobisher 1 point 5 months ago
quelle irony
the_riviera_kid 12 points 5 months ago
The worst part (in my opinion) is that if I criticize star trek academy a lot of folks assume I'm some hate filled right wing chud because of all the extremely bad faith criticisms by hate filled right wing chuds.
When in reality I just think it's poorly written and very self congratulatory, just like Discovery and Picard were.
Quill7513 3 points 5 months ago
see also: critiquing Avatar Legend of Korra gets dicey fast because most of the online discussion surrounds how the buff tan teenager being physically attracted to a woman is forced diversity when my critique is that the character writing isn't very good and the series breaks the lore
Dalkor 2 points 5 months ago
If you can speak to the specifics of why you found the writing bad, I think thats fine. If your critique is just "writing was bad". Well then maybe think on it for longer before sharing your opinion if you dont want to be lumped in with the chuds who also arent going past skin deep with the same opinion.
I have major issues with The Last of Us 2, a game that was also piled on by right wing chuds. I did enjoy the game, but there are issues i have with character motivations where I think the story writers didn't do enough to convince me that the characters had the conviction they were portrayed as having. I also feel the game had a clear ending that was acceptable and then decided to tack on an additional section because I guess they wanted to resolve somethings that were better left unresolved.
Other than the driving plot forward, once you're able to ignore some things yeah, enjoyable game, with some missed potential.
Ultimately I also think its about recognizing that these things are other peoples yums, and i think critiquing them is ok, but stating something like bad writing is objective and doesn't seem subjective. You are denying someone who thought the writing was good. You're allowed to not like something, but dont yuck it.
MoogleMaestro 8 points 5 months ago
Good shit to him. He's 100% right here.
jj4211 7 points 5 months ago
The thing was in TOS that kiss, in-universe, was no biggie. In DS9 with all the gender and sexuality shifts in the Trill scenario, it again just 'was'. When it was a big deal, it was some alien culture being backwards and the Federation being an example of doing it right.
STD was oddly self-congratulatory. "First ever non-binary character in trek!" they proclaim as people were able to respond with just so many examples of previous non-binary characters. The character despite being a human, being on Earth, had to make a big deal of "coming out" and a big outpouring of support in-universe to balance out the trepidation of coming out. Which should have just been a very mundane scenario, you want the character to be non-binary, fine, they are, people will be respectful but it will be a boring mundane fact rather than some big deal.
Yes, there are those that are flipping out over too much representation that are done consistently with star trek. Probably the most fair point was that someone probably wouldn't be out of shape, but by that logic, Picard shouldn't have been bald, so....
jj4211 4 points 5 months ago
Actually, as I recall the entire society was 'non-binary' and that specific alien wanted to come out as female. And of course Riker banging was a green light after she declared herself female. Probably not the best choice to have Riker banging her as part of the narrative, but yeah, that was famously an example of them trying to address a point by inverting real-world, the 'norm' is non-binary and the 'unusual' one is gendered and the Federation serves as the model of 'we respect your people either way, you should too'.
jj4211 3 points 5 months ago
path: 0 22879064 22882091 22882552 22882721 22882836, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 1
Is where they officially declared that Trek was doing a non-binary character for the first time.
MoffKalast 2 points 5 months ago
It... insists upon itself?
UnderpantsWeevil 5 points 5 months ago
In the early iterations of the 1960s smash hit Star Trek, audiences were shocked and titillated to see a white male officer in a romantic relationship with a black woman officer.
This continues to be shocking today, as modern audiences are not ready to see any (fully clothed) woman in any form of Sci-Fi media doing anything at all.
kbal 18 points 5 months ago
modern audiences are not ready to see any (fully clothed) woman in any form of Sci-Fi
What? Pluribus was the biggest new Sci Fi TV show last year, was liked by critics and audiences, and won a bunch of awards.
CmdrShepard49 12 points 5 months ago
Same with Silo and Foundation. This is like "reverse racism" but sexism instead.
daggermoon 4 points 5 months ago
I guess i'm in the minority of people who thought Janeway was the best starship captain as a kid. She's badass and she drinks coffee.
Mannimarco 3 points 5 months ago
I agree, I love Picard don't get me wrong but Janeway was always my favourite, she kicks ass and is just fucking cool
UninvestedCuriosity 1 point 5 months ago
I really like Picard and Shran as favourites but I'd much rather work for Janeway. I really enjoyed the duality of her morals from Admiral Janeway breaking temporal directive to try to go back and save her crew at any cost. When I was younger I couldn't understand how Admiral Janeway was so different but now that I'm older, I get it.
How can you not enjoy watching Tom and Harry strike out every 4th episode with the mythical twins as well. Absolute cinema. Also Borg ship ablative armor was fire.
Adderbox76 2 points 5 months ago
With you 100% on that. I love Picard, but it's Janeway I'd trust to get me through the delta quadrant.
UnderpantsWeevil 1 point 5 months ago
Janeway was the best starship captain as a kid
Definitely feels generational. I've got a friend who is a Janeway diehard. But she didn't really get into it until Voyager.
Picard will always be my captain of choice, but that might have its roots in watching the show as a little kid with my very bald father whom my mom teasingly referred to as "The Captain" when the show was on.
AlreadyDefederated 5 points 5 months ago
From what I've heard, Shatner is normally pretty right-wing about issues. Maybe fiscally, but not socially. Maybe I'm misremembering, or conflating his character on Boston Legal.
I guess it shows people can be complex.
AlreadyDefederated 9 points 5 months ago
Upon further research, he seems hard-core apolitical.
I must have assumed he was like his character that he played on Boston Legal - who was clownishly right-wing.
Sorry about that improper assumption, and thanks for calling me out on it!
NocturnalMorning 4 points 5 months ago
Anybody who calls themselves apolitical doesn't recognize how much politics affects us, and in my book, thay makes you kinda dumb.
village604 3 points 5 months ago
Eh, being apolitical doesn't mean you're unaware of how much politics affects us. It just means it's not a subject you're interested in, which is perfectly acceptable.
cheers_queers 1 point 5 months ago
having no interest in politics is only for the extremely priveleged, so they're either dumb or theyre assholes
InevitableWaffles 1 point 5 months ago
I disagree with the sentiment that it is perfectly acceptable to be apolitical. Governments can and will legislate your right to exist as you do so it is in your interest to be political.
GreenShimada 2 points 5 months ago
He can be apolitical in public, and I wish more idiot celebrities would be. You and I don't need to know his politics. It doesn't help anything in the grand scheme of things.
berrodeguarana 6 points 5 months ago
and also, the guy is almost 100 years old now. Any person that old with progressive views and stances is very uncommon in my book. At least the ones from now, maybe it will change when it is our turn.
Tollana1234567 1 point 5 months ago
he seemed to have grown with age,
WandowsVista 2 points 5 months ago
is it true that the kiss was originally supposed to be between Spock and Uhura, but Shatner refused to be upstaged so he had them rewrite it to be with him?
either way, good point, somewhat problematic author.
broken clocks, eh?
kieron115 8 points 5 months ago
Naw. It was originally written for Kirk and Uhura, but when the NBC executives found out they were worried it would offend TV stations in the south. The idea of having Uhura and Spock kiss was brought up because Spock is half-vulcan (which NBC thought racists would find less offensive???), but Shatner insisted that they stick the original script (perhaps out of ego, perhaps out of artistic integrity, who knows). Eventually NBC ordered that two versions of the scene be shot - one with the kiss and one without. Shatner intentionally flubbed every single take of the non-kiss version to force the executives' hands. It wasn't the first interracial kiss on televion, but it was the first instance of a scripted kiss between a white man and a black woman.
UnderpantsWeevil 11 points 5 months ago
Pretty sure that was just Star Trek Beyond, the movie where the crew defeated a horde of ravenous space insects by blasting Beastie Boys hit single "Sabotage".
UnderpantsWeevil 1 point 5 months ago
😏
RampantParanoia2365 1 point 5 months ago
Uh...yeah...no shit?
usernamefactory 19 points 5 months ago
Nah, he’s a good Canadian.
Okay, he’s rich, out of touch, and a total dick to his coworkers. But I’ve never seen him express any particularly bad political views.
cygnathreadbare 11 points 5 months ago
I think (but don't remember specific instances) Shatner is conservative leaning but I guess the canadian perspective makes him very different to MAGA.
You are probably thinking of Robert Beltran? he went open about MAGA shit on twitter shortly after jan 6 IIRC.
UninvestedCuriosity 2 points 5 months ago
You are also thinking of Shatner lol but his ego makes everything confusing.
MrEff 0 points 5 months ago
My biggest complaint about academy is the same as everyone, poor writing. But since everyone also wants to bring up the 'woke' panic as well being why it's so bad, I disagree. It isn't the package that is bad, it's the packaging.
Don't give 'the Gay(tm) character'. Give me a good character who is gay.
Why are you forcing me to care about a character because they are gay? What a wasted opportunity. You had a not so subtle anti-archetype klingon who had the heavy handed writing of being into science, medicine, and openly gay and intentionally written to be anything a klingon is not. What shitty writing. They had all the opportunities to make me love the character for who they were, their personality, their true choices and internal struggles, and make me care about them as a whole person that happened to be gay because that is who they are. Make me love their choices about being gay, not tell me I should love them because they are gay.
More than that, previous iterations of trek knew how to do it right. Most people bring up DS9 because it was done so well. We loved the characters for who they were, and who they were happened to be gay. Academy told us to love them because they were gay, and just happened to also be a character.
Edit: lol. Getting downvoted because people think this is some anti-gay post?? It's about bad writing and forced caring.
In my opinion, for recent shows The Orville did it best. Bortis is easily my favorite character. So well written and so much fun. And the whole arc with his kid was some of the best scifi tv trans writing out there. That is where academy could take a lesson from on what I mean about loving the character who happens to be gay rather the telling me to love the character because they are gay.
startrek
@startrek.website
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r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
Rules
1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
3 Be truthful
All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.
4 Be nice
If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.
5 Spoilers
Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episode. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books, etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/Quarks.
7 Meta
Questions and concerns about moderator actions should be brought forward via DM.
Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 08-20 | SNW 4x05 | "Level-Five Transporter Accident" |
| 08-27 | SNW 4x06 | “Off-Hour” |
| 09-03 | SNW 4x07 | “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” |
| 09-10 | SNW 4x08 | “Orders of Magnitude” |
| 09-17 | SNW 4x09 | "Once La’An a Time" |
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
go to feed...
startrek
@startrek.website
15164
2300
621
r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
Rules
1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
3 Be truthful
All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.
4 Be nice
If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.
5 Spoilers
Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episode. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books, etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/Quarks.
7 Meta
Questions and concerns about moderator actions should be brought forward via DM.
Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 08-20 | SNW 4x05 | "Level-Five Transporter Accident" |
| 08-27 | SNW 4x06 | “Off-Hour” |
| 09-03 | SNW 4x07 | “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” |
| 09-10 | SNW 4x08 | “Orders of Magnitude” |
| 09-17 | SNW 4x09 | "Once La’An a Time" |
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
go to feed...
These days it seems like most things getting called "woke DEI crap" are totally in line with the norms of society, but someone wants to change that.
save