https://youtube.com/watch?v=QFspemhHmsw A Critique of Star Trek Discovery — Part 1 #RIPStarTrek
This whole essay is worth listening to, but 15:46-30:33 in particular gets at the heart of a big reason why classic Trek rocks and why nuTrek is shit.
Lower Decks remains very good. CBS has tried to pivot Star Trek from Sci-Fi to Space Adventure, and that’s been ugly. But not every series they’ve spun out took that tone.
Also Orville - particularly the latest season - has been incredible. Everything Star Trek is supposed to be.
I am still bummed Lower Decks is over. Great finale, and I’m glad they wrapped up the story nicely. My only complaint is to Paramount not giving us more seasons.
Lower Decks remains very good.
It’s finished. The final episode aired last week.
Also Orville - particularly the latest season - has been incredible. Everything Star Trek is supposed to be.
That show surprised the hell out of me, especially because the first season has more of Seth’s typical touch, but then he drops some of the silliness and dives right into being a Trek replacement. It feels like every episode or two has some powerful commentary and things don’t always go the way you think they should because situations are more complex than simply right-or-wrong… Like old Trek.
Kind of yeah, but Gene Roddenberry used allegories like the half black and half white dudes who hated each other - which took more effort than having characters just walk around in the present saying, “Wow, look at all the social injustice.”
Yeah he was real subtle. Not full of preachy monologues at all.
Roddenberry was both a genuinely progressive guy and an extremely 20th century man. “In the future we’re going to cure disease and hunger and everyone of all races and creeds will work together there’s gonna be a black woman, an asian guy, a Russian and an alien with funny ears on the bridge all working as a team and the women will all wear wrist length gogo dresses and there’s gonna be an episode where the crew is utterly baffled at the very concept of racism. We’re gonna paint some actors with half of their faces white and half of their faces black and they’re gonna be really horrible to each other and when asked why they’re gonna say “They’re white on the left side and we’re white on the right side” and it’s gonna make racism sound really dumb.”
I struggle to have a problem with a guy whose message is “Systematic hatred is extremely bad and stupid, let’s look at sexy legs instead.”
As transparent as Gene’s little parables were, I vastly prefer that method of social commentary over just saying “They certainly were unenlightened in the early 21st century weren’t they - shame on them!”
I haven’t watched any Star Trek since Enterprise. Are they worse at it now? It has been a long road getting form there to here.
IMO Picard season 1 is fantastic and season 2 has some embarrassingly awkward social justice preaching but a good story about the Borg queen. Haven’t seen season 3 or Below Decks yet.
Haven’t seen season 3
Uhhhh… Just so you know, most of us consider Season 3 the good one.
I enjoyed all three, but S3 was particularly a beautiful love letter to TNG.
Great news. When I’m done with Star Wars on Disney I’ll switch over to Paramount and watch it. It’s really the only thing I’m interested in there.
Fairly, gogo dresses were a symbol of the sexual liberation movement.
So even the sexy legs were woke at the time.
So the OG girls of Trek dared to be sexy? I’m enough of a leg and hip kind of guy to choose to buy that story.
Let’s talk about all the social injustice in the world while all positions of authority are held by white dudes.
He tried to put a woman in a position of authority (first officer) but the studio shot him down.
That was an allegory??? (/s)
cough mark of gideon cough
Hey, i’m an old fart and guess how many times i heard people say that exact same shit about TNG? The pussy version of trek, nothing like it’s predecessor, all they do is talk about their emotions!
I’m an old fart too. I had a friend who said all they did on TNG was sit up straight and say, “Engage.”
Your friend clearly does not appreciate the Picard maneuver of straightening the shirt, or the Riker maneuver of throwing one leg over the chair to sit
LOL I think it was only after about 3 episodes of season 1. He was very down on the whole idea of revamping Star Trek with new characters. I have to admit I wish they hadn’t kept reusing the ship name Enterprise. Voyager breaking that pattern was a good thing.
to say nothing of Star Trek IV
“Double dumbass on you!”
Because that’s what you had to do to get past the executives and the censors in the 1960s.
Just like how “Last Train to Clarksville” is about Vietnam.
Just like how “Last Train to Clarksville” is about Vietnam.
TIL. That is a really subtle reference (at least from the perspective of somebody born a couple of decades after the fact, anyway).
Yeah, but the executives were terrified of any and all conflict. That’s why so many shows of that era are incredibly bland.
Im always rather disappointed with this claim as doh, star trek is woke, it always was and nobody has complained about that part.
When people complain about the woke part they complain about that star trek WAS woke and intelligent, yet now just pretends to be woke and hangs it like dangling keys in front of us to hide the fact that it’s become so absolutely shit.
Seriously, every criticism I’ve seen about it (and also every criticism I’ve lobbed at it) always gets “rebuked” with “you just hate woke!”
No I don’t no we don’t. I’m love the progressivism of old trek. I hate nu trek because it’s empty vapid drek that just tries to cram a much “woke” in there not to be woke but just to hide the smell of shit.
Nu trek is awful.
People have been raving about brave new worlds but those same people were raving about the mental anguish that is discovery and cringe Picard. I’m a huge star trek fan, been so for 30 years, but after Picard S3 I simply stopped. I watched trek at least once a week for decades, buy I haven’t watched anything trek ever since Picard ended. That’s how off putting Picard was as a show.l, it managed to ruin TNG for me.
I know this will be down voted and people will just continue to say I am anti woke, that I love trumpmor whatever, even though none of that comes close to reality but nu trek fans have been… Different? Star trek fans were actually progressive and trying to make the world a better place. Ever since nu trek its been “think like us or fuck off”
I’m so done with star trek. Long live the Orville!
You didn’t mention the best modern Trek show.
The crossover episode with Strange New Worlds was my favorite episode of any Star Trek since TNG.
Same!
“For all I knew, you were dead, or stuck in a dystopian San Francisco in the middle of a riot!”
“Have you noticed that their references are weirdly specific?”
“Indeed.”
I like to think that 112 years later, Spock found out about Sisko’s trip and thought to himself, “Ah. That explains it.”
He must have been walking on eggshells all through Star Trek IV, just waiting for a riot to break out.
“Could taking these whales cause a riot? Humans are notoriously prone to illogical outbursts…”
Nah, he was on too much LDS to care.
You like Orville but not Strange New Worlds or Lower Decks??? Also puzzling you gave up after Picard S3, that was the only decent part of the whole show. Felt like an extra season of TNG.
I hear you, but that last bit is just heresy
If it wasn’t clear, the part about toxicity is about the fandom. Star Trek fandom has become quite toxic but quite in the opposite of what you’d think.
If you say that discovery is godawful (it is) then you’re immediately antieoke and *phobic
I’m neither. I just don’t want to watch a show that places virtue signalling above actually being a good show.
I also want a fandom that is honest enough to see that any post enterprise trek is NOT the same writing/acting/progressive quality as pre all that.
I’ve said this multiple times, on Reddit and Lemmy and so far most responses are “you’re a Nazi” or something in that direction
Oh no, I agree with that part. But Star Trek overall is still better than The Orville. Lower Decks is real and it is delightful.
The Orville was really quite amazing coming from nowhere and you could see that it was made by people loving trek. It only took a few episodes to find its footing but it really represents star trek values better than nu trek does today. Discovery was just toxic and… Dumb? I stopped watching halfway through because it was just unbearable
This is perfect. Thank you for this.
Nichelle Nichols was at one point thinking of quitting the show but stayed because MLK Jr. himself told her how important her character was.
And without Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek, she wouldn’t have been hired by NASA and then we wouldn’t have had Sally Ride, so she is a legitimate space hero.
She thought about leaving because she didn’t feel like her character got to do enough - a common sentiment of supporting actors.
It was TNG that really established an ensemble cast formula; TOS was Kirk-Spock-McCoy and the rest. It took TNG a couple seasons before they got the idea of a true ensemble cast where everyone gets to star in some episodes. TOS wouldn’t have had more than one episode starring Reginald Barcklay with Geordi and Dianna in supporting roles, but TNG had at least two.
TOS wouldn’t have had more than one episode starring Reginald Barcklay with Geordi and Dianna in supporting roles, but TNG had at least two.
Three, even. Horny holideck, barkley gets his groove on, and transporter cuddles.
“Transporter cuddles”.
No, they alternated.
Sometimes they did proper scifi.
Sometimes they did politics.
I’m in it for the scifi mself.
You’re a gross person
Your assertion that any sci-fi at all isn’t political is a particularly bold one.
Here’s my attempt at “let’s name a hard science fiction that isn’t making a political statement” and I came up very short.
- “Frankenstein” is about grave robbing and biology horror and in no way an analogy for mistreatment of neurodivergent individuals.
- “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is about a cool submarine and not about an ultra rich man’s extreme rejection of modern societal norms bending the world of those around him.
- “The Martian” was about the cold hard science of a man surviving on Mars, and not all about humanity briefly overcoming our national rivalries to do the human thing and being one person home safely.
- “The Robot” is just about a time traveling robot, and not a sad prediction of mankind’s likelihood to erradicate ourselves leaving only our automation to remember us by.
- “Bicentenial Man” is about robotics advances and has nothing to do with marginalized people fighting to have their human rights acknowledged.
- “The Expanse” is just about how dangerous space is, and not at all about how humanity tends to break off into adversarial groups.
- “Snow piercer” is about a cool train in the cold. Okay, now I’m not even trying anymore, lol.
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but no classics come to mind.
Hang on, I’ve got two:
- “Around the world in 80 days” is arguably at least slightly more about globe trotting and less about putting up with a rich employer’s bullshit.
- “Journey to the Center of the Earth” is mostly about cool caves and dinosaurs?!
I should reread these two, but I don’t remember many political messages.
At The Earth’s Core is about how you can’t mesmerize british people, and big mac boxes can breathe fire. I’m not sure if that’s political or not.
Sometimes they did proper scifi.
Sometimes they did politics.
Sometimes they did Space Wizards and sometimes they did Politics and sometimes they did both.
But the harder they leaned into actual Science Fiction the more they inevitably tackled the socio-economic ramifications of those technologies and discoveries. Legal Theories like The Prime Directive and social experiments like The Kobayashi Maru training exercise and the very depiction of aliens - the ultra-logical Vulcans who constantly resist their base emotional instincts, the war-loving Klingons, the xenophobic Romulans, the problem of domesticating an invasive species like the Tribbles - all convey political attitudes and ideologies.
This is inescapable. You can’t create good apolitical Sci-Fi. Presenting the idea of a futuristic society without exploring the consequences of your modernizations is cowardly and boring.
Since when is wokism about social justice?
in a technical sense? yes.
in a practical sense? it’s superficial, generally without any actual actions to address anything about it. they will praise a company for plopping rainbows on everything ONLY during the exact days of pride month while funding Christian gay conversion camps
Since when does wokism have meaning? Its just something the right uses to describe everything they dont like, like equal rights.
I get not liking Discovery, but do people really think Lower Decks, SNW, Picard are “Woke?”
Also, obviously, sci-fi is at its best when tackling politics… Isn’t that kinda the point?
“Woke” has long since lost its original meaning.
Used to mean something positive and progressive. Then it meant something that tried writing itself off as something progressive, but was simply stupid and entitled (i.e. That Batwoman series), now it’s anything a right winger hates, even if it isn’t trying to be progressive in any way.
Truth is, with NuTrek, it doesn’t have a single progressive bone in its body, and the writers don’t have the skill to pull off any sort of commentary.
Truth is, with NuTrek, it doesn’t have a single progressive bone in its body, and the writers don’t have the skill to pull off any sort of commentary.
It’s not that bad, though I don’t totally disagree.
Also… I’d argue a problem is having their hands tied. Ironically, anything that would hit really hard couldn’t be aired in this day and age. The whole franchise would probably be mothballed if they pushed the envelope as hard as TOS.
Except they’re pretending they’re hitting even harder than older Trek.
That’s honestly the worst part for me; NuTrek is nothing but generic sci-fi action slop, with a bit of unfunny dank humour sprinkled in from Lower Decks, but it’s being paraded about as if the writers are breaking epic milestones never before dared in Star Trek.
'Cos they got GAYYYSSS cheers mate we’ve had them a while now.
Yep, snw and picard get ‘woke’ complaints. LD they tend to just attack for being animated
SNW has like 90% female crew members. Also the pilot lady has short hair. Therefore woke.
Probably.
It’s woke because they’re so unhinged that basic human decency is woke now.
Always was
Hey now hey now!
It’s a cashless classless society, it’s about economic class justice, too!
That part’s just more in the background.
Not for Sisko it isn’t. I wish I’d been born on the other side of the Bell riots and WW3 but at least we have cool digital watches now
We really should never have left the oceans.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
I mean, my watch is pretty sweet. It’s the damn little green pieces of paper that are causing all the problems
Have you tried… moving them around?
What an odd thought though, it’s not like they are the ones unhappy:-).
They were even more upfront about it in TOS for some issues too.
I remember many instances where they say “We have women in our crew in the future.” It’s not like DISCO flaunted around saying “we don’t hate gay people in this ship.”
Like I understand that DISCO isn’t everybody’s favorite, and sure it has some issues, but all the flak it got for being “woke” and “preachy” was weird to me.
Part of Kirk’s whole thing was preachy speeches, and Picard had many moments too.
I don’t care about the woke nonsense. STD has very few redeeming qualities. Bad writing, bad acting. They spent little to no time flushing out the characters. I guess they didn’t have time what with the universe about to end every 10 minutes. I only watched for Anthony Rapp, Doug Jones and Michelle Yeoh. Everyone else was a stinker or didn’t get enough screen time.
I quite agree STD wasn’t everyone’s favourite, in any case it wasn’t mine, although I really tried. But whining about it being woke was just stupid.
The only issue disco has ever actually had is their serialized episodes. People hate on the other shit cause they’re bigots. Its still good Trek. The story is just less flexible.
The only issue disco has ever actually had is their serialized episodes.
And not spending enough on light bulbs in some episodes. I wondered if my TV was broken, at one point. Lol.
it’s still good Trek
Everything with Pike and crew and pretty much everyone except Michael is decent Trek. Deus ex Burnham in every century Starfleet exists in is boring as shit and the nacelles not even being attached to the ship anymore is veering into Star Wars level of nonsensical ship design.
If floating nacelles is what does it for you but you can accept people being torn apart to the atoms and rebuilt somewhere else Idk what to tell ya bud. The saucers detach and float around, idk how that is sensical as it would create unnecessary weak points in the hull of the ship. The worst parts about discovery were how they were stuck trying to tell grand stories instead of being able to focus on the characters much. They didnt have that tight A plot B plot action that Trek does. But it was far from stinky poo poo terrible like most people say.
I just wish a single ship weren’t saving the Federation/Galaxy/Multiverse every season.
It also waffles hard between “The important part of the Federation is it’s ideals” and “Section 31 is pretty badass right?”.
The single ship thing is annoying and its in Picard, too.
The single ship thing is annoying and stupid - except, of course, when…
Spoiler for Picard S3
when it’s the Enterprise D. When it’s Enterprise D getting a victory lap, common sense can sit this one out while I enjoy it.
Okay I can’t say I didnt chug that nostalgia juice on that. I totally did. It was sicc.
Have yet to see anything outside of DS9 use Section 31 well. It’s inclusion manages to turn what’s supposed to be a hopeful story of the future into just another police procedural that happens to use Star Trek™ branded props
Yeah it’s nuts how it went from “These are the bad guys. This is antithetical to the point of Star Trek and the Federation.” to “Secret agents in space that can just shoot ‘bad’ guys is cool though right?”
Section 31 is pretty badass, right?
I have to say, I hated that. It feels like C suite “promote our upcoming show” meddling, to me.
It’s not like DISCO flaunted around saying “we don’t hate gay people in this ship.”
Well, after DS 9 it would just be repetitive. Also TNG spent a few episodes on this exact point, but it wasn’t a main topic.
But people tend to focus their complains about things being “preachy” when those things put the preach above the story-telling. DISCO absolutely had this flaw in some point or another. Never for very long, though, so it really wasn’t a main characteristic. Anyway, when a show is simply good, almost nobody gets bothered by the preaching.
Saying discovery is woke with their crew split in two parts, the queer ones all packed together and then the “normal” ones, seems like a stretch.
The gay couple basically adopts the non binary one who is in a couple with the trans one, are friends with the gay engineer, but barely even talk to the rest of the crew? Ah and sex scenes between straight people but the most the gay couple gets is sitting next to each other, brushing teeth and a small kiss (not that it’s a bad thing on its own, it forced the writing to actually show a relationship and not just a bunch of sex, which is positive)
That did really bother me, shoehorning all the queer people into their own little box after being far more progressive in previous seasons. Literally anyone else on the crew could have adopted Adira (who I didn’t really care much for as a character anyway, she was basically SNW Uhura but not as good an actor), but they had it be Stamets and Culber. How about making it, say, Detmer?
How about making it, say, Detmer?
Who? You sort of trailed off there; all I’m seeing is a blank space.
How dare you talk about my pretend girlfriend like that!
but the most the gay couple gets is sitting next to each other, brushing teeth and a small kiss
While you’re absolutely right, I think the record should show that tooth brushing scene is one of the sexiest scenes in television history. Those two have some serious on-screen chemistry.
Once again, the “don’t show too much gay” policy they seem to have forced them to show a relationship through actual intimacy, in contrast to the usual “relationship=sex” that shows usually have (which we can see with most heterosexual relationships in the same show, for example). Even the doctor that is portrayed by an actor that, let’s say, likes to show his body (most of the google results are him half naked) was not sexualized stupidly like they usually would ; a positive thing, except that it’s probably only because they don’t want to “show the gay” (Book for example is always naked and fucking).
So yeah, taken independently it’s a better relationship image than most relationships in most shows, but in the context it’s pretty horrible.
So yeah, taken independently it’s a better relationship image than most relationships in most shows, but in the context it’s pretty horrible.
Absolutely. I think a lot of the audience realize that if they weren’t a gay couple, we would see them with their shirts off together at every opportunity.
The silver lining is that the actors are so attractive and doing such a beautiful and convincing job, that the omission makes the show runners look prudish and silly.
“Shatner figured it out? Shatner? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.”
“When I have a problem that phasers can’t solve, I just kiss a beautiful alien. Then suddenly, I have a completely different problem!” - Jason Tiberius Kirk
Edit: I may have drifted into the Kelvin timeline…
“I’m a legit snack” - Nyota Uhura
More like the main course 😏
I havent gotten past the original series yet (I started with that), so far Star Trek seems like the entire point is to get into complex social and political issues that other companies would be too scared to cover.
Bro, IDIC.
They didn’t have everything figured out back then. For one, they bullied Spock for what we could only describe today as his neurodiversity.
You should see the episode when a woman body swapped with Kirk, and how the Enterprise crew suspected something was wrong
The one I always feel like I need to warn people about is the treatment of Rand in The Enemy Within. Particularly since that happens so early in the series.
And there will be things that are being created today that’s considered progressive that will be considered as missing the mark in 20 years.
McCoy was racist as shit and would not only have been cashiered, he probably would have been charged for hate speech
The message I got from McCoy was that humans got along because they found new people to be racist against instead of each other
That’s a simple enough message to even get it from Warhammer 40k - Gender? Skin colour? Disabilities? Doesn’t matter, pick up a Lasrifle and start shooting xenos
I think that’s the real message of Star Trek in general!
And TOS/ENT in particular
ENT gets bonus points for shran calling humans “pink skins” when Travis is right fucking there on the bridge
It helps when every other planet is a severely flawed monocolutre.
There will never come a time in which we have everything figured out.
Yes but that doesn’t mean we should never look back and see how far we’ve come, just as we look forward and see how far we have to go.
And new people who haven’t figured out yet are born all the time!
McCoy called Spock “green-blooded” on multiple occasions - and once a “hobgoblin”. And I would call the Vulcan penchant for logic a cultural trait, not neurodiversity.
OP what do you think of Discovery?
I ask this because 9/10 times someone talks about how Star Trek was “always woke”, they are usually just salty people don’t like Discovery and trying to pretend that most people who criticized it were bigots.
The other 1/10 times it’s someone who doesn’t even watch Star Trek trying to hijack the sub to push a bunch of performative culture war nonsense. However that usually involves a Tumblr post implying the Klingons were socially progressive because of how Kor treated Jadzia Dax.
how Kor treated Jadzia Dax.
For anyone who wasn’t there, this moment was revolutionary, at the time.
“What should I even say if my friend comes out to me as Transgender?!” wasn’t something everyone knew an answer to.
Having any character (Klingon or otherwise) handle learning that their friend’s gender has changed, and react in a healthy way, on screen, on prime time television, was an important positive moment for a lot of clueless future-ally scifi fans.
You cant take the actions of one Klingon and assume that describes the behavior of the species. That’s racist.
In the defense of people who constantly post the meme, they’ve never given enough thought to Star Trek to consider that some random Tumblr screen grab isn’t accurate.
I’m always stunned how many people on this subreddit come off as vocally progressive, but don’t bother actually watching the show. I guess that would take a modicum of effort.
they’ve never given enough thought to Star Trek to consider that some random Tumblr screen grab isn’t accurate.
I don’t know if it’s perfectly captioned, but I clearly remember that moment in DS9 when Dax’s old war buddy reacts to her gender and name change with a repeated big hug and corrected name…so… I’m not sure what we’re getting at here?
The issue is there is always Tumblr text below that implies the Klingon are trans forward.
First, the trill are not trans. Each symbiote/human pairing is considered a distinct person, albeit one with similar traits to their predecessor. This is emphasized on multiple occasions throughout the show, and is a central plot point in multiple episodes.
Second, the Klingon are one of the most ass backwards regressive societies in the show. They have a system that’s run by a select few aristocratic houses. They are bound by an ancient honor code that only Worf takes seriously most of the time. Women are explicitly disallowed from serving as the head of their house. The idea that the Klingon society is at all progressive is absolutely divorced from any sort of reality.
Finally, all of that is present in episode. Jadzia is explicitly told she is not bound by Curzon’s blood oath, because she’s not Curzon. The other two klingons basically spend the entire episode implying that as a human woman she’s not capable and shouldn’t be here. At the end Jadzia hesitates to kill the Albino in a way that Curzon never would.
It’s incredibly obvious that people who post that meme have not watched DS9, including the episode they are referencing. Instead, they are leveraging a Star Trek fan sub to push low effort pro LGBT memes.
It’s not the pro LGBT part that pisses me off. 90s Trek is progressive of LGBT issues. It’s the fact that they didn’t even bother watching the show. These people make being queer their entire identity, are in a star trek sub, and are too lazy to actually watch the fucking show.
Given that everyone who didn’t like the show was a bigot it made me super interested in liking it.
