Wesley was fine but that last episode is so bad not just because of the traveller stuff. It really felt like one of the early season 1/2 episodes that tried to say something but missed the mark by a wide margin and became problematic in and off itself. Pile on the fact that the Native American advisor for Voyager was a fraud and yeah, it all feels gross. Star Trek did Native Americans dirty.
And really has yet to make up for it despite having time to.
Oddly enough, the TOS episode The Paradise Syndrome was actually pretty positive about indigenous Americans despite being made during a time when they were still the “redskin savage” on a lot of other TV shows. Kirk doesn’t just fall in love with Miramanee, but with her culture and their way of life, and there’s very little ‘noble savage’ or ‘mystical Indian’ bullshit. It’s a great story about how a “backward” culture compared to a far advanced one might not be so backward after all.
It did have the typical problem of that era of Miramanee being played by a white actor with actual indigenous actors playing smaller roles, but it was still a better depiction in my (admittedly non-indigenous) eyes.
Wesley was fine but that last episode is so bad not just because of the traveller stuff. It really felt like one of the early season 1/2 episodes that tried to say something but missed the mark by a wide margin and became problematic in and off itself. Pile on the fact that the Native American advisor for Voyager was a fraud and yeah, it all feels gross. Star Trek did Native Americans dirty.
And really has yet to make up for it despite having time to.
Oddly enough, the TOS episode The Paradise Syndrome was actually pretty positive about indigenous Americans despite being made during a time when they were still the “redskin savage” on a lot of other TV shows. Kirk doesn’t just fall in love with Miramanee, but with her culture and their way of life, and there’s very little ‘noble savage’ or ‘mystical Indian’ bullshit. It’s a great story about how a “backward” culture compared to a far advanced one might not be so backward after all.
It did have the typical problem of that era of Miramanee being played by a white actor with actual indigenous actors playing smaller roles, but it was still a better depiction in my (admittedly non-indigenous) eyes.