Don’t get me started on ds9. A black captain? A trans lesbian officer? A gay interspecies couple? The federation using fear from war as an excuse to become a police state? Can’t believe they made my colorful space communism show woke.
I can’t be the only one who remembers Trekkies legitimately bitching about Tuvok because “Vulcans aren’t black.”
Like… really? You’ve been there and checked this out for yourself? Or is it that most (and not even all) of the handful of Vulcans you saw so far were white?
Tuvok is the best depiction of a Vulcan in all of Star Trek too and I will die on this hill (Spock is half human, so I am not counting him). Tuvok seemed to me like he found humans (and Neelix) to be illogical, difficult to understand, and somewhat annoying; but nonetheless he couldn’t help but like them as well, though he wouldn’t admit that to them (tangential hot take: Vulcans claim to suppress their emotions, but they still make decisions based on emotion and rationalise them as being based on logic after the fact)
Overall I like Tuvok as a character. My problem with Tuvok is they write him as if Vulcans have no emotion. He even says that.
Vulcans are supposed to have such strong emotions they need to constantly keep them under control and use logic to make decisions because the emotions cause them to make bad decisions.
I think that’s a lot more interesting for a character. Nemoy said he played Spock as a guy who was constantly in wonder at things and keeping it under control.
With few exceptions, they’re also supposed to also have mastered their emotions very handily. Partly fue to exceptional biology. Not absolutely constantly be on the verge of breaking into tears or a rage, a la Enterprise.
Sure. My problem with the writing is they write him like he doesn’t understand emotions having never had the them. When it should be the opposite.
He should be more like an alcoholic who doesn’t drink anymore. Still understands what it’s like to be drunk or hungover.
Spock was written the same way in TOS and he’s half-human.
He wasn’t though. That’s a bit of a cultural myth like “Beam me up Scotty.” Watch the show and you will see he clearly has emotion he just doesn’t let them control him.
His joy when he learns he didn’t kill Kirk. His enjoying verbal sparring with Mccoy. The spores removing his control. The look on his face when something strange and new is on the view screen.
One thing I think that determines if something is good or bad sci-fi is if the components of the show can be used to look at us humans to improve ourselves. An alien race that doesn’t have emotions doesn’t give us a vessel to use to discuss issues humans have and how we can improve. A race with very strong emotions who have recognized making decisions with emotions as a basis, rather than logic, is dangerous is useful as a tool to teach lessons.
This is what makes Star Trek good sci-fi and Star Wars bad sci-fi. There are very few lessons to learn from Wars, if any. Almost all of Trek is in service to this (at least in the good shows). It’s also why the books of Dune are good, but the 1984 version sucks. The miniseries I think are underrated and more people should give it a try. (It’s very campy. Just a warning. If you can watch old Trek you’ll be fine though.) I’m yet to make up my mind of the new Dune. It’s entertaining, and seems to maintain most of the message from the books, but we’re yet to see.
Does Tuvok actually say Vulcans have no emotion? I recall no such thing. I recall them suppressing emotions and not displaying them, but the lore was always that they were a really violent society up until they invented meditation, basically. Right?
Anyway, no matter why or what for we know they technically have no emotions in a practical sense, but Tuvok still displays understanding of the importance of emotions a lot of the time.
Like “logically” (the “logic” in the show is usually slightly reductive) dancing for someone doesn’t change anything. But… we know that it does. So it is logical to do that even if you don’t feel the emotions to do it. Although Tuvok does, he just suppresses them, like a good Vulcan.
Vulcans lie constantly to themselves and others.
You know what really grinds my gears about Vulcans? According to Trek lore their blood is green because they evolved using copper atoms to bind oxygen in the blood. But if that were the case they should have hemocyanin, and their blood should be blue.
I know for a certainty, however, that any inhabitable worlds we might find in the future will definitely look like a sound stage populated with Styrofoam boulders
Anyway, hardcore fans are dumb. I should know, I was one
Not dumb, but it makes it impossible to love Star Trek for what it is. A goofy show that takes itself seriously about space socialism. And it’s incredible at that.
Tuvok is black!?!?! I thought he was a Vulcan! I suppose the next thing you are going to tell me is that Odo isn’t a Shapeshifter?
The same people now whine about there being black dwarves in rings of power
You’re presuming a lot here. Like that anyone watched Rings of Power.
I hadn’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me. I remember people not too long ago whining about a black Ariel in the live action Disney Little Mermaid movie.
Because real live mermaids that actually exist are white. Everyone knows that.
And thier skin is all wrinkly from being in the water for so long.
A gay interspecies couple?
Rick Berman:
Hold on, O’Brien and Bashir were the same species!
Their third wasn’t.
Bashir was just polygamist. And I guess O’Brien too if we count Keiko as anything more than a mate.
I’ve seen DS9 multiple times, but I have no clue what you’re talking about on some of these. Please enlighten me.
A trans lesbian officer
Are you talking about Jadzia/Ezri-Dax? If so, neither are trans. The parasite, Dax, in them has no gender but can go to different hosts that have genders.
A gay interspecies couple
Are you talking about Odo and Kira? While Odo doesn’t have gender, I wouldn’t call it a gay interspecies couple. That’s kind of a stretch.
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A trans lesbian officer
That is a popular fan interpretation of Jadzia. I can see some similarities, but I don’t think the Trill are even as much as an allegory for transsexuality. That interpretation is very reductive and dismissive of the transsexual experience.
A gay interspecies couple
Garak and Bashir were originally written with gay subtext. Producers put a stop to that before anything actually developed between the two characters.
Thanks
You hated Discovery because it was too woke.
I hated Discovery because it wasn’t woke enough.
We are not the same.
I hated it because half of the characters annoyed me and the other half didn’t have enough screen time
I fucking loathe the series for introducing “Frieza” (the half mecha character), and IMMEDIATELY killing her off. Finally a somewhat interesting character, and they get fucking rid of her. Pisses me the fuck off
Picard: “We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity”
Tilly: “I went to Elon Musk junior high school”
I’m just going to pretend it’s one of his descendants with the same name who actually managed to do some good
Coulld alse be named similar to a area near me, the Native Tribes never named it so its named after a random Bandit who got murdered there.
His descendants will most likely change their name.
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I have only one response to you:
That episode very directly mocks the whole concept of racism in a way everybody will understand and without pointing fingers. It’s ridiculous, why do they care so much which sides the colors are on, come on! Oh, wait…
That’s what Star Trek does best: Examine problems we have through the lens of weird aliens. The audience can then make the connection to the real world.
Writing in the new shows doesn’t really do that as much, partially because they don’t really do alien of the week type episodes anymore (disclaimer: I haven’t seen SNW). So my impression is that they instead more or less directly and somewhat clumsily talk about current-day issues without the extra layer, which also diminishes the positive future aspect Star Trek is supposed to show. Especially Picard felt really off for me because of that.
The claim was that Discovery was too in-your-face about this stuff. I don’t think you can get more in-your-face than that without Kirk turning to the camera and saying, “get it? GET IT?!”
I’d say making an obvious analogy is being less in-your-face than transplanting one of today’s problems onto the Federation’s future society. The layer of fiction is what makes it effective IMO.
Nobody will feel called out by the ridiculously hate-filled half-black half-white aliens, but if one group was black and the other was white it would be a different story. Making them green and purple would also be less effective because people could just map those to human skin tones. That, I think, is what people would find in-your-face. Doing it the way they did on TOS (aliens of the week that literally look the same except mirrored, no clear good/bad side - it’s racism, but not as we know it) puts the ridiculousness of the concept itself front and center, not how the story could be a direct translation of our current issues. And it allows the protagonists to react accordingly as well.
The black-and-white aliens aren’t a subtle analogy but I think it’s smarter than people give it credit for.
Then you’re using a meaning of “in-your-face” that I’ve never seen before because I don’t know how much harder they could have shoved a “racism is bad” message at the audience.
I agree that allegory can be effective in ways that tackling issues head on isn’t, but the opposite is equally true. I don’t think addressing real world issues in a very direct way like DS9 did with Benny Russell or the Bell Riots made it a worse show in any way.
Regardless, as far as I can see, Discovery never went the “Benny Russel” route. They operated more like TOS did - they presented a diverse crew working together while addressing issues like fascism, isolationism, and climate collapse allegorically.
Edit: Of course there was no response. Because there are no examples. It’s just a dog whistle for bigots.
What?
Even then, Trek hasn’t really pushed the boundaries for a good long time. When it hit it big by TNG/TOS Syndication, it ended up being the cash cow, and thus not worth risking for such controversial things.
At most, it’s just been nudging the norm, but the kind of radical shove that TOS had, and nearly got it pulled off the air twice is basically nowhere to be found.
At most, we got one or two token characters or plots, but a lot of it is mostly the norm, or just a little ahead of it.
Compare it to something less established and free to take on more risk, like the Orville. Since it doesn’t have the big brand that networks want to keep reaping without sowing, it gets a lot of flexibility Trek doesn’t really have any more.
You’re not wrong but compared to this era of fascism and education shunning TNG is pretty damn good still.
I hated Discovery because it was written like a chorus of monkeys with typewriters and not a single one of them got close to Hamlet.
At least they got the “travel the galaxy on shrooms” part correctly.
Yeah, really. There wasn’t much enlightened future stuff going on and they pointlessly killed (and then returned, but still) one of the gay guys for shock value(?). It’s just so poorly written that neither that nor any of the empowerment messages landed for me.
Yeah… exactly. Although after all that I only fully gave up on the show when they jumped forward in time to a depressing future in which the Federation had dissolved. Like, way to completely and utterly miss the point of the setting. I’m gonna go cry into my earl grey now.
I was totally on board with that premise, thinking they might basically do their version of Andromeda mixed with late-season Enterprise. But then the actual plot happened.
Everything after the time jump felt like they were going off whatever Gene’s notes ended up becoming Andromeda.
I thought it was because they’d received enough backlash from yet another TOS era setting/characters which contradicts canon and finally listened to advance the story into post-NEM territory. Instead they went to ludicrous speed and completely overshot everything.
I hated discovery because of spore drives and logic extremists.
I dislike it because of “shit wrapped in shiny”, and the black lead woman only capable of doing one expression of emotion: You put it up my ass! But wait! maybe I like it?
I was more annoyed at the klingon subtitle style/font being difficult to read quickly. Each one talking like a kid who just shoved a whole pack of Big League Chew in their mouth from all the prosthetics also bothered me.
Each one talking like a kid who just shoved a whole pack of Big League Chew in their mouth from all the prosthetics also bothered me.
Even worse than how bad the Ferengi were with that
You know, you just reminded me of the episode of Enterprise where the Ferrengi took over the ship. And I was surprised how much I enjoyed (most of) it, and thought the first act where they didn’t bother giving the Ferrengi subtitlea, everything was communicated without the benefit of dialog.
I’m sure everyone else hated it, especially because of some of the weak plot points and how there wasn’t supposed to be any contact with the Ferrengi for 200 years and because everyone hates Enterprise.
On the other hand, it had Jeffrey Combs.
especially because of some of the weak plot points and how there wasn’t supposed to be any contact with the Ferrengi for 200 years
What got me was that Ferengi, when originally introduced, were practically completely unknown to federation despite rumor and conjecture. Yet by the time DS9 premiered they’re long established in alpha quadrant economics
I’d say pretty much all of season 1 should be considered non-canon, or at least, you know, super flexible. Even more than other Trek continuity.
I loved Discovery
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Pretty sure the downvoters didn’t finish reading that…
They sure didn’t and only frothed as soon they saw WoKe.
woke is the new sheeple
…in that anytime anyone uses it to support their argument you immediately know they’re a grade-a fuckewit.
I’m saving that. Not sure if and how I could use it as I (at least try…) avoid fanning flames, but…
Yeah, those woke sheeple are ruining everything!
To be fair, woke is a really annoying right now, essentially a conservative dog whistle for “I want to be racist but don’t want to be called racist”, so I don’t blame a lot of people for not finishing. If I read everything that started off with woke I’d have a much higher blood pressure.
essentially a conservative dog whistle for
Acknowledging a gay person exists is considered too woke for a lot of people.
I find it funny that not a single anti woke politician will say the word removed.
They understand woke. But they know they won’t get punched in the face for saying tranny.
Didn’t even get down to “unrelentingly woke” smh
I find many of these shows and movies that are accused of being woke is because they create protagonists without flaws, out of fear of making non traditional characters look bad I guess? But protagonists without flaws are boring.
I’m trying to think what Burnham’s fatal flaw is, or her deadly sin. It’s mostly stuff that has happened to her and she has to overcome but that’s not the same thing. Interesting protagonist have flaws like hubris, vice, hypocrisy, greed, something that makes them more real. You look at characters like Rey from star wars and again, flawless except for her past, which again is something that happened to her not something she is.
That’s why people didn’t like when Han Solo didn’t shoot first. Yes Han Solo is overall a good guy, but he’s also ruthless and a gangster when we meet him. If he’s already a flawless good guy at the start,that just sucks. Anakin as well, good but arrogant and controlling
I think i agree with the general premise that flawed characters are more interesting, and i also feel (with no data to back up that feeling, so bear with me) that these ‘woke’ characters sometimes fall into a pitfall where they’re just so boringly written that it does feel like the writers are either afraid of being perceived as ‘punching down’ or (edit: finishing this thought) want to misguidedly write a perfect character for the sake of superficial representation of some group.
That said, for this show in particular (i have watched TNG/DS9/Voyager but not Discovery), is it a valid criticism for this captain that couldn’t be applied to the older series? Picard’s flaws are heavily understated - sure, he was a violent little shit off screen when he was younger, and he can be a little more of a hardass than called for occasionally, but I always felt he was pretty consistently portrayed as the voice of reason, and his flaws were only relevant in a couple episodes. I think I would say that’s also true of Sisko and Janeway, though Sisko has a lot more nuance to his pragmatism that is really interesting as DS9 continues.
You’re not wrong. Picards biggest flaw that people point towards is either not being great with kids or just emotionally stunted. Janeway has so few flaws overall that the only one you’ll hear follow her around is “Genocidal” because of Tuvix. Most of her other flaws are episodic like with hunting the Equinox.
Edit: Even then, her flaw in hunting the Equinox is that she cares too much about Starfleet to let them abandon their morals. She’s so aggressively pro-Starfleet/United Federation of Planets that when tasked with not getting home for 200 years (it was 70 years at max warp without ever stopping) she put Starfleet morals first and stuck her crew in the Delta Quadrant. Multiple times. So her flaw is shes too Starfleet.
I think one of her key flaws is that she’s so ridiculously stubborn. That’s why the characterisation works in context. She refuses to give up but sometimes she probably should.
Picard doesn’t have many flaws but the writing doesn’t usually make him the main character. TNG is more a problem solving show than a character drama. When they have character drama it’s usually the B story.
When we do have a Picard centered episode they usually remove him from the rest of the crew. So you could say his main weakness is dependency on a crew. (Diehard in space doesn’t count)
No issue with what you’re saying but I will say that Burnham does have some fatal flaws that are throughout the show and not past things she’s overcoming.
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As you mentioned, hubris. Throughout the entirety of the series she thought she knew what was best or had to shoulder every single responsibility single handedly. Spock openly mocked her for it in front of other crewmen during Season 2 and other crew constantly kept saying that she does it or doesn’t need to.
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She’s hypocritical as hell but that seems to be a thread through most Starfleet officers. Hypocrisy when it serves you. Look at the Prime Directive for every ounce of proof you’d ever need for any other Captain and hypocrisy but she does it pretty regularly too. Again something Spock pointed out in Season 2.
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She’s hot-headedly emotional because she was a human raised as a Vulcan. She suppressed the everlovingfuck out of her emotions and by the time she was embracing her human side and starting to cope with those emotions she was already well into adulthood. A significant crux of the show is that Burnham has trouble regulating emotion because its new to her. People point this out as a complaint saying she “cries too much” but her character is literally someone who feels things more overwhelmingly because she was never raised to cope. Every season is her overcoming that little by little with Season 4 being all of that coming to a head. Her listening to Rillak and trying to do everything she could that she felt was right while also not doing the stupid shit like abandoning Starfleet to go save Book without asking for permission that would have been granted or freaking out over her biological mother and letting those emotions cloud so much of Season 2.
So about point 3. Vulcans are more emotional. So much so they have to constantly control them. Being human should make it eaiser not harder.
That one can be handwaved with alien psychology. Aliens think just like humans, except for when the plot calls for them not to. Humans psychological damage from repressing emotions, and vulcans get pon farr.
I think pon far is just when they get super horney every 4 years.
Side note the AI summary for Kolinahr has what I hope is a mistake.
Kolinahr It is the Vulcan ritual that is to purge all remaining emotion. It’s a ritual in which a Vulcan male shaves his balls for the first time.
The problem (at least during the first two seasons, after which I gave up) is that the show bends over backward to make her right in the end.
This again is one of those complaints thats constantly parroted but just isn’t rooted in the reality of the show. It’s not factually accurate by even the largest stretch of the imagination.
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The mutiny at the start in the first episode. She is proven immediately false and that her actions of firing first would have caused a war with all the Klingons warping in just to see Starfleet fire first.
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She (along with Lorca and a few others) make the mistake of trusting Ash Tyler. Something that isn’t fully shared. Saru has apprehensions until the divide has been made and even then is cautious.
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She keeps trying to keep to Federation Ideals while in the Mirror Universe and is proven repeatedly wrong that they don’t apply. She might be able to apply them to herself but no one else from that world and it ends up with her nearly broken from it.
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She spends most of the episodes she’s with Spock just outright ignoring him and going on her own path of what she thinks is right. During the Talos IV episode Spock even in a state of catastrophic mental instability is even annoyed by her arrogance at thinking she’s right when she’s not. Episode also shows her basically arguing with the Talosians and Spock having to say “Just fucking do it.”
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She brings Georgiou back from the Terran Universe and in doing so a planet is almost rendered uninhabitable.
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She refuses to kill Ariam, insisting that she can save her anyway. She ignores orders and in doing so almost allows Control to complete its mission and kill Burnham and everyone else on board. If it wasn’t for Nhan, all sentient life would be dead.
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Throughout Season 2 she is constantly misunderestimating Control and how they can get rid of it. She’s often just as onboard with everyone elses wrong notions as she is wrong on her own. She often goes along with the ideas of how to trap it or stop the sphere but is consistently proven incorrect.
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As mentioned previously, she constantly shoulders all burdens and pushes through them like they are her own. She is proven incorrect there repeatedly too.
And those are just the ones I can think of off hand from the first two seasons. If I actually looked back at episode synopsis and jogged memory I’d find far, far more. A significant portion of her character is constantly being wrong and learning from those mistakes.
You can not like the show all you want. Not trying to convince anyone to like the show. I’m just tired of seeing complaints that just aren’t based in what the show does or what happens in it.
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I just couldn’t get into Discovery or Picard because they felt… weird? Not that it wasn’t like Star Trek in the stories or that it was “woke,” but it just didn’t have the same vibe as what I grew up with. Lower Decks has the vibe, but not the tone or anything else. I need to check out Strange New Worlds. It looks like it might be what I’m really missing.
Both Picard and Discovery were season long plots without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible. Add some poorly done melodramatic scenes about how the leads are the most important people ever without showing why (and in a lot of cases showing the opposite) and we have two series that were just a slog to watch up to the point that I stopped.
Both sounded good on paper. Both had great casts. Both seemed to suffer from terrible writing and direction.
The final season of PIC was fun, and the second one had some good moments, mostly with Q. But that first season was still being written as they were filming and the second season had part of its budget appropriated for the third season and it shows in both.
But that first season was still being written as they were filming
Really? That explains a lot.
without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible
The other series are episode-based with some random simple overarching plotlines thrown at them so they don’t feel repetitive. Yes, those plotlines can’t sustain a series, but that was never the goal.
I can’t talk about Picard, but Discovery has a series of really interesting ideas that were completely destroyed by the overwhelmingly bad details. The plots are not exactly terrible, they have some more complex issues, and the insistence on emotional solutions to galaxy-wide physical problems is a recurring issue there (to the point that in season 4, where a “My Little Pony” plotline makes sense, it feels empty and repetitive).
I can’t talk about Picard, but Discovery has a series of really interesting ideas that were completely destroyed by the overwhelmingly bad details.
This is it. Both series had season plots that would have made for generally decent two-parters back in the '90s.
I just watched Season 2 of Picard and all I could think the whole time was “TNG crew would have wrapped this up in 1 or 2 episodes…”
Yup, in order to make Discovery and Picard work, the writers had to give everyone the idiot ball.
Trek is at its best when it’s competence porn.
As a note, to be in star fleet requires 4 years at the start fleet academy. You need to be somewhat good at your job and somewhat disciplined to even be considered for a slot on a ship.
I’m not a fan of Picard Season 2 but I will give it the argument that it only takes place over the course of like 2-3 days, just like most TNG episodes when you factor in warp speeds and all the time delays that are needed for the things talked about in the episodes.
Yeah I know. It just felt like it dragged on. I guess I just prefer more episodic Star Trek. Probably in general… all these 8 episode per season “prestige” shows are getting tiresome.
Yes, watch Strange New Worlds! It really does get at the vibe and tone of TNG and the other 90s Trek shows. It’s a breath of fresh air
Second watching SNW! Really fantastic show.
I disagree that it recaptures the vibe and tone of TNG/'90s Trek. I’d say it’s much more like TOS with weird (in a good way) plots and swashbuckling adventure. '90s Trek felt much more grounded and more taking-itself-seriously than TOS or SNW.
I agree it doesn’t exactly capture the vibe and tone of the 90s show, rather it “gets at” them since it’s a lot closer than other nutrek productions. Visually though it gives Star Trek 2009, which is a fun bit of continuity
I’ve heard good things about that enough that I had already decided to watch it in abstract, but you have just tipped me over the edge and I’ve decided to actually give it a try. Thanks for the push, I will think of you when I do watch it
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I bounced off Picard because the only thing I liked about it was Jeri Ryan.
I liked the whole alt-dimension humans are evil shit in Discovery, but everyone is so fucking weepy the whole time. It’s depressing. I don’t think it helps that everything seems to be filmed in tiny green screen box sets so everyone has to stand still or they run out of room.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the green screen box thing for Discovery. They didn’t use a whole lot of green screen. They built fairly massive sets that were all reused for other shows. The screens that you see in the show as well, like the see through ones and the ones in the consoles, are not added in post. They mass bought those screens and they actually function in real life. Honestly the amount of CGI used in Discovery, at least outside of space based stuff and effects like transporters/phasers/progammable matter is pretty low. Even then the green screens that they did use were replaced by the video wall for Season 4 and 5.
I’ve no idea why it all looks so cheap then.
I honestly thought David Cronenberg had died and they’d had to use a CGI version of him.
Everything just look so… off…
I’ve heard so many complaints about Discovery over the years. Hundreds.
Cheap is a new one.
SNW is TOS and TNG modernised. Some character arcs span across some episodes but the episodes by themselves are self contained (maybe with the exception of the end of the seasons).
There is room for totally random episodes that can experiment, do crazy things, and most important, expand characters.
They both had dogshit writing. Deeply bad. Criminally stupid.
So Bald IS a hairstyle!
BALD?? I have hair! Why else would I visit the best barber in Starfleet?!
I assume because the writers thought it was hilarious
Because if he didn’t, he would wind up looking like Hector Salamanca
Hey, Stargate had a (mostly) bald barber too…
I assume he started out with more hair, but still…
Well, yes, obviously. “Broken” is a financial state, “empty” is filling amount, “dry” is an amount of humidity…
And you can look at any programing language the type of NaN.
Bald is zero. Having no head is null
Yeah, I’d say having no head isn’t a hair style.
My only major critiques for Discovery are that they walked back a Calvin-verse reboot after fan backlash (my interpretation), and that the theatrics usually don’t mesh well with the action-oriented flow of the rest of the episodes around it.
The reboot thing was, to me, overly clear with the changes in aesthetics and technology. Especially the Klingons. And I get it: it’s hard to dazzle audiences through vibrant creative direction, with decades of canon on your back. All that older stuff has compromises from old effects tech and budget baked in, so breaking from it is incredibly tempting. But the fans will not let you do this: just ask the Dr. Who production people. So we get some really oddball stuff happening in the first few seasons.
To the latter point, we get moments like: “The ship is going to explode in one minute, so let’s argue for at least ten before we deal with that.” This kind of thing happens a lot in Discovery and a binge-watch would have you thinking that the ship’s counselor is either dead or contemplating transporter suicide. The dissent between characters feels valid most of the time, but other times is just jarringly out of character or contrary to self-preservation as to break suspension of disbelief. But there’s usually angry, loud, arguing dissent. Which is a shame since these same episodes is hitting the mark on every other metric, IMO.
My response to the first five episodes was very much “It’s like the writers are justifying a councilor being on the bridge crew.”
Gene had a rule for TNG that conflict should not be between the crew. There are a few exceptions, but it’s pretty consistent. I think that limitation made the writers more creative and greatly enhanced the series.
was there even one gay character in TNG?
Riker is clearly pan
Ro Laren
I was hoping more for any character, even a one off, where they wrote and openly had the character that way rather than ones people might feel is gay. I doubt there is one but part of me is sorta hoping they snuck one in someplace.
I mean DS9 gets two ladies kissing if that counts for anything.
Yeah I think that is sorta the slow march. TNG did not feel like they could get away with it but then they did something with ds9 and maybe voyager had something to push it more. It reminds me of very early simspsons (about the same time as TNG) had bart say bitchin on prime time tv. I expected something in the news to come up about it but it slid through with no mention.
Wesley /s
No. Fuck you. We reject him. We have standards.
Sincerely, the gay community.
Never understood the wesley hate. sure he was a trope character but I had more issue with data as he just filled to many roles and minimize other characters. stronger/more resilient to damage than worf, smarter than wesely, more experience than any other member of the crew.
Because Wesley was a stand in for Genes son basically. Wesley had a lot of unearned praise or unearned moments where he ends up saving the day or having a vital role in something that he just shouldn’t. The other characters had earned their place but he didn’t. He was just annoying and there. The reason I don’t like him is because he just feels like a fanfic character that was shoved into the show.
I mean if he saves the day how is it unearned? I dunno I never felt that way. It felt to me like a trope. the boy/girl genius but really I felt his role was more to bring in the whole family aspect of the ship. A main character that would be regularly interacting with other kids on the ship and their families and a reference for beverly to bring up that she is a mom and has to be concerned for her family.
I didn’t especially hate Wesley, but I also didn’t enjoy his character. Part of it is that the narrative often framed Wesley from the perspective of Picard, who often seemed to be irked by Wesley, priming the audience to feel the same way. In many of his earlier appearances, before he was a cadet, I recall some Wesley plots involving him being over-keen and meddling with things he shouldn’t. But it all turns out fine in the end, because Wesley is so precocious and special. This is likely a reductionist and possibly incorrect summary, but it’s how I remember it.
When I try to think about faults or arcs that Wesley had in TNG, I really struggle to think of anything that made him feel like an actual character. There was an episode where he was considering giving up after doing badly on the academy entrance test, until he had a rare bonding moment with Picard. Then there was the academy shuttle crash coverup in which Wesley doesn’t feel like he has any real agency or real conflict for his character.
I agree with you that his key role was about giving the family aspect, which I think was useful, but especially when combined with the young genius trope, he felt more like a prop than a real character (part of this criticism is also aimed at how they explored themes of family through Beverly — I see what they were going for, but it didn’t fully land for me).
Now that I’m writing this, I’m thinking of episodes I wish I could’ve seen to develop Wesley more. Such as a “Lower Decks” (the TNG episode) style look at other young people on the enterprise, before Wesley is allowed on the bridge. I could see him framing himself as having more access or knowledge than he actually does and lying to make himself seem impressive to his peers. Then he gets peer pressured into doing some dumb stuff to gain that access he pretends to have, and it causes complications that threaten to reveal Wesley’s deceit to both the crew and his peers.
I’m just spitballing. My main point is just that he seemed simultaneously overused and underutilised — for the screen time he gets, he doesn’t really get to be an interesting character. He doesn’t need to be edgy — idealistic boy genius who can’t wait to join Starfleet fits in great with TNG’s general tone. However, without something to temper the optimism with, TNG could be saccharine sweet.
Westley was also a viewer-insert character for kids to relate to. As a little kid watching TNG, I liked him as a character and thought he was cute. I didn’t start to find him irritating until I got a few years older than him.
oh yeah I could see it being done way better. I just did not especially hate him and I did like data but again I sorta gated he was sorta the end all be all. I mean spock was like that in a way but scottie still knew more about engineering and bones knew more about medicine, and he did not do well in things like poker, etc.
I mean if he saves the day how is it unearned?
In the first couple seasons, the rest of the crew would suddenly become wildly incompetent to justify Wes being the one to save the ship. The show got much better about actually giving him strengths to play to later on.
Like when?
Not to mention, programmed in a variety of techniques…
More Casanova than Riker
And yet, he would give it all up…
I’m going with Alexander.
No, but as soon as they add C to LGBT, Beverly will identify as part of the queer community.
Candlesexual?
Quite.
… Cannabissexual?
Oh. I just assumed they changed the G to mean ghost without telling me.
The only question I have about Discovery is: do you think Michael Burnham is ever capable of crying?
She cant. She came back from the future, like a Terminator, and stuffed her past-self glands with tardigrades, so her pre-tears are transported to a micro verse that needs salt water for reasons.
I liked the series. Not my favourite. But I like it.
I liked it overall, but my god, stop finding a reason for Michael to cry. It’s every fucking episode.
Thanks for that review. Seriously, well said.
The fact that they successfully branded “Not Being Racist” as being “Woke and cringe” is… some ol’ bullshit
retconned Klingons to look super weird
TBF the Klingons were retconned in TMP
From now on, every Star Trek show should change the appearance of the Kinglons and the Trill. And also add a new color of Andorians.
Polka dot Andorians
DO IT YOU PUSSIES
Discovery did update the look of the Ferengi for the 32nd Century, looked kinda cool in my opinion. I can handwave a lot of stuff from Season 3 onwards of Discovery because it’s nearly a thousand years ahead of what TNG/VOY/DS9 are at. Things gonna change so meh, tweaks like that don’t bother me so much.
I will 100% admit to absolutely fucking hating Discovery when it was originally launched. The Klingons were one of the reasons although not a primary one. Took a while for me to come around and even now I’m like “Eh, I don’t mind it.” I did appreciate trying to alien them up a little bit more while trying to keep some stuff the same. Season 2 had an okay blend of that.
My only reason for disliking the new Klingon look is that it just felt like it was doing it for the sake of doing it rather than having a good reason to do it. If they wanted to take the TNG look and make it even more alien-looking due to advances in prosthetics it would have been one thing, but they pretty much threw out everything but the ridge heads.
Also, and I’m guessing this is because of what they had to wear in their mouths, the Klingon language got suuuuper slow. Especially with Voq. It made the scenes a lot longer than they needed to be. Voq’s speech in the first episode just dragged.
Most of the other visual changes didn’t bother me much, since they generally made sense and just were because effects had improved, but I just don’t know why they changed the Klingons other than because they could.
I loved it
Yep. This greentext is all just “dont threaten me with a good time”. Let anon fawn over one another’s griftcoin acumen and wallow in their oblivious unfuckability.
Short of DS9, Discovery is my fav ✨️
heck yez
It really is amazing to me that anyone can be familiar with Star Trek and at any point claim it’s gotten too political. Like what show were you watching? Are you just some weirdo who went to Memory Alpha and memorized a bunch of Star Trek trivia but never watched an episode?
There were probably fewer non-political episodes than political ones. TOS had political episode after political episode, intentionally challenging TV executives so that they could talk about issues of the day. TNG continued this and added many social issues as well. DS9 was basically all politics for its last four seasons. Voyager was more in the TNG mold, and then Enterprise had an entire season that was an (IMO bad) allegory about 9/11 and the War on Terror.
What’s the “gay agenda” reference for TNG?
idk Riker turned me gay
When I was a kid watching TNG with my parents, my father would sometimes say things like “Man, that guy is too handsome” when Riker was on screen.
Grats your dad is gay/bi
I also don’t think the TNG cast is particularly overly-emotional.
Plus TNG didn’t retcon Klingon appearance, it had been that way for like 10 years already by that point, from the TOS films.
The TNG cast is pretty human. They don’t avoid anger, happiness, frustration, empathy, sexual tension, etc.
To the chuds of 4chan, showing a normal range of human emotion is over emotional, which this greentext is mocking.
First one that comes to mind is “The Outcast”. Not really gay, but for anyone who is triggered by anything different they would consider it “woke”.
There’s also:
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The Host which has Crusher dealing with falling in love with a Trill who moves hosts. It can be seen in some very specific ways as a trans allegory and just challenging heteronormative assumptions about love and attraction.
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The show really pushes a lot of ‘Found Family’ stuff which ends up being super popular in most LGBTQ+ media because we’re disowned by other people. (Data accepted and accepting himself as part of the crew, Worf and Alexander aren’t too awesome but Deanna steps up a bit there. You’ve got Wesley who’s kind of adopted by most of the upper ranks after a while.
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TNG is purely “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” which people see as gay agenda because they wanna collapse anything pro-diversity as just being LGBTQ+ because they have fragile pathetic minds.
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Q is aggressively queer coded. The hyper dramatic and flamboyant personality, the penchant for being a theatrical whore, openly flirting with Picard (and Riker) in such a way that you genuinely aren’t sure if he’s joking or not, he rejects every type of rigid norm from humanity, Voyager and a few other things even hinted in such a way that due to his ability to change form he’s above gendered norms too and sort of gender fluid. Not to mention being the campiest motherfucker this side of the Alpha quadrant. “It matters to me. YOU matter to me. Even Gods have favorites, Jean-Luc. You’ve always been one of mine.” There’s also his deep fucking loneliness, something that a metric fuckload of people in the community suffer from. Part of a whole but ostracized and on the outside? Yea.
Q is Queer? I never would’ve guessed.
“The Host” was another, and of course introducing the Trill species concept opens up for further things later on. The biggest flaw of that episode is how Beverly didn’t seem to consider a continued relationship after the new host ends up being female. Which is a fine reaction, but for the show pushing boundaries they could have at least had her ponder the idea even if she didn’t act on it. After all, who did she love? In that initial version of the Trill, the host was seemingly not in control, unlike later versions like Dax where the symbiote and host mix to create a shared personality.
DS9 did specifically pick up that torch, so it’s clear they wanted to explore that more.
I don’t think you need “sort of” for gender fluid. When you’re an omnipotent being of pure thought, you’re whatever gender you wish to express yourself as and you almost certainly express it as different genders for different situations on different planets and societies if you’re like Q and you want to spend eternity fucking with them.
I’d also say Odo was gender fluid. Or at least he’s a literal fluid with no gender unless he wishes to have one. He’s not expressing a gender when he’s in his bucket.
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Frakes claims that he lobbied for his love interest in The Outcast to be played by a male actor, but queerphobe Berman nixed it.
Yeah, I was gonna say I don’t remember anybody being gay in TNG. Am I missing something?
Oh, and IMO the cast of TNG is the opposite of emotional. They are calm and collected 90% of the time. 5% is Riker being horny, and the other 5% is Picard losing his shit over the amount of lights or something.
