Thanks for that review. Seriously, well said.
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.
Hold on, O’Brien and Bashir were the same species!
Their third wasn’t.
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.
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.
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.
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?
A gay interspecies couple?
Rick Berman:
You hated Discovery because it was too woke.
I hated Discovery because it wasn’t woke enough.
We are not the same.
I hated discovery because of spore drives and logic extremists.
Picard: “We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity”
Tilly: “I went to Elon Musk junior high school”
Yea, Discovery is the best case for virtue signaling being a real thing, which is unfortunate because Trek’s literal entire thing is coming off as “common sense” while spreading a progressive message through allegory.
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.
I have to say, I tried really hard but holy crap was the “in your face-ness” of it a problem for me and one of like 5 reasons I can’t stand it.
It’s definitely not any of the concepts, etc. Good to see diverse, women-strong, etc casts and plots. But a lot of it was written A) incredibly poorly, like to try to appeal to middle schoolers, B) it couldn’t stop telling us REALLY LOUD and artificially how progressive it was, and it was jarring and annoying.
Edit: and I’d argue they dropped nearly all of the progressive parts of, say TNG. Or, like, where adults acted like grownups.
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 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.
Everything after the time jump felt like they were going off whatever Gene’s notes ended up becoming Andromeda.
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.
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
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
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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.
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!
Didn’t even get down to “unrelentingly woke” smh
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.
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.
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.
My response to the first five episodes was very much “It’s like the writers are justifying a councilor being on the bridge crew.”
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s because the only “woke” thing nu-trek writers understand is representation, which even that is pretty tame by treks standards. Yeah there’s more POC and lgbtq representation, which is important, but is also pretty standard for our time. There is nothing as groundbreaking as the first interracial kiss on television, or one of the first gay kisses.
Nu-trek writers don’t understand Treks optimism and idealism at all. Gene Roddenberrys vision of a post-scarcity socialist utopia is simply beyond their ability to understand and write. They’re a bunch of Neolibs who can’t imagine a world without capitalism and just write dystopian scifi filled with interpersonal drama because that’s what’s in and what sells right now.
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
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
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.
was there even one gay character in TNG?
Riker is clearly pan
No, but as soon as they add C to LGBT, Beverly will identify as part of the queer community.
Candlesexual?
Quite.
… Cannabissexual?
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.
I’m going with Alexander.
Wesley /s
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
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”.
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.
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.
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Disclaimer: Only Trek I had watched beforehand was Lower Decks (loved it) and SNW (loved it) in that order. With that said, here are my opinions nobody asked for:
- S1 had its flaws but I was there for dark, depressing, and moody.
- SNW cast carried the fuck out of S2 and the plot was good too imo.
- First half of S3 was promising…but they fucked it up so utterly and completely in the second half that it was hard to take the rest of the show seriously afterwards.
spoiler
SPOILER START
They COMPLETELY lost me with the source of the burn, it was one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a hot minute.They had me again with the Giorgio redemption stuff in S4(?), but it was all downhill from there.
SPOILER ENDI had to forward through starting from the second half of Season 4 just to get through it. It got so ridiculously boring. I was hoping it’d get better and I could watch normally again but it just didn’t.
Watching TNG now and I’m loving it. Can be a bit slow sometimes but still enjoyable.
Edit: Does boost not do spoiler tags?
Ah, thanks! It was driving me mad
I watched them all, and I loved them all too. I had opinions and favorites, but now that I’m done with everything Trek I just wish I could watch it all for the first time again.
