Pretty sure the downvoters didn't finish reading that...
They sure didn't and only frothed as soon they saw WoKe.
Didn't even get down to "unrelentingly woke" smh
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.
A gay interspecies couple?
Rick Berman:
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?
So Bald IS a hairstyle!
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 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.
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 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.
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
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
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.
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 is pretty low. Even then the green screens that they did use were replaced by the video wall for Season 4 and 5.
What's the "gay agenda" reference for TNG?
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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 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."
I loved it
Yep. This greentezt is all just "dont threaten me with a gokd 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
I love Disco but it's not exactly Trek.
Hell, the last season is basically the first season of Andromeda
I love Disco but it’s not exactly Trek.
Well, it sort of is due to it being a Star Trek show. That sentence is extremely gatekeepy. It assumes that Star Trek is definable in what type of show it creates (it isn't), is uniform in its types of shows (it isn't) and that anything different than status quo is not applicable. It's utterly nonsense and the same nonsense that was parroted about TNG, and DS9 and Voyager and Enterprise and every other show that wasn't TOS. Remember everyone whining about the Kelvin timeline and "ItS nOt ReAl StAr TrEk!" Sure seems like most of them are gone now and the movies are getting loved.
Star Trek goes out of its way to scream about diversity, to allow differences and celebrate those, and that not every path has to be the same. I don't understand the insistence that the shows themselves cannot be diverse either.
The themes of celebrating diversity are absolutely the same. The difference I see is mainly the cinematography, story structure, and pacing. SNW and Lower Decks are a lot closer to what Trek has been in those aspects than Discovery was.
Again: Not saying Disco is bad at all. (Except for having a reaction shot of every one of the dozens of people on the bridge any time anything interesting happens. Those irk me.)
EDIT: After further consideration, I've decided that Disco is Trek, but it's a series of Trek movies and not a series of TV episodes. But the last season is still the same premise as Andromeda.
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?
was there even one gay character in TNG?
Riker is clearly pan
I'm going with Alexander.
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.
No, but as soon as they add C to LGBT, Beverly will identify as part of the queer community.
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.
The only question I have about Discovery is: do you think Michael Burnham is ever capable of crying?
