Which sounds wholesome (and I don't say it's not at all) until you realize Nichols wanted to do something else, I think it was musicals, and King convinced her by saying "we need you to have representation. When you're gone, anyone can take that position, even an alien" and so she stayed instead of self realization.
That is pretty sad, but I think she and he were both right to respect the impact she had by staying in the role.
The most iconic science fiction crew of all time will forever include a prominent impressive black woman. Nichelle made that happen, through her performances.
That's a common myth. There were several others before, some of which also had Shatner as one half of the kissing pair, believe it or not. Trek's was definitely more high-profile, though, and with several of the others it may have been hard to notice with that particular combination with the quality of televisions at the time; European man with Asian woman probably wasn't noticeable on a tiny '50s black and white TV.
It is because sarcasm needs tone. Which you do not have in text. As there is a person for every possible opinion out there and they have become more vocal in the internet i personally am annoyed by the motion that we are supposed to spot sarcasm. We all should just put that ugly s behind it, it is not that hard.
I guess i should have replied to the comment before you btw.
not necessarily. you need context and it comes from other places than just tone of voice.
if someone just drops "of course star trek is woke" in the middle of written text in random place, it can be harder to decipher the intent than it would be in voice. but the original commenter did quite a good job to guide reader to understand their position on the topic. combined with what community we are in it is a no-brainer.
yeah, sometimes there are stupid people on the internet, but sometimes a joke is just a joke. in the old days when internet sounded like a tortured robot, people used to say "be conservative in what you send out and liberal in what you receive". times have indeed changed, but the rule still can come handy sometimes.
Do you really want to say they weren't? Do you really want to deny my experiences?
Edit: don't bother answering, I'm blocking you. I don't like people referring to middle aged people as 'kids' and I don't like people doubting others' experiences without any knowledge about said experiences.
i do. you just did not recognize pretty clear sarcasm, it is documented in writing above. it is unlikely that it was only time in your life it happened. so yeah, some of these experiences in your past were also cases where you did misread the situation.
your badly acted offense does not change anything about that.
All those were token characters regularly repeating stereotypes about said groups, but OK.
Showing people from different sides of the curtain working together in future was kinda normal for science fiction.
The whole PR representation of the Cold War was like "friendly competition" or "hostile agreement" or a schism of the same religion. A good faith disagreement. USSR in some sense pretended to be like USA, but a better one, to bring the next stage of humanity's development. You know all those failed\cancelled continuations, Half-Life 3, KotOR 3, Perl 6, FreeBSD 5 (ok, that transpired and didn't kill FreeBSD completely, but), Gnome 3, KDE 4, Star Wars after 2005 and till being bought by Disney. Or ambitious alternative projects that went nowhere.
At the same time there were various levels of propaganda on either side, at the bottom for one it was the free world about to nuke dem damn commies, for the other it was the civilized peaceful humanity about to squash decadent anglosaxon zionists. But note how both variants imply there is good in the other side, just suppressed because they are possessed by evil.
So - not so strange. People perceive that friendliness as something new and the current hostility as something old, sometimes that's not true. In some sense our time is more chauvinist than 60s and 70s, not less.
I feel pretty much the same about anyone who complains about something being "woke", no matter the topic - if perceiving and objecting to harms against and struggles of others not like yourself offends you, if seeing others actively try to work in support of those others is something you just can't stomach, then you aren't someone whose opinion I care about.
Plus the folks making those complaints can rarely define what woke is, or struggle to without using language that will immediately "out" their actual objections.
It annoys me that new trek got wrapped up in this discourse because my dislike of it is because of the image above
Old trek was super "woke" and optimistic, I see new trek as too focused on war and it paints the future as though they never achieved luxury space communism free of scarcity
I think your comment could reasonably apply to early Discovery and Picard, but not so much to the rest of nuTrek. It could equally apply to DS9 and Enterprise - but not so much to the rest oldTrek (Voyager might straddle the line).
I think it’s most accurate to say that Star Trek as a whole has generally shown alternating waves of reifying and challenging the utopian future concept. Overall that gives a message that a better society can be achieved, but the work of living up to that vision can never end. It works for me.
nuTrek has been pretty great for me, overall.
Prodigy never managed to win me over, though. I'm well out of its target audience, so that's no surprise.
Old trek was super "woke" and optimistic, I see new trek as too focused on war and it paints the future as though they never achieved luxury space communism free of scarcity
At least on that front, it seemed to be rather conditional. If you were not an organic humanoid, you had a much more difficult time.
Just look at Measure of a Man, and what Starfleet later tried to pull with Lal, or what happened on the Sutherland. Or the ExoComps. Or what happened to the deprecated EMH Mk. I units, and the Voyager's EMH and his holonovel. Or the UGLY BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER crystal aliens. Or the Horta. Or Hugh.
I cannot imagine that the Federation would have ordered the developing a form of memetic virus that would telepathically spread amongst the Klingon population and wipe them all out when they were at war with the Empire.
But they did order it against the Borg, intending to use Hugh as a vector.
Yes, and it was shown as a huge internal conflict in TNG, and honestly even TOS had a bunch of inconsistent morality that didn't quite fit a utopian society, you have a lot of state secrets, a lot of espionage, paranoia, and a cold war that includes violating the prime directive on a regular basis as long as they think the Klingons will also violate around the same degree, and that's really not a very good idea, I really doubt the Vulcans would arm a bronze age civilization on a developing planet with muskets if they thought the Klingons might also do That.
I really doubt the Vulcans would arm a bronze age civilization on a developing planet with muskets if they thought the Klingons might also do That.
If anything, I think that it might be more likely for the Vulcans to do such a thing. Don't forget that they did interfere with human development a bunch, because they could not readily put them into their existing categories, out of concern for what might happen otherwise.
It does not seem unreasonable that under the same circumstances, they might find it logical to arm a bronze-age civilisation against an alien enemy.
i remember its the reason why the borg even exist, someone mention gene roddenberrry was fighting people that the parasites in that one episode was susceptible to evil and corruption if they are bieng controlled. so they created a borg as a compromise. the episode where the parasites was controlling star trek command and it sent a signal to the delta quadrant, sound familiar just the like borg.
The idea of the borg feel more like "hey, the federation sounds suspiciously like communism that works, can't we introduce "evil communism" to show how evil it is"?
Sounds probable judging from the stories of the writers fighting Roddenberry's story mandates. And as soon as he was dead, they did the infiltrating founders anyway on DS9.
that episode was wierd, since everyone thought there was a followup. because they send the big bad signal to the delta quadrant which indicates they were from there about to invade, the queen that was controlling the host had the "map of sectors in the background, which i was taken to say he was sending it there). later replaced by the borg which did the same thing.
In fairness I think the memetic virus was meant to stimulate individualism and perhaps general revolt in the Borg, and Picard and co didn’t think it would result in the collective simply purging entire cubes remotely just to keep the contagion contained
It's easier on the writers when they take away all the easy. There's an episode of DS9 where the Defiant's computer is broken and they have to do everything manually. The scene of them undocking and leaving ds9 was pretty dramatic. It let them show off the crew's hyper competency without the use of the future tech.
I really hated when Discovery jumped to a post apocalypse future, but those ended up being the best seasons of the show.
they jumped 900years in the future to get away from thier horrible 2 seasons. i once so a trailer for s4, yup as i predicted they went all in margianalized the other people in the show that made trek great.
Picard falls over because what should be left as a character study has clumsy attempts to jam 'action trek' up it, often derailing it. DISC tells us the universe is dark and full of terrors. Both tell us we fucked up and that we should fear.
PIC and DISC remain trapped in the time and political and emotional states of their making. Jihadists and racism, the same political and bigoted circles over and over. SNW and LD - and yes The Orville - like classic trek show us a version of this - but then reach past to show we could have something better. To normalise that something better.
And it's in the normalisation where Trek's REAL power has always lain. You can tell a thousand aesops, clumsy or skilled on the fool who oppressed his equal, but they don't hold a single candle to the simple fact Uhura is a bridge officer. To McCoy yielding without second thought to M'Benga as a more skilled MO. To former enemies in the crew, women in command, loving single black fathers, genderqueer species, Autistic ciphers, queer couples, trans children. All of them normalised. All of them not begging, demanding, fighting for respect - but simply receiving it. The disrespectful are the denormalised, and they must be fought. A better life is not a dream to strive for held out of reach, it's simply the base state of existence.
Picard and disc forgot that, and its a real fuckin' shame.
Yep. I just watched 'Past Tense' this week, where DS9 spends an entire two-parter advocating for the humane treatment of homeless and unemployed people through an economic policy of full employment. The characters succeed in bringing this about by staging an armed uprising largely led by a black man. It's not only 'woke' but explicitly socialist!
I found SNW to be a fresh breath of air after the garbage that Disco was. Sure, some filler episodes were weird, but at least I got a chuckle out of the Klingons rapping.
"Utopia" a group of comic book fans discover that their favorite read is a secret message from an escapee from a sinister organization.
"The Prisoner" The grandfather of all paranoid fantasy shows. An unnamed civil servant resigns and is kidnapped. He's taken to The Village, where he's told he is Number 6...
snw was too robotic, seems like the actors were being forced to say those lines every scene. they had good premise but the execution was poor, as the other 2 series. picard was equally cringey as std, again they had so MUCH history they can use for the show, but it ended falling flat, and they were using source material from fan novels. (the friendly borg, the rogue changelings,,,etx) all came from various novels.
prodigy and lower decks were much better shows than the 3 though. too bad t hey got cancelled too fast.
SNW was just too much like the other 2. had a big bad romulans at the end of season 1, but they dint do anything with them the next season, just completely disappeared.
What I'd like to see is a complete reboot. No humanoid aliens with five fingers; only nightmare creatures. Erase all prior canon. Start with an Earth based starship with a crew of five hundred humans. And get some real scientists to come up with plots.
dint kurtzman do the transformer series? i dont know why he was chose for this. almost end of every season, was universing ending event, the exact same plot as the previous season, and then they drop it the next seasons. remember the horrible klingon look, and thier cloaking, people had so much issues they partially dropped it on the 2nd season, and "Escaped to the 31st " century.
I think the difference is because Disco and Picard are serialized while SNW and LD are episodic.
On serialized Trek, if the writers get a bug up their asses to do a mirror universe storyline or a section 31 storyline, you're stuck with that tedious bullshit for at least half a season. If episodic Trek has a stinkburger episode that everyone mocks for decades (Sub Rosa), the next week can give you a premise so beloved that they base a whole series on it (Lower Decks).
Episodic Trek can take more risks. I kinda miss the longer seasons for the same reason.
Yes, upon rewatching TNG, I realized that I might actually like less than half of the stories that much, but that still leaves so many stories I do like.
If I was inclined to like a discovery story to start with, it will wear out its welcome pretty soon because they drag it out so long.
Yeah, I also absolutely hate the lighting. Everything is either way too dark or way too bright or somehow both at the same time. I remember seeing a trailer for one of the later seasons and the federation ships seem like they'd super uncomfortable to be on.
Meh, there were a few times where the comedy could have probably taken more of a backseat than it did, but the comedy didn't overall bother me that much. I did like that it was a more unpolished take on what life in Starfleet is like, and the comedy was the vehicle that that view was delivered through. I mean, take Shax and T'ana making it super uncomfortable to be roomed close to the holodecks; realistically, who isn't going to get up to some freaky shit with tech like that? The live action shows kinda dance around it, but I like that Lower Decks was able to address it outright because it's allowed to take itself less seriously.
theres a time and place for comedy but for a scifi should be kept to a minimum.
I think of all things The Orville demonstrates that on both sides - for a show whose premise is "Seth MacFarlane wants to be a TNG-era Star Trek captain" you can see more of his comedy at the start than afterward, presumably because it needed to be a Seth MacFarlane comedy to get funded and then not so much once the funding was secure.
The humour in The Orville was shockingly weak, but that doesn’t speak to sci-fi in general. Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Galaxy Quest, Spaceballs, and Futurama are all great space based comedies.
Everything before the 2009 movie reboot is old trek, including Enterprise despite it's last episode airing only four years before JJ Abrams' movies were released.
Wdym? Star Trek 2009 was an okay movie and Beyond was actually fine. Also I can absolutely recommend Strange New World and Prodigy. Lower Decks can also be fun if you're into fan service.
it was michelle yeoh, she was stealing too much of the other actors spotlight(they dont seem like they could act) and she had to leave the show. saru was a close second though. it was wierd how they forced michael, yes its name of the woman that the showrunner forced into the show.
That's selling Lower Decks a bit short. Yes, it has a big focus on comedy, but it has some genuinely great pathos that's up there with the best of Trek.
"In the past, Klingons believed humans to be weak and easily defeated. But your species has proved its toDuj. Sito was a warrior. You do not honor her."
"You didn't know her!"
"Do you follow every order from your commanders?"
"No!"
"Sito made her choice. You want to solve puzzles and mysteries? Your friend gave her life to protect that. [scoffs] She would not approve of your actions."
No shit. I was reading as I was scrolling and I read “Old Trek” and saw Data and it didn’t make sense. It’s literally called “The Next Generation” because it was new after TOS.
Yeah, anyone who complains that Trek is suddenly all woke and political now never watched any classic Star Trek or hasn't been paying attention back then.
I've watched all of Star Trek on the big screens and the small ones at least once - including Section 31 - and it's as political as it has ever been. And there has always been brilliance and absolute dogshit. Those who say NuTrek is all shite don't know what they're talking about.
they called STARGATE WOKE too, of all the scifi shows, they try to call a show that did use as much accuracy as possible to the USAF in the early years. additionally this was also discussed on one of cringey ml, hexbear posts for some reason, they are framing it as WOKE. they think its increasing propaganda because its based on USAF/CANADA/russian(to an extent).
I agree "old" Trek was woke too. It just blended in better imo. (Especially with Disco, it felt like there was a metaphorical spotlight on the "woke".)
old trek had more subtlty, nutrek was too forced and out in the open to the point, it was distracting from the series plots. and std and picard were not very good shows. SNW need better actors/acting though, although they have much better arcs than the last 2.
The kiss between Kirk and Uhurah was supposed to be between Uhurah and Spock. Shatner threw a fit and got the script changed. He essentially stole Spock's girlfriend because he wanted all the romance scenes.
The kiss between Kirk and Uhurah was supposed to be between Uhurah and Spock. Shatner threw a fit and got the script changed. He essentially stole Spock's girlfriend because he wanted all the romance scenes.
Shatner certainly caused problems, but one scene, one kiss, out of the whole of ToS, hardly seems like it would have established a relationship with Uhurah. 🤷♂️
Honestly just miss everyone working together. I only did about 1.5 seasons each of Picard and Discovery, but I just couldn't take all the "the enemy is each other". If I wanted that I'd watch the expanse? Ftr I will watch them in entirety and fully judge at that point, rn I haven't so can't say they offer nothing. SNW seems to get it though which I appreciate and hope continues. There are so few optimistic sci-fi shows I really want trek to stick to that niche.
I hate posts about some vocal asshat complaining about something being woke. Anybody who uses the word woke derogatory is an asshole who doesn't deserve a moment of my attention.
Hm and here I thought new trek was bad because of weak and lazy story writing, including blatant inconsistencies with old trek and 'burning' the original cannon in order to avoid being accountable to it. 🤔
What was that show that had the first recognized interracial kiss? Way back in November 22 1968 ... honestly, if Star Trek had done that it would have been considered shocking and "woke".
STD and picard is pretty much the reason why they start calling it woke, they dint care of the plot/and the series were crappy, just that the showrunners try to overemphasize certain characthers that they are not white, and straight and men. also the problem with STD, was naming an unlikable characther/actor as the lead role and to captain with a name that is only assigned to one gender, they were hoping this is a distraction for a poor series/writing overall. an analagous media, is J lawrence being a goodie two shoes, mary sue about her importance.
What I liked was how casually they were progressive. Like no biggie, this is just a thing, it's the future so why would it be a big deal. When they wanted to speak to a modern day issue with more gravity, either some time travel to create a human context where it could be controversial, or some alien metaphor that was super obvious but still technically not humans being backwards.
Discovery had a habit of being a bit too over the top about it and self congratulatory in media.
A good modern example of all things I think was the Orville. Humans again are casually progressive, so they had the all male species be the focus of gender issues.
The problem is that when people say "New Trek", they actually mean Discovery.
Discovery is a poorly written show made by people who do not grok Trek, and think that high ranking naval officers behaving like teenagers makes for good TV. SNW is alsio Nu Trek and manages to be faithful to the original vision while introducing new concepts.
Calling people critical of poory written shows bigots is very discrespectful. You may like it, but that doesn't mean that everybody else has to like it as well.
nu-trek is post JJ abrams movies trek, any series releasted after it, and especially if they copy all the flashy scene effects of the movies and writing.
Imagine griping about hamfisted social commentary in Star Trek. It's never been subtle.
My biggest gripe about nutrek is too much section 31. It sends the message that the utopian post-scarcity society is only possible because of unaccountable fascists slinking around in black pleather behind the scenes.
I completely agree with this. Old Trek at least pretended to have a debate about Right vs Wrong, and chose Right.
New Trek just choosed Right from the get-go and smiles condescendingly at Wrong for being Wrong.
Like, sure, I agree with everything it's saying. I just hate the implicit arrogance with which it says it.
Also, unrelated: Old Trek was portable! You could take the same script and turn it into theater stage production easily, losing none of the plot and gravitas. You could take it 50 years back in time and it'd still be trackable by an audience.
New Trek has way too many (often jaw-dropping) visual effects to be portable. You might be able to re-enact parts of it in a Floyd lazer show with everyone wired up for the occasional flight sequence.
Alright, I'll try to explain it better. For me, trek was about people overcoming their differences and trying to work things out despite them, and being kind to each other. Newer shows lack this ideas, in my opinion.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
I understand that explaining my position is probably futile, and only bring more moking.
:::
I don't agree with your point.
First, there's a lot of old trek episodes basically just saying „X is wrong, y'all stop doing this, please!“
Second, there still is a lot of times new trek shows that working together is beneficial for everyone. There's even a whole show exactly about that called Prodigy, and it's really great.
True, in old trek they too had "we know better" thing, but the feeling was different (for me), as in they were hopeful in tone and intentionally tried to be non-violent even in situations where it would be a lot easier to just force their way.
I will look at Prodigy again, thank you for recommendation.
I don't find Strange New World for example particularly violent, even compared to old trek. It is sometimes grittier when exploring how war traumatizes people caught up in it, sure but I don't think that's what you mean.
However, that is not what's being criticized usually. Most complaints about new trek being "woke" is about stuff like the inclusion of a gay couple or nonbinary characters.
For me, trek was about people overcoming their differences and trying to work things out despite them, and being kind to each other. Newer shows lack this ideas, in my opinion.
In Discovery, a Vulcan woman gets married to a seven-foot tall walking squid man. In seasons 4-5, Book nearly destroys the galaxy and they forgive him because they understand he was traumatised. These strike me as pretty clear examples (just two, I could add more!) of people 'overcoming their differences and trying to work things out despite them, and being kind to each other'.
This is entirely separate from the question of whether those plots lines and character arcs were well-written - they largely weren't, IMO. But they did happen!
I could watch TOS, TNG caused me anxiety for whatever reason, watched some DS9.
TOS - nice and cozy, it's old minded, but well meant mostly. I'm a Star Wars person. Also liked Babylon V and Stargate SG-1.
TNG - seen very little of it, get bored because of not tracking what even happens there and what's the purpose of those scenes, but I have understood that there's maybe something smart there somewhere.
DS9 - I didn't like it, really seemed to involve a lot of virtue signaling and identity politics. I don't like the former because it's all signals and no action, I don't like the latter because you are disadvantaged if you don't fit well to a stereotype of some protected group in some dimension, and nobody really does, except for brainless activists. Spherical libertarian ethics in vacuum or even spherical Marxist ethics in vacuum would fit me better, but as we all know, these are mostly represented IRL by idiots.
So - DS9 is bad. It's a paper model alternative to Babylon V with vaguely Trek-ish ideas, except Babylon V is much deeper (but also inconsistent and generally nuts, which is fine, the universe is too). It's too morally sterile as compared to TOS and TNG.
Haven't seen any of other "old" Trek.
Haven't seen any of the "new" Star Trek, if it's similar to the "new" Star Wars, then nothing of value was lost.
The point is ... I agree complaining about "woke" in Trek is strange, but it's strange for any sci-fi to be honest. These people probably think Heinlein wasn't "woke", but I'm almost certain he would be hated by them if he lived in our time. He did references to jungle law, human predatory nature and the idea that some human society developments are degenerate, but all these things are more specific than just mentioning them, for a real discussion about humanity.
I don't get it, it's like we watched two different Star Trek franchises. And while producing some real bullcrap, new Star Wars has some of the best Star Wars ever produced with Rogue One and Andor (also, Rebels is surprisingly good).
Also I do think virtue signalling and identity political do have some value to some capacity.
But calling DS9 'too morally sterile' is just baffling me. Have you even watched episodes like 'For the uniform'?
Also I do think virtue signalling and identity political do have some value to some capacity.
Well, there are some cases you can assume a thing and some cases you can't. Sometimes you can trust the other side to send the message of the right size and form in one piece over TCP, sometimes you can't. Say, if you are a Gopher server, you can. Sometimes you can wait longer, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't condition stopping some process by waiting for a response, sometimes you can't.
It's the same in life. You may see the good parts of something and not see the bad parts. Or the other way around. Life also doesn't have fairness, you can easily encounter a top level boss after just creating a character, in game terms. And no justice, no error processing, nothing of the sort.
So - answering your question, I don't remember a single DS9 episode right now, just my impression of their structure and level of complexity.
Rogue One and Andor are fine, but I wouldn't call them some of the best Star Wars made, more like the only Star Wars made since Disney acquisition. They are set in the same universe, more or less, that I can accept. And they touch upon the same things good parts of the old universe did. And they make references to things I didn't expect to be referenced under Disney. I can agree they are good. Probably just things shown I imagined differently, but then my imagination was trying to make them feel safe, similar to the second paragraph here, while Andor shows it all as a looming failure, which for may intents and purposes that phase of the rebellion indeed was.
I have no idea what you are talking about in your first two paragraphs.
So - answering your question, I don't remember a single DS9 episode right now, just my impression of their structure and level of complexity.
Maybe you can have another go. Especially the Dominion War episodes are really good, but also there are other really good episodes.
Rogue One and Andor are fine, but I wouldn't call them some of the best Star Wars made
They are though. They are definitely better than the prequels and arguably at least as good as the OT, at least from a story telling and movie making perspective.
Andor doesn't show failure though, it shows how fascist systems work and how fascism affects the 'little people'.
I have no idea what you are talking about in your first two paragraphs.
This sentence looks as if implying it were my fault. And of course it is, but that'd be any misunderstanding, with some other common traits of misunderstandings, like that it's symmetrically the other side's fault too.
Meant that you never know the upsides and the downsides of something for real. Just in some limited model, with your own imperfect projection of the universe.
Maybe you can have another go.
Feel more like another attempt at TNG, but yes, maybe.
They are though. They are definitely better than the prequels and arguably at least as good as the OT, at least from a story telling and movie making perspective.
You are right, of course, in at least one of the myriad of possible interpretations.
In mine half the good things about them are a bit masqueraded references to how the old SW EU felt, and not original decisions. And in the rest there are flaws as bad as those of prequels. No way they are better than the OT. They may be better than prequels, if we are not taking a huge part of prequels' atmosphere and removing it from flaws, calling it author's style (I do ; I don't, however, ignore parts that seem left as they were because Lucas lost the interest in deepening them or finishing them, I actually suspect he's a bit on the spectrum too).
I also don't consider prequels obviously bad, which seems to be such a common opinion that its bearers often can't elaborate on it, other than vague terms like "bad dialogue" and "bad pacing" and "doesn't make sense". I would, of course, welcome good supporting points on that.
Andor doesn’t show failure though, it shows how fascist systems work and how fascism affects the ‘little people’.
That's what a huge part of Star Wars is about, except "fascism" is a word a bit tasteless for the more generic thing.
By "looming failure" I mean Luthen&co's approach to planning, risk and lack of backups, and that they also act like agents of something far more powerful than the Rebellion in that stage. In the EU at that point they'd be all surveilled by ISB 3 steps into the chain from anybody who touched any of the suspicious senators. The private moments and conversations would be intentionally arranged and rare. Instead they act like Soviet agents in USA or vice versa, as if knowing that at worst they'll be exchanged for someone. Almost like ambassadors.
OK, I guess we might still see that Luthen was just an upper society cynical, but naive type, and in the end learn that the Emperor watched them all every moment and laughed.
Meant that you never know the upsides and the downsides of something for real. Just in some limited model, with your own imperfect projection of the universe.
That's just some blank, insignificant statement, either worthless for any discussion or an attempt invalidate discussions.
That, however, seems to be your tactic anyway. You seem wanting to make everything about how everything is smarter of perspective and interpretation, and that is not the kind of discussion I find fruitful, so I stop discussing with you now. Have a nice day.
Agree completely about Heinlein. The opinions people have about what he would have agreed or disagreed with are baffling to me. It's like the only things they read are Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Beyond This Horizon and they believe he was advocating a position instead of trying to get you to think and ask questions.
I'm so tired of the idea that "an armed society is a polite society" is any kind of good or that it is a society that should be longed for. Same for mandatory service.
It's also that things shown in his books are orthogonal to modern popular categories.
IIRC Door into Summer has something resembling socialism, not shown as good or bad, actually shown as "everything both different and still the same on the ape planet", especially the "recent news" moment after unfreezing when I last re-read it, it's amazing how that didn't get old since the book was written, you can feel that it touches exactly the same strings it was intended to touch then, full feeling of presence.
IIRC Starship Troopers has a few moments clearly showing flaws in the system, Rico clearly feeling that was wrong, and the general mood being "we know it's not ideal, we just needed something and the previous one broke" with a bit of pretense and moralism and importance, like in everything such IRL.
IIRC Orphans of the Sky can illustrate any political position conceivable, that values a human.
IIRC Citizen of the Galaxy is really hard to perceive as something he's usually accused of supporting.
We should only watch the real old trek.
I mean, it was one of the first shows ever to:
but it wasn’t woke!
MLK Jr himself called Nichelle Nichols to encourage her to play Uhura. First interracial kiss on scripted television. She worked with NASA after Trek to encourage and recruit black and female astronauts.
Which sounds wholesome (and I don't say it's not at all) until you realize Nichols wanted to do something else, I think it was musicals, and King convinced her by saying "we need you to have representation. When you're gone, anyone can take that position, even an alien" and so she stayed instead of self realization.
Certainly, worse things happened to her in her life.
That is pretty sad, but I think she and he were both right to respect the impact she had by staying in the role.
The most iconic science fiction crew of all time will forever include a prominent impressive black woman. Nichelle made that happen, through her performances.
That's a common myth. There were several others before, some of which also had Shatner as one half of the kissing pair, believe it or not. Trek's was definitely more high-profile, though, and with several of the others it may have been hard to notice with that particular combination with the quality of televisions at the time; European man with Asian woman probably wasn't noticeable on a tiny '50s black and white TV.
Have a Japanese character about 20 years after ww2.
Have a Russian character during the Cold War.
If it wasn't for Kirk banging his way around the galaxy, it would have been.
Nothing compared to Riker.
It's all Old Trek that came before the J.J. Abrams movie reboot.
Define woke then, please.
do you kids today really need /s behind every s?
You have no idea how many wild claims my autistic ass has seen that were absolutely serious.
It is because sarcasm needs tone. Which you do not have in text. As there is a person for every possible opinion out there and they have become more vocal in the internet i personally am annoyed by the motion that we are supposed to spot sarcasm. We all should just put that ugly s behind it, it is not that hard.
I guess i should have replied to the comment before you btw.
not necessarily. you need context and it comes from other places than just tone of voice.
if someone just drops "of course star trek is woke" in the middle of written text in random place, it can be harder to decipher the intent than it would be in voice. but the original commenter did quite a good job to guide reader to understand their position on the topic. combined with what community we are in it is a no-brainer.
yeah, sometimes there are stupid people on the internet, but sometimes a joke is just a joke. in the old days when internet sounded like a tortured robot, people used to say "be conservative in what you send out and liberal in what you receive". times have indeed changed, but the rule still can come handy sometimes.
"Frodo didn't offer her any tea"
"And the more they drank, the more sober they were becoming"
Just off the top of my head.
So you disagree that in many online conversations sarcasm is confused for serious statements and vise versa?
No, that's not what I said. Just that to make clearly distinguishable and good sarcasm you don't need "/s". Most people can't, of course.
were they, or did you just assume so?
Do you really want to say they weren't? Do you really want to deny my experiences?
Edit: don't bother answering, I'm blocking you. I don't like people referring to middle aged people as 'kids' and I don't like people doubting others' experiences without any knowledge about said experiences.
i do. you just did not recognize pretty clear sarcasm, it is documented in writing above. it is unlikely that it was only time in your life it happened. so yeah, some of these experiences in your past were also cases where you did misread the situation.
your badly acted offense does not change anything about that.
All those were token characters regularly repeating stereotypes about said groups, but OK.
Showing people from different sides of the curtain working together in future was kinda normal for science fiction.
The whole PR representation of the Cold War was like "friendly competition" or "hostile agreement" or a schism of the same religion. A good faith disagreement. USSR in some sense pretended to be like USA, but a better one, to bring the next stage of humanity's development. You know all those failed\cancelled continuations, Half-Life 3, KotOR 3, Perl 6, FreeBSD 5 (ok, that transpired and didn't kill FreeBSD completely, but), Gnome 3, KDE 4, Star Wars after 2005 and till being bought by Disney. Or ambitious alternative projects that went nowhere.
At the same time there were various levels of propaganda on either side, at the bottom for one it was the free world about to nuke dem damn commies, for the other it was the civilized peaceful humanity about to squash decadent anglosaxon zionists. But note how both variants imply there is good in the other side, just suppressed because they are possessed by evil.
So - not so strange. People perceive that friendliness as something new and the current hostility as something old, sometimes that's not true. In some sense our time is more chauvinist than 60s and 70s, not less.
I feel pretty much the same about anyone who complains about something being "woke", no matter the topic - if perceiving and objecting to harms against and struggles of others not like yourself offends you, if seeing others actively try to work in support of those others is something you just can't stomach, then you aren't someone whose opinion I care about.
Plus the folks making those complaints can rarely define what woke is, or struggle to without using language that will immediately "out" their actual objections.
If anyone ever uses the word woke you can automatically assume they're a moron who only gets outraged at what fox news tells them to be outraged at.
Or we used it ironically.
It annoys me that new trek got wrapped up in this discourse because my dislike of it is because of the image above
Old trek was super "woke" and optimistic, I see new trek as too focused on war and it paints the future as though they never achieved luxury space communism free of scarcity
I think that, starting with the Marquis, Trek was trying to address issues that might arise even with luxury space communism.
"It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
I think your comment could reasonably apply to early Discovery and Picard, but not so much to the rest of nuTrek. It could equally apply to DS9 and Enterprise - but not so much to the rest oldTrek (Voyager might straddle the line).
I think it’s most accurate to say that Star Trek as a whole has generally shown alternating waves of reifying and challenging the utopian future concept. Overall that gives a message that a better society can be achieved, but the work of living up to that vision can never end. It works for me.
nutrek was bad from start to finish, lowerdecks and prodigy was much better shows than the kurtzman 3 he did.
nuTrek has been pretty great for me, overall. Prodigy never managed to win me over, though. I'm well out of its target audience, so that's no surprise.
At least on that front, it seemed to be rather conditional. If you were not an organic humanoid, you had a much more difficult time.
Just look at Measure of a Man, and what Starfleet later tried to pull with Lal, or what happened on the Sutherland. Or the ExoComps. Or what happened to the deprecated EMH Mk. I units, and the Voyager's EMH and his holonovel. Or the UGLY BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER crystal aliens. Or the Horta. Or Hugh.
I cannot imagine that the Federation would have ordered the developing a form of memetic virus that would telepathically spread amongst the Klingon population and wipe them all out when they were at war with the Empire.
But they did order it against the Borg, intending to use Hugh as a vector.
Yes, and it was shown as a huge internal conflict in TNG, and honestly even TOS had a bunch of inconsistent morality that didn't quite fit a utopian society, you have a lot of state secrets, a lot of espionage, paranoia, and a cold war that includes violating the prime directive on a regular basis as long as they think the Klingons will also violate around the same degree, and that's really not a very good idea, I really doubt the Vulcans would arm a bronze age civilization on a developing planet with muskets if they thought the Klingons might also do That.
If anything, I think that it might be more likely for the Vulcans to do such a thing. Don't forget that they did interfere with human development a bunch, because they could not readily put them into their existing categories, out of concern for what might happen otherwise.
It does not seem unreasonable that under the same circumstances, they might find it logical to arm a bronze-age civilisation against an alien enemy.
i remember its the reason why the borg even exist, someone mention gene roddenberrry was fighting people that the parasites in that one episode was susceptible to evil and corruption if they are bieng controlled. so they created a borg as a compromise. the episode where the parasites was controlling star trek command and it sent a signal to the delta quadrant, sound familiar just the like borg.
The idea of the borg feel more like "hey, the federation sounds suspiciously like communism that works, can't we introduce "evil communism" to show how evil it is"?
i think the parasites were suppose to be the og borg, but gene or someone dint like that idea, that the starfleet can ben controlled by an alien.
Sounds probable judging from the stories of the writers fighting Roddenberry's story mandates. And as soon as he was dead, they did the infiltrating founders anyway on DS9.
that episode was wierd, since everyone thought there was a followup. because they send the big bad signal to the delta quadrant which indicates they were from there about to invade, the queen that was controlling the host had the "map of sectors in the background, which i was taken to say he was sending it there). later replaced by the borg which did the same thing.
No, the virus was meant to exploit a fault in their visual programming to kill the Borg drones and wipe them out. The individuality came as an accidental side effect, when Hugh developed a taste of individuality after losing his connection to the Collective, and roamed around the Enterprise.
When they came to collect, the collective re-assimilated Hugh and also got the individuality he gained, which then led them to explode cubes.
If only Rick Berman would've let us have luxury gay space communism this wouldn't have happened
It's easier on the writers when they take away all the easy. There's an episode of DS9 where the Defiant's computer is broken and they have to do everything manually. The scene of them undocking and leaving ds9 was pretty dramatic. It let them show off the crew's hyper competency without the use of the future tech.
I really hated when Discovery jumped to a post apocalypse future, but those ended up being the best seasons of the show.
they jumped 900years in the future to get away from thier horrible 2 seasons. i once so a trailer for s4, yup as i predicted they went all in margianalized the other people in the show that made trek great.
Picard falls over because what should be left as a character study has clumsy attempts to jam 'action trek' up it, often derailing it. DISC tells us the universe is dark and full of terrors. Both tell us we fucked up and that we should fear.
PIC and DISC remain trapped in the time and political and emotional states of their making. Jihadists and racism, the same political and bigoted circles over and over. SNW and LD - and yes The Orville - like classic trek show us a version of this - but then reach past to show we could have something better. To normalise that something better.
And it's in the normalisation where Trek's REAL power has always lain. You can tell a thousand aesops, clumsy or skilled on the fool who oppressed his equal, but they don't hold a single candle to the simple fact Uhura is a bridge officer. To McCoy yielding without second thought to M'Benga as a more skilled MO. To former enemies in the crew, women in command, loving single black fathers, genderqueer species, Autistic ciphers, queer couples, trans children. All of them normalised. All of them not begging, demanding, fighting for respect - but simply receiving it. The disrespectful are the denormalised, and they must be fought. A better life is not a dream to strive for held out of reach, it's simply the base state of existence.
Picard and disc forgot that, and its a real fuckin' shame.
Yep. I just watched 'Past Tense' this week, where DS9 spends an entire two-parter advocating for the humane treatment of homeless and unemployed people through an economic policy of full employment. The characters succeed in bringing this about by staging an armed uprising largely led by a black man. It's not only 'woke' but explicitly socialist!
Wait till you get to 'Far Beyond the Stars'. Exploring racism from the pov of a black man in the 50s is different.
That argument is indeed stupid, but Kurtzman Trek is inferior in every other way.
Everything is just bad.
That's my impression from DIS, but isn't SNW supposed to be decent?
Nope.
I tried a few episodes because someone said they'd done a great space battle. The battle was 8/10, but every thing else was just dumb.
I found SNW to be a fresh breath of air after the garbage that Disco was. Sure, some filler episodes were weird, but at least I got a chuckle out of the Klingons rapping.
The problem with the K (for Klingon, of course) Pop scene is that the song didn't last long enough.
Shit, you're right! I had more of a Hiphop vibe in my memory. I love how the Klingon is so annoyed that he can't prevent the singing. Peak comedy.
Here are two shows worth watching.
"Utopia" a group of comic book fans discover that their favorite read is a secret message from an escapee from a sinister organization.
"The Prisoner" The grandfather of all paranoid fantasy shows. An unnamed civil servant resigns and is kidnapped. He's taken to The Village, where he's told he is Number 6...
Thank you for the recommendations!
In case anyone wants to watch those, too, they're "Utopia (2013)" and "The Prisoner (1967)". There are quite a few series and movies with those names.
silly me
also make sure to watch the UK version of Utopia, not the very very bad US remake
SNW is decent. S2 E2 is an especially strong episode.
snw was too robotic, seems like the actors were being forced to say those lines every scene. they had good premise but the execution was poor, as the other 2 series. picard was equally cringey as std, again they had so MUCH history they can use for the show, but it ended falling flat, and they were using source material from fan novels. (the friendly borg, the rogue changelings,,,etx) all came from various novels.
prodigy and lower decks were much better shows than the 3 though. too bad t hey got cancelled too fast.
If he's the one behind "Strange New Worlds" I have to agree. Watched about three episodes and gave up.
Team lands on a strange object with the power to move a planet. "Hey, let me grab this thing!"
SNW was just too much like the other 2. had a big bad romulans at the end of season 1, but they dint do anything with them the next season, just completely disappeared.
To be fair, the Romulans only showed up because this was an alternate timeline version of a TOS episode.
What I'd like to see is a complete reboot. No humanoid aliens with five fingers; only nightmare creatures. Erase all prior canon. Start with an Earth based starship with a crew of five hundred humans. And get some real scientists to come up with plots.
enterprise wouldve gone on longer if les moonves dint trash the show. that wouldve been a good start.
dint kurtzman do the transformer series? i dont know why he was chose for this. almost end of every season, was universing ending event, the exact same plot as the previous season, and then they drop it the next seasons. remember the horrible klingon look, and thier cloaking, people had so much issues they partially dropped it on the 2nd season, and "Escaped to the 31st " century.
Strange New World and Prodigy are really nice shows though and I can see some old trek fans being very entertained by Lower Decks (including me).
I love all three and I am so glad they came along after DIS, effectively saving the franchise IMO
Old Trek fan here. Love the crap out of SNW and Lower Decks!
This.
Idk, I think Discovery just sucks.
Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks kick ass, though.
Edit: Discovery and Picard. Picard sucks ass, too. I just cannot force myself further than episode two.
I think the difference is because Disco and Picard are serialized while SNW and LD are episodic.
On serialized Trek, if the writers get a bug up their asses to do a mirror universe storyline or a section 31 storyline, you're stuck with that tedious bullshit for at least half a season. If episodic Trek has a stinkburger episode that everyone mocks for decades (Sub Rosa), the next week can give you a premise so beloved that they base a whole series on it (Lower Decks).
Episodic Trek can take more risks. I kinda miss the longer seasons for the same reason.
Yes, upon rewatching TNG, I realized that I might actually like less than half of the stories that much, but that still leaves so many stories I do like.
If I was inclined to like a discovery story to start with, it will wear out its welcome pretty soon because they drag it out so long.
But how can this be? They are shoving so much fan service down your throat.
As we all know, after 2 bad seasons, fan service makes good show!
That's fair.
Try Picard season three though, that was way better than seasons 1&2. :-)
No it wasn't
I always understood that particular emoticon to mean the same thing as /s. Or mom emailed me..in 1997
I liked the first few minutes of Picard but nothing after.
I just gave picard another go and knocked it off but jeeeeeesus. So much nonsensical bullshit and how can you faff about so much with so few episodes.
Yeah, I also absolutely hate the lighting. Everything is either way too dark or way too bright or somehow both at the same time. I remember seeing a trailer for one of the later seasons and the federation ships seem like they'd super uncomfortable to be on.
Meh, there were a few times where the comedy could have probably taken more of a backseat than it did, but the comedy didn't overall bother me that much. I did like that it was a more unpolished take on what life in Starfleet is like, and the comedy was the vehicle that that view was delivered through. I mean, take Shax and T'ana making it super uncomfortable to be roomed close to the holodecks; realistically, who isn't going to get up to some freaky shit with tech like that? The live action shows kinda dance around it, but I like that Lower Decks was able to address it outright because it's allowed to take itself less seriously.
I think of all things The Orville demonstrates that on both sides - for a show whose premise is "Seth MacFarlane wants to be a TNG-era Star Trek captain" you can see more of his comedy at the start than afterward, presumably because it needed to be a Seth MacFarlane comedy to get funded and then not so much once the funding was secure.
The humour in The Orville was shockingly weak, but that doesn’t speak to sci-fi in general. Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Galaxy Quest, Spaceballs, and Futurama are all great space based comedies.
TNG is "Old Trek" now. Thanks for ruining my day at 6:49am.
Everything before the 2009 movie reboot is old trek, including Enterprise despite it's last episode airing only four years before JJ Abrams' movies were released.
Ha ha what are you talking about that's not a thing that ever happened ha ha ha
Wdym? Star Trek 2009 was an okay movie and Beyond was actually fine. Also I can absolutely recommend Strange New World and Prodigy. Lower Decks can also be fun if you're into fan service.
I wish I could like DIS, but every season I've been disappointed in the plot points and character writing. It could've been so good
Saru is the high point of that show. He's the only character I was able to like unconditionally. He should have remained captain!
it was michelle yeoh, she was stealing too much of the other actors spotlight(they dont seem like they could act) and she had to leave the show. saru was a close second though. it was wierd how they forced michael, yes its name of the woman that the showrunner forced into the show.
Let's be happy then that there's more new trek than just disco.
Orville is more Roddenberrian than nutrek will ever be.
That's selling Lower Decks a bit short. Yes, it has a big focus on comedy, but it has some genuinely great pathos that's up there with the best of Trek.
"In the past, Klingons believed humans to be weak and easily defeated. But your species has proved its toDuj. Sito was a warrior. You do not honor her."
"You didn't know her!"
"Do you follow every order from your commanders?"
"No!"
"Sito made her choice. You want to solve puzzles and mysteries? Your friend gave her life to protect that. [scoffs] She would not approve of your actions."
Honestly, it was long before that when I tuned out zombie Star Trek forever.
No shit. I was reading as I was scrolling and I read “Old Trek” and saw Data and it didn’t make sense. It’s literally called “The Next Generation” because it was new after TOS.
I'll fucking say. I had to re-read the thing three times to figure out what the hell they were talking about, saying "Old Trek" over a shot of TNG.
nutrek is consideredin jj-abrams-present.
old trek before "enterprise" the series.
Yeah, anyone who complains that Trek is suddenly all woke and political now never watched any classic Star Trek or hasn't been paying attention back then.
I've watched all of Star Trek on the big screens and the small ones at least once - including Section 31 - and it's as political as it has ever been. And there has always been brilliance and absolute dogshit. Those who say NuTrek is all shite don't know what they're talking about.
Nice username btw.
Thanks.
they called STARGATE WOKE too, of all the scifi shows, they try to call a show that did use as much accuracy as possible to the USAF in the early years. additionally this was also discussed on one of cringey ml, hexbear posts for some reason, they are framing it as WOKE. they think its increasing propaganda because its based on USAF/CANADA/russian(to an extent).
I agree "old" Trek was woke too. It just blended in better imo. (Especially with Disco, it felt like there was a metaphorical spotlight on the "woke".)
old trek had more subtlty, nutrek was too forced and out in the open to the point, it was distracting from the series plots. and std and picard were not very good shows. SNW need better actors/acting though, although they have much better arcs than the last 2.
I'm still irritated about that scene on behalf of Nimoy. Shatner should have been told to stuff his ego up his ass.
What went wrong with that scene?
The kiss between Kirk and Uhurah was supposed to be between Uhurah and Spock. Shatner threw a fit and got the script changed. He essentially stole Spock's girlfriend because he wanted all the romance scenes.
No. In this case, Shatner knew the kiss was going to be historic and therefore wanted to be the one to go down in history for the kiss.
That said, Shatner did what he could to keep the scene from getting cut.
"Spock's girlfriend?" That's not TOS canon, in any way.
Correct, because Shatner threw a fit.
What happened?
The kiss between Kirk and Uhurah was supposed to be between Uhurah and Spock. Shatner threw a fit and got the script changed. He essentially stole Spock's girlfriend because he wanted all the romance scenes.
Shatner certainly caused problems, but one scene, one kiss, out of the whole of ToS, hardly seems like it would have established a relationship with Uhurah. 🤷♂️
Honestly just miss everyone working together. I only did about 1.5 seasons each of Picard and Discovery, but I just couldn't take all the "the enemy is each other". If I wanted that I'd watch the expanse? Ftr I will watch them in entirety and fully judge at that point, rn I haven't so can't say they offer nothing. SNW seems to get it though which I appreciate and hope continues. There are so few optimistic sci-fi shows I really want trek to stick to that niche.
I hate posts about some vocal asshat complaining about something being woke. Anybody who uses the word woke derogatory is an asshole who doesn't deserve a moment of my attention.
Hm and here I thought new trek was bad because of weak and lazy story writing, including blatant inconsistencies with old trek and 'burning' the original cannon in order to avoid being accountable to it. 🤔
What was that show that had the first recognized interracial kiss? Way back in November 22 1968 ... honestly, if Star Trek had done that it would have been considered shocking and "woke".
Star Trek has ALWAYS been controversial.
not only that, interracial crew, a Japanese, russian and a black woman on the main crew!!!
I mean, what's to understand? Kids are dumb and can't understand media, adults are dumb and can't understand media they didn't watch as kids.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
That's why we love Daddy Data 💕 🤖
"And look what happened to Lol. She fucking died!"
STD and picard is pretty much the reason why they start calling it woke, they dint care of the plot/and the series were crappy, just that the showrunners try to overemphasize certain characthers that they are not white, and straight and men. also the problem with STD, was naming an unlikable characther/actor as the lead role and to captain with a name that is only assigned to one gender, they were hoping this is a distraction for a poor series/writing overall. an analagous media, is J lawrence being a goodie two shoes, mary sue about her importance.
Picard? The series literally laser focused on and named after the cis white man?
conservatives were ignoring the premise, they only care about which characthers were acting out of thier traditional roles.
What I liked was how casually they were progressive. Like no biggie, this is just a thing, it's the future so why would it be a big deal. When they wanted to speak to a modern day issue with more gravity, either some time travel to create a human context where it could be controversial, or some alien metaphor that was super obvious but still technically not humans being backwards.
Discovery had a habit of being a bit too over the top about it and self congratulatory in media.
A good modern example of all things I think was the Orville. Humans again are casually progressive, so they had the all male species be the focus of gender issues.
The problem is that when people say "New Trek", they actually mean Discovery.
Discovery is a poorly written show made by people who do not grok Trek, and think that high ranking naval officers behaving like teenagers makes for good TV. SNW is alsio Nu Trek and manages to be faithful to the original vision while introducing new concepts.
Calling people critical of poory written shows bigots is very discrespectful. You may like it, but that doesn't mean that everybody else has to like it as well.
They made because they’re not awake.
But don't you get it: woke is when no cleavage plunges.
nu-trek is post JJ abrams movies trek, any series releasted after it, and especially if they copy all the flashy scene effects of the movies and writing.
Data did not use contractions (as pointed out by his evil twin), so that would be "choose it is own sex and appearance"
You could've just pointed out that it was supposed to be "its" instead, which is also not a contraction lol
I thought it would be funny this way. Guess not
That's the pain of text only communication, I guess
I appreciate it now that I know though!
Imagine griping about hamfisted social commentary in Star Trek. It's never been subtle.
My biggest gripe about nutrek is too much section 31. It sends the message that the utopian post-scarcity society is only possible because of unaccountable fascists slinking around in black pleather behind the scenes.
I completely agree with this. Old Trek at least pretended to have a debate about Right vs Wrong, and chose Right.
New Trek just choosed Right from the get-go and smiles condescendingly at Wrong for being Wrong.
Like, sure, I agree with everything it's saying. I just hate the implicit arrogance with which it says it.
Also, unrelated: Old Trek was portable! You could take the same script and turn it into theater stage production easily, losing none of the plot and gravitas. You could take it 50 years back in time and it'd still be trackable by an audience.
New Trek has way too many (often jaw-dropping) visual effects to be portable. You might be able to re-enact parts of it in a Floyd lazer show with everyone wired up for the occasional flight sequence.
“I only watch Trek that is well written.
Which means I don’t watch ANY Trek!” :)
::: spoiler Alternate joke “I only watch Trek that is well written.
Which means I only watch Star Wars Andor.” :) :::
That means you just watch DS-9, right?
I'm about to start a fight, I think.
They are just different, modern is so cynical and edgy and, yes, 'woke' in the way that makes it feel foreign.
Lads, is being foreign woke?
Alright, I'll try to explain it better. For me, trek was about people overcoming their differences and trying to work things out despite them, and being kind to each other. Newer shows lack this ideas, in my opinion.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler I understand that explaining my position is probably futile, and only bring more moking. :::
I don't agree with your point.
First, there's a lot of old trek episodes basically just saying „X is wrong, y'all stop doing this, please!“
Second, there still is a lot of times new trek shows that working together is beneficial for everyone. There's even a whole show exactly about that called Prodigy, and it's really great.
True, in old trek they too had "we know better" thing, but the feeling was different (for me), as in they were hopeful in tone and intentionally tried to be non-violent even in situations where it would be a lot easier to just force their way. I will look at Prodigy again, thank you for recommendation.
I don't find Strange New World for example particularly violent, even compared to old trek. It is sometimes grittier when exploring how war traumatizes people caught up in it, sure but I don't think that's what you mean.
However, that is not what's being criticized usually. Most complaints about new trek being "woke" is about stuff like the inclusion of a gay couple or nonbinary characters.
In Discovery, a Vulcan woman gets married to a seven-foot tall walking squid man. In seasons 4-5, Book nearly destroys the galaxy and they forgive him because they understand he was traumatised. These strike me as pretty clear examples (just two, I could add more!) of people 'overcoming their differences and trying to work things out despite them, and being kind to each other'.
This is entirely separate from the question of whether those plots lines and character arcs were well-written - they largely weren't, IMO. But they did happen!
most older fans dont like STD, they considered as a alternate timeline.
This is irrelevant to the discussion, which was not 'Is it an alternate timeline/who likes it?' but 'does it possess certain qualities?'.
I am baffled by this language you speak. Are you trying to break an AI overlord by speaking in paradoxes or...?
What does "woke" mean? What makes modern Trek woke but old Trek not?
I could watch TOS, TNG caused me anxiety for whatever reason, watched some DS9.
TOS - nice and cozy, it's old minded, but well meant mostly. I'm a Star Wars person. Also liked Babylon V and Stargate SG-1.
TNG - seen very little of it, get bored because of not tracking what even happens there and what's the purpose of those scenes, but I have understood that there's maybe something smart there somewhere.
DS9 - I didn't like it, really seemed to involve a lot of virtue signaling and identity politics. I don't like the former because it's all signals and no action, I don't like the latter because you are disadvantaged if you don't fit well to a stereotype of some protected group in some dimension, and nobody really does, except for brainless activists. Spherical libertarian ethics in vacuum or even spherical Marxist ethics in vacuum would fit me better, but as we all know, these are mostly represented IRL by idiots.
So - DS9 is bad. It's a paper model alternative to Babylon V with vaguely Trek-ish ideas, except Babylon V is much deeper (but also inconsistent and generally nuts, which is fine, the universe is too). It's too morally sterile as compared to TOS and TNG.
Haven't seen any of other "old" Trek.
Haven't seen any of the "new" Star Trek, if it's similar to the "new" Star Wars, then nothing of value was lost.
The point is ... I agree complaining about "woke" in Trek is strange, but it's strange for any sci-fi to be honest. These people probably think Heinlein wasn't "woke", but I'm almost certain he would be hated by them if he lived in our time. He did references to jungle law, human predatory nature and the idea that some human society developments are degenerate, but all these things are more specific than just mentioning them, for a real discussion about humanity.
I don't get it, it's like we watched two different Star Trek franchises. And while producing some real bullcrap, new Star Wars has some of the best Star Wars ever produced with Rogue One and Andor (also, Rebels is surprisingly good).
Also I do think virtue signalling and identity political do have some value to some capacity.
But calling DS9 'too morally sterile' is just baffling me. Have you even watched episodes like 'For the uniform'?
Well, there are some cases you can assume a thing and some cases you can't. Sometimes you can trust the other side to send the message of the right size and form in one piece over TCP, sometimes you can't. Say, if you are a Gopher server, you can. Sometimes you can wait longer, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't condition stopping some process by waiting for a response, sometimes you can't.
It's the same in life. You may see the good parts of something and not see the bad parts. Or the other way around. Life also doesn't have fairness, you can easily encounter a top level boss after just creating a character, in game terms. And no justice, no error processing, nothing of the sort.
So - answering your question, I don't remember a single DS9 episode right now, just my impression of their structure and level of complexity.
Rogue One and Andor are fine, but I wouldn't call them some of the best Star Wars made, more like the only Star Wars made since Disney acquisition. They are set in the same universe, more or less, that I can accept. And they touch upon the same things good parts of the old universe did. And they make references to things I didn't expect to be referenced under Disney. I can agree they are good. Probably just things shown I imagined differently, but then my imagination was trying to make them feel safe, similar to the second paragraph here, while Andor shows it all as a looming failure, which for may intents and purposes that phase of the rebellion indeed was.
I have no idea what you are talking about in your first two paragraphs.
Maybe you can have another go. Especially the Dominion War episodes are really good, but also there are other really good episodes.
They are though. They are definitely better than the prequels and arguably at least as good as the OT, at least from a story telling and movie making perspective.
Andor doesn't show failure though, it shows how fascist systems work and how fascism affects the 'little people'.
This sentence looks as if implying it were my fault. And of course it is, but that'd be any misunderstanding, with some other common traits of misunderstandings, like that it's symmetrically the other side's fault too.
Meant that you never know the upsides and the downsides of something for real. Just in some limited model, with your own imperfect projection of the universe.
Feel more like another attempt at TNG, but yes, maybe.
You are right, of course, in at least one of the myriad of possible interpretations.
In mine half the good things about them are a bit masqueraded references to how the old SW EU felt, and not original decisions. And in the rest there are flaws as bad as those of prequels. No way they are better than the OT. They may be better than prequels, if we are not taking a huge part of prequels' atmosphere and removing it from flaws, calling it author's style (I do ; I don't, however, ignore parts that seem left as they were because Lucas lost the interest in deepening them or finishing them, I actually suspect he's a bit on the spectrum too).
I also don't consider prequels obviously bad, which seems to be such a common opinion that its bearers often can't elaborate on it, other than vague terms like "bad dialogue" and "bad pacing" and "doesn't make sense". I would, of course, welcome good supporting points on that.
That's what a huge part of Star Wars is about, except "fascism" is a word a bit tasteless for the more generic thing.
By "looming failure" I mean Luthen&co's approach to planning, risk and lack of backups, and that they also act like agents of something far more powerful than the Rebellion in that stage. In the EU at that point they'd be all surveilled by ISB 3 steps into the chain from anybody who touched any of the suspicious senators. The private moments and conversations would be intentionally arranged and rare. Instead they act like Soviet agents in USA or vice versa, as if knowing that at worst they'll be exchanged for someone. Almost like ambassadors.
OK, I guess we might still see that Luthen was just an upper society cynical, but naive type, and in the end learn that the Emperor watched them all every moment and laughed.
That's just some blank, insignificant statement, either worthless for any discussion or an attempt invalidate discussions.
That, however, seems to be your tactic anyway. You seem wanting to make everything about how everything is smarter of perspective and interpretation, and that is not the kind of discussion I find fruitful, so I stop discussing with you now. Have a nice day.
Agree completely about Heinlein. The opinions people have about what he would have agreed or disagreed with are baffling to me. It's like the only things they read are Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Beyond This Horizon and they believe he was advocating a position instead of trying to get you to think and ask questions.
I'm so tired of the idea that "an armed society is a polite society" is any kind of good or that it is a society that should be longed for. Same for mandatory service.
It's also that things shown in his books are orthogonal to modern popular categories.
IIRC Door into Summer has something resembling socialism, not shown as good or bad, actually shown as "everything both different and still the same on the ape planet", especially the "recent news" moment after unfreezing when I last re-read it, it's amazing how that didn't get old since the book was written, you can feel that it touches exactly the same strings it was intended to touch then, full feeling of presence.
IIRC Starship Troopers has a few moments clearly showing flaws in the system, Rico clearly feeling that was wrong, and the general mood being "we know it's not ideal, we just needed something and the previous one broke" with a bit of pretense and moralism and importance, like in everything such IRL.
IIRC Orphans of the Sky can illustrate any political position conceivable, that values a human.
IIRC Citizen of the Galaxy is really hard to perceive as something he's usually accused of supporting.
And so on.