Is there a single episode without politics?
Star Trek is and always has been deeply and inherently political
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What?! Fashion-Lizard and his Sidekick Dr.Twink are Woke?! I can’t believe it!
Well, it did take a while for Fashion-Lizard to stop being Fascism-Lizard.
Don’t forget that the whole Federation is a post captialist utopia which is a political statement in itself.
Don’t forget that the whole Federation is a post captialist utopia which is a political statement in itself.
Great point!
“‘No need for/Evolved past the need for money’ … yeah, wtf, lets just completely ignore that ever-present bit, it’s too scary & perverted to comprehend.”
- avg capitalists Trekkie (or “Trekkie”)
Wait until people finally get the epiphany that Star Trek is advocating for a world government. And how many here, including outside the Internet, would actually like that?
Precisely.
IIRC, a world government is a prerequisite for joining the Federation isn’t it?
I don’t know. I might like that? It depends a lot on how it is implemented and who is in charge. 😅
And how much power the global government has compared to individual regions.
World government advocates would want a democray with a strong constitution that ensures checks and balance, and a federal system.
I like scifi. I like to explore the strange and push past the walls of reality. I like dangerous visions. Big ideas.
But interpersonal drama, identity-stroking and, yes, politics. It’s just weak and boring. It’s small. Damn small.
Do you see the difference?
Sometimes startrek goes big. Sometimes it doesn’t.
You need good characters to make a good show regardless of the setting, and also to help the viewers relate to the “big” stuff going on around them.
Don’t get me wrong, I think I like the stuff you like. I’d happily watch a documentary about all the made up technology and new science & life they discover, with zero need for conflict or personal growth or “feelings” or whatever. But that wouldn’t be the TV show, which is experienced largely through the eyes of the crew.
Sci-fi is at its best when it recontextualizes an idea in a way that makes us consider it from a different perspective.
Battlestar Galactica did an awesome job of turning the issues around entirely. Famously, it essentially turned the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan on their heads in Season 3, and you had the good guys building IEDs and employing suicide bombers to kill collaborators.
But my favorite one was when they came up with a situation in which outlawing abortion was necessary, and the political opposition used it as an opportunity to manufacture outrage and steal an election even though they didn’t actually care about the issue at all.
But you don’t need spaceships and aliens to do that. It’s just fetishwear at that point.
In real scifi it isn’t fetishwear. It actually serves a purpose.
The spaceships and aliens are how you get people to look at it from a new perspective.
The early seasons of DS9 were about the aftermath of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the fall of the Soviet Union. 1990s Americans couldn’t have cared less about the dangers of far-right religious indoctrination of schoolchildren, the re-intrigation of traumatized resistance fighters into peacful society, the cautious restoration of political and economic ties with former occupiers, and the danger of the discovery of a new resource in the territory of a politically and militarily fragile nation full of extremists.
But throw in phasers and a warp drive and people will watch. Suddenly you’ve tricked people into recognizing that people with different backgrounds and religions can embrace their differences to make the world a better place, or reject that unity and create suffering. You have capitalists and socialists sharing space in peace. There’s an invented taboo against rekindling an old relationship that’s actually about gay rights.
All these amazing topics are brought to an audience that just wanted laser fights.
Any genre show can do it. My parents were as red-blooded Republican as anyone, but the third episode of The Last of Us had them crying tears of joy and pain over the love story between 2 men. It tricked them into becoming open-minded by promising zombies.
That’s fiction at its finest.
Yes, like I said, fetishwear. Nonfunctional costumery
Their function is using them to introduce concepts to an audience that may not otherwise be interested or receptive.
Yes, I get the point.
politics is all-encompassing, it can be as big or as small as anything else
Well I suppose it’s a matter of perspective.
I liked Trek before Alex Kurzman stuck his filthy fingers in it and made entire franchise a steaming pile of dog shit.
Haha, true that.
But he tried.
And failed.
Oh, OG Trek was woke AF, but it wasn’t done as ham-handed and hackey as what is happening now. It used to feed open-mindedness into everyone’s living room and was generally welcome to do so. What we have now is just slapping you in the face with its floppy cock of wokeness every chance it gets. There is now almost no actual plot other than that. Doctor Who is doing the exact same thing. Can nothing of my childhood just be left the fuck alone? I mean, yeah, represent the marginalized. Make female heroes, or transgender, or whatever and whoever you feel needs to be represented or empowered. Do all of that, but do you have to rewrite absolutely everything ever written to do it? Have an original thought. Honestly, at this point, it is just lazy writing masquerading as woke.
Thank you, exactly that.
but it wasn’t done as ham-handed and hackey as what is happening now.
I’d also drag out Angel One from TNG. It’s the laziest way to write a matriarchy: everything is the same, except women are in charge instead of men.
I’m sure if we tried hard enough, we could find hackneyed, ham-handed episodes across all Star Trek shows.
For example, this attempt at discussing gender norms:
I think this comment really nails what’s irking me amount newer Trek. It used to be a show that was written in a way that regardless of your politics, anyone could watch, and it would make you think. It was a show that would sneakily slip in progressive ideas that could make you second guess your perspectives on the world.
Now there is no depth to it, it just slaps you in the face with politics.
This is probably gonna be a hot take, but I think Star Trek should be written in a way that is appealing for conservatives to watch, but regularly slips in metaphors which challenges their world view. Trek was at it’s best when on it’s surface it was a fun adventure show, and the politics was on a deeper level.
Explain more about how your childhood is ruined by political messaging in checks notes
Modern Doctor Who and Star Trek. The best written and acted shows of all time, obviously.
it’s done plainly in reference to real life now, as opposed to being integrated seamlessly into the show. a good example would be the episode where the doctor had to erase his mind and Martha (a black woman) had to try and protect him while posing as his servant because it was the 1800s when they were stranded. this was still in real history (aliens aside) but was integrated as part of the plotline and not randomly mentioned with no context. a good example of when they get this wrong is the special with the meep where Donna’s daughter says something along the lines of “I’m nonbinary because the doctor-donna is binary” which doesn’t make sense in the story because the doctor-donna is binary due to Donna literally merging with the doctor, not gender identity. these things can be integrated well and when you do they only enhance the story by making it feel more realistic, but you have to make them fit the story, not the other way round.
“I’m nonbinary because the doctor-donna is binary”
My eyes rolled all the way to the back of my head when i saw this bit
I get what they were trying to do but it was such a cop out instead of writing an actual explanation.
That, or:
Your brain wasn’t fully developed because you were a child.
I rewatched the whole show just a couple months ago and I didn’t watch TV much as a kid so I only saw a handful of episodes then. this is my current, up to date opinion.
I think this is generally what I hear when it comes to “woke” media. I always chalk it up to media having no clue on how normal humans function in a society.
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If first interracial kiss on TV is Woke then I don’t wanna be anything but.
It reminds me of those people that claim The X-Men have gotten “woke” even though that’s been the whole point of the comic since the 60’s or worse yet those poor souls out there who thought Rage Against the Machine was getting too political lol
Reminds me of a YouTube comment under the video where they got cut of during a bbc live take for singing “fuck” after the production team brieft them to not sing fuck: “What machine they thought they rage against? The printer?”
I wonder what these people think “the machine” means 😭
No mebtion of space communism? The federation is Marxist
Real. Star trek isn’t woke, star trek is tankie
Nah because they din’t glorify authoritarian violence
Violence against the Borg is to be celebrated isn’t it?
That’s violence against authoritarians
Which is the only violence tankies celebrate: killing Nazis and hanging landlords and capitalist owners
Well
End-game socialist
I mean Sisko kind of does when he describes how the Bell riots have to take place before we unite as a planet and join the Federation
Don’t forget The Measure of a Man. We literally watched that in 9th grade American History, as a commentary about slavery.
I don’t know about woke but I liked Trek before it got boring and poorly written -_-
Yep, and they suck at analogies too. The old format usually had fairly enlightened people encounter an injustice, usually making it right in some way. It’s morality theater. Discovery made the Federation itself dark and edgy and the people on board a complete mess, not a world I’d like to live in. Maybe that’s what some people perceive when they complain about “politics”.
That’s basically all it is: Media getting “too big to fail” and then neutering its writing quality by committee. It tries to tell socially progressive stories at the same time, so people associate the two.
A streamer pointed out the cognitive dissonance people have, when “anti-woke” people played Baldur’s Gate 3. It was gender expressive and diverse…but it was also GOOD writing. So they decided it was”wasn’t woke”.
That’s fair, the cartoon is apparently not bad, just not my cup of tea.
Lower Decks is my favorite Star Trek since DS9. When it came out though, I was super against it. Didn’t think Paramount had any right to be making fun of Star Trek after Discovery season 1. You can tell Lower Decks is made by people that love Star Trek though.
This last season, they did a classic Audience-with-the-Klingon-High-Council episode, and when I saw it, I exclaimed to my fiance, “Yes! I love Klingon bureaucracy episodes!” and then later in the episode, there was almost that exact same line
Strange New Worlds has been finding their feet too. We got a courtroom episode on Augment rights, that really felt Star Trek, and they’ve had some original stories as well that I’ve really loved, like Among the Lotus Eaters. There have been a couple episodes I haven’t been a fan of, but what Star Trek hasn’t had those?
If you’re open to it, I recommend giving both shows another chance!
Lower Decks and SNW are FANTASTIC and some of the best Trek in a very long time. Almost as good as The Orville ;)
Yeah it’s good and agreed that discovery is pure ass so It’s definitely a little bit of both
We have The Orville today for good Trek
I really tried to like that show but it’s just … Bad. To each their own but I’d rather just rewatch TNG or whatever other Star Trek. That show feels like it doesn’t have an identity, the writers couldn’t decide what kind of show they were writing and the acting is subpar.
Of course, if you enjoy it that’s all that really matters - keep on watching and having fun!
How far did you make it? Season 1 is a bit painful, Season 2 is better but Season 3 is a big shift.
Seth McFarland’s humor is not very good…
Season 3 was a surprise. They just played it straight. Went from parody to homage.
Not very far lol, a couple episodes to give it a fair shake though, do you have an episode recommendation?
Just echoing here that it does take awhile to get going.
Honestly, despite what I’m about to say below, I probably wouldn’t recommend it now (just on signal to noise ratio) if not for https://thecinemaholic.com/the-orville-season-4/ giving hope for more story, or unless you happened to be a superfan of Seth McFarlane.
My .02 -
Season 1 -
First reaction - wow this DOES feel like TNG.
Second reaction - WAY too much Family-Guy style humor.
I like humor in my scifi, and I like Family-Guy style humor (during its heyday anyhow). Season 1 episode 7 almost made me turn it off. No one trying to pay homage to trek should be writing in something like this as a first contact “mistake”. IMO in S1 we learned that Family-Guy style humor doesn’t always work in live action.
Season 2 - Better, but still trying to find the right blend. It’s been awhile now, but I think S2 got better and better over time and had some pretty good eps.
Season 3 - Really great, hit their stride, perfect blend of humor and drama, super disappointed when it was cancelled.
Season 4 - See link above. If they can recapture S3 vibes I’m excited for it, but I’m not 100% confident they will. Fingers crossed.
With all that said, if you are considering it at all, I’d just watch it all. That way you get the evolution of the show, the running gags, and don’t miss any significant bits that are sprinkled through, and you know all the road that has been traveled when they get to S4. It’s only three seasons and it’s not a long show. Yes, some of it is cringe, but so was some of the early seasons of TNG.
Thank you for the lengthy write up. You see though the problem with watching it all is I’d be watching it all… I do appreciate the time it must have taken for this reply though.
That clip on YouTube you linked was super cringe. Agree with you on TNG there’s definitely times and episodes where I think the writers phoned it in and I’m not going to pretend it’s all good. Still my favorite star trek but I don’t watch much so that’s not saying anything considering I haven’t even seen any of the new stuff.
Season 1 episode 10
If you don’t like it I don’t think you will care for the rest
Season 2 Episode 8-9 is a two part episode that is good but I wouldn’t recommend jumping into it because it’s not as good if you don’t care about the characters
Can’t stomach McFarlane unfortunately. I’m told it gets better later on but his sense of humor is just like nails on a chalkboard to me. Couldn’t get myself to finish the first season.
My partner and I have a theory that MacFarlane pitched The Orville as “Family Guy in space,” and he got to make it because of his success with Family Guy. But the actual goal he had all along was to make Star Trek.
In order to keep the game up and get a second season, he had to sell the pitch at least a bit. So the early episodes are like Star Trek with cringey Family Guy-esque jokes. But as the series goes on, the cringe stops, the jokes slow down, and the plots get deeper.
I can’t stand cringe humor and did not consider myself a fan of MacFarlane, but The Orville changed that.
Exactly. Orville is more “woke” and i absolutely love it. It’s supposed to be just a sort of comedy parody of star trek, yet it has more depth than the Discovery has.
True. We don’t have masterpieces like “Spock’s Brain” anymore. /S
Say what you want about TOS, it’s campy and silly but it’s not boring.
Even Platos Stepchildren, which everyone remembers for the first interracial kiss, was a pretty fucking terrible episode.
Yes, but that’s a reasonable take, so it gets drowned out.
My favorite detail of the TNG episode “The Outcast” is that the writers were pushing for an episode that touched on sexuality but Rick Berman wouldn’t go for it. So the writers gave a figurative “fuck you” and wrote an episode on gender identity instead.
And while Berman was occupied holding TNG back the DS9 writers had enough freedom to use the Dax symbiote’s multiple lifetimes to explore sexuality instead.
The DS9 writers would sometimes write a script that they knew would be approved and then give the actors “suggested improvised lines” for what they actually wanted.
Does anyone else remember that TNG had a recurring background character who was just a regular crewman but he always wore a Star Fleet dress or skirt that would just walk around in the background of scenes? He may have had heels as well, I can’t remember. Regardless I always thought it was neat that they never made a big deal out of it or a joke
Its a type of uniform called a Skant. It was TNG trying to make the TOS miniskirts unisex. It only lasted a couple seasons I think, but it’s gotten a couple callbacks on Lower Decks.
