I don't understand some people
I don't understand some people
161 comments
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That's why we love Daddy Data 💕 🤖
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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.
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But don't you get it: woke is when no cleavage plunges.
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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.
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They made because they’re not awake.
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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.
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not only that, interracial crew, a Japanese, russian and a black woman on the main crew!!!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Picard sucks
But how can this be? They are shoving so much fan service down your throat.
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As we all know, after 2 bad seasons, fan service makes good show!
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I liked the first few minutes of Picard but nothing after.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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I think that, starting with the Marquis, Trek was trying to address issues that might arise even with luxury space communism.
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"It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
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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.
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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.
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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. The memetic virus was meant to be the nonlethal option. It turned out to be lethal only because Picard and co underestimated just how ruthlessly it would be crushed. Of course, then again, perhaps I'm misremembering.
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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.
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If only Rick Berman would've let us have luxury gay space communism this wouldn't have happened
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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.
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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.
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That argument is indeed stupid, but Kurtzman Trek is inferior in every other way.
- the plots are often incoherent
- the tone strays too far from what made classic Star Trek compelling
- the overuse of action and spectacle comes at the expense of thoughtful Sci fi
- Character development feels shallow to nonexistent
- and so much more
Everything is just bad.
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I still maintain that as great as DS9 was, it started Trek on a self-destructive path of constantly trying to go even darker and edgier. Gene had utopian rules for a reason, and although some of them were probably too restrictive, the whole point of Star Trek, the unique selling point it possesses that no other franchise has, is that it offers us a vision of the future that isn't a dystopian hellscape. A positive look at what the future could be for us if we follow our nobler instincts. DS9 eroded that by suggesting that it was all bullshit, that the Federation was just as unenlightened as we are today, and although it made for a great show in the short term, in the long term it hurt the franchise because darker and edgier yields ever diminishing returns.
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That's my impression from DIS, but isn't SNW supposed to be decent?
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SNW is decent. S2 E2 is an especially strong episode.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!"
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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.
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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.
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Or we used it ironically.
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We should only watch the real old trek.
I mean, it was one of the first shows ever to:
- have a woman in a command position,
- depict a black person in a non-servile role,
- show Russians and Americans working as a team during the Cold War, and
- have an Asian character portrayed by an actual Asian actor,
but it wasn’t woke!
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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.
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First interracial kiss on scripted television.
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.
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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.
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Have a Japanese character about 20 years after ww2.
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Have a Russian character during the Cold War.
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but it wasn’t woke!
If it wasn't for Kirk banging his way around the galaxy, it would have been.
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Nothing compared to Riker.
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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.
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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.
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Picard? The series literally laser focused on and named after the cis white man?
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conservatives were ignoring the premise, they only care about which characthers were acting out of thier traditional roles.
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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!
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Wait till you get to 'Far Beyond the Stars'. Exploring racism from the pov of a black man in the 50s is different.
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TNG is "Old Trek" now. Thanks for ruining my day at 6:49am.
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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.
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nutrek is consideredin jj-abrams-present.
old trek before "enterprise" the series.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Nice username btw.
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Thanks.
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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".)
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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.
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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).
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Old Trek fan here. Love the crap out of SNW and Lower Decks!
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I love all three and I am so glad they came along after DIS, effectively saving the franchise IMO
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This.
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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. 🤔
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"And look what happened to Lol. She fucking died!"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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what is new star trek?
Lower Decks?
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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.
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What about those movies is woke?
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choose it's own sex and appearance
Data did not use contractions (as pointed out by his evil twin), so that would be "choose it is own sex and appearance"
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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.
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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'?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“I only watch Trek that is well written.
Which means I don’t watch ANY Trek!” :)
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That means you just watch DS-9, right?
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I'm about to start a fight, I think.
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They are just different, modern is so cynical and edgy and, yes, 'woke' in the way that makes it feel foreign.
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What does "woke" mean? What makes modern Trek woke but old Trek not?
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I am baffled by this language you speak. Are you trying to break an AI overlord by speaking in paradoxes or...?
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