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I mean Star Trek is not much better
What was it like before Disco came out? I know not everyone loved Enterprise, but was there always such a degree of animosity? I always thought Trekkies were generally pretty chill, especially compared to some of the assholes in the Star Wars fandom...
Well Discovery is definitely the cream of the crop when it comes to a rabid amount of hatred. There is some genuine criticism to be had, don't get me wrong, but people complain of the dumbest things possible for the dumbest reason possible. That or they don't watch the show, only know half baked things and then base everything off of that. Or saw 4 episodes of the first season and gave up but are still hating on it.
However all of those things are not new. When TNG was released it had a similar level of animosity. People fucking hated it. There were some really violent and hateful things said about the actors and even some threats thrown the way of production staff (although I could be wrong on the threats. That's what I remember from a ConPanel anyway). People hated it. A lot of hate was given to the fact that there was a woman as Security chief, nevermind as CMO and as Counsellor. Then the fact that there was a bald and french Captain? Fucking pass. The show was lambasted and hated and didn't start getting accepted until around Season 3 when conventions started turning. The actors all talk about this at conventions saying how it was a while before people started accepting them.
When DS9 came out? Same thing. Black Captain? Instant racism and hatred. New aliens? They all suck. It took until about Season 2-3 for people to warm up to a bit. Voyager? Exactly the same thing. Janeway was hated simply because she was a woman but a lot of people then took issue with her decisions, saying she was "too emotional" and "Kirk or Picard would have done this better". Enterprise? Same deal. Although Enterprise frankly deserves an enormous amount of criticism (thanks to Rick Berman, may the sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted, hateful motherfucker suffer from a rotten dick until the day he dies), it also got an undue amount of hate simply because it was new. This carried on with the Kelvin timeline movies with Pine. People lost their fucking minds. It was only placated a little when people realized it wasn't a reboot but an alternate timeline and that it was sanctioned by Nimoy himself. Even then people still viciously hated and were opposed to it. Again, people warmed up over time although certain movies like Into Darkness are still particularly hated. Mostly because of some truly awful writing decisions.
So when Discovery rolled around nothing really changed. The same hate. It didn't help that a lot of things were visually new. The show isn't a reboot but a visual reboot. Everything stays within lore and canon, despite peoples complaints otherwise, as things were very carefully chosen to fit within things already established. I've had many discussions with people and no one has ever been able to find a single thing that doesn't jive with pre-established lore. They just are probably not aware of the lore because Trek has so much and I do not blame them for that in the slightest. Picard carried on that tradition although the first two seasons of Picard are genuinely badly written so a lot of criticism is valid. The third season sees also an odd amount of hate based off of feelings but not of actual issues with the story, effects, characters, etc.
The only things that have sort of skated that have been Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds although both of them still do get criticized heavily. Not entirely sure why that happened but I suspect it's because Lower Decks is so drastically different from everything that came before it while being the most heart filled love letter to Trek in history and because SNW got a lot of its backlash during Season 2 of Discovery. However SNW and LD are also just genuinely very good and started extremely well molded as opposed to literally every other Trek show in history where it takes a season or two to find its feet.
Probably more than you asked for in all honesty.
Hell of a write up Stamets!
Thanks lol
I like Star Trek
I had no idea...
I do too
As a newer Trekkie, I thoroughly appreciate this write-up; helps explain a lot of the things I see online these days.
I’ve only recently finished watching TNG for the first time and I’m going through DS9 now. It never occurred to me that people would have issues with a gasp woman CMO and with a bald captain, but it all just goes to show that people will always find something to gripe about.
For the most part, I mainly stick to the meme communities for Star Wars and Trek to avoid most of the vitriol. For Star Wars, don’t get me wrong, I’ll argue about the sequels all day, but it all gets old when people complain about the other stuff we’ve got from Disney and refuse to find anything even entertaining about the sequels.
I’m excited to continue on my Star…Trek 😅. Just started S3 of DS9, I’ll get into Voyager and continue from there. Time has shown meme, however, that the larger communities for these things just aren’t for me since I can’t find fault in every single thing that gets produced.
Strange New Worlds is legit amazing.
I need to find a source for Lower Decks.
I feel the same could be said about Stargate. (or any other "cult-esque" sci-fi) All three started out a bit shakey. SGU was just discontinued a bit too early; before the fan base really accepted it and grew.
Absolutely based write up Stamets, especially the part about the visual reboot. That's something that I've struggled with as a new Trek fan talking to older Trekkies. I see no incongruity with Disco's aesthetics compared to DS9, but rather an update. I've been shouted down on other forums for expressing that.
Yeah I know what you mean. I've shared the same feelings. The Kelvin timeline is more of a detraction than the DSC versions, granted the Kelvin timeline version isn't an enormous detraction, just way shinier than one would expect. However I tend to give it a pass because it's much a product of the time (mid-late 2000s) as TOS enterprise is of the 60s.
DSC feels... nice. Especially when you compare it inline with Enterprise. In 100 years that feels like a rather neat and tidy update to what we have, even those blue uniforms. I do love those uniforms.
I'm one of those older Trekkies who will complain about the aesthetic choices of the DSC sets.
My view is that there is a certain style with sci-fi shows of this nature that are part of their identity.
Large swings in design choices are very distracting to the point of being off putting to me unless there is good reason for it.
One thing I absolutely applaud Disney for is how they've managed to modernize but still keep the 70s aesthetics in their Star Wars shows. And I wish Trek had followed the same path.
Your complaint makes no sense and doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. You are saying that there is a certain style but that style is not consistent within Trek. TOS was painfully 60s but the TOS Movies were very much not and actually quite similar to Discovery with its metallic and militaristic look. TNG? Same deal. Very 80s and then the Enterprise-E showed that same metallic look. DS9 has that look scattered in occasionally but it's mostly alien design. Voyager has that militaristic look everywhere throughout the show, just updating the 80s TNG look to be a bit more modern. Then Enterprise did the same thing with the metallic militaristic look.
Moreover, the swing from TOS to TOS movies is more of a swing that Enterprise to Discovery, which I remind you takes place 80-90 years after so is just continuing those visuals.
Discovery, at no point, broke design moorings. It's the same design elements that have been part of Trek since the first time Trek had money with the movies.
I find it so funny people complain about the looks of DSC when Gene Roddenberry wanted his ships to look like that when using the TOS movies as a template.
Disco is like a movie budget in terms of production quality, it's insane. And I guess in terms of writing quality too? Since almost every nutrek movie sucked.
Enterprise was the television equivalent of the smell of a roadkill skunk being slowly roasted over a tire fire.