TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name @lemmy.world

8mo ago

Give yourselves a round of applause 🖖

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anyone that tries to say star trek has "gone woke" or some stupid shit like that clearly isn't a fan of it and just trying to rile up stuff. I mean come on... how can someone say that and have watched the shows LOL
- Yeah, its not like Star Trek suddenly went woke, its been woke. First ever TV kiss between mixed races was between Kirk and Uhura. Scandalous.
  
  That's actually a common misconception. Not to downplay the significance of what Shatner and Nichols pulled off to get around the various censors (ruining alternate takes and such), but many TV shows did it before Star Trek.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television
  
  It's literally like 80% of the show's concept. The idea was to hide morality plays behind wacky alien makeup.
  
  And they're not even that woke. Afaik they still ocasionally eat animals in the 24th century. (Unless they're Vulcan.) Watch The Orville if you want some proper progressive shit 😆
- Not to mention the first black woman officer and the first black/white kiss.
  
  Duet and Drumhead hit so hard. Incredible writing, phenomenal acting. I miss that in Star Trek.
- I mean compared to TOS it's gotten woke, but TOS was like extremely woke for the 60s
- Right now it's the modern entitled version of woke. Not the philosophical exploratory woke.
  Modern Trek tells you off for thinking differently while old Trek set an example to aspire to.
  And that's only in the few limited moments NuTrek a actually bothers spending time on making an opinion, as most of it is cheaply written shlock to squeeze as much as possible out of underpaid VFX artists.
  
  Releasing Let That Be Your Last Battlefield at the height of the civil rights movement wasn’t some hypothetical philosophizing. That was pointed condemnation. Same with The Outcast’s attack on conversion therapy, or In The Hands of the Prophets' take on religious dogmatism.
  Star Trek has always been happy to condemn bad ideas. If you think it's just started telling people off now then you haven't been paying attention.
  
  What do you think woke means?

Kinda hard to be a bigot when your favorite show is about a egalitarian socialist utopia
- And yet it still happens. There are right-wing bigots who watch Star Trek for the pew pew space battles and ignore the rest, sad as that may be.
  
  They are not Trek fans, they are violence fans. They are not welcome.
  I love Star Trek for the vision, the tech, the people and of course to hate Wesley. This is my utopia.
  
  Then perhaps the qualification to be a Trekkie should be watching the original series. We'll loose the VFX loving pew pew people.
  
  Don't shame me for watching Sacrifice of Angels 20 times in a row.
  
  Ah... I see some of them must've made it to the writing room on NuTrek... Because it's pretty much nothing more than a VFX showcase these days.
  I miss the time when an entire episode was essentially the crew figuring out a moral dillema, or just some really weird space bullshit.

I have a theory:
Star Trek fans were some of the earlier cosplayers. Trekkies were wearing Starfleet uniforms and Vulcan ears to conventions decades before the word "cosplay" was a thing. My father has a book called the Starfleet Technical Manual published in the 70's that is basically an official guide for fans to build screen accurate costumes and props from, including sewing patterns for the various tunics and wrist-length dresses and a page of color swatches, plus dimensional drawings of tricorders, phasers and communicators.
And the public at large in the 1970s wasn't ready for that yet.
- People were cosplaying Junge Werther in the 1800s, it's just a thing people do.
  
  Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the ancient Greeks were cosplaying their favorite characters from the Trojan war or something. But the word cosplay is only attested from like 1993 in English and 1983 or so in Japan
- I have that book! It's super cool. It's themed as a document made by the military about information on the Federation that leaked into the past.
  
  There's also diagrams of space stations and ships, and small things, like how to properly decorate sleeves and badges for rank and division.
  
  Same man created the brilliant Star Trek Blueprints, the first detailed deck plans for the Enterprise. He did all this after his daughter took him to a Trek convention and he saw how passionate the fans were and what a need there was for material like this. It's a great story.
  http://www.trekplace.com/franzjoseph.html
  
  I read my dad's copy cover to cover as a kid, it's a great bit of fluff for fans combined with a useful prop reference. It's also fun that it's basically all hand drawn, even the text pages look l Iike a draftsman hand lettered them.
  
  I used to have the original black cover version. Long lost, sadly. I have it as an ebook though. The one Star Trek book from my youth I had to buy once when I saw it used was this one, which used to be canon until TNG threw almost all of it away. But Rick Sternbach illustrated it and the ideas are pretty fun.
  
  https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Spaceflight_Chronology
  I think my favorite part is when an Earth expedition to Alpha Centauri meets Zefram Cochrane (TOS says he is from Alpha Centauri and there's a lot of headcanon to explain it) and learns to communicate to him through mathematics. At the beginning, Cochrane draws a circle with a symbol next to it, the Earth mathematician realizes that it means pi and they move on from there.
  Looks like someone scanned in every page if you're interested: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/spaceflight-chronology.php
  Edit:
  
  As much as I love First Contact, in terms of world building, I like that so much more.
  
  Oh man those technical drawings are MY SHIT. I got all the Star Wars ones. I'll definitely see if I can track this down

Hands up those old enough to remember the shitfest that erupted over Janeway (and/or Sisko)
- I threw up the horns. It was nuts as a middle school girl, when Voyager first started airing, and everyone was so angry about Janeway and when I'd ask why they would turn red and shake their head, or change the topic.
  
  The good old days, when sexist, racist, homophobes at least kept their mouths shut... Now they'd give you a speech about how she should be in the galley :(
- It's true. It's not been a totally smooth ride. It's taken work to educate fellow fans, and making the intolerant unwelcome.
  Like there was early "controversy" about Geordie getting to be on the bridge. Which seemed kind of logical, but if you scratched below the surface you'd see how selective that critique was. That it was just racism and ableism
- I remember a comment saying that Tuvok was so anal his skin is brown on Usenet in 1995. Some things never change.
  
  Jesus

I kinda lost it when Janeway fired more photon torpedos than the ship had upon entering the Delta quadrant. Where did she get the extra torpedoes?! She's a witch!
- They figured a way to fabricate their own. Like the shuttles.
  
  Head cannon is that 1/3 of voyager is taken up by a massive shuttle manufactory. It's never discussed but it must be there...Otherwise, none of this shit makes any sense.😬
  
  I was always sad they never explored that sort of thing in an episode, didn't have to be as big as the Delta Flyer but still!

The entire Dune novel fanbase is also pretty decent. I like hanging out with him.
- He was just in it for the Dune Popcorn Bucket.
  
  It's funny I was talking to the entire novel fanbase about a month ago and told him "well I dont hate all of Dune, the original David Lynch movie was excellent" and told me to get out. Haha
- Yeah but like... have you read Chapterhouse? Shit goes off the rails
  
  Even more than that fairly, uhm.. graphic climbing scene in God-Emperor? Just started Heretics, so I'll make sure to get the popcorn ready by the time I start Chapterhouse. 😋

The Discworld fandom is another one you can't be in if you're an asshole because you clearly didn't understand the source material.
- GNU PTerry. And I'm with you there.

SHUT UP WE ARE NOT THE NICEST FAN BASE I WILL FIGHT YOU
- Say that again and I'll tuvix the shit out of you!!
  (Then there will be two of you, but better, Im showing you mercy)
  
  You probably shouldn't do the 'two of the same guy' thing (known in the trade as a 'Reverse Tuvix') where Star Trek is concerned...
  
  Don't you dare tell me Andy Dick doesn't count.

Also, sorry everyone, I was a Trekkie first and I will always come back to Star Trek, but the MST3K fan base is the nicest fan base. The only two bitter arguments I've ever seen the community devolve into was Joel vs. Mike (now very moot) and "I hate Crow's new lady voice" for the most recent season. Other than that, everyone is super nice to a fault. The MST3K forums is the friendliest forum I have ever been on.
- Joel vs. Mike
  Mike is a great writer but Joel by far has the better timing and delivery. Not to derail the thread or anything.
  calmly places halo above his head
  
  Shit, if MST3K, Cinematic Titanic, and RiffTrax have taught me anything, it's you can't win 'em all, but you're always a winner when you're laughing with your friends
  
  My attitude is that everyone brought something to the table worth watching.
  
  It's just a show, you should really just relax.
- No need to fight over Joel or Mike when we have JOIKE sweaters. Or now: JOIKAHEM.
- MST3K 🔥

I'm out of the loop... What torpedo? What woman?
- Maybe the recent controversy from Warhammer 40k where Games Workshop retconned women space marines into existence? I dunno, did Star Wars do something to trigger the sexists since then, that controversy is a few weeks old now.
  
  Female adeptes custodes not Space marines. Makes little difference in the large picture but it’s possible within the lore to have female custodians as they’re all humans picked at birth and genetically altered/enhanced individually to make the best soldier they could ever be. GW just didn’t mention females being in that order for 30 years apparently lol
  Space marines are all male though, have been explicitly stated as being all male repeatedly and even recently with lore backing of the some of the organ implants and genetic modification templates only work on males since they’re based off the primarchs who were all male as sons of the emperor of mankind.
  I’ll end with saying that GW has done great with inclusion in recent years, even explicitly telling Nazis to go find another hobby if they don’t like that GW is making warhammer and warhammer 40k for everyone, of all races, genders, and religions. They’ve always had racial representation and some manner of gender representation in the guard and eldar but now they’re expanding and I’m all for it. I have no issues with any of it so long as GW doesn’t just say ignore the last ~40 years of established lore and even recent lore issuances because we would like to sell more models.
- I took it as a (mistaken) reference to the scene in The Last Jedi when Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) rams into a star destroyer in hyperspace, a maneuver which destroyed both ships and made people wonder why they didn’t just hyperspace into shit all the time instead of building warships and getting shot all the time.
  It happened in the same point in the movie when she refuses multiple times to say that she has any plan whatsoever, leading to a lot of pointless fighting and was thought to have been some sort of commentary on “believing women” but very poorly executed.
  Disney spent billions to destroy the Star Wars canon, but hopefully Trek can escape such a grisly fate.
  
  In fairness, that scene with the destroyers was fucking awesome. Fuck the canon, it looked cool as fuck.
- Wasn't it one of the recent star wars films?
- I didn't give that a second thought, glad someone else thought they knew the reference

Meanwhile us Battlestar Galactica fans are over in the corner wondering why no one talks to us
- Because you messed up your last season especially the ending
- Because the first series didn't age well :( although I loved it at 10... And the second was (controversial opinion incoming) too much of a soap opera for me.
  
  The writers and showrunners blatantly not having a clue where the plot was going was a bigger problem for me than the soapiness.
  
  The second seemed like an asset rip to me. It wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't Battlestar Galactica.
- Imagine Space: 1999 fans...
  
  The final frontier...
- The original old show? It's meh okay 70's sci-fi TV. Not into the kid and his robot dog or whatever.
  The 2000s remake? It's basically what cured my television habit. I was never really into the "gritty realistic" heartburn drama shit anyway, so I gave up on the show itself pretty early, then spent the rest of my time as an SG-1 fan having Katee Sackhoff scream in anguish at me during every single commercial break for years on end. Then every TV show made from then on had to be a dark and brooding show about terrible people being terrible to each other and then I stopped watching TV.

Completely agree.
If I would ever be in desperate need of help it would instantly comfort me to see a trekkie or a metalhead. The average wholesomeness is ridiculously high.
- Metalhead trekkie here. I won't let you fall in the pit.
  
  There are several of us!! :D
- Metalhead over a trekkie any way. Seven foot tall, face full of piercings, absolute kitten
  
  Exactly.
  (But also Im running away from a trekkie cosplaying as Neelix ... and assaulting the Tuvix one)
  
  You mean the same ones who call every music other than metal "crap" and "not even real music"?
  Nah, I will take a Trekkie every day of the week.
- Add motorcyclist to your list.
  
  And d&d players.

So you're saying Star Trek needs its own version of Jar Jar?

Wait, but we already went crazy about a woman firing torpedoes. We went so crazy, we counted them.
- It still bugs me that they make a big deal about how few resources they have and then fire so many torpedoes and lose so many shuttles. I would have loved to have seen them pick up some locally sourced equipment.
  
  Honestly, my thought was always just that they could replicate equipment and components as needed but it was a power intensive process.
  There is a whole episode of Voyager where they land the ship to do repairs on it, and I just figure that happens more than we're shown.
  I agree though, I would have preferred Voyager to have all crazy Borg shit forever. Would have been sick to have all this jury-rigged bullshit, almost like how DS9 is totally fucked.
- That was great :)

In the words of Dr. Westphalen (who was paraphrasing Admiral Farragut), "Damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead!"

Word? Just gonna leave this here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwwMlfSEznE

I don't think anyone cares about a torpedo being fired by a woman
What people do care about is continuity, at least trying to keep characters consistent, good stories, etc.
Hence why most of the nu-trek shows and movies are such utter crap, as it's CGI over story while completely ignoring 50 years of history.
Picard show, for example... Beverly crusher who once disobeyed a direct.order to save a victim after a bombing attack, who made a point about being peaceful is now a ninja assassin. Seven of nine, who made a point about improving, being better, now is a mad mass murderer who wants revenge for everything. Picard, who once was thoughtful, highly intelligent and respected, is now a bumbling old man.
Star trek which once was about being better is now about fuck fuck fuckerdy fuck fuck fuck because that's star trek now, man, get with the program, it's cool man!
I can go on for hours about Picard, let's not. Discovery is somehow even worse. Those movies where they just did older movies again but now with new! And! Improved! CGI! CGI CGI CGI! Lense flaaaaaaaare!
With TNG I so could imagine living there on one of those star ships. Nu trek crap ships are just ... I don't even know where to begin
Add a broody darkness over that with regular over the top violence, and yeah, we really have star trek!
Long live the Orville, the new star trek
- I don't think most NuTrek is utter crap. Some is written for me, some isn't.
  SNW and Lower Decks are some of my favorite Trek.
  Continuity doesn't matter too much to me, just how the shows make me feel. TOS threw continuity out the window within the first few episodes when they introduced time travel.
  Also, if you expect someone to be the same person, fictional or not, 30 years later into their life, you haven't lived long enough. The person who is the same human they were twenty years ago, is someone who has wasted twenty years of their life.
  Times change. The new shows have brought in a lot of new fans. That's not a bad thing. Maybe instead of getting angry that new stuff isn't made with your tastes in mind, watch something you enjoy instead.
  
  If style and continuity doesn't matter for you then fine, let them make their shoe exactly how they want it to be, but don't use the star trek name as an bait and switch advertising stunt. If you want to call it star trek, let it BE star trek. Nu trek movies are a horribly bad made rehash of the earlier movies all focussed on CGI and pew pew. The shows are dark and broody crap, the animated shows were skipped after seeing how awful the trailers were. Star trek is done.
- That seems like an awfully judgmental rant, for a thread about how nice Star Trek fans are.
  
  Your comment makes me wonder if you read any of it at all.
  Pre 2000 trek is awesome, wholesome, makes you think. It wasn't just inclusive, it made you think about why inclusivity is good. It hasd graat stories and great entertainment to keep you in. It had designs that made you feel like you could really live there.
  New trek is "WE HAVE A GAY COUPLE AT THE SHOW LOOK AT US!" Whilst the stories, characters , and designs are beyond horrid. Canon is toilet paper in that you wipe your behind with it.
  But if anyone points this out, you get your comments at best, or at worst you get immediately banned, made out to be a nazi, sexist or more of that sort of fun.
  Im sure Picard would have a word or two to say about virtue signalling, but current trek fans don't really seem to care much.
- Your rhetoric is out of date, Strange New Worlds is great and IMO Lower Decks is too, even as someone that hates DISCO and Picard.
  
  Its not out of date, I simply stopped caring and watching. Star trek sucked since after enterprise. I've watched the horrendous movies, I've watched the cringe shows they showed down our throats all the way to Picard which managed to ruin TNG for me. Can't even watch that anymore without remembering how badly they broke everything.
  So I'm done
- Billionaire overlords are only funding dystopian sci-fi so that we see the evil society they plan to foist on us as inevitable. Utopian scifi like TNG is revolutionary.
- Yeah Discovery was way too dark for me. My trek has a good time all the time.
  Agreed about The Orville - the greatest homage to get cheap sets and great scriptwriting down. Also all other planets are the California woods.
  
  Figuratively but also literally. What happened with just normal plain lighting where you can see things, you know, like places where we work and live?
  No, everything has to look dark and broody and scary
- Have you watched Strange New Worlds? I swear, its TOS/TNG with a modern aesthetic

This is throwing shade at SW fans. Thing is, SW is shit since the Prequeks. Disney SW only made it worse. However, Disney shills use muhsoggknee excuse everytime someone points out their shitty movies and shows. This is why they're seething at Jenny's 4 hour takedown of their Hotel.
- Oh, have they responded to that? I was really hoping it upset them.

Doctor who is better
- Star Trek is 40 lbs of pure columbian white sitting in a big pile on my desk.
  Doctor Who is a dusty lump of crack I flushed out from behind the toilet that I'm hoping will last the weekend.

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