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Has Star Trek Gone Woke? HUH What the %^$#%
ryuranger
Member Posts: 533 Arc User
in Ten Forward
OK I am kept getting articles that people are complaining that the New Trek is "Woke"! Let me tell you something Dumb Dumbs STAR TREK IS THE DEFINITION OF WOKE!!! From the 1960's to Now Star Trek Always as been the front line of enlightenment and pushing the boundaries of Human Unity Let See here Star Trek The Cage 1964 We Have First officer Female Alien science officer Spock The Second Pilot Where No Man as Gone Before We got Scottish chief Engineer First officer Alien Aka Spock An Japanese American officer (Later Pilot of the Enterprise) Sulu Then we have in Series Black Bridge Officer that's a Communication officer second season a Russian Navigation/Security officer and in TNG we got a Blind Black Man who drove the Enterprise-D and later became Chief Engineer of the Vessel a Autistic Android A Orphan Klingon just to name few and even with casting extras and other things Star Trek from the Vary Beginning is a show that's about Enlightening the human imagination! Look what that one franchise gave the world Cell Phones Touch Screen Technology inspiration for Space Travel medical research in medical Tech so on just because we have more women on the bridge or the two cute guys on Discovery are a TRIBBLE couple dose not mean Star Trek is Gone Woke in 1967 we have first interracial Kiss in 1994 we have first Same sex Kiss on TV SO STOP with this Closed minded bull @%#$@ and Open the doors and allow your mind to wake up and be Enlighten and Seek the Future Where No One as Gone Before!!!
May the Shwartz Be With You
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- A Japanese bridge officer 20 years after the end of WW2.
- A Black bridge officer in the 1960s, still early days for the Civil Rights movement. And a woman, to boot, in an era when many women in the US couldn't even get a car or a credit card without a man's cosigning.
- "The Omega Glory" (nationalism, although the writer didn't seem clear on whether he was for or against). "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (racism). "The Cloud Minders" (class warfare). "The Mark of Gideon" (birth control, quite controversial at the time). "Balance of Terror" (racism again). "Mudd's Women" (human trafficking, unregulated capitalism). And the hits just keep on coming.
Star Trek has always been progressive, yes.
The problem is that some circles will not differentiate the two, and weaponize the term "woke" to apply it to whatever they don't agree with as some kind of catch all trigger word.
The first season of Discovery is the most extreme example. It decries real-world racism with the whole thing about the Vulcan Science Academy's admissions -- they gave it a whole episode for Chrissakes -- but then turns around and makes up its own racist stereotypes to apply to aliens and then validates them every time they comes up. For example: Burnt Ham constantly insists that "Klingons only understand violence so that's the only way you can deal with them." That is a fundamentally racist point-of-view
Guess what happens in the season finale? That's right: the Federation holds a nuke to the head of the Klingon Empire to get them to agree to peace.
While I'm at it, they also perverted Star Trek's anti-imperialist ideals in the same sequence: instead of owning their nuclear blackmail, the way Deep Space Nine might have, they hand the detonator to L'Rapist so she can do a little regime change by taking the Empire hostage herself. And to put the cherry on this s**t sandwich, they then go and give medals to the crew for completely and utterly perverting the entire core ethos of Star Trek into yet another post-9/11 neocon propaganda piece.
Wasn't there a time in Star Trek when interfering with foreign countries was supposed to be a bad thing?
No, Star Trek: Discovery insists that the Dubyas and the Boltons of the world are right: that the only way to deal with hostile regimes is to forcibly replace their governments with puppets.
Now contrast what The Orville did in season 3's "Domino". They get a superweapon against the Kaylon, and use it to compel them to a ceasefire. But they're very clear that the idea is not to hold the entire Kaylon civilization hostage forever, but just to buy time to negotiate a real peace and convince the Kaylon that the Planetary Union doesn't have any ill intentions towards them and is perfectly happy to live and let live. This turns out to be internally controversial so shenanigans happen, but the end result is a just peace based on mutual understanding and not threats of genocide.
That's what Star Trek is supposed to push for.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
True. But if you ask me, those circles are made up of radical elements of both sides.
It's as much a thing of certain conservatives to deliberately conflate woke with anything progressive, as it is done by the more radical elements from progressive circles - who do so in order to suggest that their far more radical ideas are supported by the large minority or majority (depending on which country one lives in) who just want to move forward - but who don't necessarily support stuff like diversity quota, blaming white men (or white people in general) for all bad things, rewriting established characters, ignoring grammar rules, calling women 'non-men' and the like.
It doesn't really help either that meanings can shift over time.
That may have been its original meaning, but when more radical elements of progressive circles - as well as their detractors, as pointed out above - began describing themselves as such instead of just as being 'progressive' the two things stopped meaning the same.
That's a good thing too, in my opinion, as the shifting meaning helps differentiating between forward-looking views on the world on the one hand, and the perceived need to upend society because injustice is everywhere on the other hand - as the more radical elements would claim without providing much evidence *.
* Note: I'm writing this while living in the Netherlands. Things may be different in the US, where I assume most people on here live. And where most people writing for Trek series live, of course.
We've got quite a few radical figures and movements over here - and an increasing number of them, it seems - who are very different from most progressive parties we've got (most of which were, ironically, established around or before the time 'woke' was first used). The former began calling themselves woke at some point, the latter usually don't want to be associated with that term.
Has been since 1966 and ground breaking in many ways
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
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Like a lot of other soft sci-fi, traditional Trek was drama-driven and the main focus were the issues being explored with action and whatnot being secondary to that. TOS was by far the most bleeding-edge when it came to the social and political issues (enough to make it into the news fairly often in an age where there was no internet-style social media to make that easy), but those who were not there at the time usually fail to take the zeitgeist into account so it is not easy for them to see how hard the show pushed the social/political envelope.
Today's TV (including streaming) production technology allows far more action and eyecandy at a far lower cost than ever before, and the studios like to show that off pushing the envelope of pulse-pounding eye-catching romps rather than on drama and clever, thoughtful dialog and plots (it is very similar to the swashbuckler period of the 1950s). NuTrek is a typical product of that environment with its shift to swashbuckling space-opera, heavy focus on action, and melodramatic dialog instead of dramatic.
And, of course, current social media tends to take any amount of possible controversy and whip it up to ridiculous levels, so things appear on the surface to be far more intense than they actually are, so NuTrek seems to be far more "woke" from all the fuss even though it is actually rather timid about diving into the issues the way TOS and the other traditional Treks did.
Don't forget Paris.
And even Tuvok. He danced for Neelix when he departed the ship.
I don't have a problem with character growth. My problem is that her racist views are never actually challenged in the season: she just randomly remembers in the last half-hour that, oh, wait, genocide is wrong. Also, again, regime change by nuclear blackmail? Hello? Anyone? (Bueller?)
That's not the Federation. Yes, it was a mirror universe character's idea, but nobody was holding a gun to the Federation's head and forcing them to go along with it instead of throwing her in a cell to be tried for crimes against civilization. And even if they did, there's this old rule about how following an unlawful order is itself an unlawful act. For God's sake, the entire climax of TNG: "The Pegasus" was all about that!
The proper way to have handled it would have been for the show to not present all the Klingons all the time as being all fired up for war with the Federation. Over the years we've seen a huge variety of Klingons in Star Trek: everybody from folks like Gowron and the the House of Duras, who have no honor either by Klingon standards or by ours, to Worf, son of Mogh who willingly endured the blackening of his family name twice rather than deviate from what he knew in his heart was right (the truest expression of batlh), to wise leaders like Gorkon and Azetbur who knew not to fight in a burning house, to our old friend Kaga who could give a targh Sa'Hut about all that and would rather run a restaurant and play the accordion.
Lose the entire continuity-breaking mirror universe arc, and you now have plenty of episodes wherein the protagonists can make diplomatic contact with Klingons opposed to the war and encourage and empower them. And in the bargain we force Burnt Ham to actually confront her racist opinions and overcome them organically.
That is how you use a racist protagonist properly, and that is also how Star Trek is supposed to work. If I wanted to see the protagonists spout off about how they must purge the filthy xenos and barely be challenged on it, I've got a collection of Warhammer 40k novels for that. I hear they're making an Eisenhorn TV series, too.
Actually, now that I think about it, Ciaphas friggin' Cain knew better than Burnt Ham when to put away the flamers and actually talk to the aliens, so Burnt Ham really doesn't have any leg to stand on whatsoever.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Guilliman with the Ynaari as well, he understood the need for diplomacy when faced by a common threat of Chaos
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
As for her views being "challenged", the reason she had to give a Kirk Speech was because Starfleet Command was even more racist toward Klingons than she was, and for less reason (she at least had the excuse that her parents had been killed by Klingons, Command was just being xenophobic).
War is Hell. And even if you strive to be a good person... you may have to get your hands dirty for the greater good.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
I don't think Trek is anymore 'woke' now than it ever was. Trek has always heavily referenced RL issues. But to me the older Trek series somehow seemed to do a better job of getting the message across.
I think it also has a lot to do with how you feel about the character sending the message. If it is a character you like and respect, you are more likely to accept their message. If it is a character you don't like or feels self-righteous/preachy, you are much less likely to accept their message.
Another issue with Discovery in particular is the fact that it has a 'main' character. In other Trek series, if there was a character you don't really like that much, it was not a big deal because they show wasn't focused on them. But when it comes to Discovery, if you don't like Burnham you can't really like the show, because it's the Burnham show.
I recently tried to watch Discovery again, and I just don't enjoy it. I wish I did, but unfortunately I don't. That said, it did open the door for SNW, so I appreciate it for that.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Fuller intended one person to take the lead in each cycle of the anthology but CBS wanted to play it safe and use a traditional fixed-cast structure instead of bouncing around, so they stayed with Martin-Green as the lead actress, who they actually delayed the series (at the insistence of Fuller) to wait for. It most likely would have worked better with an ensemble, but they wanted to do it action movie style (according to Kurtzman in the runup hype) and very few of those movies have ensemble casts.
Personally, I think that after they nudged Fuller out of the production they did not do a good job of trying to integrate his originally separate pitches into a single-story format, though the result is still mildly watchable even if it is not up to traditional Trek standards (in my opinion anyway).
The difference is that the former gives you something to think about, while the latter two insist that you take their side. Not only that, but the latter two also come packaged with their own versions of Bible Thumping, Witch Hunts, Selective History, and Burnings at the Stake. Indeed, the latter two, to paraphrase Peter Griffin, "Insist upon themselves."
Let us consider, for example, the kiss between Kirk and Uhura in the episode Plato's Stepchildren.
As the original is written, Kirk and Uhura kiss then the scene keeps moving to display the reactions of the antagonists, never slowing the episode to address the kiss in detail again. This gave the audience something to think about.
If that scene were written today the kiss would happen then the episodes pace would grind down so that some dialogue could be shoehorned in to convey the "acceptable" message; "There, you see? It's perfectly okay if Green People and Blue People kiss even though most Bigoted Ist-a-phobe Blue People have a problem with it. You don't want to be a Blue Bigoted Ist-a-phobe, do you?"
Indeed, I agree with jonsills in his response to fleetcaptain5. "Woke" and "Progressive" are pretty much the same thing. They just haven't been much of a problem in Star Trek since they replaced topical around 2009, or so.
Frankly that is stupid IMO. But politics be politics I suppose. And that's neither here nor there, and not going to be discussed further.
But I think we can all agree that Star Trek, no matter what term you use, has always been more forward thinking on hot button topics.
That one I believe Picard put it best.
"Who are we to dictate the next course of evolution for these people?"
Yes the Metaphasics might have benefitted billions, but at the cost of destroying a culture and, as later discovered, getting caught in the middle of a family feud as the Son'a turned out to be the same species as the Ba'ku. Picard pointed out that moving them by deception or by force would destroy their culture, just like all other forced relocations in history. One or two people to get a superpower involved in the Dominion War is one thing, 600 people is another.
And again as Picard said:
"How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people DOES IT TAKE, admiral?"
When lives become nothing more than a stastic to justify an action... especially in numbers... things get ugly.