Since Discovery, despite the Star Trek writers repeatedly beating us over the head with this, I still somehow didn’t catch onto the pattern. If there is a through-line to all the new shows, the notion that acknowledging one’s own vulnerability is a sign of individual strength, and that showing support when others are being vulnerable around you, is also a sign of individual strength.
This may not feel “woke” in the way it’s usually understood, but I really think it’s pushing a long overdue envelope, and one that is arguably more important to our times than a half-black half-white face representing the “illogical” nature of racism.
When I read the angry tweets about the new series (ie; the “pussification of men”, etc.) I can’t even force myself to see them as coming from anything other than weak, scared people who are too afraid of what the world would think of them if they expressed their authentic selves. They want to scare the rest of us into being as scared as they are, because they believe it will make them feel less alone. But loneliness can only be fixed by showing vulnerability.
And that’s the root of the problems in our modern era, isn’t it? Deeply insecure people hurting others in a desperate effort to not be hurt themselves. They haven’t always portrayed this concept in a graceful way, but kudos to Star Trek for keeping up the tradition of asking its audience: “What is it you’re so afraid of?”
Why are you even listening to the opinions of CHUDs?
The problem with new trek isn’t “wokeness”, too little or too much. It’s that they abandoned what made Trek so unique: It’s supposed to be a time after humanity has dealt with all of the stupid in-fighting and conservative BS. It’s supposed to be about a time when the drama doesn’t come from inside the house. When humanity is exploring the stars, not having a moment.
It’s just a complete lack of imagination. It’s not like Trek has ever been wanting for drama. They just decided to write new Trek in the lamest, same-old Hollywood way possible.
The problem is it’s action and drama scifi now, and not a real vision of a better future. It’s no longer unique or enlightened. It’s just drama with Trek paint.
And yet all the drama is derived directly from real world human issues, so what makes a difference between Starfleet characters creating it or some fictional alien race? The latter too closely resembles “American exceptionalism” by acting like Starfleet always has all the answers and can do no wrong and these uncultured foreign aliens need to bend to our will in order to solve their problems. I don’t see that being super appealing considering everything that is happening currently.
Yeah, I’ve always found the “Starfleet must always be in the right” mentality to be patronizing at best, imperialistic at worst.
I can think of another sci-fi series where the highly advanced civilization is always in the right, and I’ve heard it kinda sucks
That is a grossly terrible charictarization of what it’s supposed to be…
No wonder everything is going to hell if people cannot even understand what it means to be done working through shit…
What do you find to be grossly terrible about it?
If they were done working through shit then there wouldn’t be any problems left to write a TV show about. What you’re describing is one group of people being superior to another and that superior group swooping in to save the day much like the way America has viewed itself historically.
Nope. There are plenty of episodes with drama that comes from other sources, or from their adventuring, or interaction with different cultures, or just things plain going wrong. They’ve even already challenged the whole idea of the post-scarcity human culture being so superior in older treks.
So you’re kinda’ just further proving my point that it’s a gross lack of imagination to assume it has to be a fascistic superiority complex.