Risa

My favorite thing is to have them define "woke." When they can't because it's only a buzzword to them, I explain it means "waking up" to the idea that you're not the only human being with a purpose-filled life, that there are others for whom the system is built to deal a bad hand, and that the most ironic part is that 9 times out of 10 the individual I'm speaking to is not on the list of the "system's chosen."

I watched season 1 of Picard and discovery and they just didn't feel like Star Trek to me. The people complaining about how "woke" it is just distract from legitimate criticism. A lot of it for me was the sets. Their design was dark, gloomy and had an air of oppression that, while present in various forms across trek, wasn't previously baked into the design of the federation. It was all moody lighting and permenantly frowning actors. That temperament translated into the writing as well but you've already addressed part of that. And I've got a bone to pick in general with season 1 of Picard but that's a whole other rant lol

Or just having a black woman on the bridge as a senior officer next to the captain

Or a Russian as a helmsman

Or a Japanese asian man next them

Or a freaking Scotsman yelling nonsense from the boiler room

It was the first televised interracial kiss.

At least in the USA if not the world.

Just imagine what they could come up with in the future. A female captain? A black station commander? No way, Star Trek has gone down the gutter. I'm not watching TNG. They can stick their wokeness where the sun don't shine.

Go back even further! The cage almost canceled the entire show because a woman was merely implied to be captaining the ship for a quick while 😰😰

They rarely are. They're usually just someone who watched Star Trek and thought it looked cool. When it comes to the actual ideas and equality and giving people chances? Nah. The amount of "Trekkies" I've met who are aggressively for the death penalty for people who they politically disagree with or who are disgustingly racist? Phenomenally high.

They had a black woman in a respected, professional position with an officer's rank. The same with an Asian man.

They tackled race relations (in an admittedly very silly way) when no one else would touch it.

They had one of the first onscreen kisses between a white person and a black person.

Starfleet was created as a military force, but dedicated to peaceful exploration and science at the height of the Vietnam war.

Can you even imagine what today's Republicans would say about it back then? There would be a boycott of the network the first time Uhura was onscreen and it wouldn't have finished the season because there were only three networks.

Well, as someone who's gay, I'd say that the representation from Stamets and Culber didn't feel forced or unnatural. If Stamets were straight and Culber were a woman then nothing would change. If Adira wasn't non-binary then nothing would change. If Grey wasn't trans then nothing would change. Stamets was on screen for like two episodes before you ever find out that he's gay. Culber on for one. Adira doesn't mention that they're non-binary until halfway through Season 3 and the reaction is literally just "Okay" and they move on. Grey only has two throwaway lines mentioning a previous transition. Their characters are all well established without their sexuality or identity having any impact on the show. It would all be the same characters but straight. The show goes out of its way to demonstrate that being gay, trans or non-binary has literally nothing to do with the content of your character.

I am getting slightly tired though of seeing people who aren't part of the community saying that the representation of us 'feels forced'. Our mere existence isn't forced. Moreover, are you really the one who gets to judge this? After people trying to kill us for decades, and then using us for marketing purposes, now y'all wanna judge whether our existence is "forced"?

Can't LGBT+ be included unless its meaningful? I dont like that "pandering" argument. It is too easy to misuse, too subjective.

I want them included in bad shows as much as in good shows. I want a random background person to be gay just as much as an important character. Best case would be if we didnt even raise an eyebrow on seeing a LGBT+ character and rather critizise their acting or plot instead of blaming "pandering". I dont hear anyone call forcing a unecessary romantic straight subplot into a plot for "pandering".

I don't want this serialized shit.

I've seen 4 generations of the show, all were episodic. All of a sudden, everything is serialized. Fuck that. Give me self-contained, 43-45 minute stories I can watch in any order and not be like "wait, wtf is going on?"

DS9 and Voyager (and the new season of Lower Decks is doing it too with the mysterious ship plot) have been able to have both an overarching story line while still being episodic. Why can't Picard or Discovery do that?

Yeah I’m pretty sure that is what is turning me off the current shows. I don’t mind the representation, since that’s a core element of Trek and has been since the first show.

Just that the shows, especially discovery, felt very lecturing and on the nose. I don’t want literal current day talking points in space. I want to see a future where those issues have been overcome and it is normal and no big deal.

Though I may be biased because I hated the stamets character, or rather the whole engineering department.

Neurotic gay scientist who is always preoccupied with his emotions and personal life but is also as an afterthought the smartest guy in the galaxy, featuring snarky butch lesbian wonder engineer who is preoccupied with being obnoxious kinda gets old after some episodes.

I think it's starting to turn around.

Discovery - I stopped watching after season 2 cause I thought it was so bad

Picard - season 1-2 terrible. Season 3 pretty good

Lower Decks - all good

Strange New worlds - only watched S1, not my favorite but will definitely watch S2

Prodigy - never saw it so IDK

I think Discovery and Picard really ruined the reputation of modern Star Trek. Overall I think it's at worst it's average.

I started with The Orville (I know, it's not Star Trek), then Lower Decks, TNG, and now DS9. If you want woke, The Orville is very woke and I really enjoyed it, they brought up trans rights and gay rights issues. Following that, TNG isn't really woke I don't think, there's still some traditional patriarchy issues in there iirc but it's still a pretty moderate show.

DS9 was also woke and fun. TNG and TOS had dark episodes. I miss the diversity in modern trek