So I do like Star Trek a lot, especially TNG, DS9, and Below Decks. Voyager and TOS are fine. Space socialism is pretty good and I can't get enough of it. There are a few common tropes that irk me. tho.
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Baseball is cracker Amerikkkan nonsense - You telling me that all these different species and planets get together to chill, and the vibe they're gonna channel is Ohio?? Football (soccer) or some version of hockey make a lot more sense, you can pick up and start playing immediately. I can't imagine Worf wanting to learn all those pointless rules about balls and strikezones and fowls. Sisko is arguably the best captain of any series, and I really get pulled out of an episode every time he drops some awful baseball trivia. It's only slightly better than Nascar. I actually know one Scottish person who really likes baseball, and he's literally the worst person I know.
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The tribunal - It's so damn common. It seems like every season there's got to be a court-martial, hearing, or appeal against a Starfleet decision. I guess Law and Order is big there. It's probably a minor critique, but it does reinforce the ideology that Western courtrooms are fair.
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Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.
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Poker in TNG - Poker has to be the worst form of entertainment, and I genuinely like maths. I blame TNG for reigniting the poker craze of the 90s and ruining all my guy friends' personalities.
In fairness, baseball is seen by most Trek characters as this weird-ass historical thing that regular people don't really care about if they know about it at all.
It's cheap to film with 20th century TV technology.
My biggest gripe with Star Trek is the anachronistic sexism in TOS and TNG. Guess which two sword-trained TNG main cast actors didn't get to use swords in Qpid!
Also, the homophobia right up until Lower Decks. Maybe Discovery and Picard were good about queer issues, I wouldn't know, I watched the pilots of both and decided not to continue watching either one. I haven't seen any of Strange New Worlds because the same people IRL who recommended Discovery and Picard are recommending me Strange New Worlds, and I no longer trust their judgment.
what homophobia? queer stuff is underrepresented on-screen outside of
and the riker episode with the anti-gender fascist planet but if we're calling that the show's homophobia then the term is so broad it's not useful to me.
I was thinking about the TNG episode "The Host". Crusher has a romance with the Trill symbiont being transported inside Riker. The scene where Crusher looks disgusted at her lover now being in a female body has always disappointed me. It's fine if Crusher's not into women, but they could have written and played that scene much better.
the writing seems ok to me? especially for 1991
i'm shit at social cues and haven't watched the remasters so i'll believe you if Crusher's face was doing disgust rather than sadness/emotional exhaustion after Odan's "death" and the period of time where the symbiont was in riker's body which she didn't take that very well either as discussed with Troi earlier.
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/197.htm