A generalist Sci-Fi meme community.
I guess the demographics are focussing on the LBGTQ's
I've seen sentiments like this expressed even by otherwise normal people I know in real life, not just internet blowhards, and I struggle to get my head around the sheer lack of self-awareness that comes with it.
Think about how it makes you feel to not be represented for 30 minutes of airtime. That's what minorities deal with for the other 23 hours 30 minutes of mainstream programming per day.
Discovery was legitimately awful in many ways, but not because it was progressive. It was awful because the writing was trash, it over-used CGI in many ways, including breaking canon with holographic interfaces, ruined the fucking Klingons, had a constant melodramatic after-school special vibe in which characters were constantly stopping in the middle of an emergency to talk about their feelings and kumbaya-cry it out...I could go on.
But one thing I thought Discovery got right was the relationship between Stamets and Culber. It felt natural and lived-in, and I was really happy to see that. Because representation matters!
had a constant melodramatic after-school special vibe in which characters were constantly stopping in the middle of an emergency to talk about their feelings and kumbaya-cry it out
Nail on the head.
Honestly I don't think it was any of those, really. Not that I'm dismissing them, but I don't think they were the central issue.
It was just cheap action fantasy disguised as Star Trek, without really the spirit of Trek. It was individualistic and character-centric, as opposed to the classic TNG vibe of a family and an adventure that just happens on you while you're trying to just do peaceful exploration.
That's what SNW works so well, it abides by the traditional formula.
If you think gays are the worst thing about Discovery, you haven't watched Discovery...
I watched this episode and I've never been more embarrassed to be gay.
I also watched a couple other episodes (out of order), and I'm confident that I didn't miss much because each episode is 10% plot and 90% "let's talk about what you missed while you were watching tiktok".
I think the latter is the bigger offense.
What offends me about this show is how shit it is
It took me forever to figure out why the bottom picture was “bad”…
Hopefully, people in 60 years will be saying the same about the top picture.
Wonderfully said
I mean, it doesn’t have to be 60. I’d take next year too.
Next year for people to not even immediately recognize why it might be controversial? That'd require everyone's memories to get messed up pretty badly by something.
Not saying it’s probable, I’m just saying that we don’t have to wait 60 years lol
will they?
they should. but the way things are going i am not certain at all.
I wasn't really the biggest fan of Discovery, but those two guys weren't the reason for sure.
I strongly dislike Discovery.
And those two were some of the ONLY redeeming features along with Jet (Tig Notaro).
Yes, only I really hated that she was named Jet Reno because I kept thinking of Janet Reno!
It’s the only Trek I wasn’t able to finish.
I’m sure I will one of these days.
You should! The end is even worse 😐
First interracial kiss on TV
Depends on what you mean by interracial. Lucy and Desi (I love Lucy) were pretty controversial at the time, and that was before Kirk and Uhura.
Well, the only reason Star Trek happened in the first place was because Lucille Ball strong armed it to stay on the air, so she gets credit regardless.
Very true!
While the first interracial kiss on TV is still debated, Kirk/Uhura most definitely wasn't it. This was '68 or '69, on Dutch TV we already had the first interracial kiss in 1959 and there are other American examples before '68. The actress from that Dutch scene passed away this year at 95 by the way. Unfortunately I only have a Dutch source, but here you go: https://nos.nl/artikel/2574061
It might not look like much these days, but in '59 it made the headlines in international news.
Why didn't those people get outraged with Jadzia's lesbian kiss in DS9 in the 90ies?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/Rejoined_Dax_and_Lenara_kiss.png
They did, but not as many of them. And most kept it to themselves because they liked it.
Because women kissing women is sexy to straight men.
Men kissing men is not sexy to those same men.
It's misogyny.
I'd say more objectification than misogyny in this case.
I recall there being angry letters sent about how it was inappropriate for a kid, and who ever responded basically said [heavily paraphrasing] 'there's guns, violence and death and you draw the line at two women kissing? Fuck off'
one theory is that ds9 was fucking great and discovery waa poo poo.
which had fuck all to do with gay people. I mean, I guess it may have in a sense now thst I think abojt it, but only in the narrowest of ways and as an overt symptom of 2 dimensional character writing. Paul Stamets' partner's whole character was basically "I'm a gay doctor", which combined with "my whole character is that I have anxiety" Tilly and Michale "I have problems with authority" Burnham really show how weak the writing was.
which, if you stop and think about it, has anout as much do with being gay as flowers do with the plot of The Room.
100% right. Plus they were late to the party: the Shatner-Nichols kiss was absolutely groundbreaking on television in 1968, but a gay kiss on streaming in 2017 was not.
Some people hated Discovery because of progressive values, sure, but I hated it because these values were packaged in such flat characters as you said, participating in sci-fi stories that were just plain bad.
The only reason I disliked any of the gay was that it was pandering. Everyone was gay first and a person second.
Maybe I'm a bit backwards in this but I seriously could not give less of a shit who someone chooses to fuck and be romantically involved with.
I do. not. fucking. care.
I don't care if your partner is the same gender as you, a different sex, or a fucking level 13 druid owl otherkin.
It has zero effect on me.
Which also means that if your whole personality boils down to "I'm gay" or "I'm straight" then your whole personality is SUPER uninteresting.
It applies to art, too. Pandering is lazy, it is not engaging, and it is straight up bad writing.
I tried to watch Discovery. Forced myself through season one and only could manage a few episodes in season two.
The writing is just so bad, I can't handle it. This coming from someone that regularly rewatches older Trek and DOESN'T SKIP the few awful episodes.
I forced myself through every episode. It picked up and I got kinda into it and then crying space baby shit happened and threw it all away.
By the point we saw the crying space baby, my expectations were already very low 😂
The whole concept of The Burn annoyed me from the beginning. It's not that it makes less sense than warp drive or subspace comms, but it somehow didn't fit with the established "science" of Star Trek.
Is this from 7 years ago?
Yes, but Star Wars has been very white. That’s long before Disney.
Lucas is married to a black woman, Star Wars in general is full of aliens representing, ahem, different races, Star Wars 1980 and 1983 have Lando, and Star Wars prequels have a few black people on screen.
With Star Wars 1977 the story was that most of the people in the background were hired from the union in London when filming, probably not many black chaps there then. Or so I've read recently.
About interracial relationships - yes, not much of that on screen, if we don't count the heavily implied Leia-Jabba pairing.
With Star Wars 1977 the story was that most of the people in the background were hired from the union in London when filming, probably not many black chaps there then. Or so I’ve read recently.
There were plenty of black people in london back then, but maybe not in the acting union. Not sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#The_.22Windrush_generation.22
Well, I suppose there were also limitations to casting black people as Imperial military personnel (those people reminiscent of the British Empire and Nazis) and Tatooine, being somewhat reminiscent of Texas with Middle-Eastern additional vibes, too may not have been too suitable. But ... whatever.
I don't know, maybe Lucas even was racist sometime around 1977, but by 1980 no more. Who the hell knows.
