Star Trek Social Club

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.

Though they clearly haven't, even if they think so. For example, if you're not an organic humanoid, it's very much up in the air whether you'll be treated as a person, or as an inconvenience.

The Measure of a Man was constrained to apply to that one instance, in Data's case, and he had the Sutherland automatically assuming the worst of him and nearly comm itting mutiny. Both the ExoComps and the EMH suffer from people thinking they're malfunctioning and factory resetting/lobotomising them.

If you're in a war with the Federation, it's equally ambiguous whether they'll stick to their own rules of conflict. The moment they feel threatened, they'll do things like unleash a deadly bio-weapon/memetic-weapon against your species, start laying self-replicating mines, or just make plans to blow up your homeworld. At best, your fate is left to the whims of a handful of admirals and captains.

Even within the Federation, Admiral Satie was not a isolated instance. She only made two mistakes, in going up against an unusually accepting crew that would bat for one of their own, and losing her composure in front of another admiral. If she hadn't, her crusade against Romulans in Starfleet would have continued unabated.

The fact that she could start it would suggest that those attitudes exist and are underlying within Starfleet. At least, on a significant enough level that she wasn't treated as being unusually paranoid about a non-issue.

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.

I agree 100%, but I'm also saying that's exactly what's happening and we've (at least I) just been too blind to see it until SFA. This current era is portraying a future where "strength" doesn't mean swallowing your pain in order to conform and being ashamed of what makes you different. Real strength is the ability to be your true self, and (more importantly) the strength to radically accept others for being their true selves.

TOS taught us there's no need to fear people with different skin color. SFA is teaching us that there's no need to fear someone for exposing their vulnerabilities and expressing their emotions in a healthful way. It's a radical concept for our time.

EDIT because I want to reply to this:

Why are you even listening to the opinions of CHUDs?

If by "CHUDS" you mean the people I described as being "insecure and afraid" then the answer is I listen to them because they are human beings in pain. As Star Trek is trying to teach us, real personal strength comes from being able to listen with our whole hearts.

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.

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.

You seem to have almost completely missed the point of allegory and metaphor in TOS. "Time after humanity has dealt with" as you put it is just a literary device to soften the impact when the show was inevitably confronted or viewed by real racists. It was never a really view of the future. It was always a reflection of our present through the lens of futurism, a clever narrative framing device. That narrative framing device could not possibly remain unchangeable through multiple generations without loosing everything that made it work. Attempting to do so, i.e. keeping the storytelling framework completely unchanged and not adapting to new generations and new social dynamics, would have shown a lack of creativity and imagination.

The show was from a time when the U.S. thought they had beaten fascism (past tense, done, a part of the past) and would soon beat racism, classism, etc. From a time when imperialism was seen as a fundamentally good social force by most of the imperialist public. Today we (mostly) know better. We will probably never truly erase any of them. They are things we'll have to remain vigilant for. A show today patronizing us with their perfected utopian society which remains VERY imperialist without shining a light on that contradiction just would not work. A show lacking any interpersonal drama also would not work and it's not even something that was really true for TOS, just a weird kink Roddenberry got into when producing TNG. That's the context of the way Star Trek has changed and it matters.

That is a small thing.

I extremely disagree but I'd be curious to know your thought process behind saying it. To me, it seems like the biggest thing and that every social issue ever addressed in every Star Trek series has this at it's core.

Let's give Picard some credit, it spent most a season giving us a look at the challenges of building a community while evading immigration officers, and the heartbreak of losing someone whose only crime was being "illegal" or undocumented.

I'd also argue that part of it is also maintaining Starfleet values in extremis. Even if you don't have the institutional support of the rest of the Federation and they are against it, it's important to stand up for your moral beliefs.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think Discovery walked so SNW and SFA could run. TOS/TNG showed us a future where people wouldn't be ostracized for their race/gender. The newer series are showing us a future where people won't be ostracized for being their authentic selves.

I really don't think I am. Star Trek has always wrapped social topics in a scifi setting. It just took me until now to recognize what social topic they've been advocating this time, and it isn't "nonbinary people are people too", or "Black women can be a main character". It's "Not being ashamed to expose your vulnerabilities is a sign of strength more powerful than the mightiest Klingon warrior". And "Standing up and showing support to others being vulnerable" is a sign of strength too.

The way we are quick to dismiss those expressing their vulnerability as "being dramatic" is exactly the topic they're addressing. They're trying to make us ask WHY vulnerability makes us uncomfortable. Facing it dead on takes extreme courage.

As if Star Trek wasn’t corporate from the beginning!

Every major difference between the original pilot ‘The Cage’ and the original series / TOS was rooted in corporate priorities.

The bright, primary coloured uniform tunics, bright colourful flashing lights on the bridge and other sets were designed to promote NBC’s ‘Living Color’ television broadcasts.

Kirk was younger, physically more vigorous and less cerebral than Pike, no matter what Roddenberry wanted. Action adventure hero, romancing women, was what the network wanted no matter that Roddenberry wanted Kirk to be a ‘stack of books with legs’ and for Yeoman Rand to be the original third principle character and long term romantic interest.

Hah! Sign me up for a unionizing episode too. And thanks for reading!

Actually, I like the inhumanity in SFA. So many of the extras are aliens, it's great. I've had enough of Starfleet being mostly humans

Do you believe Discovery had a story arc about gender identity? I would encourage you to watch the show again because it absolutely did not exist.

TOS wasn't exactly subtle with its wokeness...

This is from an episode about how stupid racism is.

Agreed. DSC was filled with superficial Mary Sue slop. All anyone ever needed to overcome their problem was a cookie-cutter motivational speech from Burnham, while inspirational music played and the camera slowly panned across every crew members face as they smiled and gave a nod of approval.

It is cringy because it's like a virtue signaling characature of "wokeness" along the same vein as "after-school TV specials" or Christian evangelist movies of decades past. There's no depth or substance just endless variations of "there's no problem that can't be solved with a hug."