r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
Rules
1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
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5 Spoilers
Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episode. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books, etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/Quarks.
7 Meta
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Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 02-19 | SFA 1x07 | "Ko’Zeine" |
| 02-26 | SFA 1x08 | "The Life of the Stars" |
| 03-05 | SFA 1x09 | "300th Night" |
| 03-12 | SFA 1x10 | "Rubincon" |
| TBA | SNW 4x01 | TBA |
Upcoming Trek
Strange New Worlds (TBA)
Starfleet Academy (TBA)
In Development
Untitled comedy series
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
The worst part (in my opinion) is that if I criticize star trek academy a lot of folks assume I'm some hate filled right wing chud because of all the extremely bad faith criticisms by hate filled right wing chuds.
When in reality I just think it's poorly written and very self congratulatory, just like Discovery and Picard were.
If you can speak to the specifics of why you found the writing bad, I think thats fine. If your critique is just "writing was bad". Well then maybe think on it for longer before sharing your opinion if you dont want to be lumped in with the chuds who also arent going past skin deep with the same opinion.
I have major issues with The Last of Us 2, a game that was also piled on by right wing chuds. I did enjoy the game, but there are issues i have with character motivations where I think the story writers didn't do enough to convince me that the characters had the conviction they were portrayed as having. I also feel the game had a clear ending that was acceptable and then decided to tack on an additional section because I guess they wanted to resolve somethings that were better left unresolved.
Other than the driving plot forward, once you're able to ignore some things yeah, enjoyable game, with some missed potential.
Ultimately I also think its about recognizing that these things are other peoples yums, and i think critiquing them is ok, but stating something like bad writing is objective and doesn't seem subjective. You are denying someone who thought the writing was good. You're allowed to not like something, but dont yuck it.
see also: critiquing Avatar Legend of Korra gets dicey fast because most of the online discussion surrounds how the buff tan teenager being physically attracted to a woman is forced diversity when my critique is that the character writing isn't very good and the series breaks the lore
The thing was in TOS that kiss, in-universe, was no biggie. In DS9 with all the gender and sexuality shifts in the Trill scenario, it again just 'was'. When it was a big deal, it was some alien culture being backwards and the Federation being an example of doing it right.
STD was oddly self-congratulatory. "First ever non-binary character in trek!" they proclaim as people were able to respond with just so many examples of previous non-binary characters. The character despite being a human, being on Earth, had to make a big deal of "coming out" and a big outpouring of support in-universe to balance out the trepidation of coming out. Which should have just been a very mundane scenario, you want the character to be non-binary, fine, they are, people will be respectful but it will be a boring mundane fact rather than some big deal.
Yes, there are those that are flipping out over too much representation that are done consistently with star trek. Probably the most fair point was that someone probably wouldn't be out of shape, but by that logic, Picard shouldn't have been bald, so....
lmao did they really? didn't riker bang a non-binary alien (or try to at least)?
Actually, as I recall the entire society was 'non-binary' and that specific alien wanted to come out as female. And of course Riker banging was a green light after she declared herself female. Probably not the best choice to have Riker banging her as part of the narrative, but yeah, that was famously an example of them trying to address a point by inverting real-world, the 'norm' is non-binary and the 'unusual' one is gendered and the Federation serves as the model of 'we respect your people either way, you should too'.
That's right, the entire species had evolved past having gender. That makes it even sadder/funnier that ST:D tried to claim it.
Is where they officially declared that Trek was doing a non-binary character for the first time.
The Star Trek universe’s first non-binary character
wow, not even the first crew members or first actors, they tried to claim it for the whole Star Trek universe. unbelievable. I think Dax would like to have a word with them.
It... insists upon itself?
These days it seems like most things getting called "woke DEI crap" are totally in line with the norms of society, but someone wants to change that.
Agreed. People should dislike modern Star Trek for it’s bad writing, not because it’s progressive.
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn't an issue at all.
Uhura was a bridge officer who was a black woman, and nobody cared or even noticed because in-universe there was nothing special about that.
I like how in Discovery a character came out as non-binary and everyone is like "ok cool" and that was that and it was never brought up again (because why would it be)?
You can tell by the absolute meltdown conservative spaces had about that five second clip that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
But that's not what they did with Uhura. They never hung a lantern on her being black or a woman. She was just there and it was such a normal thing it didn't need to be addressed in-universe.
Having a character "come out" means the world is one in which people are hiding in the closet because of a social stigma. A world in which that stigma doesn't exist doesn't require a character to come out.
Huh? How is Stamets supposed to know if nobody tells him?
EDIT: Also Uhura's Blackness and femaleness were most certainly addressed in-universe in a longer scene than I shared above.
Don't spend 5 episodes uses feminine pronouns for the character then have them "come out" as non-binary. Just establish their pronouns from the outset, and don't make a big deal outside the show about how brave they are for having an NB Trek character.
You don't normalize something by pointing out that it's strange.
Got it, you're saying you are happy to see the inclusion of a non-binary character, just upset that it wasn't communicated a few episodes earlier?
Pretty much. And maybe in the off-screen bragging about it, at least say first main character or first crew member (someone argued about Dax, but I'd say that character was gendered, just fluid over the long term), not 'first character ever', since you had a number of instances, and pretty much dead-on a whole species dedicated to exploring gendered versus non-binary in TNG. That's one habit of Discovery was leaving people wondering if they even watched the shows that preceeded them...
There should have been no good reason for Adira to only tell Gray despite their clear desire to be recognized as non-binary.
Or, alternatively, they could have established that 32nd century Earth cut off from the federation had backslid to MAGA-sensibilities to explain why far future human feels the need to tiptoe around their identity until they come to terms with the culture of the federation that might have been lost to Earth.
I'm discussing canon and "off-screen" is definitionally not canon. Canonically, it's hard for me to see Adira's gender as anything other than an extremely small side detail about the character as it's only brought up that one single time in passing.
It's that they are treating it as something weird. Uhura's race and sex weren't treated as weird because why would it be? There wasn't anything especially special about Geordi being a blind helmsman when TNG premiered, because making accommodations wasn't anything special - it was normal.
What Discovery did was performative inclusivity, which is a more subtle form of bigotry. It's pointing at someone and calling them weird and claiming moral superiority for tolerating their presence.
Hm I don't remember that. Can you point me to a line of dialogue or anything outside of that (again extremely brief) clip I posted to support your argument?
Trek writing has never been consistently good. Half of TOS is unwatchably bad. TNG sucks until Riker gets more hair. DS9 sucks until Sisko gets less hair. Voyager's all over the place (even though it's my favorite). Enterprise is mostly bad. Only the even numbered TOS movies are good. Only the first two TNG movies are good.
I say this with a genuine love of Star Trek, but the quality of the writing has varied greatly over each individual series.
Which is one of the reasons why Discovery and Picard at least are problematic (I haven't seen Academy).
As you say, a lot of the old stories aren't really that good. What happens when they had a bad story, or maybe less 'bad' and just didn't engage with you? New one next week.
With Discovery and Picard? Well the whole season is the story, so if it doesn't engage with you, you are pretty much out for the season.
Personally, I never felt there was really enough narrative "meat" in their stories to warrant a season long arc, and so it felt a bit stretched for time for the perceived "a story needs to fill a binge" market.
Strange New Worlds primary win was returning to episodic, to give a story a chance to shine or fail in a digestable amount of time and move on. Was at its weakest when Season 3 kind of devolved to a weird arc.
Exactly. Star Trek takes place in utopia - and the creators' version of utopia is one with equality, freedom, and respect for all. If someone's version of utopia doesn't align with this, I think that says a lot more about them than it does about how "woke" Star Trek is
Their utopia also highly resembles communism as a classless, stateless society
Yeah, and it shows how hard it is to build a utopia even when intentionally trying to remove class, when oligarchies are motivated to prevent that, and in a post-scarcity reality, which we don’t yet have.
It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.
is it true that the kiss was originally supposed to be between Spock and Uhura, but Shatner refused to be upstaged so he had them rewrite it to be with him?
either way, good point, somewhat problematic author.
broken clocks, eh?
Naw. It was originally written for Kirk and Uhura, but when the NBC executives found out they were worried it would offend TV stations in the south. The idea of having Uhura and Spock kiss was brought up because Spock is half-vulcan (which NBC thought racists would find less offensive???), but Shatner insisted that they stick the original script (perhaps out of ego, perhaps out of artistic integrity, who knows). Eventually NBC ordered that two versions of the scene be shot - one with the kiss and one without. Shatner intentionally flubbed every single take of the non-kiss version to force the executives' hands. It wasn't the first interracial kiss on televion, but it was the first instance of a scripted kiss between a white man and a black woman.
A few years back, I was speaking to a roommate. I complained that the (then) new Star Trek had forced diversity. He immediately shut me down, "Star Trek has ALWAYS been like that". He was a huge fan of Star Trek
My biggest complaint about academy is the same as everyone, poor writing. But since everyone also wants to bring up the 'woke' panic as well being why it's so bad, I disagree. It isn't the package that is bad, it's the packaging.
Don't give 'the Gay(tm) character'. Give me a good character who is gay.
Why are you forcing me to care about a character because they are gay? What a wasted opportunity. You had a not so subtle anti-archetype klingon who had the heavy handed writing of being into science, medicine, and openly gay and intentionally written to be anything a klingon is not. What shitty writing. They had all the opportunities to make me love the character for who they were, their personality, their true choices and internal struggles, and make me care about them as a whole person that happened to be gay because that is who they are. Make me love their choices about being gay, not tell me I should love them because they are gay.
More than that, previous iterations of trek knew how to do it right. Most people bring up DS9 because it was done so well. We loved the characters for who they were, and who they were happened to be gay. Academy told us to love them because they were gay, and just happened to also be a character.
Edit: lol. Getting downvoted because people think this is some anti-gay post?? It's about bad writing and forced caring.
In my opinion, for recent shows The Orville did it best. Bortis is easily my favorite character. So well written and so much fun. And the whole arc with his kid was some of the best scifi tv trans writing out there. That is where academy could take a lesson from on what I mean about loving the character who happens to be gay rather the telling me to love the character because they are gay.
