#a sad lil Spock and a sad little Riker

[feifiefofum]

getting tired of the ‘pandering’ diss on star trek discovery

look, not to diss gene or the star trek that came before discovery, but previous trek pats itself on the back a little too hard about its diversity.

look, most treks have three main protags that they focus on. tos had kirk, spock, mccoy. tng had picard, riker, data. ds9 had sisko, kira, dax. voyager had janeway, seven, the doctor. enterprise had archer, trip, t’pol. 

i dunno about y’all but that roster looks a lil milky to me. kinda like democrats, but then you look at republicans and go ‘oh, alrighty then’ and shove along because it could be worse.

don’t get me wrong, whenever they turn their attention to matters of race and stuff, they make great allegories and they pull it off well. star trek did do a lesbian kiss on ds9. flox had husbandos along with waifus. but it was throwaway rep, where they can point at it and say look, we had rainbows and shit.

but it weren’t integral to the story.

now look at discovery. chief engineer/lead scientist is married to his husband. who serves on the same ship. who died on said ship, came back to life and is a relevant plot point to the show. i may be ace and slightly bi, but that’s a step up in rep compared to skippable episodes and throwaway backstory that’s not gonna come back.

the reds and antis cannot squint and say that there are no gays in space no more!

look at tilly vs barclay. i loved barclay when he first appeared in tng. tons of people loved barclay. he was neurodivergent, probs on the spectrum and socially awkward as hell. but he was in 5 episodes of tng. matter of fact, he was in more episodes of voyager. 6. i checked the wiki, because i recently rewatched all of tng, ds9 and voyager and only remembered him in 2 episodes of tng and 3 on voyager. compared to that, who has more prominence and thus better represents?

plus, she got star trek’s first f-bomb. and i will defend it to my death. i would die on this hill, y’all better believe this shit!

look, star trek’s come a long way. nichelle nichols wanted to quit trek til mlk asked her not to. because her presence on the show was important. and it was because it pushed the then boundaries of the time. and star trek continued to push them boundaries as much as the times were permittin’ from then on. 

but star trek was bound and hobbled in terms of rep. make no mistake of that. much as i loved uhara, her story was less prominent. if you squinted too hard watching tos, you’d miss her. or sulu. or chekov. there were three blinding lights in tos and their names were kirk, spock and mccoy. and it happens again in tng, skips ds9 for obvious reasons, again in voyager, and kinda again in enterprise. does t’pol count as poc if she vulcan? i dunno, but i think i kinda made my point.

yes, trek is and always was progressive. but rep was scarce, and discovery tries to tackle that shit head on. and a lot of you ‘woke’ fans are giving them shit about it and that’s kinda uncool. you pointed star trek backwards. like don’t get me wrong, i like pike, una and spock, but again.

star trek looking a little milkier. and i think that’s kinda sad.