#about watching star trek With People

[a-most-beloved-fool]

makes me a little sad when star trek ignores IDIC. like. vulcans are logical. that is true. But 'logical', for vulcans, does not amount to 'without compassion,' and it definitely doesn't amount to 'racial superiority.' Belief in 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations' should NOT result in the weird racist/speciest stuff we're getting in some of the newer treks. It does make sense that some vulcans are discriminatory. They're still flawed. But that should not be common or expected, like it seems to be in SNW. If it is, then it's a race of hypocrites, which. doesn't seem very true to Star Trek's message.

I think TOS Spock does a pretty good job of embodying this. Not always, it was the 60s, after all, but mostly. He was often trying to find non-violent routes, and get by without killing - even if they were in danger or had already been attacked. (See: the mugato, and the horta (until Kirk was the one in danger, lmao. t'hy'la > IDIC), the Gorn ship). Kirk, in his eulogy, calls him the most human soul he's ever known, and I've always read that as Kirk calling out Spock's overwhelming compassion.

It's just so much more interesting when Vulcans get to be radically compassionate. I want them to believe that everything and everyone has value. I want them to respect all ways of being. I want them to find ways for even very non-humanoid aliens to exist unfettered in society. I want them to see hybrids and think that it's amazing. Also, like, disability rep. I want Vulcans to have The Most Accessible Planet and available resources because they want everyone to feel accepted and valued. It makes for better characters and more interesting stories.

[spoonatic]

Guys I’m so high I’m making myself ILL thinking about spirk… Thinking abt how Spock probably has to watch Kirk, his beloved, his soulmate, his T’HY’LA, the like CLOSEST person he has in his life and the only person he’s every truly felt understood him and was his *friend*, (and let’s be so ffr. More. They were MORE.) walk into the face of danger willingly shift after shift saying shit along the lines of ‘if you don’t hear back from me. Leave immediately.” And knowing KNOWING that he might not ever hear back. AND HAVING TO KEEP COMPLETE COMPOSURE AND RUN THE SHIP. WITH THE KNOWLEDGE HES THE CAPTAIN IF HIS LOVER AND CLOSEST COMPANION DIES. ALONE.

Anyways. Lovers destined to be together but forever apart, or if ur less in the masochistic way, lovers secretly together intertwined so deeply it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, maybe both, at the same time.

[leolaroot]

star trek fans specifically are crazy for that. you say "im not really comfortable watching tos because of the way captain kirk interacts with women" and 900000 people come crawling oit of the woodwork to say UM ACTUALLY kirk is a GENTLEMAN FEMINIST who is ALWAYS NICE and VERY BISEXUAL! and the only people who think he acts like that are the DUMB PIG CHAUVINIST MEN who think kirk is LIKE THEM! okay im actually referring to how he constantly grabs at women esp when they're unhappy and physically restrains them. or the weird sexually charged comments he makes. or his persistent assumption of all women as available and simple things to be acquired or controlled. and sometimes they lobby back with the "well Its Made In The Sixties so of course its Dated but its still PROGRESSIVE!" okay well its so dated that im not comfortable. i cant just say to myself "oh well it was another time" and immediately become blind to whats happening before my eyes.

[youngpettyqueen]

was talking with someone irl about Star Trek the other day and this person really hates Discovery for many stupid reasons (misogyny) and he was whining about like. casual swearing. in Star Trek. like he was mad they said fuck. and he looks at me and he's like "it completely sucks you out of the experience right??" and I just looked at him and went "no it makes me want a modern DS9 show of some kind cause I think Kira Nerys deserves to say fuck" which wasn't the answer he wanted I dont think

[laniidae-passerine]

I’m one of those people who will double down on an m/f pairing when I realise that the female character is being ignored or degraded by the fandom because she’s ‘in the way’ for a gay ship involving a white boy (especially when she’s black or brown) and I think I’d just like that on the record

[waltwhitmansbeard]

not to engage in Discourse™️, but i would like to once again remind people that your local dnd actual play show is not a scripted television show that can or should follow the normal rules of narrative flow. this is a collaborative storytelling effort that requires the careful scheduling and coordination of a lot of people. the crown keepers deviation was scheduled before fcg's death. matt couldn't just fuck with all those guests' schedules bc something inconvenient happened just before they were slated to come on. i cannot say for certain, but i'm willing to bet real american dollars that the live show was scheduled and the venue was booked before fcg died too (tho maybe not, i'm not an expert in venue scheduling), but what better place to have the new sam character drop than in a theatre full of your most adoring fans? the most logical time and place to do it? maybe not, idk. but it sure was exciting for everyone watching. not sure when this downfall three-shot was initially scheduled, but there's no way in hell matt and brennan haven't been working on it together for MONTHS, if not even a year. sometimes, things happen when they happen bc that's when you get people in a room together. that's kinda the whole thing about dnd, why so many campaigns fizzle out—scheduling is fucking hard. it wasn't convenient when tal had to miss the session after the huge briarwood dinner fiasco in c1, which was leading directly into the arc that dealt pretty exclusively with his backstory, but that is life! ppl are busy! things happen when they can happen! if you don't like that events and story beats aren't hitting precisely when it would be most narratively satisfying for them to do so, perhaps dnd/ttrpg actual plays aren't for you! sometimes the dice tell the story, and sometimes the google calendar does! that's life!

[pockyandsoda]

finally properly re-watching ds9 from the start for the first time since i was in my teens and bruh it really do be gay af 😤 like odo and quark are just like that in front of everyone's salads drinks 😭 and then o'brian gets a one-off lizard boyfriend in the sixth episode 😳 everyone's just like: oh yeah dax used to be a man btw 🥰 odo being a shape shifter is just inherently queer imo, and of course the garashir of it all and also bashir is pretty ahhhh

no wonder i was so enamoured with this show in my youth

[bargarean]

i don’t think i’ll ever move on from how mtz and red dwarf are just. the same shows. they’re about a little group of people in space who are so bad at their jobs and/or do not do their jobs. they’re all always fighting but love each other more than anything. the protagonist is a purposeful subversion of your usual sci-fi protagonist by making him kind of so pathetic to varying degrees. his best friend is either a robot or arguably a robot and also they’re kind of ridiculously gay for each other despite having one sided beef that grows into absolute best friendship. i could write essays on how rimmer and lister are like if pleck and c-53 swapped roles and personalities. rimmer IS nermut if you put them in a room together they’d leave several hours later not shutting up about how they finally met someone who was On Their Level who UNDERSTOOD and APPRECIATED their career goals. one time nermut was very clearly about to get executed but he was COMPLETELY convinced he was getting a promotion—this would happen to rimmer. holly and bargie? okay sentient ship/ship ai nation. they’re both about The Horrors and how important it is to find love for life and for the people around you to get through it. this list does continue i’ve been thinking about this for months. these are the same shows in different fonts and it’s beautiful.

you know what’s insane though. mtz parodies basically every popular piece of sci-fi media in existence and yet there is not a Single red dwarf reference in here. if any of the cast had watched red dwarf there WOULD be a reference somewhere. But there isn’t. these guys don’t know they remade a british sitcom in podcast format. They don’t know how many hysterical episode premises they missed out on

[antianakin]

Star Wars fans: What do you think of the TOTE trailer?

Me, also a Trekkie: The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery's finale season just aired, who CARES about the newest Star Wars show I'm going to boycott??

[thegeminisage]

clips that make me think about tarsus iv

[imrockbottom]

One of my favorite things about Star Trek is that when a character says something totally crazy is happening to them, instead of giving a response like "You're crazy/hallucinating," they go "That's crazy, but we're going to investigate all the possibilities to find out what's really going on."

I wish that happened in real life.

[glimblshanks]

The thing about TNG is that the space aliens and moral quandaries are always like, the least insane part of the episode

[youngpettyqueen]

my ideal Kira and Julian dynamic is the dynamic between an older sister and a younger brother in a 90s teen movie. Julian is the annoying nerdy little brother and Kira is the teen older sister going "get out of my room you little dweeb" and shoving him into lockers

[kerryweaverlesbian]

How can people stand to watch full celebrity interviews and press tours they are purely rambling on 2 hours sleep to the most inane questions and prompts in the world while trying to act like the person they think I the viewer want them to be. I'm glad some people can and do watch them to gif out the silly and interesting parts but it could never be me

[remythologise]

tv writers will be like ‘I split my main protagonist into two men so they can have dialogue as two halves of the same person’ and pretend it’s a straight thing

[procrastinatorproject]

Fuck it, I'm gonna start posting my own shouty thoughts on season 3 of Picard rather than just commenting on other people's stuff.

I'll keep taggin everything "#picard spoilers" (assume I'm talking about everything up to the most recent ep, I'll warn seperately for leaked/promo stuff about ep 10) and "#picard saltiness" so you know what to blacklist (or look for, I'm not telling you how to internet 😋).

I'm sorry/get ready.

Here's the thing. I would like to watch season 3 of Picard and think "Oh well, this wasn't made for me, the same way season 1 wasn't made for the type of TNG fan who is in heaven right now. And I'm sad my favourite characters and main reasons I liked the show in the first place got written off, but I'm glad these other fans are having the time of their lives. Good on them, I'll just mentally file this away as a season/new show that I don't connect with as much as I'd hoped." I really, really want to be able to think that and approach season 3 this way.

But the writers won't let me.

At every turn, and I mean every turn, the writers have gone out of their way to not just pretend the previous two seasons didn't happen, but to remind us they happened and they were stupid and you're stupid to ever have enjoyed them.

It's not just that Picard, in the middle of his disillusioned identity crisis, when he has been holed up on his vinyard for over a decade, talking to nobody, and feeling deeply disappointed by Starfleet, gives an impassioned speech to a bunch of young people about how Starfleet is the only family you'll ever need.

That's a type of discontinuity/soft retcon I don't particularly enjoy, but if it were just that, I wouldn't be writing this way too long screed.

It's not even just the implicit "we will do it right this time" on display e.g. when Picard "flies" the Titan out of the labouring nebula. In that scene, Picard walks up to the captain's chair to take the conn, the TNG theme swells, he sits down, the music becomes bombastic, and he gets to be the Heroic Captain We All Remember. That scene is, in my opinion, something of a parallel to the season 1 scene where Picard tries to hijack La Sirena to take Soji to her people. In the season 1 scene, he sits in the captain's chair, the TNG-inspired music swells, he is about to be the Heroic Captain We All Remember -- except then the music fizzles out and the moment deflates because Picard has been retired for a decade and a half and has no idea what he's doing (and is certainly not the most qualified to do it on an unfamiliar ship).

That parallel in season 3 rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt too close to a refutation of season 1. Too close to "See? This is how that scene should have played out!" But that is a me problem. If the writers were remotely aware of the parallel (and I honestly doubt it, because I'm not sure they know season 1 well enough), it's just as likely they wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek reference, more than a rebuttal. Assuming the worst would have been on me and my unwillingness to give this season a fair shake. And if that sort of scene were the worst of it, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I wouldn't make it everybody else's problem.

Except the writers didn't stop there.

I would (eventually) be okay with it if the writers had just quietly abandoned, ignored, or even outright retconned some characters, history, themes, and plots from season 1 and 2 they disliked. But instead, they repeatedly acknowledge the existence of these elements only to then dismiss them in frankly viscious ways.

It's not enough to ignore the Jurati-Borg in all their Eggness glory and how they would be incredibly relevant to this story season 3 is trying to tell. It's not enough to pretend that storyline never happened and move on. Instead, the writers acknowledge the existence of the new collective, but the only sentence where it's mentioned is a character talking about "That weird shit on the Stargazer."

Yes, Shaw is a dick, yes it fits his character, yes Watsonian reasons. But it was still an active choice by the writers to only bring up one of the major plot developments of season 2 in the most derisive way possible.

Another example: The writers apparently felt that the Troi-Rikers didn't belong on Nepenthe. But it's not enough to have them move somewhere else between seasons, or even to let them have a discussion about how Nepenthe is steeped in loss and grief and they want to move somewhere else and start over.

Instead, the writers have to take time out of their already shoddily paced season to have these two characters extensively shit-talk one of the brightest momenst of season 1 (figuratively and literally). It's not just "they don't like it on Nepenthe anymore", it's "they never liked it, everything about it is terrible, everything season 1 showed you about their life there is a lie, and it has always been shitty and cringey and stupid, and you were stupid to like it!"

It's not just "we dumped our diverse characters, challenging themes, and relatively fresh view on the Trek universe from outside Starfleet for starship porn, great (white) men, and more Starfleet nostalgia than you can even comprehend". It's not just "we're going to ignore the existence of season 1 (and to a degree season 2), because it's not doing the things we want to do." It's not just "we're making this show, knowing (and not caring) that it will alienate a large chunk of the people who enjoyed season 1".

It's "we see what previous seasons were trying to do, and we need you to understand, really understand, how much contempt we have for these seasons and the people who enjoyed them."

I know some people felt this way about season 1 and the way it deconstructed Picard's image as the Great Heroic Captain and laid open his flaws and the flaws of the Federation. And I now empathize with them more than I ever thought I would. But I think there is a big qualitative difference in there.

In season 1, Picard gets put in his place. He has women people telling him when he's wrong, where he has failed, where he should have stepped up and needed to do better. But the show is still deeply sympathetic towards him. By the end of the season, Elnor has forgiven him, Raffi has forgiven him (without ever getting an apology), and he gets to save the day [whether the end to this particular arc is well done (it's not) is a rant for another day].

The failures Picard is being reproached for in season 1 pretty much exclusively happen between TNG and PIC. They tie in to patterns and tendencies the character has always had and attempt to deconstruct some of them. But there's no direct evisceration of specific things that happened on TNG.

At no point does Picard get out his Ressikan flute to make a glib comment about what a useless trinket it is, and how he should have thrown it out years ago. At no point does he turn to Riker and say: "Man, do you remember that Darmok and Jalad shit? What a waste of time! I wish we'd blown up that ship when we encountered it."

Season 1 is critical of Picard's character, yes, and it might feel crass or unfair at times (not least because we're still not used to seeing Great (White) Heroic Men Of Our Childhood get deconstructed that way). But any reproach the season 1 writers levelled at Picard pales in comparison to the petty contempt the season 3 writers regularly display towards the show they've ostensibly taken stewardship of.

Season 1 might have been a bit glib or inconsiderate of the legacy they inherited. Season 3 is viscious. And I am so, so tired of it.