Since Discovery, despite the Star Trek writers repeatedly beating us over the head with this, I still somehow didn’t catch onto the pattern. If there is a through-line to all the new shows, the notion that acknowledging one’s own vulnerability is a sign of individual strength, and that showing support when others are being vulnerable around you, is also a sign of individual strength.
This may not feel “woke” in the way it’s usually understood, but I really think it’s pushing a long overdue envelope, and one that is arguably more important to our times than a half-black half-white face representing the “illogical” nature of racism.
For example: when I read the angry tweets about the new series (ie; the “pussification of men”, etc.) I can’t even force myself to see them as coming from anything other than weak, scared people who are too afraid of what the world would think of them if they expressed their authentic selves. They want to scare the rest of us into being as scared as they are, because they believe it will make them feel less alone. But loneliness can only be fixed by showing vulnerability.
And that’s the root of the problems in our modern era, isn’t it? Deeply insecure people hurting others in a desperate effort to not be hurt themselves. They haven’t always portrayed this concept in a graceful way, but kudos to Star Trek for keeping up the tradition of asking its audience: “What is it you’re so afraid of?”
I don’t have a problem with “nu-trek” being “woke”. Star Trek has always been “woke” (I really hate that word). My issue is it just feels dumb now. all of it. it doesn’t challenge the viewer anymore.
TNG had that in spades. a problem would arise before the intro even rolled and it challenged the viewer to figure out what’s going on. That was most of the fun. Like the episodes where all the damn clues were right in front of you and it wasn’t until the end with the “ooooh of course!” moment. Primary example of this is the episode when the Enterprise kept blowing up and Data had to keep going back to try and figure out how to avoid it. Or the episode where Barclay, Picard, and Data were trapped in the Holodeck and they didn’t even know they were in the Holodeck. And there were clues all over the place like Geordi using his left hand for something when he’s right handed. I want more trek like that.
Why are you even listening to the opinions of CHUDs?
The problem with new trek isn’t “wokeness”, too little or too much. It’s that they abandoned what made Trek so unique: 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.
It’s just a complete lack of imagination. It’s not like Trek has ever been wanting for drama. They just decided to write new Trek in the lamest, same-old Hollywood way possible.
The problem is it’s action and drama scifi now, and not a real vision of a better future. It’s no longer unique or enlightened. It’s just drama with Trek paint.
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 very much up in the air 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.
Star Trek has always been about accepting others for who they are. They make that explicitly clear many times in their interactions with other species and cultures.
I certainly won’t disagree with that
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.
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.
The latter too closely resembles “American exceptionalism”
Yeah, I’ve always found the “Starfleet must always be in the right” mentality to be patronizing at best, imperialistic at worst.
I can think of another sci-fi series where the highly advanced civilization is always in the right, and I’ve heard it kinda sucks
That is a grossly terrible charictarization of what it’s supposed to be…
No wonder everything is going to hell if people cannot even understand what it means to be done working through shit…
What do you find to be grossly terrible about it?
No wonder everything is going to hell if people cannot even understand what it means to be done working through shit…
If they were done working through shit then there wouldn’t be any problems left to write a TV show about. What you’re describing is one group of people being superior to another and that superior group swooping in to save the day much like the way America has viewed itself historically.
Nope. There are plenty of episodes with drama that comes from other sources, or from their adventuring, or interaction with different cultures, or just things plain going wrong. They’ve even already challenged the whole idea of the post-scarcity human culture being so superior in older treks.
So you’re kinda’ just further proving my point that it’s a gross lack of imagination to assume it has to be a fascistic superiority complex.
I’ve definitely maintained that the overarching theme of Discovery was valuing mental health, and so far that seems to be getting carried forward by Academy. I think that aligns with what you’re saying. I’m not sure it applies quite as much across all the other Trek shows. Probably yes, but to a lesser degree.
Most of the discussions of “wokeness” I see break down into a grievance with white men not being the overwhelming majority of characters, so I never really thought of it in those terms, but it makes sense. It’s definitely something the world needs more of but large chunks seem actively opposed to.
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.
That is a small thing. Meanwhile in Picard you have have the most boomer takes you can get : technology bad, young are brainwashed, fate,… I haven’t seen any science after season 1, and I haven’t seen any progress.
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.
Yes indeed. But the season before that it showed us a planet were romulan migrants took over the planet they took refuge on and made an apartheid for them.
There are a few good things in Picard. There are also a lot of terrible things.
migrants took over [an area] they took refuge on and made an apartheid for them.
That sounds familiar.
I don’t think that planet was portrayed as a particularly idyllic place…
I’d say they took it even further than that - the reason they were in that all-too-relevant “past” to begin with was that they had travelled back in time to an inflection point that could lead to a global descent into fascism.
I seems like your combining two separate groups and their separate criticisms. I’ve definitely criticised the new shows for not doing woke well. I think TNG era trek also covered vulnerability but in a more subtle way, were new Trek seems overly dramatic and forced to me.
I think anyone who complains about characters being pussies is probably a conservative who is just looking for something to complain about today lol.
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.
I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying. The people saying “pussification of men” and the ones saying “not being woke enough” are two completely different groups. Your post comes off as if you’re trying to conflate those to groups even though they’re on completely different sides of the spectrum.
Now I feel like you’re trying to paint me as being insensitive to people showing vulnerability which would be unfair and untrue. Just because I’m critical of how the new shows executed the message doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the message itself. I just think that message was was conveyed better in TNG era shows.
Ah I see, you definitely misinterpreted. I was indeed describing them as two different groups.
Group A (myself and I assume most here) have been looking for more specific and obvious political/cultural messaging from the writers, and in focusing in on the details, we were missing perhaps the single most consistent messaging of all.
Group B (The angry Twitter users) are an example of what happens when society isn’t recognizing the real strength that is showing (and being receptive to) vulnerability. They (falsely) believe strength comes from hiding vulnerability.
The writers have been telling us this very apt concept all along, but myself (and many others based on posts here) haven’t yet fully noticed how radical an idea it actually is. The more obvious messaging flows from this idea.
OK that’s fair.
Are you saying this “radical idea” spans all off the new shows or one specific show. I stopped watch the new shows at some point, it just wasn’t for me. I don’t know what you’re really talking about in this post cause I haven’t seen anything new or groundbreaking like you’re describing, its all been quite generic in my opinion.
Can you point or link to a specific scene or plot that shows what you mean?
Jay-Den and Darem’s recent scene together illustrates it well, I think. And the negative reaction to it from people online who described it with terms like “woke” and “cringe” illustrates that many people are so uncomfortable and so afraid of the concept of being vulnerable that they dismiss it out of hand.
But to be clear, I actually went out of my way not to describe this as “new or groundbreaking”. If anything the messaging I highlighted in my OP has been the consistent through line for the past decade in DSC, SWW, and SFC (and to a lesser extent Picard). But I do think it’s spot-on for our current cultural climate. I (and many others who thought the new series have been too timid with their politics) have been missing the forest for the trees.
We can laugh now at TOS preaching the “illogicality of racism” to be self-evident, but during the time of scientific racism and Jim Crow laws, stating that self-evidence was considered radical. TOS never had an episode about Uhura earning her right to be on the bridge. She was just there. Discovery never had a plot line about Adira coming out as non-binary, they just did.
“Vulnerability is strength” is the radical idea of our modern era where things like emotional insecurity and ability to tolerate loneliness are held up as examples of strength, and not the reality, which is that they are the beliefs of a fearful person.
For a more serious critique of new Trek that you might find more interesting than the angry tweets you refer to, consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5DroolqFU
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.
Sure they were subject to all the constraints of commercial prime-time TV, but as that video discusses in some detail with respect to DS9, the writers still had freedom within that corporate framework to tell woke anticolonialist stories beyond the classic sci-fi adventure fare of TOS which itself often explored what was new ground for commercial television at the time. Under some other corporate masters it might’ve been possible for the new crew to find similar freedom today, if things had worked out differently — and if any of them have the ability to do it and the willingness to try. But Larry Ellison and the forces he’s standing in for seem far more alert to the subtleties of it than they used to be. There’s bigger money involved now and they’re keeping it on a tighter leash.
Is there any evidence at all of the writers of the more recent series not having “freedom,” or of corporate interference in the shows?
I don’t know. It just seems like one plausible explanation for what’s been produced. To me it has that feel to it.
Skydance only bought Paramount this past summer after production of SFA season one was well advanced and SNW was largely done seasons four production.
While there is genuine reason for concern regarding future Star Trek, it’s very hard to make the case regarding anything in pre production before 2025.
Thanks, I enjoyed that.
This is an interesting take! I’ll admit, I was concerned about whether there will be enough wokeness in Starfleet Academy, and in upcoming seasons of Strange New Worlds. But you’re right, the foundation of what we need is a sense of shared humanity. And when you put it that way, I see how new Trek is showing us that. Thanks!
But I’d still be delighted to see another episode on unionizing!
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
The most recent SFA episode was brilliant with that
It’s cringe when “wokenes” is so emphasized. It looks clownish. That’s how I perceived half of discovery. Like if half of tng would be of people talking about how is ok to be bald.
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.
I know it. It’s a different time tho.
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.”
I believe that dismissing something or someone because you personally find them uncomfortable (ie “cringe”) is ultimately a sign of weakness, and that’s what the writers are trying to tell us. It takes a very strong person to stand up and simply accept without judgement.
Well I never said anything about dismissing someone or something just that I found this behavior to be cringe due to it being superficial and inauthentic much like after-school specials or Christian evangelist films. Another example would be corporations who change their logo to a pride flag during pride month but then later suspend this or donate to anti-LGBT causes because they think it’s more advantageous to do so.
It takes a very strong person to stand up and simply accept without judgement.
Sure in the right circumstances, but as you judge me here, let’s not forget that this is a fictional television show put out for entertainment purposes by a multinational corporation not a friend or confidant telling me an uncomfortable truth about themselves.
Labeling someone’s expression as “cringey” is dismissive in any context. It takes real strength to listen.
