In the very first episode of Star Trek: the original series, we see a white Captain reporting to his black Admiral boss, a black woman on the bridge just a couple years after Jim Crow was abolished, wearing a short skirt (a symbol of feminist liberation at the time), a Japanese helmsman on the bridge only 20 years after the internment camps, a Russian crewmate on the bridge during the Cold War [edit: actually did not appear until Season 2 but the point stands], and the foundation of the modern concept of queercoding.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see male crossdressing crew members, a female officer on the bridge in charge of security, a literal ship’s counselor stationed at all times on the bridge, a single mom raising her teenage son on her own while juggling a full career in medicine, a blind mechanic whose “disability” is shown to be a strength, and an angry, all-powerful godlike being who is revealed to be simply a petulant child masquerading as a deity.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, we see a black man gain a powerful command position, respect the hell out of the customs of a religion he didn’t understand, show respect and equal treatment to members of three other alien races he didn’t understand, appoint a female guerilla fighter who defeated imperialist fascists to a position of authority within his administration and defer to her judgement in areas of her expertise, accept his friend’s gender change, and tell his son he loves him.
Star Trek has always been woke. You just grew up to be a bad person.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see male crossdressing crew members
I hate that a man wearing a dress is considered crossdressing. Actually I hate that the term exists at all. Oh, to live in a world where people wore whatever they wanted and nobody gave a shit. Yes, I get that was the point of it being in the show. Just let me bitch and complain.
For real. It’s a skant, you philistines. It was the height of fashion and one of the officially accepted versions of the Starfleet crewman duty uniform as of 2364.
agreed. And tunics are gender neutral. Dresses are just mislabeled tunics.
Tunics and dresses are not the same. There is some overlap with the simpler dresses, yes but for one tunics hang on the shoulder while dresses don’t necessarily.
Ah yes, I heard that theory about shoulderless tunics.
More seriously, dresses are a European middle-age evolution of the tunic for fashionable noblewomen. The whole gender-specific is kind of built in the concept of the word.
based
I whole-heartedly agree.
“Woke” as an insult? In 2017 or 2019 and forward, I remember see people saying “Ted Kaczynski” was the “first woke” and then become something insulting instead of something cool.
Is a silly internet word at the end of the day, like “larper” “chad” “based”, trying to understand this words are like trying to speak with Darmok.
I think the better question is “when did Star Trek start preferring awkward, hamfisted, and cynically inauthentic writing that makes you feel like you’re watching community theater?”
The answer is a toss-up between partway through Voyager and Enterprise, but ENT was definitely the point at which Star Trek was no longer being used to speculate about the possibilities of exploration and discovery in an optimistic future, and instead became an embarrassing soapbox on the part of writers and producers who haven’t had an idea challenged since they were in preschool. The entire 9/11 + War on Terror allegory is very possibly the most cringeworthy Star Trek content ever televised. That’s really saying something considering we also have Discovery, an exercise in why you can’t hire a bunch of hacks who all want to be Joss Whedon, nor give them free rein to produce a version of Star Trek in which every character is a creepy asshole who never shuts up and uses the kind of corny faux slang that only exists in TV commercials.
As with many things, I blame Rick Berman.
S-tier satire of the conservative “Trekkie” (please Gene, I hope you’re being satirical). Real comments like that always make me think of Douglass Adams’ “rules” on growing old:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Anytime someone says Star Trek’s progressivism was never “hamfisted” I usually just point them to the after school special that is Let that be your Last Battlefield:
I’m mainly responding to your quote about new things being against the established order and my view of NuTrek is extremely biased since I mainly get my information from RedLetterMedia but do you think NuTrek ackchyually can sit on its own laurels?
I did watch Picard’s 3 seasons and I think it highlighted pretty well the problems with NuTrek:
- retconning established lore to the extreme (slavery vis a vis androids is cool with the federation, earth has super drug problems)
- gratuitous violence (I was disgusted watching the equivalent of SAW with the Borg torture porn)
- action action action (can’t have any philosophy, gotta have fast paced machinegun phaser shootouts)
I could probably come up with more issues, but it’s been a bit and I’m never rewatching Picard. NuTrek is a far cry from the old thinking man’s trek and is really watered down.
Discovery isn’t a bad show, but Discovery is TERRIBLE Star Trek. Not because its “woke” but because it acrively goes out of its way to eschew most of the tropes that make Trek what it is, the most egregious being the Spore Drive and instant travel. Academy was a much better Trek show than Discovery, to compare the two modern “futuristic” shows.
The better question is: “When did the Star Trek writers forget how to do their jobs?”
Seriously, New Trek has the most garbage-tier writing I’ve seen in a while. It’s all just flashy effects and dumb characters. Old Trek had really interesting story lines that made you think, now New Trek treats the audience like we’re idiots.
It’s not that they forgot to write it’s more likely that they don’t have the time, have an asshole production team that push metrics in their throat (the Paramount family is particularly racist but prefer money over their racism) and every good writers have been laid off for attempting unionization.
It’s sad but Star Trek is in its Enshitification phase and is going on and on and on …
Don’t have time? 90s Trek had 20+ episode seasons and a season every year, current Trek is 6 or 8 episodes every two years. While the production quality has gotten better, the writing has somehow gotten worse.
The time isn’t invest on the writing.
It’s also notable we see the Starship Captain getting therapy and being emotionally vulnerable in the Pilot.
It’s a nonsensical question to begin with. Nobody will ask such a question and not be a troll so answering in any form is a defeat in itself.
Anytime someone anywhere on the political spectrum uses the word “woke” without also defining what the fuck it’s supposed to mean I just cannot take them seriously.
