Phasers set to "Bitch please"

My favorite thing is to have them define "woke." When they can't because it's only a buzzword to them, I explain it means "waking up" to the idea that you're not the only human being with a purpose-filled life, that there are others for whom the system is built to deal a bad hand, and that the most ironic part is that 9 times out of 10 the individual I'm speaking to is not on the list of the "system's chosen."
- To me, woke is when identity politics issues are intentionally inserted into a piece of media not to improve the quality of the story, but to push the creators political opinions. Even when I agree with them it annoys me, because it takes me out of the story and makes me feel like I'm being preached too or I'm consuming propaganda.
  Disclaimer, I don't watch star trek. I found this post browsing c/all
I watched season 1 of Picard and discovery and they just didn't feel like Star Trek to me. The people complaining about how "woke" it is just distract from legitimate criticism. A lot of it for me was the sets. Their design was dark, gloomy and had an air of oppression that, while present in various forms across trek, wasn't previously baked into the design of the federation. It was all moody lighting and permenantly frowning actors. That temperament translated into the writing as well but you've already addressed part of that. And I've got a bone to pick in general with season 1 of Picard but that's a whole other rant lol
TNG was close to having a transgender episode, "The Outcast", but they were stuck in their time and didn't really make any kind of statement.
TOS made several comments on religion and running into powerful beings. In particular "Who Mourns for Adonais?", which would've been a great take if not for Kirk saying "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate".
- I thought having Riker fall in love with one of the enby people was about as close to a statement of support as they could get in the 90s.
That's the problem with woke as a term. No one can agree on what woke actually means, a bit like fascism.
Does it mean hyper left politics shoved in existing IPs? Sure, a lot would agree with that. How about overly corporate content that has as much soul as a lug nut? What about just generally bad content, or overdone content like the current round of superheo movies? I wouldn't call them woke, but many would.
The problem with Star Trek and wokeness is that TNG/DS9/Voy was filled with 80s/90s era wokeness. Most people can get behind that. But 2020s era wokeness is a different beast, and it doesn't seem to fit with the older content.
- Both terms are clearly defined and people choose to use them wrong, like you did with your examples.
  People where always upset with the level of "wokeness" in Star Trek. The difference being that less where aware of it and if you wanted to complain you had to physically write a letter, go down to the post office, buy some stamps, and mail it in. Today you can just tweet some bullshit from your couch.
- No one can agree on what woke actually means
  Truth. Word trends take some time to spread around the world, and by the time it reached me it was used mostly as a derogatory term. I could not figure out what it meant from context. Initially I thought it was related to red-pillers because it was used by the same kind of angry people.
  I had to look up the definition eventually.

Kirk made out with Uhura on prime time network television. Proportional to that time, it was probably the wokest thing ever.

Or just having a black woman on the bridge as a senior officer next to the captain
Or a Russian as a helmsman
Or a Japanese asian man next them
Or a freaking Scotsman yelling nonsense from the boiler room
- And then in the 1980s they made a series where the main theme was that the status quo was perfect and should never be questioned, and they didn't allow a gay character to exist in the entire franchise until 2017. Star Trek's been coasting on the progressiveness of the 1960s series for a long time, and it should be no surprise that a substantial portion of its modern audience has different politics.
It was the first televised interracial kiss.
At least in the USA if not the world.
- It was the second actually.
  Still pretty woke though.
- It was not the first internationally nor from United States.
  A quick search will show you this
People being free to do as they see fit is great. People being constrained from hurting others’ feelings not so much.
I haven’t seen the new star trek so I don’t know what kind of wokeness is being referred to, but if it were a matter of an interracial relationship I doubt people would be calling it woke.

That's what bothers me for a long time now and I'm glad I'm not alone: I like the stories but a black woman on the bridge? Really? But it's ok, she was born in Africa so she's not necessarily a former slave. What bothers me more is a later development: A Russian on a supposedly American ship! Even if it's not explicitly American, there are Americans on the bridge and they sure as hell won't serve with a Russian! What do they think? The cold war is over? But I have great hope in the planned new series. I hope the Next Generation won't be that woke.

Just imagine what they could come up with in the future. A female captain? A black station commander? No way, Star Trek has gone down the gutter. I'm not watching TNG. They can stick their wokeness where the sun don't shine.
Go back even further! The cage almost canceled the entire show because a woman was merely implied to be captaining the ship for a quick while 😰😰
- And NBC threw a tantrum because of Uhura's and Kirk's kiss, which was made more ridiculous because the backlash they expected never came. I wonder how often they self-censored without any reason.
- The wasn't just implied to be anything, she was second in command. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally for inclusion and diversity and stuff but a woman second in command is where I draw the line.
My favorite TOS episode was the one where they showed the clear superiority of the aliens with the white/black faces over the aliens with the black/white faces. The genocide part went a bit far, but in the end those black/white face guys had it coming.
- You almost make it seem ridiculous by calling it black/white faces. It was the whole body! They wear gloves so you didn't see it but it wasn't just the face. That in mind, the white/black skinned were totally in their right. The genocide didn't even happen, it's just made up like most genocides are. The black/white people just prevented worse from happening.
I’m all for the idea of wokeness, but there are those that take it to an extreme. Those that would silence a black man making a honest case for color-blindness, calling him racist. Those that won’t put in any thought before declaring anyone who disagrees with them a racist/transphobe/xenophobe etc etc etc.
There is room for honest discussion and critical thinking, but there is this mob mentality ultraleft (and yea this exists in the right too) that seems incapable of critical thought and only capable of hating anything that opposes the groupthink.
- Maybe just keep to the porn, eh?
- you can always tell when someone has said something terrible and got called a fascist/nazi for it because they say stuff like this
- Can you give us a good example that is exclusive to the ultra left, which doesn’t involve bigotry or “just asking questions” talking points?
  Otherwise, the whole groupthink problem is a much wider issue, and why the two party system in the US is a problem.
- buT BoTH SidEs

Sounds like they were never a Trekkie to begin with.

- Speaking only for my own experience, my exposure was with TNG as a kid before streaming and everything. It was always on in syndication daytime and late night and it was more interesting to me than other choices.
  I didn’t know or understand anything about the message of the series. The more recent movies didn’t really highlight it for me at all either.
  Now, however, we watched all of Strange New Worlds, we’re halfway through Discovery and just finished Picard and in retrospect it’s obvious that it’s always been a core part of the show.
  Without the prior exposure and context? It might seem a little heavy handed but anybody who would consider it “woke” or too PC is likely a hard-right conservative, not a Trekkie.
- The amount of "Trekkies" I've met who are aggressively for the death penalty
  Voyager fans... Never 4get tuvix.
- My only thing is I disagree with the whole "complete dictatorial police state, but it's cool because at least they're a benevolent dictatorial police state" thing. Like yes every government other than the federation is worse, but just you try to have your own laws and customs contrary to Federation wishes. Better hope they can show up in time to save your ass from threats foreign or federation because no planets or people on them are allowed to have weapons, for instance.
- Damn I was hoping it was just the handful that I've met that are like that. I've been a fan along with my father since he introduced me to TNG when I was very young. Thankfully there have been relatively few like that around here.

OG startrek was probably the "wokest" thing on TV in the sixties. And a bunch of grouchy old men that no one cared about bitched about it back then too.

They had a black woman in a respected, professional position with an officer's rank. The same with an Asian man.
They tackled race relations (in an admittedly very silly way) when no one else would touch it.
They had one of the first onscreen kisses between a white person and a black person.
Starfleet was created as a military force, but dedicated to peaceful exploration and science at the height of the Vietnam war.
Can you even imagine what today's Republicans would say about it back then? There would be a boycott of the network the first time Uhura was onscreen and it wouldn't have finished the season because there were only three networks.
- They had a black woman in a respected, professional position with an officer's rank. The same with an Asian man.
  And a Russian in a trusted role. That was a pretty big deal during Cold War times, too.

As a rather left leaning Person I have no problem with New Trek beeing "woke" in general.

I fucking hate Discovery, to a point that I had to give up on it after season 3. Picards first 2 season where almost as bad (I like the third season, more or less).

The problem is not so much the wokeness of those series, it's that it's just bad storytelling.

The way how "woke" ideas are implemented just feels like pandering to the audience. Homosexualyity, Non Binary characters, enviromentalism... I approve representation for all of those and would have loved to see them integrated in a meaningfull way. But the way they were handled it felt wrong to me, as if they were forced into the story rather than emerging from it organicly.

Edit: I have since I posed this done some reading. While I still stand by this, I do see how Queer topic at least been handled with respect in Discovery. Still embeded in a badly told story, but hey, it's something and I see how that is not nothing.

- A gay couple in a series today is as forced as a black woman on the bridge in the 60s. The people who complained about the latter are the same kind of people who complain about the former today and not even notice the latter. It's also the same kind of people who won't notice either in the future and complain about what ever. Star trek handled political topics very well from the beginning by showing it as normal and making it a topic in allegories, sometimes making it explicit like when Kirk and Bones talk about how the "cold war on earth in the 20th century never got hot" or how wrong the Vietnam war "was".
  You want your star trek before it was political? You can't be talking about TOS, not even the first pilot. Maybe the intro?
- It did bother me a little that Adira was adopted by Stamets and Culber, only because it sort of felt like "let's keep all the LGBT+ characters together" in a way, but I love that there's a nonbinary primary character on Star Trek.
- The relationship between Stamets and Culber felt like the single island of humanity and goodness in the four seasons I almost got through. And then they fridged Culber, only to then bring him back with mushroom trauma. Not really the woke thing to do. Adira and Gray just seemed kinda pointless from what I remember, despite the somewhat interesting backstory.
  What I found forced and entirely unnecessary was Lt. Connolly in the first episode of the second season or how they handled Leeland. To me it's just a tone-deaf, mean-spirited show overall.
- Calm down.
  You don't need to go into full attack Mode here. Im happy for you, that you felt repretented. I did not feel the way they handled it felt like good representstion. I'd be happy to see more representstion in general, I just wish it would be embedded into a better told story. If you are cool with the way it's done: Good for you.
  I am getting slightly tired though of seeing people who aren't part of the community saying that the representation of us 'feels forced'. Our mere existence isn't forced. Moreover, are you really the one who gets to judge this? After people trying to kill us for decades, and then using us for marketing purposes, now y'all wanna judge whether our existence is "forced"?
  This is a beautiful example of heteronormativity at work. You can disagree with me on how and if Discovery did a good job of representing LGBTQI+. topic or not without assuming my sexuality or implying thst I called out for the war on gays, thank you very much.
Can't LGBT+ be included unless its meaningful? I dont like that "pandering" argument. It is too easy to misuse, too subjective.
I want them included in bad shows as much as in good shows. I want a random background person to be gay just as much as an important character. Best case would be if we didnt even raise an eyebrow on seeing a LGBT+ character and rather critizise their acting or plot instead of blaming "pandering". I dont hear anyone call forcing a unecessary romantic straight subplot into a plot for "pandering".
- Best case would be if we didnt even raise an eyebrow on seeing a LGBT+ character
  This is what I’ve liked about Discovery in particular. It feels to me like it’s just organic and normal. They don’t highlight or make a spectacle of the LGBT+ characters’ gender/identity and it’s just there, normal and regular, just like in real life.
The stories suck and neither fanservice nor wokeness save new trek from being worse than the trek from our youth.
Gloomy have you ever watched Star Trek? Like not just watched the pretty lights on the TV but ingested the story? The idea of the new episodes being more "woke" than the classic, TNG or DS9 is garbage.
- I have, yes, since I was about 10. Ive seen all of old Trek up to DS9 multiple times. Im not saying New is more woke.
  Im saying that progressiv and "woke" ideas used to be told in a orgsnic way that felt natural to the world they were told in. Modern Star Trek, to me, is badly told stories with fanservice and woke ideas glued onto them in an awkward way.
Take my upvote
As a rather left leaning Person I have no problem with TOS beeing "woke" in general.
The way how "woke" ideas are implemented just feels like pandering to the audience. Black, Asian and female characters... At least they got rid of number one after the pilot, no need to pander to the female audience with two women on the bridge crew.
-Gloomys grandfather probably

The same people would be upset to learn that Rage Against the Machine is politically charged and not just nonsense you can bop your head to.

I still can't get past Paul Ryan saying RATM was his favorite band as if he'd never listened to a single lyric.

I don't care what anyone thinks.

I'm really enjoying the new series, and if you don't like them, turn them off and watch something else. You can let people enjoy things.

I am not to into many of the series since DS9 but I Love me some Lower decks and I of course watched the cross over episode.
not if those things are bad, bro
;) just fuckin with you i aint seen an ep mostly because i'm racist against all the other new treks. Does this one do the artificial bullshit the other ones have been doing to drum up tension? Making every technical problem be life or death, pulse-pounding soundtrack, dude's literally changing a screw but the whole ship might explode? Ten minutes of cuts between concerned faces per episode? sorry i'm falling asleep trying to describe it, so boring

The problem is that most modern trek TV shows have terrible writing. I tried so hard to like discovery

I don't want this serialized shit.
I've seen 4 generations of the show, all were episodic. All of a sudden, everything is serialized. Fuck that. Give me self-contained, 43-45 minute stories I can watch in any order and not be like "wait, wtf is going on?"
DS9 and Voyager (and the new season of Lower Decks is doing it too with the mysterious ship plot) have been able to have both an overarching story line while still being episodic. Why can't Picard or Discovery do that?
- I'll say the B-word. I'll say it.
  Babylon 5 had it perfectly figured out in the 90s.
Yeah I’m pretty sure that is what is turning me off the current shows. I don’t mind the representation, since that’s a core element of Trek and has been since the first show.
Just that the shows, especially discovery, felt very lecturing and on the nose. I don’t want literal current day talking points in space. I want to see a future where those issues have been overcome and it is normal and no big deal.
Though I may be biased because I hated the stamets character, or rather the whole engineering department.
Neurotic gay scientist who is always preoccupied with his emotions and personal life but is also as an afterthought the smartest guy in the galaxy, featuring snarky butch lesbian wonder engineer who is preoccupied with being obnoxious kinda gets old after some episodes.
I think it's starting to turn around.
Discovery - I stopped watching after season 2 cause I thought it was so bad
Picard - season 1-2 terrible. Season 3 pretty good
Lower Decks - all good
Strange New worlds - only watched S1, not my favorite but will definitely watch S2
Prodigy - never saw it so IDK
I think Discovery and Picard really ruined the reputation of modern Star Trek. Overall I think it's at worst it's average.
- To each their own. I had a different experience.
  I found Picard 1-2 was great fun. Haven't seen season 3 yet.
  Lower Decks is awesome. I love the myriad references.
  Strange New Worlds pretty much reignited my dormant ST passion and reminded me why I loved TOS and TNG. Interesting Sci-Fi stories are the main thing I want out of Star Trek because that's what it was all about when I was a kid watching TOS returns. The stories can be implausible and corny with clunky dialog, I don't care. Just make me go "hmm" or make me wish I could explore the galaxy and I got my fix. It's why I still like TOS and TNG.
  Just started Discovery last night. Only one episode in. First impression, "Why you gotta do my Klingons dirty like that, what the actual fuck??"
  I appreciate that it is so cinematic in style. Feels like watching some of the original movies. But goddamn with the Klingons. The discontinuity is incredibly jarring. Although I will admit I am really wanting to find out what happens next.
- Picard is the worst offender for sure. Discovery is just the Michael Burnham show loosely set in the star trek universe.
- Isn't that how almost every Star Trek show goes though? They needed a few seasons to find their footing.
- Prodigy is good, but it's intended for kids so the subject matter is a bit different.

Cool, never seen a gold colored Enterprise before.

Anybody ever watch Earth Space Dock zone chat in STO? I last visited around the time Trump was materializing as an actual possibility as a presidential candidate. The toxicity put r/thedonald to shame.

Rule one of STO - if you value your sanity, turn off zone chat.

Hides in corner....only having watched lower decks and afraid to understand the rest of ST as a SWs fan...

- I’d say it’s not even woke, it’s an ideal. The Federation is symbolic of a utopian society, something that could be achieved through cooperation and tolerance and understanding.
  I really think this is well demonstrated in the second season of Picard when they end up in 2024. It’s very subtle but well done how the characters react to a world with massive suffering and social issues compared to what they’re accustomed to in the Federation.
- Didn't it also have the first multi racial kiss on TV? I remember seeing that somewhere. Which at the time was considered hella woke
Star Trek has always always been moral plays set in space. Politics has been integral to it since the beginning.
Wow, you're missing a LOT of context for the jokes if you've never seen any other Star Trek. Still, it's a credit to them that you can enjoy it regardless.
- Yea some of it I've had to Google but LDs is really well done. It's replaced Futurama sleeping for me. Which I thought would never happen. They did the characters so damn well, and the story is great. Some of my friends who are trekkies don't like LDs, so it seems those of us who have less ST understanding, like it better.
Watch it, enjoy it, ignore the fans.
No one hates ST more than Trekkies.

TNG was woke, and DS9 was dark. What star trek is has always been.

I started with The Orville (I know, it's not Star Trek), then Lower Decks, TNG, and now DS9. If you want woke, The Orville is very woke and I really enjoyed it, they brought up trans rights and gay rights issues. Following that, TNG isn't really woke I don't think, there's still some traditional patriarchy issues in there iirc but it's still a pretty moderate show.
- In my opinion, The Orville is the startreckiest series ever made.
DS9 was also woke and fun. TNG and TOS had dark episodes. I miss the diversity in modern trek

Set phasers to .... Stun

And Personal Computer?

Cool ship

Who knew a scarecrow argument could bring about such a spicy thread.

Clown behaviour. Have a time out.
- I love how your response is essentially how you would talk to a kindergartner
The meme isn't saying that new Trek is a masterwork.
It's saying that anyone who somehow missed the fact that star trek has literally always been very woke has the media literacy of a hamster.