Relying on cultural hot topics
I might regret asking this, but what “cultural” topics are you saying Discovery “relied on”? Disco is easily the least preachy Trek series to date.
root@precious.net 9 months ago
Relying on cultural hot topics rather than real character building killed this show. The spore drive was also kinda “out there” though interesting. I wish the best for the cast.
Corgana@startrek.website 9 months ago
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s not that they’re the topic of an episode, but that the show is RELYING on the basic drama of the cultural topics.
Trek is supposed to make allegory for cultural issues, not just blandly do the cultural issues.
Corgana@startrek.website 9 months ago
Maybe I would understand better if you gave an example of one of the issues they relied on?
Tin@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure if I agree. I think of what Ira Steven Behr said about the portrayal of LGBT issues on DS9, he really feels they missed the mark because they went with a ‘technicality’, because Jadzia was married to a woman while in a male host, and those thoughts and feelings carried over, and he didn’t feel it was actually a portrayal of a lesbian romance, but a cop-out.
There are other episodes which, while groundbreaking at the time, clearly used their allegory to soften the message somewhat. Frakes has lamented that Soren in “The Outcast” was played by a female actor, for instance. Using a female made the relationship more acceptable to the viewer.
I will say, however, that in Enterprise’s “Stigma”, which on the AIDS crisis via Pa’nar Syndrome, the allegory does allow them to hold up a mirror to intolerance and prejudice. Maybe that’s what you’re getting at? By showing the relationships and nonbinary gender identities as normal, rather than couching them in a metaphor so they could show the ugliness of intolerance, the writing doesn’t go far enough?
It’s an interesting point. My instinct is that we’re mature enough to see things like gay relationships now without needing to obfuscate them in metaphor, even if the point is to highlight the flaws of intolerant views.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yea, I’d definitely say they’ve made missteps in the past. I also hear Discovery is MUCH better in later seasons as well, so the juxtaposition in general writing style that highlights what I mean may be muddied by competence showing up later.
zaphod@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
So, putting a gay couple on screen and just having it be a normal aspect of who they are is “blandly doing the cultural issues”?
Was putting Uhura, a black woman on the bridge of a starship on a show airing in the 1960s, also “blandly doing the cultural issues”?
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 9 months ago
My comment is not about any specific lgbtq content but about the general attitude of the writing. The focus on drama over logic completely shallows out the allegory until it’s JUST a gay couple being contemporarily gay on screen.
It’s not bad to have contemporary representation, it’s just less inspired than what older ST did. Mind, I’ve heard later Picard seasons get better on the writing, and SNW I only stopped watching because I forgot more were coming, so I’m not trying to poo poo on anything except that which people largely already agree aren’t that great.
Like the first season of TNG. It’s uh… they had some decent episodes but boy were the bad ones something. lol Or the TNG movies for the most part. They’re just … different than the show. Entertaining, but that’s not my only criteria for ST, personally.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 9 months ago
Pretty mean thing to say about Jonathan Frakes…
Crackhappy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I enjoyed the wackiness that the spite drive introduced.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That has been a disturbing trend
zaphod@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Jesus Christ. The show has one non-binary character and a gay couple and suddenly they’re relying on “cultural hot topics”.
Fuck right off already.
OrangeCorvus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I agree with the original post. It’s what also killed it for me. Felt like the writers went for the lowest hanging fruit.
I mean it’s Star Trek, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, nobody cares about that. Be whoever you want to be, you will be accepted. To me that’s what Star Trek has always been about, you will always be included.
Don’t even remember when I stopped watching it, I tried a few episodes each season and I just gave up. Burnham has such a great smile but in all episodes she has a nervous breakdown and is always sad. At least that’s how I remember the series in my head. Everybody’s depressed. Don’t remember anything else.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The depression is what got me. It’s supposed to be Star Fleet, yet every character is like 12 flavors of drama that should be seen as unprofessional. I enjoy diversity, however Discovery constantly used it in a way where the characters are either struggling with their identity or have practically made it their entire personality, which is stupid because ST has made clear that in its future, no one gives a shit about that stuff.
I mean, they even ran out of oppressed minorities and had to start making up their own like Saru’s struggle with being a predator species. Or the fucking ship having an identity crisis.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Honestly, the alien stuff is exactly where there is most fertile soil for allegory there. That’s what killed it for me, too. They’re all unprofessional drama queens from the 21st century. Not space exploration officers from centuries in the future.
T156@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Some of the were exacerbated by the production issues that happened in the early seasons of the show, too.
They went through a bunch of different showrunners/producers in that time, and it shows. Much of Seasons 1 and 2 of Discovery felt like four different shows all overlapping with each other, which did not help in the slightest. It started to find its footing in Season 3, but after that was also when CBS took it off of Netflix, which also made it harder to watch, unless you were willing to subscribe to another service (that might not even be available in your country) for the one show.
It might have been more interesting if it had stabilised itself and found its footing early on, but alas. On the other hand, it being what was basically an experimental testing-ground for a bunch of different concept gave us the short treks, Strange New Worlds, and a few other shows besides, so can’t fault it that badly.