Comment on Discovery will be the first Star Trek show in half a century to end without a single Jonathan Frakes appearance

• Corgana@startrek.website ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Maybe I would understand better if you gave an example of one of the issues they relied on?

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• Tin@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

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  • MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

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• zaphod@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨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”?

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  • MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

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    • zaphod@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The focus on drama over logic completely shallows out the allegory until it’s JUST a gay couple being contemporarily gay on screen

      Yeah. That’s my damn point.

      Maybe there is no allegory.

      Maybe it’s just a gay couple on screen.

      Like Nichelle being just a black woman in an elevated position on screen.

      Why is that such a problem for you?

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      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yea, I see what you mean. Actual representation and not tokenization. I wouldn’t accuse even STD or Picard of at least purposefully tokenizing. Although with the contemporary representation with a drama focus in the writing, it almost jumps the shark enough on the ST premise that the contemporary drama representation almost just feels tokenized, if that makes sense. I don’t think it’d be obvious with better writing, and I hear they get better later, so I could see people disagreeing out of pure entertainment value in the least.

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