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Discovery will be the first Star Trek show in half a century to end without a single Jonathan Frakes appearance
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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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.
So, putting a gay couple on screen and just having it be a normal aspect of who they are (to be clear: the nature of their relationship was never a plot point on the show) is "blandly doing the cultural issues"?
Was casually putting Uhura, a black woman, on the bridge of a starship on a show airing in the 1960s, without ever calling attention to her race, also "blandly doing the cultural issues"?
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.
Yeah. That's my point.
Maybe there is no allegory.
Maybe it's just a gay couple on screen.
Like Nichelle as Uhura was just a black woman in an elevated position on screen.
No message. Just simple representation.
Why is that such a problem?
Because if you ask people in the community, many will tell you they're kinda sick of the gay experience only be represented in a negative light, always a struggle, always a message, as opposed to just them simply and comfortably existing.
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.