Everyone on star trek has anxiety, panic attacks, ptsd and imposter syndrome now. It is too much!
Barclay was OK. (In TNG.) He had his episodes but they were interesting because of the juxtaposition against the others.
Like >60% of plot & characters are now about anxiety and mental (un)health. It is individuated vs collective.
I also deeply resent the attempt to create equivalency between AI and LGBT people.
No wonder people hate woke.
Individuated vs collective is a good way to put it imo. The focus of TOS and early TNG was the collective enterprise, with most characters being “shallow” and “static”. From tng ~s2 onwards, the focus became individual characters, their feelings and interpersonal relationships instead of “monster/planet/philosophical problem of the week”
But for me the biggest issue with nu trek (all trek after the original animated series with the exception of the movie) is the vibe is off
Trek has all been downhill since TOS, with the sole exceptions of the animated series and the whale movie
TOS was made by people with a (utopian, lib at times) actual vision and hope for the future. TNG and onward (especially after riker grows the beard) was made by people increasingly resentful of the utopian and “weird” (positive, silly) spirit of TOS, but forced to occasionally pay token tribute to it as they turn the franchise into “star wars but with less magic” to chase mainstream scifi bucks.
That isnt to say all trek after tos are bad, just they dont feel like they have the same utopian spirit as TOS to me so i dont like them as much
From what I recall, discovery just went full serious and gritty. So gross and wrong for trek, it was meant to be hopeful and adventurous rather than desperate and violent:( There’s basically nothing in mainstream media that just contemplates a better world any more, it’s a shame.
I think the creators get a say over what the vibe of trek is supposed to be. I liked discovery when it was being a found family story.
their say has been shitty for 17 years
Dunno that I agree. First seaon of strange new worlds was better than it had any right to be. Starfleet Academy too. Hell of a lot better first seasons than TNG or DS9. Arguably discovery did too but I hated the first season surprise. And like I said, discovery is at its best when its about people having a found family they love and support. The feel good moments always got me. Especially the one on Trill.
that’s a wild besmirching of ds9 season 1
To be fair there are some standout silly episodes like the one with Rumpelstiltskin or “go along home”. The good episodes, like the one where someone tries to steal Dax, sort of feel like they are in a later season, so they might be forgotten.
Silly trek is best trek
Easy to forget that the season as a whole was bad because of just how good it landed the start and finish. Emissary is good, Duet is excellent, In the Hand of the Prophets was good. As a whole it’s definitely better than season 1 of TNG or VOY and these individiual episodes are better than anything nutrek ever produced,
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Dunno how anyone can say this without a wildly inflated opinion of the actual quality of the older stuff. TOS was generally so bad it got yanked from the networks after 3 years only and produced a lot of awful episodes. TNG and later DS9 were both accused of ruining older trek. And the truth is it was just space slop with the very occasional powerful message. Don’t see the justification for regarding the new stuff as being qualitatitive different. You don’t have to like it, I dislike a lot of it, but it’s the same kind of thing.
Worth noting that most of the criticism of nutrek is coming from right wingers who think it’s woke, same as it always was.
TOS was so good that those most vile of groups—network executives and the average USian—rejected it. Commercial success is not the sole arbitrator of quality.
In terms of actual qualitative differences, I’ve got three off the top of my head: TOS has less/no blood; TOS embraces rather than rejects sillyness; TOS is low stakes episodic
In terms of wokeness, i am annoyed that TNG and DS9 arent woker, tbh. For its time TOS was extremely progressive in terms of casting. TNG is about the same as TOS (if anything, slightly worse; theres more POC side characters in TOS) but 30 years later so it feels like no progress has been made.
If it were as progressive relative to other 90s shows as TOS was in the 60s, TNG would have openly queer or autistic characters instead of trying to use robots and aliens as standins
wrt ds9, Avery Brooks (Sisko) apparently had some real knock down fights advocating for what he saw as good representation of Black people in the future. He doesn’t really seem to discuss anything about it in public. Which is a significant sacrifice when you consider how being on trek even for a single episode provides life long income at conventions and such. He has forfeited all that.
As just one example, the whole thing nearly came crashing down when he decided he was going to change looks to shaved head and goatee. Execs thought he was too badass looking for a black guy and wanted the softer look of the first season. Brooks wouldn’t back down and he won the conflict.
The commercial success just never happened until syndication. You can blame the execs if you want, completely agree they’re vile, but there was no commercial success.
Hard to disagree with your characterization of TOS though the movies especially 6 dropped it. And the first two weren’t really carried over into golden age trek.
In terms of comparing TOS to TNG, I agree with what you’re saying but I think since in the 60s the bar was in hell for network TV, you had episodes on TOS like turnabout intruder or, let that be your last battlefield where the message is “maybe black people aren’t completely to blame for racism against them”. I think TNG does better even if it has one of the most racist episodes in the history of television in early Season 1.
wait you’re down on let that be your last battlefield? that’s wild. the message is racism is stupid and it’s kindof amazing it was allowed to air back then.
If you pay attention to the script the black stand in was blamed just as much for racism as the white stand in. It was incredible for the 1960s but has aged terribly.
they hated the middle star wars sequel too, for wrong reasons. reactionaries not liking something because they’re illiterate bigots doesn’t mean the thing they don’t like is good quality.
it does mean there’s a backlash to the backlash and you have to walk on eggshells to critique whatever they’re hating today because people will jump down your throat even if you only talk about whether the plot makes any damn sense.
To me it means they’re probably doing something right and get the benefit of the doubt. Worth noting that nutrek is a lot more “woke” than golden age if that’s the standard.
“kill your gays” isn’t woke
Forgot about that in the first season but they brought him back pretty quickly. I don’t know how much of that was pressure and how much it was planned but they didn’t seem to plan much despite being serialized. Definitely not as bad as Code of Honor though.
Of course they get a say. They did get a say, they literally made the show. But I also get to have an opinion, and my opinion is that they fucked up royally and made a show that fundamentally betrays everything that made old trek good. I’m not saying they shouldn’t get a say, I’m saying their work is shit.
Discovery can’t be taken out of the context of The GWOT.
I was somewhat disabused of this idea when I saw Gene Roddenberry had 1 production prior to TOS and decided to watch it. A “sexploitation” called “pretty maids all in a row” (CWs include: SA murder grooming paedophilia— in no short measure on any of them). Which in moments actually strikes the same tone as some of the most profound scenes of ST. There are contemplations of a future humanity where humans have overcome their current deficiencies. The main character actually does remind of JLP. And the TOS ep where spock and kirk travelled back in time to land with a woman who was running a catholic worker house (sort of thing) but then she became fascist. Except rather than JLP’s agonizing about the prime directive, in “pretty maids” it is a future where teachers and students all fuck each other according to an ethic of promiscuity. And when you learn about how Roddenberry conducted himself in person… you can see it.
But then otoh, idk, if we consider ST itself as a collective process that Roddenberry wasn’t the sole creative force in, then maybe.
Did you see “what we left behind”?
Havent seen “what we left behind”
I see the sex pervert side of roddenberry even in TOS trek yeah. Idk anything about how he conducted himself tho
Yeah, Roddenberry gets way more credit than he really deserves, and not enough pushback on his sexpest behaviour. Rick Berman as well.
She didn’t become fascist, she just enabling it by her public pacifism delaying entry into the war. US contribution was minor but I dunno what would have happened without that minor contribution because the eastern front was a very near thing. City on the Edge of Forever is really good, diamond in the rough.
I think it’s basically straw communism to say that the characters not being so shallow and static undermines the collective element. The collective element I assume is really undermined, but you’re just surrendering the “individualism vs collectivism” framing to capitalist ghouls by acting like collectivism requires basically eliding any one person’s own humanity and interiority. The problem is surely in how the individuals are handled, not that they get to be multifaceted and dynamic and have interpersonal relationships (?!)
Yeah and this is extremely present in early TNG.
Early tng is an example of how trying to please everyone pleases no one
My issue isnt that they “get” to be multifaceted etc, it is that the individuals and their drama are the focus rather than cool space adventures. I put “shallow” and “static” in quoted bc imo the characters in TOS are neither, but that is how i often see them described.
In TOS there are many relationships (romantic, friendship, antagonism) amonst the crew. They are not the focus of the show however, and are rarely even the focus of a whole episode. We get small mentions of e.g. spocks musical hobby; in TNG we see picards ship collection over and over and over. In TNG and DS9 there are entire episodes focussed on relationship problems, in TOS its mostly incidental to the random adventure of the week
I also do not feel like i am acting like “collectivism requires basically eliding any one person’s own humanity and interiority”. That is a strawman. I am saying that most media made under capitalism emphasises the consumer-individual and their desires. I liked TOS bc it emphasised the ship and cool (relatively) low stakes exploring, instead of the high stakes high political and personal drama of TNG onwards