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.
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