Yea, Discovery is the best case for virtue signaling being a real thing, which is unfortunate because Trek’s literal entire thing is coming off as “common sense” while spreading a progressive message through allegory.
I have to say, I tried really hard but holy crap was the “in your face-ness” of it a problem for me and one of like 5 reasons I can’t stand it.
It’s definitely not any of the concepts, etc. Good to see diverse, women-strong, etc casts and plots. But a lot of it was written A) incredibly poorly, like to try to appeal to middle schoolers, B) it couldn’t stop telling us REALLY LOUD and artificially how progressive it was, and it was jarring and annoying.
Edit: and I’d argue they dropped nearly all of the progressive parts of, say TNG. Or, like, where adults acted like grownups.
That episode very directly mocks the whole concept of racism in a way everybody will understand and without pointing fingers. It’s ridiculous, why do they care so much which sides the colors are on, come on! Oh, wait…
That’s what Star Trek does best: Examine problems we have through the lens of weird aliens. The audience can then make the connection to the real world.
Writing in the new shows doesn’t really do that as much, partially because they don’t really do alien of the week type episodes anymore (disclaimer: I haven’t seen SNW). So my impression is that they instead more or less directly and somewhat clumsily talk about current-day issues without the extra layer, which also diminishes the positive future aspect Star Trek is supposed to show. Especially Picard felt really off for me because of that.
The claim was that Discovery was too in-your-face about this stuff. I don’t think you can get more in-your-face than that without Kirk turning to the camera and saying, “get it? GET IT?!”
I’d say making an obvious analogy is being less in-your-face than transplanting one of today’s problems onto the Federation’s future society. The layer of fiction is what makes it effective IMO.
Nobody will feel called out by the ridiculously hate-filled half-black half-white aliens, but if one group was black and the other was white it would be a different story. Making them green and purple would also be less effective because people could just map those to human skin tones. That, I think, is what people would find in-your-face. Doing it the way they did on TOS (aliens of the week that literally look the same except mirrored, no clear good/bad side) puts the ridiculousness of the concept itself front and center, not how the story could be a direct translation of our current issues. And it allows the protagonists to react accordingly as well.
The black-and-white aliens aren’t a subtle analogy but I think it’s smarter than people give it credit for.
it couldn’t stop telling us REALLY LOUD and artificially how progressive it was, and it was jarring and annoying.
Do you have any examples of this?
Edit: Well, they edited their comment and have replied to a bunch of other people yet haven’t responded here so… I’m going to go with no. They don’t have any examples of this. Mainly because it didn’t happen.
Even then, Trek hasn’t really pushed the boundaries for a good long time. When it hit it big by TNG/TOS Syndication, it ended up being the cash cow, and thus not worth risking for such controversial things.
At most, it’s just been nudging the norm, but the kind of radical shove that TOS had, and nearly got it pulled off the air twice is basically nowhere to be found.
At most, we got one or two token characters or plots, but a lot of it is mostly the norm, or just a little ahead of it.
Compare it to something less established and free to take on more risk, like the Orville. Since it doesn’t have the big brand that networks want to keep reaping without sowing, it gets a lot of flexibility Trek doesn’t really have any more.
Yea, Discovery is the best case for virtue signaling being a real thing, which is unfortunate because Trek’s literal entire thing is coming off as “common sense” while spreading a progressive message through allegory.
I have to say, I tried really hard but holy crap was the “in your face-ness” of it a problem for me and one of like 5 reasons I can’t stand it.
It’s definitely not any of the concepts, etc. Good to see diverse, women-strong, etc casts and plots. But a lot of it was written A) incredibly poorly, like to try to appeal to middle schoolers, B) it couldn’t stop telling us REALLY LOUD and artificially how progressive it was, and it was jarring and annoying.
Edit: and I’d argue they dropped nearly all of the progressive parts of, say TNG. Or, like, where adults acted like grownups.
I have only one response to you:
That episode very directly mocks the whole concept of racism in a way everybody will understand and without pointing fingers. It’s ridiculous, why do they care so much which sides the colors are on, come on! Oh, wait…
That’s what Star Trek does best: Examine problems we have through the lens of weird aliens. The audience can then make the connection to the real world.
Writing in the new shows doesn’t really do that as much, partially because they don’t really do alien of the week type episodes anymore (disclaimer: I haven’t seen SNW). So my impression is that they instead more or less directly and somewhat clumsily talk about current-day issues without the extra layer, which also diminishes the positive future aspect Star Trek is supposed to show. Especially Picard felt really off for me because of that.
The claim was that Discovery was too in-your-face about this stuff. I don’t think you can get more in-your-face than that without Kirk turning to the camera and saying, “get it? GET IT?!”
I’d say making an obvious analogy is being less in-your-face than transplanting one of today’s problems onto the Federation’s future society. The layer of fiction is what makes it effective IMO.
Nobody will feel called out by the ridiculously hate-filled half-black half-white aliens, but if one group was black and the other was white it would be a different story. Making them green and purple would also be less effective because people could just map those to human skin tones. That, I think, is what people would find in-your-face. Doing it the way they did on TOS (aliens of the week that literally look the same except mirrored, no clear good/bad side) puts the ridiculousness of the concept itself front and center, not how the story could be a direct translation of our current issues. And it allows the protagonists to react accordingly as well.
The black-and-white aliens aren’t a subtle analogy but I think it’s smarter than people give it credit for.
Do you have any examples of this?
Edit: Well, they edited their comment and have replied to a bunch of other people yet haven’t responded here so… I’m going to go with no. They don’t have any examples of this. Mainly because it didn’t happen.
Even then, Trek hasn’t really pushed the boundaries for a good long time. When it hit it big by TNG/TOS Syndication, it ended up being the cash cow, and thus not worth risking for such controversial things.
At most, it’s just been nudging the norm, but the kind of radical shove that TOS had, and nearly got it pulled off the air twice is basically nowhere to be found.
At most, we got one or two token characters or plots, but a lot of it is mostly the norm, or just a little ahead of it.
Compare it to something less established and free to take on more risk, like the Orville. Since it doesn’t have the big brand that networks want to keep reaping without sowing, it gets a lot of flexibility Trek doesn’t really have any more.