4 ms·

You're talking canon. I'm talking fan theories. Canon is limited to the perspective of the people who had to go through the wringer of studio meddling and appea

by mkr-hn 5y ago

You're talking canon. I'm talking fan theories. Canon is limited to the perspective of the people who had to go through the wringer of studio meddling and appeasing broadcasters. There's a reason Discovery is the first to have a gay relationship, trans character, and nonbinary character. Most of the people involved in the previous shows at least since TNG wanted to do that but couldn't get past all the interests in the way. I consider a world without people like me in it pretty dystopic because there's only two things that do that: suppression and genocide.

Ericson2314 5y ago
Multiple interpretations are good, but I would argue there really was a break TOS's full employment culture, and today's stagnation culture. Let's not essentialize our current moment, projecting it back uncritically.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I don't think I can reason about real-world applications for a show's themes without considering the real world. That's the topic of discussion here. One of the actors in TOS was a closeted gay man who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp. Gene Roddenberry was an idealist. His utopia was nonsense. Berman was annoying to work with[0], but his version of Trek was more realistic without losing the optimism and turning grimdark. Roddenberry's utopia needed a genocide and apocalyptic world war to wipe out all the difficult problems getting from A to B. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I don't think we are really disagreeing? I think pre-1968 if there were fan theories by that point, they wouldn't have been so drawn to calling out some optimism that doesn't make sense. But I really haven't watched enough Star Trek let alone caught up with fan theories to carry this further :). Did George Takei get casted thinking "fuck this bullshit, I'm going to subtlety undermine the nonsense utopia with my acting?" Or was the pain and skepticism of cold war rhetoric more a subconscious war of vacillating between hope for the future, and skepticism that "United Space Ship" and "United States Ship" had enough distance between them? I don't think many people were on that former level, say, pre-1968 at least.
goatlover 5y ago
If we're talking in the context of Blade Runner dystopias of a crowded, polluted, dying environment run by powerful corporations, then the Federation is nothing like that. Certainly not on Earth. As far as diversity goes, that's just a matter of what was allowed on tv at the time. TOS certainly portrayed a society where racism was no longer an issue, so I think we can safely attribute the same to LGBTQ equality. It was implied and nothing in any of the shows suggest otherwise to my knowledge.

by mkr-hn 5y ago

Ericson2314 5y ago

Multiple interpretations are good, but I would argue there really was a break TOS's full employment culture, and today's stagnation culture. Let's not essentialize our current moment, projecting it back uncritically.

mkr-hn 5y ago
I don't think I can reason about real-world applications for a show's themes without considering the real world. That's the topic of discussion here. One of the actors in TOS was a closeted gay man who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp. Gene Roddenberry was an idealist. His utopia was nonsense. Berman was annoying to work with[0], but his version of Trek was more realistic without losing the optimism and turning grimdark. Roddenberry's utopia needed a genocide and apocalyptic world war to wipe out all the difficult problems getting from A to B. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSz2gW8IsE
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  I don't think we are really disagreeing? I think pre-1968 if there were fan theories by that point, they wouldn't have been so drawn to calling out some optimism that doesn't make sense. But I really haven't watched enough Star Trek let alone caught up with fan theories to carry this further :). Did George Takei get casted thinking "fuck this bullshit, I'm going to subtlety undermine the nonsense utopia with my acting?" Or was the pain and skepticism of cold war rhetoric more a subconscious war of vacillating between hope for the future, and skepticism that "United Space Ship" and "United States Ship" had enough distance between them? I don't think many people were on that former level, say, pre-1968 at least.

goatlover 5y ago

If we're talking in the context of Blade Runner dystopias of a crowded, polluted, dying environment run by powerful corporations, then the Federation is nothing like that. Certainly not on Earth. As far as diversity goes, that's just a matter of what was allowed on tv at the time. TOS certainly portrayed a society where racism was no longer an issue, so I think we can safely attribute the same to LGBTQ equality. It was implied and nothing in any of the shows suggest otherwise to my knowledge.