Not gonna lie, as a straight white man, I would watch a show called " Doctor Twink with his boyfriend fashion Lizard".
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I’m thrilled they are making a series about me.
Once The Doctor gets a Silurian companion.
If you bend things enough, VOY Distant Origin and DW Silurians can be the same thing
Silurian is a type of alien? It’s a whole geological period. Calling something “Silurian” could refer to thousands of different species in the fossil record.
Silurian is a type of alien?
Technically, no. I’m referring to Doctor Who lore.
And they were named that because of of the geological period
They were too cowardly to make Doctor Twink and his boyfriend a thing, so they don’t get credit for that. Fashion Lizard works, though.
They did! It’s canon in the lower decks mobile game (don’t play it (it’s bad))
Ha, that’s great! Of course, the creators of DS9 had no involvement.
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There’s also that segment with Andrew Robinson in some DS9 docu where he states his opinion on the matter pretty clearly. Can’t remember his exact words, but his vibe was one of “shoulda let us have fucked”.
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It’s been bloody hilarious if you’re long term fan, he’s gone over the years from coyly hinting at vague interests other than espionage to where we’re at now, where he’s outright saying ‘my motivation was i want to fuck this beautiful man’. Mostly due to society getting its head out of its arse, but still, hilarious
Yeah, that’s the one, and yes, he is! His “Especially the lies!” moment is one of my favorite.
That, and there is plenty of fanfic to fill the void. A little cowardly to leave it to the fans, but it’s not like they didn’t build the foundations. The writers deserve some credit.
Let’s not forget:
- The Kiss
- white/black Riddler duking it out with black/white guy in an allegory to race relations
- Abraham Lincoln calling Uhura a “a charming negress” followed by a brief discussion about the future’s take on linguistics and equality
- the pilot episode had a woman named Number One who was so named because she was number one at everything she did. She excelled at all the things on the ship. A woman being better than men? Impossible. That’s woke.
- the Enterprise and a bunch of klingons once showed up to a planet so woke they ended war and used space magic to make the humans and klingons also do no wars in their vicinity.
- in another episode the Enterprise went to a planet that still had war but they calculated the results of battles using a video game console and then sent casualties to their death in a disintegration chamber and the Kirk blew up the video game console to force them to either negotiate or go back to actual war as a lesson in ignoring the Prime Directive directly.
- there was a Nazi planet and the Nazis were the bad guys.
- there was also a Yankee planet where they somehow independently wrote the Declaration of Independence in broken pidgin English and used it to defeat the Space Soviets.
- the episode where Kirk and a woman exchange bodies was… not handled well and is not a good example.
- the klingons were soviets, btw.
- basically every episode of the original series had something “woke”, okay? It was literally the whole point of the series.
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Spock was supposed to be red, like the Devil.
Well said!!! To continue with your points, I really enjoyed this video essay that goes through a lot of what you’re talking about. Really proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that trek valued diversity in regards to both civil rights with race and LGBTQ. (Even though there’s no need to prove an obvious fact). It starts with DS9 but stretches to the rest of trek and even some non trek references
The Vulcan credo was IDIC — Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations.
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Sulu (to Uhura): I’ll save you fair maiden!
Uhura: Sorry, neither.
And DS9 is the conservative one with all the religion and the baseball and the war crimes and stuff.
TNG was run by a Frenchman who thought allowing bronze age species to believe in God was a barbaric act and went to bat as a human rights lawyer for an android who in turn let his first child pick their gender at will. All that while his polyamorous first officer was busy arguing against conversion therapy when pushed upon his trans nonbinary partner.
Uh… He wasn’t against allowing anyone to believe in a god of gods. He only took issue with people worshipping “The Picard” and Ardra scamming.
He gave a speech about how they had moved past religion and he wasn’t going to allow them to go back to superstition
I looked it up.
Horrifying. Dr. Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!
Man was such an atheist I’m mildly surprised he isn’t more of a terminally online conservative. He’s too pro-choice, though, so I think we’re safe.
Let’s be real. Picard probably worships the koala.
You don’t?
Wait, I thought we all did. Which is why I suggested a superior being such as JLP also does.
Fair enough. May your day be blessed by the holy breath of eucalyptus.
And may you always feel his weird double thumbed hands guiding you in your daily mod report decisions. Channel your inner Dukat.
He’s met it enough times at this point that it’s not belief. You don’t believe in a fact.
Have you been in a coma and missed the birth and growth of this terrible thing called social media?
You mean that place where you don’t believe in facts?
Nah. There is a whole omnipotent being with a massive crush on him and Picard treats him like a nuisance he deals with at regular intervals. First thing he did when Q got briefly depowered was put him in the brig.
Picard knows the Koala is real but he has zero respect for cosmic marsupials in general.
He knew Ardra was a phony, but still passed up the opportunity.
That takes some restraint and willpower, as opposed to Will-power, cause we all know Riker would.
It doesn’t take any willpower when you’re this man-
While I don’t doubt he (or Picard) could have bagged Cindy Crawford, you can tell they weren’t in the same room based on lighting and shadows.
Why would you expect them to be in the same room for the cover of some TV Guide in the first place?
As much as Renee O’Connor was amazing as Gabrielle, I wouldn’t mind Jeri in that role 👀…
Huh. Didn’t know that was a thing. Way more effort than I thought was ever put into a cover of a TV magazine.
Yeah DS9 was good, but it took me a long time to get past the fact that they made the Federation freaking space NATO. Martial law, biological weapons on your own citizens, papers please, most with the subtext (or lengthy deleted personal log) that morality is for peace time, and some of your favorite values should be abandoned when the stakes are high.
I think ENT is the most conservative tbh. Who else would go that far to get revenge for Florida?
I haven’t gotten past that, to be honest.
To this day I have a visceral reaction to all the online nerds complaining about NuTrek not being Starfleet enough but having memory holed that DS9 got that exact pushback at the time for honestly way more legitimate reasons.
And look at how DS9 is seen now.
But to be fair, do you really think the future will look back at Discovery the same way?
Hm… had season 5 been better, maybe. Like Discovery it starts with a different tone and then it finds itself, but it unfortunately ends in a bit of a dud. I think seasons 2-4 are good to great, though, it’s just never quite as smart as TNG.
Season 1 is… underrated? It buckles under the pressure of expectations as a revival to kickstart a whole new era, but I think as a movie it would have worked pretty well, honestly. Better than most of the cheap fluff they put in theatres during the TNG movie era.
But I also think DS9 is overrated. besides the straight-up bad wheelspin-y early episodes, my last rewatch ended when they spent a whole show making O’Brian argue for doing a bit of murder, then doing a bunch of murder himself and then the show being so much in agreement with him that this is taken as a bit of a teachable moment.
It’s been decades and I was still pissed. At least Michael got court martialled.
Season 1
I mean, how many Star Treks have a great Season 1? Other than SNW :P
I am not a mega Star Trek fan and skipped Discovery after season 1 TBH, but maybe I will go back and look at the later seasons, thanks.
True. I was in a genuine rage halfway through Lower Decks season 1 and I’m now actively in “Save Lower Decks” team.
I do recommend going back in your situation, then, because it really becomes a whole different show. Especially if you did enjoy SNW, the vibe of Season 2 is different but the characters are consistent, so it’s a natural jump-in point.
Random recommendation at risk of being off topic, but you have to watch Pantheon (the animated TV series) if you like Lower Decks, assuming you haven’t seen it already.
I just discovered it and… holy heck. It’s incredible, and no one knows about it because the distribution/release is a disaster. It’s honestly some of the best sci fi I’ve consumed anywhere, period.
is Bareil the communist himbo?
I was thinking Dukat, but Worf is the only one not in this so probably him.
It’s Rom.
Union Rom is the best. Then he turns against it as Nagus. Money changes people.
Did he? I only remember that he changed this on Ferenginar and Quark got mad about it and proclaimed his bar to be the last outpost of the old Ferengi.
Prob just a priest dedicated to faith, not to institutionalized religion like Winn
… Star Trek is and has always been woke. It’s like the core feature of Star Trek
ToS had the first interracial kiss shown on television. And then there was this entire episode.
It wasn’t the 1st interracial kiss on TV. By some metrics it was the 1st in the US but other countries had earlier kisses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television
I think it’s most notable for the conservative American censorship.
Being the first on American television was a significant achievement considering how they deal with censorship there. Americans have always been a bit stunted when it comes to accepting diversity.
Still this over VOY clown episode tbh
The bad guys on the show were: Space Hitler, Space Karen, Quark
I liked the purity of quarks character. Always after whatever provided the most opportunity and profit. He frequently was thwarted in his shady dealings in the pursuit of profit, but that’s capitalism baby!
Not to imply I’m a fan of capitalism, far from it, but he was portrayed so perfectly as the embodiment of pure, unfettered capitalism. Regulations were little more than a suggestion and if breaking them didn’t result in a loss (of profits), or if it had a fairly low chance of affecting his profits, in his mind, then he would simply ignore rules and do whatever the hell he wanted.
Looking at the world today, that’s exactly what capitalism is doing. If you have laws but no enforcement, corpos will do it because the punishment is basically non-existent. If you have laws and enforcement, but they can hide/relocate/obfuscate that they’ve broken any of those laws, then they’ll do whatever they damn well please, and just hide it. If the punishment for the infraction is less than the profit to be made by ignoring the laws, they’ll do that too.
One notable example I like to go back to frequently is relating to tobacco. The laws are there but enforcement is stretched so thin that the chances that you’ll be caught are pretty minimal. So many places, like corner stores and gas stations, don’t give enough of a shit to enforce the laws. They make so much from just selling to whomever asks regardless of how old they look and whether they have ID or not (within reason, I don’t think anyone is selling to 10 year olds), they’ll just do it anyways. When/if they catch a fine for it, they’ll easily pay for it with all the profit made from not giving a shit about identifying people. As long as you look old enough, or choose enough to old enough, you can buy some. I’ll strongly express that not every place is like this, but there’s a nontrivial number that are.
If you take that same approach with everything, you get corpos just eating EPA fines for polluting that are a fraction of what they would need to spend to properly dispose of their industrial waste. There’s probably thousands of examples, but I won’t waste everyone’s time to dig them up and cite them.
He was the perfect embodiment of this profit-first mentality. Easily one of the best ferengis in any of the trek universe.
Not paid enough to care.
Good news! If the MAGA party wins in November they’ll surely defund, gut, or do away with the EPA entirely, so pollution fines will drop to zero, clearly indicating pollution is gone!
Wasn’t that the strategy with COVID?
Just don’t test anyone so the numbers stay low?
Yep that’s the joke ;)
And bees.
Quark isn’t a bad guy 😢
He was an antagonist. Constantly trying to subvert order.
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If your interpretation of “woke" is the opposite of “the exploitation/suffering of others for my personal gain”, then I can’t see how that’s anything but the opposition of evil, and if you see that as adversarial— well, that speaks volumes about you and your sense of ethics and morality.
And I have absolutely no problem saying that I find that sense of morality and ethics to be fucking garbage.
Don’t bother replying, because I’ve blocked you and you’re fucking garbage sense of ethics and morality. I don’t wanna hear another word of it.
I always thought of Quark as the moral center of DS9. Hear me out. It’s a darker show, much more shades of grey, a bit of a break from Roddenbury’s vision of star trek. Instead of Jean Luc’s pompous speeches, and Janeway’s infuriating (and inconsistent) adherence to the prime directive, DS9 actually toes the line and crosses it many times. Quark meanwhile has his own code, and he sticks to it as faithfully as anyone can. He is true to himself and his species and pretty much never crosses his own line - he crosses our line for sure, but rarely if ever his own. Pretty much the only time I can remember him doing something un-ferengi is when he turned down a gazillion bars of latinum to run weapons for those people planning on blowing up a planet with a few million people on it. At the end of the day you can always count on quark doing the right thing. He’s quite complex, and by far one of my favorite characters in all of Trek.
Quark is more of an inside track informant than an outright villain. While he often held to the Rules of Acquisition, he found himself going against the grain enough to be exiled.
You had the chance to call him Space Capitalist
I thought about it. But that didn’t capture the full package as much.
And the bible…
Are we head canoning Kira as bi now or is she including mirror universe Kira in this? Or maybe I missed something in several watches.
This is my problem with this meme whenever it comes up.
There are so many direct occasions to bring up representation and acceptance in Star Trek, so why do people always jump straight into platonic erasure and make up sexualities that aren’t there?
I for one always loved the ability for people in Trek to work and live close to each other and develop deep friendships without resorting to coupling up. Turning every friendship into something more romantic just seems disrespectful, because people are perfectly capable of being friends without needing to make something more of it
I like your speech. Let’s fuck.
Babe, this ‘platonic erasure’ comes from the original airings.
It was the 90’s, we were starved of everything. There was no overt representation. The comm still operated heavily in code, so if a show threw us circumspection we read between the lines.
You got Jadzia’s kiss, you got Riker and the androgynous species, and all of Intendant Kira.
I’m not saying those few cases are enough representation (Kira being arguably a bad example, making her sexuality into a more “evil” trait), but they were definitely overt. On the other hand, there’s zero basis for saying Prime Kira was bi, and Doctor Twink was quite straight, no matter how gay Garak was.
Honestly, I thought Julian and Garak was perfectly executed. Garak may have been flirty, but Julian was obviously more enamored with the spy scenario and intrigue (as we delved deeper into in Our Man Bashir and to some degree, the Section 31 episodes).
Oh a kiss in a doomed relationshipl! An evil, abusive dictator and another doomed romance that ended in what was essentially a lobotomy! Our cups truly ranneth over
I guess your attention span ran out after four words, so you ignored the rest of the explanation
But that’s a you problem
Got nothing else so you resort to insults? Poor form.
I really get the feeling you were not queer in the 90’s, and you’re trying to backfill what it was like. As someone who was (and still is, well the queer part at least) you’re getting it terribly wrong
It’s not “nothing else”, you just ignored the rest of what I said. Literally everything in your last post was already addressed in what I said
If you took that as an insult, well… I’ve already said it.
People are weird. Trying to see things that aren’t there. Because…? Hell if I know. I’m just here for the shows. Not to question who might bang who.
Mirror Kira is only bold enough to do what regular Kira couldn’t. We all know she thought about it.
So just god emperor of dune then
Wait, who is the trans worm supposed to be?
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Fuck off transphobe
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And yet you think that trans women don’t look like and behave like women (they are women and saying otherwise is in itself transphobic), rather than understand that you just don’t realize that the trans women who do pass as cis are trans.
Because I doubt you’d know this woman was trans if you saw her walking down the street with her elegant model’s walk.
Also, please tell us how a woman or a man is supposed to behave.
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It’s obvious to me that most trans women do not look or behave like women.
Again, you have no way of knowing that. All you know is that you have seen trans people who you assumed were trans. My wife works with a cis woman who has rather masculine features and even a mustache. You would probably think she was trans.
You have no idea what is between someone’s legs unless you can see for yourself.
This is what I meant by friction that most trans people both suffer from and cause.
You can claim to not be transphobic, but when you then victim-blame trans people for being the cause of their own problems, you are.
I’m guessing you wouldn’t say that other queer people, such as a gay man, does not cause friction by being gay.
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Dax and all trills?
I forgot the symbiote was a worm thing. They really only showed that in one episode if I remember correctly, and that was already a retcon from what they did in TNG originally. I was also confused by the trans part because the symbiote doesn’t really have a gender identity, the host does.
Her swapping genders is…SOMETHING.
Lets just call it trans and go get a drink.
I’m totally fine with that. I just thought it was a confusing description at first because I forgot about the symbiote being a “worm” thing.
Also, I too love cheese…
I find it telling that all they had to do in order to make being trans “acceptable” on TV was to make them be an alien species with an even more alien critter living inside them. And it worked, nobody ever questioned it even a little bit.
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Dax was Spock of DS9: a character who’s wise and you can always rely on and who will help you with its experience. “Talk to me, Old Man” was the line aye. But of course both of its incarnations we could see weren’t perfect - none of the DS9 characters were. They all had flaws, highs and downs and that was really nicely captured by the writers. Hell, that’s why Ronald D Moore’s Galactica worked and was popular because he incorporated similar character writing style.
Anyway, I could and I still can watch episode with Lenara Kahn without projecting our reality onto it - it’s a tragic love story of two individuals separated by standards and customs, who play a dangerous game of breaking taboo set by the Trill society. Jadzia and Lenara suffered and so did Ezri when she arrived on the station - new there in this new environment and new body yet still the same among familiar faces. Again feeling the pressure of her home world and culture which she luckily withstand. Few times in the series writers dealt with how a joined individual is perceived, how that works on relations with people. The gender stuff never played back then any significant part of this species - maybe because show was overall written in a way audience didn’t have to be explained or educated. Sure, the kiss scene was a controversial one but people moved on; neither in my country this particular episode and scene got any attention.
On the other hand, Discovery Trill plot was barely watchable to me because it was there just to fill quota set by today’s media - there’s of course a tragedy and love story but it all feels really superficial and forced. Not mention actors performance was poor but that applies to most of the characters in that show.
To sum this up, yes Trill symbionts are perceived for some reason as trans representation. But that is a totally anthropocentric view, from our real world, slapped onto the fictional universe with action set in the future.
And the bisexual terrorist?
That would be Kira. Although I don’t think she was really bisexual either. The mirror universe Kira had like a narcissistic crush on non-mirror universe Kira if I remember correctly.
Oh, right, Mirror Kira definitely was, true. But our Kira was pretty focused on the one organ. I guess unless Odo counts as another gender.
Odo is quite literally gender-fluid.
In a wordplay way, sure, but he consistently presents male. In contrast to the character who is literally referred to as “the female changeling”.
Yeah, he does quite literally identify as male.
Still takes a spirit of adventure at least
She has better chemistry with Keiko and Miles than she does with Odo.
Seriously, I’ve never personally seen anyone complain about startrek being woke now…
I have seen many people (including myself) complaining that star trek went from actually woke to just only virtue signalling and putting itself on the back on how progressive it suddenly is and yet somehow forgetting how to make people think about a ethics subject in a well written and entertaining way like it did in the past. Star trek has sucked ever after enterprise. Badly.
Commence the down voting and telling me I’m a racist…
I’ve seen it. Especially in conservative circles.
And that makes actual valid criticism racist / sexist / anti woke / whatever too, somehow?
And I’ve never personally seen anyone called a racist for criticizing a show’s writing quality. In fact, there are plenty of people in this thread expressing distaste for Discovery who don’t seem to be getting much flack for it at all.
For my part, while Discovery had its faults, I’d favour its writing over Enterprise’s any day of the week. Seems like a lot of fans have really warmed up to Enterprise in the past few years, but in my day it was almost universally derided, and every time I’ve tried to give it a rewatch it’s only reinforced that impression.
I couldn’t stomach Enterprise back in the day and it kinda turned me off to Trek until SNW and Lower Decks. Discovery is different but I still enjoyed it.
Ive never watched DS9 but op makes me think I should lol
You absolutely should. I’m too far gone to choose a favourite, but I think there’s a strong argument that DS9 is still the best series Trek has had.
They forgot Libertarian Alien who’s there for comedic relief. His kooky libertarian plans reliably blow up in his face like Wile E. Coyote.
Quite woke of them to give representation to a conservative too. We wouldn’t want to ignore any minorities. Not unless they shrink into nothingness. I hope.
Conservatism … in DS9 they gave them an entire planet called Ferenginar.
I’m really loving the episodes with Brunt, Liquidator of the Ferengi Commerce Authority … if any being in the galaxy embodies taxation, it’s Brunt. I love him because I absolutely hate him, a truly genius piece of character creation.
And now the Himbo is their king
Jeffrey Combs is the most underrated actor of the 90s.
Combs also said of Brunt, “He was the IRS guy from hell. He’s the guy who just kept coming back to make your life miserable, audit after audit after audit. I can imagine that that would be pretty awful. He also typified to me the inflexibility of someone who thinks their way is the right way.”
One of the beauties of fantasy is that it is whatever you want it to be regardless of the authors intent
Dear Paramount: Doctor Twink and his boyfriend Fashion Lizard is a spinoff I would 100% watch every week.
Thank you.
Oh my god yes. My Dinner With Andre style. Just the two of them flirting for an hour.
Where do people find fanfic for Star Trek? Asking for a friend.
I would watch that over and over again.
Haha why do you guys call him Doctor Twink? The man was a horn dog, chasing tail on the daily.
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Case closed.
And an impressionable young mind opened
That’s not the only thing that opened
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It’s ok - he’s just a plain… simple… tailor.
The hypothetical discussions will be, without irony, absolutely riveting.
Out of all the shows I’ve seen over the decades, out of all the characters I’ve seen, Garek is probably my absolute favorite. When top tier writing meets top tier acting. Beautiful.
You should read the novel that the actor wrote. It’s the back story of the character, and the first of hundreds of start trek books I’ve been reading.
And he narrates the audiobook himself!
Oooh that’s a nice plus
