I am a Star Trek fan.
I will acknowledge that Star Trek was always a bit on the left, but it was Liberal left. A utopian world where infinite resources eliminated scarcity and a desire to accumulate wealth, so people were free to follow their passions and discover new things for the sake of discovery, not profit.
Star Trek was an aspirational future.
The wife and I watched the first season of Star Trek: Picard and like it.
Season Two is a woke shit-show.
One character, Captain Rios, is awesome. He’s played by a Chilean actor.
They go back to Los Angeles in 2024, which doesn’t look any different from LA in 2022.
Rios is arrested by ICE who raid a “we don’t ask questions or need to see your papers” clinic run by another Hispanic woman.
ICE are all white guys who don’t speak Spanish and torture scared and timid Hispanics. Suspected illegals are put on a bus and “disappeared” without trial in less than 24 hours after being arrested, never to be heard of again. The dialog is peppered with commentary about how evil this is.
Later on, Picard runs into a young Guinan (not played by Woopie Goldberg). Guinan, who has been on Earth for years says to Picard that fairness is something “for people that look like you, not like me” – because he’s a white man abs she’s a black woman – and that society is just as racist as it ever was and only “wears a suit instead of a hood.”
The absolute fuck is this?
It’s woke hyperbole that America hasn’t changed since Alabama in 1959 or even 1859, we just hide it better.
This is objectively untrue.
As for the ICE thing, this is Los Angeles, California, at the end if the Biden Administration (April, 2024).ICE and CBP are overwhelmingly Hispanic. It is illegal to perform an immigration arrest in a hospital or health care facility. Bybtgis time Title 42 would have expired so they’re not deporting anyone without a felony conviction.
In reality, if ICE even bothered to contact Rios, he’d probably be given a cellphone, a few hundred dollars in cash, and a subsidized hotel room with a note to when to show up at court for his immigration hearing.
But reality doesn’t spread the woke message that America is a horrible, white supremacist nation. So they have to make ICE look like Nazi Jew-hunters going after poor Hispanics.
It’s impossibly bad and totally destructive to the legacy of Star Trek.
And totally backwards from todays administration… heh heh.
Haven’t watched it. Probably won’t watch it. Heard similar things about the Discovery series, and the brand new Strange New Worlds series. I pretty much stopped watching anything Star Trek after the reboot movies (which were well done).
At least when Gene Roddenberry and TOS did this stupid over the top fascist world shit they would claim it was a parallel world and slap a beard on the bad guys, or plaster the set with Swastikas or another stand-in symbol.
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If everything is so abundant and plentiful in Star Trek Future where everyone can be whatever they desire? Who wants to be the Ship’s Janitor? The Liquid Waste System Engineer? Or anyone of a dozen miserable, but essential drudge jobs? Why? If I am so stinking rich? Wouldn’t I want to be the Captain? Or at least the Dude shooting the Phasers? Who wants the glorious and fulfilling job of mopping the decks or fixing the john?
In theory, TNG and onwards, you probably wouldn’t HAVE a ship’s janitor or specifically drudge jobs.
What you’d have is a Drone Maintenance Supervisor. A guy, probably a PO, who manages a half dozen (or more) remote controlled drones who deal with the mess. He’s trained in maintaining and repairing them, as well as giving direction.
Keep in mind that post-scarcity economics get really, really strange. A society that’s made that kind of technical advancement is not going to look like anything we consider normal (for good or ill).
“In Theory”
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Why would I want to be a drone maintenance supervisor? Am I the maintenance supervisor for machines or for the drones running the machines? Or am I just another drone supervisor being managed by the HR Computer? What exactly is in it for me?
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Maintenance? The glories of cleaning and replacing the toilet cleaning module? Emptying the dust bunnies out of the carpet cleaner (again)! How about replacing for a fifth time this cruise another Z-3338B Circuit Board which is hidden behind the electrostatic dust collection modules and the 3 wiring harnesses for the multi-directional motive units. 20,000 hour MTBF? Bull Sh!t!
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Fielding the complaints (listening to some uppity self important command deck bitch berating me) about the machines not cleaning the important people’s quarters to their satisfaction?
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What is in it for me? Riches? Fame? Glory? Sex Appeal? Intellectual Growth?
I know! A path to Advancement? Maybe I can supervise the Bartender Robots next mission?
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Ooh! Ooh! Sign me up Mista Kotta! It’s the job of my Dreams! I would rather do that than maintain the Phasers or pilot the shuttles, or be Captain Picard.
Just like the experiment where you average a class’s grades and they noticeably drop each cycle, what you see on the show is just a fraction of humanity that maintains some sort of drive to achieve or just alleviating boredom. The other 90% plus sits at home in front of their data pads and living on their monthly replicator/holodeck credits.
Honestly, that was something Roddenberry did a piss-poor job of explaining.
WHY do people become starship captains, or for that matter, crew? Ego? Curiosity? Power? Especially in a post-scarcity society, when you can more or less live well for practically pennies (figuratively speaking).
Star Trek is ESPECIALLY bad because it perpetually follows the bridge crew around. This was, incidentially, something that David Weber’s Honorverse or Peter Grant’s Maxwell Saga did better. You got to see interaction with other characters both exalted and humble, some of whom had some fairly mundane jobs (one of Maxwell’s first tasks as an ensign was taking over the ship commissary. Go ahead, tell me that’s not important. I dare ya).
20,000hr MTBF…I sense disgruntled safety/reliability engineer.
I&C Engineer. Had to clean up a mess when they decide to try running certain components for 3 years/ 2 cycles straight, instead of replacing them every one and a half year cycle. Especially when the components were in a compartment that ran 140-160F 24/7 X 365.
Passion fingers: everything “woke”, is fornicated.
They are completely making a mess of things. I hope to God John de Lancie got a good paycheck for this tripe.
All the signs Piccard being a woke dumpster fire started in season one. All the red flags were there, fans of the star Trek were just waiting for the mess to ignite.
When it comes to poisoning a beloved IP the left has gotten quite formulaic, once you learn to recognize the signs they are pretty easy to spot.
You left out 7 of 9 suddenly becoming a carpet muncher. And, the doctor is a single mother. And, let’s not forget 7 of 9 is getting into a lesbian interracial relationship. The only think missing is a transgender. (well, there is a transspecies… but the Borg kind of hit that nail on the head in TNG.) Oh… and… well… forget it. Woke dumpster fire.
RE: Guinan in 2024 LA on “fairness”: ST:TNG disproved this already. The Time’s Arrow two-parter (Season 5 Ep. 26 & Season 6 Ep. 1) had Guinan in San Francisco in the 19th century (1893, to be exact), 500 years before she joined the Enterprise crew.
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In 1893, Guinan was a well-reviewed writer; Data discovers she’s in San Francisco because her picture appears in the newspaper with the headline “Literary Reception Announced”, implying that Guinan, a black woman, is the guest of honor. The reception depicts Guinan as a respected pillar of society.
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And when an away team meets them in the past, Geordi LaForge must interact without his visor (such technology would be quite out of place), and as a blind black man he is nevertheless regarded and treated the same as the white members of the crew.
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So tell me how continuity is maintained when 19th-century San Francisco has equality and civil rights figured out — not only for minorities but also for disabilities — but 21st-century Los Angeles doesn’t.
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But then, it’s not surprising that Hollywood studios like Paramount would ret-con Woke issues into their own backstories.
Thar is a fantastic point I totally overlooked. Well done.
That’s ok, while I had heard they were going to go back to something more like TOS with Strange New Worlds, I got really excited.
Then I saw the trailer and was reminded that the good days of Star Trek are well and truly gone. Strange New Worlds is looking like just more woke crap. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. But I had been really, really hopeful. Should have known better.
I watched the Red Letter Media review of the last three episodes of Puke-hard.
No thanks, I’d rather watch the Star Trek Animated Series. At least some of the stories came from people who like science fiction.
I remember that one. They took the Enterprise from Star Trek and shoved it into Larry Niven’s Known Space Universe.
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Kzin, Stasis Boxes, Thrint, Slavers, and Puppeteers
Strange New Worlds implies, in so many words, that Jan 6 was the catalyst that started WW3 and the Eugenics Wars…
Avid fan of original Star Trek, stopped watching after it ended. Picaca was exactly that.
^That. TOS, and the movies with same (actually, the every-other-one-that’s good ones). After that, caca. By the metric ton. You can’t milk a cow forever, even if you try.
To be fair the maliciousness of America in 2024 was already set up on Deep Space Nine, season 3 episodes 11 & 12 with “Past Tense, Part I & II”
Of course America in 2024 will be a screwed up mess on the verge of collapse. 2024 is the fourth and final year of the F. Joe Biden Reign of Error. You have lived through the first 18 months. Do any of you think it will get any better in the next 24 months?
The Orville Season 1, Episode 7
“Majority Rule”
A planet where Social Media ‘scores’ can get you brain wiped..
Hmmm….