Old Trek didn’t focus on politcal issues, it focused on social issues.
Of course there’s a lot of overlap between social issues and politcal issues in the old venn diagram and old Trek didn’t shy away from that overlapping area (nor should they have).
Writers now are looking for a pat on the back and need to insert politcal non-sequiturs which don’t actually say anything real. Just mentioning inequality exists or whatever. And in places that actually hurt the overall message of the show.
I only have Picard Season 1 to go by (not interested in prequel bullshit and didn’t bother with S2) but they have a character complaining about inequality. Which implies that in the future we eliminate inequality and then later decide to go back to it? It’s really a very pessimistic outlook when you think about it.
Also everyone is suddenly racist against robots for some reason. Which sure that’s a social issue, but again you’re saying humanity moved past racism but then later decided to become racist… against robots LOL. Why did people in the future suddenly get so stupid? In TNG if the robots malfunctioned they’d run a level 3 diagnostic and determine it was a virus that caused it before the next commercial break. In new Trek everyone is too stupid to do that because… they watch Fox News I guess? Or maybe that’s just a political reference they don’t actually do anything with.
In old Trek, they’d rock up to a planet in their awesome starship and gawk at some racist aliens, and warp off to another planet laughing about how backwards they are. Someone would mention humans used to be that way, everyone would be find that unbelievable. The point was that these social problems would be alien to an ideal future society. It wasn’t wagging the finger at the audience it was saying things like racism is something weird and alien and gets in the way of building awesome spaceships.
Old Trek was just better at taking on these topics in a sly way. The writers now need to beat people over the head, wag the finger, and lecture the audience so they can get cred. But they’re just preaching to the choir so it’s not at all effective at changing anyone’s outlook on any topic.
Like the above example… well yeah he’s building an android so it makes sense to have them choose their appearance. Let that just seep into the audience’s brain and maybe if someday they encounter something analogous to this situation they might think a little differently about it. Or maybe not. But forcing people to link it to a current political issue doesn’t accomplish anything, they just say “this sucks it’s too political” and stop watching.
There’s also the deep-seated, systemic bigotry against anyone who has undergone any kind of genetic enhancements, even if they have used their advanced intellects to advance the Star Fleet agenda. It’s a holdover from the old Eugenics Wars, but when they are still pissy about it centuries later, maybe it’s time to deal with that old social trauma.
If you allow genetic modifications, you inevitably end up with a situation where people become genetically optimized for specific jobs. That results in a caste system, and some people that might want to be on the crew of a starship never having the opportunity to do so because they don’t have the correct genetic enhancements. So there’d be some people assigned to do all the cool stuff and an underclass relegated to menial jobs because of lack of genetic enhancements. Technology isn’t developed to be accessible to everyone only for people with the genetic enhancements needed to use it.
Seems very dystopian and goes against the Federation’s goals of favouring equality over the capability to dominate alien races.
The Dominion was similar to the Federation in that they had a diverse group of alien races working together. The difference was the Dominion was all about genetic engineering while the Federation was opposed to it.
I think I’d rather live on a Federation planet than a Dominion planet.
Yeah but in Measure of a Man they conclude with they can’t know if Data is sentient but since it’s possible he could be, they have to proceed with the assumption that he is to avoid even risking being racist assholes.
Picard S1 completely misses the point. It’s not that humans are treating the robots as if they’re non-sentient, it’s that people do think of them as sentient and they are racist towards them.
If they were being consistent with Measure of a Man, they would have people considering to be just useful non-sentient machines and when they blow up Mars, they would instantly think they were malfunctioning somehow.
They were telling a story about racism where the target of the racism may not even be sentient. So it’s maybe racism. Which makes the anti-racism message a bit watered down and unclear. Especially when they felt the need to have the final crisis ramped up to insane levels by having the robots all go into a Futurama “kill all humans” mode and try to wipe out all life in the Galaxy. So the shitty writing makes it feel like they weren’t at all sentient beings since they lacked any kind of empathy.
I feel like those robots would all fail the Voight-Kampff test for sure. I doubt the writers of the show even know what a Voight-Kampff test is. They definitely didn’t know how to write a good robot story that’s for sure. Everything in this story about how it’s bad to be racist against robots also has the robots behaving in a non-sentient way which ruins the anti-racist message.
So it fails at being a good robot story which results in it failing in it’s attempt at having an anti-racist message. It’s like the writers thought it was enough to just say “racism is bad” and so they didn’t need to put in any effort with the science fiction stuff.
Old Trek didn’t focus on politcal issues, it focused on social issues.
Of course there’s a lot of overlap between social issues and politcal issues in the old venn diagram and old Trek didn’t shy away from that overlapping area (nor should they have).
Writers now are looking for a pat on the back and need to insert politcal non-sequiturs which don’t actually say anything real. Just mentioning inequality exists or whatever. And in places that actually hurt the overall message of the show.
I only have Picard Season 1 to go by (not interested in prequel bullshit and didn’t bother with S2) but they have a character complaining about inequality. Which implies that in the future we eliminate inequality and then later decide to go back to it? It’s really a very pessimistic outlook when you think about it.
Also everyone is suddenly racist against robots for some reason. Which sure that’s a social issue, but again you’re saying humanity moved past racism but then later decided to become racist… against robots LOL. Why did people in the future suddenly get so stupid? In TNG if the robots malfunctioned they’d run a level 3 diagnostic and determine it was a virus that caused it before the next commercial break. In new Trek everyone is too stupid to do that because… they watch Fox News I guess? Or maybe that’s just a political reference they don’t actually do anything with.
In old Trek, they’d rock up to a planet in their awesome starship and gawk at some racist aliens, and warp off to another planet laughing about how backwards they are. Someone would mention humans used to be that way, everyone would be find that unbelievable. The point was that these social problems would be alien to an ideal future society. It wasn’t wagging the finger at the audience it was saying things like racism is something weird and alien and gets in the way of building awesome spaceships.
Old Trek was just better at taking on these topics in a sly way. The writers now need to beat people over the head, wag the finger, and lecture the audience so they can get cred. But they’re just preaching to the choir so it’s not at all effective at changing anyone’s outlook on any topic.
Like the above example… well yeah he’s building an android so it makes sense to have them choose their appearance. Let that just seep into the audience’s brain and maybe if someday they encounter something analogous to this situation they might think a little differently about it. Or maybe not. But forcing people to link it to a current political issue doesn’t accomplish anything, they just say “this sucks it’s too political” and stop watching.
There’s also the deep-seated, systemic bigotry against anyone who has undergone any kind of genetic enhancements, even if they have used their advanced intellects to advance the Star Fleet agenda. It’s a holdover from the old Eugenics Wars, but when they are still pissy about it centuries later, maybe it’s time to deal with that old social trauma.
If you allow genetic modifications, you inevitably end up with a situation where people become genetically optimized for specific jobs. That results in a caste system, and some people that might want to be on the crew of a starship never having the opportunity to do so because they don’t have the correct genetic enhancements. So there’d be some people assigned to do all the cool stuff and an underclass relegated to menial jobs because of lack of genetic enhancements. Technology isn’t developed to be accessible to everyone only for people with the genetic enhancements needed to use it.
Seems very dystopian and goes against the Federation’s goals of favouring equality over the capability to dominate alien races.
The Dominion was similar to the Federation in that they had a diverse group of alien races working together. The difference was the Dominion was all about genetic engineering while the Federation was opposed to it.
I think I’d rather live on a Federation planet than a Dominion planet.
Basically the premise of Brave New World.
Tbf tng did actually deal with robot (data) rights and humanity, so robo-racism sorta makes sense.
I agree with everything else you said. I blame the netflixification of media, where they assume everyone is looking at their phones the entire time.
Yeah but in Measure of a Man they conclude with they can’t know if Data is sentient but since it’s possible he could be, they have to proceed with the assumption that he is to avoid even risking being racist assholes.
Picard S1 completely misses the point. It’s not that humans are treating the robots as if they’re non-sentient, it’s that people do think of them as sentient and they are racist towards them.
If they were being consistent with Measure of a Man, they would have people considering to be just useful non-sentient machines and when they blow up Mars, they would instantly think they were malfunctioning somehow.
They were telling a story about racism where the target of the racism may not even be sentient. So it’s maybe racism. Which makes the anti-racism message a bit watered down and unclear. Especially when they felt the need to have the final crisis ramped up to insane levels by having the robots all go into a Futurama “kill all humans” mode and try to wipe out all life in the Galaxy. So the shitty writing makes it feel like they weren’t at all sentient beings since they lacked any kind of empathy.
I feel like those robots would all fail the Voight-Kampff test for sure. I doubt the writers of the show even know what a Voight-Kampff test is. They definitely didn’t know how to write a good robot story that’s for sure. Everything in this story about how it’s bad to be racist against robots also has the robots behaving in a non-sentient way which ruins the anti-racist message.
So it fails at being a good robot story which results in it failing in it’s attempt at having an anti-racist message. It’s like the writers thought it was enough to just say “racism is bad” and so they didn’t need to put in any effort with the science fiction stuff.
This also… “Second screening” only happens for crappy movies and shows.
You’re missing out if you pass on SNW. The Hair is so Hair
Well said chap