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Fannish Fifty #35: Rewatching Star Trek... still going
Nov. 6th, 2025 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elaynaSo once again, I have let it get to November, still having 15 FFs to go... oops!
I'm still slowly rewatching Star Trek, now on ST:TNG season 7. And it's making me think of Trek's wokeness, and whether it's the characters or the audience learning the lesson, and when to my mind, Trek fails.
Like TOS episode The Cloud Minders, and Kirk physically makes the prime minister mine rocks, releasing the toxins, and making the PM realize the damage being caused, leading to an overhaul of the social system and social equality. Ultimate wokeness, the characters realize the bad that's happening and fix it. Yay!
Whereas TOS Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the characters never accept that the racial division in their society is stupid and destructive, and the Enterprise leaves them to have their last fight. But IIRC, there's a certain amount of Kirk and the crew going, "OMG what?!? People used to believe this sort of stupid ideology but we've outgrown it!" Clearly the lesson is meant for the 1960's audience struggling with racial issues and telling them to do better. Yay wokeness!
So I watched ST:TNG Thine Own Self, which I didn't even remember. Data goes to a planet to retrieve radioactive rocks but loses his memory. The pre-space technology villagers take him in, but get sick from the rocks. Data recovers enough of himself to fix them, but they fear him and the illness he has caused and 'kill' him (he gets better). And it's... the characters don't learn anything. The villagers are satisfied that they've killed the scary visitor and that cured the illness he brought. One young girl is bummed. Crusher and Riker retrieve Data's body and learn two sentences about what's happened. Once restored, Data has forgotten his entire visit.
People can get scared and be shitty to strangers. I guess the audience learns that? I was in my 20s when ST:TNG aired, I was already plenty old enough to have that learned that lesson.
At this point I'm not going to go back and review all the ST:TNG eps, I need to move on to trying Discovery again, but I feel there were too many episodes that were just... yeah, people can be shitty but the Enterprise crew does what they need to do and then they leave. Yes, TOS can be overly simplistic and obvious, but ST:TNG can make me feel blank, not like I've seen something deep and meaningful.
Anyway, I got no final conclusion, just a ... I think it's interesting when a show is trying to get a message across and how that is communicated and who learns it.
I'm still slowly rewatching Star Trek, now on ST:TNG season 7. And it's making me think of Trek's wokeness, and whether it's the characters or the audience learning the lesson, and when to my mind, Trek fails.
Like TOS episode The Cloud Minders, and Kirk physically makes the prime minister mine rocks, releasing the toxins, and making the PM realize the damage being caused, leading to an overhaul of the social system and social equality. Ultimate wokeness, the characters realize the bad that's happening and fix it. Yay!
Whereas TOS Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the characters never accept that the racial division in their society is stupid and destructive, and the Enterprise leaves them to have their last fight. But IIRC, there's a certain amount of Kirk and the crew going, "OMG what?!? People used to believe this sort of stupid ideology but we've outgrown it!" Clearly the lesson is meant for the 1960's audience struggling with racial issues and telling them to do better. Yay wokeness!
So I watched ST:TNG Thine Own Self, which I didn't even remember. Data goes to a planet to retrieve radioactive rocks but loses his memory. The pre-space technology villagers take him in, but get sick from the rocks. Data recovers enough of himself to fix them, but they fear him and the illness he has caused and 'kill' him (he gets better). And it's... the characters don't learn anything. The villagers are satisfied that they've killed the scary visitor and that cured the illness he brought. One young girl is bummed. Crusher and Riker retrieve Data's body and learn two sentences about what's happened. Once restored, Data has forgotten his entire visit.
People can get scared and be shitty to strangers. I guess the audience learns that? I was in my 20s when ST:TNG aired, I was already plenty old enough to have that learned that lesson.
At this point I'm not going to go back and review all the ST:TNG eps, I need to move on to trying Discovery again, but I feel there were too many episodes that were just... yeah, people can be shitty but the Enterprise crew does what they need to do and then they leave. Yes, TOS can be overly simplistic and obvious, but ST:TNG can make me feel blank, not like I've seen something deep and meaningful.
Anyway, I got no final conclusion, just a ... I think it's interesting when a show is trying to get a message across and how that is communicated and who learns it.
