#committing to a new season of picard or disco really does have the feeling of walking into a movie theater

[mylittleredgirl]

so i've been thinking about this, and come to the conclusion that i was successfully prepared for star trek picard at a young age, when i cried for like seven hours after seeing the enterprise-d get totaled in generations until my mom said "you can just decide that something else happened instead :)"

which probably meant "every story is just somebody's version of what could have happened in a fictional world and isn't reality" and also "please stop crying and go to school," but i had watched a lot of star trek by this point and was like ohhhhhh, of course!

alternate timelines!

and generations didn't even really look like tng, because of the dramatic movie lighting (which was reminiscent of the way they lit "yesterday's enterprise" to show that it was A Different, Wrong Timeline).

so in my head, picard is so far down the alternate dramatic-movie-lighting timeline (which is fully temporally divorced from the brightly-lit we-all-keep-adventuring-as-friends-forever timeline promised at the end of "all good things") that i'm somehow wet-duck un-botherable by whatever inconsistencies and devastating reveals that have or will happen in this trek.

i want it to be good! i want it to be entertaining!! but whenever something happens that grinds the gears of canon or good taste, there's part of my brain that has been eating canned goods in a denial bunker for a solid 2/3rds of my life going "interesting! but damn, thank goodness that would never happen in The Real Timeline."

[sophiaforevs]

Between the early cancellation of Discovery, Seven/Raffi and Mariner/Jenn being erased in their respective shows, and SNW having queer coded characters but not confirming anything on screen, I'm really afraid that we're entering another "No Gays in Trek" era.

For those who don't know, 90s era star trek featured so few queer characters b/c Rick Berman largely held a policy of not wanting any homosexuality in his shows. And yes, we all remember the handful of episodes that slipped through that addressed it but the fact remains that there were no canonically queer main cast members before Into Darkness in 2016 gave us a five second shot that could be cut when whoever was showing the movie found the idea of two men in a loving relationship disgusting.

Then we got Discovery with multiple queer characters that allowed people to feel seen. And people never stopped bitching about them. The amount of times that I've had to listen to people complain that Adira's only character trait is that they're non-binary despite that literally being a single thirty second scene and never brought up again makes me understand that they very likely don't want to like the queer characters in that show. And it's not that there aren't criticisms to be made about the queer representation in Disco: Discovery Buries it's Gays before the end of the first season. Making your trans characters aliens who already have a history of gender fuckery is problematic b/c it somewhat plays into the idea that queerness is unnatural for human beings. But I never hear those complaints. Only the pronouns. Only the "We get it you're gay but don't shove it down our throats." But I don't want to get too off topic.

Now Discovery is being canceled early. And by early I mean, the writers weren't given proper notice that their show was ending. They were halfway through production and allowed to adjust the end episodes of the season to try to give a satisfying ending.

In Picard and Lower Decks, we got two sapphic relationships ("sapphic" meaning a romantic or sexual relationship between two women who aren't necessarily strictly lesbians) and they were pretty good. People had been asking for Seven to be queer and Jeri Ryan had been playing her as such since her introduction (see again: Rick Berman) and to see her finally get to express that was really healing. Mariner got off to rocky feet when the creators tried to pull a "Dumbledore is gay" where they said she was bi but didn't commit to it, but they she actually got a fairly satisfying relationship in season 3.

But in their most recent seasons, both were completely written out. Seven/Raffi gave us no explanation beyond that they "broke up." They went out of their way to keep them from being on screen together for most of the season. Mattis said in a Reddit AMA that he wanted Seven to be captain and Raffi to be first officer at the end of the season and that Starfleet would have regulations against relationships between the two despite the biggest reason Seven was promoted to captain was that she was a rule breaker. We didn't even get that much for Mariner/Jennifer. Jenn just wasn't in this season except for two background appearances.

And in Strange New Worlds there's just… nothing. SNW is the most recent new show and there's no queer representation. They code Ortegas as gay but don't actually confirm it on screen. There's just… nothing.

And this is how you loose the culture war. The bigots make enough noise that the show that is supposed to be a beacon of diversity doesn't necessarily side with them but they just kinda bow out of the conversation. They decide that it's easier to not bother than to take a stand. And so I and many many queer star trek fans are left wondering:

Does the franchise even want us any more?

[cicaklah]

strange new worlds!!!

I watched the first seven episodes of strange new worlds and I'm here to TALK about them incoherently.

Look, after disco season 3 and picard season 2, I had basically had my heart broken twice. Make me love a show, make me bond with a crew, then fuck it all over with bad writing, poor decision making and shoddy showrunning.

Is it happening again??? oh, probably. But much as in 2017 when I was at rock bottom disco provided me with what I needed, in 2022 it did it again, just what I needed this time was some by the numbers star trek.

some of the perennial problems of modern trek are still present: characters have to have big secrets as well as tragic backstories. too many coincidences that just happen to tie into classic trek a little too evenly. However, a lot of that is excused: these are characters we know and they are connected.

I am very glad that this is it though, there isn't a big overriding mystery yet. Disco especially couldn't work out whether it wanted to be a show with a big mystery or lots of small mysteries and instead just piled mystery upon mystery until everyone was just suffocated.

I love the decisions that have been made: the gorn being the token scary baddies is a good choice. Fleshing out Spock and T'Pring's relationship is delicious, T'Pring is glorious. I'm waiting for her to ask Spock to fuck her like a human and how much that will bsod his brain to the point I will probably write it.

I ADORE Una and La'al. I didn't think I'd like La'al, mostly because I'm sick of everyone must be one degree of separation, but I love her so much. I love Una and Pike's relationship. I am BESOTTED with Chapel. Baby Uhura is adorable. Ortega is great. Hemmer is...you don't need me to spend ages talking about Andorians/Aenar because I read all those beta canon books (DRINK), just to say though I love him.

So far all seven episodes are great, probably the weakest was the pilot, though it was good. The commitment to self contained episodes and the old A/B plotting just is a reminder that the structure is a classic for a reason. Also, they did body swap!!! Body Swap and Enterprise Bingo! In one episode!

Quick reviews of each episode:

strange new worlds: pike's beard is awful, spock's body is incredible, light touch tie into disco, I miss Michael too, and a retconning of star trek history that would have been better coming before picard but that I'm still mildly annoyed about because it still doesn't really make sense to pretend that the diversion point between us and star trek is yet to happen but also not ugh just FINE BE THAT WAY.

children of the comet: could be mid-tier forgettable tng episode and I mean that as a compliment.

ghosts of illyria: echoes of tng episodes past collide with beta canon and two characters having secrets. genuinely loved this episode, una being illyrian is something I was annoyed was apparently changed but nah. Also discussing augments and eugenic war legacy oh my its like christmas.

memento mori: SO GOOD just so good. Ambushes! Gorns! Cat and mouse in space! Character development!!! Creepy shit!!! Hemmer!!! Creative uses for things!! Mind melds!!!

Spock Amok: BODY SWAP!!!!!!! ENTERPRISE BINGO!!!! Interesting diplomacy B plot! The solarsail ship! A definite great.

lift us where suffering can't reach: this is just an adaptation of 'those who walk away from omelas' but I am glad they did it, even if now the show is doomed to be sued by ursula k leguin for plagiarisms. but does her story have topless pike? no. so this episode is obviously the superior 'powered by a forsaken child' story.

the serene squall: shipbait and a great villain who overall sells a filler episode. good job. also: sybok!!!!!! the return of sarek: galaxy's worst dad maybe???

anyway this show is good I don't know why people aren't talking about it. also there's loads of kissing, absolutely loads of it. it didn't cure my depression but it did make me feel a bit better to lie in bed, watch star trek and eat crisps.

[discotreque]

LwD 1.10, “No Small Parts”

Well, that was the most fun I've had watching Star Trek in literally a quarter of a century.

I had high hopes for this series. I love TAS, largely because of its wacky outsized concepts that could only have worked in animation—not that they all did work, but the potential was so apparent to me, even as a kid reading the Alan Dean Foster novelizations—and as an adult, there's something about the imagination of Lower Decks's FX setpieces that transcends even the glorious CGI bonanzas of Discovery.

Pause for a confession. I've long pushed back against criticism of serialization in new Trek. That's just how TV is now, okay? Might as well complain about it being in widescreen. But I'm backing down a little, because I've realized there is something about Star Trek that's inextricable from at least a partially-episodic format. And while Picard was telling a different kind of story, I can't deny that my favourite episodes of Disco have been the ones with a mostly self-contained A-plot. After 10 delightfully episodic instalments of LwD, its focus on long-term development of characters instead of a season-spanning puzzle-plot (okay, mostly just Mariner, but we only have 10 × 22 minutes and she is the star) has been downright refreshing.

So here we are, at the end of the most consistent and well-executed Season 1 of a Star Trek series since, arguably, Those Old Scientists. And sure, if they'd had to produce another... yikes, 42 episodes? Then sure, they probably would have dropped a clunker or two—but they didn't, and winning on a technicality is still winning. I'm practically vibrating with excitement for Disco to come back next week, but damn, I'm going to miss this little show while it's on hiatus.

Spoilers below:

Something I've been keeping track of finally paid off this week! (Which never happens to me, lol.) The destruction of the USS Solvang marked the first present-day death(s) of any Starfleet officer on Lower Decks, the only other on-screen killing at all being a flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow". Which makes sense, being (a) a comedy, and (b) about typically "expendable" characters: it hasn't been afraid to flirt with a little darkness here and there, but killing people off at Star Trek's usual pace wouldn't just be wrong for the tone, it would be downright bizarre.

But... people die on Star Trek. That's one of the core themes of the show, really: space is full of knowledge and beauty, but also danger and terror, and believing that the former is worth the risk of the latter is (according to Trek) one of humanity's most noble traits. I'm the least bloodthirsty TV watcher I know, but the longer we went with a body count of nil—ships completely evacuated before they were destroyed, main characters hilariously maimed without permanent consequences, etc.—well, I didn't mind per se, but the absence of truly deadly stakes was definitely getting conspicuous.

Turns out they were saving it up for maximum impact. And holy fuck, I've never felt such a pit in my stomach watching a ship get destroyed that wasn't named Enterprise. It felt grim and brutal and somehow both much too quick and dreadfully inevitable—and yeah, it looked extremely fucking cool—and I'd like every other Star Trek property for the rest of time to take notes under a large bold heading labeled RESTRAINT.

Comedy doesn't need to do this, but my favourite comedy does, and in a way that few other art forms can even approach: lower my emotional defences by making me laugh, endear character(s) to me with goofy-but-relatable antics—then BAM, sucker-punch me in the motherfucking feels. M*A*S*H is probably the classic example on TV, Futurama was notorious for it, and even Archer has pulled it off a few times; it's also a staple of some of my favourite standup. I wasn't sure if Lower Decks was going to go there in Season 1—and wasn't sure if they'd earn it—but I knew if they did, that they'd nail it, and damn. Feels good to be right.

Last batch of notes for the season!!! I rambled enough already, so let's do it liveblog-style:

I fucking KNEW they were going to use "archive" visuals from TAS at some point, I KNEW IT :D

"THOSE OLD SCIENTISTS" ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I like chill and confident Boimler a lot? You can really see—

oh bRADWARD NOOOOO

That opening shot of the Solvang tracking down to the red giant was extremely Discovery-esque... minus the motion sickness, that is

A lady captain AND a lady first officer? That's—oh hey, it's Captain Dayton's brand-new ship. Hahaha, that means they're totally fucked, right?.

Yep! They sure a—umm, wh—shit, okay, but—oh no—no, you can't—wait DON'T

...fuck

FUCK.

Narrator: "And then Amy needed a five-hour break."

[live-action Star Trek showrunner voice] "Gee, Mike! Why does CBS let you have two cold opens?"

Okay, yes, the bit with Rutherford cycling through all the different attitudes in his implant was transparently an excuse for Eugene Cardero to vamp while waiting for something to do in the story, but as far as I'm concerned they can contrive a reason for him to do a bunch of different silly Rutherfords in a row any time they damn well want, because that was classic!!!

EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP

AND THE EXOCOMP IS PAINTED LIKE THE EXOCOMP IS WEARING A LITTLE EXOCOMP-SIZED STARFLEET UNIFORM

EXOCOMP!!!!!

The slow burn and now the payoff of the Mariner-is-Freeman's-secret-daughter plot has been executed so well. I'm beyond impressed with this writer's room, y'all—they are threading a hell of a needle here

"Wolf 359 was an inside job" would have been a spit-take if I'd had anything in my mouth

...how many memos do you think Starfleet Command has had to issue asking people to stop calling the USS Sacramento "the Sac"?

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THEY'VE DECORATED THE SHUTTLECRAFT SEQUOIA THOUGH

Is, uh, is it weird if I'm starting to ship Tendi and Peanut Hamper a little? It is weird, isn't it. I knew it was weird...

Coital barbs??? I take back everything I said about wanting to know more about Shaxs/T'Ana.

The "good officer" version of Mariner is... kind of hot, tbh! But Tawny Newsome has done such a great job of building this character all season that her voice getting uncharacteristically clipped and martial and "sir! yes, sir!" is also deeply, deeply weird

Ah, so this is literally exactly like when TNG (and DS9) would bring in, and then blow up, a never-before-seen Galaxy-class ship, just to underscore that we're facing a real threat this week, baby. And hey, it fucking worked—my heart was in my throat, omg, for the reveal of the—

PAKLEDS?????????

The fucking PAKLEDS have been gluing weapons to their ships for the last 15 years. GREAT.

(We interrupt the SHIP BEING SLICED INTO SCRAP for an interesting bit of world-building: on Earth, the traditional First Contact Day meal is salmon!)

"I need a dangerous, half-baked solution that breaks Starfleet codes and totally pisses me off! That's an order." I'm starting to think Captain Freeman might actually be overqualified for the Cerritos, y'all—she's REALLY awesome

OH SHIT IT'S BADGEY, this is a TERRIBLE IDEA

"How much contraband have you hidden on my ship?" "I don't know! A lot!"

Awwww, Boims!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHA, FUCK THIS, PEANUT HAMPER OUT

BADGEY NOOOOO

AUGHHHHH WHAT THE CHRIST DID HE JUST—BUT—RUTHERFORD'S IMPLANT????

RUTHERFORD!!!!!!!!!!

SHAXS!!!!!!

F U C K ! ! ! ! !

ahaIOPugdfhagntpgjrq90e5mgu90qe5;oigoqgw4ouegrw5SP;IAEHURVa IT’S THE TITAN???????????

IT'S CAPTAIN WILLIAM T. RIKER ON THE MOTHERFUCKING TITAN??????????

i'm screaming I'M SCREAMINGGGGGG​TGGGTGQER;​LBHAOIBVNV;​OAPBIJNVagr;h;​oagruipuwtnaetbaetgq35ghqet

I'M SO GLAD THIS WASN'T SPOILED FOR ME WTF

I AM WEEPING LIKE A CHILD

...

(Just a brief 20-minute pause this time)

And oh wow, seeing Will and Deanna hits different after Picard too, in a few different ways, which I may even get into later now that my heartrate is back to normal, lmao

Oh, I am always here for some jokes at the expense of the Sovereign class. The Enterprise-E sucked. They should have built a new bigger model of the D and new Galaxy-class interiors for the TNG movies, and I will die on that hill

OKAY, FINE, YOU GOT ME, RUTHERFORD × TENDI WOULD BE ADORABLE AND THIS IS ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD SETUP FOR IT

Awwww, Shaxs though :( Congrats on the single most badass death in Star Trek history, dude. The Prophets would—well, the actual Prophets would probably be slightly confused about most of it, but Kira Nerys would be proud of you and I feel like that probably counts for more. RIP, Papa Bear

I am here all damn DAY for the Mariner–Riker parallels, ahahahahaha

Pausing it to record my prediction that Boimler's commitment to not caring about rank anymore is going to last 3... 2...

Yep.

Bradward, how DARE YOU.

"Those guys had a long road, getting from there to here." OH FOR THE LOVE OF—

What a brilliant way to resolve and renew the various character arcs and relationships moving into Season 2! The writers could easily have brought everything back to status quo—chaotic Mariner fighting with her mom and being a bad influence on Boimler, etc.—and done another 10 just like these, but I suspect that wouldn't have been ambitious enough for these writers. What a blast. I cannot wait for more.

Thanks for following along, friends! Stay tuned for my (similarly patchy and amateur) coverage of Discovery, starting next week!

[beatrice-otter]

This started out as a reblog of this excellent reblog chain about racism and antisemitism in both Star Trek canon and fandom, but as a white gentile fan I didn’t want to intrude or take over.  And I firmly believe that if you really love something, you should love it with open eyes, seeing its faults as well as its strengths.

The thing is, Star Trek is progressive ... but it’s a very white type of progressive resting-on-our-laurels type progressivism.  Sure, TOS was very progressive for a TV show of its day, but ... that ain’t saying much, and the writers and directors and showrunners were all white men and it shows.  So yes, it pushed boundaries by having Sulu and Uhura, and the first scripted interracial kiss, but that was the 60s.  TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT ... uh.  Still very heavily white and male.  Still progressive, but nowhere near as progressive comparatively as TOS, nowhere near as groundbreaking. I mean, I’m glad they listened to Avery Brooks about how his character should be designed and written!  When they made a show with a female captain, they should have at least done the same, and preferably had women in creative leadership roles (as DS9 should have had black people in creative leadership roles).  (I mean, all media should have diverse creative leadership for a lot of reasons, but when you have a character of color or a white woman as lead, it’s even more important that the creative team not be a bastion of white cisheteropatriarchy.)  DS9 was less racist and sexist than TNG or Voyager (but made up for it by being hella antisemitic, hello Ferengi) but the thing is, these are not exactly the Shining Beacons Of Progressiveness we white fans like to think of them as.  Were they better than a lot of shows out there?  Sure!  Did they grapple with a lot of issues most other shows didn’t?  Yup.  But again, that ain’t saying much.  (I haven’t watched Disco or Picard, so I can’t speak to those.)

As to fandom, just liking Star Trek doesn’t automatically make you somehow less racist.  There’s this undercurrent among white Trekkers that “Star Trek is progressive, I am progressive, therefore all participation in the fandom is inherently progressive, therefore I don’t have to worry about racial issues in either my fanworks or my interactions with other fans.”  It’s not that Trek fandom is the only fandom where white people want to assume that not actively hating black people is all you need to qualify as “not racist,” it’s that in Trek fandom we can use the perceived progressiveness of the show as additional armor against acknowledging the actual issues.

I’m white, but I remember how terribly the AOS fandom has treated both the character of Uhura (who DARED to break up the Kirk/Spock white male slash juggernaut) and fans of color.  The argument was that it was homophobic to put Spock in a relationship with a woman.  And that it was a betrayal of feminism for Uhura to have a romantic relationship.  (A black woman getting to have a fulfilling romantic relationship is a step forward, not a step back.  Nyota Uhura is not a white girl.) That whole discussion--which included fans of color getting attacked even in dedicated Spock/Uhura spaces, and ended up with the main Spock/Uhura LJ community doing a lot of educational pieces about racism and misogynoir and privilege and how not to be a dick--was back in 2009.  Over a decade ago.  And we are still having the same damned discussions and treating fans of color the same damned way.  It’s exhausting for me as a white person; I can’t imagine what it’s like for fans of color.  And the thing is, the reason we are still having the same. discussions. over. and. over. is that the majority of white fans do not learn.  We don’t.  We need to.

None of these issues are new.

Star Trek has usually been at least a tiny bit more progressive than the society around it.  That doesn’t mean that the show is perfect, and it definitely doesn’t mean the fandom is.  We can and should do better.  If we are truly committed to the ideals of Star Trek, that shining world of the future where prejudice of all kinds is greatly reduced and people usually choose to do the right thing and act with justice and compassion for all ... that should be reflected both in how we treat one another, and in what stories we choose to write.  And it isn’t.

Listening to fans of color and educating ourselves on anti-racism is a good first step, and then putting what we learn into action and working to treat fans of color better is a good second step, but there are a lot of other posts about those sorts of resources.  I’d like to talk about fannish output, what we create.

You know how people say “oh, well, the reason fandom focuses on white men is because they’re a higher percentage of screentime, therefore they’re the ones most likely to be interesting.”  Let’s look at DS9, shall we?  A show with a black man in the leading role.  As of June 30, there are 6725 fics tagged DS9 on AO3.  Benjamin Sisko (you know, the LEADING MAN), is tagged in only 961 of them.  If you look at how many fics each character is tagged in, he is the sixth person on the list.

But wait! you say, that doesn’t tell the complete story, because sometimes people only tag the pairings, not the individual characters, and therefore they don’t show up in the character tags!  So let’s look at that.  The top relationship is Bashir/Garak, with 2797 fics (almost HALF of all the stories in the fandom).  You know what the second most popular relationship is?  Platonic Bashir&Garak, with 372 fics!   You know what the #7 relationship in DS9 is?  Garak/Parmak.  Parmak is a character from a book series who never appeared in the TV show.   Sisko, the leading man of the show, doesn’t even APPEAR in the list of top ten relationships in the fandom!  Julian Bashir is there four times, Garak three.  (Jadzia/Worf is #6)

But wait! you say, the canonical pairings for Sisko were mostly recurring roles not main characters, and he didn’t really flirt with anyone he wasn’t canonically linked with, so maybe he does better when you go with only fics tagged “gen” i.e. not focused on romantic and/or sexual relationships.  (I mean, I think it’s a stretch because Janeway gets paired with Tom Paris a lot, and she doesn’t flirt with him in canon, and she rarely gets paired with Tuvok despite how often they touch hands which for a Vulcan is ... wow.  But for the sake of argument we’ll say that Sisko not flirting much with anyone besides his canon partners is the reason he’s not shipped much.) And sure, when you limit it to fics tagged “gen” he appears in the top ten list of characters!  In fourth place, with 396 out of 1876 fics.   (#1 is Bashir, with 822 fics.  #2 is Garak, with 652 fics.)

And, like, I get that Bashir and Garak are certainly very slashtastic, the actors were going for that flirty vibe in earlier seasons until they were ordered not to.  But it’s still ... pretty obvious that popularity of both shipping and gen fics is heavily influenced by racism and colorism.

I’m not trying to police fandoms or shipping or anything like that.  I’m just saying that “but this is who resonates with me/this is who I like/this is who inspires me” doesn’t absolve us from looking at the reasons why some characters are more interesting to us than others.  (It’s racism.  We’ve all lived our entire lives in a world shaped by racism and colorism, and it’s shaped our gut reactions and our preferences even when we consciously believe racism is wrong.)

And you know what?  You can influence your feelings.  You can train your gut to be less racist.  When you watch a show, pay conscious attention to the black characters.  Take a few minutes after watching an episode to think up a piece of meta or a plot bunny or something for each character of color who appears in that episode.  If you do this consistently over a period of time you will train your brain and your gut to be more interested in characters of color.  Also, when you’re deciding what to write, actively choose to favor plot bunnies featuring characters of color.  It’s not that you shouldn’t write white/lightskinned characters and ships, but that we should all be making a conscious effort to up the percentage of characters of color we write about.  (And also, you know, do at least the bare minimum of work to not write racist or antisemitic tropes. @writingwithcolor​ has many useful resources.)  That’s not the only anti-racism work we need to do to make fandom less racist, not by a long shot.  But it is important work nonetheless.

And, above all, don’t be a dick to fans of color who point out what SHOULD BE obvious to everyone.