Is Star Trek Actually Less Progressive Than You Think?
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- Опубліковано 24 вер 2019
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Being progressive doesn’t mean you get it right on every issue from the beginning. It means you make progress, which Star Trek did and kept doing.
To my mind one of the biggest examples of Star Trek not being as progressive as we would like is the way that Chakotay is handled in Voyager. Chakotay is the first regular Native American character in Star Trek, but the writers penned this aspect of his character as if pre-colonial America was a cultural monolith. Rather than choose and research a specific tribe for Chakotay to come from, his culture is made up of every stereotype of Native Americans you could find on TV and film in the 1990's.
I think it continues the tradition of Whoopis character in TNG that represented the obligatory spiritual black person.
It also didn't help that he wasn't played by a Native American....
Something that in this century.... Only 3 mainstream shows had Native Actors playing Native Characters:
King of the Hill
Parks and Rec
Kimmy Schmidt
One is a cartoon, and two of those are *the same actor....* 😔
As a Kanienkeha'ka, it's upsetting.
I'd like to add that they did hire an "expert" consultant for the show who claimed to be Native American. The problem was that "Jamake Highwater" turned out to *not* be of Native American descent but instead a fairly well-known scam artist. That problem could have easily been avoided if the production team had been, y'know, less White.
Also, far too many "generic Native American" characters are played by Mexican-American actors (not just in Star Trek) -- while on the other hand most characters on the show who are played by Latinx actors are aliens for some reason. The Whiteness of the producers (that basically reflects the economic situation in the US) is definitively showing.
Some of that was they consulted an "expert" in Native American culture who was a charlatan how made stuff up. They really needed to do their own research.
Chakotay was, infamously, created in consultation with a equally infamous conman that spent decades passing himself off as a authority and member of the Native American community.
Failure is human. Speaking about them progresses us. So, even Trek failures are still teachable moments.
Great video.
Jet Screamer this right here is why I love The Last Jedi so much. It takes the existing King Arthur framework for Luke to its logical conclusion, and in Kurosawa-worshipping Star Wars tradition incorporates echoes of Rashomon (hey, relevance to the video!) in the Ben / Luke flashback story to explore that theme of "failure is the greatest teacher." I walked out of that movie grinning like a Goddamn idiot because I finally saw the Star War I had always wanted to see.
Of course I'm primarily a trekkie and only a casual Star Wars fan, so my judgement is highly suspect.
Hear, hear!
@@tjzambonischwartz No, your judgement is perfect. I loved The Last Jedi and it flipped everything on its head.
@@tjzambonischwartz I didn't have as many problems with the movie, than many others.
I think I see what they were going for, transcendence. We should evolve above, and adjacent to our technology (even lightsabers), at the same time embracing our environment. The force is in everything.
Rian got rid of Kylo's mechanical aspirations. He also drowned the X-wing. And most of all, had Luke toss his light saber. The thing that does not support that is his hand not dropping on the rock at the end.
I hope I got that right.
I'm ok with Yoda's ability to interact with the world. He has had decades, with Ben Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin, and perhaps more. Their continued training is all an Undiscovered Country as far as movies, and their evolution. They're the first generation of everliving Jedi.
Rey is hit, and miss. Anakin was part of a prophecy. He needed a lot of training. I'd had liked to see a mintage, or something. I don't like my movies too convenient. I hope she Rises into an accomplished Jedi. But, I hope she earns it. Artoo, where are you? He is my favorite. He has not been used nearly enough. I think they should have Killed Princess Leia, instead of having her pulled the ship towards herself (head canon). No Laura Dern, and Ackbar as the hero.
Rose is awesome. But is she just there so we don't ship the supporting men? Joking.
Personally, I'm not as invested in this trilogy. NOT because it isn't good. That said, I'll always hold the movies of my childhood as the best. I'm no longer the demographic. I'm hitting 50 soon. I have steadily lost interest in movies. Most of TV too.
I will go see IX. I can't not. I have to finish what I started. I respect everyones decisions however.
@@tjzambonischwartz It's so good when I see someone else that liked The Last Jedi because they saw the actual movie, without unrealistic expectations for Luke's character. I thought it was a great story, and both me and my mom (an old-school Star Wars fan, since the original trilogy, that decided to study english to get to NASA, because it was the closest thing to being an x-wing pilot) came out of the movie grinning as well.
"Just because I love [insert here], that doesn't mean I should pretend it's flaws don't exist." This right here is an attitude I wish was far more prevalent.
With many things I complain because I love it. Because that is the only way the flaws become public and can be worked on. The only way to improve is to talk about the dark things and how to do without them.
"You can't take a trans/gay person and make them not trans or gay." I feel one of the points of the episode 'The Outcast', was as a warning: You may not be able to physically change a persons neurostructure now, but in the future, it may be possible to target the specific pathways which contribute to an individual being attracted to the same sex, or feel dysphoria toward their body. And it's obvious, that if that technology did exist, parents, even normally inclusive/tolerant parents, would jump at the chance to "correct" their kids. I feel the episode was also speaking toward the concept of forced conformity, not just toward gender or sexuality, but toward individualism... every single J''naii looks, acts, and feels exactly the same... they are a monoculture in every sense of the word... and that is terrifying.
I dont think that was the point of the episode. Transgender issues were not as pronounced as they are today and Gene Roddenberry, despite his socially liberal ideals, never had a position on transgender rights and the writers probably didn't either. Like really, it wasnt that deep. Did you watch the episode? It was... cringeworthy misongeny.
And why would a monogendered society be terrifying if that is their society? If that is their culture? I mean to me, I can detest American ideals of gender and homophobia, but why should I find it abhorent if an alien civilization has 1, 2, 7 genders? They evolved differently. No point in placing human definitions of gender to another sentient species.
Planet of hats dude. Trek verse is built out of planets of hats
@@sudafedup Indeed, transgender issues were not really a big theme... but homosexuality was and I'd wager that they tried to hint at deconversion therapy "against" that.
@@sudafedup Its forcing their will on those who are different is what makes them terrifying. The J'naii don't have one gender, they have individuals with the one, and they have individuals with the other two (at least lol). Those J'naii exist, and are therefore by definition a part of their society and culture.
Apparently some of the writers wanted to have J'naii to be played as a man, but the producers shut them down.
A great improvement is when Adira comes out to Stamets and his reaction is a simple: "Ok"
No discussion, no 'what does that mean', no 'are you sure?' - just a simple "ok" and acceptance. Culber and Stamets then go on to consistently use the correct pronouns every time.
That's always one of the best possible reactions to someone coming out! Years ago when my best friend told me she was trans, my response was, "Huh. That makes a lot of sense." Later she told me that that was the best response she'd had to coming out, and when I later came out to her with the same news, she gave me the same response, after laughing and asking if we were just trading genders. The other best response ever was my mum laughing and giving me a big hug, then saying, "Oh honey, I'm your mother, did you think I didn't already know?"
When Steve was quoting Kate Mulgrew and said 'females' I couldn't help but picture him as a Ferengi saying it.
Typical hooman!
Those fee-MALE hoo-MONS.
"Did he just "some of my best friends" a whole planet?!" Beautiful! :-D
Geordi just fidgets awkwardly somewhere...
With the gift he gave I'm pretty sure they were trying to say they were similar to China, still a rather unfortunately problematic episode, but they did make at least one half assed attempt at side stepping the issue 🤦♀️🙄
I can understand this perspective. Some of my best friends are a whole planet, but they leave mess everywhere with their gravitational pull. I think they should stay in their section of space where they belong, space isn't big enough for more than one planet. MAGA
Being African American, the TNG episode with the Ligons really bugged me when I saw it. As a matter fact, i only ever saw twice since its original airdate. One of the things about TOS that really messes with me every time I watch an episode involves Kirk's treatment to Uhura. My white friends who are trek fans never "see" it until I point it out to them but my black/brown (especially female) friends definitely do. Kirk had a real bad tendency in TOS is cut her off while she's talking, or chastise her like she was an idiot or something. One of the few times she gives it right back to him is the Naked Time episode--where he screams at her as the ship plunges into the atmosphere and she goes: "CAPTAIN! DON'T YOU THINK I WOULD SHUT HIM OFF IF I COULD?!?!" For years, where trek was broadcasted on my local tv station, growing up I never saw that part--in early syndication, Trek was heavily edited for time. So I first saw an uncut version of that scene I actually stood up and raised a Black Power Fist! LOL
Then, 50 years later we white people get pissed because two women including a black one get a little forceful with captain Pike in DSC concerning their lost and likely to be killed relative.
Never mind the fact Pike stood his ground and ultimately made the decision to act after conferring with another white guy, just the nerve of two women to strongly voice their very well informed opinions was enough to get parts of the internet enraged.
Was it really Kirk being a dick towards Uhura or was he the same dickish "authoritarian" officer to anybody except spock and McCoy (if he was in a good mood, if he was annoyed he IMO dealt with them the same way) ... ? Uhura, Rand and Chapel were the only female characters with multiple appearances, but Kirk mistreating them would probably be more his rampant flirting than "cutting them off" as he does that regularly to anybody.
The culture on Earth that Picard is referring to is the islanders on the 1967 version of the movie Dr. Dolittle. Remember Geoffrey Holder and crew???
I cringed all through this episode........never been able to watch it again coz it's just............uuggghhh
I'd always just figured he didn't like Uhura all that much. And his character was written to be an asshole. That's just how it is. Can't really judge a 70 year old tv show by today's standards.
J'naii UA-cam commenter: "There are only zero genders!"
Uhura's line about people no longer being afraid of words is, I think, greatly misunderstood by a lot of people. To me, that doesn't say "see, contemporary audience? This black person says it's okay to use whatever words we want!". It says "in the distant future, no-one will wield slurs as weapons, and by this point it'll be so long since anyone was hurt by one that someone who looks like the current targets of certain slurs won't be offended".
Yeah, slurs aren't bad because they carry some intrinsic badness, but because they're a symbol of the contemporary violence that accompanies them. Star Trek offers a future where all slurs are like "dago" or "mick" in the US.
@@gamegyro56 Um. What's dago mean?? 😓
That's the point. It's such an old slur that it just sounds like nonsense to a lot of people now. I don't really remember which group of people dago was meant to apply to. Maybe Hispanics?
“See, in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.”
That's a black woman apologizing and promising not to make an issue to a white man so he wouldn't feel bad about using a slur. When I watched through TOS a few years back, that line floored me.
By your own description, it's not about the word. It's about the threat of violence behind the word. If she laughed and said "wow, I never thought I'd hear that word used!", it would be the message you're describing: that the threat is gone because society got better, and whipping out an artifact of a darker past is more silly than threatening. But that's not what she says. She explains that people like *her* got better, and learned not to be upset by racism, as if that were their responsibility. It's grotesque.
@@gamegyro56 I wouldn't go quite as far as to slurs implying "violence", they emphasize rather the supposed hierarchy in society and are a way to "put somebody in their place"... the message they send isn't "do something and i'll cut you up" it's "you know who you are and that you will never be any more than that".
And of course it's not just ethnical slurs but also and even more importantly sexist ones... calling a woman some form of promiscuous or sex-worker is also aiming at belittling her at using her sex against her in a way that says "you only can be something if you spread your legs"... definitely intentfully hurtful, but violent? hmmm... maybe in SOME cases, but never generally.
"Is star trek less progressive than you think?" side eyes Chakotay and how badly he was written
You're probably not going to see this, but could you maybe mention how terribly Chakotay is written, you even get to criticize voyager. Cause it's really bad. Off the top of my head he's not played by a Native actor, he has no definitive tribe, his "Native" tattoos, that the's supposed to be ~spiritual~ (like the episode where he uses some vaguely Native thing to lucidly dream), and while this goes into Trek's general problems with writing Natives his backstory implies that we can't progress and our stuck in our "uncivilized ways". There's also the heavy usage of the noble native trope (I'd rather not call it what it's usually called), the usage of words like "uncivilized" really comes off as bad when white guys like Picard, Data, and Riker throw it around, and the last thing I can think of is more in terms of coding such as more native coded races being show significantly less sympathy to more white coded races.
Yes, Star Trek is as progressive as you think. Probably more so actually.
The thing about "progressive" is that it has "progress" in it. It started a lot further back than most people realize.
We wouldn't have gotten to where we are without things like Star Trek moving us forward from where we were. It isn't representative of where we ended up, but took huge leaps towards that place.
The show helped normalize a lot of things and was constantly moving us forward despite some "problematic" elements. Gene had to fight to get as much as he did on the show, and wanted to do even more only to have the network stop him.
The show is a huge and important element to the progress of at least three generations after it was released. It was just as important to today's progressive sensibilities as shows like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street, but was directed at an older audience.
I can finally stop reading the comments after reading your take, contrabardus, because I needed to read *someone* whose take on this placed the right context on the matter.
100% agreed! While I agree that the episodes in question are problematic now (except for "Code of Honour" which was off the mark even then, and they should have known better), the others examples *were* as progressive as they could get for prime time television in the era they were in. You can't judge the past by the standards of the present. The past will always fail to live up to that impossible standard. Give them the credit they deserve for doing what they did at all, Steve.
19:30 In my "head canon", Garak is gay. Very, very gay.
Anyone who thinks Odo wasn't pansexual is nuts as well.
Just because people aren't super open about their sexuality doesn't mean they don't exist.
Star Trek (Excluding the original) did a great job pushing for LGBT agenda without needing to unrealistically focus on it by putting a meaningless token gay person on the deck of every ship to pander. Picard makes several great speachs throughout the series where humanity has reached a point where everyone has acceptance in more ways that one.
Glad you mentioned Jonathan Frakes' arguing for Sorin to have been played by a man.
Me too! That was a really cool detail I didn't know, and it makes me love Frakes that much more.
I hear a LOT of the more progressive moments were actually on the actor's initiatives
Same. I was waiting for Steve to mention it, glad he did. If only the producers were as progressive as the actors eh?
Can't Picard's words in In Theory be taken as meaning that he's not had truly deep, meaningful relationships due to his devotion to his career? Picard is frequently shown as not doing great with interpersonal relationships - see his initial discomfort with the children on Captain Picard Day. He's good with professionals that he deals with often, and builds relationships with them, but he has a lot of boundaries. I think that's why we get the line in All Good Things... "I should have done this a long time ago." He COULD have broken his barriers, but did not...
I dunno. The thing is, it's not like there wasn't a better answer. There was. Instead of "i don't have any good advice about them ladies" the right answer is "treat the person you're with with respect and compassion both, and if you don't know whether what you're doing is positive, ASK THEM". That is a gender neutral answer to the question data asks, and rather than go with that, Picard goes with something that is very easy to compare with "ladies are too mysterious to understand". As if we aren't in the room when our male partners are confused. As if we wouldn't answer when asked. As if we are speaking some special language that's not understandable (because we're irrational emotional beings right?). There was a better answer and it wasn't utilized. I don't think Picard, as a character, meant it that way. I do think the writers missed an opportunity to choose equality and neutrality when it was there and available.
I always thought the make out scene between V'ger and commander Decker was always problematic. The whole movie they made V'ger out to be a child. Actually, now that I think about it, it's even worse when you consider the actor playing Decker.
Yikes! You are right! Now that I think about it, it gives me the creeps.
Okay, so it was not just me!
That whole movie is about sex! Sex symbolism EVERYWHERE!!
I rewatched TMP last week when it was re-released, unfortunately they showed the original theatrical version instead of the Director's Edition.
But yeah, I think they could have nixed the line about V'ger being like a child and it wouldn't have been so creepy. Also nixed the line about Ilia having signed her celibacy pledge. Those two changes wouldn't have made a big impact on the film and made it a bit more sex positive instead of creepy.
Apparently, the original script, shown in the TV edit of the film, has some more information about Ilia's species being some sort of sexually mature species and they make this celibacy pledge because they don't want to cause problems for less sexually mature species. Probably a Roddenberry idea, his writing of female characters was always pretty garbage.
V'ger is compared to a child, not meant to literally be a child as we consider them. He/it Literally consists of the accumulated knowledge of countless beings including Ilia who it seems takes the form of its avatar with her personality coming to dominate near the end.
The idea of him as a child doesn't hold up by the end of the story because the power dynamic is completely reversed, Decker didn't use his position as a grown man to impose his sexual desires on a weaker being. He submitted to the desires of an ancient and vastly more intelligent experienced and powerful being in what has to be the most bizarre "lie back and think of England " moments in popular culture.
I think it’s progressive for the time period it was made in.
I was actually going to come on here and say this.
I agree, and Steve even mentioned at one point in this video that at the time an episode aired he might have been confused by more complex conversations on gender. I know I would have been, especially in the family I grew up with.
It's easy for us, in the present, having learned from and advanced past many of the biases we had in the 90s to see them and explain how they're wrong. It's much harder for us to do that now with our current flaws. And that's what Star Trek tries to do, and why it's easy for us to see it when it fails.
The most important point to take away from Star Trek is that it is a continual progression of pushing our understanding, and we can't just go back and sit in TNG and say "yup, work here is done." The morality I learned from Star Trek is an active one, forcing yourself to go out and learn and change and adapt rather than staying the same or staying comfortable in your nostalgia and claiming victory.
On average perhaps, but by it's own standards it often fell well short, and within the greater scifi world it was a decade or more behind the times. To be fair, trek did take many concepts and tropes that had been long established in scifi literature and gave them much wider exposure. But the effect ultimately seems to be many fans assuming trek was in the cutting edge when it was very much in the wake of far more bold forms of narrative storytelling.
That holds true for the rest of the show as well, entire stories were often nearly intact from established genres, Balance of Terror was just a recycled plot from the then popular submarine dramas. Right up to and including the ships location being given away by sound! That episode seems to be in everyone's top five or ten list yet in it's time it was anything but novel.
Critics of DSC and its modern story structure would do well to remember that trek has always followed the structures trends and tropes of the greater entertainment world.
Yes and no. Its basically the fundamental issue that, while what is deemed progressive changes over time, different progressive ways of thinking don't necessarily only exist once they become "popular" enough to be noted historically. Frankly their are a disturbing number of social groups throughout history that have extremely "modern" ways of thinking that just never caught on or were too quickly beaten down to catch on. Its honestly an extremely complex issue.
The intent yes. The execution, not always.
The way that Riker asks for pre-emptive forgiveness for messing up pronouns in "The Outcast" was *extremely* recognisable - it made we wonder whether a trans person was consulted on the episode.
“ ... have long since been resolved.” 😀 I love you Steve!
Code of Honor is definitely among the worst Star Trek episodes. It is utterly cringe-inducing and one of the few TNG episodes that are genuinely unpleasant to watch.
It was so, so bad, and I felt so bad for the cast and crew!
Same here.
I distinctly remember stumbling upon it while watching on Netflix. Having never seen the episode on broadcast TV, it was definitely an "Oh my god, they didn't actually do this, did they?" moment.
And the worst thing is, there's two of it. The fourth episode of the first season of Stargate SG-1 follows all the same beats but with asians. And it's by the same writer.
I am pretty sure the line about an earth culture was talking about sparta
@@zen224fun I always interpreted it as Ancient Egypt (the fact they look and dress more like Sub-Saharan Africans notwithstanding).
I think it's a shame that the studio demanded the original "Number One" played by Majel Barrett be booted off the show. Having a female first officer who was seen to be intelligent, competent and wearing pants, not a skirt, was pretty awesome in something made in the 60s. Pike even calls her the ship's "most experienced officer." She's shown to be an effective, intelligent leader. I wish she'd stayed.
It was the NBC executives that thought audience wouldn't find a woman in position of authority believable. I am suprised Lucy Ball, the head of Desilu Studios didn't step up and support Roddenberry's choice of female first officer.
@@paulhunter6742 I think the waters are muddied a bit by the fact that Majel Barrett was Roddenberry's girlfriend, and some of the objection to that casting was because people didn't like the show-runner getting his girlfriend a leading role on the show.
Well thankfully, Strange New Worlds has been created, so Number Ones character has a second chance. As well as Captain Pike.
Instead she became a nurse who major defining feature was an unrequited love for Mr. Spok. That’s putting a woman in her proper place!
@@paulhammond6978 The waters are WAY muddied by that, yes, particularly since Roddenberry was married to someone else at the time. According to Herb Solow and Robert Justman's book INSIDE STAR TREK: THE REAL STORY, NBC didn't object to the idea of a female first officer, they objected to Majel Barrett being the person to play the part. But apparently Roddenberry found it more convenient to just drop the character of Number One entirely and blame it on sexist TV executives rather than recast the part and have to explain it to Majel.
I always took Picard's response in the episode "In Theory" as a personal dig on his forever-alone captain jam. Like as an attempt to distance his characterization from Kirk, they made him less "suave" and his love life a disaster. Never thought about the line outside of the character's concept, so its interesting to think back on it now in a new light. Thanks, Steve.
Yeah, I think the line is about illustrating that Picard doesn't understand women and romance, not well enough to give any advice on anyway due to his lack of success, rather than the misogynistic way many other men use similar lines to imply that women are illogical and not understandable. This also seems to be the way it's intended to be taken as well since everyone Data talks to gives their advice according to their perspective, their understanding. Picard is actually the most mature one there because he refrains from giving advice on a subject he doesn't have expertise or workable understanding of.
Have you seen the recent DS9 documentary "What We Left Behind"? I appreciate that, in it, producer Ira Steven Behr refuses accolades given to the show for being LGBTQ+ progressive (specifically regarding the episode "Rejoined" where Jadzia rekindles a love with and kisses another woman), saying that having one kind of progressive episode out of more than one hundred wasn't good enough to be given any credit. He also cites the fact that they didn't have the guts to turn Garak's bisexuality from subtext into text, which he regards as lamentable.
MisterKerr ...whoa ... I hate to admit this but I totally missed Garak’s bisexuality subtext!
@@jesscnelson fun fact, the writers planned for Garek to eventually have a romantic relationship with Bashir, but it was scrapped because one of the writers strongly opposed it.
Mudd's Women: The episode about human trafficking that doesn't seem realize it's an episode about human trafficking.
It knows. There is a whole culture of slavers in Star Trek that they have to let be as “their culture”.
@@JAGADEY that wouldn't be a bad area for DSC to expand on imo. Obviously in continuity they cant exactly resolve it, but having it be an actual problem would be nice.
I have to assume its utterly illegal in the federation but it exists in the greater galactic political economic sphere and they realistically cant do much about it.
Trek tends to send their crews in to do serious remodeling to "inferior " civilizations, how about touching on the fact they cant do anything significant about something like this happening right in their backyard and involving organizations they have open sociopolitical and economic relationships with?
For that mat6, the Klingon empire is known to be built on the backs of many slave worlds. Similar to the Spartans I imagine the Klingon race makes up the small minority of the actual population of the empire. Yet all positive interactions so far have been strictly with the master race its self.
It’s not about human trafficking. Back in the old west women traveled from the East coast to escape, perhaps arranged marriages, and helped settle the west. They chose to go.
The women in that episode choose to go. They dont have the life they want on their planet so they ask and pay Mudd to find and transport them to planets where they can have the life they want. The guy that Eve ends with in the end has some misogynistic attitudes that Eve challenges and fights back against. In the end, they only end up together because Eve chooses him even though she is offered the chance to go to another planet
On the topic of bringing Dr. Culber back in season 2 of Discovery:
I don't think that actually counts as "fixing the mistake" they made with killing him in season 1. Immediately after he was killed, on After Trek, the writer (or showrunner) said that his and Stamets' story was just starting. Meaning that they had already intended to bring him back. It was part of the plan from the beginning (although maybe not exactly as they intended it).
If Bones would have said "Jim, I'm frightened." just once that would have been great and in character. Also, no one could have delivered this line better than DeForest Kelley.
The first example, an episode that I only vaguely remember, reminds me of the ending of Game of Thrones which could in parts described as "Women are just to emotional for the job." The year is 2019... 😑
Anyway, I think the bottom line is what Yoda said in The Last Jedi "The greatest teacher failure is" and please, whoever reads this, spare me the trashing of that movie because in the end, wether you like the film or not, that was a good scene.
Thanks for the video, some of the named episodes were never my favorites and I think I only watched them once - back in the late 80s, early 90s, I knew and felt how wrong this is but I also admit that I didn't know why. For example Code of Honor.
As a child of the GDR (East-Germany) I never met a black person until 3rd grade. I didn't know about anything about racism, colonialism etc. either, that was not an issue for me or was ever discussed. The only people that looked differently then anyone else I knew appeared in the series Shogun that run on state TV in East-Germany because it was not political ...(also I was 8,when we settled in West Germany in 1988). However, even I felt that something wasn't right with the episode Code of Honor. Besides the fact that it was not very thrilling.
About Danyeris, I called roughly this ending season's ago. But it wasn't allowed to Be developed properly and so felt rushed and likely sexist.
Properly executed it could have been a beautifully written story about pride obsession and human fault played out on a large scale, the character spent her entire adult life being the hero of the small folk then at the final fight after so many sacrifices she suffers the deepest cut to her self image. The people she believes she is here to save and thus be vener6by instead only surrender out of fear. This isn't the way this was supposed to work. This isn't how this has ever worked! She sweeps through and by sheer force of will wins the day and her reward is a new army. A city of loving subjects, another affirmation of her place in the world etc. She has also learned that being brash bold or "emotional" as some would put it is how she wins, taking the advice of others to be more careful has led to several losses.
If they had let Jon be more than bored and tired looking he could have mirrored her arc, doing his duty has cost him. Being good and righteous only lost him and his family everything that matters, They both seemed to have arcs where their dedication to duty led to loss and death. Instead she goes off with just a few coarse hints and he gets his life reset back to something like a season 2 norm.
Not wrong! Maaan... that'd be an intense moment, too. They're investigating something they've never seen before, something terrible with consequences for the whole quadrant. "Jim, I'm frightened." Instant tension.
Instead... we have Uhura being used as a sort of throwaway feminine "protect me from the scary things, strong man guy". >_< I look forward to an episode of Trek where we can have a black female character deliver that line with as much impact as we would have felt if it came from McCoy.
Yeah, the Yoda who said “The greatest teacher failure is” was the same Yoda who told that same student “Do or do not; there is no try.” Way to contradict yourself, Master Jedi.
@@ttintagel Um. Okay. I guess you'll have to explain how the ability to learn from failure contradicts the difference between doing and trying, because I'm not understanding a contradiction there.
I tried to make a transgender comic once. I eventually realized that despite my best intentions I am not transgender. I literally wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about.
Good intentions has its limitations.
Well intentioned representation *is* a good thing. making mistakes isn't big deal, making the same mistakes repeatedly can be a problem but please don't avoid certain characters simply out of anxiety for doing it wrong. There are almost no trans people in western fiction - I find this to be a far worse problem than the abundance of, frequently terrible (but not always), trans people in anime. Ideally both those problems would be solved but they aren't and I will 100% approve of people trying over being ignored.
@@helenFX Anime does it all the time! They make it so it's no big deal!
Great video! Thanks for reminding us that all of us have flaws and that it is okay, as long as we are acknowledge them and try to learn from them (aka. being emotional mature).
Nx-02 also has a female captain, so I think that is the earliest in startrek cannon ( I think )
there is a female cpt. in star trek 4
@@allanlively8685 4 takes place after ENT,
"How can a show as willfully, unabashedly antiracist as Star Trek Possibly be racist?"
Code of Honor?
"...Code of Honor."
Star Trek being so imperfect in it's attempt to be progressive is good in a way, it's like a thing that says we all have to do real work to better ourselves and society, that there's always improvements to be made by us a out how we behave a d react to things.
Did Kirk & Co. "Very fine people on both sides" an entire planet?
I've always assumed that line from Picard was him admiting his cluelessness when it comes to women not his take on women being whatever misoginists mean when they say "women" like that. (Speaking as a woman here.)
Same. To me it said "even the greatest of men are clueless about women". Which seems legit.
@@spacemonkey340 I think the point is that PIcard does not make a qualitative statement like "men don't understand women", but went back to his backstory of "i never took time for that as i saw myself married to the ship"... Your version would be kind of the sexist one Steve understood it to be, even if it takes on a slightly sophisticated air...
But that kind of presupposes that women are like some kind of different species from men, with different motivations and different ways of thinking. Like men and women aren’t both humans first. If Picard had said something like, “When I know something about relationshiips...” then, sure, yeah. But that isn’t what he said.
Edit; thanks for giving this a heart Steve! ^-^
Thank you for talking about The Outcast, from a gender-identity angle as a trans person it is a bit of a 'nice try but no cigar' situation and falls short. Another episode to consider on these same topics would be DS9's Profit and Lace, where Quark undergoes a 90s version of a 'sex change'. The episode is played for comedic effect but its extremely problematic looking back. There's also one from season 2 or 3 where a Ferengi 'man' has an attraction to Quark who is actually female, as revealed in her conversation with Jadzia - who is gender identity done RIGHT in my opinion, when she gets incorretly pronoun'd/named and corrects people who then treat her respectfully as said new identity is great.
An episode that is potentially a GOOD commentary on LGBTQ+, altho indirectly, would be Chimera from the end of DS9, which can be seen as a commentary on the 'gay discovery' moment. With Laas, finding Odo - another like himself who he can be comfortable around and realise he's not alone. Theres also the scene where he's fog on the promenade and O'Brian/Bashir dissaprove of him being himself publically, and Quark telling Odo 'theres no time for a Changeling pride' among other examples in the episode.
As well as that you might consider the episode from Enterprise episode Stigma, which was a deliberate bout for talking about the AIDS outbreak and discrimination against gay people as a result.
Either way, great episode as always ^-^
If there's anything good to take from Profit and Lace, it's the accidental confirmation that gender-affirming surgery in that world is no big deal.
Like I pointed out in my comment, the fact that anyone thinks Profit and Lace plays better now than it originally did is just infuriating, and props to Ira Steven Behr for not agreeing with that.
okay this is some piping hot tea, commander
Hey, also trans here, I also always felt it was a badly executed trans allegory - even if just accidentally as part of watering down the "gay episode" promise.
Having known a bunch of people at the time who had to go back into the closet for a few years until they could move away from parents, it was.. definitely different for me about the ending, because I took it more as societal shame causing her to shun Riker than "conversion therapy actually works", even though it's probably Actually the latter thing.
Like, the sci-fi reasoning about it being because of sophisticated neurosurgery and not just institutionalised abuse (as with current conversion camps) made me able to distance myself from that angle a little more I think.
Of course all the reeeaally clumsy lines about English having no gender neutral pronouns and so forth annoyed me immediately upon seeing it when I was 13, just as much as it does to me today.
I get such mixed feelings about that Enterprise episode too. It wholeheartedly condemns such prejudice through Archer, and T'Pol's protest actions. But it also leaned almost too hard in the other direction from The Outcast's conversion therapy angle; the allegorical-gays are genetically detectable, and have unique abilities! (Within the narrative of the episode, but of course everyone remembered Tuvok and Spock's regular mind melds and went, wait what?) I appreciated how it talked about how AIDS wasn't strictly limited to gay populations, but again the episode's own logic stifles it because even though T'Pol is infected, she herself cannot pass it on unless she finds another Melder who initiates. Not really the same as a guy having a gay affair, unknowingly passing HIV onto his wife, which she passes on with her affair, and suddenly it's present in the whole neighbourhood. As I said in my own comment, I hated that the episode's narrative supported the closeted-allegorically-gay Vulcan's decision to abuse her confidence and reveal personal information to everyone, breaking his promise to her.
I too love Dax saying things like "I'm Jadzia now", and Kor immediately goes "well then, Jadzia my old friend". Quark talks about her "getting a new body" and being a guy before that early on, which is certainly close enough to the cyberpunk way some of my acquaintances talk about their transition to feel familiar....
The only silver living from Profit and Lace is the Slug-o-Cola jingle, (kinda), but also the knowledge that GRS is an outpatient surgery in the Federation (with dermal regenerators why wouldn't it be? Extensive facial surgery was long established to be outpatient too), and that whatever they do also includes resequencing the gonads to produce different hormones, which would prevent me forgetting my HRT like I often do. But it buys into so many horrible tropes, and listening to Jeffey Combs say all of those transmisogynistic things to Nilva are soooo hard to hear. Plus the repeated jokes about Rom maybe cross dressing in his spare time. And of course the surgery Bashir did also must have included breast implants, because even future hormone replacement therapies surely can't accelerate a second puberty? And I don't like the idea that "a sex change" involves installing boobs and changing the gens, soooo many TERFs still think that to this day no matter how many trans women say "I grew my boobs myself thank you very much".
Despite the problematic trope, I do enjoy everyone in the mirror universe seemingly being bi. Worf saying "you're not my type" to Garak while he's GOT HIM COLLARED, or the numerous women Mirror Ezri flirts with (Brunt's "she's very... particular about men" could well mean she's straight up a lesbian, too). And of course Jadzia kissing Lenara is something I always rewind and watch over multiple times. Even if I do think Dax is being unreasonably rushing and guilt trippy in that episode's story - which isn't necessarily out of character for a Dax - giving an uncomfortable edge to the way it finishes. But seeing them just rekindle a romance by talking all night long sure feels better than "we're going to do some light-hearted flirting, that means we're in love" thing Trek can do often do.
Ramble over, I think. :)
Profit and lace was a weird episode I feel like it’s an outlier because it focuses on Ferngi culture not human. I think in the future Trans people don’t exists, and by that I mean with the advanced medical technology, you can easily and basically for free get to change yourself to match who you feel you really are.
Hi Steve, thanks for your mentions of Jessie Gender's channel. I recently popped over there when I heard about her from you, and I have been binge watching the videos since. Excellent content!
It’s curtains for you, Mr. Spock! Lacy, gently wafting curtains.
Whuh?
kingbeauregard I need to remind myself not everyone has seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
That goes through my mind every time I hear any one say "curtains!"
I live for Steve's dialogue paraphrasings.
In the TOS pilot The Cage, Captain Pike says about his new yeoman "She does a good job alright, it's just that I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge." Number One (a woman, who is a bridge officer) gives him a look and he then says, "No offense, lieutenant. You're different, of course." WOW. I can't even...
I don't think this exchange aired with the series' original run, and it appears it was cut from "The Menagerie," which used a lot of footage from "The Cage." However, when you watch TOS on Netflx, this pilot is the VERY FIRST episode that you see. A pretty bad first impression to a newcomer to the series, IMO.
The bit about the rape accusations reminds me of "The Enemy Within" when Evil Jim tries to rape Janice in her quarters. She then has to accuse Kirk, the most powerful man on the ship, of rape in front of his two best friends who are the other two most powerful men on the ship. I think sometimes about how brave Janice would have had to have been to be able to do that and I thought the show didn't give her enough credit for it or explore that in any way. It's also kind of gross considering that Grace Lee Whitney herself said she was assaulted by one of the execs associated with the show.
I also remember the episode "Retrospect" from Voyager in which the Doctor helps Seven uncover a repressed memory of a man she worked with forcibly removing Borg technology from her body (so, a rape metaphor). She tries to get justice, despite a lot of people not really believing her. Then surprise, it turns out that her memories were faulty and he never tried to Metaphor Rape her after all. But now his life has been ruined by her baseless accusations and he kills himself. So yeah, that one is pretty terrible imo.
True, but what is the point of kissing all that butt and working 8 days a week to make it to the top if you can't abuse your underlings!
Strong episodes that show that it can be hard for a woman to stand up to men in strong positions, and that they have the same right of expression and decision.
Retrospect is one of the two episodes I ALWAYS skip when rewatching Voyager. I want to say that I can’t believe it made it to air, but sadly it’s completely believable.
The ending of that episode was pretty gross, when Spock baldly hints that Yeoman Rand must have been secretly turned on by evil Kirk's "interesting qualities." As you say, it's a bitter irony considering that Grace Lee Whitney was herself raped and Leonard Nimoy was one of the few cast members to stand by her.
And yeah, Star Trek is so "progressive" as it keeps insisting that false rape accusations are a major problem in our society.
I love star trek but I’m not blind to its short comings.
"Progressive" is necessarily a relative term, stamped with time. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was "progressive". In 2019, he would be damned as a "racist."
We build on the past, and it is a harsh fact that the past does not conform to current day sensibilities.
Just think how horrible WE will appear to folks in 2063. (April 5, 2063, to be precise.)
That's exactly right, a lot of people lose this perspective.
@@kabobawsome While yes, it is true that he said that, he also spent most of his political career speaking against slavery. His initial idea was that of containment, so slavery could die more naturally, but he was against it. However, none of that matters because, actions speak far louder than words. And at the end of the day, regardless of reason, he still had the 13th drafted and put into law.
Why so precise? Have you been in a time machine to that date so you can tell us what they thought on that day?
@@paulhammond6978 Because that's first contact day 👀
Kate was right. Women in Trek were mostly shown as sexy. Especially in TOS. Although they may be bold in character, they had to be exactly as Paramount wanted for their "male" viewers.
I think this may be my favorite of all of your Trek videos. Thank you so much for the thoughtful deep dives, and for continually reminding us that an important part of liking the things we like is examining closely their flaws. 👍🏼
Extremely good video Steve! Again, thanks for your hard work and thoughtful analysis that goes above and beyond Star Trek and gives real commentary on humanity in general. Well done!
I cannot thank you enough for this. Your humility and honesty and candidness are beautiful and refreshing, and the world needs more of that. As a survivor of sexual violence myself, it means a lot.
For me, one of the most powerful "rape allegory" episodes was the one of Enterprise in which T'Pol was forced into the mind meld. Another is the episode of Voyager where we learn that Seska is pregnant with Chakotay's child... making a powerful point about male victims of sexual violence that is so often ignored.
My un-favourite is another false accusations episode, where Seven of Nine said a man performed surgery on her without consent to extract nanoprobes. The guy ends up dying and there's a little "just because you remember it doesn't mean it happened, Seven. You need to emotionally mature before you do this again" speech at the end. It starts out seeming potentially balanced but really dives off the deep end halfway through.
And Brannon Braga said in interviews at the time he was inspired by "how false memories can destroy people's lives, like teachers or doctors". That was the central thesis before he'd even come up with the characters.
I think this is handled a bit better but still not treated seriously enough until it gets brought up much later, but the nonconsensual mind meld T'Pol tries to get out of in Enterprise sure feels like it's enjoying showing the Terrible Terrible Thing with the camera work and dubbed over breaths and stuff. I dunno man. And then the episode that actually treats it seriously has a Vulcan go against his promise to keep her secret when he just blurts it out in front of a bunch of allegorically-homophobic other Vulcans.
She gets rightly angry at him and he just goes "I'm sorry, I had to". And the narrative supports his decision! Because it saves her job and lets the semi-reset button get pushed. That was an opportunity to explore being expelled from Vulcan society, and she was going to join Starfleet after resigning her commission soon after anyway. They could've mined a lot of drama from that for all of s2's second half.
Okay, having watched the video you linked, I remembered that Voyager episode's ending a bit harshly. The little speech the Doctor gives about remorse happening when you make a mistake still has the overall tone I remembered it by - this was bad and we should feel bad - but at least he shared the blame too and there wasn't actually any talk of this being due to Seven's inexperience it seems.
She said Bryan Fuller wrote that ep too, so I guess maybe.. Braga assigned the basic concept? I could easily look up the Memory Alpha page to see if my remembered interview snippet was really Braga or if it was actually Fuller .. but nah, I won't do that.
Scanned through all the comments for this one. YES what the hell kind of message was the voyager episode saying?! "You sure you were assaulted... sweetheart?" And the fact the accused dies at the end to hammer home the point?! Jees
@@joshweeden88 Moral: "Drones be crazy, right? We can't ever know how that 'Borg' biology REALLY works... so ladies, if you remember non-consensual events you should stay quiet so you don't embarrass yourself."
That episode makes me want to puke. I hate knowing that it even exists. >_
I hated how T'pol's assault was handled. I hate it so much and yet, I have to say I relate getting outted to a person of authority after I was assaulted. I wish that the writers had a nuanced understanding of what it means to be outted like that. Beyond that, I will say that T'Pol sticking to her guns to *not* report felt realistic and gritty to me in a way that isn't often written, and I wish that it had been a longer term impact than it ultimately was. To clarify, my wants to see different looks at something so awful for T'Pol is out of my want for a voice for victims of sexual assaults to see that we aren't alone in this all
I wonder how much of the false memory narrative Braga claimed was inspired by the "satanic panic."
It's very cringy when looked at as an allegory for sexual assault. I just don't remember thinking of it that way when the episode came out, because I saw it as commentary on the mental tampering done during the so-called satanic panic.
One of the best episodes of "Trek, Actually" you've ever made. Great job. Thanks, Steve.
When it came to the episode "Code of Honor" you should have paused and said " You know what if I am going to talk about the episode "Code of Honor" I am going to need a drink". And take a drink.
I recently did a full Voyager run, and “Retrospect” is a super-whiff.
Evan Killham This episode enrages me.
The writer of Code of Honor, Katharyn Powers, also wrote the most problematic episode of Stargate SG-1, also the third episode of the first season titled “Emancipation”, in which the team goes to a planet populated by relocated Mongolian tribesmen who are mortally offended at the sight of Captain Samantha Carter, believing a woman should not show her face or wear the clothes of a man. So Captain Carter is made to dress in the local garb while the men of the team try to get everything done, and a man from a rival tribe kidnaps Carter. A Yar-Yareena battle ensues, only it’s Carter versus the rival tribal chief.
Yeah, that episode is basically a rewrite of Code of Honor, but with Asian stereotypes replacing the African ones (or, actually, just Asian actors instead of African ones portraying the exact same stereotypes).
To be fair to Stargate, Emancipation at least didn't group the people into stereotypes of all Asians, like this episode did with Africans, as this was based on ancient Mongolian culture, didn't treat them like a monolith since multiple people in the one tribe didn't think in the same backward ways, and in the end shows hope for progress, which this Star Trek episode didn't do. The episode was also not written exclusively by Katharyn Powers, but also by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner. It's still one of the worst SG-1 episodes, but it's not as bad as this.
Great video. Nice to know someone somewhere is discussing difficult topics in a nuanced & intelligent manner. I'll be watching the video you mentioned in the video too & look forward to more trek content :)
Fantastic well research and argued (and long!) video.
Much appreciated.
Turnabout Intruder isn’t canon!! It never happened! Now we shall never speak of it again!!
Turnabout Intruder is in some bizarro parallel universe with "Threshold." :P
@@normanbuchwald I remember being a teenager watching that and thinking, "WTF????"
And Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
All these things happened, but the were because of Q. Just accept that Q did it, because they're Q. Nothing else needed :)
Same thing with " Code of Honor " NEVER HAPPENED!!!
I always figured that Picard line in In Theory was his commenting on being pretty rubbish with women. Which is daft anyway, since he has had relationships that have gone well in the past
That felt weird to me too. Not the line, but Picard’s womanizing. He’s shown to be bookish and awkward with women (and shy in The Naked Now) and then in Tapestry he’s revealed to have been a player in the past. That made no sense to me. Kirk suffers from the reverse. Everyone thinks of him as a womanizer but he was a dutiful officer and described as a bookworm at the Academy.
Awesome video! I can't wait to see Jessie Gender's video too now. In fact, thanks for turning me on to her channel. It looks really cool in general.
I hate...I dislike it when people love stuff so precisely that they fall apart if it's criticized in any way. To paraphrase Jenny Nicholson, "Loving something unconditionally doesn't mean you love it more. it just means you love it sadder."
Re: The Outcast, we may think of sexuality as being 'immutable' and unchangeable by way of "therapy" -- that you cannot talk someone into changing their sexuality. But there's nothing at all to say that it cannot be changed by way of something far more invasive. You used the word "Lobotomy" yourself as describing what was done to her. Nothing is "immutable" if you don't rule out the possibility of actual literal physical brain manipulation rather than the pure psychology of "therapy". Clearly in the hours or days between her sentencing and when Riker went down to save her, something considerably more invasive than what we would call "therapy" was utilized to affect the change.
Yeah, it's a little hard to point to the J'naii reassignment treatment not working in the real world when the episode relies on all kinds of technology like warp drive and transporters that are equally impossible in the real world just to be able to get there and have the plot play out in the first place.
I was thinking that myself, and debating bring it up at all, but then I got to wondering whether or not presenting a method of conversion therapy that only works in fantasy is still problematic. I don't know how it's ultimately presented in the episode, but I suspect it would be less problematic if the procedure was ultimately revealed to destroy pretty much all sense of personality or such.
"Especially when we look back on them from our modern era, where the problems of gender inequality and sex discrimination have long since been resolved" *pause* *stares and smiles uncomfortably* *more pause*
oh, shit. what a burn to our society. i love it!
Great video and a good reflection on Star Trek's issues in this arena. One can only hope to learn and grow following past failures.
33:00 Your summation is on point. We are flawed humans constantly learning from not just our mistakes, but the experiences of others & our entertainment. Great vid!
I don't know if this has been mentioned, but even though there were women on the bridge of TOS, they were still in stereotypical female roles. Uhura was a telephone operator, and Yeoman Rand was a secretary.
Agreed. It's sad that this often gets overlooked.
And don't forget that Chapel was a nurse and McCoy was not happy about her becoming a doctor. "Ugh, another uppity woman with her opinions" is his reaction.
You know I always assumed that Lester's statement about not allowing women starship captains are just the rantings of a diseased mind. She likely believes that's why she was denied a captains position based on being a woman but not necessarily the truth. After all this is a person who we see over the course of the episode is not stable or well. So anything she says is deeply suspect. Kirky doesn't correct her because shes obviously unwell.
If you wanted to be more generous to her there maybe a bias toward men captains in the starfleet hierarchy at this time. That may explain why Kirk doesn't confront her about her statement.
That doesn't mean its not a horribly misogynist episode because it is. But Lester isn't a great source of information.
I think that interpretation makes the episode even worse. Blaming mental illness (or any other kind of disability) for violent crimes is as harmful as it is boring. (People with mental illnesses are actually *less* likely to commit violent crimes and *more* likely to become a victim. Most violent criminals and even the Nazis who went through the Nuremberg trials did *not* have any diagnosable mental illness; by all medical standards they were "sane".) Disregarding the victim of (traumatizing and/or systemic) violence as unreliable simply bc they are suffering from trauma is *especially* vile.
Yeah, even in this reading it isn't a great to reproduce the "aggressive failing women is explaining her failing by calling all the other, good people as misogynists"-trope.
It is basically what all the 'sceptics' warned us about, third wave feminazis going wild.
I've also kind of accepted Lester's comments as meaning that Starfleet, at the command level, was "A Boy's Club", with few women (Goergeiou, Number One), making it in. I also like your idea of Kirk not commenting, because he recognizes it's true. It doesn't make the episode better, it's just some head canon that makes things consistent.
"You know I always assumed that Lester's statement about not allowing women starship captains are just the rantings of a diseased mind."
I agree, but if that was the case the episode should've made it explicit.
I always thought that as well. Lester is a unreliable narrator- but still, what an episode!
Well done, Steve. By the way, your delivery of "Jim, I'm frightened!" made me burst out laughing.
Great study of the material, and very clear conclusions. Excellent stuff!
One of my favorite examples is the original ST episode "A Private Little War," which attempts to justify U.S. proxy wars, with Kirk and Krell playing the roles of the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. respectively, and features Kirk arguing passionately (in that way only Shatner can) FOR completely decimating the cultures and population of an entire planet, while filling it's occupants with hate and giving them increasingly advanced weapons.
But it should be said: They really were making an effort to move forward.
No matter where you are trying to go, you have to start from where you are.
A fair sentiment, people like to look back and criticize people known for their progressive actions in the past and cry that they didn't meet their more modern expectations.
No doubt Lincoln wasn't exactly a 21st century woke man, and there's a good chance the white men and women who marched rode and sometimes died during the civil rights movements of the 1950s were not quite as egalitarian as some today.
Often people take action strictly out of moral standings, even if they still believe prevailing concepts like racial inferiority. But steps like that lay the groundwork for times like today when its readily apparent and utterly undeniable that people of all types given the chance can rise to any level.
I understand and agree with what you say about Soren's episode; but my personal interpretation of the ending is not that conversion therapy worked, but like in real life, there are people who experience it so badly they either force themselves to believe that they are cishet, or that they pretend to be to escape the effective torture of conversion therapy. That is what I believe happened to Soren and not that it worked in any way; however the way its presented makes it believable to some viewers that it did work and that in itself is extremely problematic, for reasons covered in your video.
just wanted to share my interpretation of the ending :)
_Damn_ good message. Seemingly obvious, everyone on Reddit should read it.
"But just because I love Star Trek, that doesn’t mean I should pretend that its flaws don’t exist, or that the times when it falls short of its highest ideals don’t happen. I should acknowledge those flaws and failings, deal with them honestly, seek to understand them, and try to learn from them. And I should do that not just for Star Trek’s problematic aspects, but for my own, as well, so that when I fall short, when I screw up, when I’m insensitive or thoughtless or oblivious to my own ignorance or prejudice or privilege, instead of getting defensive or coming up with excuses when others make me aware of it, I can respond like a thoughtful, mature grown-up, make right any harm I may have done, and try to change."
One of the best episodes Steve, truly. Thank you!
@steve shives, I would take issue one thing you assert here. In the Episode, A Matter of Perspective, I do not think the takeaway was that the rape accusation was false. I had always understood Troi's line about how Manua is not lying and also that Riker is not lying is that the truth was in between, in the sense that Manua innocently flirted a bit the way, in a much less forthright manner than Riker portrayed, and that Riker aggressively tried to move on her in a way that most charitably can be described as borderline sexual assault. When you say that Manua's version portrays a Riker we are not familiar with, I also think that's not correct. Riker is often shown to be (subtly) sexually aggressive and his sexual decisions are shown to get the Enterprise into trouble on a couple of occasions. It's just that nobody ever says anything.
Now, all that being said, the fact that we are shown (in my view) that Riker very likely did make aggressive moves on Manua (even if they were not precisely what her version showed) and is not admonished or punished even slightly, is a demonstration of what you are talking about. I mainly take issue with the idea that we should understand Manua's accusation as false. Even on first watching, I always had understood that Riker's version of the story with him being noble and gentlemanly is simply how he sees himself (having little to no understanding of how his behavior effects or is perceived by his woman targets) and that he was not innocent.
That quote from Mulgrew. God I wish Voyager had competent writers all the time.
Seriously. I respect her more the more I learn about her. They had talent like that.... and somehow still ended up with Voyager. I just need a super-cut of all of the Doctor's scenes, and that's all I'd ever watch of that series again.
Thank you. Thank you for challenging my notions and helping me to grow as a person.
Wonderfully insightful, and eye opening. Thanks for making this video.
I watched The Child a week or two ago... and could have sworn I heard the word violation bounced around. Maybe just once by Troi herself.
"A somewhat reputable source, I believe."
Looking forward to the next video. The Eugenics Wars and its place in the canon has been something that's bugged me for a while now.
It might just be me but I always took Picard’s line about not understanding women as him debasing himself humorously, never as a diss, it goes down to the character as a whole saying something, not just that one moment. This goes for Riker as well in another episode when he told La Forge with a straight face to “Keep notes this project might be of interest for scholars in the future.” Only for a smile to crack as he says “…a blind man teaching an android how to paint? That’s got to be worth some pages in somebody’s book.”
I think you missed the point of “The Outcast.” It’s not supposed to be a simple, good thing vs bad thing episode, it’s supposed to use the alien plot device to ask “what if?” questions. What if there were a society that persecuted people for being heterosexual? What if said society had some brain surgery that could actually convert someone? It goes beyond the “is it possible?” question and instead gets you to realize how horrible it is even if you could do it with 100% “success.”
I think this might be honeypotting, at least a little, since none of that is explicit and really only even comes in at the very end. Everyone accepts that she has been irrevocably changed, and not even Riker tries to help her after she makes it clear she doesn't feel that way anymore. If there was a line like "forced gender reassignment doesn't work" and then like the doctor explains how the aliens are accomplishing this personality change, I'd agree, but the way it plays when you actually get the analogy (didn't at first as I was a kid) is taking the efficacy of the treatment as the default position. They even assume on the Enterprise that it WILL work and mention they might try reversing it after. Then they don't even try. Like it's sad but what can you do, they erased the gay, it's not there anymore. I agree with Steve's assessment, it's an honest attempt at progressiveness but still mostly a miss
@@Borgcow Riker has no legal basis to interfere in their culture. He's already technically breaking the rules just being there.
That moment you get a notification for Shives and you stop what your watching and switch over.
I hope you realize this was an amazing episode, Steve. Well fucking done, Sir. Great info, great analysis, great jokes. Awesome!
😲....😀.....😂🤣😆
i happened to start listening the ensigns log......
let me thank you for the great abundance of fun.
though couldnt finish them all yet, which in on itself is good too.
It's been awhile since I've seen the "Outcast" episode, so maybe my takeaway from it is off.....but I never really bought that the "conversion therapy" did work as supposed.
The first time I saw the episode (and many subsequent times in syndication), I was young and had not yet heard of conversion therapy in real life. But to the extent I understood it as a thing--or at least understood there were non-medical societal pressures to conform--I never assumed that the procedure "worked" in a medical sense, as the J'naii insinuated. I took it as meaning that whatever the "procedure" entailed was painful and damaging and that it basically beat her into submission.
Like some of those who are subjected to gay conversion therapy, it's not that she was ever medically converted or "cured." I viewed it as she merely surrendered to the societal pressures all around her, gave up her struggle between her self-identity and her desire to fit in with and be accepted by society, and repressed herself.
Because she doesn't just say, "I no longer have these urges or feelings for you," she comes out the other side spouting the party line to Riker that she now understands how sick she was and that such people are deviants and criminals. That latter part is not a function of any hormonal treatment, that is an ideological indoctrination.
So, again, I didn't take the episode as saying the therapy worked....I took the episode as saying they tortured her into hating herself and repressing herself again, as she had done for most of her life up to that point. I assumed that she would continue having the same internal urges, but that the society had tortured her into submission and conformity....at least long enough to tell Riker to leave her alone.
And isn't that what gay conversion therapy is really all about? Sadly, it does "work" that way, in some cases. It doesn't actually change anybody's identity or who they have been attracted to their whole lives--as Soren says she has felt this way her whole life before she's taken away--it just tortures them into accepting the larger doctrine and repressing themselves if they want to be accepted by their family, friends, and neighbors.
In my opinion, Star Trek's "woman problem" can be summed up in one word: catsuits. And my favorite example of Discovery making up in some way for the mistakes of Star Trek's past is Tilly. A female who looks fit instead of hungry.
I love that Tilly has a perfectly ordinary body shape. She's not thin, she's not fat, she's average.
And she is one of my favorite characters on the show. She is shown to be smart but not perfect. Just like most of us.
OOOHHH. Damn. And so true.
I just wish they'd show her in more full body shots, like they do for the other actors regularly. I counted only a handful of times she wasn't only shot from the torso/shoulders up in season 2 :/
Yes it's refreshing to see a healthy, curvy actress.
But still I don't believe just 1 second that she could run that fast in a competition, like shown on Discovery!
Yes liked your discussion here. Learning from the mistakes, thus expanding our understanding and changing future behaviour makes sense. If looking back at these episodes of only a few years ago makes us squirm uncomfortably, then we have probably changed in a useful way.
My goodness, you talk so much sense.
You seem to have a great perspective on things, can stand back and analyse things with a level of unbiasness (Is that a word ? lol) that seems to answer any question that could come to mind.
The thing is, there maybe episodes that don't hit the mark but when analysed like you have done, bring around a possible correction. Not just for future episodes but for life as a whole.
They do say, you learn more by your mistakes than you do from your victories.
TBF I imagine that a bunch of Kate Mulgrew's experience is colored a bit by the severely negative experience she had on set and with the direction on Voyager.
And let's not forget that though the 90s was a billion times better than now in terms of trying to be good... I remember the hella backlash against Janeway.
Star Trek always was and always will be a product of the times. Including any hangups those people have, that's just how media works and I think that was what Kate Mulgrew was getting at.
Honestly the impression I get from a lot of Star Trek is that it's just a long succession of writers and cast members trying to slip positive depictions of LGBTQ+ characters past Rick Berman.
When I saw the notification for this video this morning (pre-coffee) I read it as "Steve Shives is Actually Less Progressive Than You Think!"
Thank you so very much! I find your video essays on TREK among the most insightful. This is one I have mentioned and dwelt upon for years. In fact I was pointing out we never saw a female captain in Starfleet until the movies and saw only one female first officer in TOS and one more in TNG. The latter had a (very) few female Starfleet captains, all of whom came across as strident and unpleasant (as did Lt. Cmdr. Shelby btw) save for Geordi's mom who came across as frankly rather cold (but that at least made sense when you look at Geordi's relationships with women). No female first officers in Starfleet anywhere in DS9 or VOY and only one female Captain. A few admirals along the way, most of whom were heartless and/or cruel, or (like most Admirals we see frankly) little more than walk-ons.
Fair is fair--Ro Laren, Kira, Leeta, B'Elanna Torres, and Seven are among my very favorite characters of all from the entire franchise. But not until DSC did we get a female captain (who was evidently a superb officer in almost every way) with a female first officer--which when you think about it, that combo should make up roughly a quarter of Starfleet. DSC of course also gave us the first female Admiral who was a fully realized (and heroic) character in her own right.
Of course I was desperately disappointed at DS9 filling the mirror universe with evil lesbians. And since our Kira never showed any signs of being attracted women, the Indentant's homosexuality was portrayed as part of what made her evil. Ditto Mirror Ezri. (Gods how great would it have been to see Kira tell Odo or Jadzia she was actually tempted by her mirror version--and maybe then have her get confused when the O'Brien's ask her for her help, noting she thinks they are both very attractive especially Keiko but...well, you get the idea).
On a side note, I so hope and pray DSC never again resurrects a dead character. They've done that three and a half times now (the half is Saru). Enough!
Miles O'Brien aside, Star Trek doesn't have a great history portraying Irish characters and culture. Up The Long Ladder in TNG and the Fairhaven episodes of Voyager are just awful. TOS had two awful stereotypes too.
Niall, as an Irish-American, I know I'm supposed to be offended by the gross stereotypes of "Up the Long Ladder". But gazing up Rosalyn Landor somehow makes up for it every time I come across that episode.
What about "The Offspring" when Deanna gets accidentally pregnant bythe alien that wants to experience human life. Deanna says outright she is going to have the baby, the men of the crew are totally against it. Also, when Data creates Lal and for all his efforts to be human the rest of the series, the crew is largely against this whole idea, like when Riker starts hitting on Lal and Data takes him to task "Commander, what is your intention towards my Daughter"?
You are a treasure. Please keep doing what you do!!
Hey Steve!
Long time viewer, first time questioner! This episode was one of my favorites yet as it talks about one of my favorite moral dilemmas: intent versus results.
I recently watched for the first time what I think might be the greatest two-parter episode of any Star Trek series ever (at least from a social commentary perspective) "Past Tense" from DS9. What i love about it is that it really takes its time to delve into all sides of the issue while still making a clear point. It doesn't whitewash the mistaked made by the "good guys" even if it does use a sort of "dedicated counterpoint" character to do so. While there are a number of social issues nowadays that I don't think really have a defensible counterpoint, in fiction it can help illustrate the missteps somebody might take to wind up with these problematic beliefs.
I'm just sort of curious how you feel about illustrating these in episodes such as "Past Tense"? Is it a form of glorification, educational or is it "depends on how you do it" sort of thing?
Keep up the great work!
Based on certain elements its actually pretty conservative, at least when compared to other future utopian interstellar civilisations like 'The Culture' for example.
* Anti transhumanism
* No equal rights for artificial sentient beings
* The prime directive (on occasion)
* Discrimination against genetically engineered citizens
Maybe this is just my brain jumbling up Enterprise and TNG era stuff, but wasn't it only genetically enhanced humans, not all citizens? Don't get me wrong, the episode bothers me to no end - like Worf of all people saying it gives people an unfair advantage! With how quickly Klingons grow up and how strong and fast they are! Their 3 lungs! Etc!
And I say enhanced rather than engineered, just because genetic editing seems rather accepted in the Federation, but only if it's for therapeutic purposes instead of augmentive ones.
I had hoped Airiam might have led Disco to change the tune about transhumanism, but of course that didn't play out.
@@kaitlyn__L
Yeah genetic engineering is only an issue with humans, as far as we know of anyway. Iirc Dr Phlox mentioned that his species regularly uses genetic engineering.
The sentient artificial being one doesn't count because Treks Next Gen through Voyager all have episodes devoted to getting sentient rights for artificial beings
I think your 4th point is actually much more complex. A current concern that is had with CRISPR and gene editing is that only the rich can afford it so it's just another way to create a divide between the rich and the poor. Maybe that wouldn't be an issue in the 23rd or 24th century, but the Eugenics War does somewhat touch on that idea. It's impossible to imagine a society under capitalism where gene editing isn't used to push rich children to the front for everything (this is on top of other things like access to tutoring that rich kids have that other kids probably don't have, access to personal trainers to become athletes, music teachers to become musicians, etc, plus the extensive network of contacts that can be used to get someone's career off to a start by, for example, getting a studio buddy to cast your kid in a movie). Genes obviously don't tell the whole story, but having that advantage from day 1, for things like aversion to certain illnesses, better cognitive ability, etc (to be fair we don't know how to do a lot of this yet) will mean even fewer chances for kids who don't have rich parents to get ahead in life.
I'd also say that one thing Trek has really done a horrible job on is imperialism, heck the whole 3rd season of Enterprise was essentially using some of the same justifications for horrible things the crew did as Bush and Cheney used for going into Iraq and what they did once they got there.
I think TOS displayed a particular aversion to “mutated superior” people because 1965, when “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was produced, was a little too close to 1945, the year Hitler died and WW2 ended. People were still processing the relative ‘merits’ of genetic engineering and also of losing one’s humanity to mechanization. The Book “Flowers For Algernon” was released in ‘66, and even though the novels Cyborg was released in 1972, so was Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man - so Nietzsche and cautionary tales weighed heavily on people’s minds back then.
When I watched season fives violations, the memory he invaded looked a lot like ryker was actually raping troy. She said no several times to Ryker before his image changed to the alien guy.
Regarding the Outcast episode:
It is presented as a “what if” scenario. What if we had the ability to change a person’s gender if the face of what they felt it was? The episode answers is that the original person would cease to exist.
I think that is a very powerful statement: if we could actually do this thing, we would kill the person.
Jessie Gender? Oh great... another channel I'm going to have to binge watch over the next few weeks. *subscribes*
There's the constant joking about how close O'Brien and Bashir are in DS9 that comes off as fairly homophobic.
That was war camaraderie!!!
After all, they were WWII pilots fighting together whenever "Jerry tried coming across the channel!!!"
Speaking of Bashir, there is also his character in the first season that was uncomfortably creepy
i like Discovery, but i wish the writer could develops Dr. Colbert better, Stamets is great, but Colbert feel way underdeveloped, like an extra or a recurring character, rather than one of the main cast.
Anyway, about your suggestion too share episode controversial, there is an episode of VOY "Retrospect" (season 4) where the Doctor used some kind of hypnosis to bring back a memory where Seven was assaulted by a merchant (to extract her nanoprobes) and the Doctor believes Seven and the merchant is prosecuted for that and at the end he blew up his ship, dying. But at the very end of the episode nobody is sure if the memory of Seven was true or not, implying her false accusation of the merchant cause his death (sorry for my english, not my native language). Anyway, the episode was more complex than what i described, but after the episode i wasn't (and still i am not) sure about what actually the writers were trying to accomplish telling that particular story
I'd almost forgotten the TNG Yar/Yarina plot episode. I'm pretty sure it was absent from the slate of syndicated reruns because I saw it exactly once. You touched on these issues quite justly I believe.
There was also a Voyager episode where Seven was "violated" by someone who stole some of her high-tech Borg nano (doodads) then altered her memory so she wouldn't recall the forced removal of something from her person. It's been like forever since I viewed it but it was an exploration of false memory testimonials in a pseudo-rape situation. The Doctor was the one who essentially seemed to "create" a memory narrative in her mind of how this violation happened in his earnest effort to convince Seven that she'd been interfered with.
Now I need to dig the episode up and refresh my own memory.
It was an excellent video essay. Almost no Janeway bashing, I am impressed.