Can we just pretend that Voyager never happened?

[Guy Gardener]

Chakotay's tribe didn't leave earth till the 22nd Century.

This was in the bible, maybe a novel, but not on the show.

Seriously.

THATWOULDHAVEBEENINTERESTING!

"My ancestors thought that all of you sucked so hard that we split. Sayonora Earthers! Then 200 years later your Starships arrive, insisting that our planet is really their planet, even though we have been living on it for 200 years, and that they want to give it away to the Spoonheaded Scum who are shooting at us. My ancestors left the heart of the Federation for some real freedom, but no, you won't leave us alone, telling us where to live, how to live, and this is why we are not allowed nice things!"

(Above is all true, if they had bothered to flesh Chokaty out, that above is what they had planned.)

This Native American Colonial Expansion into Space is a little hard to swallow. I'm expected to believe that one tribe (less than a hundred to over a thousand persons? So much for genetic diversity!), around the time of Archer, got a space ship that couldn't top warp one or two, and built a colony dozens of light years from Earth? Seriously? I'm only suggesting that it's more likely that several tribes on Earth unified in their like mindedness got their shit together, and even then, unless most of these colonists were dragged onto those ships, I can't see any one "group" agreeing to a mass exodus without someone lighting a fire under their ass. Try Telling all of Texas that they should go live on the moon. See how that works out for you. However if these astronauts were Native Americans sourced form the entire country, if not the planet, it would mean that almost all the known and imaginary tribes would be represented, although only the psychopaths that think leaving Earth is a good idea(50 to a 100 people from 50 tribes... Which would require a fleet or a ship a hundred times the size of Archers Enterprise.) would be the volunteers going, which means that the native Americans left behind might have a chance at living a happy life on Earth without the moody loud bastards railing on.

Of course consider WWIII.

What if the Indians took back most of America from Whitey (because Whitey, by he millions had been nuked dead.)? Imagine half a century where they control the country again after a fashion. Which would require a geometric increase in population. Unless they were forewarned about WWIII, I don't like how that sounds. Mass kidnappings and forced interbreeding. However then if they just took and held only Texas, or something smaller like Ohio, then nothing morally messy like rapecamps would be necessary.

 

[Makarov]

What if the Indians took back most of America from Whitey? Imagine half a century where they control the country again after a fashion.

Well Khan did conquer the world almost and he was Indian... oh you mean Native American

Which would require a geometric increase in poopulation.

Sounds painful Edit: Caught you before an edit, just kidding with ya

 

[Guy Gardener]

I edited that 8 times postposting. Glad to amuse.

I make it a general rule not to edit stuff after people mock me, but I already edited that poopulation typo before I saw you mock me, so this ones on me.

 

[at Quark's]

It's racist to take different facets of Native American tribes, toss them in a blender and call it a backstory. Its hard so we shouldn't bother" is not much of an excuse. Its racist because its written by one race about another race where the writing race doesn't care if they get the written race right or not. I think it matters because, from the very beginnings of TOS, ST has been seen as a representation of "enlightened" humans who have moved beyond racism and are "cool" with a black woman human with an African last name (Uhuru) being a bridge officer and having authority over white men and kissing (gasp!) a white man.

Let's assume for a moment they would have included an European character in one of the trek shows, say a Frenchman with a childhood background in rural France, growing up in a very traditional family. But he speaks with a British accent and quotes from English literature (not French) all the time. That would have been insulting to all continental Europeans (I should know, since I am one), now wouldn't it.

Or is that suddenly different since Europeans are the same 'race' ? (whatever we should take that to mean exactly. I, for one, don't know .)

The mere fact that one example is perceived as racism, whereas the other is not, IMHO says more about actual racism than about the amount of supposed racism 'evident' merely from a sloppy background story.

But I do agree that it wouldn't have hurt had they worked somewhat harder to get such details right before airing it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We just have to ask ourselves, is Voyager more or less tolerant than F-Troop?

 

[Melakon]

They could have made Chakotay a member of the Hekawi tribe.

Originally they were going to be called the Fugawi, but it didn't get past the censor with the line "Where the Fugawi?"

 

[Orphalesion]

Naturally I just love being patronized, thanks for that. You do realise that novelistic storytelling focusing on naturalistic character driven narratives isn’t the only way of doing things, don’t you? Perhaps you can tell me the outstanding character traits of King Arthur in Morte d’Arthur? How about Launcelot or Guinevere? More recent? How about Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings? Care to give me a run down of his distinctive foibles? Achilles in The Iliad? Satan in Paradise Lost? Gulliver? What are those guys realistic and down to earth character traits?

I know I'm late to the party for this but.... I hope you do realize that the works of fiction you cite here to support your argument are, respectively, the literary equivalent of cave paintings from a time when literature took its first baby steps (the Illiad) medieval literature that sucked just as much as everything else in the middle ages and was more about writing Christian allegory into their stories than characters(Morte d'Arthur) a deliberate throwback to ancient Norse sagas (Lord of the Rings) a poem from the 17th century (Paradise Lost) and 18th satire (Gulliver's Travels).
Of these five examples, four are mostly kept around for historical reasons (they give us insight into their times) as well as high school/university English/Lit classes. And while Aragorn is not the most complex or relatable character the LOTR does have its share of characters that are such as Sam, Galadriel, Faramir and Eowyn.

Like everything literature has greatly evolved during human history and, in most cases become more complex. Especially in modern times it has moved from morality/religious tales and larger than life archetypes to a more grey-shaded outlook and more realistic characters. So comparing the above works to anything written in the late 20th/early 21st century is like comparing a house constructed during those eras to a modern one.
Also you want characteristics for Satan in Paradise Lost? Milton pretty much created what we know today as the sympathetic devil AND gave him a motivation for going after mankind. This went so far that people speculated Milton to be "of the Devil's party without knowing it" Satan in Paradise Lost is prideful, rebellious, but also full of regret and sorrow about what he did (when the other demons start to construct Pandemonium, he pretty much goes away and has a good cry in private) he detests that God, whom he sees as despotic and uncaring, has banished him to Hell and now tempts mankind in an attempt to drag down as many souls as he can to his prison, partly because he knows that even one missing soul will diminish God's joy, partly because if he can't have heaven he wants to keep it from as many others as he can.
Sure he's not that complex by today's standards, but he was very much for Milton's time.

Likewise the TOS characters, which largely were either one-notes, space-fillers or walking cliches, were fair for their day, but wouldn't fly today anymore unless greatly updated like Abrams did and if they weren't viewed with so much Nostalgia.
The way I see it TNG and DS9 took steps forward, Voyager was, by the network, forced again and again to take steps back.

I know character is not the only thing that can drive a story. LOTR drives a large chunk of its allure from the complex world Tolkien has created, and many TOS, TNG and VOY often focus on the concept at hand, with the characters just being the players.
But even such stories can greatly benefit from in-depth characterization, because interesting characters make the audience/readers care more about what happens to them. I certainly am more involved in the stories of Jaime, Sansa and even minor characters like Hot Pie from The SOng of Ice and Fire than in Aragorn's and while I love the concept and moral dilemma of Tuvix, I was not involved on more than an intellectual level, because the writers failed to make me care about either Neelix, Tuvok or Tuvix enough to want either to stick around. They are so minimalistic characters that it was difficult to bring the "two lives vs. one life that sorta-kinda contains the two originals" theme across
Now if the story had been done on DS9, with the two merged people being O'Brien and Worf... that would have had the greater impact and had helped the concept. The audience cares about Worf and O'Brien because they know so much about those two, their relationships, their histories and their families. All they would have had to do was give "Wo'Rien" a sufficiently strong characterization and the tragic aspect of such a situation (only theoretically present int Tuvix) would have shone fully through.

In TOS the whole thing would have been even more sterile: "....so Chekov and Zulu are one guy now....does that new bloke at least have a first name?"

 

[JeffinOakland]

They could have made Chakotay a member of the Hekawi tribe.

Originally they were going to be called the Fugawi, but it didn't get past the censor with the line "Where the Fugawi?"

TOS: Boldly going
TNG: Boldly going again
DS9: Boldly holding the fort
VOY: Boldly are you sure this the right way home?

 

[JeffinOakland]

It's racist to take different facets of Native American tribes, toss them in a blender and call it a backstory. Its hard so we shouldn't bother" is not much of an excuse. Its racist because its written by one race about another race where the writing race doesn't care if they get the written race right or not. I think it matters because, from the very beginnings of TOS, ST has been seen as a representation of "enlightened" humans who have moved beyond racism and are "cool" with a black woman human with an African last name (Uhuru) being a bridge officer and having authority over white men and kissing (gasp!) a white man.

Let's assume for a moment they would have included an European character in one of the trek shows, say a Frenchman with a childhood background in rural France, growing up in a very traditional family. But he speaks with a British accent and quotes from English literature (not French) all the time. That would have been insulting to all continental Europeans (I should know, since I am one), now wouldn't it.

Or is that suddenly different since Europeans are the same 'race' ? (whatever we should take that to mean exactly. I, for one, don't know .)

The mere fact that one example is perceived as racism, whereas the other is not, IMHO says more about actual racism than about the amount of supposed racism 'evident' merely from a sloppy background story.

But I do agree that it wouldn't have hurt had they worked somewhat harder to get such details right before airing it.

2 points come to mind.

1. Picard's being French is more of an aside than a crucial part of his character's presentation and growth. Chakotay's entire character (at least initially) is intrinsically Indigenous. In other words, Picard is Picard 1st and French 2nd (or more accurately, about 34th in character details) but Chakotay is (for the 1st few seasons) Indigenous 1st and Chakotay 2nd. After they mostly discarded the Indigenous "stuff," Chakotay became just simply boring because he had no underlying personality besides being the minority stereotype.

2. Both Picard's and Chakotay's characters were conceived and written almost entirely by white people. White people can get details about white people wrong and generalize about white people and not be racist. White people cannot get details about other races wrong or generalize about other races without being at least racially insensitive if not racist. Those are the rules of American society. I don't make the rules but I do know them and tend to agree with them.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to pretend Voyager never happened. The writers usually pretended all previous episodes never happened.

 

[Makarov]

2 points come to mind.

1. Picard's being French is more of an aside than a crucial part of his character's presentation and growth. Chakotay's entire character (at least initially) is intrinsically Indigenous. In other words, Picard is Picard 1st and French 2nd (or more accurately, about 34th in character details) but Chakotay is (for the 1st few seasons) Indigenous 1st and Chakotay 2nd. After they mostly discarded the Indigenous "stuff," Chakotay became just simply boring because he had no underlying personality besides being the minority stereotype.

Chakotay was just a regular guy most of the time, maybe a bit on the generic side, aside from episodes that go into his past. If I'm remembering right they don't even explore it until midway through season 2. It's way in the background. It's not like they were doing the Native American stuff every episode. And his most defining trait at the start is being important in the Maquis. They used him to have strong disagreements and debates with Janeway in the first few seasons.

Just like Picard and his vineyard & being French hardly ever comes up aside from Family.

 

[JeffinOakland]

2 points come to mind.

1. Picard's being French is more of an aside than a crucial part of his character's presentation and growth. Chakotay's entire character (at least initially) is intrinsically Indigenous. In other words, Picard is Picard 1st and French 2nd (or more accurately, about 34th in character details) but Chakotay is (for the 1st few seasons) Indigenous 1st and Chakotay 2nd. After they mostly discarded the Indigenous "stuff," Chakotay became just simply boring because he had no underlying personality besides being the minority stereotype.

Chakotay was just a regular guy most of the time, maybe a bit on the generic side, aside from episodes that go into his past. If I'm remembering right they don't even explore it until midway through season 2. It's way in the background. It's not like they were doing the Native American stuff every episode. And his most defining trait at the start is being important in the Maquis. They used him to have strong disagreements and debates with Janeway in the first few seasons.

Just like Picard and his vineyard & being French hardly ever comes up aside from Family.

As has been constantly bemoaned in Voyager threads; the promising Maquis/Starfleet conflict was abandoned almost immediately. Chakotay was developed as a Native American character specifically. From the very beginning, the idea was to have a minority represented in the tradition of Uhuru and the Siskos. Hence the vision-quest episodes and the other generic Native American elements no one involved had any real understanding of. Point of fact, you never see Picard in a beret painting incompetent watercolors and eating brie with the family label wine because that would have appeared absurd, insulting and beside the point.

 

[at Quark's]

2 points come to mind.

1. Picard's being French is more of an aside than a crucial part of his character's presentation and growth. Chakotay's entire character (at least initially) is intrinsically Indigenous. In other words, Picard is Picard 1st and French 2nd (or more accurately, about 34th in character details) but Chakotay is (for the 1st few seasons) Indigenous 1st and Chakotay 2nd. After they mostly discarded the Indigenous "stuff," Chakotay became just simply boring because he had no underlying personality besides being the minority stereotype.

So, if I understand you correctly, in fact you're saying he is a 'token minority' on the series, not having an actual underlying personality. If that is the case, I'd say it would even have been insulting to those minorities if they had got all cultural references 'right'. Hence, I would call his token minorityship the central problem of his character, not the fact that they actually got the cultural details all mixed up.

BTW, I personally never got the impression that he was presented as such, even though I did think the native american stuff could have been toned down a notch or two in the first seasons.

2. Both Picard's and Chakotay's characters were conceived and written almost entirely by white people. White people can get details about white people wrong and generalize about white people and not be racist. White people cannot get details about other races wrong or generalize about other races without being at least racially insensitive if not racist. Those are the rules of American society. I don't make the rules but I do know them and tend to agree with them.

Probably such 'rules' have been made with the best of intentions, in order to compensate for earlier racism, but any well intentioned action where it makes a significant difference how one is treated according to his or her race, is still racism in my book, just as positive discrimination is still discrimination.

I can understand that such 'rules' can be useful, but only temporarily, when a society is trying to weed out earlier racist attitudes as a nation. However, they should be thrown out of the window the moment true equality (as opposed to formal equality) in career opportunities, gender roles, etc, has been achieved. Unfortunately, that moment has not yet arrived. Clinging on to such rules after that moment in time would hinder further social progress, and create unnecessary tensions, IMHO.

 

[JeffinOakland]

2 points come to mind.

1. Picard's being French is more of an aside than a crucial part of his character's presentation and growth. Chakotay's entire character (at least initially) is intrinsically Indigenous. In other words, Picard is Picard 1st and French 2nd (or more accurately, about 34th in character details) but Chakotay is (for the 1st few seasons) Indigenous 1st and Chakotay 2nd. After they mostly discarded the Indigenous "stuff," Chakotay became just simply boring because he had no underlying personality besides being the minority stereotype.

So, if I understand you correctly, in fact you're saying he is a 'token minority' on the series, not having an actual underlying personality. If that is the case, I'd say it would even have been insulting to those minorities if they had got all cultural references 'right'. Hence, I would call his token minorityship the central problem of his character, not the fact that they actually got the cultural details all mixed up.

BTW, I personally never got the impression that he was presented as such, even though I did think the native american stuff could have been toned down a notch or two in the first seasons.

2. Both Picard's and Chakotay's characters were conceived and written almost entirely by white people. White people can get details about white people wrong and generalize about white people and not be racist. White people cannot get details about other races wrong or generalize about other races without being at least racially insensitive if not racist. Those are the rules of American society. I don't make the rules but I do know them and tend to agree with them.

Probably such 'rules' have been made with the best of intentions, in order to compensate for earlier racism, but any well intentioned action where it makes a significant difference how one is treated according to his or her race, is still racism in my book, just as positive discrimination is still discrimination.

I can understand that such 'rules' can be useful, but only temporarily, when a society is trying to weed out earlier racist attitudes as a nation. However, they should be thrown out of the window the moment true equality (as opposed to formal equality) in career opportunities, gender roles, etc, has been achieved. Unfortunately, that moment has not yet arrived. Clinging on to such rules after that moment in time would hinder further social progress, and create unnecessary tensions, IMHO.

I'm having a hard time disagreeing with anything you've written. I think the crux of the issue is that Chakotay was a well-intentioned character that never matured past the "token" or "generic" designation and came into his own as a separate personality. A man of many parts. Once they discontinued focusing on his minority status, there wasn't much of any personality left. Maybe this was the character development by the writers. Maybe it was Beltran's lazy approach to the character. Who knows.

Our society continues to struggle and probably will always struggle with representing and honoring different cultures. This is especially troublesome when one is obliged to distinguish between different aspects of general cultures (French European vs. English European or Hopi Native American vs. Cherokee Native American.) A simple solution would have been to make Picard an Englishman named Smith and determining before filming began what tribe Chakotay belonged to and sticking w it.

 

[Makarov]

I think Chakotay was just a victim of Seven of Nine's dominance over the show in the later seasons. He wasn't the only one shoved into the background after they started doing Seven episode after Seven episode.

I think he got some pretty good episodes though - that one where his hologram takes over the ship, the jungle episode where he is fighting a war, I even liked him in that dinosaur episode.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Each time I hear "Chakotay" it evokes that stupid stupid boxing episode. What a piece of steaming crap that one was!!!! That contributes greatly to my not liking him, as a character I should add to the benefit of some people that keep misconstruing everything I say.

 

[JeffinOakland]

Each time I hear "Chakotay" it evokes that stupid stupid boxing episode. What a piece of steaming crap that one was!!!! That contributes greatly to my not liking him, as a character I should add to the benefit of some people that keep misconstruing everything I say.

Total agreement. The boxing episode ranks pretty highly in my personal WTF are they doing!? list of episodes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Boxing is a trope.

If a show goes long enough, it happens.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Boxing is a trope.

If a show goes long enough, it happens.

You're missing the point (I didn't say "as often", did I?). It's not boxing per se that is particularly annoying. It's THAT episode, "boxing" is merely a way to identify it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I read that episode as a thinly veiled excuse to trot out Berman's favorite magical senior Boothby.