So you didn’t. You’ve made up your mind without seeing something and create a delusion to support it.
If you think it’s an attack on you then maybe it is and you should be extremely worried about that.
News Black Mirror Star Trek Spoof
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If you think it’s an attack on you then maybe it is and you should be extremely worried about that.
I have no idea what the main character actually does. If he's one of those racist/misogynistic/etc nutjobs you find in sci fi fandoms (like the idiots who call Rey a "Mary Sue", or people who don't want LGBTQ+ characters in sci fi, etc) then its definitely not an attack on me. I can be an opinionated jerk, but I'm nothing like that, and it seems like that might be the kind of person the episode is about based on reading between the lines of the non spoiler stuff I've read. But it also looks like they're probably just adding that to the standard "nerds are losers, let's make fun of them" tropes.
Plus, those kinds of people exist everywhere, so going after nerds would really only happen when they also want to add the standard anti-nerd/geek tropes. Add a Star Trek parody to that (from people whose show is ok but isn't at a place where it can degrade Star Trek of all shows) and it honestly seems like literally the worst thing Black Mirror could make if they were trying to specifically piss me off.
The main character is a female coder who works for the villain, a creep obsessed with a 60s sci-fi show that he uses for power fantasies and to torture his co-workers for perceived slights. Once again, it’s not attacking sci-fi, fandom, geeks or anything that you claim based on a lack of knowledge of the episode. It’s attacking a strain of toxic masculinity found in geek circles as well as male and geek entitlement. The writer has gone out of his way to say that Daly’s depiction of the show is based on his own biases because shows like it and Star Trek were progressive for their era. How anyone could confuse it with attacking Trek and geeks is absolutely stunning to me.
So instead of tackling the theme of toxic masculinity by taking on, I don't know, sports fans or other more traditionally "manly men" groups, its the nerds who get to be the subject matter (also, what the hell is "geek entitlement"?) . I mean, there are people like that in sci fi fandoms, you see them all the time. But its not the main group, and combining that with shitting on Star Trek and almost certainly hitting the standard "nerds are losers" tropes just makes it more intolerable.
Because toxic masculinity is also found in geek groups. Geek entitlement is the idea that geeks own the properties they’re obsessed with. And once again, since you keep ignoring it, it does not attack Star Trek or even geeks. I’m not sure why you keep insisting this, but it’s not true. Maybe you should accept that from someone who actually saw it instead of attacking it based on something you seem to have created in your head. The hero is a geek and a coder, the other characters are coders and employees of a video game company, traditionally all who are geeks in some way. Probably the only one who isn’t is the receptionist. Unless you think geek only refers to immature man children, it isn’t attacking geeks.
Well, besides "geek entitlement" being a bullshit concept (and from what I've seen only being used as a way to attack people who have problems with what they see as decisions in some sci fi productions, some people would probably claim there was "geek entitlement" with people like me who loathe Star Trek 09), the episode can literally not exist as anything but an attack on Star Trek and nerds. If it wasn't an attack, it wouldn't parody ST and Daly wouldn't be a nerd (Yeah, I went and read the wikipedia summary because I'm not going to watch it anyway).
Daly's type of nutjob that could exist in almost any context but is written as basically a trekkie is a specific attack against Star Trek fans. He is a bad person, and there are people like him that exist. A character like that deserves to be at the center of some really messed up Black Mirror episode. But, they could have done it without giving Star trek fans the finger and lumping all nerds in with the nutjobs.
It is, probably the best episode too. It's a wonderful love story that takes some time to reveal what's truly going on. The show itself isn't really scary, it's more an existential dread generating machine. The horror comes not so much from the content of the episodes, but from the idea that in some cases we really aren't that far from some of it coming true or the knowledge that if such a device existed, people would act like that. Most of them end up being more sad than anything else. The closest to actual horror is Metalhead, which is basically a nightmare starring one of those Boston Dynamic robots.
So, a sci-fi series would be attacking sci-fi..?
This is an... interesting interpretation by @kirk55555...
This is an... interesting interpretation by @kirk55555...
Yeah, even people who haven't seen Star Trek are aware of the basics. It seems on the level of Doctor Who in the US before the new series. You had to be extra geeky to be into Doctor Who, it only got two references on the Simpsons and it was one of the more obscure references at the time.
That’s not a stand-in for TOS Star Trek... Riiiiight.
Obviously, from a visual and content point of view, the reference is TOS. But let's not forget that a big part of the Star Trek phenomenon is its impact on the pop culture and society. I'm sure that a lot of people that never watched the original series know who are Kirk and Spock. But it's clear that in the episode Star Fleet is almost a niche show. I simply can't imagine someone who works in the videogame industry, after seeing a poster, saying "What is this Star Trek thing?".
That’s not a stand-in for TOS Star Trek... Riiiiight.
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So it's pre-TNG, or pre-TMP/TWOK Star Trek. That doesn't make it non-Trek.
As far I know, Star Trek pre-tmp was quite famous. I mean, they used Spock for this ad in 1975! (Nimoy wasn't happy)
And the famous SNL's skit was first aired in the 1976
So, I believe that, in the pre-TMP era, Star Trek wasn't an unknown niche show.
As far I know, Star Trek pre-tmp was quite famous. I mean, they used Spock for this ad in 1975! (Nimoy wasn't happy)
And the famous SNL's skit was first aired in the 1976
So, I believe that, in the pre-TMP era, Star Trek wasn't an unknown niche show.
So did Lost In Space...
So in the episode's universe Space Fleet is even less know than Lost In Space.
Why? Because an individual young in age female coworker didn't recognize it? That still doesn't make it "Not Trek". In the real world most people think along these lines...
...and that's if they've seen some of the sci-fi stuff that we like which isn't always guaranteed.
I can't tell the difference between Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Does that automatically make them obscure and niche novels for everyone?
It's a science fiction show, aimed towards an audience that understands and is interested in technology and how humanity uses/interacts with it (ie, geeks) so it uses a lens of something they are fans of (ie, not sports) or at least that they would be familiar with (classic tv shows and computer games) in order to make it something they would enjoy rather than not understand/find boring.
As for geek entitlement, it's essentially that attitude that says "You're not a fan of this, you have to have/know/watch X, Y, & Z to be a true fan, this doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me."
At least that's how I interpret it, happy to be corrected.
This is irony ..right?
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