News Discovery New Character Breakdowns

[thribs]

One is seriously in a wheelchair. Well he will be a inconvenience on away missions. They'll have to make sure each planet is handicap accessible.

 

[Awesome Possum]

One is seriously in a wheelchair. Well he will be a inconvenience on away missions. They'll have to make sure each planet is handicap accessible.

Brilliant suggestion, I guess they should scrap the whole thing since every single character on the ship has to go on away missions. It's not like they send a small group specialized for that particular mission. That's why they kept sending Worf and not Geordi or Data on away missions that required technical training.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Even as late as the time of Shakespeare, people went to public displays to see dead Indians, and it was commonly thought in Britain that Jews all had curly red hair, because so few people had ever seen Jews.

Probably because they were expelled in 1290 and people are racist. Still the two hundred years of persecution prior to that covers a decent chunk of the Middle Ages.

 

[Spot261]

Just out of curiosity, do you think this means if you set a show in say Viking era Britain you ought to cast black and Asian actors (and come up with plausible roles for them) even though in real life the chance of someone of either background being in such a setting (versus say Constantinople) was vanishingly small? It seems like that's the logical conclusion of arguing that representation in media is more important than a consistent setting.

You do realise black people had been in Britain long before the Viking era?

 

[Spot261]

One is seriously in a wheelchair. Well he will be a inconvenience on away missions. They'll have to make sure each planet is handicap accessible.

Is this post for real? Because if not it was an incredibly poor attempt at humour.

 

[Trekkin]

You do realise black people had been in Britain long before the Viking era?

Fun fact: There’s actually some losers in Britain who really do refuse to believe this.

Should have seen them when it came out that Cheddar Man had a good chance of being black.

 

[Refuge]

I would love to see another disabled character on Trek, but it needs to be part of Treks narrative fiction, and not a token applied with a shoehorn. We don’t even see wheels on trolleys in Trek, so why a wheelchair? So we go to an antigravity chair, and suddenly the effects budget shoots up if that’s a regular character. So from a narrative and production standpoint, we need to look at portions that work in narrative, in production, and in representation.

Oh I couldn't agree with that more. Obviously the character representation is already production ready but this notion that we need to see a disabled character in a present day wheelchair to 'get' that they are disabled is rather patrononising.

 

[Tuskin38]

We saw a hover chair in discovery already, mind you in the background.

All they need to do is keep it low enough to the ground that you can’t see the wheels

 

[Refuge]

One is seriously in a wheelchair. Well he will be a inconvenience on away missions. They'll have to make sure each planet is handicap accessible.

Well I know you are going to get beaten up on this post... but seriously I expect the technology to compensate for mobility issues.

 

[Spot261]

Well I know you are going to get beaten up on this post... but seriously I expect the technology to compensate for mobility issues.

If Star Trek were real, I'd agree with you.

 

[Tuskin38]

There is no reason for them to be on away missions.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

1. Representation in film/TV matters and therefore, having disabled actors play disabled characters on Star Trek is awesome.

I feel like a large part of this thread wouldn't have happened if we were seeing that in this case.

Right now we have a non-disabled actor (Tig Notaro, as far as I know) playing a disabled character. If we were to have a disabled actor in the part, there wouldn't be nearly as much handwringing about "but why do there have to be wheelchairs in the future?"

 

[Awesome Possum]

We saw a hover chair in discovery already, mind you in the background.

All they need to do is keep it low enough to the ground that you can’t see the wheels

Yeah, maybe show a hover effect in a shot or two. It's super easy, I could film it on my phone and have a half decent version.

 

[Jayson1]

I'm wondering though is how important the character is to the stories. Do you invest tons of money into a character who will only be in a few episodes or do you spend it elsewhere. I could simply see them going with a modern style wheel chair with a few blinkies on it just because it's the amount of money they are willing to spend on this character. Heck they might just pull out the chair prop, tinker with it maybe, they used in the Mudd time warp episode to save money. Did anyone have any problem with that chair?

Jason

 

[Brainsucker]

You have a pretty poor understanding of history. Different cultures have been interacting, trading and sometimes having wars since we started having cultures. So it's entirely possible that there could be black or Asian characters in Viking era Britain, made even more so if it's a fictional story and not based on an actual historical event where we know every single detail. Even the film Dunkirk, which gets the same "I'm not racist, but there were just white people there" excuses had soldiers from Morocco under the command of French forces.

Well, I don't agree with this. There were less chance for people from far away continents to interact to each others in the medieval era. Even with the silk road intact. Maybe there were diplomats and traders to meet each others in certain ports or capital cities, but in more rural area, there were almost null interaction between different races.

There might a single Asian or African person come to a certain place in Britain or in Norway in Middle Age, and marry a local girl or guy, and have children. But their number were so few that within only 2 or 3 generations, their existence will be forgotten; as they don't have the number to preserve their culture and genes in the land. That's, if the local were good and readily accept their existence. If not, their fate would be worse. They could become a human sacrifice for a pagan god, or have another ill fate that make the outsiders avoid the local people as far as they could, and just conduct necessary business like diplomacy and trade with the country.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well, I don't agree with this. There were less chance for people from far away continents to interact to each others in the medieval era. Even with the silk road intact. Maybe there were diplomats and traders to meet each others in certain ports or capital cities, but in more rural area, there were almost null interaction between different races.

There were Viking raids and settlements in Eastern Europe, North Africa, North America and Asia. Arabs were trading, settling and converting people in Asia, Africa and Europe.

 

[Jayson1]

My only issue with stuff set in the past is when it doesn't feel real though it's different with each type of show. I'm always not sure how realistic a past setting should be compared to how the story will play towards a modern audience. Should casual racism be included because it was a thing or ignored for a modern audience. I think it would bother me more with a serious drama than it would on a Arrowverse show. You can have a more family friendly 50's like in "Back to the Future" were racism is only slightly touched on with the black teen who will be mayor and Biff's followers racism towards the band or something that feels more real like "Good Night and Good Luck" about MCCarthy. It's basically whatever the artist is going for seems okay depending on what type of movie or show he/she is trying to make.


Jason

 

[Awesome Possum]

Well, I don't agree with this. There were less chance for people from far away continents to interact to each others in the medieval era. Even with the silk road intact. Maybe there were diplomats and traders to meet each others in certain ports or capital cities, but in more rural area, there were almost null interaction between different races.

There might a single Asian or African person come to a certain place in Britain or in Norway in Middle Age, and marry a local girl or guy, and have children. But their number were so few that within only 2 or 3 generations, their existence will be forgotten; as they don't have the number to preserve their culture and genes in the land. That's, if the local were good and readily accept their existence. If not, their fate would be worse. They could become a human sacrifice for a pagan god, or have another ill fate that make the outsiders avoid the local people as far as they could, and just conduct necessary business like diplomacy and trade with the country.

You should really try to learn more about history before forming opinions, the ones you have aren't based on reality. It doesn't matter if you don't "agree" with it, the historical record is pretty clear as @Nerys Myk commented on.

 

[Spot261]

Well, I don't agree with this. There were less chance for people from far away continents to interact to each others in the medieval era. Even with the silk road intact. Maybe there were diplomats and traders to meet each others in certain ports or capital cities, but in more rural area, there were almost null interaction between different races.

There might a single Asian or African person come to a certain place in Britain or in Norway in Middle Age, and marry a local girl or guy, and have children. But their number were so few that within only 2 or 3 generations, their existence will be forgotten; as they don't have the number to preserve their culture and genes in the land. That's, if the local were good and readily accept their existence. If not, their fate would be worse. They could become a human sacrifice for a pagan god, or have another ill fate that make the outsiders avoid the local people as far as they could, and just conduct necessary business like diplomacy and trade with the country.

There were Viking raids and settlements in Eastern Europe, North Africa, North America and Asia. Arabs were trading, settling and converting people in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Not to mention a sizeable but often overlooked multiracial element left over from the Roman era and the consequent slavery. Of course even here we are ignoring the fact that the entire population was and still is descended from migratory settlements of (you guessed it) black people.

Maybe the problem we are seeing here is the TV of the time didn't adequately represent the diversity of the population. We should learn that lesson.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

Maybe the problem we are seeing here is the TV of the time didn't adequately represent the diversity of the population. We should learn that lesson.

You jest, but sites such as http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/ have started documenting the presence of non-white people in historical works of art, and it might be surprising just how much is out there. Even in some cases, the popular presentation of images has had people of color cropped out when compared to the original full image.