Spoilers Season 2 and Race

[Dr Helen Noel]

I know arguments for Trek being too woke or not woke enough can be a thorny issue but I'd like to hear some thoughts on this from both sides.

We entered season 2 with the recurring actors of Patrick Stewart (white), Jeri Ryan (white), Alison Pill (white), Michelle Hurd (black/white), Santiago Cabrera (white Latin), Evan Evagora (Maori/white), Isa Briones (Asian/white), Brent Spiner (white), and Orla Brady (white).

The characters that were sidelined the most in the plot were:
Elnor (Evagora) - Dead body mostly
Rios (Cabrera) - Cliche Latin lover/illegal immigrant plot line
Kore (Briones) - Daughter who deletes some files

Raffi (Hurd) was a given a reasonable plot line by Seven's side but her character was changed from caring hacker to being very angry about everything. While she did hack the drones in the final episode, Agnes (Pill) was picked over her to hack the gala which didn't make much sense. Overall Raffi's character felt like she was veering into the "angry black woman" stereotype. In season 1, Raffi was also the trailer living, drug addicted, family problems character, which are also negative black stereotypes.

Rios was made the first Latin captain but not for long as he was replaced by Seven (Ryan). He was mostly paired with Teresa (Sol Rodriguez) who felt a bit like a easily angered Latina single mother stereotype lacking depth. The combined Rios holograms were shown to be most like Emmet, the most Latin cliche one.

The strongest plot lines went to Picard (Stewart) as the main character and Agnes (Pill) becoming that season's Borg Queen. Seven was given about the same plot as Raffi, but with the Starfleet borg racism element and her being given The Stargazer in the final episode. Soong (Spiner) was given a reasonable screen time for a minor villain, as were legacy characters Guinan (Whoopi Goldbeg - black/Ito Aghayere - black), captured Borg Queen (Anne Wersching - white) and Q (John de Lancie - white), and a cameo for Wesley (Wil Wheaton - white). Tallin (Orla Brady - white) had a reasonable role too. However, young Guinan's astral projection veered on the "magical Negro" character stereotype.

The actors that are believed to not be returning for season 3 are Pill, Cabrera, Evagora, and Briones. Confirmed to return are Stewart, Ryan, Hurd, and Spiner. It is unclear which season 2 legacy characters will be returning.

Considering that the writers seem to have made an effort to show how ICE negatively affects Latin and Hispanic people, I don't think the writers intentionally sidelined anyone but their choices still stand. There's also the fact that all the reoccurring actors from season 1 were either white or white mixed. Somewhat related, but in the "No Man's Land" audio drama leading up to season 2, there is a line where someone calls Raffi a "creature" which I'm very surprised was allowed.

I'm interested in (calmly!) hearing other people's thoughts on this.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

This can only end badly, unfortunately.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I have a lot of thoughts, but as someone of Mexican descent, I have to add this to your thoughts: the treatment of immigration was shamefully vapid and shallow. Just showing that there are immigrants being rounded up is a Fox News level of neutrality, but then to criminally releasing them to run wild is rather negligent on the part of the writers. The treatment of the issue was unbecoming of Star Trek.

BTW, it is not lost to me that the only returning minority or new character is the one that held the hand of the legacy character.

 

[ED-209]

 

[FederationHistorian]

In “Past Tense” – the other trip to 2024 - Sisko (black) and Bashir (Arab) trapped in the Sanctuary District, while Dax (white) was in the proximity of a 1%er (white) and 2024 high society (mostly white, but talked about issues going on in Europe and America and the Caribbean, not Asia, Africa, Middle East, Latin America). And were rescued by Kira (white) and O’Brien (white). Its not hard to see the stereotypes in play at first glance reading this summary.

The difference is that Sisko, Bashir, Dax, Kira & O’Brien were all written as intelligent, rational people. And they were confronting a situation that was based on class; race was a non-factor.

Whereas, when placed a few months earlier in the same time period, most of the PIC characters do not come off as intelligent people.

Rios is chasing after a woman he barely knew that is frequently targeted by ICE; concussion or not, it doesn’t seem like the time to be a Latin lover character if that was the intent and yet he doubles down on it. And while I don’t expect Rios to be as familiar with 21st century American history as he’s Chilean, he must hold some familiarity of the Latin diaspora and the issues surrounding immigration into the US during that particular period. Especially considering America is an empire and how various empires have fallen tend to be taught in history class.

They don’t have Teresa say anything about the state of the US either in 2024 – not ICE, not Sanctuary Districts, not healthcare, not the economic situation at the time, not climate change, not “trading hood for suits” like Young Guinan, not the Europa mission. Absolutely nothing. She was an afterthought and we gain no insight into Trek's idea of 2024 from her perspective. Even Gillian in TVH mentioned whaling being a thing in the 1980s, and Lily in FC mentioned the Eastern Coalition still being a concern years after the war was over.

Raffi is having a meltdown over Elnor, when Picard is the one who had the strongest connection with Elnor; the relationship between Raffi and Elnor is not explained well, even though there is a setup of Raffi losing contact with her actual son and wanting to be a mother to someone else to build upon. She also seems to be completely unaware as to what law enforcement is like in the 21st century, despite being a security officer. That’s something you can’t see happening with Sisko; he’d know about that history with police and BLM, as black history was important to him. The writers this season turned Raffi into basically a borderline bimbo, which is a weird creative decision to make, considering that both DIS and LD have strong female black leads and characters. If the intent was to be about mental illness, they missed that mark entirely and it did not come across clear enough.

As for Elnor and Soji, I know idea if those in charge thought their acting abilities were bad or what. But there were both was done dirty and shows shades of how Mayweather and Sato were written in the early ‘00s, and how some of the VOY cast were written over seven seasons. And how the DIS middle decks crew are written today, which is comprised of women and people of colour. Afterthought despite endless potential to be interesting and have the audience invested in them.

And its also worth noting that Zhaban (white) was written out entirely, even though he had his fans. And Picard played a French stereotype in episode 5 of S1, despite being a French character! And none of the characters thought to look through the historical database to find the divergence, something you would not expect the characters to do in past iterations of Trek.

Now, Picard having the strongest plotline isn’t surprising, since he’s the star and the title character this show is about! Jurati having a strong plotline isn’t a surprise either, since she receives second billing in the credits. Seven being given something to work with isn’t a surprise either, since she is a legacy character.

I don’t know how much, if any, can be attributed to race. The writers were either not talented or creative enough to think outside the box like past Trek writers for Rios, Raffi, Elnor & Soji. Or they were expecting their work to be edited better instead of being given the green light. Or they had something meatier planned and all the characters were well written and fleshed out and it got watered down significantly, resulting in shallow plotlines and characters.

 

[James Cole]

Teresa is an American citizen and grew up in Mexico, but has an Argentinian (or, granted, could also be Uruguayan) accent. Actress Sol Rodriguez is an Italian-Argentine.

If they wanted to work that into her backstory, they could have had something like how her family fled the Argentina Dirty War / Military regime in the 1970s to Mexico, then later ended up in the US.

Instead her portrayel did end up being a little too Latina-on-TV.

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

Teresa is an American citizen and grew up in Mexico, but has an Argentinian (or, granted, could also be Uruguayan) accent. Actress Sol Rodriguez is an Italian-Argentine.

If they wanted to work that into her backstory, they could have had something like how her family fled the Argentina Dirty War / Military regime in the 1970s to Mexico, then later ended up in the US.

Instead her portrayel did end up being a little too Latina-on-TV.

I didn't even realise she was supposed to be Mexican. I don't speak Spanish but she still came across as very Argentine to me. That's pretty bad if casting assumed all Latin people are the same.

Your idea would have been a great way to add more depth to her character and talking about this with Rios could have strengthened their relationship.

 

[Dukhat]

The ICE stuff was just a plot device to get Rios and Teresa together. That's it. No more thought went into it than that.

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

The ICE stuff was just a plot device to get Rios and Teresa together. That's it. No more thought went into it than that.

I didn't hate the basis of the ICE plot line as it's true that someone from Starfleet who travelled back to our present would seem like an illegal alien. I just wish they had used it for someone else, such Picard himself. It's not very often we see someone like him in an illegal alien role for a show set in the US and so it would have made a bigger impact. It would have been a sort of reverse of the Brexit situation that Patrick wanted to incorporate into season 1. We clearly didn't need it to span multiple episodes, but one episode could have been thought provoking.

 

[KennyB]

The strongest plot lines went to Picard ........

Well that IS the name of the show. Everything can pretty much be shoved into a trope if you try hard enough, and it looks like you did.........

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

Well that IS the name of the show.

The strongest plot lines went to Picard (Stewart) as the main character

I'm not disputing that Picard deserved to have the most screen time. It's how they used everyone else that is the (possible) issue.

Everything can pretty much be shoved into a trope if you try hard enough, and it looks like you did.........

I didn't actually come up with all of these myself. The post has a mix of my original thoughts and other points I have seen raised by others. For example, I included a link for the "magical negro" trope because I wasn't aware of this one previously.

You're right though that every character will always be a collection of known tropes. It's not hard to draw comparisons between Elnor and Elrond or Rios and Rhett Butler for example as they share similar tropes.

To be clear, I'm not trying to say that everything in the main post is 100% right. I just thought it would be an interesting starting point for a thread. I do feel like the writers wanted to write a "woke" show but I'm not completely convinced that they did. Some of the possible issues suggest that they might have inherent biases that they aren't aware of themselves and that's an interesting discussion to have. Similarly, how many of these could just be coincidence?

 

[Airmandan]

I think the writers had a number of different ideas that they wanted to use this season; however, they didn't really figure out a good storyline to make all the ideas work together. The first 2 episodes had tight writing and storyline; A little farfetched, but this is Star Trek. But from then on it seems like they didn't have a concise plan as to where to go besides just hitting the main story ideas that they had. Honestly, they could have scrapped half of what we saw and made a much more even storyline.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

It's funny how poorly the series has done with race overall. It featured in two plot lines in the first season. The issue of the acceptance of synthetic lifeforms was resolved rather quickly and facilely that was as unrealistic as it was uninformative. The Romulan refugees are apparently still rotting away on random planets. This season, immigration was touched on without really exploring the issue, only to be forgotten halfway through. Rios even proclaims that the 21st century is wonderful after having been tasered by ICE.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I know how to fix this.

Recast all of Brent Spiner's roles /appearances with Jay Hernandez, and all of Jonathon Frakes' with Idris Elba.

Problem solved, bitches. Now quit yer whining and go make me a sammich!

 

[TedShatner10]

This season, immigration was touched on without really exploring the issue, only to be forgotten halfway through. Rios even proclaims that the 21st century is wonderful after having been tasered by ICE.

Yeah, ICE overstreach and potential LAPD brutality gets brushed over as busywork for Rios, Seven, and Raffi.

Though Guinan seems to allude to US alienation in 2020s America.

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

Yeah, ICE overstreach and potential LAPD brutality gets brushed over as busywork for Rios, Seven, and Raffi.

Rios even proclaims that the 21st century is wonderful after having been tasered by ICE.

It feels like we are missing a grand speech at the end where Rios explains that he doesn’t feel comfortable going back to his cushy captain position when he knows that others like him are having the same ICE experience. Give him a bigger reason for staying than a 3 day romance.

Having Q mention that the guy on the ICE bus went onto do something important in the US would have been good too. The way they ended that plot line makes it seem like none of them made any valuable contributions, which isn’t really a great message.

I feel kind of bad for Santiago Cabrera (Rios) as apparently he normally avoids cliche Latin roles. Season 1 gave him a complex Chilean character as well as the four non-Chilean holograms. This season he got two cliche Latin plot lines and little else.

 

[Dee1891]

I know arguments for Trek being too woke or not woke enough can be a thorny issue but I'd like to hear some thoughts on this from both sides.

We entered season 2 with the recurring actors of Patrick Stewart (white), Jeri Ryan (white), Alison Pill (white), Michelle Hurd (black/white), Santiago Cabrera (white Latin), Evan Evagora (Maori/white), Isa Briones (Asian/white), Brent Spiner (white), and Orla Brady (white).

The characters that were sidelined the most in the plot were:
Elnor (Evagora) - Dead body mostly
Rios (Cabrera) - Cliche Latin lover/illegal immigrant plot line
Kore (Briones) - Daughter who deletes some files

Raffi (Hurd) was a given a reasonable plot line by Seven's side but her character was changed from caring hacker to being very angry about everything. While she did hack the drones in the final episode, Agnes (Pill) was picked over her to hack the gala which didn't make much sense. Overall Raffi's character felt like she was veering into the "angry black woman" stereotype. In season 1, Raffi was also the trailer living, drug addicted, family problems character, which are also negative black stereotypes.

Rios was made the first Latin captain but not for long as he was replaced by Seven (Ryan). He was mostly paired with Teresa (Sol Rodriguez) who felt a bit like a easily angered Latina single mother stereotype lacking depth. The combined Rios holograms were shown to be most like Emmet, the most Latin cliche one.

The strongest plot lines went to Picard (Stewart) as the main character and Agnes (Pill) becoming that season's Borg Queen. Seven was given about the same plot as Raffi, but with the Starfleet borg racism element and her being given The Stargazer in the final episode. Soong (Spiner) was given a reasonable screen time for a minor villain, as were legacy characters Guinan (Whoopi Goldbeg - black/Ito Aghayere - black), captured Borg Queen (Anne Wersching - white) and Q (John de Lancie - white), and a cameo for Wesley (Wil Wheaton - white). Tallin (Orla Brady - white) had a reasonable role too. However, young Guinan's astral projection veered on the "magical Negro" character stereotype.

The actors that are believed to not be returning for season 3 are Pill, Cabrera, Evagora, and Briones. Confirmed to return are Stewart, Ryan, Hurd, and Spiner. It is unclear which season 2 legacy characters will be returning.

Considering that the writers seem to have made an effort to show how ICE negatively affects Latin and Hispanic people, I don't think the writers intentionally sidelined anyone but their choices still stand. There's also the fact that all the reoccurring actors from season 1 were either white or white mixed. Somewhat related, but in the "No Man's Land" audio drama leading up to season 2, there is a line where someone calls Raffi a "creature" which I'm very surprised was allowed.

I'm interested in (calmly!) hearing other people's thoughts on this.

I agree with some of your complaints, but I cannot decide on some of your other ones. I'm a little confused right now.

 

[The Wormhole]

I didn't hate the basis of the ICE plot line as it's true that someone from Starfleet who travelled back to our present would seem like an illegal alien. I just wish they had used it for someone else, such Picard himself.

That storyline is very much a commentary on and criticism of ICE, an organization best known among the general public for its bias against Hispanic people. Because of that, Rios is the only character who would have made sense to be involved in that particular storyline.

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

That storyline is very much a commentary on and criticism of ICE, an organization best known among the general public for its bias against Hispanic people. Because of that, Rios is the only character who would have made sense to be involved in that particular storyline.

Thanks, I’m not American so I didn’t appreciate that aspect.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

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