Come on, Neelix was the Jar Jar Binks of the Star Trek universe for most of VOY's run, and there's not much that could redeem that.
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Was TNG considered a "family tv show" at the time? And anyway, what does "family tv show" mean?
- Thread starter Skipper
- Start date
Come on, Neelix was the Jar Jar Binks of the Star Trek universe for most of VOY's run, and there's not much that could redeem that.
It's disingenuous to assume that all discrimination is blatant and aggressive. Being a roadblock is passive by definition. It's less a matter of actively shooting things down and more a matter of declining to support challenges to the status quo. Just because something occasionally gets pushed hard enough to overcome that institutional inertia doesn't mean the inertia doesn't exist. On the contrary, the fact that LGBTQ themes were only touched on a couple of times in hundreds of hundreds of episodes proves that the resistance to them was very much present.
And of course, a homophobe could always rationalize "Rejoined" as not really being a lesbian story because Dax had been a guy when he was married to Kahn. Plus they were aliens, so it didn't really "count."
Whoa, whoa, you think men would be more offended by a lesbian kiss than women would? Have you met men? The reason we got women kissing on TV before we got men doing the same is that men generally think women making love is hot (and vice-versa), so lesbian scenes are more acceptable in a media landscape designed to cater to the male gaze.
I mean, people, do you think all that lesbian porn out there is made for lesbian women?
I've seen some hilarious videos of lesbians "reviewing" these pornos and finding them ridiculous and completely unexciting: "Of course, we lesbians put on a lot of makeup before having sex and go to bed in high heels!"
As for the supposed "orgy" in "The Naked Now": Of course, we don't physically see an orgy in all its glory, but the episode does everything it can to convey that to us within the limits of what was possible to show in the 80s. I mean, our heroes find their first victims completely naked.
Yes, exactly. By the standards of broadcast TV of the day, it was racy, much more so than he could've gotten away with in the '60s. Even acknowledging the existence of an orgy was mature, whether you showed it or not. Obviously showing it was out of the question on a broadcast show.
It's like I said above -- these days, we're so used to TV-MA sex and violence in pay-cable and streaming shows that even the most adult content allowed on commercial broadcast TV under FCC rules seems tame and family-friendly to us. In the same way that even the most mature and hard-hitting movies of the Hays Code era would probably get a G rating today, because they don't have overt bloodshed or sex or profanity.
Probably more like PG for scary moments. I think they're more attuned to that these days.
Maybe alcohol and tobacco use as well.
As I've remarked before in this thread, it doesn't work to invoke the average approach of '90s TV, because Star Trek was supposed to be the show that pushed the envelope and was more inclusive than the norm for its era, but instead it was far less willing to acknowledge LGBTQ themes than many of its contemporaries in the '90s and even into the '00s.
I'll say this for this thread - in spite of its often frustrating circularity, it's given me a lot of food for thought, particularly in regard to how I would define "family friendly", and whether I'd put Trek in that category.
Upshot is, now, I wouldn't class any Trek series as strictly "family friendly" other than TAS and Prodigy, and thus am recalibrating my own relationship to the show a bit. For one thing, it gives me no excuse to ever refer to the current streaming era as "not Star Trek", because it is Star Trek, just a Star Trek that doesn't appeal to me personally, and that's an end to it.
For a UK perspective, TNG was broadcast at 6pm on BBC2, Monday to Friday, mostly repeats, mixed with repeats of TOS, and once a year a run of new stuff. The only variation I can recall was, as Relayer1 noted, the frustrating frequency with which it was co-opted for sport. I don't think there's much doubt the BBC saw Trek as little more than lightweight filler, something bright and harmless to fill an early evening slot. That's very likely why Conspiracy prompted controversy and censorship, and I wouldn't be surprised if other eps did too, like Genesis, as what (presumably) proto-Worf did to the Sacrificial Ensign Of The Week was fairly gnarly.
The UK tends to be stricter on violence and blood than the US, and more relaxed on nudity and sexuality, thus our definition of "family friendly", and by extension mine, is a little different. For instance, nudity can and has appeared on UK TV before the 9PM watershed, and in the daytime, it just has to be educational, or artistic, or otherwise entirely non-sexual, and brief. One example would be The Simpsons Movie, broadcast multiple times in the early evening - around the same time as TNG was, funnily enough - on Channel 4 with nothing edited out. That's not to say the BBFC and the broadcasters can't be as opaque and arbitrary and contradictory as the MPA, because believe me they can.
As to the matter of LGBT+ content, in response to the seeming suggestions that a "softly-softly" approach is the best one, I'd counter that those now spearheading aggressive rollbacks of LGBT+ rights and representation in the US, UK and elsewhere were very likely emboldened by that very approach, by having little to no firm pushback. Strong and clear is the only way to be, in my opinion, or this is where we end up.
Further to that, and noting that kids shows like Grange Hill and Byker Grove were tackling LGBT+ characters, and quite well from what I remember, in the UK at around the time TNG et al were mostly pretending we don't exist, I'm firmly in agreement with Christopher that Trek, and Berman in particular, seriously dropped the ball, and I struggle to see that as anything other than deliberate on the latter's part.
One last thing that caught my eye. Someone. I think Oddish, brought up two recent Disney films that failed, and strongly intimated it was because of their LGBT+ content. I'm guessing those films were Lightyear and Strange World. If you honestly believe the former failed thanks to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it dab of the lips between two women, and not because it was an ill-conceived, sloppily executed muddle, I think that says a lot more about you than the film. Equally, Strange World, at least in my opinion, suffered far more because of poor publicity - flat, generic title, dull trailers - than happening to have gay romance in it. The queer folk weren't the issue, it's Disney's recent inability to properly sell their films, and ever more executive-controlled approach to making the films in the first place. Wish is the perfect example of this; a Disney film by numbers poorly advertised, and that landed with a thump as a result.
Feels like there's some pretty disingenous stuff going on in this thread, and it's helping no-one.
Upshot is, now, I wouldn't class any Trek series as strictly "family friendly" other than TAS and Prodigy, and thus am recalibrating my own relationship to the show a bit. For one thing, it gives me no excuse to ever refer to the current streaming era as "not Star Trek", because it is Star Trek, just a Star Trek that doesn't appeal to me personally, and that's an end to it.
For a UK perspective, TNG was broadcast at 6pm on BBC2, Monday to Friday, mostly repeats, mixed with repeats of TOS, and once a year a run of new stuff. The only variation I can recall was, as Relayer1 noted, the frustrating frequency with which it was co-opted for sport. I don't think there's much doubt the BBC saw Trek as little more than lightweight filler, something bright and harmless to fill an early evening slot. That's very likely why Conspiracy prompted controversy and censorship, and I wouldn't be surprised if other eps did too, like Genesis, as what (presumably) proto-Worf did to the Sacrificial Ensign Of The Week was fairly gnarly.
The UK tends to be stricter on violence and blood than the US, and more relaxed on nudity and sexuality, thus our definition of "family friendly", and by extension mine, is a little different. For instance, nudity can and has appeared on UK TV before the 9PM watershed, and in the daytime, it just has to be educational, or artistic, or otherwise entirely non-sexual, and brief. One example would be The Simpsons Movie, broadcast multiple times in the early evening - around the same time as TNG was, funnily enough - on Channel 4 with nothing edited out. That's not to say the BBFC and the broadcasters can't be as opaque and arbitrary and contradictory as the MPA, because believe me they can.
As to the matter of LGBT+ content, in response to the seeming suggestions that a "softly-softly" approach is the best one, I'd counter that those now spearheading aggressive rollbacks of LGBT+ rights and representation in the US, UK and elsewhere were very likely emboldened by that very approach, by having little to no firm pushback. Strong and clear is the only way to be, in my opinion, or this is where we end up.
Further to that, and noting that kids shows like Grange Hill and Byker Grove were tackling LGBT+ characters, and quite well from what I remember, in the UK at around the time TNG et al were mostly pretending we don't exist, I'm firmly in agreement with Christopher that Trek, and Berman in particular, seriously dropped the ball, and I struggle to see that as anything other than deliberate on the latter's part.
One last thing that caught my eye. Someone. I think Oddish, brought up two recent Disney films that failed, and strongly intimated it was because of their LGBT+ content. I'm guessing those films were Lightyear and Strange World. If you honestly believe the former failed thanks to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it dab of the lips between two women, and not because it was an ill-conceived, sloppily executed muddle, I think that says a lot more about you than the film. Equally, Strange World, at least in my opinion, suffered far more because of poor publicity - flat, generic title, dull trailers - than happening to have gay romance in it. The queer folk weren't the issue, it's Disney's recent inability to properly sell their films, and ever more executive-controlled approach to making the films in the first place. Wish is the perfect example of this; a Disney film by numbers poorly advertised, and that landed with a thump as a result.
Feels like there's some pretty disingenous stuff going on in this thread, and it's helping no-one.
That was not me. The Disney films I mentioned were "The Little Mermaid", which I blasted because the writers couldn't handle Eric saving Ariel (despite her saving him), and "Snow White", mainly for its CGI nightmare fuel dwarf abominations. I never said anything about Lightyear, and I didn't really know anything about the other one.
My apologies for the error.
Also for replying to a thread without noticing it had slipped beyond the six month limit.
Not my best moment.
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