Gene gets much bad talk around here....

I think most of the fandom do give a lot of credit to Coon, especially in that without him the third season suffered a lot. Fontana probably is still too overlooked but big fans realize she did contribute a lot especially to Spock.

Edit:

I don't know about outright progressive but it actually does seem at least pretty inclusive even for today to admit that submissives exist and make mistakes and regret and correct them. Khan is obviously dominating but him declaring "Go! Or stay. But do it because it is what you wish to do" seems far from misogynist, likewise him and the episode concluding that Marla being willing to join Khan in the challenge is admirable.

I also don’t see how it’s either rare or offensive to have and intend to have female characters in a movie or show be attractive, appealing to male viewers.

 

If you don't see how that entire subplot is a misogynistic writing that perpetuates bigoted tropes about women needing/wanting men to tell them what to do in their lives and about the supposed threat represented by brown men to white women, then I don't really know what to say other than that you need to read more feminist and critical race theory.

 

He's taking a look at it from a truly alternate point of view and you're trying to get the righteous mob ready. High priest, thy appropriator of Boliviana, oh what books and scrolls must we read so that we may be halfasmuch pure and wokeful as thou art?

 

Siiiiiiiiigh. "I don't know what to say except you need to read more X" is what I say when I'm ending an interaction because the amount of effort it would take to make someone realize he's wrong is not worth the continued interaction.

No one was preparing to get any "righteous mob" ready. Back the fuck off with the "we're victims" bullshit. The interaction was ending.

 

"I'm right. You're wrong."

The end of discourse.

How arrogant.

 

Wait, I thought I was the one who was allegedly going to call up a mob? Yet I've now got two people piling on after I ended an interaction.

You can die mad about the fact that I'm not willing to compromise on calling out white supremacy and misogyny when I see it.

 

I think everyone in Star Trek (men and women and so on) ought to be conventionally attractive, because it's a sign of the advanced state of medical technology. Star Trek is one of the few shows I can think of where the casting of Hollywood actors makes the most sense.

 

I guess if they can make Kirk look Romulan. Then not. They can make anyone look like anyone. So I can look even better than I do. Never thought of that.

By Picard's time, of course humanity has evolved so that looks don't matter any more, ha ha!

 

But in such an enlightened society, people shouldn't care about being attractive.
#genesvision

 

Symmetry, health, youthfulness (to males) and strength/dominance (to females) are in our genes to be attractive. It's what got genes passed on better than the alternative and so we inherit these predilections.

The real meaning of "genes' vision."

 

Was he a good man? Not really, no.

But some of the most admired people in history, who inspired millions and millions of people to do good, were not good people either. For example, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and John Lennon weren't exactly good people themselves (while even people like MLK Jr. were very flawed human beings) and yet, if you told every single one of their admirers of the kind of human beings these people really were while they were alive, it wouldn't matter to them. Why? Because their message of a better future for everyone is what matters to people. This is why so many people admire Gene Roddenberry.

 

So...follow the message, not the messenger?
Sounds good to me

 

Pretty much!

 

I think there is the need to acknowledge the humanness of the creator. But, I do not find Gene to be admirable besides making Star Trek. I think his contributions were sufficient to warrant the admiration around that, but if his ultimate message is "be a better human" I can find that in a number of other places.

 

Roddenberry was a human being. Deeply flawed, like most of us. Among other things, he was obsessed with (as a friend of mine once put it about somebody entirely different) "getting his pee-pee wet." And he was a world-class chiseler, writing all-but-unsingable lyrics to the Star Trek theme for the sake of getting a piece of the royalties, and eventually disregarding the enormous contributions made by Coon, Fontana, Solow, Justman, and the cast members and freelance screenwriters themselves.

But he was also a genius, with a profoundly optimistic vision, and an idea for getting meaningful stories past the network censors, and an ability to get very good people working for him. And he started a franchise that has spread that optimistic vision to an extent no other has, despite cancellations, and despite repeatedly waxing and waning in popularity.

One of the churches I attend had a recent clergy crisis. The rector was found to have had his hand in the collection plate for almost his entire tenure, and he was found to have had a history of that. This revelation did much to explain how somebody originally ordained a Nazarene elder ended up as an Episcopal priest. The revelation traumatized most of the congregation. Personally, I was actually relieved: for some reason, any time I was one-on-one with him, I kept hearing Marina Sirtis in the back of my mind, uttering Troi's cliche'd line, "He's hiding something." He could have been hiding far worse. At any rate, I bring up this defrocked-for-life priest because for all his faults, he preached many excellent sermons, and attracted and retained many superb associate priests.

As to that Khan line ("Go! . . . Or stay, but do it because it is what you WISH to do.") always sounded to me like he was entirely aware that he was a sexist and an "augment-ist," and was consciously struggling with his own tendencies because he genuinely cared for McGivers, in a way he'd never cared about anybody before.