Can we just pretend that Voyager never happened?

[Melakon]

Critical Care: Laboured essay against Obamacare (or the NHS for those of us in the more civilized parts of the world...) also explores the potential for slavery of AI’s.

I'll take exception to this, because when the episode was originally aired (2000), Obama was still involved in state politics, and relatively unknown at the national level. He even lost a state election that year. He wouldn't be elected president until 8 years later.

However, the episode scenario does resemble how insurance companies were influencing hospital care at the time.

 

[hux]

I've read about suspicions that McCoys accent was fake.

All that Old southern country Doctor spiel is %100 bullshit.

Maybe Chakotay is faking it too, and just making stuff up on the spot.

Why, why on Io would he do that?

To pick up women of course, why else has man ever done anything?

I'm gonna be in America in a couple of weeks

Hopefully it's true what they say about American women going crazy for English accents

Wish me luck everyone

 

[MacLeod]

^I don't know if I would say they go crazy for English accents, as I was there earlier in the year. I managed to escape.


And Lt. Marseille I do like some of the episodes you mention, but haven't many of those concepts and ideas been used before in other shows? So they were hardly twists but rather reuses of Sci-Fi staples

 

[Melakon]

I'm gonna be in America in a couple of weeks

Thanks for the warning.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

What the hell does Critical Care have to do with Obamacare? Critical Care represents the problems in the health care system that Obamacare unsuccessfully tries to address, that rich and powerful get great care and the poor can't even afford basic life saving treatment.

And for The Phage, it is not sympathetic at all to murder innocent people to save yourself.

 

[fireproof78]

You do realise that characterisation is a key component of any storytelling, and how exactly did it fail miserably with DSN?

Naturally I just love being patronized, thanks for that. You do realise that novelistic storytelling focusing on naturalistic character driven narratives isn’t the only way of doing things, don’t you? Perhaps you can tell me the outstanding character traits of King Arthur in Morte d’Arthur? How about Launcelot or Guinevere? More recent? How about Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings? Care to give me a run down of his distinctive foibles? Achilles in The Iliad? Satan in Paradise Lost? Gulliver? What are those guys realistic and down to earth character traits?

You were not addressing this to me, but can I answer that question? Please? How often do you get to discuss such depths of the issues of literary characters?

By the way, I am completely serious. Each of those characters have traits, basic on some levels, that drive the story and inform their motivation.

How they are taken, of course, is up to the individual reader/viewer. Does not mean they do not exist.

 

[Makarov]

I don't know, like when it turned out that the kids were the old people in one episode. That came as a surprise to me.

I actually had a problem with that one ("Innocence") when I saw it in first run. It felt like something I had seen in the 60s or 70s, and the old to young business was definitely mentioned in an old book I had on writing science fiction that called it an overused cliche.

That episode surprised me too, and it's one of my favorites. Tuvok is definitely a TNG level character.

 

[JeffinOakland]

There's a reason why it was never explained. It's because it was absolute completely unadulterated bullshit. In fact the idiot who wrote these lines of crap likely didn't know enough science to outsmart a donkey.

True.

The problem with the "Native American stuff" is that it is a generic amalgamation of details, despite specifically referencing a actual South American tribe. The racism is in the broad strokes, rather than dealing with the specific tribe and working that in to his backstory.

I'm sorry, but I'm still not seeing "racism" here. Racism would be either deliberately making fun of or downright slandering the race/creed/belief system of the particular character. I see nothing of the sort with how Chakotay was portrayed.

It's racist to take different facets of Native American tribes, toss them in a blender and call it a backstory. Racism can take many forms, not just slander or mockery. Even if it isn't always racist, it is ignorant, mostly because the information used to create background was factually incorrect, given by the consultant the writers used.

I don't think every part of Chakotay's character was racist, just that there are elements of it that are. And it really didn't need to be.

Exactly. It's racist because the PTB (obviously mostly middle-aged white men) think its enough to have "minority" characters but don't feel obligated to portray minorities outside of safe, generic white-male assigned stereotypes. Far too often, the inclusion of minories in tv shows by the majority is made to help the majority feel like they're being open-minded by watching a tv show. The focus shifts from equality and inclusion to mollification and self-congratulation. Instead of having Chakotay as the token "Indigenous", they could and should have given him a tribe from the very outset and stuck to the culture and customs of that particular tribe but they COULDN'T BE BOTHERED and that's racist.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They were just lazy and ignorant.

Too lazy to stop being ignorant.

Remember, Berman and Braga used to stand up and Cons and proudly scream "WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THE ORIGINAL SERIES!!!"

 

[JeffinOakland]

Laziness and ignorance are the luxuries of the powerful.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Powerful That Be?

 

[JeffinOakland]

Precisely

 

[Makarov]

Exactly. It's racist because the PTB (obviously mostly middle-aged white men) think its enough to have "minority" characters but don't feel obligated to portray minorities outside of safe, generic white-male assigned stereotypes. Far too often, the inclusion of minories in tv shows by the majority is made to help the majority feel like they're being open-minded by watching a tv show. The focus shifts from equality and inclusion to mollification and self-congratulation. Instead of having Chakotay as the token "Indigenous", they could and should have given him a tribe from the very outset and stuck to the culture and customs of that particular tribe but they COULDN'T BE BOTHERED and that's racist.

Using an actual tribe opens a can of worms. Don't get me wrong I do believe that a dose of reality would have been the right thing to do, made a much stronger story. Using real history makes things harder anytime they needed to add a fictional element, because then you need to be true to history and pay respect to it. It would have been nice, but I'm not tuning into Star Trek to learn actual history or physics.

This is no different with any of the other characters. Picard is some French dude with a winery and Riker is apparently a tough guy from Alaska. It is paper thin for everybody. Screwing up actual history or misrepresenting an actual tribe would be more offensive to me.

Chakotay is one of the few where they actually bother give a backstory. His backstory is rather lazy and bad but this isn't a documentary, they made stuff up on the spot. Frankly his backstory with his dad is better than other characters. It is easy to say it's racist because it's written by white people though.

If I'm remembering that wrong and they actually said he was from an existing tribe, then yeah it's racist though. I thought they just made one up entirely.

 

[JeffinOakland]

There's a reason why it was never explained. It's because it was absolute completely unadulterated bullshit. In fact the idiot who wrote these lines of crap likely didn't know enough science to outsmart a donkey.

True.

The problem with the "Native American stuff" is that it is a generic amalgamation of details, despite specifically referencing a actual South American tribe. The racism is in the broad strokes, rather than dealing with the specific tribe and working that in to his backstory.

I'm sorry, but I'm still not seeing "racism" here. Racism would be either deliberately making fun of or downright slandering the race/creed/belief system of the particular character. I see nothing of the sort with how Chakotay was portrayed.

It's racist to take different facets of Native American tribes, toss them in a blender and call it a backstory. Racism can take many forms, not just slander or mockery. Even if it isn't always racist, it is ignorant, mostly because the information used to create background was factually incorrect, given by the consultant the writers used.

I don't think every part of Chakotay's character was racist, just that there are elements of it that are. And it really didn't need to be.

Exactly. It's racist because the PTB (obviously mostly middle-aged white men) think its enough to have "minority" characters but don't feel obligated to portray minorities outside of safe, generic white-male assigned stereotypes. Far too often, the inclusion of minories in tv shows by the majority is made to help the majority feel like they're being open-minded by watching a tv show. The focus shifts from equality and inclusion to mollification and self-congratulation. Instead of having Chakotay as the token "Indigenous", they could and should have given him a tribe from the very outset and stuck to the culture and customs of that particular tribe but they COULDN'T BE BOTHERED and that's racist.

Using an actual tribe opens a can of worms. Don't get me wrong I do believe that a dose of reality would have been the right thing to do, made a much stronger story. Using real history makes things harder anytime they needed to add a fictional element, because then you need to be true to history and pay respect to it. It would have been nice, but I'm not tuning into Star Trek to learn actual history or physics.

This is no different with any of the other characters. Picard is some French dude with a winery and Riker is apparently a tough guy from Alaska. It is paper thin for everybody. Screwing up actual history or misrepresenting an actual tribe would be more offensive to me.

Chakotay is one of the few where they actually bother give a backstory. His backstory is rather lazy and bad but this isn't a documentary, they made stuff up on the spot. Frankly his backstory with his dad is better than other characters. It is easy to say it's racist because it's written by white people though.

"Its hard so we shouldn't bother" is not much of an excuse. Its racist because its written by one race about another race where the writing race doesn't care if they get the written race right or not. I think it matters because, from the very beginnings of TOS, ST has been seen as a representation of "enlightened" humans who have moved beyond racism and are "cool" with a black woman human with an African last name (Uhuru) being a bridge officer and having authority over white men and kissing (gasp!) a white man.

 

[Melakon]

One reason Chakotay's background is so awful is the creators hired what they thought was a well-known, published, award-winning Native American advisor when developing the character, but he was a fraud who had been discredited several years earlier.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater

 

[Makarov]

I fully believe a staff of any race of writers could write a character that bad using stereotypes of a culture. That's why I would call it bad rather than racist. I would not expect the TNG writers to do an episode on the history of their own race in any less corny or unrealistic fashion.

 

[JeffinOakland]

One reason Chakotay's background is so awful is the creators hired what they thought was a Native American advisor when developing the character, but he was a fraud who had been discredited several years earlier.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater

I remember that. Shame on him for being a fraud. Shame on them for being easily fooled. I wondered if they were so easily fooled because, on a fundamental level, they didn't care. They're professionals. They should have properly vetted him. Also, they could have self-corrected as the series progressed but they chose not to.

 

[JeffinOakland]

I fully believe a staff of any race of writers could write a character that bad using stereotypes of a culture. That's why I would call it bad rather than racist. I would not expect the TNG writers to do an episode on the history of their own race in any less corny or unrealistic fashion.

By racist, I don't mean the virulent racism that comes from hatred or condescension. I mean the "soft racism" of ignorance and indifference. I don't think the writers who designed and developed Chakotay disliked Indigenous Peoples, I think they were ignorant and indifferent.

 

[Melakon]

fraud

I remember that. Shame on him for being a fraud. Shame on them for being easily fooled. I wondered if they were so easily fooled because, on a fundamental level, they didn't care. They're professionals. They should have properly vetted him. Also, they could have self-corrected as the series progressed but they chose not to.

I don't remember when they first approached Highwater, but he might have been consulted when they did Wesley's big send off on the Indian planet near the end of TNG, which was partly to set up their plans for Chakotay, who they were developing that early. The internet as we know it wasn't available then, but they should have had Kellam DeForest's research company on the lot investigate him. Hindsight and all that, you know. The guy had won a Newbery medal, so they thought he was legit.

 

[The Overlord]

I wouldn't sentence Voyager to non existence, I just wish it was a show that ran with its premise and took risks, rather then just using old rejected TNG scripts.

Voyager could have been a daring show, people surviving beyond the frontier, two groups that don't get along forced together to survive in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Instead we got the Maquis assimilated into the Voyager crew within a week, no real lasting consequences (the ship could be a mess one week, but be fine the next) and bland nothing characters like Harry Kim and Chakotay.

Voyager is more disappointing then anything else.