Early Criticism: What’s Unfounded and What Isn’t

[flyerdog]

The only thing that achieves is blatantly othering people with disabilities. If you’re only allowing for disabled people to be included in Trek when you make their disability an alien or fantastical aspect, you are effectively saying their disability and way of existing is somehow not “normal”. I don’t mind using metaphor and allegory to talk about important subjects, taking advantage of the fact that the viewer might be able to see the subject in a new light, from another perspective. But actual lived experiences and identities like just being a person with a disability? No, forcing yourself to only included them by way of an allegory is the wrong way, IMHO.

it's not 'normal'. that's why it's called disability..and presents unique challenges.

 

[Starflight]

If you’re only allowing for disabled people to be included in Trek when you make their disability an alien or fantastical aspect, you are effectively saying their disability and way of existing is somehow not “normal”

To defend the idea, from a present-day perspective, it gives the viewer two positive messages:
- in the future, your condition will be curable; your chronic pain/reduced mobility will be a thing of the past, and subsequent generations won't have to deal with what you're dealing with
- at the same time, there are people (in this case, aliens) who live as you currently do naturally; to them, it's an entirely normal aspect of their biology, and you can relate to their experience strongly

Done well, it's the best of both worlds. Done badly, of course, it falls into the pitfalls you're identifying. I think to be done properly, such a character would have to be a recurring crewmember who is fully-defined outside their condition, so it's not a defining trait - less "oh, the writers have decided to do an allegory episode about my disability" and more "great, my favourite character is dealing with the same thing I am".

 

[Michael]

I've never even thought about connecting the two.

Well, I think it could make for an interesting Trek story.

Joy Division singer Ian Curtis famously wrote one of the band’s most well-known songs about a woman with epilepsy: She’s Lost Control. The lyrcis are pretty poignant and frame the seizures as a loss of control. I’m sure a lot of people just listening to it never figured out what it is actually about, which maybe speaks to the universality of how devastating a loss of control can be in any type of situation. I guess one could consider any Trek story where a character gets possessed by an alien entity a story about the loss of control.

it's not 'normal'. that's why it's called disability..and presents unique challenges.

Well, “not being ‘normal’” can be understood as a very negative assessment of a life situation. Many people understand it to mean an “inferior existence” or even a form of life that is not worth living. Personally, I would therefore be very cautious with this term. “Normal” has an unfortunate history; like being used to divide people into “normal” and “abnormal” in order to either push them out of society or outright murdering them.

 

[fireproof78]

If this were a genuinely peaceful utopia, then I would be more sympathetic to that idea, but this is a world where the showrunners want to have their cake and eat it too with the protagonists being able to succeed in combat against dangerous pirates and the like. Are you going to scream ableism against an antagonist character who exploits the opening to lob an EMP weapon against the wheelchair guy's wheelchair? Or do you think the pirate character always has to be respectful against opponents just to move the plot along?

What an odd thing to say.

 

[Turtletrekker]

"'Normal' is what everyone else is, but you are not." -- Tolian Soran

 

[fireproof78]

"'Normal' is what everyone else is, but you are not." -- Tolian Soran

Apparently it's normal to wish people with disabilities not appearing on the space fantasy show.

 

[ichab]

The Problem I have with critique and criticism of critique is how everything has to get focused through a particular lens (mainly Identity) and how if you denigrate something, or even offer input as to WHY something doesn't work, it immediately gets filtered through that lens , or the incorporation of ageism: "Ok, Boomer!"

SFA has plenty of material which violates canon and world building, and criticism of that does not make one the lastest "-ist" or "-phobe"....even though that is often how things are manifested....we've become like Pavlov's dog where honest constructive criticism is not even tolerated, and the "identity alarms" go up immediately.

and boy is there a lot of bad in this show from that standpoint. Just the little I've seen, things like reading glasses, Wheelchairs, Signing Betazoids, Holograms in the gym(????) that same hologram exhaling air when submerged in water...?????? Hologram showering???????????

I don't recall the Doctor from Voyager ever taking a sonic shower.

The Commandant of Starfleet lounging around in bare feet and pajamas?

I wonder if
General R.J. Garcia (Commandant of West Point), or Capt. Austin Jackson (Naval Academy Commander) do this on a daily basis.

further, the need to reinvent canon is not only arrogant, it's lazy..be it ST, SW, or LoTR...

petty differences were put aside and people engaged in discourse without volatility (see the scene from The Savage Curtain where Abe makes a comment towards Uhura, and her response...)

I think one of the biggest problems is this new paradigm of serializing everything, when you have to spread everything over 10 hours as opposed to 1 hr, you have to have filler, or you have to make VERY fast leaps because it's all about the endgame, or series finale.

when you have stand alone one -off episodes, things can be a lot more nutrient dense, to use a metaphor.

Agreed with all the above. This is the first time a Star Trek show has had me questioning the casting of the lead role.Either Hunter did not research on military officers or she just didnt care . She could of even just watched a few episodes of Voyager and taken pointers from Kate Mulgrew. Her lounging around the captains chair like it's a living room sofa is the biggest turnoff for me. It completely destroys any believability for me in her character. She is way too non chalant and has sloppy bearing. No way someone that unsat would make it to that high of rank.

People can claim future or whatever excuses they want, but if the lead character isn't believable then the audience isnt going to care about further watching.

 

[Set Harth]

I’m sure a lot of people just listening to it never figured out what it is actually about, which maybe speaks to the universality of how devastating a loss of control can be in any type of situation.

I only know because of the movie.

It would be kind of like hearing Gandalf saying "Dude, WTF???" to Merry after he drops the armor down the well in The Mines of Moria and wakes the Orcs. :-)

He should have said "Fucking Tooks!" (It was Pippin.)

 

[Fateor]

I think the reality is that having certain disabilities often is a unique thing that results in you having a different experience than able-bodied people. I 100% get where you're coming from though, if a character is defined entirely by the presence of a physical condition or other characters constantly bring it up, then it's poor writing.

If - to pick the easiest example - Melora were to have become a regular cast member on DS9, you'd expect that her disability wouldn't come up 99% of the time, and her use of mobility aids would be entirely unremarkable and not a feature of plots. But, as in real life, there'd be the occasional moment where she's not able to do something that able-bodied people are able to do or is unable to access her aids, at which point (as in real life) she has to improvise or find an alternative, which is where people with limited mobility in real life can be like "oh, yeah, that's me".

If Melora were to have become a regular cast member they probably would have included a throwaway line about O'Brien re-engineering her exoskeleton and just kept her in that most of the time.

Because the wheel chair was just straight up not compatible with Deep Space Nine's set design and that would have unfortunately extended to most "location" shooting too.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Regarding language:

'Star Trek' Legend Robert Picardo on Why the 'Starfleet Academy' Cadets Talk Like Modern Kids

The latest episode of 'Starfleet Academy' will give its young cadets a lesson in diction from the good Doctor himself.

gizmodo.com

 

[Firebird]

Agreed with all the above. This is the first time a Star Trek show has had me questioning the casting of the lead role.Either Hunter did not research on military officers or she just didnt care . She could of even just watched a few episodes of Voyager and taken pointers from Kate Mulgrew. Her lounging around the captains chair like it's a living room sofa is the biggest turnoff for me. It completely destroys any believability for me in her character. She is way too non chalant and has sloppy bearing. No way someone that unsat would make it to that high of rank.

People can claim future or whatever excuses they want, but if the lead character isn't believable then the audience isnt going to care about further watching.

Somehow, I think the audience believes her just fine in the role.

 

[Set Harth]

No way someone that unsat would make it to that high of rank.

Does 'unsat' mean someone who sits wrong?

 

[flyerdog]

Well, “not being ‘normal’” can be understood as a very negative assessment of a life situation. Many people understand it to mean an “inferior existence” or even a form of life that is not worth living. Personally, I would therefore be very cautious with this term. “Normal” has an unfortunate history; like being used to divide people into “normal” and “abnormal” in order to either push them out of society or outright murdering them.

It depends on what lens you are referring to the word "normal". through a social lens, which seems to be EVERYTHING these days, (and in this forum, apparently) it can have connotations, from the practical or even clinical lens there is nothing wrong with the term.

being paralyzed is not normal, mobility and autonomy are 'normal'. having two arms and legs is normal, having one amputated is not normal etc...having a functioning endocrine system is 'normal', type one DM is not normal...and so on....

not everything has to be filtered through a particular lens

 

[flyerdog]

Agreed with all the above. This is the first time a Star Trek show has had me questioning the casting of the lead role.Either Hunter did not research on military officers or she just didnt care . She could of even just watched a few episodes of Voyager and taken pointers from Kate Mulgrew. Her lounging around the captains chair like it's a living room sofa is the biggest turnoff for me. It completely destroys any believability for me in her character. She is way too non chalant and has sloppy bearing. No way someone that unsat would make it to that high of rank.

People can claim future or whatever excuses they want, but if the lead character isn't believable then the audience isnt going to care about further watching.

yeah very strange choice for such a heavyweight actress like Holly Hunter who has played characters with some heft in the past.
maybe she thought it would be endearing, quirky, funny. But the fact remains she is supposed to be in charge of an institution and supposed to garner respect and admiration, that it hard to convey when you are behaving like a pre-adolescent girl.

 

[flyerdog]

Not a disability but I am gay, and I appreciate being part of a group that goes beyond my particular identity.

I'm curious, genuinely,

what is your perspective on how media portrays gay characters? many times in film/TV we see the manifestation of cliches, even today. When I see it I sometimes just shake my head because I have gay friends, and they don't behave in the manner that we often see portrayed on screen...

in fact, unless you asked you'd never know. but Hollywood still likes to engage in caricatures (not always mind you), just wondering what your take is on this.

 

[Michael]

being paralyzed is not normal, mobility and autonomy are 'normal'. having two arms and legs is normal, having one amputated is not normal etc...having a functioning endocrine system is 'normal', type one DM is not normal...and so on....

Well, I suspect all of these life situations are “normal” for a lot of people who are actually facing them. And I think it‘s a presumptuous and rather narrow view to think all of them would see their existences, disabilities and themselves as you are describing here. Who are we to impose our definition of what a “normal” life is on anyone but ourselves?

I'm curious, genuinely,

what is your perspective on how media portrays gay characters? many times in film/TV we see the manifestation of cliches, even today. When I see it I sometimes just shake my head because I have gay friends, and they don't behave in the manner that we often see portrayed on screen...

in fact, unless you asked you'd never know. but Hollywood still likes to engage in caricatures (not always mind you), just wondering what your take is on this.

Honestly, this to me almost sounds like you also don‘t want gay people to stand out in any way when you watch television. Would it be better if their gayness is framed as being the behavior of an alien species?

 

[flyerdog]

Honestly, this to me almost sounds like you also don‘t want gay people to stand out in any way when you watch television. Would it be better if their gayness is framed as being the behavior of an alien species?

Ludicrous....
I'm asking a genuine question to someone whose experiences are different than mine, (maybe I should have private messaged this person then?)...and when he sees caricatures/stereotypes (i thought stereotyping was bad?) in media, what is his perspective and reaction.

edit: i did message him, because I'm genuinely curious

 

[Michael]

Well, I‘m not presuming to speak for Todd. I was just telling you what it sounds like to me, given this entire conversation. You calling a behavior a “stereotype” doesn‘t make it so. Fiction is often working with archetypes and sometimes stereotypes, but that‘s not synonymous with a hurtful or negative stereotype. Frankly, I just find the insinuation that you wish gay characters on television would behave more like your gay friends, as in not be as “stereotypical gay”, a little strange.

 

[flyerdog]

never said "I wish", i think you are projecting there...again depends on the lens

 

[tenmei]

Odd, this thread shows on the main menu but not when I go into the Academy foruk