My gripes with Asian casting and character naming in Paramount+ Trek

Well, SNW season 2 will probably be 2260 at the latest. So there could be a few years of other personnel between the two Kyles or the two Mitchells.

 

It's what I would do. I would not want to repeat TOS's over-representation of white people and of men in a future that's supposed to be egalitarian, but I like the idea of a nice little wink to the audience by having a pilot named Mitchell and a transporter chief named Kyle. The vast majority of audience members won't even recognize the reference, but it would be a nice Easter Egg for those who notice.

 

They should've had a transporter chief called Mitchell and a navigator called Kyle, that way no one would be confused!

 

Though it would've been nice to have, say, a transporter chief named Kao and a navigator named Michinaga.

 

I would've definitely preferred that over the bizarre Easter egg we got.

 

how is it an easter egg? They're recurring characters.

 

Their names are a reference to TOS characters that only fans would get.

 

You could say that about most of the main cast

 

There's a difference between making a reference to a character, and straight up using that character, and Jenna Mitchell isn't about to change her name to Gary any time soon.

 

The X Men movies did it all the time.

No sweat.

 

We need even more fantastic Asians.

 

I don't often agree with everything you say, but damn... this is a good post, Christopher!

Doing something that doesn't have to be done isn't lazy. It's more like making extra effort.

 

What aggrieves me even more about PIC season 3 is their sole Bajoran, Lieutenant Matthew Arliss Mura, doesn't have a Bajoran-style name. We are left to assume that he was adopted by humans who passed their naming style onto him because the writers thought was more important to glorify human influence. I liked the Bajorans distinctly being surname-first in TNG and DS9!

(I can go into a long rant about the inherent racism of the adoption industry, but that may be out of scope of this thread.)

 

Why assume Mura is adopted? He may be half Bajoran/ half human.

 

https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1621923442101751808

In his Twitter thread detailing the Titan senior staff in advance of the season, Terry Matalas stated Mura to be Bajoran alongside other trivia about species, pronouns, relatives, and such. That strikes me as a definitive statement, and leaving out Mura being half of another species would be a pretty significant flaw in Matalas's presentation skills.

 

So he is a namesake, or it's an additional name taken on by him in honor of someone who died.

 

We East Asians don't do that. So just because it is possible for the character does not mean I have to respect it.

 

But Bajorans might?

 

"Sole Bajoran"? There was at least one other Bajoran in Picard S3, though mentioning her directly would be considered a spoiler.

Did it upset you when Voyager disregarded this? You know, with Tal Celes who was repeatedly addressed as "Crewman Celes" and called "Tal" by her friends.

That's not definitive at all. According to onscreen canon, there is no information at all indicating whether Mura was adopted, is half human or whatever. Matalas can post all he wants on Twitter, but his tweets are not canon.

*Realizes we're in the SNW forum.*

Any further discussion of Mathew Arliss Mura, his name, backstory and whatever should be handled in the Picard forum.

 

It bugged the hell out of me. I made my own "headcanon" that Tal Celes was a normal Bajoran name, but most people just called her the wrong names. If they were going to establish her as having a different naming convention, that'd be fine, though.

Also, I forgot she existed, and was another character named Tal. Why do people love to make aliens with one syllable names ending with L? IIRC, Marco Palmieri had to put a moratorium on characters named Kel back when he was the Star Trek editor.