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

[Christopher]

So TOS Chief Kyle will take over Transporter Room from SNW Chief Kyle...

and TOS Lt. Mitchell will take over Navigations from SNW Lt. Mitchell...

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.

 

[Sci]

Using the same names is the best 'tip of the hat' they can come up with ? That's lazy.

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.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

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

 

[Christopher]

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

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

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

 

[Tuskin38]

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

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

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

 

[Tuskin38]

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

You could say that about most of the main cast

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

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.

 

[fireproof78]

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.

 

[Ragitsu]

We need even more fantastic Asians.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I do think SNW tends to overuse established characters, and I see no reason for the transporter chief to be Kyle. But in general terms of new adaptations of old works, the answer is that the characters in those works are overwhelmingly white, which is unrealistic in this day and age and often would have been at the time (for instance, the Old West had far more people of color in it than you'll see in most Westerns). So it makes no sense for a modern production to perpetuate that unrealistic bias.

Also, saying "people of color shouldn't be allowed to play legacy characters" is just one more way of perpetuating white privilege, of saying that a monopoly rooted in racism should be preserved rather than torn down. Ideally, every role should be open to the best actor for it. They're all imaginary, after all. Characters have no absolute reality, so it's easy to change them to fit actors. There have been productions of Shakespeare where noted actresses have played King Lear or Prospero. To insist that an imaginary creation must be immutable is misunderstanding the nature, and the power, of creativity.

Gene Roddenberry apparently approached Star Trek as a dramatization of Kirk's logs rather than a literal depiction, and thus was perfectly fine with making changes to correct earlier shortcomings. When he had the Klingons redesigned for TMP, he asked fans to accept that they'd always looked that way and TOS had simply gotten it wrong due to limits of budget and technology. So I'm sure he'd be just as fine with saying that, say, Robert April was always black and "The Counter-Clock Incident" just drew him wrong.

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

Using the same names is the best 'tip of the hat' they can come up with ? That's lazy.

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

 

[Enterprise1701]

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.)

 

[Enterprise is Great]

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

 

[Enterprise1701]

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.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

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

 

[Enterprise1701]

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.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

But Bajorans might?

 

[The Wormhole]

What aggrieves me even more about PIC season 3 is their sole Bajoran, Lieutenant Matthew Arliss Mura, doesn't have a Bajoran-style name.

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

I liked the Bajorans distinctly being surname-first in TNG and DS9!

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.

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.

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.

 

[ToddCam]

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.

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.