I would like to see German character like Oliver Khan.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
I thought you don't count German villain characters?
Star Trek discriminate Germans
- Thread starter MiroslavSFCenter
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I thought you don't count German villain characters?
And that means what, exactly? I've lived in the U.S. my entire life and I run into names I've never heard of all the time. Whether you've run into it or not has nothing to do with whether it's a German name or not.
Here's a page ancestry.com on the Riker family in case you're interested: http://www.ancestry.com/facts/riker-family-history.ashx
I checked my local phone book, and dang if there aren't several Rikers listed as well as Riecks, Rieckers and Rieckses. Now, that doesn't mean they are of German descent, of course, because although there are a lot of people of German ancestry in Indianapolis, there are lots of other ethnic and national groups as well. But...they had to come from somewhere. Why not Germany? That i-e-c-k combination of letters is certainly not unknown in Germanic names.
I thought you'd be pleased to know that someone of German ancestry was so prominent in Trek. But no, huh? Does the person has to be overtly German in order to count? I'm not sure I get what's going on here. What would make a person German enough for you? I'm not being sarcastic; I'd really like to know.
I merely wanted to point out that neither Riker nor Rieck sound at all German to me. I can accept that they are. But that doesn't change the fact that they don't sound German to my 26 years old ears.
Also I get the impression that you think I was being snarky. I honestly did not want to sound like that. So no reason to be defensive.
Are you talking to me? Because I never said I'd want a German character in Star Trek at all. To be honest, the character's ancestry never really mattered that much to me. All I was trying to do, was to point out that some of the proposed names for German characters didn't sound German to a German ear.
No, I wasn't trying to do that at all. Good thing we cleared that up.
Yup, it certainly is. But it feels much older ...Isn't the rest of you 26 years old, too?
hellsgate
Commodore
Then ~create~ a compelling character of German ancestry/heritage. The beauty of fan fiction!
The descendant of a German Chancellor that took a revolutionary stand after WW3 to see that the time had come, during the creation of the United Earth Government, to finally apologize and ask the (global) Jewish Community "if they would, one day in the future, find it in their hearts to forgive us", for Germany's persecution of the Jews during The Holocaust.
The descendant of a German Chancellor that took a revolutionary stand after WW3 to see that the time had come, during the creation of the United Earth Government, to finally apologize and ask the (global) Jewish Community "if they would, one day in the future, find it in their hearts to forgive us", for Germany's persecution of the Jews during The Holocaust.
Actually I did that once with a friend. Ensign Anja Krüger was her name, if I remember correctly. She was from Berlin and was basically a parody of all German stereotypes we could think of (especially those held by non-Germans). It wasn't a very serious fanfic, I might add. Yeah, maybe I am. But sometimes I feel so very old. Man, I shoud stop before this gets too personal ...
How well are non Germans represented on German produced television shows?
You see, I can play this silly game too..
You see, I can play this silly game too..
Well, to play devil's advocate here, this is about Germans in Star Trek – not Germans in US produced television shows in general.
There aren't many German science-fiction shows. Maybe the most popular one is Raumpatrouille Orion, which had not one single German character in its main cast.
Another type of blatant discrimination is Star Trek: Enterprise opening credits, which contains ONLY American space program, without USSR/Russia (Sputnik, Gagarin, Mir,...), European Space Agency (Ariane program) and other space agencies. Disaster...
Isn't the rest of you 26 years old, too?
No. Are u a MILF?
What load of crap. Jews think that whole world must apologize them for centuries. When you will apologize Palestinians for the 60 years of violence and misery?
And, there is another thing - you collectily acussed one nation, their descendants, for the actrocities made by one portion of the population. How inhuman and insulting. Frankly, Germans are apologize to you quite enough, and pay you quite enough.
Hear hear! As beautiful as it is, it doesn't reflect the spirit of "United Earth." As you said, it doesn't acknowledge
- Earth's first artificial satellite (Sputnik I, but it get's a nod in "Carbon Creek" at least)
- The first earthling in space - (Laika, Sputnik II)
- The first human in space (Yuri Gagarin, Vostok I)
- The first Human woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok VI)
- The first human to ever go on a spacewalk (Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod II)
- Earths first permanently manned space-station (Mir)
This is something I've been trying to fix in my fanfic. Even though my main focus in my writing is the Cardassians (and I've given THEM a little more diversity too, because I think their minorities were underrepresented as well), I've tried to give some diversity to my Starfleet/Federation characters as well. My lead character is Greek and I don't care if people find his surname too long. It is what it is and I refuse to change it.
About the original post: I do find the demographics of Trek strange--but I think what we should've had was a crew reflective of the world's population as a whole. That would mean including all European, African, Asian, and other origins. At the VERY least, the massive populations of India and China should be evident!
German would be in there, of course, but not ahead or behind any other nation in terms of proportional representation.
Keep this kind of discussion out of General Trek, please. If you must discuss what Germany does or does not owe, take it to The Neutral Zone. This forum is NOT the place.
I tried to do the same in my fic, and I still do in my rpg campaigns. But I hardly have to deal with ratings, actors availability, studio decisions and the such. So I can understand why in the official production it turned out like that. Trek Lit, for example, offers a more fair and balanced representation.
I'm sure Captain Clytemnestra Papadiamantopoulos is very proud of you.
Well, I can see your point, but we must remember that what we have seen is just a tiny weeny proportion of the population of Earth and other human colonies. It's hardly a fair or representative sample. So it's expected to have some over- and under-representation. It just happens to be in favour of Anglo-Saxon names.
Seriously, however, I would welcome more diversity in human cultures and ethnicities in Star Trek.
Star Trek did not conciously discriminate against Germans. Or anyone.
You can't get mad at Trek for not having a major German character, because then you'd have to get mad about other ethnic groups and nationalities that are completely ignored. Is there an egyptian, polish, australian, argentinian, brazilian, mexican, inuit, gypsie, palestinian, jewish, middle eastern, etc. etc. etc. officer? NO.
There are so few main characters you can have in a show, and there are over a hundred, or more, people groups to represent. You'd have to spend nearly every episode exploring the culture of another group while presenting a new good guy if you really wanted Trek to equally represent every group of people in the human race.
Not only that, but Star Trek spent alot of the time introducing completely NEW aliens and NEW cultures and exploring fictional civilizations. Also, these aliens- vulcans, betazoids, ferengi, klingons, trills, etc., had to be represented on a ship as a part of the cast. The Federation is not only earth, but alot of other planets that all needed to be somehow represented on the crew of a star ship.
So what are you left with in the Star Trek universe? Hundreds and hundreds of ethnic groups, societies, nations, tribes, and races. This includes not only the numerous cultures of earth but the fictional cultures of other species.
And don't ever forget that Rodenberry put a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise in the middle of the 1960s. That in itself is leaps and bounds forward beyond the horrible sexism and racism of the USA at the time.
They tried hard, by having ethnically diverse characters; having a black captain, a women captain, a russian character, a native-american first officer, an indian doctor, etc. But there's only so much you can do. Yes, Trek tended to be very american-centric and ethnocentric, but you can blame Hollywood for setting the standard of white lead characters and white casts.
The folks that got represented on Trek got represented, and there's nothing you can do about it, and nobody was trying to actively discriminate against anyone.
Stop acting like a victim and enjoy the damn show.
You can't get mad at Trek for not having a major German character, because then you'd have to get mad about other ethnic groups and nationalities that are completely ignored. Is there an egyptian, polish, australian, argentinian, brazilian, mexican, inuit, gypsie, palestinian, jewish, middle eastern, etc. etc. etc. officer? NO.
There are so few main characters you can have in a show, and there are over a hundred, or more, people groups to represent. You'd have to spend nearly every episode exploring the culture of another group while presenting a new good guy if you really wanted Trek to equally represent every group of people in the human race.
Not only that, but Star Trek spent alot of the time introducing completely NEW aliens and NEW cultures and exploring fictional civilizations. Also, these aliens- vulcans, betazoids, ferengi, klingons, trills, etc., had to be represented on a ship as a part of the cast. The Federation is not only earth, but alot of other planets that all needed to be somehow represented on the crew of a star ship.
So what are you left with in the Star Trek universe? Hundreds and hundreds of ethnic groups, societies, nations, tribes, and races. This includes not only the numerous cultures of earth but the fictional cultures of other species.
And don't ever forget that Rodenberry put a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise in the middle of the 1960s. That in itself is leaps and bounds forward beyond the horrible sexism and racism of the USA at the time.
They tried hard, by having ethnically diverse characters; having a black captain, a women captain, a russian character, a native-american first officer, an indian doctor, etc. But there's only so much you can do. Yes, Trek tended to be very american-centric and ethnocentric, but you can blame Hollywood for setting the standard of white lead characters and white casts.
The folks that got represented on Trek got represented, and there's nothing you can do about it, and nobody was trying to actively discriminate against anyone.
Stop acting like a victim and enjoy the damn show.
I think everything that needs to be said has been said. Closing.
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