News Trans character announced
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Yeah. They attempted to handle the subject in the exact same way that they'd handled such things in the 1960s. TNG was not made in the 1960s. Television was not as limited in subject matter and treatment, and the rationale for the old Trek "Trojan horse" - or, if you prefer, "Gulliver's Travels" - approach was way out of date. "The Outcast" was not daringly sneaking something past narrow-minded (and in this case, non-existent) censors; it was simply timid.
And, BTW, some examples of it on TOS played just as "hamfisted" when first broadcast in the 1960s. The less adroit writers often conflated addressing an issue or area of concern with storytelling-by-analogy and the latter rarely went well. Put more specifically, "Balance of Terror" and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" both condemn bigotry but are very different kinds of stories.
Please don't condescendingly fill your post with laughing emojis if you can't defend yourself. He wasn't simply 'announcing a new character' and you know it.
You really seem to have an axe to grind when you think the straight white male is getting disrespected.
Please don't presume to correct other people's posting style.*
I mean, you're recycling the same litany of invalid complaints you've made repeatedly about any decisions to make these shows more representative of the audience than their precursors were a generation ago. I don't think anyone takes that seriously any more.
*I'm aware of the irony here, yes, thank you.
Pretty much all announcements from showrunners are promotional and intended to generate interest by—wait for it—appealing to audiences.
If you have a problem with my posts, simply report them to a moderator.
You really seem to have an axe to grind when you think the straight white male is getting disrespected.
No one said anything about straight white males here?
what does that have to do with anything?
I'm fairly old fashioned, to the point my wife calls me "Grandpa" on occasion. If I'm engaged in a story, it doesn't really matter to me the makeup of the performers I'm watching. They could be all white and I'd be oblivious to the fact.
Star Trek helped me when I was a kid and as a younger adult, it offered me an escape from some pretty horrible things happening in my home. Star Trek gave me a lot. If these characters help someone, young or old, deal with the world or even unpleasantness in their homes, who am I to complain?
Star Trek helped me when I was a kid and as a younger adult, it offered me an escape from some pretty horrible things happening in my home. Star Trek gave me a lot. If these characters help someone, young or old, deal with the world or even unpleasantness in their homes, who am I to complain?
You really seem to have an axe to grind when you think the straight white male is getting disrespected.
Yep.
I mean, I remember them making a pretty big deal when they announced the new captain was going to be Malfoy and Spock was going to be played by Atticus's grandson.
No one said anything about straight white males here?
I think that’s called a strawman.
I'm sure that in 1966 TOS was considered to be virtue signaling of its time with a black female communications officer, a Scottish chief engineer, an Asian helmsman and a half-alien first officer and science officer. Every Trek series "virtue signals." Even ENT as conservative as many fans seem to think the series is with it's "George W. Bush" shoot-from-the-hip cowboy mentality has a Japanese communications officer and translator, a black helmsman, a British armory officer and an alien chief medical officer with multiple spouses.
We know Dr Culber is the long-term partner of Lt Stamets, presumably having followed his partner to the assignment on the Discovery.
We know he's not the chief medical officer.
We know he pursued medicine after a serious fall during hiking on a cliff side when he was a teen, inspired by a passing doctor also hiking in the area who climbed after him to stabilize him and patch him up.
We know he met Paul planet-side (I forget which planet) in a cafe, and where he decided to counter Paul's innate tendencies to be rude and grumpy by inviting himself to Paul's table (and "simply never leaving again").
We know he loves Kasselian opera.
We know he has a living mother.
We know that he's a man of integrity since he was the quintessential Starfleet officer during season 1, actively and without batting an eye refusing to follow Saru's unethical order to exploit the tardigrade further.
We now that he was much more accepting of Burnham than the other crew members, since he helped her without hesitation when she first came to him about Ripper.
We know he cares deeply about Paul but will not take his crap lying down. (Or sass from Reno, while we're at it.)
We know that his favorite food is a Caribbean rice dish (I forget what it's called).
We know he can geek out about wedding party planning with Reno.
We know he doesn't appreciate people hitting on Paul (separated or not), or to be called "Papi".
We know he's a bit too trusting when it comes to finding out about the existence of a sleeper agent (like, dude, call it in before you tell what you suspect is a Klingon spy what you just found out about him, sheesh).
We know he's resourceful enough to protect himself from the JahSepp.
We know he has serious PTSD and body dysphoria after his reconstitution.
Like, for a secondary character? I know a lot about him.
No, there couldn't.
Let me explain something to you about how fiction works: whatever isn't part of it, isn't part of it.
The reason for that is...now, this is important: it's all made up.
Take a moment to process that, if necessary. I guess I could have put it in a Morpheus meme or something, but I don't have the patience.
That's right, fictional characters have no lives or experiences other than those that are included in the fictional representation. They have no characteristics other than those that are part of the fictional representation, explicitly or explicitly.
When someone infers a thing about a fictional character that is not part of their limited existence within the fiction, they are inventing or adding something to the character, no matter how much "evidence" the person creating that thing cites for their interpretation.
Yeah, I know that's confusing. Let's take a completely made-up hypothetical example to help you work through it:
I invent and write about a character named, oh, Mumblemore. I do not, in the many reams of turgid prose that I may churn out which includes Mumblemore, establish anything specific about her sexuality.
A lot of my (hypothetical) readers are quite certain that she's this or she's that. They can point to various thematic markers or provide their interpretations of her behavior, etc.
But in fact there is no Mumblemore except what is on the page. As the writer, I might have a very definite orientation for the character in mind. Or, I may never have given it any thought at all.*
I might one day decide that it suits me to declare her to be gay, or straight, or bi, or whatever, and to make that declaration public to my readership for any reason I choose, be it noble or self-serving self-promotion. Along the way, I might change my mind three or four times about the whole thing. I can do that because she has no sense of her personhood, no identity in the sense that human beings understand ourselves to consciously have.**
Because she's not real.
TL;DR: If the writers decide in season two of Strange New Worlds that James T. Kirk is bi, he's bi. And that's the truth.
*If you think that's not common among writers, no matter how great or wretched they may be, I won't spoil the whole Santa Claus thing for you here. Never you mind about the Easter Bunny.
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I just hope they have time to develop these new characters. Expectations will be high now.
I love DSC, but they've really struggled with character overload syndrome. They intro characters, and don't have enough time or material to use them meaningfully. Or, they retain older characters, and we have the same problem.
I love DSC, but they've really struggled with character overload syndrome. They intro characters, and don't have enough time or material to use them meaningfully. Or, they retain older characters, and we have the same problem.
As long as they don't shoehorn 99% of their respective character development into just one episode the way they did with Airiam. Then kill one or more of them off in a disaster.
Even Saru kind of got that treatment last season. He had his little
"Saru arc" and then did nothing in the back half of the season. Tilly almost the same thing.
You certainly know how to make people feel welcome.
I agree: It's the story that counts, and it shouldn't matter if all characters were black, and/ or women, and/ or gay. I don't know why there's always this drama whenever a queer character is announcced.
Of course there could have been queer characters in past trek (the Nineties - probably not before that time). Even just mentioned in passing. It could be that the commander mourning his spouse has a picture of his husband on his desk, not of his wife. It could be Dax mentioning in passing that one of the symbiont's past female hosts was married to another female, and so on. It does not have to be the dramatic focus to simply... exist.
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