STEPhon IT mentioned offensive
Then why ask me?
In their respective pilots both Mayweather and Laforge were "the black guy as the driver of the ship," both were young, positive and enthusiastic. They had the same starting point.
Ok, but not sure how that affects things, every character has a starting point, the fact of there being superficial similarities has no bearing on my point. On the contrary it actually reinforces it by illustrating just what could have been done with that starting point.
LaForge being well developed came later, Mayweather had a interesting backstory that TPTB choose not to expand upon. He should have been a fount of knowledge and experience to Archer, but this wasn't explored.
Absolutely, couldn't agree more, he kept being referred to as having experience and a background in space that was barely touched on or exploited by the writers. This is exactly my point, LaForge (or in the comparison I actually used - Sisko) became a worthwhile part of the show, he contributed something more than simply being black.
LaForge represents strong writing which gave black people a real character they could identify with. For those open to persuasion, you had a positive, human example of black empowerment that would challenge their preconceptions. It's hard to see LaForge as a stereotype, in fact he's quite a strange, oddball character who is also decent, intelligent and hardworking.
Mayweather simply represented a demographic, he was there precisely because there had to be someone on the helm and they may as well be black. He didn't challenge any preconceptions because the only meaningful preconception was that there would be a black guy in there and there was. Rather than challenging anything, he reinforced the perception that TV shows are tokenistic in representing minorities, they do it for the ratings and to avoid being accused of racism.
He wasn't offensive, I'm not sure why you'd challenge me on that when I neither stated nor implied he was. However he singularly failed to bring anything of note to the franchise, precisely because his inclusion was tokenistic.
Whether that comes down to the writers directly or his lack of acting talent is immaterial, in either case people involved in either casting or writing him made it clear they simply didn't care enough about the character to make a decent showing.
