That's also how I feel about the episodes of Voyager when the crew bullied B'elanna into being more Klingon "like her kind is supposed to be"
Worf sucks in Birthright.
- Thread starter gakelly
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That's also how I feel about the episodes of Voyager when the crew bullied B'elanna into being more Klingon "like her kind is supposed to be"
Only two episodes I remember that being a thing... "BARGE OF THE DEAD", which all those scenes were a hallucination, and "DAY OF HONOR", and the only reason Tom was getting Torrres into the holodeck for that ceremony was because it was her idea in the first place.
If anything, the crew was trying to get her to keep her temper in check, not goad her into being more Klingon.
If anything, the crew was trying to get her to keep her temper in check, not goad her into being more Klingon.
It’s crazy how openly racist Starfleet characters are written but never in a way that’s supposed to show racism as “bad”, just factual. Even as recently as Picard someone calls Romulans all sneaky, and the Romulan is just like “yup”.
There was an episode where they threw a whole Klingon party for her and shoved Klingon food at her and (I think) Neelix sang Klingon songs and she was very mad about them doing this to her, but everybody just laughed it off and in a later scene Tuvok goaded her to fight him with a bat-leth (or however it is spelled) etc.
I can't remember what episode it was, but I remember being annoyed by it, and so was she.
For it's Alien characters Star Trek frequently seemed to have this idea of culture being genetic and natural for anybody who is even remotely related to a Klingon or other alien species (but most often it was Klingon)
Paris was a intra-human racist from the pilot. He kept calling Chekotay an “Indian” and asking him if he had magic powers.
One of the many things that irked me about DS9 was the planet-of-hats racism. People outright talking about how they can’t help their nature as this alien or that. Human was the only species that couldn’t be pinned down and it was seen as a pinnacle to strive for. Nog, for instance, was congratulated for rising above his inborn greed and cowardice to be able to fight with the humans. That one was particularly odd, since the Ferengi had a military that shot down the Stargazer, knocked out an away team, and was rumored to eat their opponents.
Yeah Chekotay was an unfortunate character in general, from his made-up background that was just a hodge podge of cliches sold to them by a conman to his own episode where teenage Chekotay had to learn that he has to conform completely and unquestionably to his genetic heritage, just like B'elanna.
While I feel that DS9 treated its alien characters better than the other Trek shows at the time (for example they made it pretty clear that the Cardassian stereotype was imposed through their government, with a number of rebels being shown), I agree that they were often very stereotypical when it came to Ferengi and Klingons. But even here I'd say neither Nog, nor Rom nor Quark completely confirmed to the stereotypes. But yeah the idea of a "species personality" was often quite frequent.
And then there was the idea of species-segregated afterlives they brought up after Jadzia's death...
That was "BARGE OF THE DEAD".
Which is your choice.
They were denied it. The Romulans forced them to be "civilized" by their standards.
Basically, Star Trek lets you choose and celebrate your heritage or not.
This bugs me too. Everyone on a planet has the same ideas, religious beliefs, and worldviews (or universeview). Each member of a race is some cardboard cutout.
Yeah, it's like there are about a million of these planets right here, on Earth. I mean we have everything here already, religious nuts, warhawks, greedy bastards, sadistic assholes... you name it.
What do we even need starships for if all we ever find is all of these only one instance for each planet?
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