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Star Trek Is Showing More Love To Scott Bakula’s Enterprise
(screenrant.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Enterprise was my favorite star trek. I can't even watch discovery, it's horrible.
I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today's social issues as if they're universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It's not that Disco isn't progressive; it's just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I'd expect that being judged harshly for one's gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I'm all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can't make it work, it just all comes apart.
That rather ignores the fact that Adira was an amnesiac stowaway at the time, with some pretty understandable trust issues.
It also ignores that the characters in the scene in exactly the way you're saying they should have.
The problem I had with that scene (and the whole series, really, especially season 3) was that it framed human culture of the future as being generally oppressive and backwards. Acceptance shouldn't be portrayed as radical or exceptional. It should be normal and taken for granted among humans in the future. Like in TOS, Uhura's role was a big deal for viewers specifically because it was not a big deal for the characters. They just showed us a better future, where a black woman in a respected professional position was normal.
Discovery didn't show us a better future. It showed us a shitty future with a handful of decent people in it. This is just one example, but it's one that stuck in my mind as well.
What, in your view, was "exceptional" about Stamets' acceptance in that scene?
It was presented as exceptional in-universe, from Adira's perspective. The fact that Adira felt weird about it at all paints the culture they grew up in as backwards.
Again, though, that completely removes the context of Adira's character arc.
How so? Perhaps I'm misremembering, but they were born on Earth and raised among humans, right? Does that not say something about the human culture of their time?
They were amnesiac following being joined with the Tal symbiont - they only sorted out these identity issues after Discovery took them to Trill.
I see your point, but I still don't think the scene works, but thinking about it like that makes it much more watchable. My point is that the scene is simultaneously poignant and a throw-away. It's a "big deal" but also just one scene.
By the 32nd century, something like that should be such a non-issue for humans, that it would be like stating just another fact about yourself (amnesia and trust-issues aside), which lends itself to being a throw-away...but that defeats the purpose of the scene. Again, I am all about the message and Stamets' reaction, but it felt very 21st century and on-the-nose.
I'd have preferred if Adira were just non-binary from the beginning and maybe have a quick correction of someone when they were misgendered. Or, let that scene be the reveal of something else, like the symbiont. With that change (I'd have to rewatch the season to see where this scene was in relation to the symbiont reveal), I think the scene would still work while tightening up the writing. I also think it'd get the message across, too.
Now, if the writers really wanted that scene to stay as-is, there are options. Make them an alien from a culture not as enlightened (which would cause other issues) or have this scene play into a bigger theme of Earth backsliding post-Burn (like a Dark Ages) to have mores closer to the 21st century and show the 23rd century crew as horrified by it and work to bring Earth and humanity back toward enlightenment.
This kinda sums up my main problem with Disco. There were great options on the table to realize a concept, but they just wrote it in an awkward way that is unsatisfying (at least to me). Sometimes, that awkwardness reads as performative/lazily progressive.