Alternate Star Trek Aesops

[CharlesPhipps]

STAR TREK is full of wonderful aesops that episodes revolve around. However, it's interesting to note that sometimes I think the writers have opinions WILDLY different from what the episodes actually show on screen and what the audience may take from them are completely different if not actually contradictory to what we see on scene.

I was thinking of some of them today and came up with a list. I was curious if anyone here disagreed completely with what was presented as the "intended" episode of an episode or had their own takes.

[CharlesPhipps]

ENT: "Dear Doctor" is often presented as the genocide episode and is such a repulsive act by Phlox and Archer that it drowns out just how fucking EVIL the Valakians are. The episode just kind of completely passes by the fact the Valakians are keeping the entirety of the Menk species in hovels on their own continent except for the ones they use as slave labor. It's a planet that is under a MASSIVE apartheid and Phlox has found out that they're as intelligent as the Valakian people.

The disease actually has the potential to lift the Menk from BONDAGE rather than genetic destiny.
None of this gets examined in the show as Phlox and Archer seem completely okay with, "Oh and half this planet's people are servants of the other half and live in squalor."

Let the disease wipe out the rich, Phlox! Menk of the world unite!

[Yukaphile]

"Terrorism is good" from TNG's "The High Ground" is probably why they distanced themselves from that episode. Let's see... how about "suicide is okay if you're having religious visions?" from DS9's "Rapture?"

[CharlesPhipps]

ENT: "Cogenitor" seems to be an episode where Archer rips into Trip for the fact that he drove Charles to commit suicide. Except, the woman chose DEATH to returning to slavery. Did Archer miss that apparently the Vissians are like the Taliban or the Handmaid's Tale? A gender is kept solely for reproduction, not allowed to read, and subject to constant rape?

And TRIP is the wrong one?

[CharlesPhipps]

"Terrorism is good" from TNG's "The High Ground" is probably why they distanced themselves from that episode.

It also reflects on Kira who is all about learning to live with Cardassians and letting go of hate for much of her character arc but whoever wrote, "The Darkness and the Light" went with, "If you're under an occupation, murdering the children of your enemies and other noncombatants is justified."

[Yukaphile]

"If you're in there, you're guilty" could be an extreme alternate aesop they would not repeat today. I think perhaps that's why, just from what I hear, the writers of the new shows have largely distanced themselves from DS9. And you know, that's fine if they want to go with that approach, but to pull shit like claiming Michael Burnham is the first black lead, which I've seen? NO. That shit does NOT fly. That was Sisko. Now it's a battle over what is more diverse, black man or woman, lol. I personally don't care, but Sisko is my favorite captain, bar none. And the sad part is they claim he didn't do enough for black people and I hear complaints from younger fans that he's a "white man's captain." That's pathetic. "Didn't do enough for black people" in a post-scarcity future where racial differences have been dissolved down to nothing and we want and toil for nothing, really? I notice they haven't brought back Sisko, and they claim it's racism. Is it, though? I hear Avery Brooks is both odd and notoriously difficult to work with, so... if that alone is the reason, I can't begrudge them that. But Sisko was a positive male role model meant to defy the welfare queen stereotype, so to bring him back now runs the risk of undermining that. I'm fine if he doesn't return. Headcanon whatever went wrong in the Celestial Temple. His body was destroyed and only his temporal energy signal remains, or whatever.

[CharlesPhipps]

I mean Avery Brooks in real life was a hippie jazz musician and chef so pretty far from the RL Sisko but he was very smart about using the show to promote elements that he felt were needed in the first black captain:

* That a committed monogamous relationship with Yates would be rare on television for a black man. In direct contrast to the other captains.
* That Yates herself should be black.
* Connecting with Sisko's roots (in this case, New Orleans)

[Yukaphile]

Even so, YOU DON'T MAKE FUCKIN' SISKO INTO A GODDAMNED FOOTNOTE. Shows you that modern marketing practices are venal and hostile to the fans. They just wanna do their own thing, but are being shoehorned into these older franchises. That could be another aesop. "Stay with your own kind." Really, you see very few interracial couples even in the future of Star Trek, which is bizarre, lol. I think black women are gorgeous, but no one sees that as second hat in the 24th century, really.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm still waiting for my Captain Sisko autobiography.

[Yukaphile]

It will be written secondhand, by his son Jake - Benjamin Sisko: Emissary, Hero, Veteran, Father - The Real Story. Similar to what Vir Cotto did with the late Emperor Londo Mollari of the Centauri Republic over on Babylon 5.