Admiral X wrote:
The idea with Neelix being a shithead, though, that honestly makes me cringe, although that would totally be within how the show was written. If I was making VOY, he'd have been something more along the lines of Malcolm Reynolds, and Kes would've been the real guide, and something a bit more along the lines of Sacajawea but way more mysterious.
Like I said, that only works with the character as is. And making you cringe is half the point as it could be used as an allegory for those people who buy a feathered headdress and think that gives them some connection to native Americans or who spout the native Americans were pure and in touch with nature until Europeans came and corrupted him. Basically using it to attack the offensive stereotypes about native Americans.
But again, only if Nelix was how they presented as is; like I said a couple of times on the old forum, I'd have had Nelix radically different (more like Ahab from the pitcher plant episodes) and have him be a gruff and rough but deep down grandfatherly man, in which case the above scenario wouldn't work.
I am surprised anyone ever thought anything good about this episode. I thought this one was horrifically racist and terrible when I first saw it back in high school. Not to mention more magic interaction between Delta Quadrant and Alpha Quadrant nonsense.
You'd think there was another DS9 wormhole that Voyager just drove past one day early in Season 2... honestly, it'd pretty damn funny and make a ton of sense what with all the contrived connections... hmm....
The funny thing about Chakotay is that the problem isn't even that he's got this weird mishmash of cultures that he follows, because given the deliberate attempts to destroy Native American culture and WW3 a lot of the actual culture has been and would be lost. So if Chakotay's culture was basically whatever they could recover, which would include a lot of Hollywood stereotypes, that would work. There's a bunch of different ways you could play that. Like for all that humanity has advanced we have done some damage to ourselves and each other that will never heal.
Or for a look at Chakotay's past and perhaps giving him a reason to have became a Maquis, Chakotay's people settled their planet as a sort of new Turtle Island. A homeland they could go to and rediscover their heritage that all sorts of tribes flocked too. Then came the treaties with the Cardassian's, once again a group of far away other's were deciding what would happen with their land. For Chakotay, having considered his heritage of little importance and considering himself a 24th century human rather than a Native American, this hits him completely unexpectedly and he finally starts identifying more with his people. It causing a revelation for what it must have been like for his ancestors and why so many of his people cling to what traditions he has. With this revelation Chakotay embraces his people's traditions and leave's starfleet to fight the Cardassians.
Instead we get them trying to play this garbage straight and Chakotay embraced his culture because... why again?
Nessus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2017 2:28 am
To my mind, this is really damning to the producers who though this all was a good idea. Either they didn't notice, or they thought no-one else would notice: either way makes them FANTASTICALLY out of touch with even superficial pop-culture osmosis native-culture awareness in the US.
In fairness, I never noticed these things back in the '90s and I wonder how many people would without the internet.
We used to argue whether Star Trek or Star Wars was better. Now we argue which one is worse.
planescaped wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 6:12 am
I am surprised anyone ever thought anything good about this episode. I thought this one was horrifically racist and terrible when I first saw it back in high school. Not to mention more magic interaction between Delta Quadrant and Alpha Quadrant nonsense.
You'd think there was another DS9 wormhole that Voyager just drove past one day early in Season 2... honestly, it'd pretty damn funny and make a ton of sense what with all the contrived connections... hmm....
Given how well “hidden” the DS9 wormhole was due to being artificially created, this is very possible. Can you imagine?
“Ben Sisko returned. Guess what? The prophets made a whole bunch of wormholes. Janeway, did you realize that Voyager actually passed right by four wormholes that would have lead you directly to the Alpha Quadrant.”
