Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:43 am
GreyICE wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:00 am
Although Memory Alpha tells me Avery Brooks told Entertainment Tonight to go pound sand when they wanted to film the kiss, because he didn't want it sensationalized, so he made a pro-LGBT rights allegory and didn't even get any viewer boost from sensationalism. Avery Brooks, continuing to be an utter class act, and showing why Rick Berman hated his guts at the same time (not that Berman had the balls to do anything about it - this is fucking Sisko here).
Good for him, and I mean that. I believe that's the best way of dealing with such issues - make them seem entirely normal, not sensational.
Definitely some cultural things that are very specifically American here. But one thing I'll note is that Avery Brooks did NOT intend to make it seem entirely normal. It was taboo, and he showed it as taboo.
What Brooks didn't do was sensationalize "two women kissing." What was revolutionary was love - that love didn't have to be between a man and a woman, that it could be between two people regardless of gender. It wasn't "the kiss" that was taboo, but the idea of the relationship itself, and he refused to allow the relationship to be reduced down to a physical act by singling that physical act out.
ChrisTheEnby wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 10:32 am
I guess i have to remind myself i am a younger queer/trans person who discovered Star Trek through netflix and the shows are very old at this point, so i guess i don't understand the full context of the fact that "modern trek" still predates my own existance by a lot. So maybe what happened is just because DS9 and TNG etc. were just "products of their time" and may e it's a little unfair when compared to more modern shows that are as abrave as say modern shows can be more open.
Then again, it's still trobuling that the Trek shows frm this era are still "better" than what the currently airing Trek show is doing.... which is hard to say if it says more about how i'm not giving the older shows enough credit, or the people in charge of say......Discovery are just huge fuck ups when it comes to rep.
it's sad that doing the bare minimum for the time they were made is something that needs to be praised because it's better than the alternative.
Oh no, Jonathan Frakes wanted the non-binary alien to be played by a male actor in The Outcast, and was overruled by Paramount. No less than Woopi fucking Goldberg had to fight to have her explanation of "love" not be "love is between a man and a woman" and only the fact that it was, y'know, Woopi Goldberg - the biggest actor to ever be involved with Star Trek to that point (and I would argue ever) - made them relent and let her say a more broader and inclusive line.
So throw all the bricks you want, Paramount and Berman knew what they were doing. David Gerrold was driven off the show by homophobia for fucks sake. David Gerrold. Just aim the bricks at Paramount, Rick Berman, and to a lesser extend Gene Rodenberry and his despicable lawyer. Moore, Brooks, and the DS9 crew did what they could get away with under the studio limitations, as did the TNG crew.
As an aside, I really liked the relationship subplot in
If Memory Serves. I thought it was nuanced and interesting, and I thought Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rapp did a great job with it. Although I understand if by that point you've written Discovery off, it's certainly a show that makes itself hard to love.
You have a point about Kurtzman's filmography, it really isn't inspiring. In the worst way.