Star Trek Picard season 3

[clearspira]

So it's kind of weird that latest episode had an aside just to establish that Shaw is deliberately deadnaming Seven to piss her off. Like did they think he was getting too likable or something? In real life that kind of open blatant bigoted harassment would cost him his job. Like seriously what, does he do the same thing when people get married and take a new surname?

Data pulling a Durkon was pretty cool.

Exhibit 123424252 that the ''liberal left wing utopia'' of Star Trek is actually far more right wing than the fans of all colours actually like to admit. In real life this bigot would be effed five ways from Sunday. And the irony, Trek has never changed has it? Not really. McCoy going on his racist rants would have seen him turfed out of the service too.

And this just personifies really what i've been thinking about this franchise in general for a while. Sorry to rant here slightly, but the older I get, the more I realise that Star Trek is overall pretty shit and always was. To quote Fry from Futurama: ''You know. 1966? 79 episodes, about 30 good ones.''

And that does encapsulate really the entire experience of all Star Trek. For every Best of Both Worlds, City on the Edge of Forever, In the Mirror Darkly; there are ten forgettable or outright awful episodes in between. Statistically, you are more likely to get crap when you turn into an episode of Trek then something that blows your mind.

[Frustration]

That's true of virtually everything.

[Lazerlike42]

So it's kind of weird that latest episode had an aside just to establish that Shaw is deliberately deadnaming Seven to piss her off. Like did they think he was getting too likable or something? In real life that kind of open blatant bigoted harassment would cost him his job. Like seriously what, does he do the same thing when people get married and take a new surname?

Data pulling a Durkon was pretty cool.

Exhibit 123424252 that the ''liberal left wing utopia'' of Star Trek is actually far more right wing than the fans of all colours actually like to admit. In real life this bigot would be effed five ways from Sunday. And the irony, Trek has never changed has it? Not really. McCoy going on his racist rants would have seen him turfed out of the service too.

And this just personifies really what i've been thinking about this franchise in general for a while. Sorry to rant here slightly, but the older I get, the more I realise that Star Trek is overall pretty shit and always was. To quote Fry from Futurama: ''You know. 1966? 79 episodes, about 30 good ones.''

And that does encapsulate really the entire experience of all Star Trek. For every Best of Both Worlds, City on the Edge of Forever, In the Mirror Darkly; there are ten forgettable or outright awful episodes in between. Statistically, you are more likely to get crap when you turn into an episode of Trek then something that blows your mind.

I'm sure this is an especially popular opinion, but I suspect that a society cannot survive for long enough to achieve something like interstellar travel if it's long embracing the more extreme ideas of being "woke" or cancel culture, etc. That doesn't mean that anyone should be able to say literally anything they want with no consequences, but I do think that there's a degree of any kind of "undesirable" speech and opinions that a society needs to be able to tolerate to last for very long.

Just to give one in-universe example, if McCoy had been kicked out of Starfleet - or even society - his absence would have had severe repercussions. We know that he saved members of the crew countless times. At a minimum, without McCoy Spock would almost certainly have died during the 5 year mission, and think of all the galaxy-changing repercussions that would have caused - everything from the probable extinction of the Klingon Empire to the destruction of the Earth by V'Ger to who knows what else, and then on top of that we have secondary effects such as the takeover of the entire quadrant by the Dominion for lack of the Klingons, etc. We also know that apart from saving the lives of the crew that McCoy developed all sorts of treatments over his career which obviously would have had long-ranging repercussions.

The point is that a huge part of the reason that the entire Federation even exists by the time of Picard and company is that McCoy was in the service a century earlier. If he'd been cast out because he made some quips about Vulcans from time to time - quips made, by the way, to a Vulcan that he very obviously in fact respected a great deal - then chances are there may be no Klingons or humans - or at least only a small remnant - by the end of the 23rd century.

[hammerofglass]

A casually racist and sexist attitude was socially acceptable when McCoy was being written, an expected mainstream norm in fact. 1966 was back in the "single women can't open bank accounts and interracial marriage is illegal in half the country" dark ages. Shaw has no such defense.

[Al-1701]

The reason why "woke" and "cancel culture" is an issue is because we have a dwindling but increasingly radical part of society that holds on to regressive beliefs. And those who bellyache the most about cancel culture are its most prolific practitioners (see: Tennessee).

What really holds us back is the belief skin color, sex, where our ancestors came from, who we love, and whether our minds agree with our bodies makes some of us less than.

[Madner Kami]

McCoy's racism gets overblown for no good reason. What he did was bantering with a friend. Not once you'll find McCoy treating anyone as not on the same level as he is as an individual. At worst, he comments on alien culture from a very human and emotional position (which is the entire point of the character btw. as opposed to Spock's value- and emotion-free aka inhuman logic and both serve as a sort of Kirk's concious and subconcious thoughts and actions) and treats other societies sceptical and, by necessity, pointing out (percieved) flaws.

Plus, especially and particularly during TOS, aliens aren't so much entirely different species. They're representations, "shadows" of particular human aspects. We make fun these days of the monocultures you'll usually find in Trek, but that has it's roots in this story-telling device. So, what McCoy is ultimately doing is, criticizing flaws in modern-day humanity.

[CmdrKing]

McCoy's comments on Spock definitely cross the line from a game between friends to racist, at least at times. Spock more or less says as much in "All Our Yesterdays". But it's also worth remembering that McCoy's worst comments to Spock generally arise from either exasperation or myopia; McCoy sees Spock as callous because he hasn't really figured out Spock generally expresses himself through action when he's actually concerned about something. And to be fair to him there are definitely times Spock really is lost in the logic sauce and needs called out on that shit, even if doing it with racial identifiers is... a choice.

The intent with Shaw seems to be in line with earlier seasons of Picard, where synths and (ex)Borg are, in the early 25th century, still an acceptable bigotry. Especially moral people like Picard will call it out, but the average person will usually let it slide and assume there's a good reason for it because they're a bit uncomfortable with the topic themselves because they've never met a Borg or a Synth but they've heard some terrible stories.
It's not unlike, say, trans people in the current political discourse.

[Frustration]

And Spock is initially convinced that humanity's reliance on emotion makes them inferior. He slowly comes around, and still uses those ideas to twist McCoy's nose, but if we're going to seriously consider McCoy as racist we need to indict Spock as well.

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like 99% of all discourse regarding "Woke" "Cancel Culture" and "Liberal Values" boils down to the fact that they're literally something that means something completely different to the Right and Left. So when they're discussing it, they are not actually remotely sharing any real dialogue.

Which means internet activism is mostly pointless.

Guy 1#: I'm against pedophilia!

Guy 2#: Yeah, so am I.

Guy 1#: You can't be because you're woke!

Guy 2#: What?

And being a full anarchist that I am, I'm quite happy pointing out this is hardly one side or the other. I blame entirely the politicians and media for creating this Orwellian nightmare we call civil discourse.

[stryke]

See I put a lot of that down to the nature of the internet.

Now in many ways the net is great. It's how I make my living after all. However it does make it far too easy to form bubbles online where outside voices simply don't get a look in.

The example I always go to was when a sports figure I hadn't been aware of before died and by visiting different sites that I go to at least a couple of times a week there were five very destinct reactions. They went from 1) full on gleeful grave dancing as this guy did bad stuff, 2) restrained celebration as others died too, 3) a relatively neutral take on the guy where both the good and bad stuff were mentioned, 4) they did such good stuff that will be greatly missed, 5) full on mourning, and if you dare bring up the bad stuff which were all lies anyway then it's you who are scum.

Far too many people end up just getting one of those.