ENT - Stigma

[tvindy]

And yea not every depiction of a Vulcan needs to be the same. You can depict some of them in a positive light and some can be jerks. Its just why make all of them jerks?!

Well, they weren't all jerks. V'Lar was pretty cool.

[Darth Wedgius]

And yea not every depiction of a Vulcan needs to be the same. You can depict some of them in a positive light and some can be jerks. Its just why make all of them jerks?!

Well, they weren't all jerks. V'Lar was pretty cool.

If I recall correctly, Kov and Tavin from "Fusion" were all right, too. Like V'Lar, IMHO, they weren't very Vulcan Vulcans.

I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but maybe they should have asked Voyager's writers for advice. Tuvok was done well. Though most of the credit for that probably goes to Tim Russ, I think the dialog he was given ran mostly decent-to-good for a Vulcan.

[Draco Dracul]

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both sons of immigrants, I'd say that might have been their intent.

J.S. and J.S. were probably both sons of legal immigrants. I don't think there's been a major movement toward open borders until pretty recently.

And yet their creation, isn't. Not only that, but I have serious doubts that two Jews that lived through the forties would have too many nice things to say about immigration quotas.

[Darth Wedgius]

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both sons of immigrants, I'd say that might have been their intent.

J.S. and J.S. were probably both sons of legal immigrants. I don't think there's been a major movement toward open borders until pretty recently.

And yet their creation, isn't. Not only that, but I have serious doubts that two Jews that lived through the forties would have too many nice things to say about immigration quotas.

Kal El didn't exactly sneak over the border, either. We can speculate what they would say about open borders, and they were pretty liberal, but until pretty recently even the left wasn't for open borders. I can't even recall much of a fuss for them under Obama. It really wasn't until Trump started enforcing the borders, IIRC.

[Draco Dracul]

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both sons of immigrants, I'd say that might have been their intent.

J.S. and J.S. were probably both sons of legal immigrants. I don't think there's been a major movement toward open borders until pretty recently.

And yet their creation, isn't. Not only that, but I have serious doubts that two Jews that lived through the forties would have too many nice things to say about immigration quotas.

Kal El didn't exactly sneak over the border, either. We can speculate what they would say about open borders, and they were pretty liberal, but until pretty recently even the left wasn't for open borders. I can't even recall much of a fuss for them under Obama. It really wasn't until Trump started enforcing the borders, IIRC.

One, Kal El is a Dreamer. You know the kind of people that Trump has removed the protections of. Two, Democrats aren't calling for open boarders now.

[9ansean]

Isn't this the one place the Vulcans are in character though? They believe in suppressing emotions therefore NOTHING should be a traumatic experience in their eyes - not even rape. ''Keep your lip stiff and think of England'' would be the Vulcan way of looking at it.
[/quote]

That's actually a good point. T'pol has been pretty stiff about following Vulcan customs. Perhaps too much in response to the judgement that's "gone native" after spending so much time around illogical beings. I actually find it unsurprising that she completely broke down during the whole Xindi arc from all that been she'd been trying to suppress over the course of three seasons. It's funny that while I agree the writers didn't seem to know what they should be doing with plot or characters over the chaotic run of Enterprise, I do see more general (if implicant) character development for her and Trip than with Archer (who like Janeway just seemed to vary with the writers).

[Darth Wedgius]

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both sons of immigrants, I'd say that might have been their intent.

J.S. and J.S. were probably both sons of legal immigrants. I don't think there's been a major movement toward open borders until pretty recently.

And yet their creation, isn't. Not only that, but I have serious doubts that two Jews that lived through the forties would have too many nice things to say about immigration quotas.

Kal El didn't exactly sneak over the border, either. We can speculate what they would say about open borders, and they were pretty liberal, but until pretty recently even the left wasn't for open borders. I can't even recall much of a fuss for them under Obama. It really wasn't until Trump started enforcing the borders, IIRC.

One, Kal El is a Dreamer. You know the kind of people that Trump has removed the protections of. Two, Democrats aren't calling for open boarders now.

One, he wasn't brought across the border as part of a family of illegal immigrants sneaking under a fence. He was shot at a planet. It's not quite the same. Two, you might want to tell AOC, who wants to replace ICE with an agency "that is directed towards safe passage instead of the direction of the criminalization," or Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn, who wore a t-shirt saying that he doesn't believe in borders.

[FaxModem1]

Kal El didn't go through a long paperwork process, though. His parents dropped him off via rocket. Depending on which continuity, the Kents did some shady things to make him their son legally. So yeah, he didn't enter the country legally.

Keep in mind the below is me playing 'in-universe' justifications.

As to T'pol and her strain, T'pol's blind acceptance of how she is being hit is in-character for Vulcans in Enterprise. If you want to look at it through a retrospective lens, T'pol is breaking because of it. Because seasons 3 and 4 show that T'pol is really feeling the strain of the disease, even becoming a drug addict to cope, to the point that in season 4's Home, she's acting so angrily that her mother is wondering what's wrong with her. That's Manny Coto fixing the divot, but it shows that normally, Vulcans respond a bit less angrily to injustices done to them, and just sort of blindly accept it, which would show why a Romulan-corrupted government could mislead them for so long. The Vulcan trilogy fixed T'pol to an extent, as well as the Vulcans, and she acted a lot healthier from that point on, even joking to the crew, whereas before she would act a bit rude to them.

This really shouldn't have been done to the Vulcans in the first place with this episode, but it could show that a normally passive people keep on following the example of 'grinning and bearing it' to their breaking points. T'Les, T'pol's mother, after all, left Academia and joined the 'Syrannite Cult' due to the pressure of it all.

With Surak's katra and original writings recovered and in place, they're a much more open society, to the consternation of the outlier bigots shown in Discovery and TNG's Gambit. IDIC, after all.

[Robovski]

Kal El was abandoned on Earth's doorstep (Kansas) as a baby, making it a Safe Haven case.

[Worffan101]

It's an Enterprise episode done by Berman and Braga at the height of their arrogance and burnout.

Of course it sucks donkey ass. It's like STD but coming from a different sort of incompetence.

(Another example, Supergirl's current season with the tedious ham-handed immigration strife allogory. I just think that, maybe, a show about an alien superhero living among humans is largely going to be watched by the people who kind of don't need that message, because they are like, fans of an alien superhero living among humans. But perhaps I am once again, giving people more credit than they are due in assuming that there are very few people who will watch something like that and go "my goodness, Supergirl is right, I better stop being a Richard the Third to my neighbour chap from [some other cultural background/country/whatever]!"

(Notably, the moment they actually got to the "Russain Supergirl clone plot that has been teased for the first, like two-thirds of the season, everything improved markedly...)

Supergirl needs to find something else to do with its time. They have done this alien allegory thing for four straight seasons, only they never focus on it fully.

They should have either committed 100% to the xenophobia thing or just done the Red Daughter plot--which itself, um, is pretty contrived (to be charitable about it), but at least it gives Benoist an opportunity to play villain, Cryer is a better villain as Luthor than the other idiots, and Katie McGrath gets to wear a suit which is just hot. (I'm sorry, I know it's probably un-PC or something, but Katie McGrath is fucking gorgeous and seeing her in what's basically drag is nosebleed-worthy)

then again, if I had been in charge of that show, Supergirl would be dating Lena Luthor already, Mon-El would've been kicked off halfway through season 2, I would've scrapped the weird intrusion of the Kryptonian witches entirely, and made season 4 completely different. Probably something with Magog from "Kingdom Come" and an analysis of the superhero genre as a whole, kinda like a season-long budget version of Deadpool 2's theme of violence and revenge vs. compassion and understanding.

IDK. They need to be more like Arrow and Flash and Legends and crystallize each season around one major villain with secondary episodic villains as needed. They haven't really done that so far--season 1 they switched villains halfway through because the really good villain with a really good actress left, so they had to settle for the most boring waste of space ever; then season 2 the big bad showed up like 4 episodes from the finale and completely distracted from the main villain who'd driven most of the season; season 3 they threw out half their villains halfway through and brought in the shitty witches 3 episodes from the finale, and season 4 swapped themes and villains halfway through.

This is so freaking frustrating because the core dynamic of Kara and her sister works, and works well. It's like the Ollie/Diggle dynamic on Arrow but with two ladies instead of two guys and it has all the same siblings-of-choice kinda emotions. If they could only find a theme and villain per season and stick to it they'd be fine.

Instead we have a halfassed dabbling with immigration allegory that's often poorly thought-out (see, alien POTUS) and never really committed to. With a sprinkling of hot button issue du jour, except that they hardly ever do those as well as Arrow and Legends do (they nailed Alex's being-gay thing and a lot of their main-character social issue storyline stuff, but other than that? The gun control episode was outright shit, whereas Arrow's version was merely blandly noncommittal, and a lot of their one-offs can be overly preachy).

It's what's preventing Supergirl from breaking past merely "a decent superhero show" to the level of Arrow seasons 2, 5, and 7, or everything Legends has done after season 1. (seriously, Legends is like if Guardians of the Galaxy were a TV show and involved time travel instead of aliens, it's glorious)

anyway that's my ramblings, tl;dr I agree with Chuck.