It’s like conservative Always Sunny fans.

There are a surprisingly high number of educated conservatives in the high tech fields, engineers/programmers/etc.

It’s sad :/

Same with conservative Fallout fans that somehow unironically think it’s pro-Capitalism, despite nearly every instance of actual Capitalism and not just bartering being absurdly evil.

“You know those Ferengi really have some good ideas…”

It was mostly indignation over me not kissing his ass and telling him he’s right, I’m generally one of the few in my family that will stand up to him at all never the less consistently, he’s pretty charming and the family that have never lived with him all think he’s just great usually, but he always has this condescending way of telling me “you weren’t alive then so you don’t know” as if there aren’t interviews with Roddenberry that confirms these things, or if it’s broader politics, as if encyclopedias and news article didn’t exist back then. Then when I knocked down that argument he just defaulted back to “well it’s too woke and preachy now” while citing examples of preachyness that are just examples of inclusivity in the show.

I’ll say this, my pop apparently helped do clean up at ground zero after 9/11, he was a guard at Rikers at the time and I could see him volunteering for it, but he’s also kind of a bullshit artists so we’re never sure what’s fully the truth. However fact or fiction he’s never been the same since that day, we all lost a bunch of people we knew, and we all have a lot of friends who lost close relatives and it impacted not only us but our community, because it’s a fire firefighter town we live in, we live next to the former chief and down the block from the station house and my pop hangs out at the bar near the station house. After 9/11 he fell down the Fox News hole and never was the same again, and now i gotta hear some “woke” bullshit every time he talks about something he seems to not understand.

So overall the reaction was a lot of indignation, a little bit of arguing followed by a hasty hang up.

It’s a special case of the more general rule: right-wing free-market anyone is self-deluding.

Live long and peace out, bitches.

Only the british ones.

It’s a Vulcan gang sign.

first interacial kiss

First black/white kiss. There was an earlier white/Asian kiss.

I’m not trying to undermine the idea that Star Trek was progressive for its time, far from it, but since no one else has pointed this out, I thought I’d say it. Star Trek was NOT the first interracial kiss on television. In fact, the actors’ lips never touched in the shot.

Well, sort of. I’ve been reading William Shatner’s autobiography, and they had to fight really hard to include an interracial kiss. The network was going to forbid it, telling Rodenberry that televisions across the South would rather black out their televisions for an hour than allow something so highly offensive. When he insisted upon it, they kept making concessions Rodenberry wouldn’t agree to, like instead having Uhura kiss Spock, since it there would be a little more disconnect between reality. Eventually, Rodenberry offered to film the kiss both ways—one way with their lips actually touching, the other with Uhura’s back to the camera as they embraced, giving the illusion that they kissed without their lips ever touching. The actors were really upset about it, because It was originally going to be a passionate kiss, but the only way they allowed it to be filmed on television was if the actors displayed clear discomfort—which could be used to reinforce the idea that interracial relationships were bad.

Soo…yeah! That’s your Star Trek history lesson for the day! (I’ve never watched the original episode, I’ve only watched TNG and Discovery for myself, so this is all secondary info, but if you watch the episode, you can see for yourself.)

I think with Disney and a lot of companies now it’s more obvious that they are consciously trying to “look good” vs Star Trek was a lot more genuine and authentic with it’s intention to include these things, and it was challenging status quo back then whereas today it’s very mainstream (which is a good thing). This is also what I think is (sometimes intentionally) misinterpreted with the “woke” concerns from the right, cause criticizing the company for morally branding themselves can be legit, but only if the actual idea of including and respecting people isn’t lumped in with it. A legit issue with these huge companies that exploit workers is how they commodify their visibly “diverse” employees and claim the virtue for themselves rather than all the effort it took from workers to actually be treated with dignity. Amazon may very well be welcoming and inclusive but they’re gonna fight their diverse employees when they want better conditions and pay. DEI doesn’t erase the inherent conflict between employers and employees.

I mean, so long as you see the satire of the film, that’s not incompatible.

Eugenics program? So this Khan guy is a good guy?

Farscape isn’t horny enough. That’s why I like LEXX

Farscape is cool. Star Trek is cool. Star Wars is okay too I guess; not hating, I just don’t like them as much as the rest of the world seems to.

It has an alien species where the religious group has quotes that are directly from Carl Sagan (and they’re have more of a philosophy than a religion, at least in most ways). It generally treats religion with more respect than Roddenberry did, in a “all religion has some good parts to it, but extremism is a problem” kind of way.

One of its major plot arcs is all about how democracies fall into fascism. I thought it was a bit heavy handed at the time, but now it feels too real.

Skirts around a pair of characters in a lesbian relationship, but like most shows at the time, it doesn’t come right out and say it. They 100% banged one night, though.

It’s also military science fiction. That always seems to invite right wingers who love the asthetic but ignore the themes. Same problem with Star Trek and Star Wars.

Well let’s see, there’s an episode with a dockworker’s strike, in which a “negotiator” is sent in who’s position is basically “I’ll pretend to ask nicely but the only tactic I have is this in-universe law that says I can use the military to force you back to work.” The letter of that in-universe law (the “Rush Act”) is “The local military commander can break strikes by any means he deems necessary.” And Commander Sinclair decides to pay the dockworkers what they demand out of the military budget of the station. So the union ultimately wins.

There’s several times when some character, often a human but sometimes an alien, walks up to some other kind of alien and says “We don’t want you FREAKS coming in and stealing our JOBS!” and they’re always depicted as obviously in the wrong. Basically in the script it says “A Republican happens, and gets dealt with.”

There’s a whole episode with a religious exchange, all the various aliens are invited to demonstrate their planet’s “dominant religion.” When it’s the human’s turn, Sinclair takes the alien crew down a hallway with a long line of various different kinds of priests, ministers, monks, etc. The first guy in line is an atheist. The point being “Earth is diverse as fuck, yo.”

The show just barely glances off a lesbian relationship, and the show’s attitude says “What? You didn’t have a problem with the five other romantic couples we’ve seen so far, what’s your problem with this one?”

Oh, then there’s the whole major plot of a socially conservative president sliding Earth’s entire government into totalitarianism with the backing of a hostile alien race thing.

Haven’t watched it in years myself, but unless you can define “woke” I’m not going to make any assumptions.

They occasionally reference “Federation Credits”, but I think it’s mainly for use outside the Federation.

Fuck laser swords, i want food without cooking.

The Klingon way!

Everyone thinks she killed Tuvix to save her ship or crew or some utilitarian bullshit, but the reality?

She knew. She knew this was her chance to kill a man and call it duty.

Yeah it’s not actual communism but more like a reflection of the fears of communism in pop culture from the time when it was written in the late 70s. Comment was a bit inprecise but amended.

I don’t recall reading that anywhere. I do remember seeing WW2 referenced, especially with respect to the dogfights.

Very interesting! I knew the Vietnam thing but I’m not into Star Wars.

I don’t think you can discount first contact’s affect on that shift. Finding out you’re not alone in the universe would surely have a massive societal impact.