Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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I'm catching up with TNG episodes I couldn't watch or I watched parts of.

Chain of Command... Riker, what an ass.

I'm watching part I and as soon as Jellico arrives, you can see he's a nice man who only wants to do his job and even expresses his respect directly to Riker (something like "I can't wait to work with you") and what does Riker do? Be mad at him because he wasn't given the command of the Enterprise like it's Jellico's fault.

IMO, this is the worst that Riker did: Jellico asked for four shifts instead of three. Apparently, the crew had problems with that. Fine, it can happen. Now, after the ceremony of change of command, Jellico told Riker he wanted the fourth shift to do something and Riker told him they weren't ready and he had planned on telling him AFTER the ceremony. After that, Jellico tells him the fourth shift will still do their orders and now they only have two hours left to prepare everything.

If the show wanted to imply Jellico was in the wrong here, he wasn't. It was Riker. He failed communicating properly with the new captain and he also failed to his men who all had to work faster to catch up with the captain's schedule, something he was very clear about.

The parts where the rest of the crew also look mad at Jellico for doing his job are odd as well. It's like all are thinking "how dares he to make us work faster when we're heading straight to what could be war??! What does he want? To make us all ready and prepared? Pfff, what an inconsiderate brute!". Did they all want Jellico to explain them with graphics that they were about to be in real danger and they needed the ship in optime conditions or did they all never took the situation seriously? I don't know what failed there. It's like they all forgot they're in the military and they are expected to follow orders and shut up about it. Jellico wasn't asking for impossible. I really doubt they were acting this way during the borg situation back in S3.
 
Tasty Tatty said:
I'm catching up with TNG episodes I couldn't watch or I watched parts of.

Chain of Command... Riker, what an ass.

I'm watching part I and as soon as Jellico arrives, you can see he's a nice man who only wants to do his job and even expresses his respect directly to Riker (something like "I can't wait to work with you") and what does Riker do? Be mad at him because he wasn't given the command of the Enterprise like it's Jellico's fault.

IMO, this is the worst that Riker did: Jellico asked for four shifts instead of three. Apparently, the crew had problems with that. Fine, it can happen. Now, after the ceremony of change of command, Jellico told Riker he wanted the fourth shift to do something and Riker told him they weren't ready and he had planned on telling him AFTER the ceremony. After that, Jellico tells him the fourth shift will still do their orders and now they only have two hours left to prepare everything.

If the show wanted to imply Jellico was in the wrong here, he wasn't. It was Riker. He failed communicating properly with the new captain and he also failed to his men who all had to work faster to catch up with the captain's schedule, something he was very clear about.

The parts where the rest of the crew also look mad at Jellico for doing his job are odd as well. It's like all are thinking "how dares he to make us work faster when we're heading straight to what could be war??! What does he want? To make us all ready and prepared? Pfff, what an inconsiderate brute!". Did they all want Jellico to explain them with graphics that they were about to be in real danger and they needed the ship in optime conditions or did they all never took the situation seriously? I don't know what failed there. It's like they all forgot they're in the military and they are expected to follow orders and shut up about it. Jellico wasn't asking for impossible. I really doubt they were acting this way during the borg situation back in S3.
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There was some robust Jellico discussion some pages back. Suffice to say I'm on "Team Jellico". I also noticed that the writers did play it straight down the fairway when they could have just easily made Riker seem like he was getting wronged from the get-go.

I wonder how much of that was respect for Ronny Cox who was, by TV standards, a pretty decent "get" at the time.
 
Travoltron said:
Was there any characterization of Chakotay beyond "I'm Native American!"? I really have no idea how the staff fell for that con artist. The Native American hocus pocus was utter nonsense with no cultural basis.
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Eh, pretty sure it's been 100% bullshit ever since baizou invented the term "Native American" and mythologised them as effortlessly wise, tree-hugging noble savages.

(100 years or so before, people who actually encountered them in the wild and weren't immediately killed tended to be more based and redskinpilled about the Injun's stone age savagery, retarded superstitions, and general propensity to lie, steal, torture, mutilate and murder for fun.)

Irregardless, the Red Indian is an irreplaceable symbol of classic Americana and it was therefore inevitable that he'd show up in Star Trek, a show that was (was) so unashamedly Murica! it had Captain Kirk deal with some ignorant aliens by literally reading the Constitution to them. 🇺🇲:hulk:

Naturally, Kirk set phasers to bang as soon as he encountered a good looking squaw.

theparadisesyndrome7.jpg


TNG was the era of pastel carpets, men in skorts, and pretending Whoopi Goldberg isn't an idiot, so it had a far cringier and less sexy approach to what makes the red man red:

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It's one of those weird Trek contradictions that makes no sense in the show's own continuity but perfect sense in the context of West Coast upper middle class liberal opinion circa 1994. Captain Picard, who has never before shown anything but amused skepticism about the supernatural, and who is an ambassador of a cheerfully atheistic civilization so technologically advanced it can literally make hot chocolate appear out of thin air, suddenly starts taking hippy dippy bullshit like white guilt and vision quests seriously.

The Space Irish can only dream of such patronizing deference, but then it sucks to be a Mick, I guess.

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Anyway, idk how faithfully it's even possible to write Chakotay, who was played by a Mexican dude, as a Sioux or Hopi or whatever he was meant to be.

The audience probably doesn't want to see the guy depicted as an alcoholic casino owner, and the Federation is only very superficially multicultural anyway - it's an imagined future where everyone in Starfleet holds basically the exact same cultural assumptions as a late 20th century registered Democrat from California. Chekhov and Scotty have colourful accents and Picard is the Limiest Frenchman you ever saw, but there's no real depth to the illusion of diversity, it's less substantial than a Holodeck program.

And maybe that's how it needs to be? Probably not a good idea to operate a starship where the crew are constantly running into wacky cultural misunderstandings when they're trying to realign warp coils or navigate through asteroid belts.
 
Starscreams Cape said:
There was some robust Jellico discussion some pages back.
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We're still debating Jellico 30 years later. Not bad for a one-off character.
Sexual Chocolate said:
Anyway, idk how faithfully it's even possible to write Chakotay, who was played by a Mexican dude, as a Sioux or Hopi or whatever he was meant to be.
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Crashing the Val Jean is the most interesting thing he ever did, and that's in the first episode.

Everyone gushes over Harry in "Timeless", but that's not giving Chakotay a fair shake: a criminal with a survival instincts and passion for life and love! Why they dropped that aspect to his character, I have no idea, because Chakotay makes a real impact in episodes like this and "Nemesis."

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SF Debris has posted a review of DS9's "Rejoined". Just a little reminder that while the producers of the newest shows are blabbering on about how socially-aware they are, DS9 is folding its arms and saying "Bitch, please, we did that a quarter-century ago, and we didn't even need to make a big deal out of it."

 
Travoltron said:
When 7of9 was added to the show, originally they were going to fire Garret. Then they were afraid of being accused of racism, so they fired Jennifer Lien instead.
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So there have been some rather recent revelations that put the decades-long "Garret Wang in People magazine" official story into doubt.
Some authors did some investigating and it seems Jennifer Lien's unhinged behavior is what got her fired.
heavy.com

Why Was Kes Really Written off Voyager?

Kes was abruptly written off Star Trek: Voyager in the fourth season. A recent behind-the-scenes book offers a new explanation for why.
heavy.com heavy.com

I wonder why Garret was thrown under the bus like that to cover for Lien? That was the official story for decades as to why she was cut.
 
Travoltron said:
I wonder why Garret was thrown under the bus like that
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Because they could. Wang needs Star Trek more than Star Trek needs him.
Flexo said:
Never read Peter David before, have you?
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Per casetpanda:
  • Q hooks up with Lwaxana, who turns him into a basketball and dunks him.
  • Odo and another Changeling beat each other up like a pair of T-1000s, while Quark sells holosuite programs of Dax and Kira stripping.
  • Guinan's sister takes the Doomsday Machine to fight the Borg.
  • Also, he certainly LOVES writing about naked women.
 
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HarryHowler said:
SF Debris has posted a review of DS9's "Rejoined". Just a little reminder that while the producers of the newest shows are blabbering on about how socially-aware they are, DS9 is folding its arms and saying "Bitch, please, we did that a quarter-century ago, and we didn't even need to make a big deal out of it."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JgyEhRdUWeg
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The rot was beginning to creep in, even then...

Flexo said:
Never read Peter David before, have you?
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I remember, in my childhood, reading through the trio of Starfleet Academy junior novels that David had written back in the 90s. To the best of my recollection they were harmlessly fun little adventures, so needless to say it was a bit of shock to read the synopses for David's New Frontier series years later, and coming across such highlights as Suzie Plakson's Vulcan character from TNG getting impregnated by a promiscuous hermaphrodite. Jew's gotta Jew, I guess...
 
HarryHowler said:
SF Debris has posted a review of DS9's "Rejoined". Just a little reminder that while the producers of the newest shows are blabbering on about how socially-aware they are, DS9 is folding its arms and saying "Bitch, please, we did that a quarter-century ago, and we didn't even need to make a big deal out of it."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JgyEhRdUWeg
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That's where you're wrong, Trekko.

rejoined_443.jpg


Both those women are attractive, which means something something cishetpatriarchal male gaze.

NOW it'd be an eyeball-scouring Lovecraftian abomination of acid puke hair colors, androgyny, and jiggling back fat, because Allah forbid that a heterosexual man somewhere gets a boner.
 
Sexual Chocolate said:
That's where you're wrong, Trekko. Both those women are attractive, which means something something cishetpatriarchal male gaze.
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So you can forget about all that diplomatic, "sex positive" shit.

As Cornell West explains, Wokeness is a secular form of Baptist rigidity. Although it's being exported globally, wokeness is a uniquely American ideology: it could not have risen anyplace else.
 
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JamesFargo said:
^This is a mainsteam opinion on Reddit. So you can forget about all that diplomatic, "sex postive" shit.

Further proof that wokeness is a secular form of Baptist rigidity (cheers to Cornell West for pointing this out).
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Eh, I guess? Kinda. The secular religion comparisons are apt but only up to a point.

Never misunderestimate the role of simple malice in this thing. The desire to humiliate and punish designated enemies, even if they're completely imaginary. (All those chadly Star Track fans with their popped collars and advanced degrees in applied rape culture, amirite?)

TV hasn't started to fill up with off-putting fuglies because it's stunning and brave, or because the increasingly fat and dumb audience wants to see its multitudinous drool-slicked chins reflected back at it in glorious 4K.

It's that way because they hate you, and they want you to be unhappy. Same energy as sneering soydweebs making ugly, shitty computer games while congratulating themselves on not being fun.

That's why the cast of Picard looks like a transporter malfunction got a Tumblr meetup. Every day, we stray further away from Seven's glorious space tiddies

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