As a Gen Xer, I'd say that 1997 was right around the time that I'd say that a lot more "new" stuff was just stuff from my youth that had been repackaged but with extra cynicism and tokenism.
There was still a lot of good stuff, but the ideological and nihilistic crap was definitely starting to seep in.
Like, having a black Vulcan on Voyager was obvious pandering to me, even back then. The main difference was that it used to be encouraged to point out cynical marketing pandering. Like when my university (98.5% white, 1% Asian, 0.5% other) took promo pictures and managed to find the 2 black guys who weren't on the basketball team to proudly feature and was resoundingly mocked for it.
As a Gen Xer, I'd say that 1997 was right around the time that I'd say that a lot more "new" stuff was just stuff from my youth that had been repackaged but with extra cynicism and tokenism.
There was still a lot of good stuff, but the ideological and nihilistic crap was definitely starting to seep in.
Like, having a black Vulcan on Voyager was obvious pandering to me, even back then. The main difference was that it used to be encouraged to point out cynical marketing pandering. Like when my university (98.5% white, 1% Asian, 0.5% other) took promo pictures and managed to find the 2 black guys who weren't on the basketball team to proudly feature and was resoundingly mocked for it.