I'm watching TOS again. I never finished it back in the day. Not because I didn't enjoy it, it's just that TV shows, especially long episode length ones are easy for me to get bored of.
But TOS is the only Star Trek I like. I forced myself to watch all of Next generation and didn't care for it. Haven't seen the others, but with Deep Space Nine not being as much about self contained stories but long archs, I see myself hating that even more.
But this is about TOS.
I hear all the time "Star Trek was always a woke show...it's not for you right wingers, yadda yadda yadda".
Well after I watch an episode, I check out the review for it on Jammers reviews and I read the comments.
I swear about 90% of the comments for the original series are pointing out all the stuff they find "problematic".
"I love the plot in this episode, but I hate the portrayal of "insert woman character"
or
"Wow this episode basically took a pro-colonialism stance, that did not age well"
To me, if you have to constantly dodge landmines of things that irritate you in a show, then you're not the target audience.
It would be like me claiming that Marvel movies are right wing entertainment because of things like law and order, justice, etc. Then I'd have to go "but I hate this feminism inserted here, and this race pandering here" and on and on. It would be absurd for me to claim that Marvel movies are conservative if I'm having to constantly express my frustration with woke elements.
Likewise, while there are some philosophical underpinnings to the writers of Star Trek that are subversive and leftist, 98% of what comes through in practice is stuff that's refreshing to me as an old school Conservative Christian.
The very stuff they gripe about is some of the most appealing aspects to me about the show. The Star Trek writers essentially understood the nature of women and wrote them accordingly and realistically to reality as just one example.
And while they did have some left leaning tendencies that sometimes comes through, the thing people don't talk about is how influenced in Christian Conservative thinking even atheists were in their thinking back then by virtue of having grown up and lived in a Christian culture.
Modern Star Trek is an example of how post-Christian thinking has worked it's way into writing.
Well the original 60s Star Trek has so much thinking and viewpoint that was right in line with how normal people viewed things. Yes some liberal stuff got through, and they probably would have gotten away with more if they could have, but there are just generally character attitudes rooted in how men are supposed to be, and how women are supposed to be, and values rooted in at least the concept of objective morality, which they unknowingly are getting from the Christian society.
So I wouldn't claim that Star Trek is a Conservative show, but my point is that when I watch it, it's like a breath of fresh air, while the so called die hard Star Trek fans, have to scrape through with a fine tooth comb to extract the few things they like while having to give caveats about all the "problematic" things.
When there's a show with as much wokeness as the so-called "bigotry" that these Star Trek fans are finding in TOS, then I stop watching that show, I don't claim that I like it, and I certainly don't claim it for my side.
If Star Trek TOS was as "progressive" and "woke" as they claim, I'd be having a hard time watching it, instead of it being like a refreshing gulp of crisp water contrasted with the sewage that is modern day ideology and these "fan" comments wouldn't be filled with statements about how much this and that element are "tough to stomach" and "a product of its time".
It was progressive for the time, so not good enough for 2020's progressives.
Exactly, but even then, I'd say, it's considered progressive because people remember some of those stand out moments.
The half-black, half-white fight that was meant to be a "woah, racism is like stupid man....." and the interacial kiss.
There's like 30 episodes per season.
The majority of the show isn't left leaning or right leaning.
Including the messaging. Most of the time the messaging would be as simple as "having quiet wars where no cities get destroyed, but millions of people die is bad...war is supposed to be ugly which is why you try to avoid it". These "messages" weren't usually as much about pushing an agenda, as giving an intriquing conflict to figure out how to resolve where you have culture clash. And back then the good guys represented the values the typical American would have. Whereas TNG and later would be more "morality is grey and who are we to say their culture is wrong". Whereas Kirk and his team were more like, no....this is right, this is wrong, your society is stupid.
The aforementioned position on war being ugly by design would fall into the category of a common sense message that pretty much anyone would agree to. I think Sun Tzu would probably agree with that as a generally true statement even if you yourself are pro war.
90% of the show is apolitical, 9% a mix of ideas conservatives and liberals might debate on, and then a tiny, once in a while smattering of some, for the time, "progressive" (read subversive) moments that people remember and associate the show with that are actually few and far between.
So in that 90-99% of the time you're left with general writings and attitude of the time which is stuff that makes people with modern day sensibilities fall over into their fainting couches.
This, for that time, is like the modern equivalent level of having an explicit tranny sex scene with stickditch visible on screen on network television for your children to be watching with you. You see it as "just a thing" that happened that can be handwaved this easily because you are looking at it from a modern lens where such a thing is so blase.
If our modern discourse on "Woke/Progressive" was around back then this would be decried as "woke shit, complete garbage, irredeemable slop" on this alone. Instead its being judged on a scale where you can give every element a fair shake and then compare it to decide its totally not because X outweighs Y.
Like, you could do this for most of the Woke media we laugh at here. Compartmentalize the wokest part as "that thing that happened" and then write about the other elements that are more generalized at length, making it seem like its not really that woke at all actually! Its just a black guy in Japan, its just a girlboss, its only one tranny character.
If you like the series regardless, that's fine. Everyone here would be a liar to pretend they don't enjoy some property that is Woke to some extent. But by its own historical standards TOS was incredibly Woke, because it was absolutely pushing a Progressive agenda in those scant 1% moments.
I understand how much it was pushing the envelope for the time.
I'm not denying that.
The only difference is there's nothing bibically inherently immoral about an interracial kiss. There is something biblically inherently sinful about the tranny stuff.
If we're going to assess things by how big of a deal they were at the time, we could do that for a lot of stuff. Like it wa a controversy that the movie Psycho showed a toilet flushing. You're not supposed to have that be seen in cinema according to sensibilities of the day.
Does it being a big deal at the time mean it's on the level of tranny and wokeness? I don't think you would consider a toilet being shown as in that category.
Do I like the interracial kiss? Knowing what the agenda has been, no. Do I think it's on the same level because the audience reaction was the modern day equivalent that we'd have over something horrendous. No, I don't think it's on the same level objectively speaking.
By the same token, if the woke crazies were to become the majority, like a true majority and something conservative happened in a movie and it caused national outrage, that they considered subversive, that wouldn't give you insight into the morality of the thing itself.
You have to deal with it objectively outside of general audience reception.
Is a white man kissing a black woman objectively immoral? No.
Was it pushing the envelope of the culture. Yes.
Was that envelope pushing part of a larger destruction of the values of our society? Yes.
So I'm against it for those two out of three reasons.
However the tranny, gay and other blatant anti-white bullcrap fails all three categories.
You can stop at the very first question in their case. Is the tranny gay and anti-white stuff objectively bad? Yes.
So they aren't perfectly equivalent. I don't like it for what it represented, but again, a white man kissing a black woman is not sinful or inherently wrong unlike stuff today.
And there it is. The civnat elements that make Christianity a terrible religion that keeps making excuses for soulless, human-shaped beings.
You needed a very specific definition to create this differentiation. There are more metrics to immorality than inherent or biblical evil.
Pedos don't inherently have to hurt children. But we know that will happen to such an overwhelming amount of time we don't need to split the hairs on it.
Heck, black people existing in a country doesn't have to inherently increase crime and violence, but it always does and most of our "race politics" debates rest on this fact. Its one of the reasons why that scene is so Progressive and Woke to this day.
This is a foolish comparison. We are assessing it by both how big of a shakeup it was and the agenda that it is attempting to push. The interracial kiss was meant to be a statement reflecting the real world Civil Rights movement, which is why Shatner forcefully ruined every take to make sure it got on air, whereas a toilet flushing is not trying to make a message on Leftist Political positions.
Even if it did, its purely on a neutral action against censorship. We can squabble on the degeneration of American culture by allowing gross things on TV like that, but that's a whole much larger and less Left/Right definable discussion.
A white man giving in to his lust constantly with women to whom he is not married is objectively immoral thing regardless of who its with, based on "biblicaly inherently immoral" standards. Heck most times the bible refers to these acts it calls it "sexual immorality" specifically. This is your standard, so it fails before it even reaches the "black woman" part.
You've created a super specific metric to define things to defend a property you like from being criticized by the same standard you hold many other things to.
It was a Leftist political message shoved into a network television show to push a very controversial position onto the populace via media manipulation and social pressure. That makes it no different than the vast amount of gay and tranny stuff is right now, regardless of how you want to split the hair.
Its fine if you like Star Trek, heck its fine if you think the tarring of it goes too far in some ways. Literally everyone here has some Woke property we like anyway.