I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today’s social issues as if they’re universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It’s not that Disco isn’t progressive; it’s just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I’d expect that being judged harshly for one’s gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I’m all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can’t make it work, it just all comes apart.
The scene you’re describing is a good example. Though I would argue that given this story line is set a millennium in the future, it isn’t just lazily progressive, it’s an ultra-conservative view of the future. It perpetuates today’s bigotries as universal truths instead of challenging the audience to perceive of a future without our current bigotries like the Kirk / Uhura kiss did 50 years ago.
I’ve only made it to season 2, so I’m holding out hope that it gets better, but lazily progressive seems to describe it pretty well.
The one that really rubs me rough it how Tilly is very clearly coded to be some type of neuro divergent, probably autistic, but also only when it is convenient and quirky and will not interfere with the plot too much.
Her suddenly being very socially adept when the plot needed her to pretend to be an evil commander or whatever, and she dropped all of her character flaws to make it happen just felt so out of character and lazy.
Also the scenes with Spock and “child abuse bad” at the start of the red angel arc was very ham fisted.
I much preferred how SNW handled the “our wonderful society is supported by horrible child labor and death” arc. Still about as subtle as a brick, but it at least felt like an attempt was made to encode a message, and not just saying it at the viewer like a pre-school cartoon recapping the message of the episode.
It also felt like it was shoehorning in all the progressiveness for the sake of being progressive which sends the exact opposite message than they hoped for. The crew was so amazingly diverse representing so many different things that any adult would look at it and go “the odds of all these different sexualities/etc. being on one ship at once are so improbable as to be impossible.” That makes it feel like pandering, not being progressive. That could work for kids, just being able to see someone like them on screen helps a lot, but Discovery is very much not meant for kids to watch.
Basically they tried too hard and didn’t understand what they were doing.
I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today’s social issues as if they’re universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It’s not that Disco isn’t progressive; it’s just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I’d expect that being judged harshly for one’s gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I’m all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can’t make it work, it just all comes apart.
The scene you’re describing is a good example. Though I would argue that given this story line is set a millennium in the future, it isn’t just lazily progressive, it’s an ultra-conservative view of the future. It perpetuates today’s bigotries as universal truths instead of challenging the audience to perceive of a future without our current bigotries like the Kirk / Uhura kiss did 50 years ago.
I’ve only made it to season 2, so I’m holding out hope that it gets better, but lazily progressive seems to describe it pretty well.
The one that really rubs me rough it how Tilly is very clearly coded to be some type of neuro divergent, probably autistic, but also only when it is convenient and quirky and will not interfere with the plot too much.
Her suddenly being very socially adept when the plot needed her to pretend to be an evil commander or whatever, and she dropped all of her character flaws to make it happen just felt so out of character and lazy.
Also the scenes with Spock and “child abuse bad” at the start of the red angel arc was very ham fisted.
I much preferred how SNW handled the “our wonderful society is supported by horrible child labor and death” arc. Still about as subtle as a brick, but it at least felt like an attempt was made to encode a message, and not just saying it at the viewer like a pre-school cartoon recapping the message of the episode.
It also felt like it was shoehorning in all the progressiveness for the sake of being progressive which sends the exact opposite message than they hoped for. The crew was so amazingly diverse representing so many different things that any adult would look at it and go “the odds of all these different sexualities/etc. being on one ship at once are so improbable as to be impossible.” That makes it feel like pandering, not being progressive. That could work for kids, just being able to see someone like them on screen helps a lot, but Discovery is very much not meant for kids to watch.
Basically they tried too hard and didn’t understand what they were doing.