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The entire point of Star Trek is to be woke. It’s literally a franchise created in the premise that life forms of all colors, creeds and gender are equal and should try to live together peacefully.
It was woke 50 years before that was a concept. Did you completely miss the point?
As we're both Trekkers and GWM fans, I'll afford you the politeness you lack. No I haven't missed the point, but I suspect you have. Trek is about the exploration of space and alien life. It's about science. About boldly going where no MAN has gone before. And I can appreciate the first interracial kiss without needing an intragender equivalent (although 'Picard' showed this...but I FF'ed that scene :) )
Btw, I don't debate, I discuss. If you want to discuss Trek, happy to oblige. If you came looking for a debate, look elsewhere.
:)
As we're both Trekkers and GWM fans, I'll afford you the politeness you lack. No I haven't missed the point, but I suspect you have. Trek is about the exploration of space and alien life. It's about science. About boldly going where no MAN has gone before. And I can appreciate the first interracial kiss without needing an intragender equivalent (although 'Picard' showed this...but I FF'ed that scene :) )
Btw, I don't debate, I discuss. If you want to discuss Trek, happy to oblige. If you came looking for a debate, look elsewhere.
:)
A lot of people watch Star Trek with modern eyes and forget what the world actually looked like when Trek first aired. The show wasn’t just “about exploring space.” It was making radical social statements at a time when those statements were dangerous.
Everyone remembers the interracial kiss, but honestly, the kiss wasn’t even the most groundbreaking part. Uhura’s presence on the bridge was revolutionary. In the 1960s, Black Americans were still being denied service in restaurants, still fighting for basic civil rights, still treated as second‑class citizens. Yet here was a Black woman in a position of authority, treated as an equal by everyone around her. That wasn’t subtle. That was Gene Roddenberry planting a flag.
Same with Commodore Stone. In 60s television, a Black man outranking a white man, outranking Captain Kirk, was unheard of. That wasn’t “just science fiction.” That was intentional social commentary.
And Trek didn’t stop there. The episode with the two‑toned aliens who hate each other because one half of the face is black and the other is white? That’s not subtle metaphor. That’s the civil rights movement written directly into science fiction.
Season 2 introduces Chekov, a Russian officer, during the height of the Cold War, when Americans genuinely feared nuclear war with the USSR. Putting a Russian on the bridge wasn’t about “exploration.” It was about imagining a future where enemies become allies.
This is the DNA of Star Trek. It has always been about challenging prejudice, expanding empathy, and imagining a better world.
And that didn’t stop with TOS.
The Next Generation gave us “The Outcast,” an episode centered on the J’naii, an androgynous species where identifying as a specific gender is considered deviant. Riker falls in love with Soren, who secretly identifies as female. She’s arrested, put on trial, and forced into conversion therapy. That’s not “woke 2020s Trek.” That’s 1992. Star Trek has been exploring gender identity and LGBTQ themes for decades.
So when you say you “don’t need an intragender equivalent,” or that Trek is “about boldly going where no man has gone before,” you’re actually missing what Trek has always been doing. The franchise has never been just about space exploration. It’s about imagining a future where humanity grows past its prejudices—racial, cultural, political, and yes, gender‑based.
Modern Trek isn’t some new “woke” invention. It’s continuing the exact mission Roddenberry started in the 60s.
If anything, the newer shows are simply being as bold today as TOS was back then.
That’s the point. And it’s been the point from the very beginning.
@cmk201 Thank you for that great commentary!
I find it amazing how the OP could enjoy all of those episodes, countless hours of Star Trek, without realizing the underlying intentions and subtext. It's interesting how it's all there to see, but you can totaly enjoy it without caring about that. This surely must be a reason for the series to becoming so popular, cause it works on different levels for a diversely educated audience.
Star Trek has been woke from day one. It did the exact same thing the Twilight Zone did, use a sci-fi setting to reflect on contemporary social issues. Discovery was bad because the writing was bad, not because it was woke. The OP's lack of media literacy is unsurprising.
Long gone are the days when popular media wasn't forcing all the woke stuff down our throats.
I miss bands like Rage Against the Machine who just focused on the music and shows like TOS that were all about space adventures. I don't need social messaging in my entertainment.
@cmk201 Thank you for that great commentary!
I find it amazing how the OP could enjoy all of those episodes, countless hours of Star Trek, without realizing the underlying intentions and subtext. It's interesting how it's all there to see, but you can totaly enjoy it without caring about that. This surely must be a reason for the series to becoming so popular, cause it works on different levels for a diversely educated audience.
I absolutely get the inclusivity thing, I just don't need the vile extent to which 'Disco' took it. As a Pacifist / Conscientious Objector I also don't like the military but I don't mind the fact that Starfleet's role in wartime/emergency is to act as Earth's military. I jumped off my sofa spilling beer and roaring with happiness when the Klingons uncloaked to save the day in 'Sacrifice of Angels'. Just because I like muscular women/bodybuilding, doesn't mean I don't dislike 'roids. Just because I like French foods, doesn't mean I like French government bureaucracy. Etc...
I'm seeing a lot of either/or thinking here.
Trek is about the exploration of space and alien life. It's about science. About boldly going where no MAN has gone before.
Btw, I don't debate, I discuss. If you want to discuss Trek, happy to oblige. If you came looking for a debate, look elsewhere.
Healthy discussion is always good. But if you're wanting to foster discussion, it helps to avoid inflammatory wording and word policing. While byrdcf27 could've used less blunt wording than "the point", your very first post opened with "nonsense" and "woke". Instead of word policing, we can focus on the core message. That's the purpose of discussion over debate.
I wish Star Trek focused more on science than it did. Cosmos was science. Star Trek took Sagan's Voyager probe and turned it into a hot bald Indian babe named "V'ger". Trek is heavy on the fiction and light on the science with a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief because as is the case with the genres of both Science Fiction (eg. Star Trek) and with Fantasy (eg. Star Wars), the mediums and plots serve as vehicles for the social commentary "moral of the story".
Sure, we get real science inspired by the fiction: Communication satellites ala Arthur C. Clarke, flip phones ala TOS communicators. The 3 laws ala Isaac Asimov for AI... No, nevermind. Still waiting for that one.
Discovery was definitely bad writing. Any post "Burn" Trek has pretty bad writing unfortunately. The seeds of the Burn were planted in a TNG episode then swept under the rug. The inside of Discovery was bigger than the outside, the Water Bears were the size of Polar Bears, the tech was lost hyper tech like a second coming of Plato's Atlantis, and programmable matter on the scale of a star ship to micro circuitry was just silly.
Of course everytime you use the transporters you die, but Bones was the only skeptic with a hint of suspicion. Shhhh don't tell the other Trekies that literally every character died before ever appearing on the show and every character is little more than a facsimile of the original.
... Suspension of disbelief and conveniently omitting the more disturbing scientific realities to the rescue.
The transporters have always been the perfect setup to explore the philosophical thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus. But science isn't the focus. Now hand me the Ratcheting Heisenberg attenuator so I can decouple this Rube Goldberg device from the Hasenpfeffer Incorporation. (Treknobabble ≠ Science)
The closest Trek ever came to proper science that I'm aware of is Logic Lessons with Mr. Spock, a fan-created web animation series by Curt Danhauser that uses the visual and audio aesthetic of Filmation’s Star Trek: The Animated Series.
Glad to see fellow trekkies. Star Trek did deal with progressive themes, but it never forced them on the viewer, and that's a big difference between old, thought provoking television and modern woke slop. Favorite show is DS9, as far as favorite episode, The Visitor is definitely the one, just an incredible story about wasting life trying to achieve something impossible, only to make the ultimate sacrifice. The other ones I like, It's Only a Paper Moon, pretty much any episode with Vic Fontaine, Cheif Obrien "must suffer" episodes are among the favorites, and many more. I also have to mention that Babylon 5 is in my top 5 shows, as well as Battlestar Galactica, which I only recently seen and loved it.
Glad to see fellow trekkies. Star Trek did deal with progressive themes, but it never forced them on the viewer, and that's a big difference between old, thought provoking television and modern woke slop. Favorite show is DS9, as far as favorite episode, The Visitor is definitely the one, just an incredible story about wasting life trying to achieve something impossible, only to make the ultimate sacrifice. The other ones I like, It's Only a Paper Moon, pretty much any episode with Vic Fontaine, Cheif Obrien "must suffer" episodes are among the favorites, and many more. I also have to mention that Babylon 5 is in my top 5 shows, as well as Battlestar Galactica, which I only recently seen and loved it.
If DS9 came out today in the exact format it did back then it would be numero uno on the grifter crowd's woke garbage list. There would be countless video essays on an episode like Far Beyond The Stars about how the libtards are forcing some kind of woke agenda on the youth. And lets not even get started on an episode like Rejoined.
If DS9 came out today in the exact format it did back then it would be numero uno on the grifter crowd's woke garbage list. There would be countless video essays on an episode like Far Beyond The Stars about how the libtards are forcing some kind of woke agenda on the youth. And lets not even get started on an episode like Rejoined.
That doesn't change what I said.
Glad to see fellow trekkies. Star Trek did deal with progressive themes, but it never forced them on the viewer, and that's a big difference between old, thought provoking television and modern woke slop. Favorite show is DS9, as far as favorite episode, The Visitor is definitely the one, just an incredible story about wasting life trying to achieve something impossible, only to make the ultimate sacrifice. The other ones I like, It's Only a Paper Moon, pretty much any episode with Vic Fontaine, Cheif Obrien "must suffer" episodes are among the favorites, and many more. I also have to mention that Babylon 5 is in my top 5 shows, as well as Battlestar Galactica, which I only recently seen and loved it.
I'm very much in a minority in that I really didn't enjoy 'The Visitor'. The Vic episodes were, jazz fan that I am, a welcome diversion and the actor was a genius pick by Casting. Having O'Brien suffer with his wife hijacked by a Pah Wraith, and undergo a memory implant of (20 years?) hard time in prison were equally sublime writing.
Healthy discussion is always good. But if you're wanting to foster discussion, it helps to avoid inflammatory wording and word policing. While byrdcf27 could've used less blunt wording than "the point", your very first post opened with "nonsense" and "woke". Instead of word policing, we can focus on the core message. That's the purpose of discussion over debate.
I wish Star Trek focused more on science than it did. Cosmos was science. Star Trek took Sagan's Voyager probe and turned it into a hot bald Indian babe named "V'ger". Trek is heavy on the fiction and light on the science with a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief because as is the case with the genres of both Science Fiction (eg. Star Trek) and with Fantasy (eg. Star Wars), the mediums and plots serve as vehicles for the social commentary "moral of the story".
Sure, we get real science inspired by the fiction: Communication satellites ala Arthur C. Clarke, flip phones ala TOS communicators. The 3 laws ala Isaac Asimov for AI... No, nevermind. Still waiting for that one.
Discovery was definitely bad writing. Any post "Burn" Trek has pretty bad writing unfortunately. The seeds of the Burn were planted in a TNG episode then swept under the rug. The inside of Discovery was bigger than the outside, the Water Bears were the size of Polar Bears, the tech was lost hyper tech like a second coming of Plato's Atlantis, and programmable matter on the scale of a star ship to micro circuitry was just silly.
Of course everytime you use the transporters you die, but Bones was the only skeptic with a hint of suspicion. Shhhh don't tell the other Trekies that literally every character died before ever appearing on the show and every character is little more than a facsimile of the original.
... Suspension of disbelief and conveniently omitting the more disturbing scientific realities to the rescue.
The transporters have always been the perfect setup to explore the philosophical thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus. But science isn't the focus. Now hand me the Ratcheting Heisenberg attenuator so I can decouple this Rube Goldberg device from the Hasenpfeffer Incorporation. (Treknobabble ≠ Science)
The closest Trek ever came to proper science that I'm aware of is Logic Lessons with Mr. Spock, a fan-created web animation series by Curt Danhauser that uses the visual and audio aesthetic of Filmation’s Star Trek: The Animated Series.
For me the most annoying lack of Tech in Trek is how Data had any trouble with...anything. We currently have AI that can outdo him on many levels. I could have done with a thorough explanation, if not depiction, of how the Borg function internally, and by extension Seven, with the accumulated knowledge of 8000+ species, should not only have been able to correct her own trauma but should effortlessly handle the function of Ship's Counsellor and cure her entire crew of whatever mental woes they had, as should Bashir. I could have done with a look inside the Great Link.
These balls were all dropped by the writing staff but could have been such rich grounds for great episodes.
I watched all of the original Trek and Next Gen episodes multiple times. Many of the episode themes and plot lines reflected an idealistic hope for society rather than wokeness. I think wokeness is fundamentally mean spirited, anti intellectual threaded with a desire for revenge while promoting entitlement. The original and older Trek series were fun to watch and the social commentary was not too heavy IMO.
I watched all of the original Trek and Next Gen episodes multiple times. Many of the episode themes and plot lines reflected an idealistic hope for society rather than wokeness. I think wokeness is fundamentally mean spirited, anti intellectual threaded with a desire for revenge while promoting entitlement. The original and older Trek series were fun to watch and the social commentary was not too heavy IMO.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The optimistic future that Star Trek presented was only possible through confronting the evils of the past. Wokeness is literally, definitionally, an awareness of systemic injustice. TOS constantly tackled systemic injustice, frequently using directly real world references and analogies. You are telling on yourself and your inability to critically engage with media. TOS was not subtle. The social commentary was extremely heavy in many, many episodes. If you can watch an episode like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and think "oooh this is fun, social commentary isn't too heavy", you're truly a special individual.
Happy to discuss everything and anything Trek except that woke 'Disco' nonsense. I'm delighted that since, SNW and Picard have flown the flag for Trek in the 20's.
I've pretty much seen every episode of every series (worthy of the Trek name), so TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Picard and SNW.
Happy to nominate my fave ever ep, 'In The Pale Moonlight'. A searing and soaring tale with a humongously good twist, and I happened to watch it around the same time as my fave film, 'The Usual Suspects'.
However...don't ask me for the rest of the top 10, the competition is SO ferocious I'd want to put about 40-45 episodes in that list. Probably easier for me to group them by Series + Season.
Over to you, my fellow Trekkers :)