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@newtrekcriticisms
I love a deep lore dive as much as the next nerd, but I also have to acknowledge that it is in fact very funny that Star Trek has become so intractably mired in its own past that we're now on prequels to sequels to prequels and can scarcely go a dozen episodes without a trans-temporal tie-in to a storyline that first aired in 1965.
i think the thing that pisses me off most about picard is that its writing implied that after everything the voyager crew went through together that seven ended up alone??
like they became a fucking family. they were the only people literally there for her and picard wants me to believe that after they got back to the alpha quadrant they split just like that? no seven crashing at different peoples homes or them helping her out get used to life back on earth or whatever planet?? just “bye hope u live well??” nah i dont accept it at all
SIGH. i really dont like how modern star trek always has to make spock's "emotional moments" just absolutely unhinged anger. screaming and destroying shit and whatnot.
in TOS when his vulcan stoicism slips its usually just him crying or expressing affection for his friends. feels like some toxic masculinity shit that the writers only seem comfortable letting him be angry.
im also not a fan of how SNW kinda ties spock struggling with his mixed race identity to a stupid love triangle. especially when we already know he doesn't end up with either t'pring or chapel.
and also discovery S2 already addressed this in a much more compelling way (being torn between wanting to please his mom and his dad and learning from his human foster sister that it's possible to do both).
I’m sorry but who is this stale ass piece of white bread. They can’t be serious this is the guy they got for Kirk, he has all the charisma of a concrete slab. Zero camp, zero joy, reading the lines like a kid in the 9th grade asked by the teacher. Like o don’t wanna get into how the whole episode was fucking just fan fiction balance of terror where Kirk and Pike team up with poor writing and it has pretty much zero impact beyond enforcing a pessimist status quo. Like I could have maybe tolerated the bland plot if at least we had a good Kirk, but no we get this cardboard cut out instead.
I propose we give SNW!Kirk a new name like we did with Blade. I say we call him Sword.
You’ve heard of Spock who looks and acts nothing like Spock, now get ready for Kirk who looks and acts nothing like Kirk
If anyone’s curious as to why I bother responding to some of the people leaving comments on my posts, it’s because this blog has a One Chance Policy, if you will. If you leave a comment on my post, no matter how offhanded it is, I’ll respond to you. I’ll explain what needs to be explained to help you better understand where I’m coming from. That becomes your chance to either move on, or continue the discussion civilly. But if you come back to my response in bad faith, that’s when I’ll block you. That’s how things work on this blog.
New Trek needs to stop this trend of using its marginalised characters for tragedy porn. Its white, straight, and/or abled characters never suffer as much or to the same extent. It is unacceptable, especially for these shows that repeatedly laud themselves for their diversity, to consistently put its diverse characters through more shit than anyone else.
Fairweather fake fans need to stop bitching about things they don’t like, and be thankful that they get a show at all.
Someone here is bitching, and it’s not me.
I would take no new Star Trek for the rest of time over Star Trek that makes me as a marginalised person feel like shit every time I try to watch it. Particularly when these shows are constantly saying, “Hey, marginalised people! Come watch our show to see yourself represented!” and promoting their diversity ad nauseum, only to then portray their diverse characters poorly, or have them bear the constant brunt or torment while white, cishet, and abled characters get off with nary a scratch. The “things” I “don’t like”, as you put it, are the writers’ verifiable instances of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism. It should go with out saying, but I am allowed to have an opinion on this, including a negative one.
In any case, in advocating for a Star Trek that treats all of its characters equally regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or ability, I can’t help but feel as though I am a truer fan than you. Good day.
Wahhhhhhhhhhhh bitch bitch bitch.
I’m not the one complaining about a TV show that doesn’t cater exactly to what I want.
I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. Stay classy though.
people will truly have zero understanding of how unbelievably painful being in a marginalized community and/or disabled can be and will then just tell you to suck it up even though they’ve never experienced pain within two orders of magnitude of the pain you face on a daily basis.
and when you’re trying to find a refuge from that pain in characters you can relate to; apparently having to relive your own pain by watching them experience it, and finding that an incredibly unpleasant experience so much so that you protest its portrayal, you’re “bitching” instead of “making a valid point about how marginalized and disabled folks should be able to watch a show directly claiming to support them without having to relive the horrors of their own lives disguised as representation”
Been thinking about character deaths lately, and I want to be clear, I hate Prime Philippa Georgiou’s death, and think it was super messed up to have the promos be so much about her, only to kill her off in episode 2.
That being said, if the producers were dead-set on it, I think the only situation in which it might have worked for me is if Michael had been promoted to captain directly afterwards (in episode 3). And then the rest of the season had been about her struggling to fill Philippa’s shoes and missing her.
It’s not ideal, but at least it’s better?
New Trek needs to stop this trend of using its marginalised characters for tragedy porn. Its white, straight, and/or abled characters never suffer as much or to the same extent. It is unacceptable, especially for these shows that repeatedly laud themselves for their diversity, to consistently put its diverse characters through more shit than anyone else.
I understand the sentiment, but this is unhelpful.
It’s space, people die.
It’s fiction, sometimes good people die for awful reasons. It’s meant to be sentimental.
Yes, sentiment porn and motivation porn exists. Yes, Star Trek has used it in the past.
That’s also called science fiction. It is meant to be obvious and clumsy so you’re forced to think about it.
Yes, it’s not original, but don’t call it unoriginal. It’s literally genre convention. The very thing Star Trek fans asked for from Strange New Worlds.
Count the number of white straight cis men in the main cast. There’s one. Pike. He’s it. (And even then, that’s iffy.)
Everyone else hits at least one diversity checkbox.
It’s space. People die in space. Even good people who don’t deserve it.
I don’t have to justify it politically just to say that I liked him and I’m sad he’s dead.
Also, this is Star Trek. They can always tech-tech Hemmer back to life at any time. Lower Decks understands that genre convention, too. Look at Shaxs.
Just so we’re both aware, tumblr user twilightsparklesharem, there are real human writers behind the stories in New Trek. Writers who live in our society and have real world biases and I, as a mixed disabled LGBT person directly affected by said biases, am allowed to criticise how those biases come through in their writing. And they do come through, verifiably.
Look how Michael Burnham has to suffer trauma after trauma and fight tooth and nail for her right to captain the ship while a white woman, Tilly, gets made first officer as an ensign with no questions asked. Look how Book had to suffer the loss of not just his entire family, but his entire planet. Look how Adira, a nonbinary person, had to watch their boyfriend, an Asian trans man, die in blood right in front of them. Look how Raffi Musiker, the only Black character in Picard, is depicted as a drug addict and an alcoholic and a deadbeat mother. Look how Hugh Culber, an Afro-Latino gay man, was killed and brought back all for the emotional character development of his white partner. Look how Philippa Georgiou Prime, Star Trek’s first Asian woman captain, was killed off in episode one. Look how all of the background characters on Discovery are people of colour, while the most developed characters like Tilly, Stamets, Detmer, and Saru (yes, Saru counts) are white. Look how even Uhura and M’Benga in SNW are not free of some very horrible tragedies being heaped onto them needlessly. And yes, look how Hemmer, the only disabled character in SNW and only the second disabled main character in all of Star Trek, had to kill himself once he realised there was no hope for him, and died a tragic inspiration to the Enterprise crew. Notice how these events of extreme tragedy or violence never involve or directly harm the white, straight, cis, and/or abled characters. Pike worrying about his future or Una dealing with being an augment is not even close to what Michael Burnham alone has had to go through. I promise you, these events are not happening in a vacuum. These writing decisions are not being made in a vacuum. They are not being experienced by the viewer in a vacuum, either, for that matter.
You must understand how watering the things that happen in these shows to “it’s space, people die” is a far more meaningless and yes, unhelpful, than critical examination of how the writers’ biases, be it racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, or general disregard for marginalised people, affect the events that take place in the show. It is not a stretch for me to point out that there is now a pattern of marginalised characters being exposed to suffering far more frequently than anyone else. And there are reasons for that which go far beyond “it’s space” or “it’s science fiction” or “good people die in stories all the time”. Saying such demonstrates what I can only describe as a massive lack of understanding on your part of intersectionality and how writers’ real life biases affect the things they write.
Hemmer did not die because “it’s dangerous in space”. He died because the writers made the decision (from the start, I might add) to kill him off in their story. I am allowed to wonder if the reasoning for that decision had ableist roots, particularly given New Trek’s existing track record.
As an aside, I am frankly bewildered by your assessment of SNW’s diversity. Pike is a white, cis, straight, abled man; nothing about that is “iffy” and I am at a loss as to how it could be. Sam Kirk is also a white, cis, straight, abled man, in case you forgot about him. Spock is a white, cis, canonically straight man (I won’t say abled, but at the same time they seem to have forgotten about his dyslexia, which hasn’t been brought up since Discovery). Una and Chapel being women does not preclude them from also being white, cis, and abled, and in Una’s case, straight. As of now there is only one confirmed main LGBT character on SNW, Chapel, whose bisexuality was confirmed in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. There are only three characters of colour, Uhura, M’Benga, and Ortegas, against five white characters (six if you include Hemmer). Again, from what you’ve written here, I don’t think you have a good grasp on intersectionality and how it affects things like race, gender, and disability.
If your interpretation of anyone trying to address real instances of racism, ableism, transphobia, or homophobia in television is that they are trying to “politically justify” not liking something, you really have some learning to do, and that’s as polite as I’ll be about that.
Sorry, I stopped reading when you claimed Saru, a member of a species who’re the victims of oppression for literally millenia, as being white coded.
Which was after you ignored all the shit Stametz went through that didn’t involve his husband. So Culber dying (which he didn’t, not really) was a tragedy for a gay character, but the extreme stress that didn’t kill Stametz and the multiple times he saved the lives of his crewmates and the lives of trillions doesn’t count as a triumph for a gay, possibly autistic character? So you could just focus on his whiteness in contrast to, again, his Black husband??
Your intersectional “analysis” reads as someone trying to mask a different flavour of reactionary politics. You’re larping compassion. Which is why I said what I said.
Once again, you are not acknowledging the external forces at play when it comes to fiction.
I did not call Saru “white coded”. I said that he is white. He is played by a white man. Doug Jones benefits from white privilege. You can laugh at that all you want, but you cannot divorce that fact from the character regardless of how many layers of makeup and prosthetics he’s under. Claiming Saru has any kind of status as a marginalised character because his fictional species was oppressed by fictional fantasy racism is frankly insane.
Stamets being gay does not absolve him of his whiteness, nor of how that whiteness plays into his dynamic with Culber. Therefore I am not amending what I said. Culber was killed and resurrected and used as a plot device for his white partner’s angst. This was racist, whether it was gay or not.
There is zero evidence of Stamets being canonically autistic. I refuse to give Discovery credit for having an autistic character unless it is confirmed in the story, or even by word of god at this point. You cannot use the fact that Stamets could maybe be read as autistic as evidence toward me being, what, ableist toward him? I truly have lost the plot here.
“Your intersectional ‘analysis’ reads as someone trying to mask a different flavour of reactionary politics.” You are now just saying words that don’t mean anything. “You’re larping compassion.” I am mixed, disabled, nonbinary, and gay. These are my issues, inextricably. I don’t have to “larp” anything. If you ask me, it is Paramount who is “larping compassion” with their shoddy attempts at making marginalised people feel seen. That is their intention and they are failing at it miserably. But as you’ve indicated, it is apparently “useless” to point this out.
As you couldn’t bring yourself to read the rest of my post, I would assume you’re not interested in debating this any further. Funnily enough, given your tone toward me over this exchange, neither am I. So, tumblr user twilightsparklesharem, I bid you farewell. Next time you see a post like this that you disagree with, I would advise you to keep scrolling.
Anyway, in case it wasn’t obvious: we as marginalised Star Trek fans do not have to sit here and take New Trek’s piss-poor attempts at representation. We are allowed to be upset. We are not being picky or selfish for demanding the bare minimum effort from this franchise. Paramount is deliberately advertising these shows with diversity as a selling point, deliberately trying to earn our viewership with its portrayals of marginalised people. That’s why it is all the more important to speak up when those portrayals are poorly executed or even harmful. They are the ones trying to represent us, they are the ones who dragged us into this. We have a right speak out when something isn’t right.
Truly incredible that someone can construe me taking issue with basic instances of bias and inequality in New Trek’s diverse representation as me wanting a show to “cater” to me specifically. Tell me you don’t know there are other people in the world with different experiences than yours without telling me you don’t know there are other people in the world with different experiences than yours.
New Trek needs to stop this trend of using its marginalised characters for tragedy porn. Its white, straight, and/or abled characters never suffer as much or to the same extent. It is unacceptable, especially for these shows that repeatedly laud themselves for their diversity, to consistently put its diverse characters through more shit than anyone else.
Fairweather fake fans need to stop bitching about things they don’t like, and be thankful that they get a show at all.
Someone here is bitching, and it’s not me.
I would take no new Star Trek for the rest of time over Star Trek that makes me as a marginalised person feel like shit every time I try to watch it. Particularly when these shows are constantly saying, “Hey, marginalised people! Come watch our show to see yourself represented!” and promoting their diversity ad nauseum, only to then portray their diverse characters poorly, or have them bear the constant brunt or torment while white, cishet, and abled characters get off with nary a scratch. The “things” I “don’t like”, as you put it, are the writers’ verifiable instances of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism. It should go with out saying, but I am allowed to have an opinion on this, including a negative one.
In any case, in advocating for a Star Trek that treats all of its characters equally regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or ability, I can’t help but feel as though I am a truer fan than you. Good day.
New Trek needs to stop this trend of using its marginalised characters for tragedy porn. Its white, straight, and/or abled characters never suffer as much or to the same extent. It is unacceptable, especially for these shows that repeatedly laud themselves for their diversity, to consistently put its diverse characters through more shit than anyone else.
I understand the sentiment, but this is unhelpful.
It’s space, people die.
It’s fiction, sometimes good people die for awful reasons. It’s meant to be sentimental.
Yes, sentiment porn and motivation porn exists. Yes, Star Trek has used it in the past.
That’s also called science fiction. It is meant to be obvious and clumsy so you’re forced to think about it.
Yes, it’s not original, but don’t call it unoriginal. It’s literally genre convention. The very thing Star Trek fans asked for from Strange New Worlds.
Count the number of white straight cis men in the main cast. There’s one. Pike. He’s it. (And even then, that’s iffy.)
Everyone else hits at least one diversity checkbox.
It’s space. People die in space. Even good people who don’t deserve it.
I don’t have to justify it politically just to say that I liked him and I’m sad he’s dead.
Also, this is Star Trek. They can always tech-tech Hemmer back to life at any time. Lower Decks understands that genre convention, too. Look at Shaxs.
Just so we’re both aware, tumblr user twilightsparklesharem, there are real human writers behind the stories in New Trek. Writers who live in our society and have real world biases and I, as a mixed disabled LGBT person directly affected by said biases, am allowed to criticise how those biases come through in their writing. And they do come through, verifiably.
Look how Michael Burnham has to suffer trauma after trauma and fight tooth and nail for her right to captain the ship while a white woman, Tilly, gets made first officer as an ensign with no questions asked. Look how Book had to suffer the loss of not just his entire family, but his entire planet. Look how Adira, a nonbinary person, had to watch their boyfriend, an Asian trans man, die in blood right in front of them. Look how Raffi Musiker, the only Black character in Picard, is depicted as a drug addict and an alcoholic and a deadbeat mother. Look how Hugh Culber, an Afro-Latino gay man, was killed and brought back all for the emotional character development of his white partner. Look how Philippa Georgiou Prime, Star Trek’s first Asian woman captain, was killed off in episode one. Look how all of the background characters on Discovery are people of colour, while the most developed characters like Tilly, Stamets, Detmer, and Saru (yes, Saru counts) are white. Look how even Uhura and M’Benga in SNW are not free of some very horrible tragedies being heaped onto them needlessly. And yes, look how Hemmer, the only disabled character in SNW and only the second disabled main character in all of Star Trek, had to kill himself once he realised there was no hope for him, and died a tragic inspiration to the Enterprise crew. Notice how these events of extreme tragedy or violence never involve or directly harm the white, straight, cis, and/or abled characters. Pike worrying about his future or Una dealing with being an augment is not even close to what Michael Burnham alone has had to go through. I promise you, these events are not happening in a vacuum. These writing decisions are not being made in a vacuum. They are not being experienced by the viewer in a vacuum, either, for that matter.
You must understand how watering the things that happen in these shows to “it’s space, people die” is a far more meaningless and yes, unhelpful, than critical examination of how the writers’ biases, be it racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, or general disregard for marginalised people, affect the events that take place in the show. It is not a stretch for me to point out that there is now a pattern of marginalised characters being exposed to suffering far more frequently than anyone else. And there are reasons for that which go far beyond “it’s space” or “it’s science fiction” or “good people die in stories all the time”. Saying such demonstrates what I can only describe as a massive lack of understanding on your part of intersectionality and how writers’ real life biases affect the things they write.
Hemmer did not die because “it’s dangerous in space”. He died because the writers made the decision (from the start, I might add) to kill him off in their story. I am allowed to wonder if the reasoning for that decision had ableist roots, particularly given New Trek’s existing track record.
As an aside, I am frankly bewildered by your assessment of SNW’s diversity. Pike is a white, cis, straight, abled man; nothing about that is “iffy” and I am at a loss as to how it could be. Sam Kirk is also a white, cis, straight, abled man, in case you forgot about him. Spock is a white, cis, canonically straight man (I won’t say abled, but at the same time they seem to have forgotten about his dyslexia, which hasn’t been brought up since Discovery). Una and Chapel being women does not preclude them from also being white, cis, and abled, and in Una’s case, straight. As of now there is only one confirmed main LGBT character on SNW, Chapel, whose bisexuality was confirmed in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. There are only three characters of colour, Uhura, M’Benga, and Ortegas, against five white characters (six if you include Hemmer). Again, from what you’ve written here, I don’t think you have a good grasp on intersectionality and how it affects things like race, gender, and disability.
If your interpretation of anyone trying to address real instances of racism, ableism, transphobia, or homophobia in television is that they are trying to “politically justify” not liking something, you really have some learning to do, and that’s as polite as I’ll be about that.
To those in the Star Trek fandom who are rightfully upset about Strange New Worlds’ treatment of Hemmer and wish to turn their anger into action, or to anyone looking to support blind or visually impaired individuals this Disability Pride Month, here is a list of foundations, charities, and other organisations dedicated to improving the lives of those who are blind or visually impaired, all of which show accountability and transparency ratings of 90% or above, that you could consider donating to:
Helen Keller International
National Federation for the Blind
Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind
In addition, here are just a few active GoFundMe pages that haven’t reached their goals if you wish to support people with visual impairments directly:
Help AK, a Black blind musician, afford assistive technology
Help Shayla, a chronically ill blind person, escape abuse, avoid homelessness, and afford a Guide Dog
Help Max, a Black DeafBlind teenager, afford specialised services
Help Yerko, a DeafBlind Chilean immigrant and pianist, afford his acceptance into Rutger’s University
Help Michelle, a blind person, afford a new Guide Dog
Help Scott, a visually impaired person, afford Smart Glasses
Help Tracy, a visually impaired Black person, afford eye surgery
Help Jacob manage LHONS and sudden vision loss
Help Ala afford a Braille reader and keyboard for the As-Siraj Foundation for the Blind’s school for girls
Help Megan, a Black blind person, attend a National Federation of the Blind convention
Help Lanie, a blind person, afford a Braille display
Help Patra build a well for her blind grandmother
I would also like to open up the notes to any individuals who are blind or visually impaired who wish to plug their own GoFundMes or money transfer app details if you are in need of mutual aid for any reason. Sighted people are encouraged to reblog this, even if you can’t donate.
Remember to include blind and visually impaired people in your activism, not just this July, but always.
Hemmer Rant
I wanted to write this before I read any other thoughts or comments about Hemmer's character arc in Star Trek Strange New Worlds and before I watched The Ready Room interview with Bruce. So this is done directly after getting home from work. (They haven't even removed their binder, friends!)
Be aware, SPOILER ALERT.
I want to preface this with saying I am neither blind nor do I have a significant vision impairment that isn't corrected with glasses. So I absolutely can't speak to that experience but I do want to speak to what I feel was a flawed character arc for our chief engineer.
Additionally, forgive any ignorance I've expressed in my wording or perspective. Please feel free to correct me.
Bruce was, as interviews have said, told clearly about his character arc before he took on the role as Hemmer. And if he had to die, he said, he wanted it to be a cool death. And as far as death's go cinematically, it was pretty cool. What wasn't cool (in my opinion) is that the writers and creators had to do it at all.
Historically people with disabilities have lacked autonomy in their characters and stories. Yes, Hemmer was not considered disabled but he was played by an actor open about his vision impairment and advocacy and this was touted in articles as something revolutionary in the Star Trek universe. "Star Trek's first legally blind actor!"
Thus, I believe this character still has fallen to a common trope, sacrificing his own character development to be a bolster for another character's development. In this case, that character was Uhura.
The thing is, there was potential for Hemmer to be a fully drawn and realized character. He had a past we all wanted to know about. He had intrigue. He was played fully by a brilliant actor who had the experience to do so. But his story was sacrificed, quite literally, to fulfill the development of another character. That is the trope. That is where his autonomy was abandoned. His existence was in service to an able bodied character and only that. He was to inspire Uhura to stay in Starfleet and on the Enterprise by giving up his life.
Star Trek has done so well bringing marginalized characters into stories and integrating them without fanfare and with pure acceptance. I think they failed miserably with planning this character's arc.
Hemmer is the blind prophet (a terribly annoying trope but unavoidable considering the history of the Aenar cannon). Hemmer's development is only seen when in service of abled body people around him (a fact they worked into the very fabric of his personality by never allowing him to grow past only being useful in fixing but also useful as a fully autonomous person FOR HIMSELF). Hemmer dies tragically as an inspiration. The representation was almost there. It was so close. It could have been SO GOOD. But Star Trek bowed to cliché. It bowed to the popular media motif for disabled people. And perhaps it didn't do so knowingly, but it is a genuine shame that Hemmer had to die without having explored him beyond a prop for furthering another character's story.
If it had been any other type of alien that didn't represent a disabled population perhaps it would be better. But touting disability representation and then bending to such a disrespectful storyline was such a disappointment to see. Hemmer deserved better. And we deserved to see a disabled representation that didn't end with tragedy as too many so often do in story telling. We still have a lot of work to do.
People need to get mad at Paramount for SNW’s treatment of Hemmer. He never got to be fully developed character. They never explored him or featured him as equally as the other members of the main cast. And now they have fridged him. This reeks of ableism.
If the actor wanted to leave the show, I understand and sympathise with that. But the writers could have simply written Hemmer off in a different way—he could have gotten a promotion, or assigned to a different ship or project. He did not need to die. Not when blind or otherwise disabled characters are so far and few between, and yet fewer get to have happy endings.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Nobody needs to be mad. Or you can, and demonstrate you know nothing about Trek.
Jesus, spam the tag less with your tantrums.
🙄🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Cry more, baby
If anyone wants to block this ableist, racist person who has been spamming my posts with such nonsense, feel free.
