ponnfarrtrek

it's a trek blog.

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"Violence is never the answer" is a propaganda line thrown around by those who use violence to maintain the status quo.

[ponnfarrtrek]

Wrong blog, but perhaps a good reminder that Trek can be propaganda sometimes.

[convertgrapeling]

"Violence is never the answer" is a propaganda line thrown around by those who use violence to maintain the status quo.

[ponnfarrtrek]

Whatever the ups and downs of Starfleet Academy, I will die on the hill that actually some people needed to see a leader sitting weird in a chair. Our concept of who makes a "good leader" is actually way too skewed towards body language, how people dress, their vocabulary and other things that don't actually affect the quality of their decision-making. In 2026, we put too much emphasis on whether someone "looks like a leader" - polling companies regularly ask this about politicians - and not enough emphasis on what decisions people are making and why. And of course this bias ends up working against marginalised groups, like all biases eventually do. ("Why is she sitting like a little girl?" is something I've heard more than once)

Having a leader who rejects staunch formality is weirdly one of the most progressive things Trek has done in years. Think about how life changing it would be if you didn't have to worry about what impression your stance, your clothes and your appearance were giving off. Imagine people reacting purely to the value of what you are saying and doing, and absolutely nothing else.

[ponnfarrtrek]

I feel like I have to add to this post because its more popular than I thought it would be. Just to say a couple of things...

(1) I do like Nahla Ake as a lead character but the positive parts of the character are somewhat undermined by the "deprived a kid of his mother for BS reasons then forced him into a weird prison/school situation and kept making him to do menial labour" situation.

(2) When I said some people need to see leaders being weird, I didn't mean for representation. I mean people with fixed ideas about leadership should have them challenged. Representation of "people who sit weird in chairs" is too hyper-specific to be useful.

(3) It is entirely reasonable to say that yes this is a deceptively progressive thing that nu Trek did but honestly they could and maybe should have done more progressive stuff. Totally valid.

(4) This post is the one people like? Really? This one? Ok.

[ponnfarrtrek]

everyone on ds9 was kind of wonky to start with and thats why its characters were likeable even early in the show before they figured out how to make the episodes good. star trek characters often are too well-adjusted, to the extent that fans spend decades using their meta to give some characters the kind of depth that ds9 characters already had in season 1

[ponnfarrtrek]

I love the whole thing of Worf being a terrible dad, we don't see enough dads in fiction who just don't even pretend to give a shit.

[ponnfarrtrek]

best trek lead character

James T. Kirk

Jean-Luc Picard

Benjamin Sisko

Kathryn Janeway

Jonathan Archer

Michael Burnham

Beckett Mariner

Christopher Pike

Nahla Ake

Voting ended onJul 8

Im curious

[ponnfarrtrek]

This is it then. The inevitable Janeway post.

I'm just gonna say it. I'm sick of this idea that people who don't uncritically love Janeway (or Kate Mulgrew's performance) must be raging misogynists. This is Baby's First Feminism thinking. Girlboss Gatekeep Gaslight feminism. "Lean in" feminism. Marketplace feminism. It's nonsense, basically. "Oh here's a woman and she's in charge, how feminist."

There's lots to like about Janeway. The Katherine Hepburn vibe really does it for some people. I would be remiss not to mention her great-looking arms, beloved by lesbians everywhere. I think Mulgrew is the only captain who nails her performance in the first season, and she did it under somewhat shitty circumstances - coming in late after the previous actor bailed, having people fuck about with her hair all the time, being away from her kids, etc.

This does not mean everyone has to like her. Voyager has always had problems with character arcs (namely in not deciding if it wants to have them), and its not surprising that complaint would be amplified with the character who gets most screentime. For me, I find it jarring that Janeway goes back and forth between someone who is immovable on her Starfleet ideals one week, and someone who will bend the rules beyond all recognition the next. Whichever direction she's going in, there's never any humility and precious little reflection. She mistakes overconfidence for strength.

I don't like her "mentoring" relationship with Seven. It seems to me that Janeway is trying to remake Seven in her own image, rather than letting Seven figure out who she is for herself. I don't like the decision Janeway makes to work with the Borg (and yes I feel it's justified to call it genocide). I do not like the Tuvix resolution. I don't like her decision that the giant PTSD machine they find in one episode should be left in tact to traumatise more people. I know people will disagree with me on some or all of these things and that's fine, but to conclude that someone must be misogynist to dislike these actions is just a bizarre argument.

Do you really think nobody is looking at Picard like "are you really gonna let that whole planet of people die out, baldo?" You've never heard anyone complain about Sisko poisoning a planet because some guy wouldn't shut up about Les Miserables? You really think Trek fans, one of the most overanalytical fandoms you can imagine, has never been able to find fault with James T Kirk? We don't need to turn to misogyny for an explanation here, people judge Janeway cos she does bad things.

I'm sure some people don't like her just because she's a woman. Probably. The reality is Voyager never faced the kindness of "it's wokeness out of control" backlash that new Trek shows have faced. Fan hysteria in those days did not compare. I remember nobody complaining about a woman captain and everyone saying "this is boring."

My point is: a woman with power is not an inherently feminist thing. What did Janeway do for the women in the Delta quadrant? Did you see her ask even once about why we never saw any Kazon women? Does she even notice that most of the aliens societies in the Delta quadrant seem highly patriarchal? Nah, it's not enough to simply be doing what a guy would be doing if you weren't there. And your mileage may vary on that, but stop calling people misogynists just for having higher standards it just makes you look at very unserious person.

[ponnfarrtrek]

TNG and everything is the same except Picard's fish is a blob fish.

[ponnfarrtrek]

Problems I have with Bashir's "I've been genetically modified" story.

This revelation is seen as being part of "fixing" the character but those off-putting elements of his early appearances were long gone by season 5 anyway.

It clearly hasn't been foreshadowed or considered in any way before season 5, so it doesn't fit with any continuity before that.

The whole "we didn't want our son to have learning disabilities" bit is swept over far too quickly.

Starfleet's position on not employing genetically modified people should have been entirely overturned by this episode's events, because this demonstrates that "superior ability" doesn't have to lead to megalomania after all. He couldn't even get on a starship, he's at the post-occupation shopping mall.

Julian is still too much of a dope for me to believe someone made his brain that way on purpose.

The fact it led to those two stories with the group of autistic-coded people doing extreme maths is absolutely unforgivable.

He can do super-fast maths but what is the point of this when computers exist

Really, we're not going to see how other people feel about this? Okay.

[ponnfarrtrek]

Found out today that Ira Steven Behr is a Zionist and I'm trying some of that "separate the art from the artist" thing people like to talk about but guess what it's not working.

[ponnfarrtrek]

picard's fish

why does he have a fish

its cool he has a fish

who feeds it when he's on away missions

boo jellico, etc

that fish is Picard's only family post-generations and pre-picard

(that he knows of, obviously)

Voting ended onJun 19

[ponnfarrtrek]

I like Star Trek because it's fun but I think I struggle with Star Trek when they try to make it "fun."

I cannot describe what I mean, so here have some pictures. Who knows what they mean.

[ponnfarrtrek]

There's no way I could look at something like a Star Trek computer console being used in real life without thinking "what happens when the bulb goes out?" If they make another Trek show, it would probably resonate better with our current times if nothing works properly and every episode is about trying to find a workaround for everything cos imagining a future where all the technology just works seems outright absurd at this point.

[ponnfarrtrek]

We really don't talk enough about how "Elaan of Troyius" is a despicable piece of shit episode.

[unit-1312]

[ponnfarrtrek]

my theory is that Gen X prefers TNG, millenials prefer DS9 and Gen Z prefers Voyager. I cannot prove this theory and I don't know why its the case, but I believe it in my bones. There is something about DS9 that Gen X could not get into but the millenials found it and heaped praise on it. That was predictable enough, but the way Voyager as a show has been on this incredible Redemption Arc through Gen Z is something that I honestly did not see coming and I don't mean that as a slight to Gen Z, I'm just too Xennial to get it

[ponnfarrtrek]

Look I just wanted to post photos of these crumbly, aged Trek doctors, okay? Can't remember any equivalent shots of Bev Crusher or any doctor after the EMH, so I guess those ones moisturised?