Comment on It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about.
moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoTrek expresses gay people being normal. It’s explicitly not the plot. There’s no plot point about it. The plot is about kids (for a certain Steve McQueen value of “teenager”) being in school and battling Space Foes. I’m picking on “being gay” as a point because I imagine it’s what the people who cancelled the show had an issue with, but I could well be wrong.
There was no exploration of the things the right-wing hate in Academy. They just exist. There’s no ongoing plot about anyone’s sexuality, or if you think there is then it’s dwarfed by the same plot with other straight characters.
It sounds so much like saying you can’t have a gay character unless there’s an interesting moral plot point about why they’re gay. That’s not what Academy did.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
If these themes are ancillary and not the one dimensional focus, no problem. In Ko’Zeine, the entire episode arc hinges on Darem being gay. It is the plot. To make it worse, there was never any ambiguity. The writers telegraphed the “correct” outcome from the beginning and never let the viewer stew in any kind of reflection or moral dilemma. We knew exactly what the outcome would be and the only reason we watched was to see how we would reach the only “right” conclusion. That’s not good storytelling. It’s a poor choice of plot. So would be a “murder is bad” plot. The issue isn’t a gay character existing. We have plenty of examples of gay characters existing in media in which “the right” takes no issue. See Six Feet Under, Will & Grace, Willow in Buffy, Remy in House, and a thousand other examples.
The issue is the poor writing. I levy similar criticisms of any writing like this. If these episodes revolved around “I’m short,” or “I’m ugly,” or “I’m fat,” they would also be uninteresting. There needs to be more complexity and moral ambiguity to provoke thought. I don’t watch Star Trek for the flashy lights. I watch it for the interesting dilemmas. Academy is the very lowest brow Netflix slop I could imagine.
moopet@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
None of that episode hinges on Darem being gay, though? What would have changed if he was straight? It’s not the plot. The plot is that he has responsibilities to his home world and has new found family with Star Fleet.