Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Rajaah said:

The villain and the MC's love interest chick...don't exactly count as positive white male portrayals.

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Let's not get carried away. I don't think most of them count as positive portrayals of any race, species, or gender. The positive portrayals im seeing are the chancellor (or whatever her position over the academy is called), the betazoid leader for being a protectionist, the doctor, the hologram girl, and the snarky girl maybe. 4 of them are white, 2 are white men. And tbh, I think the bad guy is going to turn out to be sympathetic. If nothing else he's pretty competent which I would call positive.

Lanx said:

isn't this andromeda?

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You mean Hercules in space? I don't remember that but of lore. I remember the Nietzschens fucking everything up and being a ripoff of Khan, only successful. There was also some stuff with the magog, did that involve blowing up crystals somehow?

Malakriss said:

Dude you can't compare any other show to that thing. They chased off the original showrunner so they could have post-triple stroke Kevin Sorbo as shotcaller and the parent company went bankrupt yet the show mystertiously continued to exist for multiple seasons.

Maybe a shadow government rigging the timeline needed Lexa Doig to stick around long enough to meet Michael Shanks because their grandkids will be important or something.

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Sorbo is christian. It wasn't shadow government, it was straight up divine intervention.

I actually just finished a full watch of Andromeda last night since it is on Peacock. Been watching an episode or so a night while putting our newborn to sleep for the last few months.

I have never seen a show more confused about what it is. That show was constantly changing, dropping plot lines, no consistent tones. Season 1 was its own sort of thing, pretty bad but almost endearingly so, as if they wanted to be unique but just didn’t have the talent to do it. Felt like this odd Babylon 5 and Farscape hybrid.

Season 2 is a complete reboot almost after Majel Rodenberry has no creative control. Suddenly the whole ship changes. Like, they walk on the bridge and the entire thing is different with the only explanation that the super smart engineer just “made some upgrades.” The crew starts wearing leather jackets, colored streaks in their hair, they look like rejects from The Matrix. Every week is an adventure on the same looking planet where they get into bar fights with the local gangs and are in shootouts constantly. It is a huge mess.

Season 3, 4, and 5 it continues to just suddenly change. Kevin Sorbo looks like he just wrapped up a 4 day bender stumbling on to the bridge with red eyes and 5 o’clock shadow. All the positivity and vision of season 1 is just gone. Lexa Doig disappears because she is pregnant in real life and they introduce another random android ho.

The only redeeming part of the show is the amazing guest appearances that leave you wondering why the hell this person is on Amdromeda. Freaking Tony Todd and Michael Ironside show up. Ironside just acts circles around these buffoons, it is really worth watching. Pretty much anyone that was filming in Canada and on a series gets a turn in Amdromeda. 3/4 of the Battlestar Galactica cast show up at one point, Christopher Judge from Stargate has a recurring role at the same time he was doing SG-1, just bouncing back and forth between shows. There’s a TON of others that you see.

I’m honestly not sure why I kept going it was so bad. Not even so bad it is good. After 4 seasons it was pure stubbornness. At the same time I also rewatched Space: Above and Beyond and that show is amazing.

velk said:

I think you are proving Hoss' point there with 'I didn't actually watch it, but a ragebait video I watched said it, so it must be true'.

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The show is terrible enough already, you don't need to invent reasons to hate it ;p

( Also, obviously there were white men in S1 discovery, starting with the captain. Straight white men are considerably rarer though )

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Most of the white guys are the "previous generation", the stodgy Olds that are on their way out, while the fresh-faced young recruits are way more...Diverse.

This same trope plays out over and over again and it always strikes me as an allegory of Biden and Kamala. The whole objective of that ticket in 2020 was that Biden would make voters feel at ease, then step aside for the new generation at some point. Well, that's the vibe I get from these shows, that the white men are mainly just there to either A) Mess things up and then GTFO of the way, B) Be comic relief, C) Be passably competent...but also GTFO of the way.

But once again, this is like, the smallest of my numerous issues with this show. The show at large seems like it's designed from a very communistic point of view where meritocracy is something to be avoided and even torn down if possible.

Cybsled said:

That kind of got me thinking. In a lot of Star Trek shows, they always have small plot points about how movies used to be a popular form of entertainment and then sort of went away. This is even in pre-Holodeck Star Trek settings. Many years ago you would be hard pressed to say that one day TV shows/movies will no longer be desired and sort of stop being a thing, but I could easily see that type of media (as it exists today) becoming less and less relevant. Or at the very least, not as ubiquitous as it is now.

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Trek is at its best when it's thoughtfully predicting the future (the best version of the future) with things like "we created replicators, so hunger was eliminated from the world" and holodecks replacing movies - making for an entertainment medium that requires people to think more, AND makes them physically healthier since it's keeping them busy / not sedentary. All these little advancements, and how they affect people, are just as interesting as the actual starship advancements.

Right now I'm almost done watching DS9. Started watching it for the first time about six years ago and it has been a slow process; at this point I'd be further along if I were watching them alongside their original airdates. But damn, I love DS9. Everything that happens on this show is thoughtful and self-aware. The characters are likeable and get along.

Captain Sisko is a huge bad-ass, and where I am now he's about to try to broker a deal with the Romulan Empire by "dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight". I have about ten episodes left in S6, then S7. I'm considering watching Picard S3 after that just because it's the TNG conclusion I was hoping the whole show would be, and would chronologically follow after DS9's conclusion (plus 1-2 decades).

Not once in that however many years have I felt like DS9 was ham-fisted or clobbering me with The Message. It had plenty of messages, yes, and all of them were thoughtfully contemplated and delivered. I never feel like the show is mean-spirited towards anyone, not any particular character, nothing. Except for the Cardassians of course, with their occupation of Bajor and general assholery. Even then it's reserved for the high command, not regular Cardassian folk.

Have basically no interest in Nu Trek outside of Picard S3. I tapped out on both Discovery and Picard some time late in their first seasons. I think Nu Trek died for me somewhere around Drunken Seven of Nine incinerating a guy, or maybe it was when some guy's eyeball got yanked out, or maybe it was the 80th instance of cursing.