David Benfell, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

@buerviper Excellent point. The contrast with Counselor Troi on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise in The Next Generation (#TNG ) is stark.

@Reygle I would say that not everything has to be the original series (#TOS ).

@ValueSubtracted DS9 was my favorite until Picard and Discovery.

I was appalled by Voyager and Enterprise, and while the former never really improved, the latter got better just before they cancelled it—I faintly recall that they brought in a different producer.

@Solumbran @Steve

I agree with this in Voyager, a show I was never very impressed by anyway. She emerged as a much stronger character in Picard, however.

@Corgana People fawned over her because she was a loving character who did great. That greatness emerged from her redemption and would have been lost to whatever the Federation’s idea of a prison cell in the 23rd century otherwise.

I’ve been on social media for a while and I have to say, this has all the hallmarks of a flame war. So this is all I’m going to have to say on the matter. You can throw darts at her photograph on your own wall.

@Corgana That’s what redemption is about. It’s recognizing that even the greatest among us make mistakes and can still be great.

@Corgana she did redeem herself.

@glorkon @USSBurritoTruck

Star Trek also assumes a truly post-scarcity society in which capitalism plays, at most, a small part.

One of the problems we face in assessing human potential is that we pretty much only know of humans since the Neolithic, when authority and wealth became increasingly centralized. In the Star Trek universe, while authority remains hierarchical and highly centralized, economic inequality is somewhat diminished. These are different sets of social premises and the outcomes might vary.

@data1701d @ValueSubtracted

Yeah, this’ll be a hard pass for me too.

@ValueSubtracted I recall noticing the sexism on Enterprise. I don’t recall noticing it on Voyager, which had two strong female characters. But I’m an old man raised in a more chauvinistic era–I might not notice.

@ValueSubtracted @cybervseas

By such standards, the Original Series (#TOS) seems positively regressive. I don’t mean to defend this, but I’m guessing that, at the time, it was perceived that Enterprise needed to fit into that regression.

@usernamefactory I did manage to watch it all the way through, but I wouldn’t watch it again. Some of it is just too relentlessly horrific and it didn’t actually become interesting until the final few episodes before they cancelled it.

@jalanhenning pretty normal for the era.

@dethstrobe this M’Benga fellow seems like the most interesting character of the lot, with a backstory we’ve only seen bits and pieces of. It’s a shame Paramount will probably kill off its Star Trek franchise before we see more of it.

@StillPaisleyCat @hopesdead Yeah, I’m wondering if there’s a deal in the works that I, at least, hadn’t heard about.

Paramount has been too much in the news for the wrong reasons.