It's different these days though. Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer.

Whereas in Star Trek, it made sense that a future spacefaring crew would be made up of people with origins from all different parts of the world. This was entirely consistent with the overall storyline.

Complain about terrible storylines all you want but now isn't must different from what it was in the past. People considered interracial relationships and being gay in the past the same way you consider "fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now".

> Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer.

People were been just as dismissive about interracial kiss in the 60s. About gay relationships in the 70s and 80s.

Evolve or become a dinosaur.

What if the societal trends were in the opposite direction? Should you evolve or become a dinosaur then too? If so, why bother caring at all?

Unless you're corrupted by archaic religious morals, generally it's pretty obvious to tell when society is progressing or regressing.

It did not “make sense”. It was a concerted effort to include women and other races, which was controversial at the time.

If it made sense, why was it so groundbreaking?

So it’s not consistent that show set in America be multi-racial and have people with different sexual orientations?

Back in the 90s, they showed Jadzia Dax as being interested in men and women on Star Trek DS9.

Not to mention X-men has always been a allegory of prejudice against minorities.

I think it's more that Netflix just has poor execution on a lot of shows.

When telling a story on TV, you often want to cut the story to the bone such that it can be understood quickly and entertain without confusing the viewer with side tangents that aren't central to the story. If a non-story-essential element is too prominent then the viewer might feel it's boring

This happened to Doctor Who. Too much emphasis on LGBTQ rather than good stories.

Sad, really; Whitaker nailed the role as the Doctor. At least the most recent season made up for it. The previous season's attempt at giving everything a woke angle simply turned out to be really, really boring sci-fi.

That's good to hear, I might it up again.

They forgot the golden rule of tv, make a good show first.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, when exactly did that happen? Most people who enjoyed the new show and dropped out did so with the Thirteenth Doctor (Whittaker). There were some episodes that made me roll my eyes (e.g. the Rosa Parks one) but personally I mostly I lost interest because of the pacing and the IMO blandness of the characters and the lack of chemistry between them (again, this is just me).

But the show was pretty much about identity for most of its first ten series, not to mention that you could say that there is an inherent aspect of transness to the character of the Doctor (especially their experience with other characters familiar with past incarnations of the Doctor). The show plays a lot with gender, especially around the timelords.

Heck, even on a purely literal textual level the show is extremely LGBTQ from the start. Captain Jack Harkness is openly bisexual (or pansexual) and flirts with the (male presenting) Doctor who is clearly intrigued. The "love triangle" subplots largely play out more as depictions of polyromantic relationships rather than sources for drama. Even without featuring any clearly trans characters, the show is fundamentally queer if you even barely scratch the surface of it.

I guess if you want to consider the show overly "woke", that started as early as when Martha Jones became a companion because her race became relevant to the plot. The only thing that changed with the newer series is that the writing IMO got sloppier.

I don’t remember Harkness, love triangles, or sexuality pre-reboot Doctor Who. I don’t recall any Doctor having relationships with companions pre-reboot, yet the opportunity to showcase that was always possible. It was a sci-fi kids show that didn’t include love, but still had great stories.

So you dislike the entire new show starting with the Ninth Doctor, not just the more recent series. That's important context. FWIW I'd argue that the Eight Doctor also had a heavy romance subplot, so I guess your cut-off is 1989.

That's all percectly reasonable but I don't see how this has anything to do with the discussion related to the article, given that the new Doctor Who show started in 2010, Netflix only started doing its own productions in 2013 and most complaints about "too much politics" tend to be about media produced in the mid-2010s onwards (the Ghostbusters reboot was released in 2016).

Would anyone say that a show emphasized heterosexuality too much?

Yes. Even before the source material for GOT dried up it was borderline unwatchable due to the constant nudity.

I’m really not a prude, I hope, but I prefer to keep my intriguing and backstabbing separate from my softcore pornography.

Do you have an example of this preaching from Netflix? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're referring to, but maybe I just haven't seen it

People are saying that right now about the new Star Treks. And I don't think most disagree with the politics/social commentary, it's just so in your face/contrived that it ruins the show for many.

Right, folks are totally cool with gays and blacks and whatnot as long as they don’t have to see them. “So in your face”!

Good grief, no need to take the comments of others in bad faith. What folks mean by "in your face", is the fact that these shows will throw in a bunch of woke characters as a substitute for actually writing a good show. Instead, they'll say something like "Look, we have a disabled multiracial transsexual lesbian as a character, isn't our show great?".

The reason all the Star Trek comparisons in this comments section are so wildly off base is that Star Trek was actually a well-written show with interesting plot lines and interesting characters, that happened to have a diverse cast. Most of what's on Netflix now is just junk that that thinks if it pushes the cultural envelope far enough, no one will notice that most of the shows are little more than clumsy preaching.

They have one gay character and a non binary character. The one character has (had) a trill symbiont. The trill host has always been shown as not being heterosexual in TNG in the 80s and Deep Space Nine in the 80s.

Again even back in the 60s with the original Trek “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, they showed two races fighting because one was black on the left side and white on the right side and the other race was just to opposite - to show just how dumb racism was.

They considered the kiss in your face too at the time.

As was Ellen’s episode when she came out.

Even more recently there was an uproar about “wokeness” when they decided to cast a Black woman to play an orange alien from Tamaran on Titans.

Strangely enough, there was not such an uproar about lily White shows like Friends and Seinfeild.

You’re comparing a reaction to something that was common but only recently televised to something that’s extremely uncommon and over-represented in their programming 20x compared with reality.

I think you underestimate how much things have changed to make that claim: it wasn't until 1996 that the majority of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Below 20% of Americans approved of it when the Star Trek kiss aired.

A larger percentage of Republicans support transgender rights today than Americans supported interracial marriage when in 1969. More Americans support transgender rights today than supported it 20 years after the Trek kiss aired.

Interracial relationships weren’t that realistic in the 60s and there were laws in the south against interracial marriage. It wasn’t until the 80s that laws against “sodomy” - ie homosexual relationships - were overturned. It was always those “liberal Hollywood types” pushing an agenda…

Uh, sodomy was legalized in many southern states as late as 2003.

But netflix is making historically white characters black for no good reason.

If some ruler in middle age europe was white then why do they have to change that just to showe more black people into the show or whatever. They should make original shows and stories where they can do whatever they want

I wasn’t aware white, straight was the default choice for characters, and you need a reason to differ from this norm!

What are the rules for allowing black characters on tv?

And if some movie is set in 2000s, why do they have to show Norse Gods, men that turn green when in angry and an alien from Krypton?

The hippie Star Trek episode remains ludicrously terrible 60 years later.

Star Trek was actually good though. Netflix pulp is completely devoid of content other than politics. Nobody wants to pay to watch propaganda.

From what I can tell Netflix's catalog includes Stal Trek so you are just backing up his point.

Owning streaming right =/= producing content.