I doubt that's what they meant, partly because it really doesn't seem to apply to either Disco or Picard. Both had their fair share of issues in the writing, but I wouldn't say tokenism was among them (unless you count Disco's bury-your-gays moment, but they course corrected on that).
It hardly seems fair to compare them to robots.
I agree, but also… you know if battle droids existed in Star Trek there’d be at least one episode where one of them breaks with its programming and comes to Starfleet seeking asylum. Like the exocomps, or Hugh in “I, Borg”, or even Data getting his day in court to prove his free will. Star Trek wants everyone to be free, whatever they’re made out of.
Just saw jem Hadar in the star fleet in this trailer? What?
Why is that a problem? In TOS, Klingons were the enemy, then TNG brought us Worf. In TNG, the Ferengi were the enemy, then in DS9 Nog joined up. Star Trek is all about coming together and overcoming differences.
I see them prioritizing:
- Diversity and political correctness
I wish. They’ve cancelled all the shows with queer representation. SNW has about a hundred relationships going on, all straight. I miss Disco and Lower Decks.
I haven’t noticed much backlash, though I’m sure you can find some in the usual discontented corners of the internet. Personally I’m optimistic, but we really don’t have all that much information yet. The trailer mostly sold the tone, but it seemed like the right tone.
Still better than Musk Junior High.
My partner does this all the time. Unfortunately, they’re often completely wrong about what I was trying to say. Suddenly we’re having two completely different conversations simultaneously.
Click baity headline. Here's the actual quote:
“There were Romulans—there was a whole thing. The idea was that Guinan’s bar was presented as a normal bar in Los Angeles, but if you knew the right thing to do, you could go into the back through the telephone phone booth and that was Rick’s Café and it was a stopping point for all these different species that were actually there on Earth with a ‘Do not interfere’ thing happening. So you had a lot more Star Trek happening in the backdrop of it. Ultimately, the powers that be at that time were like, ‘This is too much.’ But there were some really good ideas there that were pretty cool.”
Sounds like they wanted to throw in a bunch of random alien species cameos that would have done nothing but distract from the plot. Frankly, there's too much of that in Season 2 already. We don't need young Guinan, Gary Seven's team, a Soong, visitors from Vulcan, the Borg Queen, and Q all mucking about with Earth. Pick two to three of those and actually develop them.
The Vulcans didn't know the Romulans were their long lost brothers until Errand of Mercy, did they? Hard to reconcile with a group who noped off thousands of years ago and may not even exist anymore.
Not to say this wouldn't factor into the Romulan's attitude, it probably would, but it would be in an irrational way.
For the reward of instantaneous travel, I’m sure the Federation could muddle its way through amending a 100 year old law. The rest of the points don’t seem all that different than the complications we see our heroes regularly encounter exploring the galaxy. And none of them were enough to convince the crew of the Discovery to stop using the spore drive for the rest of the series.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Discovery anyway. Trek is full of miracle technologies that go conveniently forgotten. Janeway has no reason to be miffed given that she sat on an infinite speed drive herself, which had no downside that the doctor wouldn’t have been able to cure after it took them home.
I'm bothered by the false dichotomy made in the original post, though. The diversity isn't the cause of bad storytelling. The problem isn't that they prioritised one thing over another. Casting a white male lead on Discovery wouldn't have given them more time to work out the plot, or a more talented stable of writers. The two are completely orthogonal to one another.
If someone wants to criticise the storytelling, they can just do that. There's no reason to bring up diversity unless they have some desire to scapegoat it.