Now don’t get me wrong, I think the best way for Trek to handle queer issues is to just put queer people on the bridge. A gay Riker equivalent or a trans woman who talks about her past with the same discomfort but honesty as how Picard talks about his is what I want. And in that vein I’m still on my first watch of TNG and it’ll be a while before I get to nutrek.
But I’m not going to pretend that to a certain portion of the population TOS wasn’t seen as being overly preachy on race. But seeing as I haven’t gotten to TOS yet either, I will say that in modern day I do think TNG was a bit preachy about disability and I’m glad they were.
Where do you consider TNG being preachy about disability? Not arguing, it’s just been a while since I’ve watched it beginning to end and this might be something I failed to pick up on.
Geordi’s blindness is a plot point at least once in an episode that’s basically exactly what people act like episodes involving queerness are. Where he has to hold a eugenicist’s hand through accepting that he doesn’t mind that he was born blind and that he even has some advantages thanks to his visor. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very good episode, and people did need it laid out like that, but it’s very much not the “we’ve moved beyond such concerns” in a way that say having a ranking officer use a wheelchair would be.
I will say something they did right was that his visor gives him headaches. It’s very in line with what folks with cochlear implants or very strong eyeglass prescriptions describe.
Ah, that’s fair, I was a child when I first watched the series so I don’t think I ever really registered the visor as a disability given that being blind doesn’t hinder him at all, besides the aforementioned headaches that rarely come up.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think the best way for Trek to handle queer issues is to just put queer people on the bridge. A gay Riker equivalent or a trans woman who talks about her past with the same discomfort but honesty as how Picard talks about his is what I want. And in that vein I’m still on my first watch of TNG and it’ll be a while before I get to nutrek.
But I’m not going to pretend that to a certain portion of the population TOS wasn’t seen as being overly preachy on race. But seeing as I haven’t gotten to TOS yet either, I will say that in modern day I do think TNG was a bit preachy about disability and I’m glad they were.
I mean, the one with the half white half black face dudes was not subtle
True, but that was one episode, not every scene of every episode.
honestly i think DS9 strikes a better balance. and it too was disliked at the time for going against what star trek was.
Where do you consider TNG being preachy about disability? Not arguing, it’s just been a while since I’ve watched it beginning to end and this might be something I failed to pick up on.
Geordi’s blindness is a plot point at least once in an episode that’s basically exactly what people act like episodes involving queerness are. Where he has to hold a eugenicist’s hand through accepting that he doesn’t mind that he was born blind and that he even has some advantages thanks to his visor. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very good episode, and people did need it laid out like that, but it’s very much not the “we’ve moved beyond such concerns” in a way that say having a ranking officer use a wheelchair would be.
I will say something they did right was that his visor gives him headaches. It’s very in line with what folks with cochlear implants or very strong eyeglass prescriptions describe.
Ah, that’s fair, I was a child when I first watched the series so I don’t think I ever really registered the visor as a disability given that being blind doesn’t hinder him at all, besides the aforementioned headaches that rarely come up.