There’s a very good, very readable, very short book on the alt right and their sci-fi kink—some of which is because a lot of fascists wrote and write science fiction and when the science fiction is anti fascists (Orwell, for example) the alt right just cuts out the 10% they don’t like and drool over the rest. Speculative whiteness: science fiction and the alt-right by Jordan S. Carroll.
I was a child who was too young to stay up and watch Star Trek TOS when it first aired, but I got to watch it as reruns after school in the 1970's. A groundbreaking Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz got ST:TOS on the air with their Desilu Studios. They knew first hand about sexism and racism!
There were 1960's TV shows in America written to imagine a better world, or at least a more interesting one, instead of merely reinforcing the status quo. The Cold War was just one of the influences on plots. I didn't understand at the time how experimental some shows were in some ways, especially the fantasy, SF, and magical realism shows. Who remembers The Prisoner, The Time Tunnel, Nanny and the Professor, Land of the Giants, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Wild Wild West, The Avengers,The Twilight Zone, and of course Star Trek? Other shows were also trying to break thru the barriers thrown up by racism and sexism. Have you seen or heard of Julia, the first show to feature a Black woman in the starring role (Diahann Caroll)? Yet, it wasn't just experimental a time, it was also optimistic about our future. It feels like we prefer distopian stories these days. Thanks SER! I've been dodging traffic on memory lane this afternoon!
I was 9 when Star Trek TOS premiered. They actually had censors who approved script and costuming. I Dream of Jeanie, she couldn't show her navel. That inter-racial kiss was supposed to be cut but Bill made sure they had to use it. Times were different. They were making political statements they could under the nose of the censors who watched every frame. Considering the conditions and technology, they DID pretty good! IT REALLY WAS DIFFERENT TIMES.
Trekker since 1966. ONLY show our whole family enjoyed. Good thing since parents controlled the TV back then.
I’m much more familiar with the next Gen era show than the original series, but even in the first year of that where Gene Roddenberry was most heavily involved, it took place in a grand socialist utopia where humans no longer fought to acquire material goods.
I liked the one where their mirror universe crew was all aggressive and mutiny-ish and you could tell they were bad guys because the guys had no sleeves and the women wore thigh high boots and everyone knows the rough customers have no use for sleeves and need their boots extra high.
I also liked that episode where the “Yanks” and “Coms” turned out to be Americans and Communists and don’t you people know all this fighting will just lead to a bad end???
H&I TV https://www.handitv.com runs all of the old Star Trek shows: TOS, Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise on free OTA TV; most cable providers carry it as well.
I've not yet caught any of the Starfleet Academy series, but Discovery was (IMO) the best of the new generation of the movies and series, followed closely by Strange New Worlds.
I am fully on board with giving Stephen Miller the "A Clockwork Orange" treatment of force feeding all the season of 'Discovery'.
The usual suspects regularly howl that the resurrected Doctor Who has gone woke.
Unlike back in the good old days.
From '63 to '89 whenever the writers couldn't come up with something fresh, they'd trot out a seemingly heartless plutocrat, ready to do some dirty deal with the space aliens against his fellow humans. Then the Doctor would lecture everyone about survival of the fittest and the benefits of unencumbered free enterprise.
I fondly remember how Patric Troughton's Doctor patiently explained to Jamie how the English Redcoats civilized the savage Scotsmen.
Very well considered article. Thank you. I wonder how much my watching the Star Trek original series affected my sensibilities. When blended with books I read I now realize that I was very fortunate to have had the opportunities I had .
Good column. I've seen the two new Starfleet Academy episodes plus the vast majority of the other Star Trek series. Even if we settle our differences within our society we're always are war outside of it. While I (hope to) believe MAGA has more in common with us than differences, as my cross country trips have shown, the propagandized differences are overwhelming the common ground.
Someone should strap Miller in, tape open his eyes, and make him watch all five seasons of Star Trek Discovery, quite possibly the wokest tv show and definitely the wokest Star Trek, ever. We wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore 🤯.
Captain Picard was, on the surface, more "civilized" and diplomatic than Captain Kirk, but you learn that he was a hellion in Starfleet Academy who had to learn the hard way to keep his aggressive impulses under control and you would still see those aggressive tendencies break through or linger just under the surface when he was pushed.
For all of his reputation for daring and aggressiveness, Kirk, I think, was the more naturally calm captain of the two. I mean, Hell, Khan nearly killed him and his crew and stole the Enterprise and by the end of the episode, he's setting him up on what he thinks is a potential great planet for the tyrant and his minions and smiling about it.
I've watched the first 2 episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and it is every bit as "woke" as the original Star Trek series ever was. There will be plenty of ammunition in it for the radical right to denounce as namby-pamby ultraliberalism. It's actually kind of amazing that it got greenlit, given the current political climate.
Paul Giamatti chews the scenery as a classic villain with a sense of humor, and Holly Hunter is smart, wily, and thoughtful as the new Captain Kirk. Right off the bat she has reprised the words, "to go boldly where no man has gone before", and sets the tone of imagination, exploration, and adventure with a strong dose of humanity. So far, so good!
When you serve the unreconstructed—as Herr Miller does—you can just say whatever you like about popular media. Just whatever wins the argument for the moment. And of course it's every bit expected from such a foul. miserable shell of a human being.
I hadn't seen as much of Star Trek TOS, and that is a LOT you have taught me. I even remember different surprisingly progressive for the 1960s things! And one of the things people mentioned a lot was the interracial kiss involving Uhura, which was HUGE back then. That was a kind of thing that was controversial for another thirty years even.
There’s a very good, very readable, very short book on the alt right and their sci-fi kink—some of which is because a lot of fascists wrote and write science fiction and when the science fiction is anti fascists (Orwell, for example) the alt right just cuts out the 10% they don’t like and drool over the rest. Speculative whiteness: science fiction and the alt-right by Jordan S. Carroll.
I was a child who was too young to stay up and watch Star Trek TOS when it first aired, but I got to watch it as reruns after school in the 1970's. A groundbreaking Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz got ST:TOS on the air with their Desilu Studios. They knew first hand about sexism and racism!
There were 1960's TV shows in America written to imagine a better world, or at least a more interesting one, instead of merely reinforcing the status quo. The Cold War was just one of the influences on plots. I didn't understand at the time how experimental some shows were in some ways, especially the fantasy, SF, and magical realism shows. Who remembers The Prisoner, The Time Tunnel, Nanny and the Professor, Land of the Giants, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Wild Wild West, The Avengers,The Twilight Zone, and of course Star Trek? Other shows were also trying to break thru the barriers thrown up by racism and sexism. Have you seen or heard of Julia, the first show to feature a Black woman in the starring role (Diahann Caroll)? Yet, it wasn't just experimental a time, it was also optimistic about our future. It feels like we prefer distopian stories these days. Thanks SER! I've been dodging traffic on memory lane this afternoon!
Mr. Chekov would have had one word for Miller: "Cossack!"
I was 9 when Star Trek TOS premiered. They actually had censors who approved script and costuming. I Dream of Jeanie, she couldn't show her navel. That inter-racial kiss was supposed to be cut but Bill made sure they had to use it. Times were different. They were making political statements they could under the nose of the censors who watched every frame. Considering the conditions and technology, they DID pretty good! IT REALLY WAS DIFFERENT TIMES.
Trekker since 1966. ONLY show our whole family enjoyed. Good thing since parents controlled the TV back then.
I’m much more familiar with the next Gen era show than the original series, but even in the first year of that where Gene Roddenberry was most heavily involved, it took place in a grand socialist utopia where humans no longer fought to acquire material goods.
https://open.substack.com/pub/austinsikora/p/stephen-miller-shadow-president?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=32cg97
I liked the one where their mirror universe crew was all aggressive and mutiny-ish and you could tell they were bad guys because the guys had no sleeves and the women wore thigh high boots and everyone knows the rough customers have no use for sleeves and need their boots extra high.
I also liked that episode where the “Yanks” and “Coms” turned out to be Americans and Communists and don’t you people know all this fighting will just lead to a bad end???
H&I TV https://www.handitv.com runs all of the old Star Trek shows: TOS, Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise on free OTA TV; most cable providers carry it as well.
I've not yet caught any of the Starfleet Academy series, but Discovery was (IMO) the best of the new generation of the movies and series, followed closely by Strange New Worlds.
I am fully on board with giving Stephen Miller the "A Clockwork Orange" treatment of force feeding all the season of 'Discovery'.
The usual suspects regularly howl that the resurrected Doctor Who has gone woke.
Unlike back in the good old days.
From '63 to '89 whenever the writers couldn't come up with something fresh, they'd trot out a seemingly heartless plutocrat, ready to do some dirty deal with the space aliens against his fellow humans. Then the Doctor would lecture everyone about survival of the fittest and the benefits of unencumbered free enterprise.
I fondly remember how Patric Troughton's Doctor patiently explained to Jamie how the English Redcoats civilized the savage Scotsmen.
Very well considered article. Thank you. I wonder how much my watching the Star Trek original series affected my sensibilities. When blended with books I read I now realize that I was very fortunate to have had the opportunities I had .
Good column. I've seen the two new Starfleet Academy episodes plus the vast majority of the other Star Trek series. Even if we settle our differences within our society we're always are war outside of it. While I (hope to) believe MAGA has more in common with us than differences, as my cross country trips have shown, the propagandized differences are overwhelming the common ground.
Someone should strap Miller in, tape open his eyes, and make him watch all five seasons of Star Trek Discovery, quite possibly the wokest tv show and definitely the wokest Star Trek, ever. We wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore 🤯.
“Stephen Miller remains an unabashed, unrepentant racist who is also incredibly stupid.”
Department of Redundancy Dept.
Captain Picard was, on the surface, more "civilized" and diplomatic than Captain Kirk, but you learn that he was a hellion in Starfleet Academy who had to learn the hard way to keep his aggressive impulses under control and you would still see those aggressive tendencies break through or linger just under the surface when he was pushed.
For all of his reputation for daring and aggressiveness, Kirk, I think, was the more naturally calm captain of the two. I mean, Hell, Khan nearly killed him and his crew and stole the Enterprise and by the end of the episode, he's setting him up on what he thinks is a potential great planet for the tyrant and his minions and smiling about it.
I've watched the first 2 episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and it is every bit as "woke" as the original Star Trek series ever was. There will be plenty of ammunition in it for the radical right to denounce as namby-pamby ultraliberalism. It's actually kind of amazing that it got greenlit, given the current political climate.
Paul Giamatti chews the scenery as a classic villain with a sense of humor, and Holly Hunter is smart, wily, and thoughtful as the new Captain Kirk. Right off the bat she has reprised the words, "to go boldly where no man has gone before", and sets the tone of imagination, exploration, and adventure with a strong dose of humanity. So far, so good!
When you serve the unreconstructed—as Herr Miller does—you can just say whatever you like about popular media. Just whatever wins the argument for the moment. And of course it's every bit expected from such a foul. miserable shell of a human being.
I hadn't seen as much of Star Trek TOS, and that is a LOT you have taught me. I even remember different surprisingly progressive for the 1960s things! And one of the things people mentioned a lot was the interracial kiss involving Uhura, which was HUGE back then. That was a kind of thing that was controversial for another thirty years even.