This is something that was really cemented to me after finishing the last season of Lower Decks in one go. In particular in the scene where two humanoid life-forms with pointy ears, one having heavy eye-liner and the other not, assumingly a male, and female Vulcan, were shown side by side. — It is often said that Star Trek as a franchise is at the vanguard of progressiveness and challenging it's audience, but I find myself strongly disagreeing.
I suppose that for The Original Series, one can argue that for the time, for a U.S.A. television series it was certainly a daring move to specifically include non-white cast members, cast members from around the planet, a Russian at the height of the cold war in particular, and female cast members. — These would certainly be things that challenged the U.S.A. audience but that was al it did. I actually particularly dislike how 300 years into the future these supposed pedigree “races” still apparently exist. Many other titles such as The Time Machine showed what I believe is a more correct view in concord with Roddenberry's “Utopian” vision, that all mankind had more or less merged into a homogeneous brown skin complexion. The U.S.A. is the only country in the Americas where “races” continue to exist; every other country has already for the most part merged into this somewhat homogeneous brown complexion.
If the bridge crew of the Enterprise looked thus, I would have certainly liked it more.
And after that, it only becomes worse. T.N.G. certainly did nothing remarkable for it's time in that department. Featuring non-white, non-male characters was nothing new a that time of course, and then D.S.9. was a particular embarrassment with it's treatment of race, inventing “black Bajorans”, which were never seen before, simply to give Jake Sisko a love interest since even though cross-species romance is fine, cross-race apparently is too sensitive in the 90s?
The intro sequence of Enterprise was a further embarrassment, willfully excluding the first man in space from it's opening montage of great feats of exploration because it was a soviet achievement? Gene Roddenberry would turn in his grave after he achieved including a Russian character at the height of the cold war, but showing the first man in space in 2002 is too much to ask?
There were some interesting things however, such as Denobuians being portrayed as a polygamous species where each individual is married to three others, and the episode that highlighted it did serve to challenge the U.S.A.-audience on their views on monogamy, as well as the three-sex species where the third sex was essentially a slave cast, but it certainly was not much.
Of course, it can't be omitted how much Star Trek has categorically been lacking behind in including same-sex relationships when this was already very mainstream in other titles, and frankly how absurd it's treatment of gender has always been. How reptilian alien species still have males and females with the females somehow having breasts or how completely different alien species must sport sex-coded haircuts conformant with North American gender roles.
Just so there be absolutely no mistaking who is male, and who is female.
They could do anything they wanted with alien species; they could have made both the male and female members of an alien species both be played by say female human actors, but make the females bald, and have the males have elaborate peacock-style colorful manes, which is certainly not biologically unlikely, but for the most part that would challenge the audience too much.
Liquid lifeforms that only assume a humanoid form for convenience to interact with humanoids must still have a gender.
We are talking about aliens here who could have very interesting biology, but this was all thy could come up with.
Then onto Lower Decks where it all started: we indeed finally have our same-sex sexual intercourse, and actually handled in a way that I like as it's treated as the most common thing without special attention drawn to it, but all the female cast members wear this strange eyeliner, races still exist, haircuts must be conformant to gender and race from a purely U.S.A. cultural perspective, and even though it be animation, where the sky is the limit and one is not beholden to any limits of human actors, alien species must still have exactly the same sex characteristics as humans do.
Certainly in animation, I've een far better, and far more impressive things that push the boundary.
I suppose that for The Original Series, one can argue that for the time, for a U.S.A. television series it was certainly a daring move to specifically include non-white cast members, cast members from around the planet, a Russian at the height of the cold war in particular, and female cast members. — These would certainly be things that challenged the U.S.A. audience but that was al it did. I actually particularly dislike how 300 years into the future these supposed pedigree “races” still apparently exist. Many other titles such as The Time Machine showed what I believe is a more correct view in concord with Roddenberry's “Utopian” vision, that all mankind had more or less merged into a homogeneous brown skin complexion. The U.S.A. is the only country in the Americas where “races” continue to exist; every other country has already for the most part merged into this somewhat homogeneous brown complexion.
If the bridge crew of the Enterprise looked thus, I would have certainly liked it more.
And after that, it only becomes worse. T.N.G. certainly did nothing remarkable for it's time in that department. Featuring non-white, non-male characters was nothing new a that time of course, and then D.S.9. was a particular embarrassment with it's treatment of race, inventing “black Bajorans”, which were never seen before, simply to give Jake Sisko a love interest since even though cross-species romance is fine, cross-race apparently is too sensitive in the 90s?
The intro sequence of Enterprise was a further embarrassment, willfully excluding the first man in space from it's opening montage of great feats of exploration because it was a soviet achievement? Gene Roddenberry would turn in his grave after he achieved including a Russian character at the height of the cold war, but showing the first man in space in 2002 is too much to ask?
There were some interesting things however, such as Denobuians being portrayed as a polygamous species where each individual is married to three others, and the episode that highlighted it did serve to challenge the U.S.A.-audience on their views on monogamy, as well as the three-sex species where the third sex was essentially a slave cast, but it certainly was not much.
Of course, it can't be omitted how much Star Trek has categorically been lacking behind in including same-sex relationships when this was already very mainstream in other titles, and frankly how absurd it's treatment of gender has always been. How reptilian alien species still have males and females with the females somehow having breasts or how completely different alien species must sport sex-coded haircuts conformant with North American gender roles.
Just so there be absolutely no mistaking who is male, and who is female.
They could do anything they wanted with alien species; they could have made both the male and female members of an alien species both be played by say female human actors, but make the females bald, and have the males have elaborate peacock-style colorful manes, which is certainly not biologically unlikely, but for the most part that would challenge the audience too much.
Liquid lifeforms that only assume a humanoid form for convenience to interact with humanoids must still have a gender.
We are talking about aliens here who could have very interesting biology, but this was all thy could come up with.
Then onto Lower Decks where it all started: we indeed finally have our same-sex sexual intercourse, and actually handled in a way that I like as it's treated as the most common thing without special attention drawn to it, but all the female cast members wear this strange eyeliner, races still exist, haircuts must be conformant to gender and race from a purely U.S.A. cultural perspective, and even though it be animation, where the sky is the limit and one is not beholden to any limits of human actors, alien species must still have exactly the same sex characteristics as humans do.
Certainly in animation, I've een far better, and far more impressive things that push the boundary.
