@jeffowski The assertion that Star Trek was never political is one of the most annoying things in sci-fi fandom.
Star Trek has *usually* been the quiet, understated, matter-of-fact kind of political. And often that's enough.
And then there's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," because sometimes you just want to beat the message into people's heads with a club.
@bmac @jeffowski my unified theory of ST and Dr Who is when the Dr Who writers watched the ep where Kirk and pals beam down to Morgulon 9 and meet the mud men, they missed the part where the mud men society was a (clear! political!) metaphor for fascism / racism / classism and instead thought the point was the sweet mud men costumes.
Don’t be like straw men Dr. Who writers! Trek has always been political!
Today is a good day to shout ‘trans rights are human rights’!
@heavyimage @bmac @jeffowski having run for 60 years (admittedly with a 15 year gap in the middle) Who has had a whole bunch of episodes in different veins — the second ever story, that introduced the Daleks in 1963, was somewhat anti-Nazi.
In 1975 we have ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ where we have the predecessors of the Daleks in blatantly Nazi uniforms, leading up to the Doctor trying to tackle ‘do we kill baby Hitler’.
@heavyimage @bmac @jeffowski These are just some examples that come to mind, obviously not every episode is ‘political’ and it doesn't ‘land’ every time either, but Who has often had ‘a message’ right since the start.
Not to mention behind the scenes things like Verity Lambert, the first producer, being the only woman with that title at the BBC at the time.
(I need a longer character count, sorry 🙈)
@heavyimage @bmac @jeffowski we can argue it should be obvious and non-controversial, I'd be right there with you, but this here isn't exactly ‘not political’ — it's borderline a manifesto:
Church of Jeff
Brian MacDonald
Jesse Spielman
zbrown