So I do like Star Trek a lot, especially TNG, DS9, and Below Decks. Voyager and TOS are fine. Space socialism is pretty good and I can’t get enough of it. There are a few common tropes that irk me. tho.

  1. Baseball is cracker Amerikkkan nonsense - You telling me that all these different species and planets get together to chill, and the vibe they’re gonna channel is Ohio?? Football (soccer) or some version of hockey make a lot more sense, you can pick up and start playing immediately. I can’t imagine Worf wanting to learn all those pointless rules about balls and strikezones and fowls. Sisko is arguably the best captain of any series, and I really get pulled out of an episode every time he drops some awful baseball trivia. It’s only slightly better than Nascar. I actually know one Scottish person who really likes baseball, and he’s literally the worst person I know.

  2. The tribunal - It’s so damn common. It seems like every season there’s got to be a court-martial, hearing, or appeal against a Starfleet decision. I guess Law and Order is big there. It’s probably a minor critique, but it does reinforce the ideology that Western courtrooms are fair.

  3. Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.

  4. Poker in TNG - Poker has to be the worst form of entertainment, and I genuinely like maths. I blame TNG for reigniting the poker craze of the 90s and ruining all my guy friends’ personalities.

  • macabrett[they/them]English
    5·
    8 months ago

    I feel like we never got to see how vast and expansive a space station could be. Deep Space 9 takes place on a gigantic space station, but it mostly feels like a few rooms and a LOT of identical hallways.

    Babylon 5 also takes place on a space station, but it takes some time to show how transit works and it even has big outdoor similar to Mass Effect’s citadel and the Captain even accesses a baseball field that has big robots that go around picking up the baseballs to return to the pitch machine.

    Yes, both 90s tv shows about space stations had a captain that was into baseball several hundred years in the future.