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.
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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.
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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.
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Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.
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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.
Amen. We need filler episodes so this can happen. Nu Trek doesn’t really do chill episodes or show much of the crew just kinda dicking around doing day to day stuff. The 10 episode season is the culprit imo. It can be good for a show to just burn off an episode or two and focus on something a bit more low key. 26 per season seems like waaaaaay too big a workload, but 15-20 seems fine along with the expectation that they don’t all need to be bangers. I don’t really need a plot to enjoy star trek. Just watching that world exist is fun. We gotta get some bottle episodes and episodes where they clearly had to save budget for the bigger ones. They’d never make Data’s Day or Our Man Bashir nowadays.