Roddenberry was both a genuinely progressive guy and an extremely 20th century man. “In the future we’re going to cure disease and hunger and everyone of all races and creeds will work together there’s gonna be a black woman, an asian guy, a Russian and an alien with funny ears on the bridge all working as a team and the women will all wear wrist length gogo dresses and there’s gonna be an episode where the crew is utterly baffled at the very concept of racism. We’re gonna paint some actors with half of their faces white and half of their faces black and they’re gonna be really horrible to each other and when asked why they’re gonna say “They’re white on the left side and we’re white on the right side” and it’s gonna make racism sound really dumb.”
I struggle to have a problem with a guy whose message is “Systematic hatred is extremely bad and stupid, let’s look at sexy legs instead.”
Fairly, gogo dresses were a symbol of the sexual liberation movement.
So even the sexy legs were woke at the time.
As transparent as Gene’s little parables were, I vastly prefer that method of social commentary over just saying “They certainly were unenlightened in the early 21st century weren’t they - shame on them!”
I haven’t watched any Star Trek since Enterprise. Are they worse at it now? It has been a long road getting form there to here.
Let’s talk about all the social injustice in the world while all positions of authority are held by white dudes.
