Excerpt from 'Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series'
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2026
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If the point of this is to draw the false conclusion that TOS was checking boxes as much as modern Trek, it's simpleminded and wrong. TOS was acknowledging social issues back in the pre-metrics era, before the media industry even drew up the checklist. Back In the '60s it was Roddenberry and a few others wanting the show to do some responsible things. Today the "thought" process aims to identify social cohorts that generate enough buzz among consumers to be worth pandering to.
Arf arf
If I’m understanding your post correctly, you’re saying that ‘60s Trek had representation because it was the right thing to do, while modern Trek has it because it believes it is more profitable. That leaves me with two death-of-the-author type questions:
I never said I doubted Roddenberry’s intentions. I don’t particularly doubt the modern team’s, either, though.
That sounds fair to say in general, but it’s not very specific. Which characters in modern Trek would you say are token minorities?
Regarding point 1, Roddenberry was indeed very open about his desire to make sure that when people watched Trek, they saw a version of the future where things were more egalitarian. He wanted a woman to the first officer on the ship, even though he also had Pike voice some consternation about having a woman on the bridge regarding yeoman Colt. He wanted people of colour on the ship. During the height of the Cold War, he wanted a proud Russian character on the ship, and even made up a story about being a Russian magazine article criticizing the lack of representation. He wanted people of colour on the ship. According to George Takei, when he tried to convince Roddenberry to include gay representation, Gene said that he wanted to, but couldn't push for that with the studio. TOS famously had the first scripted interracial kiss in a North American television show.
As you alluded, even if we recognize that some of Roddenberry's motivations were money and ratings oriented -- like having Chekov's hair be styled like the Monkees' to appeal to a younger demographic, or his introducing the Vulcan IDIC he could sell merch of it -- we also have to acknowledge that he was dedicated to portraying that egalitarian future as much as he could given the constraints of the era.
But how do you know the motivations of the people making those decisions today?
If your question is sincere you should do a little searching on Hollywood or Show Biz pandering to the loudest voices on social media. There are tons of stories from entertainment celebrities, writers and other insiders, attesting to how executive decisions respond when social media deifies or demonizes something. I support giving people the benefit of the doubt, but in this case you could just as well ask how we know Trump doesn't have a secret plan for an egalitarian utopia.
You can just look at the writing.
Sometimes on shows and movies they have fan service references to things from the franchise's past. You can spot that, right? They show you the thing, make sure it's center frame to be sure that the audience knows you have that thing they know in the show. But there's no point to it in terms of the plot, it's solely there to say to the audience "look we have this thing you like in the show!"
Many shows do the same thing but with political issues. They mention it, but they don't bother to have a plotline about it, or have it integrated into the story line. It's just there so they get credit for mentioning an issue exists. They don't want to actually discuss an issue too deeply, that would be too controversial.
Actual social commentary is very rare in TV shows and movies now. What we have now is social fan-service. Just references to issues, not actually taking a risk and doing anything meaningful with it.
I do agree with you that the modern iterations of Trek are not nearly as progressive relative to our time as TOS was in the 60s.
I took it more as demonstrating to the weirdos that have recently been up in arms that Star Trek became too "woke" that they're idiots who've been missing what's right in front of them the whole time. I don't even like Star Trek (No knock to those who do, but I grew up around a fair number of committed Trekkies, and none of their "Oh, you'll see if you watch this episode!" worked. Not saying it's bad, just not for me.), and I've known for ages it had plenty of progressive elements. I read this the same as people poking fun at Republicans who listen to Rage Against the Machine and unironically think they aren't parts of the machine being raged against.
The "weirdos" (which include Patrick Stewart and other alums) aren't objecting to the content but to the preachy, heavy-handed delivery. Roddenberry commented on the ridiculousness of racism with two characters hating each other for being the wrong color on the wrong side. The Picard s2 writers had characters walk around present-day LA saying things like, "There's so much the social injustice!" The complaint about modern Trek is that it tries too hard to be "woke" and not hard enough to be good science fiction.
It's so crazy how the difference between "preached" and "commented" is based on your specific opinion of where social progress should have stopped 🤔
As opposed to characters walking around modern day San Francisco discussing environmentalist taking points?
Please. Trek has never been subtle. Anyone accusing Trek of "trying to be too woke" was never paying attention in the first place.
No no no it's simple see:
Black lady serving on the bridge crew = "social commentary"
Black lady leading the bridge crew = "preachy heavy handed delivery trying too hard to be woke"
That's a potentially valid complaint, I was thinking more of people just complaining that Star Trek es bad just because it's become too woke and liberal, though. People like my father will just moan, "I don't know why they have to make it political with this stuff, Star Trek never used to do that." if he sees an episode with morn than one black character in it. There are some real idiots out there.
There are idiots out there, but also a lot of people we assume are idiots because for some reason we want to draw the worst possible conclusion and define them as The Enemy.
imo the best thing that modern trek has going for it is the fact that it's continued in the spirit of the original and sought to represent people otherwise largely ignored on the mainstream cultural landscape. berman-era trek actors would have supported lgbt+ story lines except it had a berman-shaped problem: berman. one of the reasons ds9 is so beloved is because it found creative ways to get around this. i fear with the takeover of skydance this may be wittled away and we'll be left with nothing but shitty action-adventure copraganda à la paramount but put it in space.
Well said
Representation is not pandering.
And yet for some reason the word "tokenism" exists.
Ah a clever and biting retort to be sure! A short and sweet dagger to the heart of the argument. Your college debate team is clearly very lucky to have someone like you among their ranks! However, I warn you, the fediverse, my friend, is the biggest of the big leagues, and such concise witticisms and stinging flashes of showmanship will not suffice to pull your seemingly iron clad observation across the finish line! Tokenism is not representation.
And Rod Serling was doing the same thing starting in the late 50s with Twilight Zone, using fantasy and science fiction to discuss subjects that TV never would have put on the air have they been shown in a realistic context.