Wokey Pokey Star Trek?

I have been a classic Star Trek fan for most of my life. My all time favorite show to this day is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I still will turn on reruns of that show and nap to it on a Sunday afternoon. Enterprise and Deep Space Nine are also excellent spin offs to the franchise. I never was a huge fan of Voyager, as it was the place the bad '90s Trek writing often end to languish and die. However, credit where credit is due: when Voyager was good, it was very good indeed, but when it was bad, it was horrid. 

The last of the good Star Trek pretty much went out with Star Trek: Enterprise. I really liked that incarnation, but there was a lot of hating on it at the time. It only ran 4 seasons, which was a shame. That show did start slow, but the last few seasons, the writing was really stellar. It was airing at the height of 9/11, so it really had an interesting take on terrorism and the inherent need for many at that time for revenge/justice.  

I think Enterprise suffered from a few issues, not related to the show itself. One was that there was just some Trek fatigue going on for a lot of people. Star Trek had pretty much been running by that point for over a decade a half, first with Next Generation, and then concurrently with DS9 and Voyager. Of course, when you run two competing shows in the same universe, invariably you have your base divide up into camps. I was solidly on Team DS9. 

The last two seasons of DS9 and the Dominion War was some of the finest Science Fiction writing of the '90s. That's saying something because the Science Fiction TV show scene in the 1990s was absolutely a golden age. Aside from all the good Star Trek that decade, there were shows like the X Files, Stargate SG-1 (which was really Star Trek without the Enterprise or the Prime Directive), Sliders, Babylon 5, and the last few seasons of Quantum Leap (despite it having the worst series finale episode ever). Even the parody was top notch, with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Muppets in Space. 

Enterprise came at the very tail end of all that, and so sort of got viewed by a lot of the fanbase as the red-headed step child of Star Trek, even though it really did have a great cast chemistry with Captain Archer and Trip Tucker and all. Archer always polls last in polls about the greatest of the 5 classic Trek captains, but if I was an enlisted Star Fleet NCO that I'd take a red shirt phaser blast for, I'd sign up to work for Captain Archer any day of the week. 

My point is though that even Enterprise has come into its own at a mini-classic in the Trek universe since the New Trek of the streaming era. While it finally ended strong, Picard kind of floundered with a bunch of bizarre half-baked story threads that they never followed up on. Star Trek Discovery was just rubbish. There was not a single character in the cast I liked, and they drank the Alternate Universe koolaid to end up in the 32nd century. It really was just preposterous. Then there was that weird Section 31 movie that I still don't even know what that was about. Star Trek Strange New Worlds started amazingly with a hat tip to the old Episodic format, but then kind of became almost ridiculous in an almost self-parody kind of way. (A musical with singing Klingons and dance numbers? I couldn't take the show seriously anymore after that nonsense. Some things can't be unseen...)

Currently, there is this truly bizarre offering called Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. I have honestly tried to watch it on its own merits, but it's truly ghastly. A lesbian commandant and her female Jem Hadar lover and a gay klingon on in a dress? Star Trek has always pushed the envelope on some social themes, but this was so wokey pokey in your face, I had to stop watching it. It was like Saved by the Bell level stories with wokey Trek. I guess I am not surprised. Hollywood writers can't help themselves anymore. They have to cram all this down your throat because they think that's what real life is because they live in this weird Malibu bubble where literally everyone around them in their world is all about rainbow flags and far Left policies. They literally can't imagine a world outside that myopic bubble. 

Now, you can completely disagree with me on these New Trek offerings, and that's fine. I don't care for them myself, but if that's your jam, knock yourself out. What irritates me is the gaslighting that so many in the Trek world seem to be doing now by proclaiming that Trek has always "been woke." That's simply not true. Some of the most conservative people I know are huge classic Trek fans. 

Yes, like all good science fiction, the story telling forces you to wrestle with current social issues. But the beauty of Star Trek was that it could do so without intentionally being in your face on one side or the other. They would present topics, and it was left to the eye of the beholder on how they interprets such allegories and commentary. 

People always point to classic episodes of Star Trek to prove "Trek was always woke." Take for instance this classic Trek episode: 

If you have never seen it, this episode is an allegory about race wars. It aired during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The premise of the episode is that the Enterprise encounters these two aliens. One is pursuing the other because he is black on the left side of this face and therefore a degenerate, not like the master race whose faces are white on the left side of the face. 

Now, yes, one level, the allegory of the stupidity of judging one solely on the color of their skin is very strong. The kicker in this episode is that it turns out that this race war has annilated these two alien's entire population, as it turns out these two are the only two people left of their entire race. And yet their hatred continues. The Enterprise lets them both escape, to return to their hunt and fight to the death, even though it's literally destroyed their world. 

Wokey pokey Trek fans like to point to this as "proof" that "Star Trek has always been woke, but that's nonsense. The Enterprise in this episode follows the Prime Directive and chooses not to interfere in the end, and let this society literally destroy itself. The Prime Directive: not to interfere with the natural evolution of any species with modern technology or morals is an extremely conservative principle. In fact, it's right out of the pages of Edmund Burke, the father of Enlightenment era conservatism. Burke argued that democracy and modern enlightenment can't be imposed on civilizations that have not evolved to the point of embracing self rule. It's a fool's errand to try and impose it because it's not in their societal ethos. Burke argues you have to let backwards tribal societies be tribal because imposing Enlightenment democratic rule would be futile and rejected. 

So, while there are episodes of Star Trek that explore more "liberal" themes, there are an equal number that explore 'conservative' themes. Star Trek let the audience decide how to interpret the episode. That's a big different than the in your face virtue signaling of wokey New Trek.