star trek diversity. the fact that that phrase is meaningful is sad.

[cimorene]

Here's a crazy thought I had today: original Star Trek was one of the best racially representative shows in science fiction tv. It certainly did better than TNG (the only black member one of 2 black regulars on the cast was a savage alien - extra points if you've reimagined aliens who originally allegorically represented the USSR as ultra-violent, hulking black guys with a tribal bent; the other's a blind sidekick, essentially, the way he's usually written as Data's bff, whose sole romantic encounter is with one of the vanishingly-few black women they meet! And Whoopi's Guinan is a magical, sexless, ALIEN negro who tells fortunes, provides motherly advice as well as sassy straight-talking, and wears a robey-muumuu thing that I'm pretty sure is also offensive) and DS9 (one Indian, one black guy who is essentially the governor of a huge-ass COLONY and a diplomat, but is somehow militarily ranked below Picard and Kirk; a bunch of aliens, but none of them dark-skinned; of the two newly-introduced races we have Bajorans who are white, and Cardassians who are PAINTED GREY but always played by white people!)

I believe Voyager had a black Vulcan and a North American native (as well as maybe an Asian cast member? Am I remembering that right?). BSG has some racial diversity from what I've seen (I've not watched it myself), but the Stargate franchise has always been pretty abysmal (Teal'c: he's black, alien, AND a magical negro! And let's not start on Ronon and Teyla's treatment in canon).

So I mean, essentially, race has not made progress in mainstream tv sf since 1964.

Comments

[almostnever.livejournal.com]

Geordi also had a brief romantic experience with a sentient AI on the Holodeck modeled after an actual white female scientist (he was trying to tap into her expertise by modeling the AI on her, and ended up having chemistry with the AI; iirc, they kissed just before he deactivated the simulation). In a later episode, the scientist herself visited the Enterprise, and turned out to be married; she was disgusted to learn that Geordi had shared an attraction with the AI based on her. In retrospect, I can't even begin to figure out what to think about that.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Really? Wow, I had... completely 100% forgotten about that! But you're right, I don't really know what to make of it. On the surface, it's yet another "biracial relationships are ok, but only as long as they're imaginary/subtexty flirting with no consummation", which I seem to see a LOT of in tv (to be fair, Worf had UST with Deanna and a relationship with her in one AU even before marrying Dax, but the TNG incidences can also fall under 'imaginary/flirting' - and both Worf *and* Dax were supposed to be aliens, so...).