Fandom Toxicity Bites the Hand that Feeds
I’ve noticed something within the Star Trek fandom in the last few weeks. That is the incredible number of poor takes on Strange New Worlds. When the show was first announced, the fandom rejoiced over Captain Pike finally getting his chance to headline a Star Trek show. Yet with the second season, there has been a lot more criticism. Not only that, but the complaints are very unconstructive.
The first season of Strange New Worlds was not perfect. Girafe and I spent over an hour on my personal YouTube going over our many hesitations about the season. The big point of contention being the imbalance between stories involving the white cismen Pike and Spock and the numerous characters of color and women. I also had a particular gripe with the lack of queer characters, with only a quick reference to Chapel’s bisexuality before we settled into her years-long Spock obsession.
These complaints are not the ones that are being brought up against Strange New Worlds now. The dress uniforms are criticized for not looking like they did back in Original Series episodes like “The Menagerie” and “Journey to Babel.” Melissa Navia, who plays Ortegas, responded to a Twitter user about her side shave making her “lesbianic.” The only men on the show are Pike and Spock, thus uninteresting.
I am baffled by these complaints.
I am someone who knows costuming. I’ve been creating cosplay for over twenty years and sewing for thirty. Bernadette Croft and her team have done a masterful job of costuming this show. From the brief glimpses of dress uniforms we’ve seen in the trailers, they have captured the essence of the Original Series costumes while making them look modern and gorgeous. I compare the two, and I think they’re the same costume. It is just the budget that is different. The Original Series had a costume; Strange New Worlds has a uniform. Croft and her team have taken the original's essential elements and upgraded them.
Rebecca Romijn as Una
As for Melissa Navia’s hair… How ever a woman wants to wear her hair is her own damn business. If she wants to rock the Reverse Picard, she very well can. And she absolutely can rock it. She looks fantastic. It’s also a very practical hairstyle for a pilot. We know how people can be whipped around on a ship. Do you really want the pilot of the Enterprise to have to push the hair out of their eyes before they get the ship back on course after being hit by Klingon D7s? It’s also just a reductive, sexist and homophobic remark. Women don’t have to have long hair, queer women don’t have to have short hair, and why would looking “lesbianic” be a bad thing?
Melissa Navia as Ortegas Photo Cr: Michael Gibson/Paramount+
The final criticism I listed… Boy, does this one make me sigh. Hey Siri, play “Sound of Silence.” First, saying Pike and Spock are the only men on the show completely ignores that they aren’t, as the first season featured M’Benga and Hemmer in the main cast, with Chief Kyle a recurring presence. But none of them are white cismen, so I suppose they don’t count. Pike and Spock are also the protagonist and deuteragonist of the show respectively. Within the first season, five of the ten episodes featured them centered in the main plot. With a main cast of nine characters, that is a remarkable number and led to the Twitter campaign for #Mortegas, when Erika Ortegas received no character-centric episode. If you go up to any woman, person of color or queer person and complain there is only one character you can identify because it matches your demographic, they will laugh in your face and send you a link to the Token Minority page on TVTropes.
Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Pike Photo Cr: James Dimmock/Paramount+
I would like to acknowledge that while trolls have been getting loud again, they most certainly have not been silent. I’m focusing on Strange New Worlds because the recent complaints have been directed at it. But for the six years it has been on, Discovery has been taking a tremendous amount of bad-faith criticism based on racism, sexism and homophobia. Aside from the fact that without Discovery, we would not have any of the Star Trek we’re getting today, it’s a good show. It is a show that dares to take risks with its cast and storytelling. It does not deserve the criticisms levelled against it.
All the complaints I’ve seen can be summed up succinctly: It’s not the Trek I loved growing up. This is not a new complaint from Star Trek fans. It’s been happening since they announced Avery Brooks would be the first black lead on Deep Space Nine. People doubled down on it when Kate Mulgrew was brought in as the first female lead on Voyager. It reached an absolute fervour when Sonequa-Martin Green was cast as the first black female lead on Discovery.
It is true that the Star Trek that is coming out now is not what people loved growing up. But it shouldn’t be. Star Trek has always been about progress, and there is nothing progressive about maintaining a stasis from a show that began airing in 1966. I love the Original Series, and it was fair for its day… But there are massive problems with it. For all its acclaim for inclusion, the people of color within the cast are relegated to supporting roles. Women were relegated to love interests. Plot points such as Spock teasing Rand for being attracted to the “evil half” of Captain Kirk after he sexually assaulted her in “The Enemy Within” have aged like milk. It wasn’t until the fiftieth anniversary of the Original Series that a main character was allowed to be portrayed as an out and proud queer person, with Sulu in Star Trek: Beyond. Star Trek has always been about inclusion and showing a world where everyone from every walk of life can have a safe place to exist and thrive.
Nothing I’ve brought up here is anything new. As I said, people have been complaining since Deep Space Nine, and those criticisms got incredibly loud with Discovery. So-called “Nü Trek” has long been the bane of many internet trolls. It’s been the background radiation of the toxicity of online discourse. I was puzzled why it seemed like it had been getting louder and why it was being directed at Strange New Worlds, of all things. Then, it finally hit me.
It's all Picard’s fault… Thanks for that, Jean-Luc.
Patrick Stewart as Picard - Photo Cr: Sarah Coulter/Paramount+
Picard season three was a throwback to The Next Generation era of Star Trek. That show reflected the values of the late eighties and early nineties in which it was produced. In making what was essentially an eighth season of The Next Generation, Picard called back to all of that, focusing primarily on the white men in their cast, minimizing the women and people of color to supporting roles and often in a problematic way. They lobbied hard on nostalgia.
That is not to say I did not like Picard season three. I absolutely did. I had issues with it, but that did not detract from my overall enjoyment of what was presented. You can like something while still being critical of elements.
The problem is that by making this season—and pushing for the Legacy spin-off so hard— Paramount has fed into this toxic subset of fandom that has been waiting for something to be geared directly at them. But it’s not enough that they had a season of something. They want everything Star Trek to be bespoke for them.
I’m going to tell you now… That’s not going to happen. Star Trek is bigger than one subsection. While The Original Series and The Next Generation may have focused on cis white men, as was typical of the eras of original release, that has never been the demographic of the fanbase. Bjo Trimble is acknowledged as “The Woman Who Saved Star Trek” for her campaigns to keep The Original Series on the air. Pretty much every single first by a minority in NASA can be attributed to Nichelle Nichols appealing to Star Trek fans to join the space program. Even looking at the crews working behind the scenes on the current crop of Star Trek will show a greater diversity because they were fans, and they are now working on the shows they grew up on and can now add their own unique voice. We’ve been here all along. You just have to see us now.
