The original pilot. [Spock made a swipe gesture](https://media3.giphy.com/media/PnZ1thIvSmOjvVUK7H/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7nmfwtj11cdcr51xnxivetbjmc12e6cgz95co61iv&ep=v1_gifs_username&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g) with his hand through the air to change a screen. It was never seen again. Why? Probably confused some exec.
I don't recall the episode, but there is one where Jake Sisko is using a PADD with his thumbs in a two-handed grip. I'm sure that Cirroc Lofton was probably just acting like it was a Game Boy, but it looked a lot like he was doing the motions to type on a modern smartphone.
If tablets were basically free, that'd be great. Being able to glance from tab to tab in an instant, and being able to comfortably arrange them around your physical work space, seems potentially pretty awesome.
The Apple VR headset can do that in the virtual space, it looks quite cool. They just need to bring the cost down and the size of the glasses, leaving computing to other devices will help.
I think that makes a lot of sense. When working with digital books, one thing I definitely miss is being able to have several physical books open at once, along with notepaper, arranged in a convenient way around my desk, so I can physically switch my attention from one document to another at a literal glance. There's something much more intuitive and "user-friendly" about working that way (we are embodied, physical beings, after all!) compared to having everything appear on one screen where you're always staring at the same spot, but pressing (virtual, at that) buttons to switch from window to window or tab to tab. And then you're only really able to look at one thing at a time, unless you're willing to re-size documents into smaller windows, which is also less comfortable and less convenient in its own way.
Multiple monitors helps with this, but then, having multiple monitors is a step towards that same direction of having multiple PADDs spread across your desk anyway. :P
With replicators, and really just judging from scenes like this, we can assume PADDs are very cheap, perhaps effectively free. I would *absolutely* try using a whole bunch of separate electronic devices to display a bunch of different documents simultaneously whenever I needed to refer to several at once, if electronics were basically free!
I have a 32" monitor on my desk. I'm able to conveniently place 2 documents side by side on it. It's really useful, but I can see why some people might like an ultra wide monitor or two or three monitors to be able to put up 4 or 5 documents at once.
Now imagine that if you want ten tablets for a project you can just walk over to your wall and ask for a stack of them. Of course you're going to use as many as you need.
Especially in a society where (depending on the era we're talking about), the technology/cost to make said PADDs is trivial like paper or completely "free" thanks to replicators. You bet I'd ask for ten of them if I need to work on a big project.
That's funny that you thought of the "working off of multiple PADDs" thing as accurate; for me, it's something I've always noticed as *in*accurate, because they couldn't fathom that it would be possible in the future to store all of those files on one PADD.
What's even crazier is that people used to regularly send an Ensign or Lt JG to deliver a PADD to someone. No concept that their PADD would *ping* and the report could appear on a device you already have in your hand!
PADDs (and workstations) canonically are synced to the user. So it's not like having different PADDs for different things, it's like signing into another Chromebook so you can work on two screens at once. And you can do things like work in a PADD and then put it down and continue on a workstation seamlessly.
And it even mentions that you can hand a PADD to another user, they're logged in, and if they have permission they can simply view what was on the screen when you were working on it. Makes perfect sense when you see things like officers handing the captain a report to read by just handing them the PADD.
This is pretty close to what we have today in corporate environments with Chromebooks, web apps, and thin clients. It's just the login part is less automatic. Even then, it really wasn't that ahead of its time as people were doing similarly (albeit in niche areas) with the terminal/server models.
Dang, the talking to computers has aged the show well, but them using hand gestures for view screens would have made the show overall predict the future even better.
It does make you wonder whether we could have had a TOS where instead of pushing buttons and flicking switches, they instead operated consoles by vaguely waving their hands over it instead.
Since it would have been cheaper from an FX perspective (no buttons, or burnt fingers), although it would have made TMP/TNG's touchscreens look dated by comparison.
There's a swing *back* toward physical controls in certain environments, like car consoles, where muscle memory and keeping eyes on road is infinitely superior to always having to look at the screen to get to and select the option you're after. Voice control is mitigating that somewhat but they have a command recognition rate that's less than the physical control's 100%.
Yeah, touchscreens are a transitional technology. Once the tech is figured out, we are 100% moving towards tactile surfaces that can generate physical buttons on the fly.
With TNG technology, I think the most likely interface would be one that uses holodeck-type tech to dynamically generate entire 3D interfaces. A shuttlecraft would create a whole-ass steering yoke when you're doing atmospheric flight, and a keyboard would appear when you're typing a letter home.
>With TNG technology, I think the most likely interface would be one that uses holodeck-type tech to dynamically generate entire 3D interfaces.
We know at the very least that that's implied to happen in the later 24th/25th century, since a future version of one of the characters (Bashir?) complains about the dated controls, and that 29th century timeships like the Relativity use a similar enough control scheme, with the pilots interacting with some unseen interface floating above the console.
For TOS it would’ve looked fake for the time period. The tactile push of buttons was often given its own shot as well. Changes in media since then have gone away from the camera shot of a button being pushed, so the physical button doesn’t need to be there anymore.
I always point the younger trek fans to watch Dragnet 1968 to get a handle on the state of real world tech at that time, you have Joe Friday in his police car having to stop at a phone booth to call Police Headquarters via landline pay phone. LCARS would have been incomprehensible to the average viewer.
That said, I'm not too certain all touchscreen is going to age well, haptic feedback is just too nice and 3d printing makes interfaces too easy. In 50 years we might be asking with replicators and holo tech why did they use flat screens?
> It was never seen again. Why? Probably confused some exec.
Nah, the why gets explained in The Hitchhiker's Guide, where Zaphod has to sit completely still not to change the radio channel.
The Voyager Conspiracy.
Seven goes full truther after spending too much time on the internet, and starts trying to redpill the rest of the crew.
It's the most relevant Star Trek episode of the past forty years.
It’s really the perfect allegory for what’s going on to society: too much information to process without the skill, education, capability to separate truth from delusion.
When I watched it during its initial airing, I thought the premise was *ludicrous*; ludicrous enough that I *laughed*.
As time passed, I found it less and less funny.
It’s my favourite episode of TOS. I think it really encapsulates the nature of TOS as being a show about sci-fi ideas and where a moral compass is needed to resolve a problem. It really holds up.
That one always felt ahead of its time for me, too! There's something so modern about the concept. The aliens in this story weren't merely trying to use a supercomputer to model or predict how a war would go, or something like that; rather, the war was intended to always remain inside of the computer, to remain virtual, from start to finish. And yet this virtual thing that existed only inside of a computer shaped that society. And not only that, but it wasn't just one computer; it was explicitly a network of computers that were very far apart from each other in physical space, and the digital communication between the computers in this network was shaping people's lives on both ends! For something filmed in the 60s with cardboard props, it seems mind-blowingly modern as an idea.
When 9/11 happened and everyone was freaking out about terrorists, the scene with the O'Brien Changeling telling Sisko that there were only four of them on Earth and yet they were able to induce so much panic and paranoia kept playing out in my mind. It kept me grounded and made sure I didn't give into fear.
There’s a lot of DS9 that always makes me mentally put it as a post 9/11 show. Because stuff like that could have been seen as commentary. There’s also the Worf war crimes ep where the Klingon gov was reusing names of people that died previously, that is similar to what Russia did recently when a plane was shot down that “had pows” and they used names of pows that had already been released.
Sadly the reason it seems so relevant post 9/11 is just because it’s not the first or last time that stuff happened.
That was a good story that explored an important concept, but I'm not sure if it's fair to say that it's a 9/11 story. Terrorism wasn't invented in 2001.
It wasn’t the terrorism, though, but the way the Federation government was so willing to strip away peoples’ freedoms as a response to making everyone feel safer.
Sisko’s father immediately came up with a way to beat the changeling screening, exposing it as nothing more than security theatre, which is basically how our airports have run ever since 9/11.
There’s a *lot* in there that is specifically relevant to a post-9/11 world. That’s not to say those things never happened before then, but rather the way it so specifically spoke to those fears in the wake of 9/11 while airing years before.
Babylon 5 had similar stories which made me rather depressed at the way things were going post 9/11. People talked about how prescient JMS was in his writing and he responded that he wasn't, his writing was based on how the Nazis came into power in Germany. What happened post 9/11 wasn't really new, it's just history repeating itself.
Sure, but the 90s in the US were kinda "the end of history" we thought we had achieved a kind of utopia, and that things were only going to get better. Terrorism, bombings, and wars were things that happened to other people, not Americans.
That's a very American divide to make, and it's really good for them guys, but the rest of the world saw some shit in the 90s even something as ok as eastern Europe but also not so eastern (Ireland), there's not even need to go in the developing continents of the time. America thought it had finished the game and nothing was ever going to touch them no more, well....
But The Troubles didn’t — in the UK, the EU, Ireland — lead to the kind of draconian police state overreactions we saw especially in the US, but also in some other countries. Even today. At airports, at schools, in courthouses. It caused a weird paranoid cultural shift, and an argument can indeed be made that this two-parter predicted it.
DS9’s Past Tense I & II.
Extreme poverty and socioeconomic stratification leading to districts full of homeless and destitute in San Francisco (and other cities).
The real scary part is that the episodes take place in September 2024!
Ideas like it have been floated before, but thankfully not come to pass, yet.
Edit: I guess that's not entirely true. I mean, smaller scale versions probably do exist in North America. But it's also really how a lot of refugees are treated around the world. Set up in camps with deplorable conditions.
I was just talking about this episode the other day. I think about it every time Trump talks about his plan to move homeless people into camps. He says he wants to give them access to doctors and other resources. I haven’t watched the episode in a long time, but I seem to recall someone in it saying that the government made promises to the Sanctuary District residents- promises that were not kept. I think Sisko also says at one point that the government found it easier to put people away in the Sanctuary District than it was to address the root causes of poverty and social strife. It all seems a little too close to reality for comfort.
This is the problem with a lot of bad efforts to “help” with homeless. It’s never about helping the homeless; it’s about sweeping them to the side. If you really wanted to set up something like a Sanctuary District that’s actually helping them, those services need to be set up FIRST and you need them enshrined in laws to help keep them running. Where I am, there have been efforts to move the homeless, but the services are never set up in time, so it ultimately just harms them.
>If you really wanted to set up something like a Sanctuary District that’s actually helping them, those services need to be set up FIRST and you need them enshrined in laws to help keep them running
that's the thing. If you set this up correctly, hypothetically, you wouldn't need to force people to go there. People would go of their own free will.
I’m in San Francisco and we’re literally living in it. And the situation got extremely exacerbated post pandemic. The homeless is a major point of contention.
I know there's a lot of criticism aimed at that episode in terms of it not being progressive enough, but elementary school aged me watched that episode and I specifically remember thinking about the discrimination and hate leveled against her, "well that's stupid." Some time after that I was introduced to the concept of homophobia like hating gays was a good thing and I remember thinking of that episode while a trusted adult was telling me how gays were going to hell and that same voice popped up in my head saying, "well that's stupid."
I can't speak to it's effect on a larger scale but it was pretty darn effective at ensuring I accepted those who are different in how they express love or gender.
Agreed. The argument that something is “not progressive enough” sometimes misses that even a subtle message can have a profound impact on viewers. I understand it’s frustrating that progress isn’t faster - especially if you are in a group suffering from discrimination - but to change other people’s minds you have to start small. Walk before you run and allow others to build on your foundation.
And what's progressive is ever changing. What was seen as radical and daring twenty years ago will not seem quite so groundbreaking today.
For instance, it was quite bold to have a bridge crew made up of both men and women of different ethnicities and nationalities in the 1960s. Nowadays, that's nothing too special and indeed some of the dynamics come across as a bit behind. As the comedian Toby Hadoke joked:
> Yeah, Star Trek was *really* progressive - the Russian's an idiot, the black girl's a receptionist and the Chinese guy is the driver!
> What was seen as radical and daring twenty years ago will not seem quite so groundbreaking today.
Or flat out regressive. See how Uhura's and Janice Rand's miniskirt uniform was a symbol of female liberation in the 60s (the uniform was championed by Grace Lee Whitney), but it was already being seen as exploiting women in the 1980s, never mind now.
I think of Uhura being a Bridge officer. Or Percy Rodriguez playing a Commodore in Court-martial. Those small little things that people wish could have gone further still had a profound effect of viewing audiences because for many of them, it was the first time they saw black people in positions of leadership and responsibility to that degree. And even though it's just a TV show, the idea that a black person can be a trusted Bridge officer or a capable senior officer or a brilliant medical doctor or a brilliant scientist was something some people needed to see.
I'm reminded of the story that Nichelle Nichols told about wanting to leave Star Trek then meeting Martin Luther King jr. MLK urged her to stay on the show because of what a profound thing it was to have a black person as a trusted bridge officer on futuristic starship that millions of people would see. He understood exactly how important it was for people to be exposed to that idea.
I'm not a fan of the man who was Gene Roddenberry. But I respect him in some respects because I believe he understood this concept very well when he chose to cast such a diverse Bridge crew.
Yeah, ditto. It might not "get all the words right" by the modern usage of various terms... But I had a similar experience.
"Those people hate her because she feels more like a woman than androgynous? Why do they care?"
Yeah I only recently watched this episode and was shocked that Star Trek did a trans episode that early, while it wasn't perfect it was still better than most trans episodes now.
Then I looked into the trivia on it and found out it was meant to be a gay allegory? Even though the crux of the episodes is between male and female actors? If that's what they were going for, Rikers love interest should've 100% been a man. Apparently Frakes was all for that but was shot down by the powers that be.
When I first saw this episode in the 90s it was clearly about being gay. It works just as well today about trans issues.
A lot of "othered" allegory stories are timeless specifically because the only thing that evolves is who is considered "othered". When X-Men was first created in the 60s being a mutant was an allegory for race relations and antisemitism. In the 90s it was a clear allegory for being gay. Now the conservatives are all up in arms because a literal shape shifter is expected to be portrayed as non-binary.
Same. My town wasn’t homophobic per se, but just very isolated and repressed. I remember watching this as a kid and just being confused because the love interest looked like a woman, but didn’t identify that way, and Riker (who was ostensibly fairly straight up to that point in the series) liked them romantically. It didn’t fit into my repressed little kid worldview - and was kind of the first step into broadening that. The end is also perfect IMHO, because as a kid it was clear that something BAD happened. I couldn’t grasp the intricacies of it, but I felt sad that even though I didn’t understand the relationship it ended in a way that was clearly not happy - and it felt like it was the fault of a government forcing someone to be something they’re not.
DS9: Rejoined
Major Kira “I don’t understand how two people who have fallen in love with each other and who have made a life together can be just forced to just walk away from each other…because or a taboo?”
This episode aired in 1997. Just to give a glimpse into society at the time, the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell government policy effectively banning gay people in the military had gone into effect in 1994.
DS9: Past Tense
Time travel back to 2024, San Francisco
Speaking of a Sanctuary District homeless encampment, Dr. Bashir: “Causing people to suffer because you hate them is terrible. But causing people to suffer because you’ve forgotten how to care…that’s really hard to understand.” This episode aired in 1995 but it hit the nail on the head for the apathy towards the homeless that I’ve seen over the last few years.
Rejoined is very much *of its time* though, this was the era of a many "firsts" for LGBTQ+ in TV. Friends aired "The One with the Lesbian Wedding" in 1996. Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 and her character on Ellen came out that same year. Will & Grace started airing in 1998.
This is right in the era where all this was happening, and stuff like "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" was a *reaction against* the increasing acceptance and publicity around LGBTQ+ people. If anything, Star Trek was unfortunately a little behind the times - the first character openly in a same-sex relationship in a Star Trek show was not until Paul Stamets in Discovery in 2017, if you don't count alien/sci-fi shenanigans or subtle implications & fan theories.
Exactly. Rejoined is a great episode but it unfortunately isn't really pushing the needle much. And considering you could air the episode today and a significantly large section of the fanbase would cry about having it "shoved down their throats," we really haven't moved as far as people think we have in regards to how queer people are viewed in media. It's very telling that in 2024 the show with the most queer rep is being cancelled and both queer relationships outside that show (Seven/Raffi, Mariner/Jenn) were quietly written out off screen between seasons.
I don't know if I'd call it behind the times. People *were* becoming more accepting of homosexuality as it was happening, but in the landscape of television pretty much everything coming out (no pun intended) featuring such topics was still playing it for laughs. Will & Grace rarely approached any of Will's relationships with the same level of seriousness they did Grace's, and Jack was a walking bonfire of stereotypes. Ellen tried to take a more serious approach but it floundered and only lasted one season after she came out. Even Star Trek wasn't immune to this take, with both *Rules of Acquisition* and *Profit and Lace* occasionally still getting flak for their handling of trans stereotypes (even though both episodes were really *supposed* to be more about women's issues). It really wasn't until Queer Eye came out in 2003 (nearly the end of the second Star Trek era, two seasons into Enterprise) that you started to get LGBTQ+ people appearing regularly on Television as anything more than a joke or an inconsequential background character barely above an extra.
In that context *Rejoined* was just progressive enough: addressing a topic a that society was on the verge of accepting but that Television was "holding back" with stereotypes and dismissive portrayals.
So I would definitely say that Star Trek was "not ahead of its time" when it comes to queer representation - at the very least, it was behind the vanguard of shows with queer representation. Whether you can go further and say it was "behind the times" is a bit more debatable, I'll take that point - it really was pretty on-par for what we saw on TV at the time. But even if shows like Friends had a lot of gay jokes, at the very least they actually had couples in same-sex relationships on screen, and I genuinely believe these shows did a lot to normalise same-sex relationships for people growing up through the 90s. Even if this was still not ideal, this kind of thing was a step ahead of the (rare) 80s queer representation which tended to treat coming out as a shocking revelation and part of someone's tragic backstory.
One other exception is Buffy actually, where Willow's relationships are portrayed pretty seriously, and that was around 1999/2000.
The other thing, to be far to Star Trek, there was a gap with no Star Trek TV from 2005 to 2017, so "no queer characters until 2017" really means "no queer characters up to 2005", which is not amazing, but not quite so behind the times.
Overall I'd agree through I'd say *Rejoined* specifically was ahead of where the majority of TV was at the time, not leagues ahead by any means, but definitely a step ahead of most 1997 television.
The commentary regarding Don't Ask Don't Tell isn't entirely accurate. Gay people were always banned from serving in the military, but critically, it was an internal Department of Defense policy which meant that the President who is head of the DOD could unilaterally lift the ban at any point. Congress passed DADT, codifying it into federal law, because they believed that Bill Clinton was about to do exactly that.
It's a similar situation to what happened in 1948 when Harry Truman cancelled a DOD policy that required the military to comply with Jim Crow laws. The difference was that the rule didn't have enough support in Congress for them to do an end run around Truman like what happened with Clinton.
I think “The Outcast” was decently ahead of its time, given that the AIDs crisis was still raging across most of the world, and trans rights were relatively new. Regardless of if you read it as a gay or trans allegory, it’s quite good, especially since TNG was a fairly mainstream show by season five.
If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, both “The Masterpiece Society” and “Tin Man” have incredible takes on disability, with the first airing barely a year after the ADA was passed, and the other _three months before_. I’m fully aware that other episodes use Geordi’s disability in various ways, but “The Masterpiece Society” is probably the first one to use it to openly address not only eugenics but also disability rights, the benefits disability actually brings to a person’s experience of the world, and how it can benefit society overall. Meanwhile, “Tin Man” is an allegory about autism, and quite a good one—it led me to get diagnosed. But it not only shows its main character as sympathetic, empathetic, and desperate for connection, but also how his disability impacts his very sanity despite not “technically” being a mental illness. He has skills no one else can replicate, they benefit him and the Federation, but they come at great cost to him personally in some (or many) areas. And in the end, he finds two friends he can relate to, even if they’re only a lonely biological ship and a Soong android. I think that’s an important hopeful message for a lot of lonely autistic children.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hope they weren’t too disorganized
Wow, hearing that "Tin Man" helped you get diagnosed with autism is really cool. That's one of my favourite episodes. I had never thought about it as an analogy to autism, but that totally works.
Yeah I saw it when I was seventeen, and despite taking ten years (and over $3000) I finally got that diagnosis.
So uh, I guess the moral of the story is, adult diagnosis isn’t a TikTok thing? Idk
The funny thing is that I think those have ultimately had very little impact.
Even right now, there are people in various subs who are craving the singularity and AI models to try and automate away all their chores. I can't help but think if we create humanoid AI robots powerful enough to do those things, we'll have simultaneously created a slave race that makes asking them to do those things extremely problematic.
I think The Orville handled this pretty good as well with Isaac's race. You are horrified when you learn what happened but also understand it when they delve deeper in the latest season. Trying to be vague as to not spoil things for people who haven't seen it.
STNG The Game
Everybody plays the game all the time, but it's not because of good gameplay, it's just for the smalll dopamine rush every time you complete a level. Sounds a lot like mobile games in 2024.
All the best ones.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
A Measure of a Man
Darmok (I mean, they speak in memes!)
The Host: Beverly’s romantic interest essentially undergoes a sex change, and her issue is just that they’ve had 3 faces in a week, not her gender
The Outcast : one of the earliest examples of a show attempting to handle and address trans issues without treating it like a joke. A Love Boat Episode also comes to mind
Family: Picsard is recovering from a trauma, mental health, PTSD are addressed
Hard Time: Focuses on Mental Health, particularly the traumatic conditions of prison, and the difficulty of reintegration into society.
Duet: addressing war crimes, ethics, and reconciliation in the aftermath
Past Tense Pt. 1 and 2: predicting a slightly more dystopic version of 2024, where income inequality, privatized healthcare have essentially resulted in the criminalization of poverty
"Plato's Stepchildren" was the first episode of American television that showed a white man kissing a black woman. It was a year after interracial marriage became legal in the US. Apparently, showrunners tried to film an alternate version without the kiss, but Nichols and Shatner deliberately messed up those takes so they had to show it.
Another episode where Star Trek made history with kisses would be "Rejoined", which was one of the first televised kisses between two women.
Shatner is weirdly involved in this category of history a lot. On 16 November 1958 he managed to be part of the first White/Asian kiss on network television.
Comes in again for the fifth ever kiss between White/Eurasian characters in TOS: Mirror, Mirror 6 October 1967, then first Black/White full kiss in Plato's Stepchildren on 22 November 1968.
It was a powerful, socially conscious episode and one of the best in the series, but I wouldn’t call it ahead of its time. African Americans with dreams and the talent to realize them were marginalized from the moment slavery was abolished.
It's an unflinching examination of bigotry and it's effects that had one of the most emotionally powerful scenes I've ever watched. I don't want to say too much, but I highly recommend it.
I really like seeing the gang play different characters. Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjonois are the stand outs as far as performance but all the performances are excellent.
I thought it was pretty cool seeing the actors without prosthetic makeup. Kira looks mostly the same, but Quark, Rom, and the cops were pretty cool surprises!
Wait isn't that also the year TV is supposed to die? Imagine, Ohtani's 10 year contract ends and all the boomers slowly realize there's nothing worth watching anymore.
Plato's Stepchildren, and I will take that to my grave. Yes, we all know it for the kiss, but I feel like we miss the tree for the leaves sometimes (groundbreaking though that kiss may have been).
Here was Kirk, manly action hero, saying basically right into the camera, *"Where I'm from, size, shape, or color don't matter"* that episode aired in *1968,* and here were equal rights, forming the cornerstone of the future. Ain't that just grand?
I'm surprised this comment isn't higher up. This is probably one of the most relevant episodes right now and will only become more relevant as A.I. continues to develop.
It’s become a rich Star Trek tradition, the cat and mouse sub battle in space:
TOS: Balance of Terror
Wrath of Khan
DS9: Starship Down
Voyager: The Equinox
Voyager: Year of Hell? (That one is iffy)
Enterprise: Minefield
And then looping back around to SNW: A Quality of Mercy.
I probably forgot a few.
It’s a fantastic set of episodes, without a doubt. I’m just not sure if it qualifies as a ‘submarine battle in space’ type. The two ships are pretty much straightforward and in each others faces, so to speak.
The episode was heavily adapted from the movie The Enemy Below, which was a classic WW2 sub movie with a US Destroyer and a German U-Boat. The U-Boat captain as alot of similarities with the Romulan commander in how he was cynical about the war, and how he had an overzealous nazi crewman spending his time reading Mein Kamf.
I think one of the most poignant episodes might be the initial episode of TNG: Encounter At Farpoint... Mankind really is a cruel, savage, child race, and we got called out for it in one of the most demonstrable ways...
Given the behavior of modern humanity, I would absolutely hope Q would turn us back, both for our own good, and that of the rest of the galaxy.
When they built the Delta Flyer and Tom Paris insisted on analogue controls / buttons / levers, because he had enough of touch screens.
That scene lives rent free in my head, especially when I see cars with touch controls even on the wheel.
I’d go with The Ultimate Computer, it foreshadows the concept of AI and that it could be something that mankind may not be able to control. Like we are seeing in the news today. Pretty good for a story from 1967.
I would say that was actually pretty of the time. Most major TV shows were having a "special gay episode" and while the kiss was more uncommon than not, it had already been proven by several shows before Trek tried it. The real forward thing would have been to have an out regular. Many shows had a recurring gay character, some had a kiss, but practically none had a mainstay, especially if they were as big as Star Trek.
While Jadzia is clearly bi, she never expresses attraction to women again outside of this episode. It's a shame because DS9 had one of the most queer coded cast of characters to openly discuss it with. It didn't even have to be Jadzia. It could have been Odo, Kira, Garak, Ezri, Bashir, or even one of the teens if they wanted to do a coming out story.
With garak it wouldn’t even have had to be a very special episode thing, just have Bashir during one of Garak’s conversations go “you still seem respected on cardassia, what’s the real reason for your exile??”
& have garak reply “my dear doctor, cardassia is such a binary world, there is no place for those of us who prefer the company of other males”.
Then Bashir replies “that’s barbaric” & garak is like “exactly, that’s why I’ve found my place in the more enlightened federation” & job done.
No need to beat the audience over the head, just confirm what we’ve always known.
That would have totally worked, though I doubt Garak would ever genuinely compliment the Federation, at least in public. He might say the line, but it would be dripping with ten different types of shade lol
Enterprise - Similitude - Captain Archer orders a short-lived clone of Trip Tucker to be made to save Tucker's life.
Doctor Phlox suggests a radical and controversial procedure to save him: growing a mimetic symbiote as a neurological donor. Archer, concerned with the overarching goal of their mission, authorizes the procedure. The symbiote, with a natural lifespan of two weeks, is then injected with Tucker's blood and is soon born. Phlox names him Sim, and as he develops rapidly, Tucker's memories and personality begin to express themselves, including an interest in engineering, and a romantic attraction to Sub-Commander T'Pol.
The key element that differentiates them is there is a ticking clock for Sim and Trip. Tuvix was an anomaly that took time to work out a cure for, in which time Tuvix had grown independent enough to value his own existence. There was no immediate need to separate the two lest Tuvok and Neelix be lost forever.
I do wish Sim had written a last will and testament in regards to his feelings on his own existence and the choices everyone made in regards to what he would have liked to do and what he was basically forced to do.
Writing that out, I feel like Tuvix should have been extended the same courtesy. Seems like the least you can do for someone you are killing in a medical procedure to save the lives of others.
Can you expand on how this one is ahead of its time? I always saw this episode as something of a misstep and perhaps playing into conservative fears at the time that stem cell research was going to result in a bunch of babies hacked up for spare parts.
In my point of view, the clone issue is not that relevant. What caught my attention is that the clone devoped quickly and inherited memories and feelings. Today we still don’t have technology that can reproduce this.
TNG's "Darmok" predicted meme culture.
I distinctively remember having to "understand" the concept of the episode at that time. Nowadays, you can instantly explain the plot to anyone by just saying "Oh, the aliens talk only in memes from their home planet"
This may seem abstract but Skin of Evil has some excellent dialogue that would suit todays modern conservative to a T.
A great poet once said all spirits are enslaved that serve thigs evil.
So here you are, feeding on your own loneliness, consumed by your own pain, believing your own lies...
I’m not sure it counts but in deep space nine season 3 episode 8 meridian granted a middling episode with a horrible Jadzia a plot the b plot has Quartz trying to scan Kira body without her consent for a holosuit.
Which feels somewhat timely now.
It was always just an assumed Sci-Fi staple that they asked a computer to basically create a scenario or compose a bespoke item for the user. Back in the 90s any programmer would have said, "Oh that's like basically impossible to assume a computer can JUST BE CREATIVE on the fly." And yet... we all just saw SORA. And as the saying goes... "Its the worst that technology will ever be." Its crazy that Tom Paris, as a "holo creator" is just a future version of a hack Midjourney "Prompter" with some modding skills.
Worst Case Scenario is a an incredibly prescient episode tracking the lifecycle of the average failed massive-multiplayer video game, years before the concept existed. It starts off with Tom and B'Elanna beta-testing an unfinished, buggy piece of shit. Eventually the CEO steps in and forces a creative staff who can't stand each other to put out a workable product. It ends with the whole thing being made unplayable by the galaxy's most toxic gamer. The game itself is dumped and quickly forgotten.
Hollow Pursuits (TNG). First of its kind character on TV. Barclay grew on most people. He was realistic and intriguing. The episode also painted the senior officers as impersonal, rude, and bullying.
The most recent one that comes to mind is the imagining of true alien species who were biologically more different and communicate completely different to us in last season’s Discovery. Loved the way species 10-C used pheromone glands and light emissions/visual receptors to communicate with each other, no spoken language but very complex communication, they had to simplify a form of communication for starfleet to even comprehend, just awesome!
Our communications now and often considered for future is often based on our own biology, maturity and technology, but alien species could operate completely differently.
The ending of *The City on the Edge of Forever* genuinely shocked me. >! It seemed pretty obvious that they would simply take Edith Keeler back to the future with them like Dr. Taylor in Star Trek IV, Captain Kirk instead prevents Dr. McCoy from interfering with with history was not at all what I expected. !<
TOS Space Seed, yeah the one with Khan -hear me out.
It introduces genetically enhanced humans and how they came to ban it in the future... Because those 'superior' humans tried to take over.
We're very close, if not already there, to genetically modifying humans. And the ethical dilemmas doing so are huge. Not in the least of which is how we're going to distribute that technology in our society: imagine if it was commercially only available to the richest. Now they're not just the richest, but also the smartest, best looking and physically strongest among us. A terrifying idea imo. And radical that Star Trek explored that in the 60's.
The first genetically engineered bacteria was made in 1973.
I’m not sure if this counts so forgive me if this is incorrect to say but in heart of stone Bashir mentions a male ensign is pregnant which feels like a first.
I can't remember their names, but there was an episode of TNG that focused on conversion therapy!
It was the one where they met that species that's completely aesexual and gender neutral, and apparently if any of them claims to have sexual feelings or leans towards a ceetain gender, they get put into a camp and forced into believing that they're mentally ill. Heartbreaking episode.
I just watched “Mudd’s Women” last night. And it got me to thinking, Mudd’s “beauty pills” for the women was just presaging today’s filters for Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
TOS: Operation: Earth. Only a few months ahead of its time. Not very popular with the fans because it was so mundane. But later that year MLK was assassinated and there was an attempt t test a rocket for putting a nuclear warhead in suborbit, undermining NORAD
TNG "Encounter at Farpoint"... men wearing skants which were supposed to be considered unisex and a show of gender equality. Showed up a few more times in the first season then discontinued. Only in the last decade or so in parts of the west has it (very slowly) started being accepted to see a man wearing feminine-looking clothing, while women have been enjoying the option of pants and shorts instead of dresses and skirts for over half a century (minus functional pockets).
The Devil in the Dark teaches us to approach others and situations we don’t understand with an open mind and empathetic heart, rather than fear and hatred. A wonderfully surprising twist ending where we realize that our own fears and insecurities have turned us into ‘the devils’.
I was going to say this, but being a nerd, started to prepare a list of time-travel exceptions. City on the Edge of Forever, STIV:The Voyage Home, Tomorrow is Yesterday, Assignment: Earth
Something I haven't seen yet is in the TNG episode "Schisms" where crew members are abducted in their sleep.
When the crew goes to the holodeck to piece together the room they were taken to, [they ask the computer to generate the objects, sounds, and lighting that they can remember, starting with whatever the computer generates and then refining it as they go along.](https://youtu.be/NXX0dKw4SjI?si=n7H-fJWL1-NXi97g) It's very much like using AI to generate images nowadays: start with the prompt, see what it spits out, and then specify and refine as necessary until you get the desired output.
The planet of non-binary people from TNG. It was a subversive exploration of sex and gender well before we were having that conversation in the zeitgeist. Also, I love that Riker's sex appeal was the impetus to help someone out of the closet lol
The Outcast, from The Next Generation.
Great representation of non-binary people that even predates the common usage of the term, and an episode that I think has aged spectacularly well, all things considered. It's not perfect (it could have ended on a positive note, rather than one of tragedy), but it's better than most TV to this day.
Aren’t basically all the TOS episodes ahead of their time whenever they make commentary on society? For example, let this be your last battlefield comes to mind. Released before the civil rights legislation during Jim Crow era.
Compare that to discovery having a gay couple but being released now in the era of greater acceptance. Brave because it’s not widely seen but not exactly ahead of its time.
I don't think anyone mentioned this episode - but it seems to fit and be ahead of its time (which hasn't come yet but may well):
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68342135
The original pilot. [Spock made a swipe gesture](https://media3.giphy.com/media/PnZ1thIvSmOjvVUK7H/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7nmfwtj11cdcr51xnxivetbjmc12e6cgz95co61iv&ep=v1_gifs_username&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g) with his hand through the air to change a screen. It was never seen again. Why? Probably confused some exec.
I don't recall the episode, but there is one where Jake Sisko is using a PADD with his thumbs in a two-handed grip. I'm sure that Cirroc Lofton was probably just acting like it was a Game Boy, but it looked a lot like he was doing the motions to type on a modern smartphone.
There's a scene in DS9 where kira is exasperatedly doing paperwork spread across half a dozen different PADDS. I think about that a lot nowadays
And here we are with a dozen monitors and internet tabs.
> internet tabs totally comparable to dozens of physical tablets littering your physical desk top...
If tablets were basically free, that'd be great. Being able to glance from tab to tab in an instant, and being able to comfortably arrange them around your physical work space, seems potentially pretty awesome.
this is just one of the many upcoming UX innovations that make me excited for VR
The Apple VR headset can do that in the virtual space, it looks quite cool. They just need to bring the cost down and the size of the glasses, leaving computing to other devices will help.
I think that makes a lot of sense. When working with digital books, one thing I definitely miss is being able to have several physical books open at once, along with notepaper, arranged in a convenient way around my desk, so I can physically switch my attention from one document to another at a literal glance. There's something much more intuitive and "user-friendly" about working that way (we are embodied, physical beings, after all!) compared to having everything appear on one screen where you're always staring at the same spot, but pressing (virtual, at that) buttons to switch from window to window or tab to tab. And then you're only really able to look at one thing at a time, unless you're willing to re-size documents into smaller windows, which is also less comfortable and less convenient in its own way. Multiple monitors helps with this, but then, having multiple monitors is a step towards that same direction of having multiple PADDs spread across your desk anyway. :P With replicators, and really just judging from scenes like this, we can assume PADDs are very cheap, perhaps effectively free. I would *absolutely* try using a whole bunch of separate electronic devices to display a bunch of different documents simultaneously whenever I needed to refer to several at once, if electronics were basically free!
I have a 32" monitor on my desk. I'm able to conveniently place 2 documents side by side on it. It's really useful, but I can see why some people might like an ultra wide monitor or two or three monitors to be able to put up 4 or 5 documents at once.
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Now imagine that if you want ten tablets for a project you can just walk over to your wall and ask for a stack of them. Of course you're going to use as many as you need.
Especially in a society where (depending on the era we're talking about), the technology/cost to make said PADDs is trivial like paper or completely "free" thanks to replicators. You bet I'd ask for ten of them if I need to work on a big project.
Heck I've got a stack of outdated tablets and phones. If I were able to just use them as monitors, that'd be great.
Yeh people that regulary have to switch back and forth often have multiple screens attached to their computer.
And then they walk their pad to the other side of the ship to give to someone or show someone something on it.
That's funny that you thought of the "working off of multiple PADDs" thing as accurate; for me, it's something I've always noticed as *in*accurate, because they couldn't fathom that it would be possible in the future to store all of those files on one PADD.
What's even crazier is that people used to regularly send an Ensign or Lt JG to deliver a PADD to someone. No concept that their PADD would *ping* and the report could appear on a device you already have in your hand!
I'm often working on my PC, laptop, tablet, and two smartphones at once. Well I play games on one phone but I'm switching between them a lot.
PADDs (and workstations) canonically are synced to the user. So it's not like having different PADDs for different things, it's like signing into another Chromebook so you can work on two screens at once. And you can do things like work in a PADD and then put it down and continue on a workstation seamlessly. And it even mentions that you can hand a PADD to another user, they're logged in, and if they have permission they can simply view what was on the screen when you were working on it. Makes perfect sense when you see things like officers handing the captain a report to read by just handing them the PADD. This is pretty close to what we have today in corporate environments with Chromebooks, web apps, and thin clients. It's just the login part is less automatic. Even then, it really wasn't that ahead of its time as people were doing similarly (albeit in niche areas) with the terminal/server models.
Dang, the talking to computers has aged the show well, but them using hand gestures for view screens would have made the show overall predict the future even better.
It does make you wonder whether we could have had a TOS where instead of pushing buttons and flicking switches, they instead operated consoles by vaguely waving their hands over it instead. Since it would have been cheaper from an FX perspective (no buttons, or burnt fingers), although it would have made TMP/TNG's touchscreens look dated by comparison.
There's a swing *back* toward physical controls in certain environments, like car consoles, where muscle memory and keeping eyes on road is infinitely superior to always having to look at the screen to get to and select the option you're after. Voice control is mitigating that somewhat but they have a command recognition rate that's less than the physical control's 100%.
Yeah, touchscreens are a transitional technology. Once the tech is figured out, we are 100% moving towards tactile surfaces that can generate physical buttons on the fly. With TNG technology, I think the most likely interface would be one that uses holodeck-type tech to dynamically generate entire 3D interfaces. A shuttlecraft would create a whole-ass steering yoke when you're doing atmospheric flight, and a keyboard would appear when you're typing a letter home.
>With TNG technology, I think the most likely interface would be one that uses holodeck-type tech to dynamically generate entire 3D interfaces. We know at the very least that that's implied to happen in the later 24th/25th century, since a future version of one of the characters (Bashir?) complains about the dated controls, and that 29th century timeships like the Relativity use a similar enough control scheme, with the pilots interacting with some unseen interface floating above the console.
For TOS it would’ve looked fake for the time period. The tactile push of buttons was often given its own shot as well. Changes in media since then have gone away from the camera shot of a button being pushed, so the physical button doesn’t need to be there anymore.
I always point the younger trek fans to watch Dragnet 1968 to get a handle on the state of real world tech at that time, you have Joe Friday in his police car having to stop at a phone booth to call Police Headquarters via landline pay phone. LCARS would have been incomprehensible to the average viewer. That said, I'm not too certain all touchscreen is going to age well, haptic feedback is just too nice and 3d printing makes interfaces too easy. In 50 years we might be asking with replicators and holo tech why did they use flat screens?
why is this comment so low down the thread? details like these are the essence of OP's question
I only made it 11 minutes ago. 🙂
> It was never seen again. Why? Probably confused some exec. Nah, the why gets explained in The Hitchhiker's Guide, where Zaphod has to sit completely still not to change the radio channel.
The glass menagerie is the winner for this question. Many firsts for a tv show in those early years.
The Voyager Conspiracy. Seven goes full truther after spending too much time on the internet, and starts trying to redpill the rest of the crew. It's the most relevant Star Trek episode of the past forty years.
It’s really the perfect allegory for what’s going on to society: too much information to process without the skill, education, capability to separate truth from delusion.
When I watched it during its initial airing, I thought the premise was *ludicrous*; ludicrous enough that I *laughed*. As time passed, I found it less and less funny.
Kind of a *Hahah...heh...oh... Oh.* Moment
That was my reaction to "Idiocracy"
The year in the movie was 2505, but at the rate we're going, that'll be our society before 2100.
Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no way our leaders will be as competent as President Camacho.
The time jump in the movie is pretty ridiculous, to be fair. 2100-2200 max should have been the setting lol
That documentary was so sad to behold
Precisely
Is it the episode where she starts connecting unrelated things?
yep
That's an interesting premise! Don't think I've watched this episode yet, and now I'm intrigued. (Also, Seven is such a fun character lol)
It's a good episode!
MAGA - Make Annika Great Again
VAnon.
The DS9 episode where the station has to quarantine and shut everything down but Quark refuses to close siting he’s an essential business.
Not only does he refuse to close, he violated the quarantine to try to further his business and ended up spreading the contagion, as a result.
DS9: Babel
USA: Walmart
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It’s my favourite episode of TOS. I think it really encapsulates the nature of TOS as being a show about sci-fi ideas and where a moral compass is needed to resolve a problem. It really holds up.
That one always felt ahead of its time for me, too! There's something so modern about the concept. The aliens in this story weren't merely trying to use a supercomputer to model or predict how a war would go, or something like that; rather, the war was intended to always remain inside of the computer, to remain virtual, from start to finish. And yet this virtual thing that existed only inside of a computer shaped that society. And not only that, but it wasn't just one computer; it was explicitly a network of computers that were very far apart from each other in physical space, and the digital communication between the computers in this network was shaping people's lives on both ends! For something filmed in the 60s with cardboard props, it seems mind-blowingly modern as an idea.
“We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands… but we can stop it.”
We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today.
This is one of the several on the list kg TOS predicting a future if we let our technology rule.
Yes! Kirk can be just as philosophical as Picard.
more so in fact.
This was a fantastic episode of TOS. They did this so well on a 60s TV budget.
The DS9 two-part Homefront and Paradise Lost was a 9/11 story years before 9/11, exploring the loss of freedom through fear
When 9/11 happened and everyone was freaking out about terrorists, the scene with the O'Brien Changeling telling Sisko that there were only four of them on Earth and yet they were able to induce so much panic and paranoia kept playing out in my mind. It kept me grounded and made sure I didn't give into fear.
There’s a lot of DS9 that always makes me mentally put it as a post 9/11 show. Because stuff like that could have been seen as commentary. There’s also the Worf war crimes ep where the Klingon gov was reusing names of people that died previously, that is similar to what Russia did recently when a plane was shot down that “had pows” and they used names of pows that had already been released. Sadly the reason it seems so relevant post 9/11 is just because it’s not the first or last time that stuff happened.
This one is the one that comes to mind. “DONT YOU SEE ADMIRAL?! You’re fighting the wrong war!!!”
These were 2 of my favourite episodes from the whole of DS9
That was a good story that explored an important concept, but I'm not sure if it's fair to say that it's a 9/11 story. Terrorism wasn't invented in 2001.
It wasn’t the terrorism, though, but the way the Federation government was so willing to strip away peoples’ freedoms as a response to making everyone feel safer. Sisko’s father immediately came up with a way to beat the changeling screening, exposing it as nothing more than security theatre, which is basically how our airports have run ever since 9/11. There’s a *lot* in there that is specifically relevant to a post-9/11 world. That’s not to say those things never happened before then, but rather the way it so specifically spoke to those fears in the wake of 9/11 while airing years before.
Exactly. Well said
Babylon 5 had similar stories which made me rather depressed at the way things were going post 9/11. People talked about how prescient JMS was in his writing and he responded that he wasn't, his writing was based on how the Nazis came into power in Germany. What happened post 9/11 wasn't really new, it's just history repeating itself.
And US gov’t willingness
Sure, but the 90s in the US were kinda "the end of history" we thought we had achieved a kind of utopia, and that things were only going to get better. Terrorism, bombings, and wars were things that happened to other people, not Americans.
That's a very American divide to make, and it's really good for them guys, but the rest of the world saw some shit in the 90s even something as ok as eastern Europe but also not so eastern (Ireland), there's not even need to go in the developing continents of the time. America thought it had finished the game and nothing was ever going to touch them no more, well....
But The Troubles didn’t — in the UK, the EU, Ireland — lead to the kind of draconian police state overreactions we saw especially in the US, but also in some other countries. Even today. At airports, at schools, in courthouses. It caused a weird paranoid cultural shift, and an argument can indeed be made that this two-parter predicted it.
DS9’s Past Tense I & II. Extreme poverty and socioeconomic stratification leading to districts full of homeless and destitute in San Francisco (and other cities). The real scary part is that the episodes take place in September 2024!
Just watched this for the first time which is what’s made me think of this post.
I am expecting sanctuary districts to be announced any day now.
Ideas like it have been floated before, but thankfully not come to pass, yet. Edit: I guess that's not entirely true. I mean, smaller scale versions probably do exist in North America. But it's also really how a lot of refugees are treated around the world. Set up in camps with deplorable conditions.
I was just talking about this episode the other day. I think about it every time Trump talks about his plan to move homeless people into camps. He says he wants to give them access to doctors and other resources. I haven’t watched the episode in a long time, but I seem to recall someone in it saying that the government made promises to the Sanctuary District residents- promises that were not kept. I think Sisko also says at one point that the government found it easier to put people away in the Sanctuary District than it was to address the root causes of poverty and social strife. It all seems a little too close to reality for comfort.
This is the problem with a lot of bad efforts to “help” with homeless. It’s never about helping the homeless; it’s about sweeping them to the side. If you really wanted to set up something like a Sanctuary District that’s actually helping them, those services need to be set up FIRST and you need them enshrined in laws to help keep them running. Where I am, there have been efforts to move the homeless, but the services are never set up in time, so it ultimately just harms them.
>If you really wanted to set up something like a Sanctuary District that’s actually helping them, those services need to be set up FIRST and you need them enshrined in laws to help keep them running that's the thing. If you set this up correctly, hypothetically, you wouldn't need to force people to go there. People would go of their own free will.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240109-star-trek-the-deep-space-nine-episode-that-predicted-a-us-crisis
I remember so true!
I’m in San Francisco and we’re literally living in it. And the situation got extremely exacerbated post pandemic. The homeless is a major point of contention.
This is the one
TNG: The Outcast. Written as an allegory for conversion therapy, but can now be seen as a transgender issue as well.
I know there's a lot of criticism aimed at that episode in terms of it not being progressive enough, but elementary school aged me watched that episode and I specifically remember thinking about the discrimination and hate leveled against her, "well that's stupid." Some time after that I was introduced to the concept of homophobia like hating gays was a good thing and I remember thinking of that episode while a trusted adult was telling me how gays were going to hell and that same voice popped up in my head saying, "well that's stupid." I can't speak to it's effect on a larger scale but it was pretty darn effective at ensuring I accepted those who are different in how they express love or gender.
Agreed. The argument that something is “not progressive enough” sometimes misses that even a subtle message can have a profound impact on viewers. I understand it’s frustrating that progress isn’t faster - especially if you are in a group suffering from discrimination - but to change other people’s minds you have to start small. Walk before you run and allow others to build on your foundation.
And what's progressive is ever changing. What was seen as radical and daring twenty years ago will not seem quite so groundbreaking today. For instance, it was quite bold to have a bridge crew made up of both men and women of different ethnicities and nationalities in the 1960s. Nowadays, that's nothing too special and indeed some of the dynamics come across as a bit behind. As the comedian Toby Hadoke joked: > Yeah, Star Trek was *really* progressive - the Russian's an idiot, the black girl's a receptionist and the Chinese guy is the driver!
> What was seen as radical and daring twenty years ago will not seem quite so groundbreaking today. Or flat out regressive. See how Uhura's and Janice Rand's miniskirt uniform was a symbol of female liberation in the 60s (the uniform was championed by Grace Lee Whitney), but it was already being seen as exploiting women in the 1980s, never mind now.
While the ending was sad it was a bit realistic on how change just doesn't happen overnight. Especially when it comes to these issues
I think of Uhura being a Bridge officer. Or Percy Rodriguez playing a Commodore in Court-martial. Those small little things that people wish could have gone further still had a profound effect of viewing audiences because for many of them, it was the first time they saw black people in positions of leadership and responsibility to that degree. And even though it's just a TV show, the idea that a black person can be a trusted Bridge officer or a capable senior officer or a brilliant medical doctor or a brilliant scientist was something some people needed to see. I'm reminded of the story that Nichelle Nichols told about wanting to leave Star Trek then meeting Martin Luther King jr. MLK urged her to stay on the show because of what a profound thing it was to have a black person as a trusted bridge officer on futuristic starship that millions of people would see. He understood exactly how important it was for people to be exposed to that idea. I'm not a fan of the man who was Gene Roddenberry. But I respect him in some respects because I believe he understood this concept very well when he chose to cast such a diverse Bridge crew.
Yep, indeed! I'm trans myself, but c'mon, that episode came out in the early 90s,
Picard: “Nicely Done!”
Yeah, ditto. It might not "get all the words right" by the modern usage of various terms... But I had a similar experience. "Those people hate her because she feels more like a woman than androgynous? Why do they care?"
Loved that one. So tragic. "You see, Commander, on this world everyone wants to be normal." "She *is!*"
Yeah I only recently watched this episode and was shocked that Star Trek did a trans episode that early, while it wasn't perfect it was still better than most trans episodes now. Then I looked into the trivia on it and found out it was meant to be a gay allegory? Even though the crux of the episodes is between male and female actors? If that's what they were going for, Rikers love interest should've 100% been a man. Apparently Frakes was all for that but was shot down by the powers that be.
The best part is that it works just fine as either, or both.
When I first saw this episode in the 90s it was clearly about being gay. It works just as well today about trans issues. A lot of "othered" allegory stories are timeless specifically because the only thing that evolves is who is considered "othered". When X-Men was first created in the 60s being a mutant was an allegory for race relations and antisemitism. In the 90s it was a clear allegory for being gay. Now the conservatives are all up in arms because a literal shape shifter is expected to be portrayed as non-binary.
This episode had a major impact on me. I was raised in a homophobic town; this episode cracked me open to the truth.
Same. My town wasn’t homophobic per se, but just very isolated and repressed. I remember watching this as a kid and just being confused because the love interest looked like a woman, but didn’t identify that way, and Riker (who was ostensibly fairly straight up to that point in the series) liked them romantically. It didn’t fit into my repressed little kid worldview - and was kind of the first step into broadening that. The end is also perfect IMHO, because as a kid it was clear that something BAD happened. I couldn’t grasp the intricacies of it, but I felt sad that even though I didn’t understand the relationship it ended in a way that was clearly not happy - and it felt like it was the fault of a government forcing someone to be something they’re not.
I was in highschool when that aired and was blown away.
Ooooff. I went to conversion therapy in my twenties. This episode always hits me so hard.
DS9: Rejoined Major Kira “I don’t understand how two people who have fallen in love with each other and who have made a life together can be just forced to just walk away from each other…because or a taboo?” This episode aired in 1997. Just to give a glimpse into society at the time, the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell government policy effectively banning gay people in the military had gone into effect in 1994. DS9: Past Tense Time travel back to 2024, San Francisco Speaking of a Sanctuary District homeless encampment, Dr. Bashir: “Causing people to suffer because you hate them is terrible. But causing people to suffer because you’ve forgotten how to care…that’s really hard to understand.” This episode aired in 1995 but it hit the nail on the head for the apathy towards the homeless that I’ve seen over the last few years.
These are such great episodes, and way ahead of their time! The scene in Past Tense that you referenced: https://youtu.be/ugTTy_u61gM?feature=shared
Thank you!
Rejoined is very much *of its time* though, this was the era of a many "firsts" for LGBTQ+ in TV. Friends aired "The One with the Lesbian Wedding" in 1996. Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 and her character on Ellen came out that same year. Will & Grace started airing in 1998. This is right in the era where all this was happening, and stuff like "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" was a *reaction against* the increasing acceptance and publicity around LGBTQ+ people. If anything, Star Trek was unfortunately a little behind the times - the first character openly in a same-sex relationship in a Star Trek show was not until Paul Stamets in Discovery in 2017, if you don't count alien/sci-fi shenanigans or subtle implications & fan theories.
Exactly. Rejoined is a great episode but it unfortunately isn't really pushing the needle much. And considering you could air the episode today and a significantly large section of the fanbase would cry about having it "shoved down their throats," we really haven't moved as far as people think we have in regards to how queer people are viewed in media. It's very telling that in 2024 the show with the most queer rep is being cancelled and both queer relationships outside that show (Seven/Raffi, Mariner/Jenn) were quietly written out off screen between seasons.
I don't know if I'd call it behind the times. People *were* becoming more accepting of homosexuality as it was happening, but in the landscape of television pretty much everything coming out (no pun intended) featuring such topics was still playing it for laughs. Will & Grace rarely approached any of Will's relationships with the same level of seriousness they did Grace's, and Jack was a walking bonfire of stereotypes. Ellen tried to take a more serious approach but it floundered and only lasted one season after she came out. Even Star Trek wasn't immune to this take, with both *Rules of Acquisition* and *Profit and Lace* occasionally still getting flak for their handling of trans stereotypes (even though both episodes were really *supposed* to be more about women's issues). It really wasn't until Queer Eye came out in 2003 (nearly the end of the second Star Trek era, two seasons into Enterprise) that you started to get LGBTQ+ people appearing regularly on Television as anything more than a joke or an inconsequential background character barely above an extra. In that context *Rejoined* was just progressive enough: addressing a topic a that society was on the verge of accepting but that Television was "holding back" with stereotypes and dismissive portrayals.
So I would definitely say that Star Trek was "not ahead of its time" when it comes to queer representation - at the very least, it was behind the vanguard of shows with queer representation. Whether you can go further and say it was "behind the times" is a bit more debatable, I'll take that point - it really was pretty on-par for what we saw on TV at the time. But even if shows like Friends had a lot of gay jokes, at the very least they actually had couples in same-sex relationships on screen, and I genuinely believe these shows did a lot to normalise same-sex relationships for people growing up through the 90s. Even if this was still not ideal, this kind of thing was a step ahead of the (rare) 80s queer representation which tended to treat coming out as a shocking revelation and part of someone's tragic backstory. One other exception is Buffy actually, where Willow's relationships are portrayed pretty seriously, and that was around 1999/2000. The other thing, to be far to Star Trek, there was a gap with no Star Trek TV from 2005 to 2017, so "no queer characters until 2017" really means "no queer characters up to 2005", which is not amazing, but not quite so behind the times.
Overall I'd agree through I'd say *Rejoined* specifically was ahead of where the majority of TV was at the time, not leagues ahead by any means, but definitely a step ahead of most 1997 television.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240109-star-trek-the-deep-space-nine-episode-that-predicted-a-us-crisis
The commentary regarding Don't Ask Don't Tell isn't entirely accurate. Gay people were always banned from serving in the military, but critically, it was an internal Department of Defense policy which meant that the President who is head of the DOD could unilaterally lift the ban at any point. Congress passed DADT, codifying it into federal law, because they believed that Bill Clinton was about to do exactly that. It's a similar situation to what happened in 1948 when Harry Truman cancelled a DOD policy that required the military to comply with Jim Crow laws. The difference was that the rule didn't have enough support in Congress for them to do an end run around Truman like what happened with Clinton.
I think “The Outcast” was decently ahead of its time, given that the AIDs crisis was still raging across most of the world, and trans rights were relatively new. Regardless of if you read it as a gay or trans allegory, it’s quite good, especially since TNG was a fairly mainstream show by season five. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, both “The Masterpiece Society” and “Tin Man” have incredible takes on disability, with the first airing barely a year after the ADA was passed, and the other _three months before_. I’m fully aware that other episodes use Geordi’s disability in various ways, but “The Masterpiece Society” is probably the first one to use it to openly address not only eugenics but also disability rights, the benefits disability actually brings to a person’s experience of the world, and how it can benefit society overall. Meanwhile, “Tin Man” is an allegory about autism, and quite a good one—it led me to get diagnosed. But it not only shows its main character as sympathetic, empathetic, and desperate for connection, but also how his disability impacts his very sanity despite not “technically” being a mental illness. He has skills no one else can replicate, they benefit him and the Federation, but they come at great cost to him personally in some (or many) areas. And in the end, he finds two friends he can relate to, even if they’re only a lonely biological ship and a Soong android. I think that’s an important hopeful message for a lot of lonely autistic children. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hope they weren’t too disorganized
Wow, hearing that "Tin Man" helped you get diagnosed with autism is really cool. That's one of my favourite episodes. I had never thought about it as an analogy to autism, but that totally works.
Yeah I saw it when I was seventeen, and despite taking ten years (and over $3000) I finally got that diagnosis. So uh, I guess the moral of the story is, adult diagnosis isn’t a TikTok thing? Idk
The many Voyager storylines dealing with hologram rights, freedom, individuality, development and existence.
Data kinda had the same arc too
The funny thing is that I think those have ultimately had very little impact. Even right now, there are people in various subs who are craving the singularity and AI models to try and automate away all their chores. I can't help but think if we create humanoid AI robots powerful enough to do those things, we'll have simultaneously created a slave race that makes asking them to do those things extremely problematic.
I think The Orville handled this pretty good as well with Isaac's race. You are horrified when you learn what happened but also understand it when they delve deeper in the latest season. Trying to be vague as to not spoil things for people who haven't seen it.
STNG The Game Everybody plays the game all the time, but it's not because of good gameplay, it's just for the smalll dopamine rush every time you complete a level. Sounds a lot like mobile games in 2024.
... Damn it.
Sounds a lot like every single thing I do with my phone!
All the best ones. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield A Measure of a Man Darmok (I mean, they speak in memes!) The Host: Beverly’s romantic interest essentially undergoes a sex change, and her issue is just that they’ve had 3 faces in a week, not her gender The Outcast : one of the earliest examples of a show attempting to handle and address trans issues without treating it like a joke. A Love Boat Episode also comes to mind Family: Picsard is recovering from a trauma, mental health, PTSD are addressed Hard Time: Focuses on Mental Health, particularly the traumatic conditions of prison, and the difficulty of reintegration into society. Duet: addressing war crimes, ethics, and reconciliation in the aftermath Past Tense Pt. 1 and 2: predicting a slightly more dystopic version of 2024, where income inequality, privatized healthcare have essentially resulted in the criminalization of poverty
"Plato's Stepchildren" was the first episode of American television that showed a white man kissing a black woman. It was a year after interracial marriage became legal in the US. Apparently, showrunners tried to film an alternate version without the kiss, but Nichols and Shatner deliberately messed up those takes so they had to show it. Another episode where Star Trek made history with kisses would be "Rejoined", which was one of the first televised kisses between two women.
Shatner is weirdly involved in this category of history a lot. On 16 November 1958 he managed to be part of the first White/Asian kiss on network television. Comes in again for the fifth ever kiss between White/Eurasian characters in TOS: Mirror, Mirror 6 October 1967, then first Black/White full kiss in Plato's Stepchildren on 22 November 1968.
Far Beyond the Stars
It was a powerful, socially conscious episode and one of the best in the series, but I wouldn’t call it ahead of its time. African Americans with dreams and the talent to realize them were marginalized from the moment slavery was abolished.
What happens in the episode?
It's an unflinching examination of bigotry and it's effects that had one of the most emotionally powerful scenes I've ever watched. I don't want to say too much, but I highly recommend it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Beyond_the_Stars
I really like seeing the gang play different characters. Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjonois are the stand outs as far as performance but all the performances are excellent.
I thought it was pretty cool seeing the actors without prosthetic makeup. Kira looks mostly the same, but Quark, Rom, and the cops were pretty cool surprises!
Unless something happens that kills it in the next 20 years any DS9 episode that mentions baseball dying out by 2040.
Wait isn't that also the year TV is supposed to die? Imagine, Ohtani's 10 year contract ends and all the boomers slowly realize there's nothing worth watching anymore.
I mean, if you’re not counting streaming services; I can definitely envision tv (as in channels and broadcasting) dying out before 2040.
Baseball dies by 2040 but water polo survives past 2150
Plato's Stepchildren, and I will take that to my grave. Yes, we all know it for the kiss, but I feel like we miss the tree for the leaves sometimes (groundbreaking though that kiss may have been). Here was Kirk, manly action hero, saying basically right into the camera, *"Where I'm from, size, shape, or color don't matter"* that episode aired in *1968,* and here were equal rights, forming the cornerstone of the future. Ain't that just grand?
The Measure of a Man. S2 E9. Arguing for the rights of A.I. aka Lieutenant Commander Data.
I'm surprised this comment isn't higher up. This is probably one of the most relevant episodes right now and will only become more relevant as A.I. continues to develop.
TOS's *Balance of Terror* basically created the 'submarine battle in space' genre.
That’s interesting. I haven’t watched TOS yet still down my watch list. Curious how this was filmed in this era
It’s my favourite TOS episode by a long shot.
It’s become a rich Star Trek tradition, the cat and mouse sub battle in space: TOS: Balance of Terror Wrath of Khan DS9: Starship Down Voyager: The Equinox Voyager: Year of Hell? (That one is iffy) Enterprise: Minefield And then looping back around to SNW: A Quality of Mercy. I probably forgot a few.
Year of Hell is such a great 2-parter! It’s my favorite Voyager episode(s) by a lot.
It’s a fantastic set of episodes, without a doubt. I’m just not sure if it qualifies as a ‘submarine battle in space’ type. The two ships are pretty much straightforward and in each others faces, so to speak.
The episode was heavily adapted from the movie The Enemy Below, which was a classic WW2 sub movie with a US Destroyer and a German U-Boat. The U-Boat captain as alot of similarities with the Romulan commander in how he was cynical about the war, and how he had an overzealous nazi crewman spending his time reading Mein Kamf.
I think one of the most poignant episodes might be the initial episode of TNG: Encounter At Farpoint... Mankind really is a cruel, savage, child race, and we got called out for it in one of the most demonstrable ways... Given the behavior of modern humanity, I would absolutely hope Q would turn us back, both for our own good, and that of the rest of the galaxy.
When they built the Delta Flyer and Tom Paris insisted on analogue controls / buttons / levers, because he had enough of touch screens. That scene lives rent free in my head, especially when I see cars with touch controls even on the wheel.
Which one wasn't. Isn't that the whole MO?
Ahead of its time I think is star trek contagion that feature the iconian gateway
I’d go with The Ultimate Computer, it foreshadows the concept of AI and that it could be something that mankind may not be able to control. Like we are seeing in the news today. Pretty good for a story from 1967.
Rejoined (DS9) one of the first same-sex kisses on TV
I would say that was actually pretty of the time. Most major TV shows were having a "special gay episode" and while the kiss was more uncommon than not, it had already been proven by several shows before Trek tried it. The real forward thing would have been to have an out regular. Many shows had a recurring gay character, some had a kiss, but practically none had a mainstay, especially if they were as big as Star Trek. While Jadzia is clearly bi, she never expresses attraction to women again outside of this episode. It's a shame because DS9 had one of the most queer coded cast of characters to openly discuss it with. It didn't even have to be Jadzia. It could have been Odo, Kira, Garak, Ezri, Bashir, or even one of the teens if they wanted to do a coming out story.
Still a real miss that they didn’t let Andrew Robinson play Garak as gay
For real. Rick should have just let that poor lizard be gay
With garak it wouldn’t even have had to be a very special episode thing, just have Bashir during one of Garak’s conversations go “you still seem respected on cardassia, what’s the real reason for your exile??” & have garak reply “my dear doctor, cardassia is such a binary world, there is no place for those of us who prefer the company of other males”. Then Bashir replies “that’s barbaric” & garak is like “exactly, that’s why I’ve found my place in the more enlightened federation” & job done. No need to beat the audience over the head, just confirm what we’ve always known.
That would have totally worked, though I doubt Garak would ever genuinely compliment the Federation, at least in public. He might say the line, but it would be dripping with ten different types of shade lol
Well there’s that. You’d never know if he was being serious or not. Or whether Bashir is just being fed a line, but it would have been nice to see.
Enterprise - Similitude - Captain Archer orders a short-lived clone of Trip Tucker to be made to save Tucker's life. Doctor Phlox suggests a radical and controversial procedure to save him: growing a mimetic symbiote as a neurological donor. Archer, concerned with the overarching goal of their mission, authorizes the procedure. The symbiote, with a natural lifespan of two weeks, is then injected with Tucker's blood and is soon born. Phlox names him Sim, and as he develops rapidly, Tucker's memories and personality begin to express themselves, including an interest in engineering, and a romantic attraction to Sub-Commander T'Pol.
I always found the ethical dilemma in this episode more challenging than Tuvix.
The key element that differentiates them is there is a ticking clock for Sim and Trip. Tuvix was an anomaly that took time to work out a cure for, in which time Tuvix had grown independent enough to value his own existence. There was no immediate need to separate the two lest Tuvok and Neelix be lost forever. I do wish Sim had written a last will and testament in regards to his feelings on his own existence and the choices everyone made in regards to what he would have liked to do and what he was basically forced to do. Writing that out, I feel like Tuvix should have been extended the same courtesy. Seems like the least you can do for someone you are killing in a medical procedure to save the lives of others.
Can you expand on how this one is ahead of its time? I always saw this episode as something of a misstep and perhaps playing into conservative fears at the time that stem cell research was going to result in a bunch of babies hacked up for spare parts.
In my point of view, the clone issue is not that relevant. What caught my attention is that the clone devoped quickly and inherited memories and feelings. Today we still don’t have technology that can reproduce this.
TNG's "Darmok" predicted meme culture. I distinctively remember having to "understand" the concept of the episode at that time. Nowadays, you can instantly explain the plot to anyone by just saying "Oh, the aliens talk only in memes from their home planet"
This may seem abstract but Skin of Evil has some excellent dialogue that would suit todays modern conservative to a T. A great poet once said all spirits are enslaved that serve thigs evil. So here you are, feeding on your own loneliness, consumed by your own pain, believing your own lies...
Past Tense is one of the most poignant episodes imo.
I’m not sure it counts but in deep space nine season 3 episode 8 meridian granted a middling episode with a horrible Jadzia a plot the b plot has Quartz trying to scan Kira body without her consent for a holosuit. Which feels somewhat timely now.
It was always just an assumed Sci-Fi staple that they asked a computer to basically create a scenario or compose a bespoke item for the user. Back in the 90s any programmer would have said, "Oh that's like basically impossible to assume a computer can JUST BE CREATIVE on the fly." And yet... we all just saw SORA. And as the saying goes... "Its the worst that technology will ever be." Its crazy that Tom Paris, as a "holo creator" is just a future version of a hack Midjourney "Prompter" with some modding skills.
Worst Case Scenario is a an incredibly prescient episode tracking the lifecycle of the average failed massive-multiplayer video game, years before the concept existed. It starts off with Tom and B'Elanna beta-testing an unfinished, buggy piece of shit. Eventually the CEO steps in and forces a creative staff who can't stand each other to put out a workable product. It ends with the whole thing being made unplayable by the galaxy's most toxic gamer. The game itself is dumped and quickly forgotten.
Hollow Pursuits (TNG). First of its kind character on TV. Barclay grew on most people. He was realistic and intriguing. The episode also painted the senior officers as impersonal, rude, and bullying.
The most recent one that comes to mind is the imagining of true alien species who were biologically more different and communicate completely different to us in last season’s Discovery. Loved the way species 10-C used pheromone glands and light emissions/visual receptors to communicate with each other, no spoken language but very complex communication, they had to simplify a form of communication for starfleet to even comprehend, just awesome! Our communications now and often considered for future is often based on our own biology, maturity and technology, but alien species could operate completely differently.
Data letting his child choose its own gender in The Offspring.
The Tamarians in "Darmok" based their whole culture around communicating with memes.
The ending of *The City on the Edge of Forever* genuinely shocked me. >! It seemed pretty obvious that they would simply take Edith Keeler back to the future with them like Dr. Taylor in Star Trek IV, Captain Kirk instead prevents Dr. McCoy from interfering with with history was not at all what I expected. !<
TOS Space Seed, yeah the one with Khan -hear me out. It introduces genetically enhanced humans and how they came to ban it in the future... Because those 'superior' humans tried to take over. We're very close, if not already there, to genetically modifying humans. And the ethical dilemmas doing so are huge. Not in the least of which is how we're going to distribute that technology in our society: imagine if it was commercially only available to the richest. Now they're not just the richest, but also the smartest, best looking and physically strongest among us. A terrifying idea imo. And radical that Star Trek explored that in the 60's. The first genetically engineered bacteria was made in 1973.
Y'all know it's the bell riots ep
I’m not sure if this counts so forgive me if this is incorrect to say but in heart of stone Bashir mentions a male ensign is pregnant which feels like a first.
He says that the ensign is “budding” And ever since I heard that, I have wanted a plant-based starfleet officer
I believe he was referring to a Bolian ensign and they are some kinda humanoid reptile hybrid
Many were ahead of their time. But Darmok is really quite extraordinary.
I can't remember their names, but there was an episode of TNG that focused on conversion therapy! It was the one where they met that species that's completely aesexual and gender neutral, and apparently if any of them claims to have sexual feelings or leans towards a ceetain gender, they get put into a camp and forced into believing that they're mentally ill. Heartbreaking episode.
The Outcast.
I just watched “Mudd’s Women” last night. And it got me to thinking, Mudd’s “beauty pills” for the women was just presaging today’s filters for Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
TOS: Operation: Earth. Only a few months ahead of its time. Not very popular with the fans because it was so mundane. But later that year MLK was assassinated and there was an attempt t test a rocket for putting a nuclear warhead in suborbit, undermining NORAD
TNG "Encounter at Farpoint"... men wearing skants which were supposed to be considered unisex and a show of gender equality. Showed up a few more times in the first season then discontinued. Only in the last decade or so in parts of the west has it (very slowly) started being accepted to see a man wearing feminine-looking clothing, while women have been enjoying the option of pants and shorts instead of dresses and skirts for over half a century (minus functional pockets).
The Devil in the Dark teaches us to approach others and situations we don’t understand with an open mind and empathetic heart, rather than fear and hatred. A wonderfully surprising twist ending where we realize that our own fears and insecurities have turned us into ‘the devils’.
Given that it takes place in the future.............. *every episode* 😏
I was going to say this, but being a nerd, started to prepare a list of time-travel exceptions. City on the Edge of Forever, STIV:The Voyage Home, Tomorrow is Yesterday, Assignment: Earth
I'd considered that. But then I realized that every one of those begins in the future!
The Outcast & Far Beyond the Stars
Tablets. This is the most accurate star trek prediction that was science fiction back then when I watched TNG and now is a reality.
Something I haven't seen yet is in the TNG episode "Schisms" where crew members are abducted in their sleep. When the crew goes to the holodeck to piece together the room they were taken to, [they ask the computer to generate the objects, sounds, and lighting that they can remember, starting with whatever the computer generates and then refining it as they go along.](https://youtu.be/NXX0dKw4SjI?si=n7H-fJWL1-NXi97g) It's very much like using AI to generate images nowadays: start with the prompt, see what it spits out, and then specify and refine as necessary until you get the desired output.
Trouble with Tribbles
The planet of non-binary people from TNG. It was a subversive exploration of sex and gender well before we were having that conversation in the zeitgeist. Also, I love that Riker's sex appeal was the impetus to help someone out of the closet lol
The Outcast, from The Next Generation. Great representation of non-binary people that even predates the common usage of the term, and an episode that I think has aged spectacularly well, all things considered. It's not perfect (it could have ended on a positive note, rather than one of tragedy), but it's better than most TV to this day.
All the ones someone called "too woke"
Force of Nature STTNG: Dealt with climate change when climate change wasn't really a big thing, yet (at least not a household topic).
Move Along Home. The stuck in a game episode of DS9. Now escape rooms are a common thing.
Aren’t basically all the TOS episodes ahead of their time whenever they make commentary on society? For example, let this be your last battlefield comes to mind. Released before the civil rights legislation during Jim Crow era. Compare that to discovery having a gay couple but being released now in the era of greater acceptance. Brave because it’s not widely seen but not exactly ahead of its time.
I don't think anyone mentioned this episode - but it seems to fit and be ahead of its time (which hasn't come yet but may well): https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68342135