David Benfell, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

@glorkon @USSBurritoTruck

Star Trek also assumes a truly post-scarcity society in which capitalism plays, at most, a small part.

One of the problems we face in assessing human potential is that we pretty much only know of humans since the Neolithic, when authority and wealth became increasingly centralized. In the Star Trek universe, while authority remains hierarchical and highly centralized, economic inequality is somewhat diminished. These are different sets of social premises and the outcomes might vary.

@data1701d @ValueSubtracted

Yeah, this’ll be a hard pass for me too.

@ValueSubtracted I recall noticing the sexism on Enterprise. I don’t recall noticing it on Voyager, which had two strong female characters. But I’m an old man raised in a more chauvinistic era–I might not notice.

@ValueSubtracted @cybervseas

By such standards, the Original Series (#TOS) seems positively regressive. I don’t mean to defend this, but I’m guessing that, at the time, it was perceived that Enterprise needed to fit into that regression.

@usernamefactory I did manage to watch it all the way through, but I wouldn’t watch it again. Some of it is just too relentlessly horrific and it didn’t actually become interesting until the final few episodes before they cancelled it.

@jalanhenning pretty normal for the era.

@dethstrobe this M’Benga fellow seems like the most interesting character of the lot, with a backstory we’ve only seen bits and pieces of. It’s a shame Paramount will probably kill off its Star Trek franchise before we see more of it.