Hi All,
White Klingons, Black Romulans and BAME Time Lords?
Science fiction from a woke perspective :
One trope of older science fiction (as least on tv) is that the humans on the show are always an ethnically (the religious aspect is downplayed) diverse group of characters, although they don't really have any LGBTQ or Muslim characters.
Yet any aliens (almost always human looking with some ridges on the nose, face or neck or pointed ears) are always uniform in more ways than one.
In Star Trek Klingons are almost all uniformly brown- more noticeable in the original series as the makeup department couldn't do to them what they could in the films and the many spin off series, and are all uniformly 'warriors', so any intersectionality analysis can see the racist sub text here - and they call Star Trek "progressive"??!. The Romulans by contrast are always shown as white with pointed ears, even though they are an offshoot of Vulcans and we know there's been black skinned Vulcans on the show, but at least it is the whites who are the baddies now. In Doctor Who we used to have Time Lords: all apparently white -British, all robed Cardinals come Oxbridge Dons, until the recent retcon. In Babylon 5, the Minbari and Centauri are aristocratic white with either British or Eastern European accents , but the Narns are all orange with spots. All of these aliens mentioned are also uniform in culture, religion or politics. There is no mention of gay Romulans or transgender Narns, lesbian Klingons or bisexual Borg.
On the feminist front things are even worse. Yes there was Susan from Babylon 5, but today rather than being a Russian Orthodox Jewish, repressed and keeping it a secret telepath, bisexual and in the military, she would have to be a Pakistani Muslim, transgender, bisexual, full on powerful telepath with no flaws or kick ass coolness of the original and in anything but the military. Then there was Delen from the same tv show. While being an alien Minbari, she then changed to become half human looking (a parallel with transgender rights) but then she ends up falling in love with the main hero (a human white hetrosexual, military hero, cis gendered man!) Captain Sheriden and instead of being an all powerful feminist role model, doing things without powerful men or a situation where men are utter idiots, she and the aforementioned Captain become a leadership team and have to work together to stop the bad guys, the shadows (who are all - like all shadows are- black in colour, so maybe that show needs to be banned).
Thankfully Dr Who saw the light and decided to support transgender rights by making the lead character a female, albeit a white female who isn't either lesbian or bisexual. At least it is now canon of the show that the Doctor was originally a black female, which upset the patriarchy.
You can see how popular such an approach is by the viewing figures and that alone means that we should have more woke, progressive science fiction. Science fiction has always been progressive. There's no room for anyone remotely centralist, conservative or general readership. It must be according to the woke agenda. Anyone who disagrees is a phobe of some description,
So there!
Go woke or go broke!
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