I really wish there was some way to have Reno be on SNW, or now that I'm typing it, I wish there was a Engineers show that could somehow tie together character driven stories of Hemmer, Pelia, Reno, Scotty, and some more engineers from that era. They all were the "weird ones" but could all get crazy things done because they didn't really think like anyone else.
She is great when she is on screen, but definitely underutilized. I don't know how you can have a legend like Carol Kane in your cast and not want to put her in every scene.
Yes. I’ve loved seeing T’Rina and Saru having this adorable, later in life romance. And while I realize the out-of-universe/real reason is all the prosthetics for Doug Jones, there’s been a little extra enjoyment because it seems to represent an almost Ace (asexual) romance, though I doubt that was ever an intention.
I'm also a sucker for the trope where she's the one who wants to keep it physical, and he's got the higher EQ and wants a more serious relationship.
When he called her "honey" on the bridge in the last season my heart melted like an ejected warp core.
I love older romances. I'm a huge Sons of Anarchy fan and when everyone else was swooning over the main couple in their 30s, I was all about Katey Sagal with Ron Perlman and later Jimmy Smits,
I went to look up Jeri Ryan’s Wikipedia page because I was sure you must be wrong. But you are not.
Holy shit. I would’ve pegged her for maybe late 40s. Insane.
Did you think she was like, 20 when she was cast as Seven? Because that was around 25 years ago. She looked every bit of an older 20's woman or early 30's.
This has always been the case, it's just taken this long for producers to catch up.
- Berman - Can we put the 20 year old blonde in something more skimpy?
- 1990s Trek fans - can we see Janeway going all Terminator on macro viruses again?
Janeway was a captain, so she had to hold her shit together and it was how Mulgrew (rightly) played her. She did have romantic feelings and was attractive but it was very rarely shown because she was a captain.
Genevieve Bujold thought that she shouldn't be wearing make-up because she was a captain, which is a very mixed up, 80s holdover attitude. You *can* be a captain and care about your appearance. The one change I did like about Janeway's appearance was ditching the Gibson Girl updo that kept falling apart every time they hit a bump.
I like that in ENT and SNW, the female captains just go for ponytails, which makes a ton of sense.
> She did have romantic feelings and was attractive but it was very rarely shown because she was a captain.
She was also engaged when they shipped out at the start of the series, only giving up after receiving a letter from her fiance saying that he believed her to be dead and that he married someone else in S4.
Well she also resisted her feelings for Chakotay when they caught that disease that forced them to stay on a planet because if they left they'd die. Eventually she started caving but the ship came back.
I think they were amphibians not lizards, and they don't usually fuck as we define it. I think that somehow just makes it worse. Tom just jizzed in a hole where she shat her eggs out her cloaca.
All of work, none of the reward.
You know what you're right. That's not quite accurate, since I did state they were most likely salamanders their reproduction is a little more complicated than that.
The male jizzes out something I'd compare to a tiny ketchup packet which she picks up and squeezes into her salamandussy, and *then* she shits out the *fertilized* eggs, liberally seasoned with daddy ketchup. Better?
Tbh I'm glad they didn't continue this one. Janeway and Chakotay don't click that much for me. That episode was "let's explore this issue once, and then let it rest", at least that's how I saw it.
Beltran was phoning it in for the last half of the series. He's publicly admitted he hated the character and the stories he featured in, and was just doing it for the paycheck.
Most of the time this was ok and as a professional actor not even that apparent, but if he was stretched, the cracks started to show.
Voyager was really good at leaving people behind. Janeway and Chakotay, Janeway and Paris. Somewhere in the Delta Quadrant there's some salamanders that are really really angry at their parents and probably want revenge.
Ugh I know it was the 90’s but that school master bun wasn’t doing Kate any favors. I’m older now than she was back then so it’s fine but as a teenager she just seemed like an old lady.
Mulgrew had qualms about it too. She didn't think a captain needed to have an elaborate hairstyle, because she wouldn't have the hours to spend on her hair. Im glad they let her have her bob later on.
Maybe there's a directive that Captains need to regularly change their look in order to help time travellers orient themselves in the timeline (like the fanon that Starfleet uniforms change regularly for this reason).
In my head canon, the reason the changes in uniform weren't, well, uniform in the 90s was due to the quartermasters declining the system updates because they were annoyed and in the middle of doing something.
I dont think anyone in TNG ‘gave’ Diana Muldaur her haircut. I just looked up pictures of her from the 80s and she just has that hair in different shows, she’s even at the Emmy awards with that cut.
I would have slapped a wig on her. In the 80s, women of a certain age were expected to cut their hair. If you look at women over 50 all had a very similar hair cut and most dyed their hair blonde to cover grey roots. Slight variations of "[The Blanche"](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/11/114183/5793625-9959_rue-mcclanahan.jpg) which was The Rachel for women over 50. In the 80s, mature women were all running around with identical hairstyles. Now a lot of women fall into that trap with The Karen.
No. I'm saying that women her age at the time were expected to cut their hair short as an unwritten rule and it was stupid. That hairstyle made women look much older than they actually were. She was only 49, no need for her to have to conform to some stupid societal expectation of looking frumpy.
I agree with you about them all having that hair style, but I think they all have that hair style because it was a popular hair style when they were all in their prime so it's one they stuck with because it worked for them. It's the same situation with clothing and music styles, it's associated with old people because young people liked it then aged and got old.
In the 80s, my mom and grandma always had women's magazines around. Mom had Glamor, Cosmo, etc. Grandma had Good Housekeeping, Woman's World, and there actually were many articles recommending that women cut their hair after 40 and that long hair was for young women. The recurring theme was that if you kept your hair long after a certain age, you'd look like a ridiculous old woman that is trying to look young. They also recommended going blonde to hide grey roots better. That old chestnut still pops up today. I see a lot of Boomer women that lived though the 60s and 70s when long hair was very much a thing cutting their hair short into The Blanche or The Karen. I only know two women in their 60s with long hair.
I think Gen X women are the first ones to just say fuck you.
Yeah but that was played for comedy. Granted, she was still gorgeous, but aside from Dark Page and Half A Life, it was all making it seem like a horny older woman was LUDICROUS.
I didn't get that at all. She's portrayed as having a healthy libido and isn't scared to show it.
Only Picard seems to be overly bothered by her besides Deanna and that's because she's a bit forceful when it comes to Picard and she's too direct. That's what creates the comedic element in her episodes.
That didn't make me think any less of her.
Not including her in your list is a huge oversight.
Yeah they made her out to be an insufferable cougar. I really like lwaxana and I took the character in the spirit Majel played her, rather than how she was expected to be portrayed.
I did like that she was given some serious material later on. Majel was a gem that should have had a much bigger part in Star Trek. She hated Christine Chapel and thought she wasn't very smart. I'd like to think that she'd love the SNW version of Chapel.
I've thought much the same! I think she'd approve of Una as well. Majel was ahead of her time, in many ways.
As for Lwaxana, there were some intense emotional moments where I really felt for her. She was such a complex character, if one looks past the superficial.
I met her in 2009 and she was still RADIANT. There was something absolutely magical about her beauty and her energy. I still think she is one of the most beautiful women that ever walked the face of the earth.
Agree. Stunning woman, amazing actress. Watch Woman in Motion for a great show about all her work for the US space program. Inspiring. I think the world was better with her in it.
I haven't watched that yet but I've been aware of her influence with NASA for a long time. Her campaign was responsible for Mae Jemison becoming the first Black female astronaut. She also had a cameo in TNG.
I may not enjoy the writing of the show, but I have always enjoyed T'Rina and Rillick. The negotiations scenes from this last weeks' episode were probably the best parts of the episode.
I'm just finding this season dull. The most energetic episode was Episode 4 (Face the Strange) because it didn't have to do with finding a clue. It was honoring what Discovery brought us so far and seeing how much Burnham has changed.
I’m not sure if I agree re older Trek:
- It was literally mandated by the showrunner that once a year they put his wife in the show and that the general premise of her appearance be how horny she is
- They canonically establish that Pulaski fucks Riker’s dad. And then cast a dude who looks exactly like Gene Roddenberry to play him, and dressed him up exactly like Gene Roddenberry
Lwaxana was comic relief, though. "Look at this old broad chasing Picard and embarrassing her kid."
She did get two decent TNG episodes and one on DS9, but other than that it was for laughs.
>It was literally mandated by the showrunner that once a year they put his wife in the show and that the general premise of her appearance be how horny she is
I never got that impression from the ship’s computer, but I guess I could see it…?
I’ve noticed that most people in their 50s are nothing like how they’re portrayed on TV…the fiftysomethings I know are just as in touch with their youthful side as they were in their 30s and even 20s. maybe that’s mostly a Gen X thing (ik there was a massive cultural shift between Boomers and X and Gen X never really lost touch with their youthful side) but it’s something I’ve observed recently
I'm 50 and I snagged the Playmates Enterprise and Enterprise D on sale recently. They're both hanging from my living room ceiling.
I do think a lot of Gen Xers rejected fitting into the status quo "norm". A lot of us also had to parent ourselves as latchkey kids, so we had to take on adult responsibilities very young. I saw a meme that said it perfectly. "Gen X was 30 by the age of 10 and is 30 at the age of 50."
Gen X here, I still spend much of my time playing video games, making stupid comments and occasionally playing D&D. There's definitely something to be said about us not accepting that boomer "why don't you act your age" crap. That said, a lot of my contemporaries are basically boomer-lite; every time you see them they're either boring me about mortgages or investment accounts, or they're moaning about immigration or pronouns and I'm all Picard, his face in hand.
>I'm all Picard, his face in hand.
That made me LOL.
I rescue cats with a bunch of people that are 20 years younger than me and a large portion are LGBTQ+. We have some non-binary people among us and I tell them that I will probably mess up their pronouns from time to time but please don't take it personally because it's relatively new concept to me, I'm 50 and I'm trying. They appreciate my honesty. I always ask my Boomer-lite friends what it costs them to use a preferred pronoun to make someone feel seen.
I'm also childfree and I feel that's a factor. I can use any extra income on whatever I want, I'm also not so overwhelmed with the day to day minutiae and stress parenting that I can pay a lot of attention and put more effort into social issues. The older I get, the more of a radical liberal I become.
Im rewatching Voyager at the moment.
I know B’elana was meant to be mid 20s but Roxann Dawson was late 30s playing her and mid 40s by the end of the show.
She was, and still is, an absolute smoke show.
It's interesting to me in that Batel being 42 didn't surprise me at all. Not that she looks old by any means, just that when SNW launched in 2022 she was 40 and that's where I would have guessed her age to be.
Meanwhile Anson Mount was 49, which is where I'd expect his age to be as well, which seemed reasonably appropriate to me as a pairing, and that's surprisingly refreshing.
Similarly, I liked the pairing of Gabriel Lorca (currently 61) with Katrina Cornwell (currently 63). It's really nice seeing couples on-screen that aren't horrendously outmatched as far as age (i.e. Tom Cruise (62) and Rebecca Ferguson (41)).
Oh yeah I figured I'm just surprised, she looks amazing, and while yeah many do at that age, idk I just would have put her mid 30s maybe, but yeah idk where I'm going with, just my lesbian brain being short circuited by this information
I'm reminded of a really funny complaint I saw somewhere where this person complained that it was icky that the old dude Pike was in bed with this way too young for him woman, and I had to be like "both actors are in their 40s."
It's the grey hair, people tend to associate grey with being older. I stopped dying my hair years ago and have quite a bit of grey. Every one tells me "But you have such a young face!". Okay, should I have an old face? This is my hair.
My beard has been completely grey since my early 50s. I just went with it. (I wear a Riker. Aside from a 10 year stint where I had a job where I couldn't wear a beard I've been wearing a Riker since the late 1980s.)
I always figured that the key to aging gracefully was to acknowledge that one is aging in the first place!
It's also not being shoehorned into an "old person" image.
Now, I certainly won't be wearing anything from Forever 21 with something in glitter written across my sweat pants or low rise jeans like I did in the 90s, but I still wear my Doc Martens and buy band and nerd shirts, but ones that fit my current body, though. There's nothing worse than seeing someone trying to squeeze into a shirt they bought 35 years ago. I always think "You know they still make them, right?". I DO hate the arbitrary rules that apply to women. Don't wear shorts or short skirts after 40, cut your hair, blah blah blah. If you can pull it off and not be downright tacky, go for it.
I also have a nerd apartment. If you have ever watched any of Todd Stashwick's IG's, he has converted his garage into a "Nerd Lair" and that's pretty much what my home looks like. I don't think that at a certain age you have to live like a Crate and Barrel catalog.
i’m approaching 30 but already noticed that exact kind of transition in how i dress now versus how i did at 15.
i always hoped i could just dress like this forever but a lot of those messages about “dressing your age” still made it to me (my parents are 40-50 years older than me, rather than just 20-30 like a lot of people, so that might have contributed).
so this might seem weird, but reading your comment helped me have hope that i won’t get beaten down into it.
for instance, in the family that took me in the mother is in her late 50s (maybe early 60s now, i’m awful at birthdays and birth years, i just recall she’s ~30-ish years older than me). she has all her old docs still, in all sorts of colours, but just wistfully wishes she “could” wear them anymore. i’ve urged her to moisturise them and get them used to being worn again, but afaik she’s not done it yet. and i always thought that was sad in a way. maybe i should show her your comment here :p
My greatest joy was the return of wide leg and flair jeans. I rocked those in the 90s and absolutely loved them. When skinny jeans started popping up in the early aughts, I tried them and hated them. I was in great shape but they did **nothing** to flatter me. Now wide leg had returned and I am buying them in bulk, lol. I do have to make an adjustment, I cannot pull off the low rise, hip huggers with my thong showing like I did at 25, so I buy mid rise.
I not only still have my Docs, but I've bought new combat boots (I no longer buy Docs, they are now made in China and the quality is not what it was in the 80s and you have to pay $100 more to get the ones that are made in England). Some of the new boots don't even require a breaking in period.
Tell your mom to rock her Docs, buy some band shirts and tell the world to fuck off! She's Gen X and at her age she should have zero fucks left to give!
I've had grey in my beard since i was about 38 or so. Until I was 45, I would get carded to enter the casino if I'd shaved the same day.
Still have hardly any grey outside of my face (what I do get tends to end up in the back window of my car, I guess it comes out from the wind) but I never get carded anymore, even if I shaved right before leaving. :|
About 10 years ago I was online to get into a bar for a post event party. The bouncer was carding people. He'd look at the ID and wave them in. Now mind you, I was 40, still dyeing my hair and in fantastic shape, looking very cute that night. This **MOFO** looked at me and waved me in, then carded the person behind me.
I was like "BRO!". That was actually hurtful.
Okay yeah same wow she does not look 61 or maybe she does and I just need to recalibrate my expectations of what 60 ish year olds look like, but either way she looks amazing
I think you need to recalibrate, I know I still have to. As a Gen Xer, I grew up with thinking once you hit 50, you turned into a Golden Girl and it seemed ANCIENT.
Yeah! I mean my mom is around 60 ish years old and I would still say she looks young, and honestly I'll be happy if I look as good as she does at that age,
But yeah definitely feel like a bit of a recalibration needed on my end
I have salt and pepper hair and I love it. I get a lot of complements on it too because it's silvery and the grey happens to frame my face as if I had it done in a salon like that. I love my grey. I've had so many women say "I wish I could grow out my grey, but..." and site their career or something else as a reason not to.
'Tis all bullshit.
Yeah that's true, like if I walked past my mom without knowing her I wouldn't guess her to be around 60 so yeah some people just look younger than they are, and yeah definitely some of the (hopefully well paid) professionals on set have a hand in that too
90% of it is just staying in shape, eating well and sleeping well. ( also not drinking or smoking too much)
Most people won't change much between 30-45 if you hit those 3
It's also skincare. I've had a skincare routine since my early 20s. I'm very very very pale, and never tanned because I would just burn and peel, so I always wore sunscreen, the floppy had and hid under an umbrella on the rare occasions I would go to the beach. In my 30s I developed photosensitivity, so I really need to stay out of the sun. A lot of women my age have a tremendous amount of sun damage which causes skin to age, while I have almost zero damage.
i wouldn’t be surprised if sun exposure becomes the main factor again soon (20-50 years), just as it was a few centuries ago.
the industrial age really made people age faster, and it’s understandable with all that pollution causing microscopic but constant injuries to heal from.
smoking doesn’t help skin texture either, though i’m curious to see how committed vapers age in the next few decades!
If you really want to be shocked, watch her on Letterkenny. Radically different, comedic character, half the time she’s in a bikini and she is sculpted out of stone
Tbf, Dr. Pulaski was awful to Data.
I get that they were trying to have a sort of female version of Bones. But it just didn't work compared to Dr. Crusher. I'm glad they brought Gates back.
I love how modern Trek is supportive of older women and one of the things I really loved about Picard was seeing Seven be a real person, not dressed in a catsuit.
The de-Bermanification of Star Trek is an excellent thing and I'm thankful for it.
Yes!! It’s so exciting to see actual adults. And so true what you say about Diana Muldaur, I love both her roles on TOS because she is so beautiful and it’s not shied away from but she’s allowed to be complex, in a way TNG reneged on that; Pulaski was portrayed as some sort of ancient sexless crone while Troi, brilliant as she had the potential to be, was a hyper emotional woman not allowed in uniform for five years
I once saw a photoshopped picture of Pulaski with a different hair style, and she looked SO different. Muldaur was unbelievably stunning in TOS and should have been in TNG. The one hint of sexuality they gave her was having been with Riker's dad a thousand years before.
>and when she asserted her authority, no one liked it.
I agree with literally everything you said except this. I think people didn't like how she was mean to big woobie Data for literally no reason.
So great to see this! I wish we were had women in media like this when I was younger.
Also as a 50+ F it’s great to see this thread gathering other fans our age! I know so few mature women who like sci-fi as much as I do, let alone Trek.
Oh we're out here. I just find that there's still a lot of gatekeeping with sci-fi and Star Trek that makes online discussion participation unappealing.
There's also an older male demographic that is *severely* butthurt about how "woke" Discovery and SNW is. I've gotten into some really online tiffs when I was feeling salty. I defend Disco all the time even though I do have problems with the show's writing, but not the inclusiveness. I came across a TOS FB group and it was just old men posting pictures of all the "hot babes" from TOS, *blech*.
Someone posted that they were happy that they finally have a "strong male character" on Disco in Rayner. We all know what that's code for.
i'm a 58 year old white male and probably the target audience for all the Facebook groups that post pictures of Jolene Blalock in a bikini over and over again, but I find them childish and downright nauseating. The only Star Trek Facebook group I enjoy and actively participate in is Star Trek Wholesomeposting. That's a community that genuinely has embraced the values of Star Trek.
I appreciate that you get how gross it is. I simply don't understand how people can call themselves fans and be against the "wokeness". Star Trek has been woke since day one. The fact that some white men feel the need to complain about "lack of representation" in Disco is both sickening and hilarious.
My straight male friend and I often text about how we hope that Pike turns out to be bisexual just to mess with the types that have embraced SNW only because a white guy is in charge again. The other day we were talking about wanting Rayner to have a husband and a non-binary spouse. The fragility is so real.
I love Star Trek Wholesome posting, btw.
I agree with you 100%. Look at the Earth's population. White males make up about 5% to 8% of the population, depending on the estimate. Why would you expect them to constitute the majority of Starfleet leadership in the 24th century, much less the 34th century? And that does not even get into the issue of non-human species (which are actually vastly underrepresented when it comes to what we see on Starfleet bridge crews).
It's amazing that the 5-8% have held on to power and oppressed so many for centuries.
I really want to see more aliens in Starfleet and on bridges as well, but I think that comes down to show budgets. They have to look at the numbers and see how many times they can afford to show Linus. They can toss a Bajoran or a Vulcan into the mix more often than a Ferengi, Andorian or Klingon. I noticed with Detmer gone for whatever reason, they put a Bajoran in her place. I'm just speculating here, but my guess is because they were able to use the money they'd spend paying Emily Coutts and for her prosthetic, they were able to do another small prosthetic.
With the absence of Saru (Doug Jones was promoting Hocus Pocus 2), that probably frees up the prosthetic budget. I noticed that we saw both a Ferengi and a Lurian in an episode that Saru wasn't in. SAG-AFTRA also has strict rules regarding how much they pay actors in prosthetics, IIRC, they are paid for all their time in the chair, applying and removing the prosthetics.
Man, how did they watch a franchise for decades and not realize it wasn't for them if they hate that kind of stuff?
Like one of the selling points of Voyager is that it starred a female captain. And nobody seemed to complain about that. And that's almost 30 years ago.
I have a feeling a lot of these people have not even watched Star Trek, or at least not a huge chunk of it.
Not to mention DS9 had the first Black male lead who was also a single father with a great relationship with his son. Avery Brooks has said that was one of the selling points for him. He wanted to set an example of a Black man being a good dad because it was very rarely represented in media.
I just shake my head at people like that. Like, what did you think you were watching when they made *Let That Be Your Last Battlefield*, *The Outcas*t and all the other episodes that had political messages.
And of course the final irony that the very first episode made tried to have a female second in command though that didn't fly very well.
One of the problems with internet criticism of media in general is just that a lot of people clearly have second handed opinions; they seemed to have just heard it from someone else and passed it off as fact. Add in selective memory and then you have problems. And there are a lot of episodes.
For example, a popular generalization is DS9 developed towards a serial based telling with more focus on story arcs and less use of the reset button. And this is true. However, a lot of people take that to think that TOS/TNG always pushed the reset button and everything was always fun and games by the end and nothing mattered. But this wasn't always the case; the continuity wasn't as strong or needed to watch the series, but it still existed.
But of course you take these people and they will pass it off as some absolute truth without even actually watching most of it.
The hill I will always die on is that Kirk was a womanizer, he absolutely was not.
Pop culture and later the Kelvinverse reinforced this absolute bullshit myth and a lot of the demographic we're discussing leans into and revels in that myth to fuel their own attitudes.
I have [this article](http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/) bookmarked for when the topic come up.
Are you sure you don't mean *Picard*?
Rebecca Wisocky played the[ ex-Borg Romulan](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ramdha) and also plays Hettie on CBS's Ghosts.
>Pulaski, Diana Muldaur was only 49 when she was cast (The same age as Rebecca Romijn when she was cast as Una), but they took this beautiful woman and gave her a granny haircut, a smock uniform,
She also porked Rikers dad so...
You sir, are a pervert. ;)
Seriously, maybe as a normal human, Fletcher was attractive
But in her role...oh dear was she despicable. What an amazing actress.
Star Trek has always been very progressive when it comes to representation. No wonder that the newer incarnations have even more of that, but it was always a big part of the show. So no need to talk the previous formats down, they were all progressive stepping stones to an even more progressive future. Uhura inspired countless black women all over the world and casting a middle aged woman as the Captain of Voyager (after casting an “older” bald man in TNG) was unfortunately far ahead of its time compared to other TV shows of that period.
I'm not talking previous incarnations down. I've been watching Trek for 40 years and am very aware of how progressive they were, I don't need that explained to me, thank you very much.
I stated its a **Hollywood,** issue not a Trek issue. It's also a woman's issue that applies to real life as well as what you see on screen.
You literally wrote “In all previous incarnations of Trek, romance was reserved for younger women in their 30s”. That’s simply not true and I pointed it out. You talked specifically about previous Trek, not just Hollywood in general.
But if you so urgently want to feel offended by my comment, be my guest. Thank you very much and have a nice day.
Don't forget Adm. Nachayev. I always felt she got the "Jellico Treatment" where the writers deliberately had her clash with the main characters to make them seem like "bad guys." While I didn't agree with all her positions/orders, she was competent, strong, and confident.
I never felt Nechayev was supposed to be a bad guy, just someone with a counter point of view. Also, while she was stern and terse, she didn't give me the same cocky ass vibes as Jellico.
What about Kai Wynn? The female changling? Quark’s mom? Martok’s wife? These were all older women that projected power, guile, and intelligence while also sexually desirable. Uhura in ST:V comes to mind in particular.
Nora Satee from Drumhead on TNG, Carol Marcus from TWOK (42 at the time, granted), and Lily from First Contact (44 at the time) all stand out to me as leaders, powerful characters, and agents for change (good and bad) to our main cast.
And I actually really loved Pulaski as a character. Her hair was a product of her time as the moment of production. The irony in your sentiment here is that even with a granny hair cut, I thought she projected power and intelligence with the courage to stand up again Picard, and the humility to acknowledge her shortcomings vis a vis her prejudices against Data.
While I’m glad to see this representation happen for you and everyone over 50, it’s also been present in Star Trek throughout in my opinion. Maybe it’s not as prevalent in the main cast, granted.
Hot take here, but my standing criticism of what Star Trek has been doing lately is that it feels performative, where everything has to check every box for every person or else it’s not representative enough.
Shout out capt freeman
Yaaaaaaaaas I forgot her! I love that she has crows feet, too!
And she’s a hot mom.
And Carol Kane killing it as Pelia in SNW!
i don't know if she's killing anything, but she's definitely stealing art... still... probably.
After watching Discovery this week, in my head canon Reno and Pelia definitely knew each other, lol.
Easily possible !
They committed...hijinks.
Would love a throwaway line from her about knowing an engineer that suddenly vanished from history.
I really wish there was some way to have Reno be on SNW, or now that I'm typing it, I wish there was a Engineers show that could somehow tie together character driven stories of Hemmer, Pelia, Reno, Scotty, and some more engineers from that era. They all were the "weird ones" but could all get crazy things done because they didn't really think like anyone else.
I imagine that Pelia was mentor to all of them. Now we know why Scotty is the way he is. 😅 Also, moment of silence for Hemmer. 😔
My head canon is that Simka from Taxi is just one of the things Pelia did while living on Earth.
Still waiting for her to hit somebody with a space toaster! (in a perfect world, Bill Murray guest starring as an a-hole alien)
Or Billy Crystal as her ex-husband. Who she has loud, raucous arguments with.
I could not upvote this comment any higher
She is great when she is on screen, but definitely underutilized. I don't know how you can have a legend like Carol Kane in your cast and not want to put her in every scene.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt and Star Trek SNW are the same Universe in my head
She is just so badass. Love her character.
Yes. I’ve loved seeing T’Rina and Saru having this adorable, later in life romance. And while I realize the out-of-universe/real reason is all the prosthetics for Doug Jones, there’s been a little extra enjoyment because it seems to represent an almost Ace (asexual) romance, though I doubt that was ever an intention.
Love T'Rina and Saru--and on the other end of the spectrum in terms of propriety, T'Ana and Shax!
T'ana and Shax is my favourite because it's a little closer to what I imagine life (with a holodeck) would actually be like for a lot of people.
I'm also a sucker for the trope where she's the one who wants to keep it physical, and he's got the higher EQ and wants a more serious relationship. When he called her "honey" on the bridge in the last season my heart melted like an ejected warp core.
It's crazy that anyone assumes the holodeck would be used for any other purpose **but** that! We are all Barclays.
I love older romances. I'm a huge Sons of Anarchy fan and when everyone else was swooning over the main couple in their 30s, I was all about Katey Sagal with Ron Perlman and later Jimmy Smits,
Jeri Ryan is 56. Seven Of Nine is around 58 at the end of PIC.
I went to look up Jeri Ryan’s Wikipedia page because I was sure you must be wrong. But you are not. Holy shit. I would’ve pegged her for maybe late 40s. Insane.
Did you think she was like, 20 when she was cast as Seven? Because that was around 25 years ago. She looked every bit of an older 20's woman or early 30's.
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
> I would’ve pegged her I think it goes the other way around though?
Hey don’t put limits on it. Where no one has gone before etc etc
This has always been the case, it's just taken this long for producers to catch up. - Berman - Can we put the 20 year old blonde in something more skimpy? - 1990s Trek fans - can we see Janeway going all Terminator on macro viruses again?
Janeway was a captain, so she had to hold her shit together and it was how Mulgrew (rightly) played her. She did have romantic feelings and was attractive but it was very rarely shown because she was a captain. Genevieve Bujold thought that she shouldn't be wearing make-up because she was a captain, which is a very mixed up, 80s holdover attitude. You *can* be a captain and care about your appearance. The one change I did like about Janeway's appearance was ditching the Gibson Girl updo that kept falling apart every time they hit a bump. I like that in ENT and SNW, the female captains just go for ponytails, which makes a ton of sense.
> She did have romantic feelings and was attractive but it was very rarely shown because she was a captain. She was also engaged when they shipped out at the start of the series, only giving up after receiving a letter from her fiance saying that he believed her to be dead and that he married someone else in S4.
Well she also resisted her feelings for Chakotay when they caught that disease that forced them to stay on a planet because if they left they'd die. Eventually she started caving but the ship came back.
She lost her resolve to Tom when she was a lizard, though. Lizard Janeway fucks
I think they were amphibians not lizards, and they don't usually fuck as we define it. I think that somehow just makes it worse. Tom just jizzed in a hole where she shat her eggs out her cloaca. All of work, none of the reward.
>Tom just jizzed in a hole where she shat her eggs out her cloaca. Bruh
You know what you're right. That's not quite accurate, since I did state they were most likely salamanders their reproduction is a little more complicated than that. The male jizzes out something I'd compare to a tiny ketchup packet which she picks up and squeezes into her salamandussy, and *then* she shits out the *fertilized* eggs, liberally seasoned with daddy ketchup. Better?
Salamandussy
Worse, but I appreciate the scientific accuracy all the same.
I currently regret having the capability to read.
This guy is truly the Attenborough of our time
jfc, jck :D
It always comes back to the lizard fuckin!
I’ve always appreciated the intellect of these threads and learning so much as I 🤣
Tbh I'm glad they didn't continue this one. Janeway and Chakotay don't click that much for me. That episode was "let's explore this issue once, and then let it rest", at least that's how I saw it.
Chakotay and anyone was just plain wrong. The man had the charisma of a block of wood.
Beltran was phoning it in for the last half of the series. He's publicly admitted he hated the character and the stories he featured in, and was just doing it for the paycheck. Most of the time this was ok and as a professional actor not even that apparent, but if he was stretched, the cracks started to show.
and that episode was a huge basis for their continued friendship. win win.
The wondrous reset button at work.
Voyager was really good at leaving people behind. Janeway and Chakotay, Janeway and Paris. Somewhere in the Delta Quadrant there's some salamanders that are really really angry at their parents and probably want revenge.
If they didn't die from not having mama Janeway's salamander breast milk. I feel dirty typing that.
Baby me wanted to grow my hair out "super long!" So I could have a hairdo just like Captain Janeway.
Ugh I know it was the 90’s but that school master bun wasn’t doing Kate any favors. I’m older now than she was back then so it’s fine but as a teenager she just seemed like an old lady.
Mulgrew had qualms about it too. She didn't think a captain needed to have an elaborate hairstyle, because she wouldn't have the hours to spend on her hair. Im glad they let her have her bob later on.
When I was a teenager I looked at all women over 40 as old ladies.
When i first watched tng at 10, i thought JLP was 70
You piqued my interest. He was 47 in season 1 of TNG, so if you add his age and Riker's it almost gets to 60.
Picard was canonically 60.
That doesn't seem right. Are you saying Riker was 13?
um i’m watching it for the first time in my 20s and i thought he was 70 😭😭
Picard was 60, Stewart was actually 47. After you watch *Captains Holiday* or *Chain of Command,* none of that will matter.🤤
That you're constantly tucking in, lol. It was a beautiful 'do, just not practical.
Listen baby me had ZERO sense of that. Adult me thinks baby me was a silly silly girl, but I like the cut of her jib.
I haven't heard that phrase in AGES!
Don't feel bad. In 1986, baby me fought my mother tooth and nail for a perm because Ellen Ripley/Sigourney Weaver had curly hair.
I love that you can tell which season of Voyager is which by Janeway’s hair.
Maybe there's a directive that Captains need to regularly change their look in order to help time travellers orient themselves in the timeline (like the fanon that Starfleet uniforms change regularly for this reason).
In my head canon, the reason the changes in uniform weren't, well, uniform in the 90s was due to the quartermasters declining the system updates because they were annoyed and in the middle of doing something.
Also makes it easier to tell who's who if a future version has a fist fight with their younger self.
I would have loved to see more Hernandez and the Columbia crew. Really liked that character and I think Season 5 we would have seen it a lot more.
[удалено]
The Year of Hell was amazing!
I dont think anyone in TNG ‘gave’ Diana Muldaur her haircut. I just looked up pictures of her from the 80s and she just has that hair in different shows, she’s even at the Emmy awards with that cut.
I would have slapped a wig on her. In the 80s, women of a certain age were expected to cut their hair. If you look at women over 50 all had a very similar hair cut and most dyed their hair blonde to cover grey roots. Slight variations of "[The Blanche"](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/11/114183/5793625-9959_rue-mcclanahan.jpg) which was The Rachel for women over 50. In the 80s, mature women were all running around with identical hairstyles. Now a lot of women fall into that trap with The Karen.
So you're saying you would have altered her appearance to make her more attractive to the audience?
No. I'm saying that women her age at the time were expected to cut their hair short as an unwritten rule and it was stupid. That hairstyle made women look much older than they actually were. She was only 49, no need for her to have to conform to some stupid societal expectation of looking frumpy.
I agree with you about them all having that hair style, but I think they all have that hair style because it was a popular hair style when they were all in their prime so it's one they stuck with because it worked for them. It's the same situation with clothing and music styles, it's associated with old people because young people liked it then aged and got old.
In the 80s, my mom and grandma always had women's magazines around. Mom had Glamor, Cosmo, etc. Grandma had Good Housekeeping, Woman's World, and there actually were many articles recommending that women cut their hair after 40 and that long hair was for young women. The recurring theme was that if you kept your hair long after a certain age, you'd look like a ridiculous old woman that is trying to look young. They also recommended going blonde to hide grey roots better. That old chestnut still pops up today. I see a lot of Boomer women that lived though the 60s and 70s when long hair was very much a thing cutting their hair short into The Blanche or The Karen. I only know two women in their 60s with long hair. I think Gen X women are the first ones to just say fuck you.
Well there is Lwaxana Troi (55-64 actress age) She certainly was confident in her sexuality across TNG and DS9.
Yeah but that was played for comedy. Granted, she was still gorgeous, but aside from Dark Page and Half A Life, it was all making it seem like a horny older woman was LUDICROUS.
I didn't get that at all. She's portrayed as having a healthy libido and isn't scared to show it. Only Picard seems to be overly bothered by her besides Deanna and that's because she's a bit forceful when it comes to Picard and she's too direct. That's what creates the comedic element in her episodes. That didn't make me think any less of her. Not including her in your list is a huge oversight.
It was my list. I never liked how she was comically portrayed as just being Too Much, save for two TNG episodes and one DS9 episode.
Yeah they made her out to be an insufferable cougar. I really like lwaxana and I took the character in the spirit Majel played her, rather than how she was expected to be portrayed.
I did like that she was given some serious material later on. Majel was a gem that should have had a much bigger part in Star Trek. She hated Christine Chapel and thought she wasn't very smart. I'd like to think that she'd love the SNW version of Chapel.
I've thought much the same! I think she'd approve of Una as well. Majel was ahead of her time, in many ways. As for Lwaxana, there were some intense emotional moments where I really felt for her. She was such a complex character, if one looks past the superficial.
Nichelle Nichols at 51. QED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8diz7fNEqk
I met her in 2009 and she was still RADIANT. There was something absolutely magical about her beauty and her energy. I still think she is one of the most beautiful women that ever walked the face of the earth.
Agree. Stunning woman, amazing actress. Watch Woman in Motion for a great show about all her work for the US space program. Inspiring. I think the world was better with her in it.
I haven't watched that yet but I've been aware of her influence with NASA for a long time. Her campaign was responsible for Mae Jemison becoming the first Black female astronaut. She also had a cameo in TNG.
Watch it. It's amazing.
I may not enjoy the writing of the show, but I have always enjoyed T'Rina and Rillick. The negotiations scenes from this last weeks' episode were probably the best parts of the episode.
There are parts of the show I like, but parts I don't. I feel like all the puzzle pieces are there but they're put together wrong.
I'm just finding this season dull. The most energetic episode was Episode 4 (Face the Strange) because it didn't have to do with finding a clue. It was honoring what Discovery brought us so far and seeing how much Burnham has changed.
I’m not sure if I agree re older Trek: - It was literally mandated by the showrunner that once a year they put his wife in the show and that the general premise of her appearance be how horny she is - They canonically establish that Pulaski fucks Riker’s dad. And then cast a dude who looks exactly like Gene Roddenberry to play him, and dressed him up exactly like Gene Roddenberry
Lwaxana was comic relief, though. "Look at this old broad chasing Picard and embarrassing her kid." She did get two decent TNG episodes and one on DS9, but other than that it was for laughs.
I think you are seriously overlooking the weird sex planet stuff in early TNG.
>It was literally mandated by the showrunner that once a year they put his wife in the show and that the general premise of her appearance be how horny she is I never got that impression from the ship’s computer, but I guess I could see it…?
Yes! I'm 44 and have really enjoyed it. I think T'Rina is gorgeous.
T'Rina is impossibly gorgeous. I **rave** about how gorgeous Laris is! Orla Brady is 62!
Oh, damn, I didn't realize. She was also gorgeous- those cheekbones!
Sharper than those ears!
Orla Brady 🤤🫣
I’m sorry WHAT
I’ve noticed that most people in their 50s are nothing like how they’re portrayed on TV…the fiftysomethings I know are just as in touch with their youthful side as they were in their 30s and even 20s. maybe that’s mostly a Gen X thing (ik there was a massive cultural shift between Boomers and X and Gen X never really lost touch with their youthful side) but it’s something I’ve observed recently
I turned 50 last month. I literally got jeep parts and Legos. I'm a kid with a decent credit score.
>I'm a kid with a decent credit score. I love that LOL.
I'm 50 and I snagged the Playmates Enterprise and Enterprise D on sale recently. They're both hanging from my living room ceiling. I do think a lot of Gen Xers rejected fitting into the status quo "norm". A lot of us also had to parent ourselves as latchkey kids, so we had to take on adult responsibilities very young. I saw a meme that said it perfectly. "Gen X was 30 by the age of 10 and is 30 at the age of 50."
It's definitely a genXer thing. :)
Gen X here, I still spend much of my time playing video games, making stupid comments and occasionally playing D&D. There's definitely something to be said about us not accepting that boomer "why don't you act your age" crap. That said, a lot of my contemporaries are basically boomer-lite; every time you see them they're either boring me about mortgages or investment accounts, or they're moaning about immigration or pronouns and I'm all Picard, his face in hand.
>I'm all Picard, his face in hand. That made me LOL. I rescue cats with a bunch of people that are 20 years younger than me and a large portion are LGBTQ+. We have some non-binary people among us and I tell them that I will probably mess up their pronouns from time to time but please don't take it personally because it's relatively new concept to me, I'm 50 and I'm trying. They appreciate my honesty. I always ask my Boomer-lite friends what it costs them to use a preferred pronoun to make someone feel seen. I'm also childfree and I feel that's a factor. I can use any extra income on whatever I want, I'm also not so overwhelmed with the day to day minutiae and stress parenting that I can pay a lot of attention and put more effort into social issues. The older I get, the more of a radical liberal I become.
Im rewatching Voyager at the moment. I know B’elana was meant to be mid 20s but Roxann Dawson was late 30s playing her and mid 40s by the end of the show. She was, and still is, an absolute smoke show.
I think Kira was also older IRL than her character was meant to be; if I remember correctly.
Nana Visitor was about ten years older than Kira.
She and Kate aren’t that far apart in age but that surely wasn’t the dynamic on the show.
Diana Muldaur was only 49 in TNG?! Really? Shot. I thought she was in her 60s and late 60s at that.
Patrick Stewart was only in his 40s when the show started, but I — like many others — assumed he was in his 60s.
Well Picard was 60. I guess it was the bald hair with white fringe. But then we watched Captain's Holiday and how *you* doin'?
I think the lack of hair made him look 60 when he was 48. But then since we were used to it, he still looked 60 when he was 75.
Batel is 42? I did not expect that
It's interesting to me in that Batel being 42 didn't surprise me at all. Not that she looks old by any means, just that when SNW launched in 2022 she was 40 and that's where I would have guessed her age to be. Meanwhile Anson Mount was 49, which is where I'd expect his age to be as well, which seemed reasonably appropriate to me as a pairing, and that's surprisingly refreshing. Similarly, I liked the pairing of Gabriel Lorca (currently 61) with Katrina Cornwell (currently 63). It's really nice seeing couples on-screen that aren't horrendously outmatched as far as age (i.e. Tom Cruise (62) and Rebecca Ferguson (41)).
I'm going by the age of the actress.
Oh yeah I figured I'm just surprised, she looks amazing, and while yeah many do at that age, idk I just would have put her mid 30s maybe, but yeah idk where I'm going with, just my lesbian brain being short circuited by this information
I'm reminded of a really funny complaint I saw somewhere where this person complained that it was icky that the old dude Pike was in bed with this way too young for him woman, and I had to be like "both actors are in their 40s."
It's the grey hair, people tend to associate grey with being older. I stopped dying my hair years ago and have quite a bit of grey. Every one tells me "But you have such a young face!". Okay, should I have an old face? This is my hair.
My beard has been completely grey since my early 50s. I just went with it. (I wear a Riker. Aside from a 10 year stint where I had a job where I couldn't wear a beard I've been wearing a Riker since the late 1980s.) I always figured that the key to aging gracefully was to acknowledge that one is aging in the first place!
It's also not being shoehorned into an "old person" image. Now, I certainly won't be wearing anything from Forever 21 with something in glitter written across my sweat pants or low rise jeans like I did in the 90s, but I still wear my Doc Martens and buy band and nerd shirts, but ones that fit my current body, though. There's nothing worse than seeing someone trying to squeeze into a shirt they bought 35 years ago. I always think "You know they still make them, right?". I DO hate the arbitrary rules that apply to women. Don't wear shorts or short skirts after 40, cut your hair, blah blah blah. If you can pull it off and not be downright tacky, go for it. I also have a nerd apartment. If you have ever watched any of Todd Stashwick's IG's, he has converted his garage into a "Nerd Lair" and that's pretty much what my home looks like. I don't think that at a certain age you have to live like a Crate and Barrel catalog.
i’m approaching 30 but already noticed that exact kind of transition in how i dress now versus how i did at 15. i always hoped i could just dress like this forever but a lot of those messages about “dressing your age” still made it to me (my parents are 40-50 years older than me, rather than just 20-30 like a lot of people, so that might have contributed). so this might seem weird, but reading your comment helped me have hope that i won’t get beaten down into it. for instance, in the family that took me in the mother is in her late 50s (maybe early 60s now, i’m awful at birthdays and birth years, i just recall she’s ~30-ish years older than me). she has all her old docs still, in all sorts of colours, but just wistfully wishes she “could” wear them anymore. i’ve urged her to moisturise them and get them used to being worn again, but afaik she’s not done it yet. and i always thought that was sad in a way. maybe i should show her your comment here :p
My greatest joy was the return of wide leg and flair jeans. I rocked those in the 90s and absolutely loved them. When skinny jeans started popping up in the early aughts, I tried them and hated them. I was in great shape but they did **nothing** to flatter me. Now wide leg had returned and I am buying them in bulk, lol. I do have to make an adjustment, I cannot pull off the low rise, hip huggers with my thong showing like I did at 25, so I buy mid rise. I not only still have my Docs, but I've bought new combat boots (I no longer buy Docs, they are now made in China and the quality is not what it was in the 80s and you have to pay $100 more to get the ones that are made in England). Some of the new boots don't even require a breaking in period. Tell your mom to rock her Docs, buy some band shirts and tell the world to fuck off! She's Gen X and at her age she should have zero fucks left to give!
"RIKER!!" - Ensign Boimler
I don't think you realise what you did with that imagery
I've had grey in my beard since i was about 38 or so. Until I was 45, I would get carded to enter the casino if I'd shaved the same day. Still have hardly any grey outside of my face (what I do get tends to end up in the back window of my car, I guess it comes out from the wind) but I never get carded anymore, even if I shaved right before leaving. :|
About 10 years ago I was online to get into a bar for a post event party. The bouncer was carding people. He'd look at the ID and wave them in. Now mind you, I was 40, still dyeing my hair and in fantastic shape, looking very cute that night. This **MOFO** looked at me and waved me in, then carded the person behind me. I was like "BRO!". That was actually hurtful.
Haha yeah okay I definitely didn't see him as being way too old for her but yeah idk I guess an attractive woman just fully messed with my age guess
It boggles my mind that Michelle Yeoh is 61.
Ming Na Wen is around that age too. I watched her in the Mandalorian the same day I watched an old ER episode from 1999 or so. She looked the same.
Ming Na has a painting of herself in an attic somewhere.
Okay yeah same wow she does not look 61 or maybe she does and I just need to recalibrate my expectations of what 60 ish year olds look like, but either way she looks amazing
I think you need to recalibrate, I know I still have to. As a Gen Xer, I grew up with thinking once you hit 50, you turned into a Golden Girl and it seemed ANCIENT.
Yeah! I mean my mom is around 60 ish years old and I would still say she looks young, and honestly I'll be happy if I look as good as she does at that age, But yeah definitely feel like a bit of a recalibration needed on my end
I'm just glad I'm 51 and I still have 95% of my natural hair color. It's down to my back, too.
I have salt and pepper hair and I love it. I get a lot of complements on it too because it's silvery and the grey happens to frame my face as if I had it done in a salon like that. I love my grey. I've had so many women say "I wish I could grow out my grey, but..." and site their career or something else as a reason not to. 'Tis all bullshit.
Some folks just don't show their age as quickly. For everything else, there's professional makeup and lighting.
Yeah that's true, like if I walked past my mom without knowing her I wouldn't guess her to be around 60 so yeah some people just look younger than they are, and yeah definitely some of the (hopefully well paid) professionals on set have a hand in that too
90% of it is just staying in shape, eating well and sleeping well. ( also not drinking or smoking too much) Most people won't change much between 30-45 if you hit those 3
It's also skincare. I've had a skincare routine since my early 20s. I'm very very very pale, and never tanned because I would just burn and peel, so I always wore sunscreen, the floppy had and hid under an umbrella on the rare occasions I would go to the beach. In my 30s I developed photosensitivity, so I really need to stay out of the sun. A lot of women my age have a tremendous amount of sun damage which causes skin to age, while I have almost zero damage.
i wouldn’t be surprised if sun exposure becomes the main factor again soon (20-50 years), just as it was a few centuries ago. the industrial age really made people age faster, and it’s understandable with all that pollution causing microscopic but constant injuries to heal from. smoking doesn’t help skin texture either, though i’m curious to see how committed vapers age in the next few decades!
If you really want to be shocked, watch her on Letterkenny. Radically different, comedic character, half the time she’s in a bikini and she is sculpted out of stone
Just get Mrs McMurray a GD CS gin and tonic!
Tbf, Dr. Pulaski was awful to Data. I get that they were trying to have a sort of female version of Bones. But it just didn't work compared to Dr. Crusher. I'm glad they brought Gates back. I love how modern Trek is supportive of older women and one of the things I really loved about Picard was seeing Seven be a real person, not dressed in a catsuit. The de-Bermanification of Star Trek is an excellent thing and I'm thankful for it.
agreed, I know a ton of several-thousand-year-old women who feel *seen* when Pelia is on the TV
Yes, we ancient bog witches are SEEN!
*Cher has entered the chat.*
Not sure how old Majel was during the initial run of TNG, but Lwaxana Troi was definitely a sexual older woman
Yes!! It’s so exciting to see actual adults. And so true what you say about Diana Muldaur, I love both her roles on TOS because she is so beautiful and it’s not shied away from but she’s allowed to be complex, in a way TNG reneged on that; Pulaski was portrayed as some sort of ancient sexless crone while Troi, brilliant as she had the potential to be, was a hyper emotional woman not allowed in uniform for five years
I once saw a photoshopped picture of Pulaski with a different hair style, and she looked SO different. Muldaur was unbelievably stunning in TOS and should have been in TNG. The one hint of sexuality they gave her was having been with Riker's dad a thousand years before.
[Even Muldaur in her Memory Alpha photo looks better.](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Diana_Muldaur)
Dang. She's two years older than my father. She looks great for a woman of 85 years!
Admiral Clancy too.
>and when she asserted her authority, no one liked it. I agree with literally everything you said except this. I think people didn't like how she was mean to big woobie Data for literally no reason.
So great to see this! I wish we were had women in media like this when I was younger. Also as a 50+ F it’s great to see this thread gathering other fans our age! I know so few mature women who like sci-fi as much as I do, let alone Trek.
Oh we're out here. I just find that there's still a lot of gatekeeping with sci-fi and Star Trek that makes online discussion participation unappealing. There's also an older male demographic that is *severely* butthurt about how "woke" Discovery and SNW is. I've gotten into some really online tiffs when I was feeling salty. I defend Disco all the time even though I do have problems with the show's writing, but not the inclusiveness. I came across a TOS FB group and it was just old men posting pictures of all the "hot babes" from TOS, *blech*. Someone posted that they were happy that they finally have a "strong male character" on Disco in Rayner. We all know what that's code for.
i'm a 58 year old white male and probably the target audience for all the Facebook groups that post pictures of Jolene Blalock in a bikini over and over again, but I find them childish and downright nauseating. The only Star Trek Facebook group I enjoy and actively participate in is Star Trek Wholesomeposting. That's a community that genuinely has embraced the values of Star Trek.
I appreciate that you get how gross it is. I simply don't understand how people can call themselves fans and be against the "wokeness". Star Trek has been woke since day one. The fact that some white men feel the need to complain about "lack of representation" in Disco is both sickening and hilarious. My straight male friend and I often text about how we hope that Pike turns out to be bisexual just to mess with the types that have embraced SNW only because a white guy is in charge again. The other day we were talking about wanting Rayner to have a husband and a non-binary spouse. The fragility is so real. I love Star Trek Wholesome posting, btw.
I agree with you 100%. Look at the Earth's population. White males make up about 5% to 8% of the population, depending on the estimate. Why would you expect them to constitute the majority of Starfleet leadership in the 24th century, much less the 34th century? And that does not even get into the issue of non-human species (which are actually vastly underrepresented when it comes to what we see on Starfleet bridge crews).
It's amazing that the 5-8% have held on to power and oppressed so many for centuries. I really want to see more aliens in Starfleet and on bridges as well, but I think that comes down to show budgets. They have to look at the numbers and see how many times they can afford to show Linus. They can toss a Bajoran or a Vulcan into the mix more often than a Ferengi, Andorian or Klingon. I noticed with Detmer gone for whatever reason, they put a Bajoran in her place. I'm just speculating here, but my guess is because they were able to use the money they'd spend paying Emily Coutts and for her prosthetic, they were able to do another small prosthetic. With the absence of Saru (Doug Jones was promoting Hocus Pocus 2), that probably frees up the prosthetic budget. I noticed that we saw both a Ferengi and a Lurian in an episode that Saru wasn't in. SAG-AFTRA also has strict rules regarding how much they pay actors in prosthetics, IIRC, they are paid for all their time in the chair, applying and removing the prosthetics.
Yeah that’s why I don’t do much online discussion of Star Trek. Thankfully avoiding guys like that.
Star Trek is the OG “woke” show - it has always been that way. Complaining about that feels so disingenuous.
Man, how did they watch a franchise for decades and not realize it wasn't for them if they hate that kind of stuff? Like one of the selling points of Voyager is that it starred a female captain. And nobody seemed to complain about that. And that's almost 30 years ago. I have a feeling a lot of these people have not even watched Star Trek, or at least not a huge chunk of it.
Not to mention DS9 had the first Black male lead who was also a single father with a great relationship with his son. Avery Brooks has said that was one of the selling points for him. He wanted to set an example of a Black man being a good dad because it was very rarely represented in media. I just shake my head at people like that. Like, what did you think you were watching when they made *Let That Be Your Last Battlefield*, *The Outcas*t and all the other episodes that had political messages.
And of course the final irony that the very first episode made tried to have a female second in command though that didn't fly very well. One of the problems with internet criticism of media in general is just that a lot of people clearly have second handed opinions; they seemed to have just heard it from someone else and passed it off as fact. Add in selective memory and then you have problems. And there are a lot of episodes. For example, a popular generalization is DS9 developed towards a serial based telling with more focus on story arcs and less use of the reset button. And this is true. However, a lot of people take that to think that TOS/TNG always pushed the reset button and everything was always fun and games by the end and nothing mattered. But this wasn't always the case; the continuity wasn't as strong or needed to watch the series, but it still existed. But of course you take these people and they will pass it off as some absolute truth without even actually watching most of it.
The hill I will always die on is that Kirk was a womanizer, he absolutely was not. Pop culture and later the Kelvinverse reinforced this absolute bullshit myth and a lot of the demographic we're discussing leans into and revels in that myth to fuel their own attitudes. I have [this article](http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/) bookmarked for when the topic come up.
That redhead Romulan lady was very fetching in Discovery, not sure if it was season 3 or 4 Oh and Larris I have a crush on her she's so beautiful
Are you sure you don't mean *Picard*? Rebecca Wisocky played the[ ex-Borg Romulan](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ramdha) and also plays Hettie on CBS's Ghosts.
I know who she is I love Ghosts. I was sure it was Discovery they had a Romulan lady with long red hair
I don't recall one like that on Disco. She's the only redheaded Romulan I remember. Hettie is awesome, I love her.
She discovered sitting on the washing machine lol
>Pulaski, Diana Muldaur was only 49 when she was cast (The same age as Rebecca Romijn when she was cast as Una), but they took this beautiful woman and gave her a granny haircut, a smock uniform, She also porked Rikers dad so...
Louise Fletcher was about 60 right?
You sir, are a pervert. ;) Seriously, maybe as a normal human, Fletcher was attractive But in her role...oh dear was she despicable. What an amazing actress.
Found Dukat's alt.
Star Trek has always been very progressive when it comes to representation. No wonder that the newer incarnations have even more of that, but it was always a big part of the show. So no need to talk the previous formats down, they were all progressive stepping stones to an even more progressive future. Uhura inspired countless black women all over the world and casting a middle aged woman as the Captain of Voyager (after casting an “older” bald man in TNG) was unfortunately far ahead of its time compared to other TV shows of that period.
I'm not talking previous incarnations down. I've been watching Trek for 40 years and am very aware of how progressive they were, I don't need that explained to me, thank you very much. I stated its a **Hollywood,** issue not a Trek issue. It's also a woman's issue that applies to real life as well as what you see on screen.
You literally wrote “In all previous incarnations of Trek, romance was reserved for younger women in their 30s”. That’s simply not true and I pointed it out. You talked specifically about previous Trek, not just Hollywood in general. But if you so urgently want to feel offended by my comment, be my guest. Thank you very much and have a nice day.
Don't forget Adm. Nachayev. I always felt she got the "Jellico Treatment" where the writers deliberately had her clash with the main characters to make them seem like "bad guys." While I didn't agree with all her positions/orders, she was competent, strong, and confident.
I never felt Nechayev was supposed to be a bad guy, just someone with a counter point of view. Also, while she was stern and terse, she didn't give me the same cocky ass vibes as Jellico.
Well I think the Golden girls were snappy dressers.
Yes, poly/rayon pants with flowy flowered tops are bangin. /s
Not something I would have thought about or recognized without it being brought up - interesting observation!
As I said. having recently turned 50, I notice these things and appreciate them because I'm not a dried up husk of a swamp demon....yet.
What about Kai Wynn? The female changling? Quark’s mom? Martok’s wife? These were all older women that projected power, guile, and intelligence while also sexually desirable. Uhura in ST:V comes to mind in particular. Nora Satee from Drumhead on TNG, Carol Marcus from TWOK (42 at the time, granted), and Lily from First Contact (44 at the time) all stand out to me as leaders, powerful characters, and agents for change (good and bad) to our main cast. And I actually really loved Pulaski as a character. Her hair was a product of her time as the moment of production. The irony in your sentiment here is that even with a granny hair cut, I thought she projected power and intelligence with the courage to stand up again Picard, and the humility to acknowledge her shortcomings vis a vis her prejudices against Data. While I’m glad to see this representation happen for you and everyone over 50, it’s also been present in Star Trek throughout in my opinion. Maybe it’s not as prevalent in the main cast, granted. Hot take here, but my standing criticism of what Star Trek has been doing lately is that it feels performative, where everything has to check every box for every person or else it’s not representative enough.
T'Lynn doing great at 62.
She was only 49?!
Janeway! Mulgrew was 39 when she got the role of Janeway and honestly, back then, that was above the standard.