Gays and Klingons deserve better representation (Why the New Star Trek show failed)

(The above picture is an actual advertisement from a Star Trek website. I am not exaggerating or modifying it in any way.)

I thought the Klingons presented in Star Trek: The Next Generation were really interesting. They were a fierce warrior race where honor and bravery meant everything. They were tough fighters and strong and all that. But behind all the head-butting and ridiculous sword duels, it seemed like honor and selfless bravery were what they were all about.

Worf was loyal to the human-dominated Federation, but he still adhered to the Klingon traditions of honor, discipline and martial valor. Worf was interesting because the Federation was not based around Klingon culture, but he was theologically and culturally totally Klingon. In later episodes, he had difficulty raising his son, Alexander, because he wanted him to be Klingon yet remain a loyal Federation citizen. Klingons were an unusual fit in the human-dominated Federation society.

Klingons looked, talked and acted different from humans as well. They all carried weird-looking knives and still dueled with swords. In a world of hyper-advanced technology, they still trained in hand-to-hand combat.

Basically they were dark-skinned space Spartans with strange foreheads that had at least twice the durability of puny human skulls. And they were awesome. (Being totally different from regular human culture is awesome.)

In the new Woke Star Trek, the Klingon character is an effeminate homosexual who struggles with social anxiety. That tells you all you need to know about the character.

It’s not his sexual orientation that makes him boring. It’s that he talks and acts like he is a modern college student from an American upper-middle-class family on the West Coast. We all know how those people think and talk and behave. They are predictable in every way.

On the Critical Drinker YouTube show, there was an American philosophy nerd who liked Star Trek (I suspect that it is a requirement to like Star Trek if you study philosophy in America, and it is highly recommended in Britain). He mentioned how a Klingon shopkeeper or Doctor would be bottomlessly fascinating. A culture obsessed with honor would still need Doctors and shopkeepers. But how would a shopkeeper be the most honorable shopkeeper that ever was? How would a Doctor devoted to saving life operate in a culture where sacrificing one's life is the heroic ideal?

Klingons that aren’t your typical warrior archetype could be really interesting. But they would have to act like Klingons and not like citizens of the urban Woke monoculture.

Similarly there is a video game called 1348 Ex Voto about a lesbian Knight in Medieval Italy. Asmongold did a Let’s Play of the demo and the dialogue is hilariously bad. Not only are you supposed to believe that there were lesbian knights in 1348 Italy, but the lesbian knights speak like a Starbucks barista with purple hair and multiple piercings.

You can practically hear the subpar Professor lecturing about systemic something or other through the video game dialogue. Like you and your friends could get together on the weekend to make fun of it over a few beers bad. In fact, alcohol and ridicule would be the only way to enjoy the cutscenes in Ex Voto.

Gays have often not been fairly represented in media. In the 1990s and earlier almost everyone in media was straight. The few gays who were depicted were flaming feminine men with a lisp or butch women. Obviously these kinds of homosexuals exist, but the media depicted a very narrow range of what a homosexual person was.

Strangely, Woke art repeats this mistake in its own way. Instead of well-developed characters who happen to be gay, they depict homosexuals within a narrow range. Instead of three-dimensional characters, you get bland victims and plaster saints.

Media representation isn’t the most important thing in the world. It makes sense for a group to focus more on economic advancement and educational attainment (among other things). But it’s unlikely that positive depictions of a group don’t have ancillary benefits. When I was watching cartoons as a kid, I knew that the Nazis were bad guys because they were all fighting superheroes. I suspect that even with adults, passive positive depictions have some influence.

Wokism claims to support minority representation. But as Ayn Rand has noted, “the smallest minority on Earth is the individual.” Without the representation of an interesting individual, the representation of a group is so boring that it doesn’t matter.