fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3400 ]

[ SECRET POST #3400 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3400 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[The Secret of Crickley Hall]

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03.

[Longmire]

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04.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiKj0Z_Xnjc]

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05.

[Great British Bake Off]

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06.

[The West Wing]

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07.

[Kim Possible]

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08.

(Free! Iwabi Swim Club)

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09.

[Hyper Light Drifter]

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10.

[Sword of Truth]

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11.

[Count Cain/Godchild and Kuroshitsji]

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12.

[Discworld]

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13.

[assassination classroom]

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14.

[Monster Pop!]

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15.

["Magical Diary: Horse Hall" and "Harry Potter”]

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16.

[Silmarillion]

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17.

[Once Upon a Time]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 084 secrets from Secret Submission Post #486.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I pretty much can only talk about it here , because it's an episode that's 24 years old, and I'm six months behind the daily rewatch group I was following.

So, I fucking love this episode. To recap: Star Trek creates an agender race and uses feelings of gender as a metaphor for homosexuality and the bigotry/homophobia people who are "different" face. And in that regard it's beautiful (and haunting). It would be more beautiful still if Jonathan Frakes had gotten his way and the main guest character - who falls for Riker and vice versa -- were played by a man. But the very fact that that wasn't allowed by producers speaks even more to the necessity of the episode.

And sure, viewed by 2016 eyes, the message gets kind of jumbled as we're smack in the middle of a trans rights movement.

But apparently EVERYBODY HATES THIS EPISODE. They hate it because it's not trans enough. Because it's a "reverse oppression story, where marginalized people are made into villains!!". And the one that really gets my goat is "because when the Enterprise crew are talking about gender and attraction, they never mention other sexualities! There aren't any gay people, but it steals gay people's struggles!"

And I just want to say "HELLO!! You're banging on the door of the point and missing it entirely!!" There weren't any gay people there because it's a show created in 1992, bound by the standards of 1992 television. And it was wrong. HENCE THE MOTHERFUCKING METAPHOR.

But oh, no, no. the writers were cowardly who just shouldn't have told the story if they weren't going to put actual gay people in it.

Ugh. It just makes me angry.

It's not terrible but it isn't all that good, even by ST:TNG standards.

I mean, I don't know

I think it's a fair point to say that it was a good idea that was sabotaged by the shittiness of the producers / Rodenberry's lawyer or whatever. The fact that they were handcuffed by those things doesn't intrinsically mean that the resulting episode was good. Just that it was a noble attempt.

Yeah, but everyone I see talking about it doesn't even give it that much credit. It's just a giant shit sandwich because it doesn't fit with a standard of social justice it preceded by more than two decades.

I can appreciate how that might be the case.

I don't understand what you're saying here?

Oh, sorry - I can see how it would be the case that people talk about it in a dumb way for not fitting a social justice rubric exactly.

Because it's a "reverse oppression story, where marginalized people are made into villains!!"

Anyone who says this like it's a bad thing is an idiot. The oppression reversal is a classic and effective storytelling method when it's done well. I haven't seen the episode in years so I couldn't say for myself if this one was done well, but that reason alone isn't a good dismissal of it.

NAYRT
But it's not done well. It's never done well. It is always offensive.

See for reference Farnham's Freehold

fuck that book

Uh, wrong. Sometimes it's done poorly, but certainly not always.

It is, because it gets people to see things from the oppressed's perspective. Like, people have come away from these stories and said so. If people were perfect, we wouldn't need stories like that, but any way to enlighten people that works is better than leaving them to their ignorance because they can't learn without ~offensive~ story methods.

Add another mark to the wall of why, apparently, privileged people should never try to concern themselves with the stories of the marginalized. They'll just "do it wrong" and shouldn't even try.

I hate "my" people sometimes. Making progress by ourselves is the slow-assed, idiot's way. We need to embrace allies and their efforts, wherever they come from, not demonize them for not doing enough.

and I'm six months behind the daily rewatch group I was following.

Markwatches?

*smallvoice* yes. I know, I know. It's just, when I was keeping pace, I really liked having an active community to talk to. Because the responses aren't ALWAYS like this one. But since I'd fallen behind I'd started watching on my own without visiting the site.

But then I liked this episode so much that I went back and was absolutely floored by the mountain of hate. I even found a free download to the reaction video, which I tried to watch first, but I had to stop before it was even half done.

It's cool Nonny. I followed them for all of Tamora Pierce's work, and I check in for the Discworld books I've already read. They're some of the only people who I found discussing those books in an organized fashion. I just don't post anymore because I find their "rules" to be, well, stupid.

To me, it's not just that it's awkwardly shunting around the issues that they really want to discuss instead-- that's fairly typical Trek. It's the execution of it, with an uninspired performance from Melinda Culea as Soren and a frustrated Frakes trying to sell it but failing. And the one-note authority figures... ugh.

But it's just a particularly stupid allegory, in the end. Perhaps not as cringeworthy as certain progressive stands on TOS look now, but also without the fun/camp factor. "The Outcasts" will never be fun.

I don't think it's supposed to be fun, tho?

Maybe fun isn't the right word. I should have said entertaining. Because a tv show, even a drama, should still be enjoyable and entertaining experience. And that episode is far from it.

That's the feeling I get when people complain about a lot of Star Trek. Yeah, by today's standards it's not very progressive, but at the time it was made...At least they tried, when few other shows/movies thought to. They did their best even if it didn't always work out very well.

Plus, I remember watching that episode for the first time when I was a small girl. I just got swept up by the story, the way I always did. And I was appalled when they brainwashed Riker's love interest at the end. Because why couldn't they just let them be in love? And that's the point of the episode and of ST in general. And yeah, maybe the point would have been made even clearer if the actor had been a man, but the fact I remember so much about an episode I haven't seen in over 20 years means the point stuck anyway.

I fucking hate when people jump straight to blaming the writers in cases like this. Especially when they're self-righteous about it. It really just betrays how little the actually know about how TV shows get made.

no one's brought up what I thought was the obvious problem, that the ending could be interpreted as sanctioning Soren being brainwashed. :(

I thought it was pretty clear that we were supposed to agree with Riker that it was a horrifying thing that would haunt him (implied by that stony push in as they flew away).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3400 ]

Star Trek TNG: The Outcast

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