Funny…if you’d told my ten-year-old self that, one day, a Star Trek series would be running and I wouldn’t have the faintest desire to watch it, I’d have laughed at you.
I usually try to keep my blog away from culture wars and “Christian boycotts”, because I believe we’re likely to get better evangelistic results by talking about what we’re for (i.e. loving God through Christ alone) than what we’re against. But today, it’s a PSA (public service announcement) for anyone considering watching Star Trek: Discovery.
I watched the first five episodes of Discovery, the seventh series in the franchise and the first to air in 12 years. I didn’t continue because the series is part of CBS’s All Access project and I thought it stupid to keep paying for a subscription unless the writing was top caliber. Discovery’s wasn’t. Muddled and excessively Nolan-ized (i.e. characters are horrible and we’re supposed to care because it’s “dark”), the show was strongly performed but wasn’t sure why it even existed. It didn’t have that immediate mystery-grip that Lost did.
Then, with its midseason finale, the show made a hard-left turn into mature-rated cable content. Not just the much-ballyhooed gay kiss (a first for the franchise), but a flashback sex scene featuring nudity. (I was ambushed by a Youtube clip.)
Not only does it all feel done just “because it can”, but it pricks my conscience as a Christian. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was never a bastion of Biblical thought even then, dripping with Gene Roddenberry’s yes-we-can humanism and contempt for religion (how can one work in the LAPD, of all things, and come away with a rosy picture of human nature?), although he deserves great credit for promoting racial diversity in his casts. But Trek for the most part remained harmlessly family-friendly. Deep Space Nine had its LGBT dallyings, but they remained wrapped in sci-fi trappings. We still stopped watching it as a family.
Well, now it has to be edgy, and has also (along with a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in the recent feature film, Star Trek Beyond) given the LGBT community the victory for which they have clamored so loudly over the decades. I am not the first to note that they think it discriminatory if any entertainment product omits an LGBT pairing these days. Such is the direction this show has turned, seemingly for no reason except to further normalize those lifestyles.
I leave it to you to decide whether to invest in Discovery, and I pray we will all practice good discernment and shine like lights in the darkness. But I will not be further investing.
Brandon J. Adams 
Wow, that’s disappointing. (I grew up with Star Trek Voyager and The Next generation but was too young to remember TNG first-run.) Sad to hear that Star Trek is going down that path. I guess at least we have fond memories of the older series…
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Voyager was so bland!
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Haha, I think I was bias because they had a woman captain and I thought that was cool. 😂 I actually liked Voyager along with TNG and the original Star Trek. (I don’t remember the other two very well.) I loved Kes and her telekinetic abilities; I didn’t like Voyager as much after she left.
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Very cool to have a female captain – I enjoyed the one Discovery started with, also.
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🙂 ❤
CBS aired the first episode, but I didn't watch enough to know that Discovery had a female captain. 😂
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Well, the Shenzhou did.
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That stinks, but I very much appreciate the head’s up. I agree and also try to stay out of the culture wars for the most part and focus on God’s goodness and the wonder of Jesus’ sacrifice. Yet… that being said, I also think about the time and dollars I spend and whether or not it glorifies God. My prayer is similar – that we will all have discernment… It is much needed.
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A lot of our money goes to places we can’t possibly see. We can’t help that. But if you know where it’s going… Then you have a crisis of conscience.
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Exactly.
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One reason I loved the older series and Next Generation was because of the love, kindness and deep friendship they portrayed. I’ve watched a few shows of this new series, but won’t be continuing. I’m glad you warned us about the nudity. That is one of the reasons, along with the suggestive jokes on sit-coms, and violence on dramas, I quit watching movies and TV.
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Don’t blame you. There’s some kinship in this series, but there’s also some conflict, and not of the compelling kind. It’s just there to be there.
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So glad they have included homosexual people.
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I grew up with the original and the racist thing was some tension between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura
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Raciest thing I meant
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LOL…what a spectacularly unfortunate misspelling. 🙂 But I agree…for all Kirk’s womanizing, it was still a roll-of-the-eyes thing. Wasn’t even as bad as James Bond.
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Nope. What makes my misspelling even more unfortunate is that the whole tension between those two was at times quite controversial in the day. Some found her very presence disturbing actually.
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That’s what I meant. Weird how backwards things were in that arena, even just 50 years ago. I’m glad we’ve made at least some progress.
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I am too, Brandon.
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We’re big Trek fans, but we only watched the first episode for about 20 minutes, that contained as much swearing and blatant sexual references that we were willing to stand. I thought it might be limited to the one character, but no. Good article.
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I don’t remember the first episode being THAT bad. I always did suspect, though, that part of the reason they were putting the show behind the paywall to begin with was because it let them go TV-MA.
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