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Star Trek fans have held the national stereotype of being way too rabid about things for decades but they’re probably the nicest fan base in all of science fiction and the one least likely to have a large faction of them absolutely lose it over a torpedo being fired by a woman or dumb shit like that
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And yet it still happens. There are right-wing bigots who watch Star Trek for the pew pew space battles and ignore the rest, sad as that may be.
They are not Trek fans, they are violence fans. They are not welcome.
I love Star Trek for the vision, the tech, the people and of course to hate Wesley. This is my utopia.
The funny thing is, unlike with most sci-fi, Starfleet usually only starts shooting as a last resort. They don’t even notice that.
They don’t understand that shooting should be the last resort for police/countries as well. They’re just enjoying it.
Talking it out instead of shooting first and asking questions later is one of the things I admire most about Star Trek. It was sold as essentially a space Western, but unlike your standard Western, it says that violence is not the answer, talking and understanding each other is the answer.
And really, the only Westerns I truly enjoy are the same way. My favorite is The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck. He’s an aging “fastest gun in the west” who just wants to be reconciled with his wife and child, retire and live a quiet life. But he keeps getting challenged. Spoiler for a movie made in 1950: There’s only one gun fired in the entire film, shot at the titular Gunfighter by a young hotshot. As Peck’s character lays dying, he lets the hotshot know that the curse of a life of violence has been passed on and he’s about to have as dismal a life as the man he killed.
The same sort of moral lesson Star Trek teaches.
But they want John Wayne coming in blazing, shooting at those inhuman savages (they don’t have to worry about being called racist if they hate Cardassians).
The number of times in trek where they could easily destroy the ship or entity that was causing the problem in the episode is huge in Trek. But they spend most of the episode trying to figure out how solve the problem with the minimum damage to both sides.
Even times where it could be argued that shooting at it is justified (the Crystalline Entity), they try to figure out other options.