• rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    872·
    10 months ago

    We grew up with a series where Black Jesus, a perpetually horny twink, a trans slug, a bucket of goo with identity crisis, a rehabilitated rebel/terrorist, and an Irishman reconciled cultural differences to restore a planet following a decades-long occupation. And it was awesome.

    • Jesus_666@feddit.deEnglish
      36·
      10 months ago

      Rehabilitated? Her resistance movement won the war and they just promoted her. She was not a rehabilitated rebel/terrorist, she was a successful and proud rebel/terrorist.

          • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            18·
            10 months ago

            If you’re new to the series, just tough it out for the first one or two seasons. They’re good, but it gets WAY better at S3.

            • airman@infosec.pubEnglish
              12·
              10 months ago

              Extremely new. Watched Lower Decks recently. My brother recommends TNG before DS9. Says it’ll be much more fun this way.

              • BossDj@lemm.eeEnglish
                7·
                10 months ago

                Lower decks has nearly constant references to the other shows. If you end up watching and enjoying the others, then you’ll have rewatch lower decks for some solid hidden gems!

                Similar to DS9, TNG takes a season or two to find its footing. The person who introduced me had me skip the entire first season of TNG then come back to it later.

              • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
                5·
                10 months ago

                TNG is great, chronologically it comes right before DS9 and the two intersect in DS9’s first episode. Knowing the events leading up to that point adds a lot of subtext both to the episode, and the world-building and political landscape later on. I can’t say it’s absolutely required, but if you do watch it, you won’t regret it.

                Just… again, tough it out for the “pre-beard” first season. It’s rough.

              • lugal@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                10 months ago

                They overlap. I was nerd enough to sort all episodes of TNG, DS9 and VOY and watch them in order of first release. It does make sense since some story lines go through all 3 series or at least 2

              • AMDIsOurLord@lemmy.mlEnglish
                2·
                10 months ago

                Star Trek TNG the first season is a bit miserable, but slowly gets good as the writers find out wtf they’re doing. There’s of course the original Star Trek, from 1960s, and it’s absolutely beautiful but needs quite a bit of 1960s media appreciation to fully “get”. It’s also cheesy as fuck considering the budget lol

              • 1simpletailer@startrek.websiteEnglish
                1·
                10 months ago

                I’d recommend trying to watch TOS before TNG if you can. It’s aged a lot, so no shame if you cant. Just skip ahead to TNG if TOS isn’t your cup of tea. If you can manage it though, its only 3 seasons and some movies and you’ll appreciate some good episodes of TNG and DS9 a lot more if you enjoyed TOS first.

            • Sombyr@lemmy.zipEnglish
              5·
              10 months ago

              I love that introducing people to DS9 we’re asking people to tough out the first few seasons not because they’re bad or even mediocre, but because they’re not as astoundingly amazing as the rest. Really says a lot about the series.

              • 1simpletailer@startrek.websiteEnglish
                4·
                10 months ago

                DS9’s growing pains are nothing compared to other Treks. There’s a few iffy episodes but most of it is still great! I’d rank “Duet” as one of the best episodes period and its in season one.

            • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              4·
              10 months ago

              I’m halfway through season 2 and I love it, you are saying it gets better?? I’ve never watched any star trek movie or series at all, it seemed like a good starting place and I’m hooked.

              • then_three_more@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                10 months ago

                I envy you getting to watch it for the first time. Oh yes, it gets better. I can think of only one really stand out episode that you’ll have had so far (Duet). I was going to list some good ones you’ve still got ahead, but it was getting silly long.

              • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.worldEnglish
                11·
                10 months ago

                Season 1 took a while to get going even on the funny side and didn’t hit us stride untill late s1. And it’s Seth McFarland so quite a few folks just didn’t watch it and probably mouthed off.

                • HappycamperNZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  10 months ago

                  I mean, so did simpsons, futurama, family guy - even GOT kicked off when someone lost their head half way through S1. It takes time to build a world and get invested.

          • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
            410·
            10 months ago

            Watch The Orville instead. It’s everything Star Trek should have been, plus it’s funny.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I’d want anyone watching DS9 also see Babylon 5 after that.

          It sometimes feels clumsy and drugs-induced, and somehow makes me depressed, and in general I don’t like a lot of it, but there’s something alive deep in its core which DS9 imho lacks, being nice otherwise.

    • then_three_more@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      10 months ago

      And a bisexual tailor. Yep just a simple tailor, nothing to see here.

      And a space Uber capitalist who’s there to be ridiculed and whose brother quotes Karl Marx and somehow ends up leading their people.

    • Lath@kbin.social
      101·
      10 months ago

      Sisko, Bashir, Dax, Odo, Kira and Keiko O’Brien. Am I right or am I right?

  • random9@lemmy.worldEnglish
    68·
    10 months ago

    The only sad thing about Captain Planet was that it taught me that if you point out the wrong-doings of the rich and powerful, there will be correct action taken by the authorities to right the wrongs and to punish those responsible. The truth is much sadder imho.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      35·
      10 months ago

      My local water company was fined £2m for dumping huge amounts of sewage in the river.

      Their profit for the year was about £500m.

      Like, what is even the point? We should be renationalising this shit. Fuck these people.

      • random9@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        10 months ago

        I agree.

        It reminds me of that joke that a corporation is an ingenious tool for personal profit without personal responsibility.

        It may be radical, but I strongly believe that the people running corporations (aka those making decisions) should be personally held accountable for crimes and wrongdoings of their corporations. It goes against the very idea of a corporations, but absolutely horrible people have been exploiting hiding behind corporations. I bet that if those people had to face the prospect of serious prison time, some actual personal responsibility, they would think twice before committing crimes. (edit for spelling mistakes)

        • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
          7·
          10 months ago

          I think the worst case in the UK at the minute is the Post Office, who knew there was a massive fuck up in their computer system, but prosecuted their sub-postmasters anyway for the “missing” money. People went to jail. People committed suicide. Hundreds faced financial ruin.

          I can’t wait for the bosses to face absolutely no consequences, or for them to shove some low level minions under the bus.

          • Tak@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Even when there are consequences the consequences for the wealthy are always drastically lighter than the consequences for the poor.

        • yamanii@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          Your proposition is only fair since they love to pretend to be people in the eyes of the law, but when any wrongdoing happens, nobody is ever held accountable and they just pay some fines that are like 1% of their profits.

        • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          The whole concept of corporations does seem to be purpose-built for avoiding negative consequences. For example, if the company makes a profit, the shareholders own that profit. But if the company goes into deep dept… the shareholders are not on the hook for that.

      • Joe Cool@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        10 months ago

        Since you can’t put a company in prison, all of management should be on trial for intentional poisoning of the population.

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    624·
    10 months ago

    People talk a lot about the ethnic stereotyping of the original Power Rangers, what with the Black Ranger being black (and of course majorly into hip-hop), the Yellow Ranger being Asian and versed in several Asian stereotypes, and the leader being the straight white male (who then gets displaced as leader by another straight white male).

    What we don’t talk about is how, to spite all of that, it was still a huge step forward for the time to make it such a diverse cast. It was progress, warts and all.

    The original idea was to make the Red Ranger Native American which…wow. But still… it’d also have been note worthy for the time too to put a Native American character in this line up, let alone as the leader.

    Honorable mention to Billy who, to spite the character not being gay, the actor was (and got harassed for it). I know he’s said he never made Billy gay, but I can’t help but think there’s a reason I identified with Billy as a kid, and not just because he was the nerd.

    • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      401·
      10 months ago

      While it wasn’t as flashy as the others, long range communication, and the ability to mess with someone’s head are not to be underestimated. It was fairly useless on its own, but a powerful force multiplier on the others.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        211·
        10 months ago

        You have a point, but he mostly sat in the back and didn’t do much in my memory.

        I also always wondered where Captain Planet went when he left. Like was there some Captain Planet bachelor pad where he hot tubs and reads the paper?

        • Æsc@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          17·
          10 months ago

          I think he just didn’t exist when he “left”. Their rings don’t summon him from another place, they form him. When the mission is over, he ceases to be. There was an episode where the fire guy goes back in time and prevents himself from getting his ring and creates an alternate timeline where Captain Planet never existed at all, because the other planeteers can’t “cast” him without fire.

      • vithigar@lemmy.caEnglish
        18·
        10 months ago

        There was an episode that showed an alternate timeline where Wheeler refused the fire ring, so the planeteers were never able to summon Captain Planet and couldn’t defeat the villains, so they ultimately went their separate ways but kept the rings.

        Ma-ti is shown using the heart ring to essentially mug people, altering their minds to force them to give him money.

      • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
        17·
        10 months ago

        Yes. The Heart Ring is the most devastating of the rings of Environmental Power.

        By controlling the hearts of its victims it’s able to induce the most horrific feeling known to man: meaninglessness.

        While all of his opponents seemed to wither only slightly in battle, over 90% of them eventually committed suicide, as they saw the world move on without them, and found only so much solace in drugs and cheap sex.

    • bier@feddit.nlEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      They don’t show it in the episodes, but when that kid grew up he got laid like there was no tomorrow.

  • 1simpletailer@startrek.websiteEnglish
    314·
    10 months ago

    The 90’s were such a weird time for representation. All the higher ups in media were still old white people, but some of them were well meaning and did think it was important to insert people of different ethnicitys and cultures into their programming. Problem was that none of the people of the culture being depicted were involved in the writing, so these characters were often offensive stereotypes. Apu from the Simpsons and Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager are two of the most egregious examples. This all paved the way for actual progressive inclusion in media, but man has a lot of it aged poorly.

      • 1simpletailer@startrek.websiteEnglish
        91·
        10 months ago

        The problem with Apu stems deeper then just the character itself though. He embodies a mix of negative and positive stereotypes, but the biggest problem is the fact that he is written more or less exclusively by white men, and voiced by a white man doing an impression of an Indian accent. I think the character could have been pulled off fine if there had been someone of Indian decent offering creative input and voicing the character.

        • tegs_terry@feddit.ukEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          So, had he been voiced by and written via the consultation of an indian person, the stereotypes would cease to be unacceptable?

          • 1simpletailer@startrek.websiteEnglish
            41·
            10 months ago

            I mean kinda yeah. No doubt the character would have been portrayed differently had there been input from someone of Indian decent. Besides that its a general rule in good comedy to not punch down. If you’re going to have jokes about a minority culture then it needs to be that culture making jokes about itself. Relatively few people were outraged about the Black stereotypes made fun of on The Boondocks because the vast majority of people involved in creating that show were Black. In the case of The Simpsons, it was just a bunch of White guys sitting around writing jokes about Indian stereotypes and making a silly voice.

            • tegs_terry@feddit.ukEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              I wonder exactly what would’ve been changed with the input of the average Indian person. What is man that ye shall know him? Would it be Apu or a name with another rose?

              I also have a problem with the whole ‘punching down/up’ nomenclature. As long as the intention is to punch at all, then I think you’re coming from the wrong angle, especially as - depending on the trajectory - it seems to try and justify different things. A lot of ‘punching down’ seems in good spirit, whereas ‘punching up’ is specifically designed to agitate.

          • gmtom@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Kind of?

            Like making self deprecating jokes is different to another person making fun of you, but with nationalities.

            • tegs_terry@feddit.ukEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              Depending on which nationality. Americans lay into the French like they’ve forgotten how much they owe them… nobody bats an eyelid.

  • Konala Koala@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago
    • Takes one look at this thread’s title and puts on… ♪Captain Planet, he’s a hero! Going to take pollution, down to zero! We’re the planeteers, you can be one too! Because saying the planet is the thing to do! Looting and polluting is not the way! Here is what Captain Planet has to say! The Power is yours!♪
  • doingless@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    10 months ago

    I’m 50 and I have no idea who captain planet is. When and where was that a thing? Did you need to have cable? Because like 5% of my friends had cable. I’ve still never paid for it.

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    215·
    10 months ago

    Nobody I knew ever watched that show, it was Ted Turner’s pet project he threw money into. It’s a shame to have it included in the cartoons of that time.

    It didn’t reflect anything socially except egotistical social engineering experimentation by a megalomaniac.

        • AquaTofana@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          10 months ago

          Go to therapy. Get help. And stop using the phrase “dyke”. I’m not sure if English isn’t your first language or what, but it’s offensive as fuck, and I’m sure a better conversation could have been had if you hadn’t started off with that aggressive pejorative.

    • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      We live in a world where hundreds of shows come out each year. Name 3 shows in that last decade where that happened, and don’t pick the intentionally LGBT ones like gayish.