This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Thoughts on Star Trek Being Woke

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

News to conservatives complaining about new Star Trek series being "woke": Star Trek has ALWAYS been "woke."

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Tune in now just wait and see this Just press play we're on our way Voices sharp opinion bright All right Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to our Snowed in 2026 edition of the podcast. We are about to be snowed in on Friday, January 23rd, 2006. And I have preemptively put the call out for interviews. And so far we've got a couple scheduled for this special program. see if I'm getting some more. But in the meantime, we're going to start with me talking. So this is thoughts on Star Trek.

As you all know, if you are a regular listener to the podcast, you know, I'm a massive Trekkie. And specifically, the idea that Star Trek is all of a sudden, all of a sudden, has gone woke. So what the hell am I talking about here, woke? So, of course, Star Trek, this is the 60th year since Star Trek started. So that's a pretty fun to think about that it all started 60 years ago. But let's be honest, when Star Trek went woke was pretty much from the very beginning. it's always been woke and I'm bringing to something now

because there's a controversy so about awokeness you have these conservative politicians saying oh can we bring

can we bring back Bill Shatner because because we feel that Star Trek has gone woke and your thing to which Shatner replied

well I'm seeing people in this new series the Starfleet Academy series wearing glasses. So haven't we fixed eyesight yet? Number two, Shatner is a couple of things that's, aside from being an actor

and in his 90s, William Shatner is two things that's these right-wing pundits haven't really started to consider. Yes, the character James T. Kirk is you know, a stereotypical

white guy out of Iowa and everything. But first of all, you know Shander is Canadian, right? Born in Montreal. I'm sorry, not just a Canadian city, but a French

Canadian city. And number two, number two, and I hate to bring religion into this. but mostly these guys are

doing the yapin are evangelical types pseudo-christians and I do say pseudo-crisons because they certainly don't act like Christ will have wanted them

to act but yeah Shatner's Jewish so consider that and we're talking about the the first guy first the first guy who was the

regular captain on that show all right so William Shatner probably not the best guy to try to inject into modern trek and once again the man's in his

90s okay but as it revolves around modern Trek so I'm reading the Facebook posts of Daniel Aronson,

sci-fi and fantasy author. And it reads somebody, Gina Yashiri, Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, lashes out against whites, misogynists who dislike the show.

She posted online. The entire cast is a damn good mix. We woke as hell over here. So woke. Incredible woke. Woke. Woke are that woke. wokey woke woke a cacophony of woke this particular actress broke new ground on star trek playing the first actress being the first actress to portray a female gem hanar so her her character for those who haven't been watching star trek and certainly not this starfully

kami which i do highly recommend by the way different it's a different angle at the the Star Trek universe, but her character is, her father is Gem Hadar. For those not trickies, the Jim Hadar are a genetically modified race.

They're basically thugs for the dominion throughout DS9. And they are all male and all drug addicted. But her mother is Klingon. So she's a hybrid of Gem Hadar and Klingon, and that's kind of talking about what we're talking about here.

And by the way, this is the baddest-ass character in that new series. She's basically the drill instructor. So, though it takes the train duty and very British. Lover takes the train duty six months of interspecies vomits. Clean up. And 200 push-ups. No, I said now. God damn it.

But if you start to think about Star Trek, it has always been woke. So I was thinking about the late 60s when Star Trek first became a thing. Yes, you had James C. Kirk. Yes, you had Leonard McCoy, a southern gentleman as the doctor. And, yes, you had Spock. We're talking about Hyper's area, half Vulcan, half. human. I think his presence on that bridge alone would justify what I'm talking about but then there because we had Scotty, the Scotsman engineer, played by Canadian, by the

anyways, and it was going to do not stop there. He had Uh, uh, uh, uh, it was going to do not stop there. He had uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, played by Nishel Nichols. who was African-American and a woman holding a senior position on the bridge at a time when you had the civil rights movement was in full effect and the treatment of women even then was quite misogynistic

in comparison to today and there was actually a point where she wanted to quit the show, but she was talked to affidts by none other than Martin Luther King Jr. himself. So think about that. All right. You had, uh, he had, uh, he kadosulu. Uh, I'll talk more about the name and just a little bit.

A Japanese American man, George Taked, who's, you know, still very much alive and not quite 90 yet, but he's getting there. Oh, and, uh, and it's not. explicitly touched on in Star Trek but in real life George decay also happens to be gay and is happily married to another man so there's that now talk a little about the name so I just looked up the name because Sulu the letter L did not appear in Japanese the closest you're going gets to Japanese there is Suru Tsulu means to-do in Japanese.

So that's kind of cool. So I think that's the dictionary form of to-do. You'll most like it here in formal speech. Shimas. To-do. No, the name Sulu came from a body of water called the Sulu Bay. That's borders of Borneo and the Philippines. And Ron Barry suggested that name.

So, oh, let's do a pan-Asian name and just throw it, and draw it out the map. And I say, get more up with and the fact that Taked himself happens to be a Japanese descent. And Hikaru is a common Japanese name. Of course, nowadays, you'll hear mostly in session with. association with Hikato Nakamura, who is a Japanese-American chess grandmaster. Oh, and chess has its DNA in Star Trek running the very beginning, too. And then you have Chekhov, another actor who's still with us, Walter Coney.

And his character was Russian. trying about to think about it now but also keep in mind late 60s were in the middle of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and he didn't show up until the second season

but still that is kind of significant that you know one day in the future we'll forget our we'll forget our different is based on our nationalities

and come together and work together. And you kind of see that now with the International Space Station. That could be another episode altogether. But just in the main bridge crew of the original series,

you're seeing diversity. And that only compounds itself in the future series. I mean, TNG, you have a blind man driving the ship the first season and then it gets transferred to engineering. So you have a blind man running the ship's engines. You have an android as your, as a member of your crew.

And you have a Klingon as a key member of your crew. The Klingons in the original series were the bad guys. They were an allegory for the Soviet Union. But come TNG. they were kind of put their differences aside and that's how you get

Wharf on the bridge of the Iron Prize and that's how you get Michael Dorn as the most with the most appearances as a single character in Star Trek so and that's how he also

gets the exploration into Klingon culture beyond just let's let's fight the Federation and everything that's where you get the cultural references like they're liking to eat gach gach is always best one served life and I say to get into their concept of honor the Bouchito that's I get into their martial

arts and everything DS9 African-American captain Voyager woman captain and then this holiday of diversity and everything trickles in once again even two more modern the modern stuff that we're seeing today

so so yay for diversity Star Trek also had the first interracial kiss ever on television the first major one between Kirk and who are the episode is called Plato's stepchildren,

which would have been the third season. It's a weird one, but involves aliens with telekinetic abilities who are big fans of Plato and ancient Greece and wanted to use their powers for their own amusements, send their own amusement and fall to

making the Air Price crew to stupid things and also in the third season we have let that be your last

battlefield so you may have seen the photos of the two aliens one is completely black on one side of his face and white on the other and the other guy

is just the opposite by which I mean the colors on the opposite sides well these two guys and their societies hated each other for that well he's

yeah he's different for me just because the way he looks and that is very much an allegory for racism a problem we still have to say in fact I would argue that the whole tea bag

MAGA thing we can actually prove this with the tea baggers. They started because a black man was elected present. All right, give me a second.

I need to take care of something real quick. I'll be right back. All right, we're back. So, yeah, we're talking about Star Trek being woke and everything. Okay, so continue with our notes here for a special shout out to Google

AI for putting this information together for me so strong female leadership yeah even in TOS in those cases I'd refer you more to

the very first pilot the cage with the late major baron ronbury number one and once again shot to current trek Strangin Worlds Rebecca Romaine now

playing that same character we now know his name Ummed Chin Riley and given more depth to that character and Strang's New Worlds by the way majority female

cast despite Captain Pike and Spock being there so so yay and and chat to

Pike's uh lady friends and a couple of cock-sucking genitonics in her

in her honor uh and of course Catherine Janeway first female captain yeah that's not until

Voyager but but still a lot A lot of female sci-fi fans, especially feminists, love Catherine Janeway. And honestly, I don't blame them. Yeah.

We have an economics system that's in, I want to say, well, post-scarcity will say they don't see the need for money that we have right now. and everything everyone is provided for of course their are syncinges like the

Ferengi yeah the Fringi being the model of a capitalist society within Star Trek they

yeah there's a society that you have to pay like a slip of latinum just to just to have a seat waiting to see whoever

you're trying to talk to and everything and of course they're quite misogynistic too this was a society that said women can't speak to men and can't wear clothes and can't make profit

and here's Quark's mother doing exactly that so that's that's other to to consider maybe that's woke to... Of course, anti-war message

and remember the original studies came at during the height of Vietnam, which was a very unpopular war and we've had

plenty of conflicts in the six years since. So, so, yeah. Now, that's the AI-specific examples of woke in the original track.

So it provided me two that I already mentioned to let that be your last battlefields and Plato's stepchildren. On the issue of race and equality also brings up the Savage Curtain. This is when the alien version of Abe Lincoln shows up. Turns out he's part of a species

of rock creatures, the X-Calbians, who wants to understand good and evil. So their idea of good and evil is, yeah, let's team up Abe Lincoln with Surak, the father of

the Vulcan, who was essentially the father of their philosophy of logic and emotional suppression. Let's say that with Kirk and Spock, and on the other side, let's include and remember the Klingons were bad guys and

the original series. K'elish. That's the first time we hear about that guy in Star Trek. You know, he's basically the Moses of the

Klingon people. And they fight out. Class and socioeconomics. So they list two episodes from the third season,

both of which I had like I remember one's called the Cloud Miners, the cloud miners rather the elites live a city that's elevated above their planet on clouds

and they look down upon the miners down below who have to mine this substance that causes them to act a little crazy and everything's so

so yeah that's a good example of the classified and by the way I believe Fred the Hammer Williamson played one of the minors in it so the former chiefs player turned actor so Travis Kelsey this is your future

seems like the Mark of Gideon is another one that they suggest this is about Kirk being the catcher by a alien race, put on the exact duplicate of the Enterprise and being stranded there with this girl

who, you know, quite a brilliant illusion because the rest of the planet is so overpopulated that you literally have no elbow room. And their logic was, well, Kirk is carrying this disease with him.

So, yeah, let's kidnap him and use his blood to infect all of our people and see how many of them die off. So, yeah. Anti-war and anti-imperialism,

it lists a private little war. I would say this episode is probably the closest you'll get to an allegory on Vietnam in Trek. It's also where we got. the mugados the apes with the big horn on their heads and and yeah this one involves klingons as well because klingons were supplying one faction on this planet with flintlocks

flintlock rifles and i're trying to sway some bounce power out of there a taste of armageddon it lists as an example so this is two warring planets, but they're not fine with conventional wars, no, they're fine with computers. And its computer says, this particular city has been hit. Everyone that was in that part of town,

go to the suicide booth. And I guarantee you that's where Futurama came up with the idea for suicide booths to kick off that series. You are now dead. Thank you for using

whatever and the last one they have mentioned for anti-war anti-imperalism happens to be my favorite episode

in all of TOS and that is Day of the Dove Klingons and the Star the Air Prize crew are forced to fight

each other with swords to feed this non-corporial entity with all the anger he needs to

be strong and influence everyone and it really done and it ends because Kirk and Kang the Klingon commander

decided to you know what if we want if we want to free our crews and everything we got to get this entity off of our ship and it's feeding on our shared hatred of one another so let's just fake it until we make it and uh and uh they uh decide to act all uh jovial and that

succeeds in driving this uh thing off of the uh ship like you know what yeah we we do dislike each other but uh we we're making a conscious effort right now to just Not today. Let's be friends today. Gender and social issues, we mentioned the cage earlier. He also mentions Turnabout Intruder. The last episode of the original series, by the way, Kirk gets by swiped with a female scientist, who, by the way, is insane. And, correct to Shander for portraying.

the insanity, not necessarily being... But... But they're saying, well, just because you're a woman, you're insane, so... So this one clearly problematic. And clearly quite sexist. I mean, it is still the 60s, after all. And mentions the devil in the dark.

That's the horse. episode, this non-human creature killing all these miners because they happens to come across and kill plenty of her offspring or feature offspring. They're just eggs at this point. But there's one episode that the AI didn't particularly ask about that I think needs to be brought. up as late season two of the original series the episode is called Patterns of Force and deals with Nazis by literal Nazis the setup is the airpress is is looking for this Starfleet Academy professor who disappeared in that sector and you have two planets fighting each other.

It turns out one of the planets, the one that's influenced by this particular professor, became Nazi Germany. And the other planets, they are an allegory for the displaced Jews. So very much a Nazi Germany World War II parallel. everything. I'll read directly what the

AI says here. So the Star Trek original series episode, Patterns of Force is widely considered woke by modern standards because of its over its social commentary on fascism, racism, and the powers, and the dangers of

absolute power. While some viewers in 26 interpret its message through a modern lens, its core theme, were deeply progressive for 1968. Critique of fascism.

Let me repeat that again. Critique of fascism. It features a direct allegory for the Holocaust with the Zeons their clear standing in for the Jews, like I said. Being persecuted as vermin by the Nazi-inspired

Ecosians. Oh, I'm sorry, that's the racism part, condemnation of racism. So the allegory of the zions and the being treated like Ferman by the Hoseans, that's the condescension of racism. So I'll go back to

critique of fascism. The episode serves as a chilling parable about the totalitarian temptation showing how even a benevolent attempt to use Nazi-style efficiency it leads inevitably to genocide and

oppression. If anyone in the MAGA cult is listening, that's you. Anti-authoritarian message. The episode warns that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yes, it does. And we're saying that in real time here in the States. And that any system built on unquestioning obedience to a single leader, Donnie, is inherently dangerous, regardless of the leader's initial intentions. And moral responsibility highlights how ordinary citizens become

complicit in atrocities through silence and inaction, a recurring theme of a progressive social justice discourse. Historical controversy, the episode so bold that was banned in Germany until 1995 because of the over-Nazi depictions. And alternative interpretations, while many see it as woke. Some critics argue it is fundamentally conservative

because it critiques the concentration of power itself. Warning that even well-meaning governments can attract those who would misuse that power. Others find it crass and simplistic by 26 standards for focusing the blame on the few evil men rather than systemic issues. He means systemic issues that Reagan introduced by chance. And, well, this was way before Reagan, of course, we're talking to the 60s, so we're near the end of LBJ and at the start of Nixon. And for further context, the professor in question was drugged,

as his deputy that was abusing power and turned to, into full-blown Nazis. And at the end of the episode, they revive briefly, because he winds up getting killed, they revive the professor. He's like, yeah, yeah, my debut here? Yeah, he's the guy who drugged me. And, yeah, he's a big traitor.

And this is not how I wanted all to go down. So he gets killed. And then the deputy gets killed. And they just, and the survivor. versus all decide amongst of sales. This is bullshit. We can do better. So, yeah, Star Trek has always been woke.

And if you're on the right and you haven't got that message yet, I would highly recommend open your mind and doing some damn research about that before spanning off about it's all woke now, it's all woke. lame, blah, blah, blah.

F that. F that, man. Woke from the beginning and probably you could say even more woke with each passing iteration. I mean, Mark TNG, you had a Klingon,

remember sworn enemies of the Federation with on that crew. You had an android. on that crew. You had a blind man on that crew. All right. DS9, you had

a black man running the station. You had a woman as first officer. You had a trill and the trill are interested in that they could be seen as a

mirror towards a LGBT-ish. choose. So you have that you have a fringy bartender. You have you have a changing as a chief security and the problem is his people caused

in another part of the galaxy. Voyager, woman captain, Native American first officer. You have rescued a Borg and some of other stuff and of course lizard babies

let's let's be real there and then jump to discovery and discovery it really goes heavy with the LGBT

like we see you we acknowledge you and all that and I give them credit for that too so diversity

and tolerance and all that has been in their DNA forever. So by that definition, if that's woke, then it's always been woke, and I'm glad to be a fan of it. And I'm glad I at least take the time to understand the messaging behind it.

So, with all that said, this podcast is Uncalled for. It is hosted, produced, and in it by a Treki by name of Mike Cherniewski. Our opening music and our closing music for the Snowden series was created at suno.com, SUNO.com. Remember infinite diversity and infinite combinations. May you live long and prosper.

Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive uncalled for merchandise, T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.com.com. com slash uncalled for pod. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time. Thank you.