this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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Star Trek oftentimes depicts people as the other as part of broader plot arcs where people learn to understand one another. At first there's misunderstandings between people, but then over time these misunderstanding are overcome and there's peace.
One of the main reasons for TNG is because Gene Roddenberry felt the Klingons were portrayed in too much of a negative light in TOS. So TNG had a Klingon on the crew in a Federation Starship and the Klingons and Federation were at peace. DS9 similarly featured a Ferengi character and had the Ferengi join Starfleet as a borader plot arc. Voyager had a Borg character.
Not sure which characters you think are space jews, is it the Ferengi? If that's the case, no word of lie, My favourite character in all of Star Trek is Quark, a Ferengi character.
Yeah, the Ferengi. Nothing wrong with Quark as an individual, I think. Even the wiki page on the Ferengi mentions the "controversy".
Personal story. Back when I was a nerdy kid watching Star Trek I told my german father who the Ferengi were. He's not woke at all (nor the opposite). He's just of a generation and background where all that is simply not an issue. He immediately said something: "Oh, like Nazi caricature." It had never occurred to me before. I never recovered. It just got worse the more I learned.
FWIW, the hanging remark was about this guy.
Yeah it starts out as a caricature because we're seeing them how the Federation sees them.
But watch the scene where Nog is asking for Sisko's endorsement to join Starfleet. Sisko is making assumptions about Nog about it being part of some scheme to make profit. But Nog breaks down and says it's all about how his father's life was shit working for Quark and he didn't want to live that way. Sisko has a "wait, am I the asshole?" moment and gives the recommendation. Nog is a great member of Starfleet, loses a leg in his service. Rom decides to quit working for Quark and is a brilliant engineer when working for the Bajorans. Quark learns to respect his brother. So no, it's not just one individual Ferengi that's cool, it's a whole story with defined characters.
We even see improvements made in Ferengi culture. Ferengi women's rights and democracy. Social issues in Star Trek? Crazy!
Yeah, S1 of TNG was problematic. Remember the episode where they go to a planet where everyone is black and they have a crazy violent society? So yeah, S1 of TNG was kinda bad for that.
But it improved and and the story of the Ferengi was interesting with a lot of discussion about workers rights in a capitalist society which is something that's not normally possible in Star Trek because of the nature of the Federation being a vaguely defined utopia.
And Quark is my favourite character because while he was most certainly flawed (as all interesting characters are) he would call out the bullshit of the Federation. He was never quite right about things because of his flawed perspective, but he made some very good points. Also the funniest character in all of Star Trek because of that flawed perspective. Most humour in Star Trek surrounds characters like Spock or Data misunderstanding humans, the humour of Quark was him understanding humans better than humans understand themselves.
In the end, no one hates the Ferengi, no one thinks of them as evil. S1 of TNG has problems way beyond the Ferengi, but judging all of Star Trek for some embarrassing things in S1 of TNG means you're really missing out.
And in the end Star Trek is about social commentary and putting aside differences. Can't do that if there's not initial differences to overcome. TNG S1 just took things too far in defining those differences. It wasn't trying to build a racist narrative and we are talking about episodes that aired like 36 years ago.
One of the Ferengi in the problematic episodes was played Armin Shimerman a Jewish man. He saw similar problems as you and pushed to change how the Ferengi were portrayed. And he succeeded and got to play another Ferengi. Guess which Ferengi he played in DS9?