Re: *** Star Trek Mod Discussion ***
Major Tom:
I disagree with almost all of your points.
The Original Series, while groundbreaking for its time, was for the most part crappy aside from a handful of good episodes. The depiction of most alien cultures included a scantily clad women whom Kirk would be enamoured with. I don't think it was until the original movies that Star Trek became a lot better.
Let's discuss about races being portrayed:
Klingons
Klingons in the TOS were hardly unique compared to the variety of Klingons presented in the later series. In TOS, they were all one dimensional, wanting to destroy the Federation, and it was only the intervention by some "superior" race that they made peace. In TNG and later, you have Klingons of all types, honourable warriros like Worf and Martok, nasties like the Duras Family, some in the middle ground. The acts of the Empire were sometimes for peace and sometimes for war depending on the need of the Empire.
Romulans
The Romulans in TOS were decent, but hardly conclusive since we only saw them a few times. In TNG and later, we had Romulans of all kinds - some they wanted to destroy, others who wanted peace, some wanting reunification. Some honourable and some not. In fact, at the end of DS9, it was looking like the Federation and Romulans might have seen the start of better relations.
Cardassians
The Cardassians were portrayed in many different lights as well. Some were plain bad like Dukat, some felt bad about the occupation, others were more honourable, some were not. There were a lot of good Cardassian characters that did not fall into stereotypes. The Voyager episode you referred to you must not watched carefully. It wasn't because he was Cardassian, but because he had experimented with Bajoran subjects during the occupation in his research a la Nazis and Japanese in WWII. Big difference, eh?
I think the later series did a lot better job with avoiding stereotypes and addressing racial issues on many, many occassions. I'm not sure how much of the later episodes you have seen, but it is certainly there!
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