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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9017898" data-attributes="member: 7023840">So, take Enterprise (as Henny Youngman would say, PLEASE!).I like Scott Bakula. I wanted him to do well. But let's be honest- Archer had two defining character two traits; he had a dog, and ... wait. He had ONE defining character trait. Which wasn't a character trait, it was a pet. Was Archer "duller" that Adira in Disco? Yeah. I think so. But no one says that Archer is a token! No one goes on rants about Enterprise being bad because Enterprise had too much representation (HA!). No, it's allowed to be judged on its merits, for better or worse.Why? Well, we know why.There is no brow-beating people. Instead, this is exactly the problem. We can't just have representation and characters- what, you think that the actual existence of gay, or trans, or asexual, or diverse characters is brow-beating? No, it's reality! It's the same when you see the rehashed arguments about how female leads are "Mary Sues," - we accept that male leads are protagonists, but female leads have to meet a higher standard.When people talk about tokenism (or brow-beating), they are really demanding a higher standard for representation. That's exactly what this is about. There is not a single person who says that "random white guy" is a token ... do they? No one requires that "random white guy" justifies their existence on a show. And, most importantly, no one would think of saying that Scott Bakula's boring portrayal or Archer fuels prejudice.*I don't think that this is controversial; if you do, I think that's just a fundamental disagreement that we have. Again, Discovery, like almost all Star Trek shows, is not perfect. But I also find that a lot of the criticism comes from a place that I cannot, and will not, ever agree with.*ETA- again, I can't imagine someone thinking that the mere portrayal of diverse characters fuels prejudice. This same argument could have been repeated verbatim with regard to Uhura in TOS. It didn't sound good then, and it doesn't good now. To me.</blockquote>

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