I look at the first two series' approach on this, and there's an awful lot of Afternoon Special for Adults tone to them that I find hamfisted and irritating.
I don't know which three eps you saw, and it's very true that a random sampling of the series is all-too-likely to result in finding one of the "Trip & the Captain go all cowboy and then they have to go decontaminate and do fanservice (with both male and female characters) cheesecake" episodes. (There were far more of those than of anything decent, worse as the series wore on.)
Blame advertising-driven decisions for the predominance of shows for white men - it's that idiotic "coveted 18-35 white male" demographic. Reading through tvtropes.com reveals a lot of the rest of the reasoning behind that sort of storytelling. Basically, in the absence of race neutral casting, the existence of PoC characters (or anyone other than viewpoint white male + love interest) needs to be justified by a "why are they PoC" storyline. Which no one really wants to watch, because they're anvilicious.
I think a lot of Enterprise was designed as fanservice, and possibly influenced by the sort of things that show up in fanfic. There's very, very little exploration of race in Trekfic, and a whole lot of sexytimes. Unsurprising that an embattled production opts for the easy path. (I think it was also a lack of Gene Roddenberry at the helm, and the post 9/11 Bush-era attitudes. I imagine that an early Obama-era series might have reflected a different attitude.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-03-03 11:50 pm (UTC)I don't know which three eps you saw, and it's very true that a random sampling of the series is all-too-likely to result in finding one of the "Trip & the Captain go all cowboy and then they have to go decontaminate and do fanservice (with both male and female characters) cheesecake" episodes. (There were far more of those than of anything decent, worse as the series wore on.)
The (all too few) Hoshi eps are listed within this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshi_Sato
Blame advertising-driven decisions for the predominance of shows for white men - it's that idiotic "coveted 18-35 white male" demographic. Reading through tvtropes.com reveals a lot of the rest of the reasoning behind that sort of storytelling. Basically, in the absence of race neutral casting, the existence of PoC characters (or anyone other than viewpoint white male + love interest) needs to be justified by a "why are they PoC" storyline. Which no one really wants to watch, because they're anvilicious.
I think a lot of Enterprise was designed as fanservice, and possibly influenced by the sort of things that show up in fanfic. There's very, very little exploration of race in Trekfic, and a whole lot of sexytimes. Unsurprising that an embattled production opts for the easy path. (I think it was also a lack of Gene Roddenberry at the helm, and the post 9/11 Bush-era attitudes. I imagine that an early Obama-era series might have reflected a different attitude.)