Not necessarily. They never did officially establish the Bashirs’ ethnic background.
Ronald D. Moore, one of the producers, is on record as believing the Bashir family is likely of Sudanese (like Alexander Siddig), Indian, or Pakistani descent (but living in England when on Earth*, also like Sid), but that never actually made it into the show, aside from a brief mention of one of his ancestors being named Singh.
Until his parents were sentenced to a penal colony in New Zealand for the whole genetic manipulation thing.
Star Trek should have people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, gender identities.
It should not have any people of any existing, contemporary religion. One of the fundamental characteristics about Star Trek is the secularism of human society.
On Babylon 5, Joe Straczynksi (who is NOT a religious guy) had fun by showing how various religions have been tweaked over time. For instance, there’s a news reports alluding to Pope Bernadette II. I thought that was rather clever.
I’m not sure I’d agree about a double-standard there.
In Trek almost all religious beliefs end up being based on some real entity or power. You could consider it pro-religion in that sense.
Sure, it’s usually implied the object of such beliefs are not gods, but they usually have god-like powers.
I’m struggling to think of an example where religion was brought up and nothing happened to imply the religion was more than just a myth. Maybe some of Picard’s archeology?
Star Trek should have a cast selected from the best auditions, not some committee-designed politically correct collection of diversity just for its own sake.
I find ST:TNG horribly dated now, and that’s probably because they so blatantly pandered to the styles and mores of the time. The original series holds up much better even though it looks more old-fashioned, because the characters were by and large just normal people behaving as their characters would behave according to the show’s mythos. And their stories (with a few exceptions) were more classic science fiction with interesting ideas than thinly wrapped commentaries on some contemporary social issue, which was common in ST:TNG.
I’m just rewatching the entire original series on Blu-Ray with my kid, and I’m surprised by how well it holds up. I’m really enjoying it, and he loves it. Mind you, we haven’t gotten to season 3 yet…
Somebody already mentioned Kirk’s line to Apollo, that “mankind has no need for gods; we find the one quite adequate.” The first six words seem to be heading that way, but the next six seem to kill the idea that it’s a fundamental characteristic.
It’s not just folks in general making Biblical allusions, or McCoy in particular uttering a quick “Lord, forgive me”; those, I can handwave away. But this seems explicit.
You mean when Marvel Pictures decided that, since every single movie related to a comic book series must now have a Token Black Person, it was ok to make him the doorman.
As a side-note, the last Star Trek: The Animated Series episode was titled “Jihad” and featured a bird-like alien race, one of whose members attempted to trigger a holy war between his people and the infidel Federation to return his people to their warrior-like ways. Not explicitly Muslim, but with Islamic references, and the character Tcharr could be seen as a prototype for Osama Bin-Laden, I guess.
That was actually where I learned what the word “Jihad” meant.
Can’t think of the title, but there was an episode where the Enterprise was assisting anthropologists who were observing a pre-industrial Vulcanoid people, and one of them gets accidentally transported to the ship, where he’s healed of some injuries, and returned to his people. Whereupon he promptly relates to them his encounter with the great god Picard. Eventually, Cap’n Baldy has to go to their village and allow himself to be shot by an arrow to prove that he’s not divine. Jean-Lucky gets off some pretty contemptuous lines about religion in that ep; he implied that most educated people in the Federation view religion as mere superstition. It was an explicitly anti-theistic episode.
I don’t remember that one. I do remember the one where a con artist passing herself off as the goddess foretold in a prophecy comes looking for treasure, and Picard reproduces all her “miracles” with Enterprise technology. That was a good anti-theist one also.
Dune was quite a bit earlier - in fact the sequel had already been published by TAS time.
I saw a lot of them when it was on originally and then when it reran on the early days of Nick, but it seems I missed some.