PR for the franchise.

That about says it all.
They basically said in all press. This is an important episode, come watch us and, as Trek goes, it wasnt.

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Why not make the show about AIDS instead on an analogy?? T'Pol is depicted as a victim instead of a member of the minority? MAN is this guy dumb. He actually wants them to write a STar Trek story about AIDS that isn't an analogy? Isn't it more powerful to think that by the 22nd century we have BEATEN AIDS? Doesn't that in itself show more hope?? ANd Has he ever seen Star Trek before? By the 23rd century the so-called minority are NO LONGER a minority! Spock and Sarek mind melded regularly on Original Trek. Therefore we have another positive message. Those who were shunned in the 22nd century are accepted and normal in the 23rd. This guy is writing without knowing the facts.

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"New Jersey Girl, New Jersey Girl
Come on and rock my world
New Jersey Girl, New Jersey Girl
I wanna love you
New Jersey Girl, New Jersey Girl
With your crazy f**ked up hair
New Jersey Girl, New Jersey Girl
Your wicked awesome!"
-Nerf Herder

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This review is typical of editorials from the People's Republic of Massachusetts. The reviewer wants to advance a particular political agenda. So rather than address the merits of episode, he criticizes the episode for it did not do. This approach sets up every episode to fail.

I thought Stigma was one of Enterprise's better efforts this season. It had a good message that dealt with a subject that has an effect on all of us. It wasn't necessary to narrow the focus of the episode to promote the reviewer's political agenda in order for the episode to have merit.

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This reviewer doesn't understand what the episode is about. Bigotry, whether from racism, sexism, nationalism or homophobia, is wrong. It doesn't matter that T'Pol is a member of the minority: one doesn't have to be african-american to be against racism or a female to be against sexism after all. In fact, suggesting that that is so is a narrow-minded view.

BTW, I just saw the episode, and I thought it was good (so I am not impartial).

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"my mind is slipping away ... day by glorious day" -RA Gorkin

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Very impressed to see a writer nail the problems with that insulting episode. Obviously a Trek fan, but not a Trek Lemming. Well done.

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What's special about the Boston Herald? Is their opinion important (being a non-US, I don't know if it's a small town newspaper of big entertainement journal).

The reviews in all seemed to be more positive than negative.


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Lydia: "I've never lost at mortal combat yet."
Diana: "Idiot. If you had, you'd be dead." -- V, "The Champion"

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that people are always talking about.

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-Steve Krutzler
==V/-/== Rocks

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First off, pathetic reviewer, he is obviously looking at this in such a deep manner that he has lost the whole point of this episode.

How else was T'Pol NOT going to be taken off the ENT? By saying "I'm gay?"...the show had nothing to do with gay people, first off, T'Pol was melding with a male, not another female, secondly, I didn't see any gay connections at all in this episode, just the thought that mindmelders are bad (which most of you missed, because every Vulcan can mindmeld in the 24th century, so it makes you wonder just what happened and obviously they accepted it eventually). That's the SAME as us...we looked at AIDS as a bad bad thing and directed it towards people, and eventually we accepted it. That's the point, it has nothing to do with anything else and frankly, it's insulting to my intellegence to even keep hearing this boring, tiresome arguement over a sci-fi show.

Frankly, get a life.

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This was another example of a personal attack on the producers. It should be discouraged in official magazines. I'm glad Enterprise is not trying to upset anyone. We don't need stories that divides us, but stories that unify. Not stories that triggers a flamewar among us. There are still many people who wouldn't like to see permanent gays in Star Trek. I'm one of them. I'm glad the producers are mature enough to draw reasonable borders, so they don't upset wether me or anyone else.. well, except those who ... I just don't understand!

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I agree with everything the writer has to say about Trek's lack of courage in showing gay characters in the future. Roddenberry promised Trekkies that they'd be there, and Paramount's never delivered.

But the writer's inability to see beyond that leads us down a stupid path of botched reasoning.

In my early twenties, I was a hospital chaplain working predominantly with HIV and AIDS patients at various stages of their illness. The single greatest thing of value one has to offer to someone living with a stigmatized chronic disease is the simple act of differentiating between the possible CAUSE of the disease, and the suffering of the person who HAS it. Focusing on the latter is all that matters, and that's the simple message of this episode that all of its critics refuse to accept.

The very thing that made Stigma work, is the very thing this reporter lacks enough depth to see clearly. Most people with AIDS or HIV sickness on this planet ARE NOT MEMBERS OF A SEXUAL MINORITY! AIDS is devastating Africa and Southeast Asia because it is spreading like wildfire to straight women who contract it by force in cultures where they often lack the legal right to refuse sexual contact with their HIV positive husbands who themselves pick it up from prostitutes, IV drug use or unprotected gay sex. Especially in Africa, women lack the social freedom to earn a living to support their children after the death of a husband, so you also see widowed mothers marrying known HIV positive older men in order to make sure their children can eat. Add to this the horrific magical belief that the blood of a virgin can cure AIDS, and you have an epidemic of child-rape emerging in Africa that is increasing infections among little girls before they even hit their teens.

Most people with AIDS on our planet are just like T'Pol, and this episode took an extremely courageous stand in making it clear that she was NOT a member of any minority. What better way to point out the absurdity of the stigma? The writer who is loudly denouncing Trek for perpetuating a stereotype is actually subscribing to a bigger,more dangerous one themself: the myth that AIDS is a gay disease, and that any responsible story-telling about that disease must focus on the gay experience of it.

Ridiculous. The gay experience is as tragic as anyone else's. And it's a story that needs to be told. BUT, looked at as a global experience, it is also a minority among AIDS patients.

For more information about the global AIDS epidemic, and ways that we can use established village leadership structures to combat its spread and alleviate suffering in the third world, please visit the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance.

www.thegaia.org

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Ah, Microbrain! Growl for me one more time. Let me know you still care!
-Q, "Q Who?"

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Brannon Braga epitomizes the worst kind of prolethesysing PC Thug. So anyone who accuses him of "condoning prejudice" has got to be one serious left-wing pinko.

The thought that there is someone out that thinks Brannon ISN'T BEING LEFT WING ENOUGH kindof creeps me out.


Trek has done TOO much preachy prolethesysing on TNG and VOY, and was glad to finally see it kept to a minimum for the first time in 10 years.

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Founder: The Silik Appreciation Society

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Not only does Trek no longer take any, and I mean ANY, bold stands on anything remotely controversial. But as this writer so correctly points out, even when one of it's characters brushes by it by means of analogy, it ALWAYS takes the easy way out, and lets it's characters off the hook at the end. Always.

And for Paramount to promote this as some kind of bold stand -- WHAT A JOKE. Wow, how controversial to be against prejudice. Boy, they would NEVER have gotten this by the censors if they had actually said anything about AIDS. Not in a million years. Riiiiiiiiiight. What a joke.

This reviewer is right on.

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