Sigh-Fi

Good social commentary is rarely labeled as “woke” by bigoted people, and often flies under the radar despite its inherent wokeness.

A great example of this is the show Justified, and its subsequent reboot Justified: City Primeval.

The original show was incredibly well written and featured plenty of “woke” social commentary surrounding policing, but no one took issue with the social commentary because it was well written. It was a show with complex characters navigating complicated situations, and not some simplistic “good guy cops vs bad guys” story.

On the other hand, the reboot was not nearly as well written or produced (in general, not just wrt the social commentary), but one thing that was especially bad about it was that the social commentary was shoehorned into it so blatantly. It was pretty clearly inserted to pander to a specific audience, and every line of social commentary was pretty much universally phrasings that took you out of the show and left you thinking that such dialogue would never happen in real life. Even if the overall point of the commentary itself was sensible, the actual writing was such garbage that it detracted from the experience of watching the show.

Good social commentary doesnt get labeled as woke because its not hitting people over the head to make a point. Next Generation is filled with that type of quality social commentary. I dont know about new trek, but id imagine people get upset at the “wokeness” because it features the same type of garbage social commentary shoehorning that has become prevalent in a lot of media. Quality writing that makes points on social commentary in a more subversive and plot-centered way has long since become an artifact of the past