First woke TV show
this show was ahead of its time, a DIVERSE CAST, a gay person and even a russian.
share'Woke' or not (and I don't think it was THAT 'woke', my alarms didn't go off that much with this), this show made you THINK.
More than taking a definite side and bashing things like 'white, heterosexual males', like today's 'woke' does so casually now, it presented you with a 'moral dilemma', made YOU question your own morality and whether things are right or wrong, and what would you do, and what solution would you present as the correct one, etc.. it made the violent womanizer a true diplomat in many cases.
Kirk may have used his fists a lot, but he was pretty darn intelligent, situtationally aware, understood problems very profoundly and was able to think of solutions that occurred to no one else, plus take charge and know what he's doing, in a charismatic, leader-sort of way.
Would YOU think it's better to have a 'clean war' where people just walk into booths to be disintegrated because computer told they are a casualty?
Would YOU think it's right to manipulate people to rescue/save another group of people?
What do YOU think about a very ugly creature that is not 'life as we understand it', but nevertheless can feel and dream?
It puts you into the problem, and makes you think what the best solution might be, and sometimes, it seems there isn't a clear, easy, clean, pure, righteous answer or solution. Oftentimes, Kirk surprises you with his fresh angle and amazing compromise.
In this show, 'woke' stuff is mostly in the background, and although the women are very 'don't you dare gaze upon me', and clearly control the relationships, seduce men easily and so on, and aren't strong enough to take a punch from a man (though when are they going to be? Still waiting..), they are shown as intelligent beings with personality and will of their own, there's nothing particularly sexist except how the women treat men (a woman can slap a man, but man can't slap the woman back, that's not misogyny, that's misandry, sexism against men)..
The big difference is, this show, although shows all kinds of 'token' characters and whatnot (though I think liteunant Uhura is a good character), tries to be 'diverse' and whatnot, it's not really _ABOUT_ the 'woke'.
The 'woke' stuff happens in the background - or even in the foreground - but it's never the focus of the attention. It's like, there's an asian and a scottish and a vulcan in the ship, but they never TALK about how there's an asian, and a scottish and a vulcan in the ship. They focus on something else, the 'diversity' is just... there.
Sometimes diversity is realistic, sometimes it's forced, sometimes it's completely unrealistic. Do teen gangs in the 'hoods really comprise of all kinds of races and 'all kinds of genders'? No. They don't. There are black gangs, mexican gangs, and so on. There's Italian Mafia, it's not a 'diversity mafia'. Yakuza probably did not and do not have too many Beyonces doing Judo Chops (I really have to stop thinking about Austin Powers movies), the chinese Triads probably didn't include all that many Hillbilly Eskimo-halfies.