Some Trump allies, including Stephen Miller and Elon Musk, have criticized Paramount+’s new series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” for going “woke.” On Wednesday, “Star Trek” alum Whoopi Goldberg scoffed at that assessment, calling out the men for being more concerned about a fictional TV world than U.S. citizens being shot and killed by government agencies.
Last week, both Miller and Musk complained about the show on social media, reposting a clip from the account End Wokeness. Miller called it “tragic” and suggested Paramount cede control of the series to William Shatner, while Musk joked that “they banned Ozempic and LASIK in the future.” So, during Wednesday’s episode of “The View,” Goldberg was blunt.
“Why are you concentrating on a television show, while people are being shot and killed?” she asked angirly. “While people are going hungry. When farmers are losing their farms. Kids can’t get meals at school. Why you paying attention to this?”
Host Joy Behar suggested it was to distract from the Epstein files, where Trump was named thousands of times, but Goldberg countered that it was more likely “to distract from everything.” So, she offered a directive to the men.
“Please, do your job, and we actors and people from outer space will do ours,” she said.
Goldberg played Guinan on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” as well as in a few “Star Trek” films. So, she also offered her expertise on how the franchise has always made efforts to be inclusive.
“If you’ve never been asleep, you can’t be woke, see?” she said. “This was a show that was created with the idea that people from other planets would come, and we would all find a way to exist together. This was Gene’s idea, this was his dream. And when you watch ‘Star Trek,’ that’s what it shows you.”
The ABC moderator did not take the time to also explain to the men that, in universe, it is already explained why Holly Hunter’s character wears glasses (the short version is: her species collects items over centuries).
Additionally, Hunter’s character is not the first in the franchise to wear glasses; William Shatner’s Captain Kirk also wore reading glasses in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Fittingly, Shatner himself also responded to Miller’s post on X, and joked that Paramount should increase the budget of the show so they could afford more glasses.
You can watch the full discussion from “The View” in the video above.
