Star Trek and Suvian Powers by
hermione of vulcan
on 2013-06-11 21:19:00 UTC
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I'm sorry I didn't get around to responding when you posted the thread.
I never thought of those specific episodes that way, but then again, I saw them before I got into fandom, so I didn't know about Sues. Now that you mention it, though, it makes sense. Also, I will always call that virus the OOC-virus now. It appeared in the third episode of TNG, and the episode is, well, now that I think about it, kind of fanfic-y. Unlike in the TOS episode where it was an interesting exploration of the characters' inner desires(Spock...*sniff*), the TNG episode did that with one character and the rest of them...either shamelessly flirted or really paired off, if you know what I mean. And the one that did the latter was the pairing where the two people had had next to zero interaction.(Ironically, they are often shipped, despite going back to next-to-no interaction after the episode.) And I'll stop before I start ranting about how much I hate that pairing, because it's irrelevant.
Star Trek has done more deconstructions of Sue traits. Characters have been possessed multiple times, and there's a episode of TNG where Picard is replaced by an impostor and the rest of the crew have to figure it out before fake!Picard kills everyone. Then there's a Voyager episode that sometimes appears to be a parody of fanfiction - an alien discovers a crashed shuttlecraft and writes a play based on the logs, and when Lieutenant Torres finds out she has to fight an uphill battle to get him to write them in character. We also have the holodeck, which is a place for people to act out their self-insert-y fantasies. A minor character on TNG had a spotlight episode revolving around his "holo-addiction". In his simulations, he was a charming womanizer who got with Ms. Fanservice Deanna Troi, but in real life he was incredibly socially awkward. And then the Doctor on Voyager is a hologram, and his daydreams include being the captain and all of the three major female characters flirting with him. (It's absolutely hilarious.)
I'm sure there are more episodes, since over five series and ten movies Star Trek's covered pretty much everything. But Star Trek is no stranger to deconstructing and parodying Sue tropes.
True, but... by
Metz77
on 2013-06-10 17:59:00 UTC
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I'd go with TV Tropes on this point: It can't really be a parody because the thing it was meant to parody didn't exist yet. They call it an Unbuilt Trope, where writers seem to be taking apart a tired cliche and examining it from new angles, except that the example predates the cliche.