From Janeway, Picard and Sisko to modern Star Trek: what happened to the ethical future we were once asked to imagine?
I have been watching Picard, and I am genuinely surprised by how much the ethical structure of Star Trek has changed.
I am not talking about nostalgia, and I am not saying that characters should remain exactly the same for thirty years.
I am talking about something much more fundamental.
TNG, DS9 and Voyager were built around an ethical premise that, for me, was one of the strongest elements of Star Trek:
THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS.
This principle appeared again and again.
Characters could make mistakes. They could become angry, afraid, traumatised or confused. They could even cross ethical lines.
But the line existed.
And when they crossed it, Star Trek stopped and examined what that meant.
That was the difference.
The characters did not simply ask:
Can we do this?
They asked:
Do we have the right to do this? What will this choice make us? What responsibility comes with the power we have?
Voyager is probably the clearest example.
They were trying to cross an impossible distance to return home. They could have justified almost anything through survival.
But they did not.
Again and again they accepted a longer journey, greater risk and personal sacrifice because reaching home could not justify destroying another civilisation, exploiting another species or abandoning the principles they represented.
That was not weakness.
That was the entire point.
Humanity had evolved technologically, but Star Trek proposed that perhaps we could also evolve ethically.
And this is where I struggle enormously with Picard.
Picard himself feels fundamentally different.
The Picard I knew could certainly be wrong, but his reasoning had extraordinary internal coherence. He questioned himself. He debated. He understood that being captain was not simply having authority — it was carrying responsibility for how that authority was used.
The new Picard often feels reactive, impulsive and strangely ineffective.
For me, that is not simply “an older and more vulnerable Picard”.
It changes the architecture of the character.
And Seven of Nine is even more difficult for me.
Seven was one of the characters I identified with most.
Her journey in Voyager was not simply about becoming emotional or “more human”.
It was about learning how to be human while maintaining discipline, logic and integrity.
She struggled with identity, belonging and emotion, but what made her extraordinary was precisely her effort not to become governed by impulse.
She could be wrong. She could be severe. She could misunderstand human behaviour.
But revenge was never the foundation of the character.
Her relationship with the Doctor was particularly important because both of them were learning what humanity meant almost from the outside. Their logic often exposed the inconsistencies of ordinary human behaviour.
Now I find Seven driven by anger, punishment and revenge.
At times she feels closer to a Klingon archetype than to Seven of Nine.
For me, this is not character development.
It is a different character.
And the change goes beyond Picard and Seven.
The entire universe feels different.
The older Star Trek made an extraordinary effort to maintain coherence.
Character coherence.
Ethical coherence.
Political coherence.
And even scientific coherence, as far as science fiction could reasonably achieve it.
Of course there were mistakes across hundreds of episodes, but you could feel that the writers cared about the rules of the universe they were creating.
A decision made years earlier could still matter.
A species had a culture and internal logic.
Technology had rules.
Characters carried the consequences of what they had experienced.
And most importantly, Star Trek was never simply fantasy in space.
It was asking something.
What could humanity become if we improved?
Not if we became perfect.
If we improved.
What would happen if curiosity became stronger than conquest?
If responsibility became stronger than ego?
If knowledge created an obligation rather than simply power?
If we learned that having the ability to do something did not automatically give us the moral right to do it?
That was what made Star Trek different from ordinary science fiction.
It was not the Enterprise.
It was not warp drive.
It was not aliens.
It was the idea that the future could contain people who had learned something that we still struggle to understand today.
I started watching Star Trek when I was around 18, and this philosophy genuinely influenced the way I grew up.
I saw many things I already believed in expressed in a more evolved society, and it made those principles feel possible rather than naïve.
Responsibility mattered.
Integrity mattered.
The method mattered as much as the result.
The end did not justify the means.
DS9 challenged this perhaps more
- JANEWAY — Caretaker THE COST OF DOING WHAT IS RIGHT
“I’m not willing to trade the lives of the Ocampa for our convenience.”
JANEWAY — CARETAKER 70,000 light-years from home. The easier way home would cost someone else their future. She refuses.
- PICARD — I, Borg POWER DOES NOT CREATE THE RIGHT TO USE IT
Caption:
PICARD — I, BORG He could destroy the enemy that once destroyed him. Having the power does not give him the right.
- SISKO — In the Pale Moonlight WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE END DOES JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
Caption:
SISKO — IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT He crosses the line — and he wins. The episode is about the moral price of that victory.
JANEWAY I will sacrifice our advantage rather than sacrifice them.
PICARD I will not become my enemy in order to defeat him.
SISKO I crossed the line to save millions — now I have to live with what I became.
When did Star Trek stop making the moral cost the story — and start treating moral compromise simply as character development?
is there a policy against ai written posts? because this ticks all the boxes
Watched the first 3 episodes of Picard. Decided it was just more Abramsverse extension garbage.
Star Trek is dead. It died in the early 2000s when UPN canceled Enterprise. That is my hill to die on.
If Star Trek can’t teach you self reflection or reflection on the state of humanity, including conceptual ethics, it isn’t Star Trek.
Read books instead and try to remember the good times.
I liked the cartoon, it’s silly but it felt more true to the old series than picard
I cant recall what it’s called right now, but it must have been good cause they cancelled it too
lower decks, and i agree! despite being unapologetically modern, it somehow feels more inline with old trek than new trek.
i was sure they’d kill it after a couple seasons, it’s honestly wild we got 5.
The only cartoon for me was from the 70s…
I don’t mean nostalgia. My question is whether we are losing a way of thinking that asked us to become better.
Star Trek used ethics, responsibility and self-reflection as part of the story itself. That shaped how many of us thought about power and humanity.
For me, keeping that alive is not about the past. It is about keeping our conscience active.
U.S has lost that for sure. It’s utterly devoid of ethics. Multiple Western nations are following that path.
Neocolonialism, piracy, genocide. Our countries have become the worst versions of ourselves.
:(
Yeah. One thing Im not wild about trek since ds9 is a sorta slippery slope. Increasinglingly the franchise has become more typical space opera over what it was. Much like what we are seeing in our actual society it was slow at first but yeah everything in the new trek era is sci fi but kinda no longer feels trek.
agree
It’s always been a discussion, not an unspoken agreement. Every series and film has characters with each of those viewpoints. A viewpoint may go unmentioned for a season but it’s there.
You might be observing that there are prominent moments for one viewpoint more so than the other.
That episode where McCoy blew up the utopian civilization of golden prosperity and peace because they didn’t fuck anymore like god intended.
I would say it depends.
I mean, the ends not justifying the means is kind of the entire point of DISCO S1 (whether or not the rest of DISCO embodied it is a different matter); Burnham has to let go of what Lorca summarizes as “Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings.” or in other words, the ends often justify the means.
Also, SNW is better about it, than say, PIC; for instance, SNW S3 E7 “What is Starfleet?” from 2025, for all its flaws (including in some ways being very similar to TNG “Tin Man”), basically has the crew going “WTF! The ends (saving an alien race from a war they didn’t start) do not justify the means (enslaving a sentient space whale)!” Also, SNW 1x06 is basically “ends don’t justify means”, although mostly because it basically copied “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”.
Exactly. Old Trek repeatedly put the moral cost of the means on the table.
Voyager’s entire premise was built around that question. Rick Berman described it as getting home “at any cost?” and immediately answered: it shouldn’t be at any cost. That was built into the show from the beginning.
Michael Piller was famous in the writers’ room for asking: “What’s it about?” Not just what happens, but what the story is actually examining: paranoia, responsibility, identity, parenthood, fear. The ethical or human question came before the mechanics of the plot.
That is why episodes like Caretaker, I, Borg, The Measure of a Man, Insurrection or In the Pale Moonlight work so well. The characters are not simply looking for the fastest solution. They stop and ask what that solution costs, who pays for it, and whether another path exists even if it is harder.
And the scripts were written with enormous precision. Robert Hewitt Wolfe said DS9 scripts were locked down because the shows were so technical and precise; dialogue was not something actors simply improvised around. The writers were protecting the internal logic of the universe and the characters.
So my point is not “the end never matters”.
It is that a good end never removed the obligation to scrutinise the means.
Old Trek constantly asked: What will this choice do to others? Is the damage proportionate? Is there another way? And sometimes the harder, slower road was still the right one.
That it was part of how Star Trek was written.
I basically just gave three (or at least 2, as the DISCO one maybe is a bit iffy) examples of modern Star Trek scrutinizing the means despite the obstensibly good ends.
Also, another example is S2 E2 “Ad Astra Per Aspera” borderline almost literally puts “the moral cost of the means” (keeping good genetically modified people like Una out of Starfleet) that is ostensibly done for the ends of preventing another Eugenics Wars. I wouldn’t hesitate to call this episode one of the best in the whole franchise, very much in the tradition of court case ethical discussion episodes like “Measure of a Man”.
I don’t think one can make a blanket statement about newer Star Trek quitting “believing something”; sure, it may be uneven in quality (maybe more than classic)*, but dismissing all of “NuTrek” out of hand is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
: I mean, there’s whatever DIS season 2 was, Section 31, most of PIC, etc., but also, it’s not like good swathes of classic Trek aren’t also kind of crap - I mean, there’s the time Riker murdered his clone and nobody batted an eye, as well as TOS S3, TNG S1, and the inconsistency of VOY. Even in the good classic episodes, it’s not like every one is “do the ends justify the means” - in addition to other ethical themes, classic Trek still had room for simply "Cool sci-fi s** happened and we have to deal with it", not to mention episodes focused on interpersonal drama like “Data’s Day” or any of Deanna’s “Oh f*** my mother is on board” episodes.
thank you a lot for your answer and input. I understand the examples, but I still think there is a difference.
Having an ethical issue in the plot is not the same as really exploring it. What I miss is the reasoning: different positions being confronted, the consequences being questioned, the characters actually struggling with what is right rather than simply reaching a solution.
In episodes like The Measure of a Man, I, Borg or In the Pale Moonlight, the ethical question was not just part of the story. It was the story.
That is what feels different to me now. The themes may still be there, but they are often used as part of the sci-fi scenario rather than examined with the same depth.
So my point is not that modern Trek never raises ethical questions. It does.
I think it no longer stays with them long enough.
Really enjoyed this post.
thanks
How else would means be justified, except by ends?
The phrase is “the ends don’t justify the means”; it’s particularized. Those ends don’t justify those means. Other means may be justified. You don’t use an axe to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead, in the ancient Chinese proverb, but you might use a rolled up newspaper. The ends justify some means, not others.
I think we are talking about two slightly different things.
Your example is about proportion: some means are appropriate to an end and others are excessive.
My point is more about moral legitimacy.
A method can be effective, proportionate and still be ethically wrong because of what it does to someone else.
That is what Star Trek used to examine so well: not only “will this work?”, but what are we becoming responsible for by choosing this way of getting there?
You’re absolutely right, it’s not the same. I refuse to watch the new franchise because I find it depresses me. It’s so far off from the shows I know and love.
I think it’s hard to blame one person for its divergence, so I blame them all. Cast, creators, producers, and writers equally.
What I like to say is that Star Trek: Picard (STP) is so bad it tries to retroactively drag Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) down with it. If you take STP as canon, it means the Federation and one of its best Captains were lying all along about having principles. Red Letter Media did an excellent analysis of how terrible it was, and it depressed the hell out of them. Alex Kurtzman is so much of a hack he didn’t even bother asking why Star Trek is great, he just went straight for generic action sci-fi with interpersonal conflicts
There is such a thing as too many paragraphs.
Sadly, not everyone is familiar with markdown.
That was not weakness. That was the entire point.
Okay, chatgpt. 🙄
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, I was already convinced it was LLM generated and I didn’t even notice that bit. The fact that their response to you is completely different seals it.
You’re surprised that someone writes differently when writing a long post about something they obviously care about vs responding to a baseless accusation that only warrants half a thought? Care to elaborate?
thanks
They called Uhura a white skin.
I sincerely don’t understand what would lead you to think the post is AI written, I was enjoying reading people discuss Star Trek before coming across this AI thread, and after having my human written comment called AI not too long ago it bothers me to see what seems to me like earnest writing be called AI.
That’s where I’m coming from when I say that I’m willing to argue, but I follow the core tenets of arguing I learned in philosophy 101 to assume the other person (you) have something worth saying and that questions of meaning come before questions of truth. I’m open to being wrong, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me that I am.
After reading this thread I went back and skimmed through the first several lines of the post with an eye for AI/human indicators, and found three things that gave the impression of a human touch before coming back and writing my comment. First, there was a sentence in all caps, which seems weird for an LLM to do as I believe they usually go for a more neutral tone that’s antithetical to digital shouting. Second, 7o9_99 skipped the oxford comma in at least one place and a cursory internet search tells me that LLMs tend to make full use of that.
But the big thing that I feel bad saying but easily overlooked while reading it for the content is that the post is terribly formatted. My experience has been that LLMs write nice looking paragraphs, and if it does break things out into single lines it tends to do so with bullet points. This post breaks out each sentence into a new line instead of using any real paragraphs that reads to me like a person’s stream of consciousness rather than the more structured writing of an LLM. I guess you could argue they went through and hit enter everywhere to add the new lines but that seems like more work than an LLM user would be willing to put in.
Does that make sense?
Edit: The comment I responded to originally asked “Are you trying to understand or are you just looking to argue?” I’m not sure why they edited it and gave no indication that they did.
bro they called Uhura a white skin
I’m so confused. Who said that? Why was the comment I responded to edited to say the same thing you just did?
OP wrote that in another comment. CTRL+F, my dude. using an AI to write your trek love letter is so fucking cringe.
no dear is my text and my reflections
I highly doubt that, but in case it’s true, consider not allowing yourself to be brainwashed so thoroughly by LLM writing patterns.
As someone who has used em-dashes, semicolons, and other punctuation (including bullets and spacing) for clarity and emphasis since adolescence, fuck that.
This person’s using proper grammar. GET 'EM!
Removed by mod
J.J. Abrams killed it and it’s been Marvelized since then.
Or maybe it was dead before that, maybe Malcolm McDowell did it
Enterprise and Nemesis killed it, he revived interest.
Shut up.
What’s wrong with Enterprise, aside from it’s shit finale? I always liked it.
That is a different argument though. Poor ratings or advertising performance do not tell me whether the writing still understood what Star Trek was trying to do.
Old Trek was built very deliberately. Michael Piller’s famous question in the writers’ room was essentially: “What is this story actually about?” The plot came after the human, ethical or philosophical question.
Roddenberry also imposed strong limits on how Starfleet characters should behave, because the future was supposed to represent an evolved humanity. Writers could challenge those limits , DS9 did it constantly , but they had to know which ethical line they were crossing and why.
That is why so many episodes feel coherent even decades later. The conflict was not just “what happens next?” but what is the right thing to do, what does it cost, and what does this choice say about us?
Whether Enterprise had enough viewers for UPN is a commercial question.
Whether Star Trek still had that intellectual and ethical architecture is a completely different one.
Do you think Roddenberry would be pleased with how Enterprise was handled?
Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder but ENT did not do well with the audiences that UPN needed to sell ads.
The conflict should not come from within the ship and starfleet should feel professional. Corruption should not be a part of future utopia. Less swearing and tantrums pls. A modern show should feel more utopian, with humanity ever closer to replacing the q.
Oh please. Surely we’re of better moral character than the Q already [On the bridge of the Enterprise D]. At least by example of the mischievous loud one most seen. We can do far better at aiming high, than to aspire to Q. … “What was it they called you on Brax, the god of lies?”
Power has clearly corrupted the Q. In humanity’s current state, power would corrupt them. Is corrupting them. In TNG, whether power would corrupt the average Federation citizen was an open question. In Discovery and Strange New Worlds and Academy, the answer was obviously yes.
In Lower Decks… once more, an open question.
On a slightly unrelated note:
What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?
It’s really
annoying to read
if you ask me.
I think you are partially trapped in nostalgia. Star Trek has never been this philosophically pure. Picard broke the Prime Directive in S1 by having contact with the Edo. And then regrettably prevented them from executing Wesley for trespassing a flower bed. Either should’ve cost him his command.
When Data has an inappropriate chat with a girl on a dying planet, JLP jokes with Riker about the level the shit is up to for them. And there are no palpable consequences for any of this behaviour.
Picard doesn’t feel like he should plant the Borg bug in Hugh. Admiral Valarian Canapés wholeheartedly disagrees. And while I like Picard’s reasoning, from a ten thousand foot perspective I agree with her. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have prevented the best TNG movie from existing but perhaps we would have also been spared Picard S2-3.
Late TNG and early DS9 with the introduction of Starfleet Al Qaeda, i.e. the Marquis, is a turning point for me. We get more stories that are more grey. Star Trek went from Kirk coming to a planet, telling the inhabitants their culture was stupid, to more contemporarily thoughtful treatments of ethical and moral conundrums in a utopian world, to seeing where utopia rubs up against the rest of the galaxy that isn’t there yet. Starfleet and the Federation are no longer exclusively the good guys. Sisko poisons an atmosphere just to catch one traitor and gets away with it. WTF?
Janeway gets a pass from me for most of her bad decisions because she tried and had to figure stuff out by herself. Tuvix be damned!
Enterprise also exists.
Third wave Trek is more grey than Marquis era Trek. It’s more CGI and action oriented because they can. That saves a couple of pages of dialogue otherwise spent on ethics. It’s different just like TNG was different from TOS. But it isn’t a radical change if you ask me.
Early TNG isn’t great until they stabilised the writers room. And then there is a continuation of development through DS9 and even into ENT. (Unfortunately including grade A assholes.) “Chaos on the bridge” is the default for Disco and Picard. And that’s why they often tell weird stories that don’t match up with what came before. They try to do Trek in the now passé golden age of television. And failed a lot imo.
Of all the third wave Trek, I’m most fond of Lower Decks. Because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is littered with easter eggs. Disco S2 is good. Most of SNW S1-3. Picard had moments in it but that’s it. My heart’s not in it any more. I watch it because I see we are entering another content drought. I even enjoy SNW S4, not because I think it’s good Star Trek but because it’s a middle finger to Paramount for no longer financing any new projects.
I think there’s more to Lower Decks.
Lower Decks shows a crew that’s certainly not as professional and dignified as the TNG-era ones but also one that still feels like the crews we saw back then. They might have issues but they’re also dedicated professionals and they’re all interested in becoming better versions of themselves. Even Mariner, who has a whole menagerie of deep-seated issues, manages to work through them with the help of her fellow lower deckers (and sometimes even the bridge crew).
“Cerritos strong” may be a particularly blunt implementation of the Starfleet ethos but it is one. The idea that they’re all in this together and they’re all working towards a better future for everyone underpins everything the characters do, even when they get drunk off contraband hooch. Ultimately, Lower Decks shows that flawed individuals can come together and achieve great things and that you don’t have to be Jean-Luc Picard to do the right thing.
The show highlights the silliness of the Star Trek universe but it also takes a firm stance on the side of idealism at a time when the writing room seems to be staffed by 1990s comic writers.
I don’t think nostalgia is the issue.
I’m not saying old Star Trek was morally pure. DS9 in particular had characters crossing serious ethical lines. My point is that the line mattered: when someone crossed it, the story examined the moral cost.
What feels different in Picard is not that it is darker. It is the loss of ethical and character coherence. Too often the characters seem to react as the plot requires, rather than from the moral architecture built around them over decades.
Seven is the clearest example for me. Of course she should change after twenty years. But moving from discipline, logic, self-control and the struggle to build an ethical individual identity toward revenge and punishment needs a convincing bridge. I don’t see enough of that bridge.
Old Trek repeatedly asked:
We can do this — but should we?
Sometimes the characters answered badly. But the consequences of that answer were part of the story.
That is what I miss. Not the 1990s. Not old sets. The coherence and the ethics.
I hear you. You think crossing the line mattered in 80s+ Trek but it doesn’t now. I don’t think that’s true. Sisko poisoning a planet is one of the examples where it clearly didn’t. But should have. So nostalgia is the only thing I could come up with to explain why you like the older and dislike the new stuff.
I don’t want to be in a position where I have to defend Picard, the show. Half of S1 is okay and then it goes off the rails. There are moments in it that are good. Overall, it’s a mess. One aspect that they did well is that they show a hero aging. Kurt Corbain will always be an icon because he ended his life early. So we were spared his ideas on COVID, Q Anon, or pick another hot button issue later in life or albums continually deteriorating in quality. With Picard they wanted to show consequences and chisel away at the icon a bit. The trauma of being borgified. His being sidelined for his unwillingness to bend to his superiors’ will. Why they had to bring his parents into it will be the writers’ secret. But they show consequences of lines being crossed. One of them is him standing rightly on his professional principles. It sounds to me this is exactly the stuff you’re missing and they built the whole S1 premise on it.
Burnham getting to be captain is about as realistic as chubby Kirk being demoted back to Captain.
Just want to say to both of you that this type of discussion about Star Trek is the best and it’s why I love the show.
You both make such great points, and exemplify for me why sitting around in the conference room talking about a tense situation was so important in old Trek. Different viewpoints can both be important enough to be presented in the discussion.
I think we are mixing two different things: consequences in a character’s biography and ethical consequences as part of the storytelling.
Yes, Picard shows consequences: ageing, Borg trauma, losing his position, conflict with Starfleet. I am not denying that at all. My point is that this is not the same thing as the older Trek habit of stopping and asking:
Was this action right? Was it proportionate? Did we have the right to do it? What responsibility follows from it?
That distinction matters.
Sisko poisoning the Maquis colony is actually a good example of where old Trek itself failed to examine something as deeply as it should have. I can criticise that episode too. I am not claiming every old episode was ethically perfect.
I am talking about the overall narrative architecture.
Across TNG, DS9 and Voyager, ethical reasoning was repeatedly built into the story itself. Characters had recognisable moral structures, and those structures were so consistent that in several episodes a change in behaviour was enough for the others — and for us — to realise that someone had been replaced, possessed or manipulated. That level of trust came from coherence.
That is what I find weaker in Picard.
Seven can move from a character built around discipline, restraint, logic and moral self-construction to revenge and vigilante violence, without the story really earning that transformation.
Jurati can kill Maddox while manipulated — and I am not saying she should necessarily have been punished; she might well have been cleared — but older Trek would likely have made the question itself part of the story: coercion, responsibility, guilt, consent, manipulation. Instead the explanation largely replaces the ethical examination.
And with Picard himself, my objection is not that he is old, traumatised or imperfect. I actually find that potentially interesting. My objection is when his established way of reasoning disappears because the plot needs him to react differently.
So no, I am not asking for morally perfect characters or consequence-free heroes.
I am asking for ethical coherence.
Old Trek could show someone doing the wrong thing. But very often, the fact that it was wrong — and why — was the story.
That is the difference I am talking about.
As I said before: I don’t want to be the guy who defends PIC … Jurati being justifiably imprisoned or at least institutionalised may have also spared us S2. Who am I to argue with that?
I’m thinking of Quark who burgled, sabotaged, schemed, snuggled, bought more than one child from the GQuad, and engaged in weapons trade and remained for the most part a comedic diversion character 7 series long. No consequences and maybe the thinnest veneer of looking at any of his decisions from an ethical POV. That’s another reason why I don’t perceive the difference you describe.
We could probably go back and forth a couple of more times here but maybe we leave it at that? Just tell me in no more than a paragraph: Tuvix. Janeway yay or Janeway nay? I’m just curious.
Just want to say to both of you that this type of discussion about Star Trek is the best and it’s why I love the show.
You both make such great points, and exemplify for me why sitting around in the conference room talking about a tense situation was so important in old Trek. Different viewpoints can both be important enough to be presented in the discussion.
What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?
One of the multiple hallmarks of LLM text found in this post/some of OPs comments.
Do you have any particular examples of the “the ends justify the means” attitude you seem to think is so prevalent now?
Enterprise got pretty rough in seasons 2-3. But that was a reaction to 9/11 and yeah a lot of people kinda had their minds broken by that.
Which I think alludes to the crux of the issue: Star Trek does not REALLY take place in the 23rd century: it takes place on a series of soundstages in Los Angeles in the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Each show is an examination of the values of the moment as we want to believe ourselves. Earlier Trek was filmed in a more optimistic age; later Trek was filmed in a more jaded, bitter, cynical age. And it shows.
This is one of the reasons I love Lower Decks so much, btw: aside from the jokes, it embraces the corny wholesomeness of the Berman & Braga era. I think Strange New Worlds might. I’m curious how it feels. I haven’t watched it much.
That’s the best part of science fiction. On the one hand, it’s a mirror. “See, even with all their technology, they’re still people. They’re still us. Look at what we are” But on the other hand it’s a place to play with and practice ideas. “Look at what we can become.”
The best of Star Trek, I think, is the “look at what we can become.” But if things are rough out there, it turns into “look at what we are.” And it’s rough out there.
Exactly. For me, Star Trek was never just science fiction. It was always a human question: what could we become if we genuinely chose to become better?
Even TOS, rough as it was, was already pushing boundaries — putting Uhura, a not only white skin and woman, on the command and imagining a future where that was simply normal. The same principle continued through the franchise: different planets and species were rarely just “aliens”; they reflected real cultures, conflicts, prejudices and political or social problems from our own world, but displaced far enough to let us examine them differently.
Even the science was treated with unusual discipline. Much of it was speculative, of course, but it was usually extrapolated from real scientific ideas rather than used as random fantasy. The strength of Star Trek was coherence — scientific, cultural, ethical and psychological.
That is why “look at what we can become” matters so much more to me than “look at what we are.”
If the future simply reproduces our present cynicism, ego, revenge and moral shortcuts with better technology, then we have advanced technologically, but not as human beings.
And Star Trek’s most radical idea was always that perhaps we could do both.
That’s very well put.
it takes place on a series of soundstages in Los Angeles in the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Earlier Trek was filmed in a more optimistic age; later Trek was filmed in a more jaded, bitter, cynical age. And it shows.
This really sums up the huge difference in attitude and tone.
And even then…they got there in the end. It was rather the point of the arc.
Yes sure a lot and a lot… but Seven is the clearest example for me.
In Voyager, she repeatedly learns to restrain impulse, revenge and Borg-style utilitarian logic in favour of individual rights and ethical judgement. In Picard, she becomes a vigilante and ultimately kills Bjayzl out of revenge even after Picard explicitly challenges that choice. … she changed is nto mroe seven of nibe and all the character behind…
More broadly, Picard normalises extrajudicial violence, revenge and “necessary” moral compromise much more than TNG/Voyager did. My point is not that older Trek never crossed those lines . DS9 absolutely did. The difference is that older Trek usually made crossing the line itself the ethical problem of the story.
That distinction matters to me: not “nobody ever does wrong”, but the narrative still knows that the means require moral scrutiny.
In Picard, she becomes a vigilante and ultimately kills Bjayzl out of revenge even after Picard explicitly challenges that choice.
And you believe the show was endorsing the fact that she did it? Portrayal of an act is not an endorsement of that act. Seven did plenty of shady stuff on Voyager, from trying to take over the ship to disobeying orders and waking up the Vaadwaur.
That distinction matters to me: not “nobody ever does wrong”, but the narrative still knows that the means require moral scrutiny.
You seem very determined to make the case that the new shows don’t provide that, but I simply don’t agree.
Doesn’t NuTrek glorify Section 31, which is basically just that?
I always think about that TNG episode where the enterprise comes across that phase shifting technology but ultimately destroys it since it’s too close to stealth tech.
NuTrek would probably use it to 9/11 Romulus’s sun’s core and wipe their home world out just to stir up drama. I think the second part was a plot point in Picard so it wouldn’t be hard for them to insert either lol
Doesn’t NuTrek glorify Section 31, which is basically just that?
Arguably in the movie, though they didn’t do anything particularly immoral in it.
Beyond that, not even a little bit. They’re still the bad guys.
NuTrek would probably use it to 9/11 Romulus’s sun’s core and wipe their home world out just to stir up drama.
If you have to conjure examples out of thin air, it’s possible your argument isn’t as strong as you think it is.
Bit late to the party but for a real example Pike commited genocide on a hunch in SNW…so yeah I can see New Trek genociding Romulans
You would have preferred the genocide to have been not on a hunch?
Would have prefered them not commiting genocide but at least discussing it through would have been interesting. Are they ok commiting genocide for the future of humanity? And not just ehh lets just do it.
The way I would have liked it most would be them discussing it coming to the conclusion that genocide is never ok and that they are stopping it and then a temporal agent stops them from stopping it or something…
at least discussing it through would have been interesting.
I think him having to make a snap decision without complete information is far more interesting, both dramatically and as an exploration of themes that have been present in the franchise since the beginning.
It’s interesting that your preferred solution is to remove all agency from the characters.
Yeah, dont think I would have liked my prefered version much either.
What do you mean with its more interesting? My read of the moral is now %hat its fine to commit genocide if you think its for the greater good. History past and present always shows that the people commiting genocide at least say its for the greater good…
I’m not conjuring examples, I’m having a toilet thought. I think I got a stomach bug or food poisoning
Not everything is an argument
I think I got a stomach bug or food poisoning
I feel you. I’ve been going through it this weekend, myself. Flu season came early.
Flu is the worst, hopefully you’re not blowing chunks
I’m pissed Covid isn’t important enough any more to merit a free vaccine, both those illnesses are hellish
Star Trek Discovery did an entire season arc about how Section 31 almost wiped out all intelligent life in the galaxy because they thought the ends justify the means. So that kind of makes me wonder whether you or OP have actually engaged with the thing you’re criticizing.
