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.

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.

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

Take a look at the first appearance of the Bajorans, as opposed to how they were presented later on. That is one example. There are also a few "oppressed populations choose violence" stories in the early seasons where that is considered simply wrong, as opposed to some in later seasons where it is treated with nuance.

It's not a one to one, but it is indeed interesting to watch, as OP said.

Did you see how everyone looked at Sisko, and how he talked about it afterwards with Dax like "Holy shit, I went too far, didn't I old man?" "Yes, you did, and you're lucky you got away with that shit, Benjamin."

The show highlighted the problem, and that it was not the right thing to do, and how Sisko needed to be aware of that going forward.

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.

I wish this was a real discussion prompt and not a (probably LLM-assisted) rant disguised as a question because as it reads now it's just more of this:

If you don't like something, that's fine, but getting upset because [new thing] is different than [childhood thing] is not productive.

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.

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.

Thank ChatGPT...

What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?

One of the multiple hallmarks of LLM text found in this post/some of OPs comments.

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.

Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder but ENT did not do well with the audiences that UPN needed to sell ads.

Exact same thing happened to me. I made a post about it during my rewatch this summer. They've probably made references to it before TNG but the first one I saw was S3E2, where a planet is given to a civilization through peace accord and the Enterprise must convince the native population to evacuate.

S3E2 is very against the two state resolution, seeing the new arrival culture's claim to the planet as nonnegotiable and the native population's decision to resist violently to the death as misguided, though relatable. Data subverts their attempts at resistance while Picard uses political maneuvering to buy them more time to evacuate and avoid extermination.

However S5E3 introduces Esign Ro who is a Star Fleet criminal assigned to aiding Picard in resolving a conflict between the conquered Bajorans and their Cardassian occupiers. Star Fleet is technically neutral in their conflict but functionally complicit by aiding Cardassia to honor peace accords. Ro is intentionally set in the center of the situation because an admiral in Star Fleet knows that her involvement will cause Picard to reexamine the situation and possibly cause Star Fleet to change their stance on the conflict.

By the end of TNG Ro has been exonerated of her previous insubordination, helped broker new more beneficent treatises with Bajor, but still defects from Star Fleet to aid dissident Bajorans even violently against Star Fleet in S7E24 in their fight to resist Cardassian occupation. Though opposed by Picard with this, she leaves with Ryker's blessing and the narrative of the story asserts she is right for this. She's probably my favorite character besides Jean Luc, definitely worth rewatching TNG for. Obviously devisive, however.

Then there's the film Star Trek Insurrection where the ENTIRE Enterprise crew just goes "FUCK IT, I'm tired of these mothafuckin apartheids being upheld by this mothafuckin Star Fleet" and Picard leads the whole cast in open rebellion on the side of a occupied planet against an oppressive regime who uses legal sanctions and preference by Star Fleet accords to obscure a genocide it's perpetuating on a sister nation. The two nations are revealed to be only recently split, some individuals are reconciled, but mostly Picard and the gang blow them up.

your udnerstanding is superficial. I suggest you to read again , understand better, and judge less

Part way reading through that, I began to wonder, the when, and what was happening then, ...

It seems, Trek lost its way in this moral regard, after Voyager, ...so, after 2001. 2001... so, after the PNAC plan kicked into action with their unifying false flag terror attack?

Can't help also wonder about maybe the slippage had already begun earlier... perhaps, showing the fringe of the federation, evoked, in a "what if all art a tool of manifestation" sense, sanctuary districts. Overdue mends... Where's our Bell?

And as I near the end, I think of the pale moonlight, and yup, you rightly mention it too. ... It's haunting, as Sisko closes the episode, trying to convince himself he is okay with it. New fake trek would have just blasted past that like it was nothing of consideration at all.

I'm glad there are others who see this too, and can put it to words as well as you have there. Good stuff. Maybe we who care about the essence of trek can revive trek. ... I've already got various notes taken for an outline for a new trek in the same spirit as TNG, DS9 and VOY, accumulating over years. I wont be the only one. ... How long before some start to churn it out via LLM? [Edit: <- Oh look, that'd be like thinking the ends justify the means.] I'd rather make it for real.

All the whitewashing narcissistic sadistic psychopathic machiavelianism, as seen in the fake trek (especially the most recent), is clearly not star trek.

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.

And it can be again. :)

Make it so.

Honestly same, I couldn't get more than a few sentences into this post, the formatting is horrible. I read a lot and the disjointed single sentence paragraphs lost me.

I enjoy Strange New Worlds fo

I've never managed to get that far. Because (like is stated and elaborated upon in the original post)...

The entire universe feels different.

Breaking coherence very early on in the first episode, to such an extreme, I cannot bring myself to carry on watching. It's like someone forgot the brief on what and who Vulcans are, what their culture's like, and did not pass it on to writers, directors, nor actors.

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?"

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

Yus, this. Thanks for the vid. Good stuff

They're all pretty bad in their own ways, but they're also all a better send off to the TNG era than Nemesis was. So, personally, I'm glad they exist.

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.

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.

I can understand that. It didn't bother me as much. The singing episode I skipped large parts of (although they actually had an in-universe explanation, I still rolled my eyes so hard they hurt for a few hours).

I think, for the most part, that they sort of have captured some of the more classic Trek feel, but...... specific things might bother specific people, e.g. you and the Vulcans. So I wouldn't encourage you to take another look because it'd annoy you. heh.

But.... I stuck with Discovery. I liked some of what they did, disliked a lot, but it ended up mostly alright, except for the whole emo-talky thing on crack.

I think I might not be a hardcore Trek fan, though. I tend to prefer my sci-fi a bit harder (The Expanse was GREAT - books and show; growing up I read lots of Asimov. And Heinlein and the other classic era authors, but Asimov was my favorite). With the exception of Andor, while I grew up adoring the original three, I hated the prequels, was fine with the sequels, and have been meh on most of the other media (baby yoda was fun but the series got old imho) - with the exception of Andor which I think it one of the top shows of all time ever in any genre. heh.

I'll probably watch just about any new Trek series. I like enough about most of them to overcome any things I dislike. :)

But I can totally respect a viewpoint like yours.

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.

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

Really enjoyed this post.

As someone who has used em-dashes, semicolons, and other punctuation (including bullets and spacing) for clarity and emphasis since adolescence, fuck that.

The fact that your writing in this response is so different than the post and other lengthy comments makes me wonder if my LLM assumption was correct.

Same. I stopped watching too, and I was sad because I kept hoping to see something different.

The plot actually had potential, but I was shocked by how the characters dealt with everything.

Picard contradicts his own words and principles, and sometimes he does not even realise how insensitive he is with Soji, a synthetic being. This is Picard, who was always thoughtful and wise.

Then you have the scientist specialised in synthetics killing Maddox, and somehow it is just passed over without any real reasoning around it.

And Seven of Nine completely changes , her expressions, her reasoning, everything. I loved watching her struggle with the Doctor about her humanity, her identity and her internal conflict. Now suddenly she becomes a revenge-driven character.

It is honestly crazy to me how these characters became like characters from any other film or series.

Star Trek was not like that. It was coherence, reasoning, growth.

It actually educated me a lot when I was younger, and it did it in such a subtle and intelligent way.

Now I feel like I am watching just any other film or drama, wihtout soul.
And when Picard started talking about love, I switched it off. Honestly, that was the last thing I could keep.

thank me, dear me. not chat gpt. if you ahve to blame use better your time. I believe in this psot

I don’t actually think Picard arrives at the same ethical conclusions.

The synthetics are a good example. When they decide to activate the beacon and call for help, Picard’s response is basically to stop them and offer to take them away.

Old Picard, to me, would first have changed the perspective of the question: does a persecuted minority have the right to ask for protection? If yes, from whom? At what cost? And what happens if that protection destroys another population?

That is where the real Star Trek dilemma would have been.

Not simply “don’t call them, come with me,” but a confrontation between rights, fear, survival and consequences, until the most ethical solution possible emerged.

That is why I don’t think the destination is the same. The old Picard was not looking for the solution that worked for him. He was trying to understand what was right beyond himself.

That difference is exactly what I miss.

But that is exactly my point: this is where “the end does not justify the means” disappears.

Old Trek never said trauma would not change you. Picard was assimilated, violated and used by the Borg to kill thousands. In First Contact that trauma turns into rage and revenge , but the story stops him there. Lily confronts him, he recognises what he is becoming, and he changes course. His trauma explains the reaction; it does not automatically justify it.

Janeway does something similar in Equinox: desperation and anger push her too far, Chakotay challenges her, and the story makes that loss of perspective visible.

That was the point of the evolved humanity Star Trek imagined: not people without trauma, anger or fear, but people trying not to let those things decide what is right.

So saying “the universe became harder, therefore Picard and Seven became harder” is exactly what I am questioning. If circumstances are allowed to redefine the ethics, then the end has started to justify the means.

Old Trek asked whether we could suffer, be angry, even be broken , and still stop ourselves and ask: what is right beyond me?

That is the first thing I feel Picard has lost.

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.

This person's using proper grammar. GET 'EM!

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?

The knee-jerk reactions to the androids (anything synthetic in the end)

Which is kinda what we are seeing right now in Lemmys attitude with AI.

I can understand that. It didn’t bother me as much. The singing episode ..

Glad I didn't go further.

Ahh, yeah, that does fit pretty well!

Wow, that's a pretty compelling case.

...didn't think I'd actually get interested in seeing Insurrection again! :D

Thanks! It was fun to watch all this now at an age where I'd get it. Another important mention that often comes up about TNG when talking about episodes with a stance on violent resistance is S3E12 because of how it views the topic of terrorism and martyrdom. That one didn't have any specific conditions that point to the Israel-Palestine conflict but it was notably pulled from the air in UK and Ireland

They called Uhura a white skin.

I'll definitely agree that they could have developed the ethical conflict more. The biggest problem with Picard's first season was that they really dragged their feet in the first half and then rushed through the climax, throwing up problems and solutions that could have actually been interesting if they'd taken the time to really develop them. It was clear they didn't have things mapped out and it really hurt them.

But I do think the dilemma as it stands speaks directly against "ends justify the means" thinking. Both sides face an existential threat that could easily justify using destructive means to survive. The synthetics face being wiped out by a Romulan armada short term, and Federation policy long term. Their self-interest says they should call in the organic-destroying super-synths. The Federation (and the rest of the galaxy) face destruction if the synthetics make that call. Their self-interest says they should let the Romulans wipe out the synth colony first.

Neither of those happen, though. Instead Picard fights off the Romulans until Riker arrives, putting his faith in the hope that the synths wont make the call. And the synths stand down, putting their faith in an institution that has up until now been working to legislate them out of existence. And it turns out to be the right decision for both.

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.

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".

That episode where McCoy blew up the utopian civilization of golden prosperity and peace because they didn’t fuck anymore like god intended.

What’s up with calling Geordie “The New Spock”?

Everyone else gets their character names under their picture and Geordie isn’t even close to Spock. Data is way more Spock-like.

That's actually hilarious I never noticed that

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.