Everyone on star trek has anxiety, panic attacks, ptsd and imposter syndrome now. It is too much!
Barclay was OK. (In TNG.) He had his episodes but they were interesting because of the juxtaposition against the others.
Like >60% of plot & characters are now about anxiety and mental (un)health. It is individuated vs collective.
I also deeply resent the attempt to create equivalency between AI and LGBT people.
No wonder people hate woke.
I have never been the biggest trek fan. I think TAS gets more hate than it deserves and enjoy voyager more than I perhaps should, but never really got super into trek. I had been thinking about going back and giving tos/tng a proper watch, but then discovery came out. I’d already found the new movies pretty off-putting with the way they were more action oriented, but discovery just killed any interest in trek for me. The captain fighting his way out of a Klingon prison after being starved and tortured, beating fully armed and armored soldiers with his bare hands, didn’t feel like Kirk’s silly haymakers, it felt like cape slop. I am okay with a slightly chunky Bill Shatner throwing big silly haymakers. I do not like cape slop.
the 90s era trek is completely unlike the jj abrams/kurtzman schlock. If you don’t like the new shit because of those reasons then you stand a very good chance of liking the old stuff because it is so very very much not that.
i hate nu trek more than Khan hates Kirk in the movie named after his wrath.
well since you didn’t mention it, ds9 is (now) famously the best trek series. unappreciated in its day because it makes absolutely zero sense in syndication. the only way to watch it is via the binge, a concept that didn’t even exist until 15 years later. And I’ll be honest, it took me a couple go throughs to really understand all that was going on. But that’s due to the fact that they were doing something way too sophisticated for the medium, they pushed it way past what was possible. So only in the age of netflix can it be properly appreciated.
ds9 is a series that contemplates the colonial, the post colonial and the reactionary fascist. even the fascist within the successful liberation struggle. collaboration, pragmatism, espionage and the blurry lines. it poses communism vs capitalism. in opposition to other treks, it is not post racial. sex workers are recurrent, prominent characters of influence. there are labor struggles, political scandals, conspiracy theories, false flags and cults. there are also real gods; some religion is true in ds9.
eta: the character of dax, and the concept of the joined trill, is an essentially extra-gender and pansexual influence.