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?
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
The only cartoon for me was from the 70s…
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.
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.
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
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.
Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder but ENT did not do well with the audiences that UPN needed to sell ads.
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.
There is such a thing as too many paragraphs.
Sadly, not everyone is familiar with markdown.
I got through the first 10 sentenceparagraphs before realizing I was being subjugated to your conservative nostalgia self-sacrifice spank bank fantasy. Freudly deny it all you want. Nobody is a moral ideal when survival is on the line.
The sentenceparagraph trend needs to go the way of the Husnock. Why am I seeing it everywhere?
Imagine critiquing someone calling out Star Trek’s modern lack of good morals while invoking the fate of the Husnock like it wasn’t a prime example of the very thing you’re whining about.
That example actually reinforces my point.
Kevin’s destruction of the Husnock is not presented as acceptable or morally neutral. It is treated as horrifying, and Picard is visibly shaken by the scale of what he has done.
That is exactly the distinction I am making: old Star Trek absolutely showed people crossing terrible ethical lines, but -->>>the story knew a line had been crossed. The moral consequence was part of the episode.
My argument is not “old Trek characters were always good."
It is tha: ethics were part of the narrative structure!!
A character could fail morally, but the failure itself was examined. That is very different from normalising revenge, violence or ethical compromise as simply another aspect of character development.
Yep, they crossed the line so we could watch them deal with the consequences of that in a progressive and enlightened manner, not just so they could go “WOOO FUCK YEAH” and be cheered on like rockstars for being so rebellious.
My guess? In short? The people, who first made up that future and that quest for humanity are now called woke antifa sympathisers or worse. Todays filmmaker have other dreams, where the end does justify the means and so on.
It’s not the filmmakers that changed, it’s the centralization of power of studios. Today’s woke antifa supporter filmmakers are making youtube videos or podcasts, or trying to scrounge together crowdfunding.
Look I’m foursquare against dumbing things down just to satisfy folks that don’t like to read, so take this with that in mind.
That was the proverbial wall of text I couldn’t make myself finish. Too damn many paragraph breaks. Some are welcome, as I deal with dyslexia and separation can help with that. But the single line paragraphs was just intolerable. Again, I’m long winded and totally get the need for extended writing to carry a point. But you gotta learn how to format better
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?
One of the multiple hallmarks of LLM text found in this post/some of OPs comments.
Some of what you are saying is explained in the show, the universe they are in changed. Picard kept trying to do the right thing whilst others just reacted or took the easy way out and it kinda broke him a bit.
Seven saw a different side of the universe in the nigh on lawless frontiers and on top of that saw friends hunted for who they are and logically decided that she would be shit to people that didn’t deserve her time or empathy.
The knee-jerk reactions to the androids (anything synthetic in the end) and the Romulan crisis pushed the characters to their limits, way out of their comfort zones and part of the show is them trying to get back some of what they lost or thought they’d lost.
Maybe I’m being generous in my interpretation but the fact it’s open for discussion is a good thing.
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. In the future, a lot of Lemmy posters are definitely gonna be on the android/synthetics hate-train.
Not me though, because I love modern tech. :)
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.
I found Picard to be the most poorly written of the modern Trek series, with some great ideas wasted by haphazard and shoddy execution, but:
Season one ends with Picard convincing Soji that the safety and freedom of synthetic life is not worth welcoming entities that would destroy organic life. Instead she’s working towards peace and understanding in season 2.
Season two charts a redemption arc for no less than the Borg Collective, very much following up on the themes of I, Borg.
Season three shows the result of Section 31’s “ends justify the means” thinking during the Dominion War: enduring hatred leading to the infiltration of Starfleet and near destruction of the Federation.
It’s not well executed, and there is certainly plenty I disagree with, but I think for the most part Picard aligns with the principles you’re talking about.
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.
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.
tyhank you for your great answer and thinking, I really appreciate you, and I understand your reading, but I still disagree that the ending reaches the same ethical place.
For me, the future of old Trek was not built simply on trust. Trust came from an ethical framework. Old Picard would not just ask a persecuted minority to trust him and the Federation that had already outlawed them. He would first ask: do they have the right to seek protection? From whom? And when does protecting one persecuted group become the destruction of another?
Trek had already spent years asking these questions with Data: when does created life become a person, when does ownership become slavery, and what obligations do creators have toward the beings they create? The Measure of a Man is basically built around that question.
And this is where the Alliance of Synthetic Life bothered me too. They are supposedly a vastly superior synthetic civilisation, yet their reasoning is essentially the most basic human response: you persecuted us, therefore we will destroy you. That felt incredibly simplistic.
One of the strengths of old Trek was that other species did not simply think like humans in different bodies. The Founders in DS9 are a perfect example: their entire perception of identity, individuality, solids and belonging comes from being Changelings. You can disagree with them morally, but their reasoning grows from what they are.
That was what made the encounters interesting. The alien civilisation brought a genuinely different logic to the table, and Star Trek used that difference to make us look at our own conflicts: race, religion, power, minorities, occupation, fear. from another angle.
So yes, the synths eventually stand down. But for me the more interesting Star Trek story was the ethical argument that should have happened before that decision.
There is a season 3 of Picard???!!!
I stopped watching somewhere midway season 1 coz it was so stupid… But, they made 3 seasons! Dafuk.
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.
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.
I watched the first season and I loved it! The story, the characters…
Wait, no. That was Mass Effect.
Well star trek is a Utopian story and as such considering a perfect ethical debacle is a good past time. Sadly the real world has to compromise between the ethics and the reality of the situation.
This is of cause a spectrum with extremes on both ends. Forced adherence to ethics while the crew suffers as well as throwing all the ethics out for survival at any cost. Both are a very simplified world view (there is only one rule that counts).
Which people on Lemmy are somewhat drawn to by definition. You see mostly two viewpoints here: avoid violence at any cost (pacifism, only one rule), or violence is the only solution (only one rule ). Both are somewhat true but also somewhat extreme. Choosing violence as a last resort and granting that perfect pacifism won’t work either would be a realistic plot.
IMHO: star wars chose to movea away from the pleasanville aesthetics and moved to a more realistic version of the future that still struggles with the nature of the human condition but embraces it instead of sanitizing it.
The ends justifying the means was always an open question from TNG, it was just they were on a sliding scale that started from “no you cant execute Westly for messing up some flowers”, all the say up to Die Hard with a baryon sweep. But it didnt even start there. Theres this analysis didnt start with Kirk, cause he was settling those ends with a phaser rifle personally.
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.
Thank you for the well written, though out post.
Thank ChatGPT…
thank me, dear me. not chat gpt. if you ahve to blame use better your time. I believe in this psot
Can’t you find something better to do? this are my thoughts.
I wonder how much of it is habit. DS9 thoughtfully examined the idea, and then Voyager did so much more loosely given the desperation level. Then Enterprise often had them fall short on this, because it’s the beginning of Starfleet- they’re the reason the rules are being written, that’s the point. Then Disco S1 was both wartime, although by now that was more of an excuse than the point like it was in DS9, and also you had the mirror captain. By the time Picard rolled around, it had accidentially just become habitual and reflexive. The idiom of Trek became looking at the line over your shoulder
Star Trek Picard is just a bad show for memberies to please Patrick Stewart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdLHKdn0JTY (sorry for the 4h video, but it’s very good)
thank you for sharing
