I liked the song when I was a kid and watched Enterprise (and I liked Enterprise in general) but growing up, the sheer American nationalism throughout the series was pretty unwatchable. Still leagues ahead of the all-American new Trek.
But that’s just the thing. I too like utopia, but I want a believable utopia, not a Starbucks upper class version of what they think is “yass relatable”. I thought DS9 was actually a wonderfully utopian show because it showed that despite incredible hardship, people can still overtake their circumstances and keep a level head, good relationships and a just society. It was authentic to what I as a working class person experience, to what my life is; just an idealized version of it where others and society as a whole share my ideals and ethical standpoints. New Trek on the other hand tries so hard to appeal to progressive politics but fails at realizing the actual authentic circumstances of the working class and instead makes it into some kind of “Eurovision” or “Oscars”-ish upper class atmosphere thing. The recent musical episode was even more insulting in its “what rich people think is fun”-ness.
Now that you mentioned it, I hate that they stopped talking about “duty” and started talking about “work” or a “job”. It’s not supposed to be labour! That’s the entire point of a utopia! Why does everyone treat their Starfleet career like an employment contract with annoying bosses and all? The Lieutenant next to me is my comrade, not my “coworker”. Do they think it becomes relatable because they - in this utopia - still deal with the socialized equivalent of wage labour?
Everything in SNW/DSC/PIC looks, feels and sounds like a Marvel movie with unfunny quips and one-liners, or an advertisement at worst. They speak like the Microsoft boss does when he talks about Xbox - “millions of players all over the world come together to celebrate these incredible, amazing worlds that our people have created for you to express yourselves in” - it’s just marketing talk. It feels incredibly, incredibly sterile and corporate, but when DSC/SNW/PIC characters talk about Starfleet or the Federation, they sound exactly like that. The characters look like Hollywood actors, especially Pike; not like people I know in real life. Miles O’Brien could have been in my local pub; Pike looks and acts like someone who lives in a Californian villa and socializes with Jeffrey Epstein.
Star Trek has turned from union shop working class entertainment to rich white Americans’ entertainment. I do not like that one bit. And it’s not like I hate everything new. I thought Lower Decks was really enjoyable outside of a few stinkers, and I keep reading the novels.
I just am scared how they’ll represent Earth life in a new show. It will most likely be incredibly Americanized with every radical Roddenberry-ism and Berman-ism thrown out of the window. The “Federation News Network” (FNN) and all of the American cultural dogwhistles in Picard made me turn it off in the first episode. It just feels like we throw utopia out of the window and make everything just future-USA.
They even reintroduced car culture and wide highways, American architecture and cultural norms.
The problem I have with the new shows is that they all feel acted, designed and written like American advertisements or stock videos. It’s hard to describe, but everything is glossy, polished and corporate-designed, and people never act or speak like the people I know in real life; they act and speak like influencers, vloggers and YouTube personalities. It’s eerie and I cannot immerse myself at all. It’s too clean, too bright, not industrial or lived in enough. Even the “relatable” scenes just remind me of what an upper class hipster writer in a glass-front writing room thinks is relatable.
The people and sets on DS9 felt so real, so tangible, so relatable. The episode with Bashir’s parents comes to mind where the interaction between Julian and them was so gut-punchingly accurate to a regular immigrant working class family. The relationship between Ben and Jake. The entire character of Miles. The people in new Trek feel fake, like a Hollywood writer’s idea of a regular person. The politics in DS9 felt genuinely radical, in new Trek they feel shoe-horned in out of an obligation to be progressive with no meat behind it at all, just to market to a target demographic.
Maybe it is because I am European, but DSC/SNW/PIC just feel SO incredibly American. Like Alegria art.
That’s the attitude of someone who does not really care about a continuous universe or a coherent world and just wants to watch sci-fi for the plot. If that’s the case, why not write and direct original fiction?
My entire enjoyment of Star Trek comes from the fact that it is a vast, largely consistent universe that feels real to me. I could mostly not care less about plot points or individual lead characters, I want the world that I know and love to expand. It’s like daydreaming.