It’s vanity, and that’s fine. But affectation supposes something fake:
‘Affectation noun behaviour or speech that is not sincere’
To me that’s a (negative) value judgement. And I’m defending the point that there’s nothing inherently negative about vanity, unlike what’s being implied by our dearest Dr.
I see TNG with mostly 2D characters where the Federation and its ideals are the main driving force of the plots. When they deviate from that is when you get bad episodes (cough Sub Rosa cough). The characters had to shed some of their depth and become idealized for message to shine through.
On DS9, you have a gritty view of a frontier without the influence of the Federation. The evolution of the characters and how they react to the changing reality around them is the center stage, and for that you need 3D, flawed characters to build development arcs upon.
Then on DSC you have perfect 2D characters in a corrupt world and the show is about Michael Burnham but she’s also perfect and I can’t see what message they’re trying to send.
Show me a moderate Democrat in the US and I’ll show you a moderate right winger in the world. From a world perspective, the US hasn’t had a left leaning president in the last 30 years or more. The US lost its left at some point, and advocating for sensible policies became its new left. Outside looking in, Bernie is a centrist or at most left-of-center.
So if your reference is the full spectrum, the majority of the US population is right wing, a good portion of it radicalized fascists. Now if your reference is the severely skewed Overton window of the US, then yeah, all right wingers are fascists.
This show, like most trek, really found it’s footing after one or two seasons. The characters have depth and personality and don’t just exist for sake of the jokes.
I still struggle with some of the crass humor, but that’s because I’m rather particular about what I find funny. The last season was particularly good on character building and they did set it up for a very exciting new season indeed.
It has happened before and it will happen again. TNG, DS9 and VOY once graced our screens at the same time, until interest waned and shows were canceled. Oh and Babylon 5 was there too, wasn’t it? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.