I quite liked Enterprise. It didn’t live up to its potential, but it was still good. Great sets and costumes, good actors with good chemistry and interesting characters. And there was almost zero real world politics being shoehorned into it. The show really was focused on just telling good Star Trek stories.
I know allegory has been a big part of Star Trek from the beginning, but it was done so much more subtly and unabrasively (not a word) in the past, by skilled writers who understood that they still had to produce a show that appealed to a large swathe of viewers and make money.
The problem with modern Trek, besides being run by people who don’t understand Trek or view Trek as entertainment, is just how heavy-handed everything and preachy it is. It just isn’t fun.
I loved TNG, but never enjoyed the scenes of Picard talking about how terrible humanity once was (meaning the audience, essentially), but how they’d progressed so much since then. Discovery (and Picard) have taken that idea and put it on steroids. Every story and character serves as a vehicle for the creators to dump on everything loathsome to them in the 21st century. Heroes are vehicles for them to lecture the audience, and villains effigies to be beaten and burned. The show exists to service the creators, instead of the opposite, which is/was the standard operating procedure for many years.
I’m glad there are people out there who legitimately enjoy the Bad Robot / Secret Hideout version of Star Trek. Unfortunately for me, I just don’t. I wish I did and could, but I can’t and don’t. It just isn’t real Star Trek to me. That died with Enterprise, which to me is the last Star Trek I really enjoyed, and could recognize as Star Trek.
I know allegory has been a big part of Star Trek from the beginning, but it was done so much more subtly and unabrasively (not a word) in the past, by skilled writers who understood that they still had to produce a show that appealed to a large swathe of viewers and make money.
The problem with modern Trek, besides being run by people who don’t understand Trek or view Trek as entertainment, is just how heavy-handed everything and preachy it is. It just isn’t fun.
I loved TNG, but never enjoyed the scenes of Picard talking about how terrible humanity once was (meaning the audience, essentially), but how they’d progressed so much since then. Discovery (and Picard) have taken that idea and put it on steroids. Every story and character serves as a vehicle for the creators to dump on everything loathsome to them in the 21st century. Heroes are vehicles for them to lecture the audience, and villains effigies to be beaten and burned. The show exists to service the creators, instead of the opposite, which is/was the standard operating procedure for many years.
I’m glad there are people out there who legitimately enjoy the Bad Robot / Secret Hideout version of Star Trek. Unfortunately for me, I just don’t. I wish I did and could, but I can’t and don’t. It just isn’t real Star Trek to me. That died with Enterprise, which to me is the last Star Trek I really enjoyed, and could recognize as Star Trek.
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