[freeflight]

Imho that's what makes it all the more grating: Star Trek was always on the rather "woke" end of the spectrum, and it usually managed to be there without pandering or being too condescending about it.

But this new generation of Trek seems to have completely lost that ability, while at the same time retconning large parts of the universe, and its inhabitants, to serve it's now much more simplistic moral dilemmas.

Which becomes particularly apparent when contrasted with something like The Orville. Sure, MacFarlane's humor can be an acquired taste, but I found that comedy take to be much more relatable, and truer to the "Trek spirit" than recent Trek offerings.

Maybe that has to do with the fact that The Orville also depicts a way more optimistic picture of future humanity, akin to the old Trek, while new Trek seems to be too busy to make Trek as gritty, edgy and actiony as most other media nowadays.

[pryce]

The original Star Trek had a good (though contested) claim to be the first (Black and White) interracial kiss on US public television[1]; Compare that with the Pew study "Intermarriage in the US 50 years since Loving v Virginia", showing that in 1990, about 63% of non-Blacks would be very or somewhat opposed to a close relative marrying a Black person[2] Pew. Imagine what that figure looked like in 1968.

If we don't see the original Star Trek as staking as many firm moral positions on issues where popular opinions are mixed, it says more about who we have become today, and how popular morality has adjusted, than about what was or wasn't radical or confronting at the time.

There doesn't seem to me to be any plausible claim that earlier Trek was previously less "confrontational" or deliberate in promoting its chosen morality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_tele...

[2] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/2-public-views-on...