@chris

The older series had some heart. As I recall, DS9 was the highest rated, for variety, themes and consistency. It's probably my bingerewatching most famous. Bizarrely, I've even learned to forgive "Enterprise", except for its "already becoming authoritarianly stupid" characters.

Even "Picard" had some worth (I've only seen S1.) But as a "harbinger of doom", the movie about the making of DS9, I think, you get a scene where they brainstorm continuations, and you listen to the writers come up with abject garbage that basically shows they are bored playing doll with what can only be endlessly repetitive archetypes. "Let's have Colonel Kira become the religious leader of a Jem Hadar army", ignoring that Kira would never do such a thing and all the Jem Hadar would have died by then -- but hey, Who Gives A Shit About Self-Consistency or even simple logic. [See, the audience is so stupid and passive we can count upon consumption even as quality approaches zero.]

=> The plots themselves are effectively being written "by Eliza", and it shows. Oh, a new movie, boss? Here's the AI assistant to help you write it.

1. Who is the bad guy?
a. A clone of a Star Trek captain but now intent on galactic domination.
b. A victim of acute dyspepsia intent on annihilating all sentient life in the universe as revenge.

It's always that much, now. Jimbo must break the graham cracker in precisely the right place, or all that is, ends.

A more streamlined summary: a bunch of people with whom you are supposed to have sympathy must do some thing in order to survive and prevail. They will be endlessly beset by every manner of impediment, including a flow of bad guys disgusting in every way and portraying all those motives our heroes remain above. And now per Kurtzman, every segment ends with everyone smiling about how much everyone loves each other and how happy everyone is with everyone's diversity being celebrated, even as the cast must march over scores of bodies of the reprehensible enemy that was gloriously if tediously defeated at great cost to the life hopes of some sympathetic character.

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I remember how "Section 31" was (supposedly) regarded in DS9: namely, as a cancer to be removed; as an intolerable blot on humanity's 'purity'. The means justifies the ends. Things we wouldn't do because they are or were or would be war crimes and crimes against humanity and conscience. Impermissible authoritarianism.

And yet I should celebrate a SERIES about said agency? O yes let's EXPLORE what drives us to wish to be cruel to each other. Let's DEMONSTRATE, every week, being engaged in pursuing BEING THAT MALEVOLENT. Basically, reductio ad absurdum, BRING ON THE PAIN AND TORTURE, LET'S RUB YOUR FACES IN YOUR FEAR OF BEING A VICTIM OF INTENTIONAL HARM.

O look, I dressed it up in a "sci fi plot", "it's not real", but it's WHERE I WANT YOU TO LIVE, it's WHAT I WANT YOU TO THINK ABOUT, it's HOW I WANT YOU TO FEEL -- ALWAYS. UNDER THREAT.

And then pumping Raytheon's guts with metric tons of cash just makes perfect sense, because it becomes everyone's ENFORCED PERSONALITY TYPE.
(1) We show you this SHIT, endlessly, on TV.
(2) The reality MSM has you live in is no better.
(3) Hey, plenty of ENEMIES and all that is left to us is to DEFEAT THEM.
(4) So where's our FUCKING WAR, FUCKERS?

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As an ex-little-boy, I by now think it's time to retire little-boy archetypes. Worse, I think it's time to maybe visit little-girl archetypes for a change. The STNG episode "Pen Pals", what's at stake is the fate of the girl's planet and people, but that was all; and there was indeed a "fight": the discussion as to what to do about the girl's people. But no malice and no mayhem; no fistfights, not even raised voices for the most part. But was there emotional tension, yes; was the episode survivable, yes. So aw no blood and guts, no blood on the deck, no Foley boys cracking sticks to emulate jaws being punched, nobody being face-slammed with a baseball bat, no eyes being gouged out, no heads exploding ... no immersing the audience with continuous human torture, and did I need to explain that that's what you're watching?

Ask yourself what kind of world you live in and what kind of world you Want to live in, when you suffer your entertainment media to give you massive helpings of exposure to the worst the society offers (without reminding voters that they have the means to correct it.) Between "Hollywood" and "Stan Lee", the public has been infantilized, including having their moral reasoning ability (as of age 10) endorsed as mature and reasonable, when it's not.

We can hardly object to things e.g. Blinken or Von Der Leyen say when what they say is no LESS reasonable than what the latest Marvel superhero reasoned, the problem is the public is not rejecting what is being said by EITHER group as unreasonable. The reasoning is on the kindergarten level of "you hurt me, so I'll hurt you," yet the public sits back and lets it be.

While women CAN be just as vicious as men, everyone knows it ain't statistically so. So you filter out the nazis as you must anywhere, and put women in majority control of everything: senate, congress, executive, state. "Hi, world. We're Americans. We're trying to sort out: are we only the assholes you've had to suffer for 60 years? Or do we have the balls to meet the commitment we made so long ago to being the good guys?"

The reflection in popular media should be a scaling back of things. Is it okay for the thing at risk in this story to be less than all of existence at once? The next thing is: we don't need to see the GRATUITOUS DRIPPING INTERPERSONAL ANIMOSITY, no, it's NOT normal anymore : NO, VIOLENCE IS NOT NORMAL ANYMORE. And Yes, we're entitled [as humans managing human culture] to make violence a very undesirable thing, to be discouraged and confronted. That means it doesn't reflect the values of your society, to show people people being mean and petty towards each other. Look forward to the number of murders committed and fistfights held before the next dogfood commercial to converge to 0 in short order.

Maybe all we need to do is fire everyone writing for Kurtzman and then the public, not Kurtzman, elects an all-female group of writers for whatever ST franchises (they are growing like pimples, I think? Where's Michael Dorn's Worf series?) are to follow in Kurtzman's steps. [Better control the product directly than via a boycott.]