I am not an anti-woke person in the slightest, and I wouldn’t say Star Trek was ever subtle about its leftist ideals.

But it did use to present us with a more optimistic view of the future of humanity that was largely beyond the petty dramas we have today, while still leaving room for the fact that no matter how much you’ve progressed, you do always have to fight to keep the ideals and society you’ve built. Allegories for modern problems were largely relegated to interactions with humanlike alien species so that the theme of humanity itself being “better than it was” is left intact.

And it did lose a little something when the Alex Kurtzman era came along and took the federation and humanity back to the stupid ages in order to get the point across.

The scene in Picard where you have a character living in what looks like poverty despite it being a post-scarcity age, and trying to draw parallels between her and Picard, and the different classes we have today, because she lived in a trailer and he owned a vineyard, was just next-level misunderstanding the source material. Hello they don’t have capitalism, there’s no money. It was long established by this point that humans excel due to their drive to achieve, not command a salary.

It does feel like Star Trek used to be woke, but was a story from the mouths of people who had something to say, to now it’s woke, but in a very icky corporate-sterilized kinda way.

Yep. Good analysis. Probably why I haven’t been able to get along with much of the Kurtzman era Trek. I’ve started Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks and find those two to be actually watchable, but Discovery and Picard I noped out of pretty hard after around a season each, and have no desire to even start Academy.

I will die on the hill that Lower Decks is not only the only nu-trek that is actual Star Trek, but that it actually belongs up there with the actual legacy Trek shows it parodies. And it’s got plenty of gay woke stuff in it. But despite being a parody, and forgiving the very rough first season (It’s ST, hello), it’s obviously that the writers actually understand what Star Trek is.

I fear a lot of people will write it off as “Star Trek does Rick & Morty” and it’s a shame. It has a TAMARIAN bridge officer for gods sake.

Lower Decks relies a little too much on nostalgia and the supposed parody of older shows, and the parody often comes off as memberberries.

Lower Decks is like a love letter to Star Trek and manages to be good Trek on its own. But yeah it is derivative and nostalgic as part of its blueprint . You need the context of the existing shows for it to be as good as it is, but I can’t really discount it for that.

and manages to be good Trek on its own.

No, I don’t actually think that. While there are some gags that work on their own (like the play on prejudice with the Ferengi), there are so many more “remember that thing from TOS, TNG, TAS, etc? Here, have it again!” (like that giant spock skeleton or the Landru-episode or when Rutherford builds a Delta Flyer). And I don’t quite like that.

Contrast that with Prodigy (why does that one get to be forgotten so often though? It is really good). Janeway returns as an Emergency Command Hologram, which is a callback both to Janeway and Voyager in general and to the episode about The Doctor, when he wanted to exoand his role and als become an ECH. But they told new stories with the Janeway ECH and made her a new character of her own. Same with Chakotay, who appears later as himself (not a hologramnor some other form of copy). The same character, but new story and developement (both Janeway and Chakotay get more character developement here then in all of Voyager). Then they got Wesley Crusher back, but instead of just rehashing the annoying teenager they explore his Traveler role.
Instead of pointing at things from past shows saying “See, you liked that, didn’t you? We got that here, too!”, Prodigy expanded these characters and explored new stories. And it did that well.
Lower Decks did that, too, sometimes. Sometimes LD did make fun of older trek, saying how dumb something was, ok. But mostly the references were mere easter eggs that were there for nostalgia bait.

Lower Decks actually added to the Star Trek universe in real ways. The whole idea of Second Contact vessels, Klingon non-noble culture, Ferengi TV, the Ferengi joining the Federation, Orion culture, etc. It wasn’t only references or derivative at all.

I didn’t say it added nothing. I explicitely said there is good stuff. What I do say though is that there is too much memberberries and too little new stuff.