this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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I could watch TOS, TNG caused me anxiety for whatever reason, watched some DS9.
TOS - nice and cozy, it's old minded, but well meant mostly. I'm a Star Wars person. Also liked Babylon V and Stargate SG-1.
TNG - seen very little of it, get bored because of not tracking what even happens there and what's the purpose of those scenes, but I have understood that there's maybe something smart there somewhere.
DS9 - I didn't like it, really seemed to involve a lot of virtue signaling and identity politics. I don't like the former because it's all signals and no action, I don't like the latter because you are disadvantaged if you don't fit well to a stereotype of some protected group in some dimension, and nobody really does, except for brainless activists. Spherical libertarian ethics in vacuum or even spherical Marxist ethics in vacuum would fit me better, but as we all know, these are mostly represented IRL by idiots.
So - DS9 is bad. It's a paper model alternative to Babylon V with vaguely Trek-ish ideas, except Babylon V is much deeper (but also inconsistent and generally nuts, which is fine, the universe is too). It's too morally sterile as compared to TOS and TNG.
Haven't seen any of other "old" Trek.
Haven't seen any of the "new" Star Trek, if it's similar to the "new" Star Wars, then nothing of value was lost.
The point is ... I agree complaining about "woke" in Trek is strange, but it's strange for any sci-fi to be honest. These people probably think Heinlein wasn't "woke", but I'm almost certain he would be hated by them if he lived in our time. He did references to jungle law, human predatory nature and the idea that some human society developments are degenerate, but all these things are more specific than just mentioning them, for a real discussion about humanity.
Agree completely about Heinlein. The opinions people have about what he would have agreed or disagreed with are baffling to me. It's like the only things they read are Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Beyond This Horizon and they believe he was advocating a position instead of trying to get you to think and ask questions.
I'm so tired of the idea that "an armed society is a polite society" is any kind of good or that it is a society that should be longed for. Same for mandatory service.
It's also that things shown in his books are orthogonal to modern popular categories.
IIRC Door into Summer has something resembling socialism, not shown as good or bad, actually shown as "everything both different and still the same on the ape planet", especially the "recent news" moment after unfreezing when I last re-read it, it's amazing how that didn't get old since the book was written, you can feel that it touches exactly the same strings it was intended to touch then, full feeling of presence.
IIRC Starship Troopers has a few moments clearly showing flaws in the system, Rico clearly feeling that was wrong, and the general mood being "we know it's not ideal, we just needed something and the previous one broke" with a bit of pretense and moralism and importance, like in everything such IRL.
IIRC Orphans of the Sky can illustrate any political position conceivable, that values a human.
IIRC Citizen of the Galaxy is really hard to perceive as something he's usually accused of supporting.
And so on.