I think the modern writers have forgotten that some of those gimmick episodes of TOS happened because they had a shoestring budget and had to reuse whatever cowboy or city set was available.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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That's what I think people miss. Seeing humanity form the federation was the point. The teething troubles. The galaxy we found ourselves in. The one time I actually want a prequel.
Vot suffered from not relinquishing it's serial roots. We all wanted the year of hell as a whole season I think. I wanted the whole show to show wear and tear on the ship and crew. That's why I liked the Xindi arc in ENT, the accrued damage and fatigue. No new, fresh ship in each episode.
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To add to your point about VOY I think they missed the other side of the coin too. Not just wear and tear on the ship but the upgrades. We're told many times that they added borg tech though out the ship. With a digital ship they missed a real opportunity to have it slowly change over time like a Vidiian. Yes show us the scars of battle but also show us how the ship has changed. It could have been as simple as a splash of green in the lighting. Unfortunately they always reset to zero.
It doesn't help much that they also didn't use change in the characters to convey developments and time on the ship. Voyager was mired in a serialized stagnation when its premise demanded at least a mixture like what is seen in earlier seasons of DS9 (which, go figure, felt like a different setting from the start to end of the show). When you look at contemporary discourses surrounding both shows, you'll notice that this was in fact a consequence of how older fans vocalized frustration with the "darker" and slower-paced storytelling on DS9, so it's understandable to see why the production took this route.
Star Trek is at its strongest when it excells even within budgetary and production limitations, so they could have still achieved this effect even with the ship models they started out with. Christ, how often do they do redresses on these sets anyway? Could have changed some panels and added different colored glowy bits to the gell packs if it's just a visual thing.
I think it would have been great if they had actually committed to what is intriguing about a pre-Federation humanity; especially after the criticisms of liberal utopianism that were fleshed out in DS9. They didn't though, it mostly manifested as vague, "racism bad," stories where political tensions are a consequence of misunderstandings or external bad actors, and not the struggle to reconcile fundamentally oppositional material and political interests.
The Xindi arc was at its most interesting when the tensions within the Xindi were focused on, but that was itself shortlived and reductive. It's all just a bit flat unfortunately, even though there are a lot of really interesting ideas and a decent production behind them.