A novel approach to the modern issues with Star Trek... No longer do we get insightful criticism of structural societal problems we get repackaged corporate washing of political movements removing the heart and soul of actually critiquing power or having something interesting to say..
The way Damien Walter illustrates how Larry Ellison basically owns Star Trek and its unlikely he would allow a criticism of anything Ellison is doing.... is a compelling link I hadn't considered.
Unlike most Star Trek noise out there, this one is saying something novel about why modern Trek has no bite.
TLDW: Get your capitalism out of my fully automated luxury space communism show.
summerizer
Deep Space Nine : post colonial studies in space
- DS9 moves from episodic exploration to long-form politics.
- DS9 puts colonization, settler colonialism, and decolonization on-screen.
- Bajor: a spiritual, peace-leaning society after Cardassian rule.
- Cardassians: stiff, polite imperialists; empire dynamics in space.
- Ferengi: profit-first middlemen; an uneasy ethnic mashup in the metaphor.
- Dominion: persecuted shapeshifters become an expansionist state; cycles of harm.
Old Trek carries material critique; New Trek carries corporate "wokeness".
- Star Trek peaks in DS9 with postcolonial critique of imperial power.
- New Trek is written by elite-college pipelines and corporate shareholders.
- Starfleet Academy opens with loud messaging and weak craft.
- Kurtzman-led teams keep failing upward while the franchise falls.
Corporate "wokeness" is marketing skin over power.
- Fearless Girl looks like feminist defiance but works as fund advertising.
- The campaign promotes State Street's gender-diversity product (ticker: SHE).
- The statue is built for PR by McCann Worldgroup.
- Charging Bull is guerrilla art by Arturo Di Modica, dumped at the NYSE.
- Fearless Girl vs Charging Bull becomes a clean corporate story over a messy one.
Spectacle and recuperation hollow out radical culture.
- Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle targets culture under capitalism.
- Recuperation sterilizes subversive acts and sells them back as safe symbols.
- Protest slogans, 1960s counterculture, and early political hip hop get commodified.
- Star Trek goes through the same sterilization into corporate "wokeness".
Ownership explains the shift.
- Skydance is in Star Trek Into Darkness credits as a rising finance engine.
- Skydance bankrolls big franchises, then buys Paramount and the Star Trek library.
- David Ellison leverages Larry Ellison's Oracle wealth to consolidate Hollywood.
- Control of CBS News tightens; stories get spiked to fit owners' tastes.
The missing future.
- Star Trek's radical idea: no billionaires; wealth is shared for human flourishing.
- New Trek talks emotional safety and dodges billionaires because billionaires pay.
- While billionaires own Star Trek, Star Trek never becomes woke again.
References
- [00:17] Paramount closes merger with Skydance — https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/paramount-closes-8-billion-merger-with-skydance-after-settling-60-minutes-2025-08-07/