Star Trek Social Club

You seem to have almost completely missed the point of allegory and metaphor in TOS. "Time after humanity has dealt with" as you put it is just a literary device to soften the impact when the show was inevitably confronted or viewed by real racists. It was never a really view of the future. It was always a reflection of our present through the lens of futurism, a clever narrative framing device. That narrative framing device could not possibly remain unchangeable through multiple generations without loosing everything that made it work. Attempting to do so, i.e. keeping the storytelling framework completely unchanged and not adapting to new generations and new social dynamics, would have shown a lack of creativity and imagination.

The show was from a time when the U.S. thought they had beaten fascism (past tense, done, a part of the past) and would soon beat racism, classism, etc. From a time when imperialism was seen as a fundamentally good social force by most of the imperialist public. Today we (mostly) know better. We will probably never truly erase any of them. They are things we'll have to remain vigilant for. A show today patronizing us with their perfected utopian society which remains VERY imperialist without shining a light on that contradiction just would not work. A show lacking any interpersonal drama also would not work and it's not even something that was really true for TOS, just a weird kink Roddenberry got into when producing TNG. That's the context of the way Star Trek has changed and it matters.

It's supposed to be a time after humanity has dealt with all of the stupid in-fighting and conservative BS. It's supposed to be about a time when the drama doesn't come from inside the house. When humanity is exploring the stars, not having a moment.

And yet all the drama is derived directly from real world human issues, so what makes a difference between Starfleet characters creating it or some fictional alien race? The latter too closely resembles "American exceptionalism" by acting like Starfleet always has all the answers and can do no wrong and these uncultured foreign aliens need to bend to our will in order to solve their problems. I don't see that being super appealing considering everything that is happening currently.

Let's give Picard some credit, it spent most a season giving us a look at the challenges of building a community while evading immigration officers, and the heartbreak of losing someone whose only crime was being "illegal" or undocumented.

As if Star Trek wasn’t corporate from the beginning!

Every major difference between the original pilot ‘The Cage’ and the original series / TOS was rooted in corporate priorities.

The bright, primary coloured uniform tunics, bright colourful flashing lights on the bridge and other sets were designed to promote NBC’s ‘Living Color’ television broadcasts.

Kirk was younger, physically more vigorous and less cerebral than Pike, no matter what Roddenberry wanted. Action adventure hero, romancing women, was what the network wanted no matter that Roddenberry wanted Kirk to be a ‘stack of books with legs’ and for Yeoman Rand to be the original third principle character and long term romantic interest.

Thanks, I enjoyed that.

TOS wasn't exactly subtle with its wokeness...

This is from an episode about how stupid racism is.

Agreed. DSC was filled with superficial Mary Sue slop. All anyone ever needed to overcome their problem was a cookie-cutter motivational speech from Burnham, while inspirational music played and the camera slowly panned across every crew members face as they smiled and gave a nod of approval.

It is cringy because it's like a virtue signaling characature of "wokeness" along the same vein as "after-school TV specials" or Christian evangelist movies of decades past. There's no depth or substance just endless variations of "there's no problem that can't be solved with a hug."

Actually, I like the inhumanity in SFA. So many of the extras are aliens, it's great. I've had enough of Starfleet being mostly humans