Star Trek at its best is didactic. It's a morality play in a sci fi costume. Every good episode has something to say about humanity, about the contemporary world, about SOMETHING.
Strange New Worlds¹ has gimmicks. It's fun, sometimes, but it has nothing to say. It's hollow and facile.
In fact a lot of modern Trek has focused too much on FORM and not on FUNCTION.
Disco for all its befuddlement at least tried to say something each season, and even multiple somethings.
Picard's first season seemed to gesture in the vague direction of saying something before devolving into nonsense
Lower Decks is an over-achiever in the FORM over FUNCTION race. It wear's TNG's pants but never read TNG's books.
Prodigy is about Star Trek, about why it matters, why it's important.
As is Starfleet Academy, but it unforgivably pulls its punches.
The worst kind of Star Trek, worse even than bad Star Trek, is a Star Trek that says nothing, is about nothing, it cosplays, it roleplays, but it's empty. Star Trek's pretty face but nothing behind the eyes.
It's truly worrisome when I begin to feel I have more to say than Star Trek can teach me anymore.
I grew up learning Star Trek's lessons, those shows were my classrooms, my synagogue, my mosque. Its words were my scripture.
But now it's all...photons and forcefields.
To be ABSOLUTELY clear, this is NOT an invitation to shit on the creators of modern Trek, especially when invoking "Kurtzman" as some bogeyman.
¹ someone on BlueSky, where I also posted this, suggested that SNW does say something, perhaps unintentionally;
it’s frequently fatalistic, deeply conservative, pro military industrial complex, bio essentialist, and even genocide apologist.
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