I think it all comes down to capitalists own the star trek franchise and post-scarcity is a scenario that really challenges the core ideas of capitalism, especially when they show this advanced utopia, even if it was a bit frayed at the edges and some had a hard time relating to the idea that the crew of the various Enterprises were pretty much all doing it as a hobby rather than a job (albeit with military-level organization).

I always assumed that she was living in a trailer in the desert to get away from people, and just dug the isolated vibe of it... It didn't seem like it was awful or nuthin. Maybe trailers are nicer in the future lol

Well DS9 did the whole "section 31 exists this shit is a violation we do not do this" and nu!trek explicitly keeps going to that well as protagonists so yeah, there's a big difference there

All of them still felt more optimistic than nu Trek. And purely stylistically they were filmed in a very different way that felt comforting whereas these new shows want to be as grimdark as possible

The Orville is the best Nu-Trek.

I blame the Battlestar Galactica reboot. That was insanely successful while being dark and moody, so networks in the coming decades kept trying to chase that kind of success in their own shows by making them dark and moody as well. Game of Thrones seems like someone decided to take a LOTR-like medieval world and give it the tone of Battlestar Galactica.

The old guard of Hollywood were a bunch of people who had absolutely no problem with saying people that act like Nazis are bad. Those people are gone or nearing retirement/irrelevant. Also, writing is now done by committee so it never has any over-arching narrative, it's just a bunch of different writers trying to be noticed instead of creating a good plot.

That sentence used to be a lot longer, but it all does boil down to stupidity.

I heard a theory on the Adam Conover show recently that said product people--that is people that understands products and their customers--no longer run companies. Instead, we have finance people that know how to talk to investors and see their products as conglomeration of characteristics, maximized for mass appeal, and see their customers as numbers on a spreadsheet.

I find this a very compelling theory and you can see it across all forms of media--from movie, to TV, to games. The root cause of this problem has been unstated, but I see it as somehow a result of wealth inequality and concentration of power. Bad decisions can continually be made because competition is limited, at the same time, being "in" with powerful people is career insulation from constant failure.

I feel this so much.

It was great when there was the occasional oddball episode, but the main focus was on the story.

But this last season has been absolutely nothing except weird comedy episodes, every single week.

Made SNW go from one of my most-liked Trek outings to among the worst.

Perhaps I should rewatch Season 1 to recover.

Though to be fair, higher resolutions have made what used to be decent props into shitty looking ones, so the bar is higher these days, too.