true

thank you for your comment jsr, for sure TNG and Voyager, for me, keep the ethical or philosophical question much more consistently at the centre of any episode. but also DS9. DS9 maybe is darker, more political and sometimes more commercial in its storytelling, although it still constantly makes you think. a lot.

And it still does something very Trek: it uses species to reflect us. The Ferengi are probably the clearest example , they exaggerate greed, profit, sexism and status to such an extreme that they expose how poor and ridiculous those behaviours can look when you see them from the outside.

So yes, I agree that For the Uniform is not DS9 at its best ethically. But I still see it as an exception inside a series that largely keeps questioning power, war, occupation, religion and responsibility.

What changes much more clearly after Voyager, for me, is the centre of gravity: spectacle and drama increasingly become the engine of the episode, while the ethical or philosophical question becomes secondary.

That is the shift I am talking about.

thank you a lot for your answer and input. I understand the examples, but I still think there is a difference.

Having an ethical issue in the plot is not the same as really exploring it. What I miss is the reasoning: different positions being confronted, the consequences being questioned, the characters actually struggling with what is right rather than simply reaching a solution.

In episodes like The Measure of a Man, I, Borg or In the Pale Moonlight, the ethical question was not just part of the story. It was the story.

That is what feels different to me now. The themes may still be there, but they are often used as part of the sci-fi scenario rather than examined with the same depth.

So my point is not that modern Trek never raises ethical questions. It does.

I think it no longer stays with them long enough.

Can’t you find something better to do? this are my thoughts.

thank you

I think we are talking about two slightly different things.

Your example is about proportion: some means are appropriate to an end and others are excessive.

My point is more about moral legitimacy.

A method can be effective, proportionate and still be ethically wrong because of what it does to someone else.

That is what Star Trek used to examine so well: not only “will this work?”, but what are we becoming responsible for by choosing this way of getting there?

thanks

I don’t find that explanation very credible.

Picard had seven seasons and 178 episodes of TNG, plus the films, in which he went through assimilation, torture, captivity, profound loss, command failures, war and repeated moral crises.

Those experiences changed him, of course. But they never erased the way he thought.

That was one of the strengths of Star Trek: character development did not mean replacing a character’s moral architecture. Change had to grow from what had already been established.

So the issue for me is not that Picard changed. People change. The issue is whether that change feels earned and coherent.

After decades of seeing him confront trauma without abandoning the habit of asking what is right beyond himself, simply saying “the universe became harder, so he became harder” feels too easy.

Star Trek used to make that tension itself part of the story.

That is what makes this version of Picard feel less like evolution and more like a rewrite.

thanks

I completely agree.What I loved about old Trek is exactly this: it did not just present a moral position, it kept reopening the question from different perspectives.

A treaty could be legal and still create injustice. Neutrality could become complicity. Resistance could be understandable and still morally difficult. Starfleet itself could be wrong. And the characters were forced to reconsider what they thought they knew.

That is what made the episodes so powerful. They were not simply telling us what to think — they were making us think.

And often they did it through different species, occupations, conflicts and political systems that clearly reflected real human problems without reducing them to slogans.

That depth is exactly what I miss. Every episode could leave you with a real ethical question after it ended.

tyhank you for your great answer and thinking, I really appreciate you, and I understand your reading, but I still disagree that the ending reaches the same ethical place.

For me, the future of old Trek was not built simply on trust. Trust came from an ethical framework. Old Picard would not just ask a persecuted minority to trust him and the Federation that had already outlawed them. He would first ask: do they have the right to seek protection? From whom? And when does protecting one persecuted group become the destruction of another?

Trek had already spent years asking these questions with Data: when does created life become a person, when does ownership become slavery, and what obligations do creators have toward the beings they create? The Measure of a Man is basically built around that question.

And this is where the Alliance of Synthetic Life bothered me too. They are supposedly a vastly superior synthetic civilisation, yet their reasoning is essentially the most basic human response: you persecuted us, therefore we will destroy you. That felt incredibly simplistic.

One of the strengths of old Trek was that other species did not simply think like humans in different bodies. The Founders in DS9 are a perfect example: their entire perception of identity, individuality, solids and belonging comes from being Changelings. You can disagree with them morally, but their reasoning grows from what they are.

That was what made the encounters interesting. The alien civilisation brought a genuinely different logic to the table, and Star Trek used that difference to make us look at our own conflicts: race, religion, power, minorities, occupation, fear. from another angle.

So yes, the synths eventually stand down. But for me the more interesting Star Trek story was the ethical argument that should have happened before that decision.

tyhank you for your great answer and thinking, I really appreciate you, and I understand your reading, but I still disagree that the ending reaches the same ethical place.

For me, the future of old Trek was not built simply on trust. Trust came from an ethical framework. Old Picard would not just ask a persecuted minority to trust him and the Federation that had already outlawed them. He would first ask: do they have the right to seek protection? From whom? And when does protecting one persecuted group become the destruction of another?

Trek had already spent years asking these questions with Data: when does created life become a person, when does ownership become slavery, and what obligations do creators have toward the beings they create? The Measure of a Man is basically built around that question.

And this is where the Alliance of Synthetic Life bothered me too. They are supposedly a vastly superior synthetic civilisation, yet their reasoning is essentially the most basic human response: you persecuted us, therefore we will destroy you. That felt incredibly simplistic.

One of the strengths of old Trek was that other species did not simply think like humans in different bodies. The Founders in DS9 are a perfect example: their entire perception of identity, individuality, solids and belonging comes from being Changelings. You can disagree with them morally, but their reasoning grows from what they are.

That was what made the encounters interesting. The alien civilisation brought a genuinely different logic to the table, and Star Trek used that difference to make us look at our own conflicts: race, religion, power, minorities, occupation, fear. from another angle.

So yes, the synths eventually stand down. But for me the more interesting Star Trek story was the ethical argument that should have happened before that decision.