Usually, but I love the optimistic fanfare of the TNG intro, and it has a habit of drawing me in.

King can’t take because a bishop is looking in her direction from half a mile away.

This is great. I have a new daily game to play. Thanks for sharing!

This is why I love TNG so much. Even though TOS is the original that laid the groundwork for everything, TNG took that “boundless optimism” and ran with it. Watching TNG inspires me to continue to self-improve and encourage it in others.

It’s just another tired bit about how following orders and perfect institutions are what Star Trek is really about, to hell with any evidence to the contrary.

I’d argue that the theme is less about following orders and more We are all individually flawed and are at our best when we follow our shared values - which is represented by both Starfleet and the utopian setting as a whole.

I can see the argument (for fiction and real life), that as we trust institutions less, our focus becomes more on individual judgement rather than collectivist ideas. It also tracks for me that as this occurs in real life, our media would reflect individualism more and more.

I’ve admittedly still only watched up through the 90s, but I’d definitely say that DS9 depicted a significantly more “morally gray” version of Starfleet than TOS or TNG.

I think the point the author is making is that the extent to which this idea gets explored is reflective of our society’s growing mistrust of institutions IRL, rather than suggesting the theme has never been explored.

Why aren’t we fixing this?!

And thank you for the lore!

I swear I learn more about LOTR from comment sections under memes than anywhere else.