I am not even sure why this is up for debate. The original Star Trek is easily the most socially progressive TV show in history. The guy above is upset that the newer shows take things to new extremes, while the original show took things to old extremes. That's a fairly consistent use of the license, that means the recent ones are operating within the spirit of Star Trek. He thinks the new stuff is unnatural while the older Star Trek is natural, this is simply because society has advanced. Similarly, much of what feels unnatural to conservatives today is going to be natural to conservatives 50 years from now.

That's an interesting point; an interracial kiss as seen in the original series was probably seen as very offputting to many viewers in the 1960s, just as much as any of the "political/woke" content in Discovery. Plus DS9 had a black captain and a female first officer in the early 90s, Voyager had a female captain and a native American first officer in the mid to late 90s, etc.

Star Trek has always been "woke".

Another thing I'll add about Star Trek being too left leaning today is that the older Star Treks leaned far more into Marxism than the current iterations.

To show how over-sensitive people were in the early days of Star Trek, read this ridiculous controversy:

https://intl.startrek.com/article/creating-star-treks-first-alien-mr-spock

"As the series began production, the use of Spock’s pointed ears was cause of great controversy between the Star Trek production team and the television network. “In 1965, the NBC Sales Department was concerned,” recalled Herb Solow, Desilu executive in charge of Star Trek at the time. “It was as if they believed that, after Satan had been cast out the the Garden of Eden, he was reincarnated as actor Leonard Nimoy and cast into Star Trek as science officer Spock, a pointed eared, arched eyebrowed ‘satanic’ Vulcan alien.” NBC feared its advertisers and local stations would be targets of a religious backlash protesting this “devil incarnate.”

“It took several weeks for us to learn the extent to which NBC Sales had gone to disguise Spock’s ‘satanic’ pointed ears,” says Solow.

NBC had sent a very attractive Star Trek sales brochure to its station affiliates and advertisers. Close scrutiny showed, however, that an artist working for the NBC Sales Department had airbrushed Spock’s pointy ears round in all the photographs.

In order to placate the network, which was strongly advocating the use of regular ears and eyebrows on the Spock character — a move that would have seriously undermined the concept that an alien was serving onboard the Enterprise — the Star Trek production team decided to “tell NBC what they wanted to hear” in agreeing to greatly reduce Spock’s visibility in the show for the first thirteen weeks while actually proceeding without limitations on the use of the Vulcan first officer.

Also, RIP Christopher Plummer (who played General Chang in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country, probably the only villain to rival Khan)

STD and Discard are both shit. The current running show that is the best Star Trek is Orville. Fact.

I hear a lot of good things about The Orville and I'd like to check it out, but it's not available on the streaming services I'm subscribed to and I'm not paying extra for it on Youtube TV or signing up to a third service. I really hate the stream service wars.

Thanks man, I had no idea it was on SBS, I'll definitely have a look once I finish the shows I'm currently watching.

Sounds awesome to me! I don't mind Seth's brand of comedy personally so I'm sure that won't be a problem. Will report back once I get into that, though that might be a while as I am pretty stuck into Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica atm haha.

I actually found Discovery and Picard very different, especially in terms of tone. Picard is a lot darker and grittier while Discovery is a lot goofier and upbeat.