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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 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.

:(

Exactly. Old Trek repeatedly put the moral cost of the means on the table.

Voyager’s entire premise was built around that question. Rick Berman described it as getting home “at any cost?” and immediately answered: it shouldn’t be at any cost. That was built into the show from the beginning.

Michael Piller was famous in the writers’ room for asking: “What’s it about?” Not just what happens, but what the story is actually examining: paranoia, responsibility, identity, parenthood, fear. The ethical or human question came before the mechanics of the plot.

That is why episodes like Caretaker, I, Borg, The Measure of a Man, Insurrection or In the Pale Moonlight work so well. The characters are not simply looking for the fastest solution. They stop and ask what that solution costs, who pays for it, and whether another path exists even if it is harder.

And the scripts were written with enormous precision. Robert Hewitt Wolfe said DS9 scripts were locked down because the shows were so technical and precise; dialogue was not something actors simply improvised around. The writers were protecting the internal logic of the universe and the characters.

So my point is not “the end never matters”.

It is that a good end never removed the obligation to scrutinise the means.

Old Trek constantly asked: What will this choice do to others? Is the damage proportionate? Is there another way? And sometimes the harder, slower road was still the right one.

That it was part of how Star Trek was written.

I don’t mean nostalgia. My question is whether we are losing a way of thinking that asked us to become better.

Star Trek used ethics, responsibility and self-reflection as part of the story itself. That shaped how many of us thought about power and humanity.

For me, keeping that alive is not about the past. It is about keeping our conscience active.

But that is exactly my point: this is where “the end does not justify the means” disappears.

Old Trek never said trauma would not change you. Picard was assimilated, violated and used by the Borg to kill thousands. In First Contact that trauma turns into rage and revenge , but the story stops him there. Lily confronts him, he recognises what he is becoming, and he changes course. His trauma explains the reaction; it does not automatically justify it.

Janeway does something similar in Equinox: desperation and anger push her too far, Chakotay challenges her, and the story makes that loss of perspective visible.

That was the point of the evolved humanity Star Trek imagined: not people without trauma, anger or fear, but people trying not to let those things decide what is right.

So saying “the universe became harder, therefore Picard and Seven became harder” is exactly what I am questioning. If circumstances are allowed to redefine the ethics, then the end has started to justify the means.

Old Trek asked whether we could suffer, be angry, even be broken , and still stop ourselves and ask: what is right beyond me?

That is the first thing I feel Picard has lost.

I don’t actually think Picard arrives at the same ethical conclusions.

The synthetics are a good example. When they decide to activate the beacon and call for help, Picard’s response is basically to stop them and offer to take them away.

Old Picard, to me, would first have changed the perspective of the question: does a persecuted minority have the right to ask for protection? If yes, from whom? At what cost? And what happens if that protection destroys another population?

That is where the real Star Trek dilemma would have been.

Not simply “don’t call them, come with me,” but a confrontation between rights, fear, survival and consequences, until the most ethical solution possible emerged.

That is why I don’t think the destination is the same. The old Picard was not looking for the solution that worked for him. He was trying to understand what was right beyond himself.

That difference is exactly what I miss.

thank me, dear me. not chat gpt. if you ahve to blame use better your time. I believe in this psot

Same. I stopped watching too, and I was sad because I kept hoping to see something different.

The plot actually had potential, but I was shocked by how the characters dealt with everything.

Picard contradicts his own words and principles, and sometimes he does not even realise how insensitive he is with Soji, a synthetic being. This is Picard, who was always thoughtful and wise.

Then you have the scientist specialised in synthetics killing Maddox, and somehow it is just passed over without any real reasoning around it.

And Seven of Nine completely changes , her expressions, her reasoning, everything. I loved watching her struggle with the Doctor about her humanity, her identity and her internal conflict. Now suddenly she becomes a revenge-driven character.

It is honestly crazy to me how these characters became like characters from any other film or series.

Star Trek was not like that. It was coherence, reasoning, growth.

It actually educated me a lot when I was younger, and it did it in such a subtle and intelligent way.

Now I feel like I am watching just any other film or drama, wihtout soul. And when Picard started talking about love, I switched it off. Honestly, that was the last thing I could keep.

your udnerstanding is superficial. I suggest you to read again , understand better, and judge less

no dear is my text and my reflections

Yes, I think this is part of the same problem.

Talking was always central to Star Trek, but the dialogue used to build the solution. It clarified the ethical problem, the scientific constraints, the risks and the consequences. You understood why a decision was made and what it would cost.

Now, too often, the talking feels detached from the actual mechanics of the crisis. Everyone processes the situation emotionally, then a solution appears, works almost perfectly, and the consequences disappear with the episode.

For me, the issue is not that they talk too much. It is that the reasoning no longer feels structurally connected to the outcome.

Old Trek could spend ten minutes in a briefing room, but by the end of those ten minutes you understood the problem better.

That made the resolution feel earned.

Now it can feel as if the emotional conversation is the resolution. …

I think we are mixing two different things: consequences in a character’s biography and ethical consequences as part of the storytelling.

Yes, Picard shows consequences: ageing, Borg trauma, losing his position, conflict with Starfleet. I am not denying that at all. My point is that this is not the same thing as the older Trek habit of stopping and asking:

Was this action right? Was it proportionate? Did we have the right to do it? What responsibility follows from it?

That distinction matters.

Sisko poisoning the Maquis colony is actually a good example of where old Trek itself failed to examine something as deeply as it should have. I can criticise that episode too. I am not claiming every old episode was ethically perfect.

I am talking about the overall narrative architecture.

Across TNG, DS9 and Voyager, ethical reasoning was repeatedly built into the story itself. Characters had recognisable moral structures, and those structures were so consistent that in several episodes a change in behaviour was enough for the others — and for us — to realise that someone had been replaced, possessed or manipulated. That level of trust came from coherence.

That is what I find weaker in Picard.

Seven can move from a character built around discipline, restraint, logic and moral self-construction to revenge and vigilante violence, without the story really earning that transformation.

Jurati can kill Maddox while manipulated — and I am not saying she should necessarily have been punished; she might well have been cleared — but older Trek would likely have made the question itself part of the story: coercion, responsibility, guilt, consent, manipulation. Instead the explanation largely replaces the ethical examination.

And with Picard himself, my objection is not that he is old, traumatised or imperfect. I actually find that potentially interesting. My objection is when his established way of reasoning disappears because the plot needs him to react differently.

So no, I am not asking for morally perfect characters or consequence-free heroes.

I am asking for ethical coherence.

Old Trek could show someone doing the wrong thing. But very often, the fact that it was wrong — and why — was the story.

That is the difference I am talking about.

Exactly. And I would go even further: trust in old Trek was not sentimental or naïve. It was the consequence of ethical consistency.

The writing was so coherent that, in several stories, a character behaving differently was itself enough to suspect that something was wrong — that they had been replaced, possessed or manipulated. The audience knew their moral architecture that well. Certain choices simply would not have belonged to that person.

That is how strong the character writing was.

Now characters can suddenly act against values built over years because the plot needs conflict, and we are asked to accept this as “more realistic”.

I don’t.

For me, it is weaker writing and a poorer idea of humanity.

Old Trek imagined trust as something civilisation could actually achieve: people listened, reasoned, shared a problem, challenged each other and still trusted the other person’s integrity. Ethics was not separate from competence — it was part of competence.

Modern Trek often replaces that with suspicion, trauma, aggression and interpersonal conflict. That may resemble us today, but then what future are we actually imagining?

If centuries of progress give us better technology but essentially the same ego, distrust and emotional chaos, then the utopian idea has disappeared.

And perhaps that is the real issue: we have become so accustomed to cynicism that ethical coherence now looks unrealistic.

To me, that says more about our present than it does about old Star Trek.