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It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about.
(media.piefed.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Agreed. People should dislike modern Star Trek for it’s bad writing, not because it’s progressive.
Trek writing has never been consistently good. Half of TOS is unwatchably bad. TNG sucks until Riker gets more hair. DS9 sucks until Sisko gets less hair. Voyager's all over the place (even though it's my favorite). Enterprise is mostly bad. Only the even numbered TOS movies are good. Only the first two TNG movies are good.
I say this with a genuine love of Star Trek, but the quality of the writing has varied greatly over each individual series.
As a Star Wars nerd, I feel this so intensely. It sucks when you love the setting, but the actual writing is a crapshoot.
You hold up Andor, Rogue One, and the Animated Clone Wars Saga next to the Sequels, the Christmas Special, or Revenge of the Sith, and it makes your heart hurt.
Agreed. Season three TNG is peak Star Trek. That said, and at the risk of being flayed by the Star Trek community at large, I think DS9 was the best series, taken as a whole.
Subjectively agreed, although ds9 is not as suitable for random watching since some characters have like real arcs and there's a plot (which we can probably thank b5 for)
Which is one of the reasons why Discovery and Picard at least are problematic (I haven't seen Academy).
As you say, a lot of the old stories aren't really that good. What happens when they had a bad story, or maybe less 'bad' and just didn't engage with you? New one next week.
With Discovery and Picard? Well the whole season is the story, so if it doesn't engage with you, you are pretty much out for the season.
Personally, I never felt there was really enough narrative "meat" in their stories to warrant a season long arc, and so it felt a bit stretched for time for the perceived "a story needs to fill a binge" market.
Strange New Worlds primary win was returning to episodic, to give a story a chance to shine or fail in a digestable amount of time and move on. Was at its weakest when Season 3 kind of devolved to a weird arc.
Star Trek writing just depends on making sure the main characters have exactly the right hairstyle. They tried real hard to find it in Discovery, maybe with a few more seasons we would have got there.
The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn't an issue at all.
Uhura was a bridge officer who was a black woman, and nobody cared or even noticed because in-universe there was nothing special about that.
I like how in Discovery a character came out as non-binary and everyone is like "ok cool" and that was that and it was never brought up again (because why would it be)?
You can tell by the absolute meltdown conservative spaces had about that five second clip that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
It got there, sure, but that coming out was a bit rough, because they treated it as a "big deal", they were afraid of coming out and ultimately did, but seemed to harbor anxiety that should have not had a place anymore. They got over it (I assume, I actually kind of lost track of Discovery), but at one point it was too big a deal.
Also, out of universe, they were a bit annoying about bragging about being the first non-binary representation in Star Trek ever, which just seems disrepectful of the times it came up before.
I don't believe any of this is supported by what we saw on screen. Do you have evidence to support these claims? Even just a single line of dialogue for each claim would be helpful.
I'd have to rewatch, but I recall as they picked Adira up from 32nd century Earth, despite being a fully grown up person, went by feminine pronouns. Adira had to work up to come out, rather than being out from the onset.
I recall because I was very confused on Adira's introduction because they kept yelling from the rooftops about how progressive they were by having a non-binary character, but Adira and everyone around Adira kept using feminine terms. I distinctly recall a 'coming out' moment which seemed to be played with trepidation.
The fairest thing I could say is that 32nd century earth was no longer "federation" and so maybe they had a big old conservative backslide and so Adira's plight was due to the gloomy setting of isolated Earth with the loss of FTL travel.
Nothing from the show itself? A transcript or youtube clip?
Ugh, fine.
"Adira, who joined us from Earth, may be able to guide sto Federation headquarters one she regains her own memoris"
"Is there any way the symbiont was joined with Adira against her will?"
Basically, Adira spends episodes 3 through 8 rolling with feminine pronouns, keeping their non-binary nature a secret.
Adira doesn't come out until Episode 8: ADIRA: Um, “they.” Not… not “she.” I’ve never felt like a “she” or or a “her,” so… I would prefer “they” or “them” from now on.
STAMETS: Okay.
ADIRA: Um, and I’ve never told anyone but Gray.
Adira kept their non-binary identity secret and took them 5 episodes to work up the nerve to declare to the first person other than Gray. I think the traditional trek move would have been from episode 3, right out the gate, first reference to this new character would use non-gendered pronouns because, well, why would they feel they need to keep it a secret?
Where is it reflected in canon that Adira was "afraid" to come out, keeping their gender a "secret", or otherwise had to "work up courage"?
Again, just a single line of dialogue or anything from the show that illustrates that the topic was covered more than that scene I linked to in my initial comment.
I quoted the show. Season 3, episode 8. After several episodes of going by "she" did Adira actually say anything, after spending their entire life only telling Gray.
Why else would they withhold this their whole life except for anxiety. Is not like they had an awakening, they said they never felt that way and had already confided in the person they were closest to.
They made it very clear that asserting a non binary identity was just uncomfortable enough in society in the 32nd century that Adira felt a need to keep it to themselves.
I'm asking is there anything on screen to support your claim other than that very brief line of dialogue?
But that's not what they did with Uhura. They never hung a lantern on her being black or a woman. She was just there and it was such a normal thing it didn't need to be addressed in-universe.
Having a character "come out" means the world is one in which people are hiding in the closet because of a social stigma. A world in which that stigma doesn't exist doesn't require a character to come out.
Huh? How is Stamets supposed to know if nobody tells him?
EDIT: Also Uhura's Blackness and femaleness were most certainly addressed in-universe in a longer scene than I shared above.
Don't spend 5 episodes uses feminine pronouns for the character then have them "come out" as non-binary. Just establish their pronouns from the outset, and don't make a big deal outside the show about how brave they are for having an NB Trek character.
You don't normalize something by pointing out that it's strange.
Got it, you're saying you are happy to see the inclusion of a non-binary character, just upset that it wasn't communicated a few episodes earlier?
It's that they are treating it as something weird. Uhura's race and sex weren't treated as weird because why would it be? There wasn't anything especially special about Geordi being a blind helmsman when TNG premiered, because making accommodations wasn't anything special - it was normal.
What Discovery did was performative inclusivity, which is a more subtle form of bigotry. It's pointing at someone and calling them weird and claiming moral superiority for tolerating their presence.
Hm I don't remember that. Can you point me to a line of dialogue or anything outside of that (again extremely brief) clip I posted to support your argument?
Pretty much. And maybe in the off-screen bragging about it, at least say first main character or first crew member (someone argued about Dax, but I'd say that character was gendered, just fluid over the long term), not 'first character ever', since you had a number of instances, and pretty much dead-on a whole species dedicated to exploring gendered versus non-binary in TNG. That's one habit of Discovery was leaving people wondering if they even watched the shows that preceeded them...
There should have been no good reason for Adira to only tell Gray despite their clear desire to be recognized as non-binary.
Or, alternatively, they could have established that 32nd century Earth cut off from the federation had backslid to MAGA-sensibilities to explain why far future human feels the need to tiptoe around their identity until they come to terms with the culture of the federation that might have been lost to Earth.
I'm discussing canon and "off-screen" is definitionally not canon. Canonically, it's hard for me to see Adira's gender as anything other than an extremely small side detail about the character as it's only brought up that one single time in passing.
Is Jay-Den being gay not exactly that? Nobody cares in universe. But somewhat it is a big thing for a lot of people for no reason at all.
It is exactly that. Same with the meltdowns over Adira.
Discovery writing is all over the place I agree, but Starfleet Academy writing does not look that bad to me. What is so much worse then previous trek? If we do not cherry pick the best of the past against the worst of the new, writing is better or on the same level of what we saw before.
Yeah, nothing is organic. Feels like it's not normal to the characters too, because they have to keep explaining it to themselves.
The message is not the issue, the inability of the writers to insert it in the story is.
I find the actual problems they face to be more organic than other series, there's always at least a semi-good reason why the threat of the week is occuring rather than something stupid like flying through enemy territory with no shields or some rando just beaming out your ships main computer being a huge weakness that no one ever thought might be a problem.
This summarizes everything wrong with Trek:
Why is she running a ship like she's in a vegan cafe in Portland? Why does she need glasses hundreds of years in the future?
What happens to all the straight people in the future? a killer virus?
What's the primary romantic relationship in that show again?
i was pointing it out alot on nutrek videos, some people dont believe its bad writing lol. have you seen them act lately, or the writing. its wierd how kurtzman sees the live action as transformer style/copaganda of nutrek but with the animated is more in line with old trek.