this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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I really enjoyed some darker content in terms of establishing that humans aren't always the good, wise, enlightened people of the galaxy, consistently The Good Guys in nearly every encounter.
But shifting to that "oh there's a dark side to all the optimism" as the consistent ongoing tone for the show rings wrong as much as the always good guys tone did with older trek.
It's the broad brush that gets me. Going dark has to be a principled choice. DS9 nailed it with the "it's easy to be a saint in paradise" mentality. The hope in most Trek writing comes from a worldview that most people are inherently good unless their environment forces them to act otherwise (which I would very much say is how the world actually works). When shows go dark using something closer to a "people are inherently evil unless they really fight back against their nature" mentality, it feels bad and rings hollow.