From Janeway, Picard and Sisko to modern Star Trek: what happened to the ethical future we were once asked to imagine?
I have been watching Picard, and I am genuinely surprised by how much the ethical structure of Star Trek has changed.
I am not talking about nostalgia, and I am not saying that characters should remain exactly the same for thirty years.
I am talking about something much more fundamental.
TNG, DS9 and Voyager were built around an ethical premise that, for me, was one of the strongest elements of Star Trek:
THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS.
This principle appeared again and again.
Characters could make mistakes. They could become angry, afraid, traumatised or confused. They could even cross ethical lines.
But the line existed.
And when they crossed it, Star Trek stopped and examined what that meant.
That was the difference.
The characters did not simply ask:
Can we do this?
They asked:
Do we have the right to do this? What will this choice make us? What responsibility comes with the power we have?
Voyager is probably the clearest example.
They were trying to cross an impossible distance to return home. They could have justified almost anything through survival.
But they did not.
Again and again they accepted a longer journey, greater risk and personal sacrifice because reaching home could not justify destroying another civilisation, exploiting another species or abandoning the principles they represented.
That was not weakness.
That was the entire point.
Humanity had evolved technologically, but Star Trek proposed that perhaps we could also evolve ethically.
And this is where I struggle enormously with Picard.
Picard himself feels fundamentally different.
The Picard I knew could certainly be wrong, but his reasoning had extraordinary internal coherence. He questioned himself. He debated. He understood that being captain was not simply having authority — it was carrying responsibility for how that authority was used.
The new Picard often feels reactive, impulsive and strangely ineffective.
For me, that is not simply “an older and more vulnerable Picard”.
It changes the architecture of the character.
And Seven of Nine is even more difficult for me.
Seven was one of the characters I identified with most.
Her journey in Voyager was not simply about becoming emotional or “more human”.
It was about learning how to be human while maintaining discipline, logic and integrity.
She struggled with identity, belonging and emotion, but what made her extraordinary was precisely her effort not to become governed by impulse.
She could be wrong. She could be severe. She could misunderstand human behaviour.
But revenge was never the foundation of the character.
Her relationship with the Doctor was particularly important because both of them were learning what humanity meant almost from the outside. Their logic often exposed the inconsistencies of ordinary human behaviour.
Now I find Seven driven by anger, punishment and revenge.
At times she feels closer to a Klingon archetype than to Seven of Nine.
For me, this is not character development.
It is a different character.
And the change goes beyond Picard and Seven.
The entire universe feels different.
The older Star Trek made an extraordinary effort to maintain coherence.
Character coherence.
Ethical coherence.
Political coherence.
And even scientific coherence, as far as science fiction could reasonably achieve it.
Of course there were mistakes across hundreds of episodes, but you could feel that the writers cared about the rules of the universe they were creating.
A decision made years earlier could still matter.
A species had a culture and internal logic.
Technology had rules.
Characters carried the consequences of what they had experienced.
And most importantly, Star Trek was never simply fantasy in space.
It was asking something.
What could humanity become if we improved?
Not if we became perfect.
If we improved.
What would happen if curiosity became stronger than conquest?
If responsibility became stronger than ego?
If knowledge created an obligation rather than simply power?
If we learned that having the ability to do something did not automatically give us the moral right to do it?
That was what made Star Trek different from ordinary science fiction.
It was not the Enterprise.
It was not warp drive.
It was not aliens.
It was the idea that the future could contain people who had learned something that we still struggle to understand today.
I started watching Star Trek when I was around 18, and this philosophy genuinely influenced the way I grew up.
I saw many things I already believed in expressed in a more evolved society, and it made those principles feel possible rather than naïve.
Responsibility mattered.
Integrity mattered.
The method mattered as much as the result.
The end did not justify the means.
DS9 challenged this perhaps more
- JANEWAY — Caretaker THE COST OF DOING WHAT IS RIGHT
“I’m not willing to trade the lives of the Ocampa for our convenience.”
JANEWAY — CARETAKER 70,000 light-years from home. The easier way home would cost someone else their future. She refuses.
- PICARD — I, Borg POWER DOES NOT CREATE THE RIGHT TO USE IT
Caption:
PICARD — I, BORG He could destroy the enemy that once destroyed him. Having the power does not give him the right.
- SISKO — In the Pale Moonlight WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE END DOES JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
Caption:
SISKO — IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT He crosses the line — and he wins. The episode is about the moral price of that victory.
JANEWAY I will sacrifice our advantage rather than sacrifice them.
PICARD I will not become my enemy in order to defeat him.
SISKO I crossed the line to save millions — now I have to live with what I became.
When did Star Trek stop making the moral cost the story — and start treating moral compromise simply as character development?
There is such a thing as too many paragraphs.
J.J. Abrams killed it and it’s been Marvelized since then.
Or maybe it was dead before that, maybe Malcolm McDowell did it
On a slightly unrelated note:
What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?
It’s really
annoying to read
if you ask me.
I think you are partially trapped in nostalgia. Star Trek has never been this philosophically pure. Picard broke the Prime Directive in S1 by having contact with the Edo. And then regrettably prevented them from executing Wesley for trespassing a flower bed. Either should’ve cost him his command.
When Data has an inappropriate chat with a girl on a dying planet, JLP jokes with Riker about the level the shit is up to for them. And there are no palpable consequences for any of this behaviour.
Picard doesn’t feel like he should plant the Borg bug in Hugh. Admiral Valarian Canapés wholeheartedly disagrees. And while I like Picard’s reasoning, from a ten thousand foot perspective I agree with her. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have prevented the best TNG movie from existing but perhaps we would have also been spared Picard S2-3.
Late TNG and early DS9 with the introduction of Starfleet Al Qaeda, i.e. the Marquis, is a turning point for me. We get more stories that are more grey. Star Trek went from Kirk coming to a planet, telling the inhabitants their culture was stupid, to more contemporarily thoughtful treatments of ethical and moral conundrums in a utopian world, to seeing where utopia rubs up against the rest of the galaxy that isn’t there yet. Starfleet and the Federation are no longer exclusively the good guys. Sisko poisons an atmosphere just to catch one traitor and gets away with it. WTF?
Janeway gets a pass from me for most of her bad decisions because she tried and had to figure stuff out by herself. Tuvix be damned!
Enterprise also exists.
Third wave Trek is more grey than Marquis era Trek. It’s more CGI and action oriented because they can. That saves a couple of pages of dialogue otherwise spent on ethics. It’s different just like TNG was different from TOS. But it isn’t a radical change if you ask me.
Early TNG isn’t great until they stabilised the writers room. And then there is a continuation of development through DS9 and even into ENT. (Unfortunately including grade A assholes.) “Chaos on the bridge” is the default for Disco and Picard. And that’s why they often tell weird stories that don’t match up with what came before. They try to do Trek in the now passé golden age of television. And failed a lot imo.
Of all the third wave Trek, I’m most fond of Lower Decks. Because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is littered with easter eggs. Disco S2 is good. Most of SNW S1-3. Picard had moments in it but that’s it. My heart’s not in it any more. I watch it because I see we are entering another content drought. I even enjoy SNW S4, not because I think it’s good Star Trek but because it’s a middle finger to Paramount for no longer financing any new projects.
I don’t think nostalgia is the issue.
I’m not saying old Star Trek was morally pure. DS9 in particular had characters crossing serious ethical lines. My point is that the line mattered: when someone crossed it, the story examined the moral cost.
What feels different in Picard is not that it is darker. It is the loss of ethical and character coherence. Too often the characters seem to react as the plot requires, rather than from the moral architecture built around them over decades.
Seven is the clearest example for me. Of course she should change after twenty years. But moving from discipline, logic, self-control and the struggle to build an ethical individual identity toward revenge and punishment needs a convincing bridge. I don’t see enough of that bridge.
Old Trek repeatedly asked:
We can do this — but should we?
Sometimes the characters answered badly. But the consequences of that answer were part of the story.
That is what I miss. Not the 1990s. Not old sets. The coherence and the ethics.
I hear you. You think crossing the line mattered in 80s+ Trek but it doesn’t now. I don’t think that’s true. Sisko poisoning a planet is one of the examples where it clearly didn’t. But should have. So nostalgia is the only thing I could come up with to explain why you like the older and dislike the new stuff.
I don’t want to be in a position where I have to defend Picard, the show. Half of S1 is okay and then it goes off the rails. There are moments in it that are good. Overall, it’s a mess. One aspect that they did well is that they show a hero aging. Kurt Corbain will always be an icon because he ended his life early. So we were spared his ideas on COVID, Q Anon, or pick another hot button issue later in life or albums continually deteriorating in quality. With Picard they wanted to show consequences and chisel away at the icon a bit. The trauma of being borgified. His being sidelined for his unwillingness to bend to his superiors’ will. Why they had to bring his parents into it will be the writers’ secret. But they show consequences of lines being crossed. One of them is him standing rightly on his professional principles. It sounds to me this is exactly the stuff you’re missing and they built the whole S1 premise on it.
Burnham getting to be captain is about as realistic as chubby Kirk being demoted back to Captain.
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.
As I said before: I don’t want to be the guy who defends PIC … Jurati being justifiably imprisoned or at least institutionalised may have also spared us S2. Who am I to argue with that?
I’m thinking of Quark who burgled, sabotaged, schemed, snuggled, bought more than one child from the GQuad, and engaged in weapons trade and remained for the most part a comedic diversion character 7 series long. No consequences and maybe the thinnest veneer of looking at any of his decisions from an ethical POV. That’s another reason why I don’t perceive the difference you describe.
We could probably go back and forth a couple of more times here but maybe we leave it at that? Just tell me in no more than a paragraph: Tuvix. Janeway yay or Janeway nay? I’m just curious.
Just want to say to both of you that this type of discussion about Star Trek is the best and it’s why I love the show.
You both make such great points, and exemplify for me why sitting around in the conference room talking about a tense situation was so important in old Trek. Different viewpoints can both be important enough to be presented in the discussion.
Just want to say to both of you that this type of discussion about Star Trek is the best and it’s why I love the show.
You both make such great points, and exemplify for me why sitting around in the conference room talking about a tense situation was so important in old Trek. Different viewpoints can both be important enough to be presented in the discussion.
What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?
One of the multiple hallmarks of LLM text found in this post/some of OPs comments.
The conflict should not come from within the ship and starfleet should feel professional. Corruption should not be a part of future utopia. Less swearing and tantrums pls. A modern show should feel more utopian, with humanity ever closer to replacing the q.
Oh please. Surely we’re of better moral character than the Q already [On the bridge of the Enterprise D]. At least by example of the mischievous loud one most seen. We can do far better at aiming high, than to aspire to Q. … “What was it they called you on Brax, the god of lies?”
Power has clearly corrupted the Q. In humanity’s current state, power would corrupt them. Is corrupting them. In TNG, whether power would corrupt the average Federation citizen was an open question. In Discovery and Strange New Worlds and Academy, the answer was obviously yes.
In Lower Decks… once more, an open question.
I wonder how much of it is habit. DS9 thoughtfully examined the idea, and then Voyager did so much more loosely given the desperation level. Then Enterprise often had them fall short on this, because it’s the beginning of Starfleet- they’re the reason the rules are being written, that’s the point. Then Disco S1 was both wartime, although by now that was more of an excuse than the point like it was in DS9, and also you had the mirror captain. By the time Picard rolled around, it had accidentially just become habitual and reflexive. The idiom of Trek became looking at the line over your shoulder
I wish this was a real discussion prompt and not a (probably LLM-assisted) rant disguised as a question because as it reads now it’s just more of this:
If you don’t like something, that’s fine, but getting upset because [new thing] is different than [childhood thing] is not productive.
your udnerstanding is superficial. I suggest you to read again , understand better, and judge less
The fact that your writing in this response is so different than the post and other lengthy comments makes me wonder if my LLM assumption was correct.
What’s up with calling Geordie “The New Spock”?
Everyone else gets their character names under their picture and Geordie isn’t even close to Spock. Data is way more Spock-like.
That’s actually hilarious I never noticed that
In retrospect, I feel like there may have been some anti-black racism in the Star Trek scene, despite the ideals of the show. I was 5 when TNG started.
When Voyager came out I remember my dad making a comment about how “there’s never been a black Vulcan before,” and me thinking, “why does that matter?”
Old-school rage bait, I think. To try to make the reader go, “They made Spock a black guy??”
Part way reading through that, I began to wonder, the when, and what was happening then, …
It seems, Trek lost its way in this moral regard, after Voyager, …so, after 2001. 2001… so, after the PNAC plan kicked into action with their unifying false flag terror attack?
Can’t help also wonder about maybe the slippage had already begun earlier… perhaps, showing the fringe of the federation, evoked, in a “what if all art a tool of manifestation” sense, sanctuary districts. Overdue mends… Where’s our Bell?
And as I near the end, I think of the pale moonlight, and yup, you rightly mention it too. … It’s haunting, as Sisko closes the episode, trying to convince himself he is okay with it. New fake trek would have just blasted past that like it was nothing of consideration at all.
I’m glad there are others who see this too, and can put it to words as well as you have there. Good stuff. Maybe we who care about the essence of trek can revive trek. … I’ve already got various notes taken for an outline for a new trek in the same spirit as TNG, DS9 and VOY, accumulating over years. I wont be the only one. … How long before some start to churn it out via LLM? [Edit: <- Oh look, that’d be like thinking the ends justify the means.] I’d rather make it for real.
All the whitewashing narcissistic sadistic psychopathic machiavelianism, as seen in the fake trek (especially the most recent), is clearly not star trek.
The older Star Trek made an extraordinary effort to maintain coherence.
Character coherence.
Ethical coherence.
Political coherence.
And even scientific coherence, as far as science fiction could reasonably achieve it.
And it can be again. :)
Make it so.
Do you have any particular examples of the “the ends justify the means” attitude you seem to think is so prevalent now?
Enterprise got pretty rough in seasons 2-3. But that was a reaction to 9/11 and yeah a lot of people kinda had their minds broken by that.
Which I think alludes to the crux of the issue: Star Trek does not REALLY take place in the 23rd century: it takes place on a series of soundstages in Los Angeles in the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Each show is an examination of the values of the moment as we want to believe ourselves. Earlier Trek was filmed in a more optimistic age; later Trek was filmed in a more jaded, bitter, cynical age. And it shows.
This is one of the reasons I love Lower Decks so much, btw: aside from the jokes, it embraces the corny wholesomeness of the Berman & Braga era. I think Strange New Worlds might. I’m curious how it feels. I haven’t watched it much.
That’s the best part of science fiction. On the one hand, it’s a mirror. “See, even with all their technology, they’re still people. They’re still us. Look at what we are” But on the other hand it’s a place to play with and practice ideas. “Look at what we can become.”
The best of Star Trek, I think, is the “look at what we can become.” But if things are rough out there, it turns into “look at what we are.” And it’s rough out there.
Exactly. For me, Star Trek was never just science fiction. It was always a human question: what could we become if we genuinely chose to become better?
Even TOS, rough as it was, was already pushing boundaries — putting Uhura, a not only white skin and woman, on the command and imagining a future where that was simply normal. The same principle continued through the franchise: different planets and species were rarely just “aliens”; they reflected real cultures, conflicts, prejudices and political or social problems from our own world, but displaced far enough to let us examine them differently.
Even the science was treated with unusual discipline. Much of it was speculative, of course, but it was usually extrapolated from real scientific ideas rather than used as random fantasy. The strength of Star Trek was coherence — scientific, cultural, ethical and psychological.
That is why “look at what we can become” matters so much more to me than “look at what we are.”
If the future simply reproduces our present cynicism, ego, revenge and moral shortcuts with better technology, then we have advanced technologically, but not as human beings.
And Star Trek’s most radical idea was always that perhaps we could do both.
That’s very well put.
it takes place on a series of soundstages in Los Angeles in the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Earlier Trek was filmed in a more optimistic age; later Trek was filmed in a more jaded, bitter, cynical age. And it shows.
This really sums up the huge difference in attitude and tone.
And even then…they got there in the end. It was rather the point of the arc.
Yes sure a lot and a lot… but Seven is the clearest example for me.
In Voyager, she repeatedly learns to restrain impulse, revenge and Borg-style utilitarian logic in favour of individual rights and ethical judgement. In Picard, she becomes a vigilante and ultimately kills Bjayzl out of revenge even after Picard explicitly challenges that choice. … she changed is nto mroe seven of nibe and all the character behind…
More broadly, Picard normalises extrajudicial violence, revenge and “necessary” moral compromise much more than TNG/Voyager did. My point is not that older Trek never crossed those lines . DS9 absolutely did. The difference is that older Trek usually made crossing the line itself the ethical problem of the story.
That distinction matters to me: not “nobody ever does wrong”, but the narrative still knows that the means require moral scrutiny.
In Picard, she becomes a vigilante and ultimately kills Bjayzl out of revenge even after Picard explicitly challenges that choice.
And you believe the show was endorsing the fact that she did it? Portrayal of an act is not an endorsement of that act. Seven did plenty of shady stuff on Voyager, from trying to take over the ship to disobeying orders and waking up the Vaadwaur.
That distinction matters to me: not “nobody ever does wrong”, but the narrative still knows that the means require moral scrutiny.
You seem very determined to make the case that the new shows don’t provide that, but I simply don’t agree.
Doesn’t NuTrek glorify Section 31, which is basically just that?
I always think about that TNG episode where the enterprise comes across that phase shifting technology but ultimately destroys it since it’s too close to stealth tech.
NuTrek would probably use it to 9/11 Romulus’s sun’s core and wipe their home world out just to stir up drama. I think the second part was a plot point in Picard so it wouldn’t be hard for them to insert either lol
Star Trek Discovery did an entire season arc about how Section 31 almost wiped out all intelligent life in the galaxy because they thought the ends justify the means. So that kind of makes me wonder whether you or OP have actually engaged with the thing you’re criticizing.
Doesn’t NuTrek glorify Section 31, which is basically just that?
Arguably in the movie, though they didn’t do anything particularly immoral in it.
Beyond that, not even a little bit. They’re still the bad guys.
NuTrek would probably use it to 9/11 Romulus’s sun’s core and wipe their home world out just to stir up drama.
If you have to conjure examples out of thin air, it’s possible your argument isn’t as strong as you think it is.
I’m not conjuring examples, I’m having a toilet thought. I think I got a stomach bug or food poisoning
Not everything is an argument
I think I got a stomach bug or food poisoning
I feel you. I’ve been going through it this weekend, myself. Flu season came early.
Flu is the worst, hopefully you’re not blowing chunks
I’m pissed Covid isn’t important enough any more to merit a free vaccine, both those illnesses are hellish
Bit late to the party but for a real example Pike commited genocide on a hunch in SNW…so yeah I can see New Trek genociding Romulans
You would have preferred the genocide to have been not on a hunch?
Would have prefered them not commiting genocide but at least discussing it through would have been interesting. Are they ok commiting genocide for the future of humanity? And not just ehh lets just do it.
The way I would have liked it most would be them discussing it coming to the conclusion that genocide is never ok and that they are stopping it and then a temporal agent stops them from stopping it or something…
at least discussing it through would have been interesting.
I think him having to make a snap decision without complete information is far more interesting, both dramatically and as an exploration of themes that have been present in the franchise since the beginning.
It’s interesting that your preferred solution is to remove all agency from the characters.
Yeah, dont think I would have liked my prefered version much either.
What do you mean with its more interesting? My read of the moral is now %hat its fine to commit genocide if you think its for the greater good. History past and present always shows that the people commiting genocide at least say its for the greater good…
My guess? In short? The people, who first made up that future and that quest for humanity are now called woke antifa sympathisers or worse. Todays filmmaker have other dreams, where the end does justify the means and so on.
It’s not the filmmakers that changed, it’s the centralization of power of studios. Today’s woke antifa supporter filmmakers are making youtube videos or podcasts, or trying to scrounge together crowdfunding.
Watched the first 3 episodes of Picard. Decided it was just more Abramsverse extension garbage.
Star Trek is dead. It died in the early 2000s when UPN canceled Enterprise. That is my hill to die on.
If Star Trek can’t teach you self reflection or reflection on the state of humanity, including conceptual ethics, it isn’t Star Trek.
Read books instead and try to remember the good times.
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.
U.S has lost that for sure. It’s utterly devoid of ethics. Multiple Western nations are following that path.
Neocolonialism, piracy, genocide. Our countries have become the worst versions of ourselves.
:(
I liked the cartoon, it’s silly but it felt more true to the old series than picard
I cant recall what it’s called right now, but it must have been good cause they cancelled it too
lower decks, and i agree! despite being unapologetically modern, it somehow feels more inline with old trek than new trek.
i was sure they’d kill it after a couple seasons, it’s honestly wild we got 5.
The only cartoon for me was from the 70s…
I found Picard to be the most poorly written of the modern Trek series, with some great ideas wasted by haphazard and shoddy execution, but:
Season one ends with Picard convincing Soji that the safety and freedom of synthetic life is not worth welcoming entities that would destroy organic life. Instead she’s working towards peace and understanding in season 2.
Season two charts a redemption arc for no less than the Borg Collective, very much following up on the themes of I, Borg.
Season three shows the result of Section 31’s “ends justify the means” thinking during the Dominion War: enduring hatred leading to the infiltration of Starfleet and near destruction of the Federation.
It’s not well executed, and there is certainly plenty I disagree with, but I think for the most part Picard aligns with the principles you’re talking about.
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.
I’ll definitely agree that they could have developed the ethical conflict more. The biggest problem with Picard’s first season was that they really dragged their feet in the first half and then rushed through the climax, throwing up problems and solutions that could have actually been interesting if they’d taken the time to really develop them. It was clear they didn’t have things mapped out and it really hurt them.
But I do think the dilemma as it stands speaks directly against “ends justify the means” thinking. Both sides face an existential threat that could easily justify using destructive means to survive. The synthetics face being wiped out by a Romulan armada short term, and Federation policy long term. Their self-interest says they should call in the organic-destroying super-synths. The Federation (and the rest of the galaxy) face destruction if the synthetics make that call. Their self-interest says they should let the Romulans wipe out the synth colony first.
Neither of those happen, though. Instead Picard fights off the Romulans until Riker arrives, putting his faith in the hope that the synths wont make the call. And the synths stand down, putting their faith in an institution that has up until now been working to legislate them out of existence. And it turns out to be the right decision for both.
tyhank you for your great answer and thinking, I really appreciate you, and I understand your reading, but I still disagree that the ending reaches the same ethical place.
For me, the future of old Trek was not built simply on trust. Trust came from an ethical framework. Old Picard would not just ask a persecuted minority to trust him and the Federation that had already outlawed them. He would first ask: do they have the right to seek protection? From whom? And when does protecting one persecuted group become the destruction of another?
Trek had already spent years asking these questions with Data: when does created life become a person, when does ownership become slavery, and what obligations do creators have toward the beings they create? The Measure of a Man is basically built around that question.
And this is where the Alliance of Synthetic Life bothered me too. They are supposedly a vastly superior synthetic civilisation, yet their reasoning is essentially the most basic human response: you persecuted us, therefore we will destroy you. That felt incredibly simplistic.
One of the strengths of old Trek was that other species did not simply think like humans in different bodies. The Founders in DS9 are a perfect example: their entire perception of identity, individuality, solids and belonging comes from being Changelings. You can disagree with them morally, but their reasoning grows from what they are.
That was what made the encounters interesting. The alien civilisation brought a genuinely different logic to the table, and Star Trek used that difference to make us look at our own conflicts: race, religion, power, minorities, occupation, fear. from another angle.
So yes, the synths eventually stand down. But for me the more interesting Star Trek story was the ethical argument that should have happened before that decision.
I think you’re under-selling the level of depth Picard goes into here. You’re limiting your analysis to what happened in that isolated episode, when Picard is a serialized narrative that is making a much larger statement when taken as a whole. It confronts the theme of how we deal with an overwhelming threat through different facets of a number of different scenarios, only one of which is Soji’s decision in the last episode.
We see the Federation’s isolationist response to the loss of their shipyards, the neglect it leaves the Romulan refugees in, and the anti-synth sentiment it breeds. We see how that hardline attitude impacts even Federation citizens caught up in it, like Rafi and the Rikers. We also see the Federation’s response of the perceived threat of the Ex-Borg, and the effect that has on Hugh and Seven. And we see the Zhat Vash’s response to the knowledge of the “super-synths” and the terrible price the Romulan people pay for that.
All of these are maladaptive, fear-based reactions to the same sort of existential threat the synth colony faces in the final episode, and they’re all contrasted to the choice the synths make there. It’s all part of the same theme being dealt with through the entire season. The answer given to the question of “do the ends justify the means” in the last episode may just be one sentence long, but it’s the final sentence of an essay that started in episode one.
You said in your initial post that when a character crossed the line, Star Trek stopped and examined what that meant, and that’s exactly what’s happening throughout Picard. That’s why the tone is so grim for most of the season. As Picard said right up front, crossing that line means you’re “no longer Starfleet” – you lose something of yourself. And the entire season is driving home that point, but also showing the process of recovering from a mistake like that, and setting a better example for the next generation.
In that regard, I’d also push back against your comment about the synths. Star Trek has a long history of showing that technological advancement is not always accompanied by commensurate wisdom. The synths are like Data was in much of TNG: remarkably intelligent in some ways, childlike in others. A key difference being that they have pronounced emotions, so instead of child-like wonder and curiosity, they’re prone to emotional over-reaction. So maybe V’Ger is a better comparison than Data – an enormous super-intelligence, prone to child-like tantrums.
I’ve appreciated this talk because, like I said, I do think Picard really failed narratively in a lot of ways, so I’d usually not bother to take the time to defend the things that do work. But it’s nice to take a moment to do so, lets me appreciate it a little more myself.
Yeah. One thing Im not wild about trek since ds9 is a sorta slippery slope. Increasinglingly the franchise has become more typical space opera over what it was. Much like what we are seeing in our actual society it was slow at first but yeah everything in the new trek era is sci fi but kinda no longer feels trek.
agree
Old trek felt more competent, trusting of each other, asking should we do this? Will it harm others? It was inspirational, a future where we could talk and try to help each other and learn and grow.
Current trek feele more anti human, more drama, more attacking each other, more shit going on.
Old trek they actively had a problem and trusted each other and told each other and listened. New trek doesn’t understand that concept and nobody seems to trust anybody anymore.
I believe the reason is always comes down to capitalism. They want more views more money and giving people a vision of the future without it is anti capitalism, they don’t want that.
I just enjoyed the old shows better because they where compet, trusting, caring and more loving and understanding of others and there differences.
Now it’s just drama and subtle or overtly anti Difference, mainly because the giga corp making it wants us to fight each other instead of making a better world.
This is just my thoughts and feelings of the shows. And don’t be a dick and say “oh what about this one episode!”. I’m talking it as a whole, not a single shit episode I the whole series
You talk a lot about trust, and I think that’s an important factor. Sure, you can argue that the shows’ utopianism changed entirely because the powers-that-be warped the messaging. That’s probably true too, certainly now with the Ellisons at the top. But that’s pretty recent.
I think there’s also an aspect of how much viewers would be able to suspend their disbelief if they were served '60s or even '90s era scripts today. Especially TNG was very diplomacy focused and based in mutual respect. My guess is there has been an erosion of trust in Western society in the meantime. Again, ultimately because Capitalism, I’m sure — but in a broader sense than I interpret from your comment?
I dunno, I don’t have a neatly wrapped theory about this. Sorry if I go completely off on a tangent based on your comment.
I think the first season of Discovery tried to earnestly grapple with real world politics through the whole Klingon war/Mirror Universe arcs. All of Picard seemed to be about conspiracies and shadow governments, which certainly also speaks to its time of production… while dulling the shine on the utopian vision for the future.
And it’s not just badmirals and Section 31 that have been at issue. We’ve seen plenty of disgruntled pirates (read: regular-Joe capitalists) turned terrorists in the eyes of the Federation. Our main casts have visited enough dystopian “slum” planets in the past ten years, where criminals organise and prosper, that the idealism of Star Trek is depicted as precarious.
Way out in the 32nd century, as Osyraa bites into a Federation-produced apple, admiral Vance comments that “it’s made from our shit, you know”. Way to sell post-scarcity, buddy. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made. I think the past decade of Trek has done a good job of postulating soft values, standing up for minorities and diversity. It’s been pretty shit (to stay in the vocabulary) at representing the very foundation of that sort of tolerance, though.
Trek should be a means to imagining the end of Capitalism, even if only as a background note for all kinds of weekly weird encounters and philosophical twists. But that is not just hard to depict in the 21st century — it’s actively being played as downright unsexy in the shows.
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.
I would say it depends.
I mean, the ends not justifying the means is kind of the entire point of DISCO S1 (whether or not the rest of DISCO embodied it is a different matter); Burnham has to let go of what Lorca summarizes as “Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings.” or in other words, the ends often justify the means.
Also, SNW is better about it, than say, PIC; for instance, SNW S3 E7 “What is Starfleet?” from 2025, for all its flaws (including in some ways being very similar to TNG “Tin Man”), basically has the crew going “WTF! The ends (saving an alien race from a war they didn’t start) do not justify the means (enslaving a sentient space whale)!” Also, SNW 1x06 is basically “ends don’t justify means”, although mostly because it basically copied “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”.
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 basically just gave three (or at least 2, as the DISCO one maybe is a bit iffy) examples of modern Star Trek scrutinizing the means despite the obstensibly good ends.
Also, another example is S2 E2 “Ad Astra Per Aspera” borderline almost literally puts “the moral cost of the means” (keeping good genetically modified people like Una out of Starfleet) that is ostensibly done for the ends of preventing another Eugenics Wars. I wouldn’t hesitate to call this episode one of the best in the whole franchise, very much in the tradition of court case ethical discussion episodes like “Measure of a Man”.
I don’t think one can make a blanket statement about newer Star Trek quitting “believing something”; sure, it may be uneven in quality (maybe more than classic)*, but dismissing all of “NuTrek” out of hand is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
: I mean, there’s whatever DIS season 2 was, Section 31, most of PIC, etc., but also, it’s not like good swathes of classic Trek aren’t also kind of crap - I mean, there’s the time Riker murdered his clone and nobody batted an eye, as well as TOS S3, TNG S1, and the inconsistency of VOY. Even in the good classic episodes, it’s not like every one is “do the ends justify the means” - in addition to other ethical themes, classic Trek still had room for simply "Cool sci-fi s** happened and we have to deal with it", not to mention episodes focused on interpersonal drama like “Data’s Day” or any of Deanna’s “Oh f*** my mother is on board” episodes.
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.
I remember in TNG when their stance on Palestine and then violent resistance changed. Was kind of cool seeing the process of the writers coming around on a political stance
