this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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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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Relative to the time in which each was released Trek has gotten less progressive over time. TOS was released during the height of the cold war and the civil rights movement. It had a black female bridge officer. The line of command isn't super clear on tos but Uhura was a department head and no lower than sixth in command. It had the first interracial kiss on television between Kirk and Uhura. It had a Russian bridge officer, also no lower than sixth in command. It had an Asian bridge officer also no lower than sixth in command. Earth was presented as a Socialist utopia.
TNG didn't really back off of that ideologically, though it didn't do as good of a job with racial representation, but it also didn't advance it and culture did advance between the 60s and the 90s.
DS9 pulled back on it primarily as a result of its exploration of darker themes. It creates and drives wedges into cracks in Earth's Utopia. It has Starfleet and even the main protagonist abandon Starfleet's ideas and principles in periods of adversity. It also started the movement away from the philosophical sci-fi that Trek thrived in before to more action oriented sci-fi.
Ultimately, imo, Janeway was a more "Starfleet" officer than Sisko. She showed more integrity and dedication to the Federation's ideals under greater levels of hardship and personal risk. All in all Voy was not particularly more or less progressive than DS9 though.
Nutrek tries but it's too action oriented and doesn't really explore the themes in a meaningful way and that causes its more progressive moments to come off as less impactful and less integrated into the story. It also seems to forget that Starfleet is a quasi military organization and doesn't always do a good job at presenting the characters as competent disciplined professionals which makes progressive decisions and moments less meaningful.
So, I agree. Trek isn't woke enough. It should bring Roddenberry's philosophical progressive Trek into the modern era.
IMO it's more to do with the Network/producers wanting to play it safe, since Star Trek is a big franchise, and thus a reliable cash cow now. Either that or it's a victim of its own fame. No-one wants to be the one who ruined Star Trek, for example.
Parts of the US threatened to take the original series off the air because it was so socially progressive, and I feel like the subsequent series haven't quite lived up to that part of the legacy, because they don't want to risk much.
The most emblematic of this, I feel, is the shift to the 32nd century. There was a lot of potential there, and a lot of it was just thrown away to reset everything back to something recognisable, just with a shiny new coat of paint. You would expect them to have at least moved on from warp drives, phasers, and quantum torpedoes a millennium after the fact, or that they would be almost entirely unrecognisable.
I want the first otherkin Starfleet officer. The first plural Starfleet officer who isn't a cyborg or an alien. I want Starfleet officers with (treated) BPD, NPD, and ASPD. I want the first schizophrenic Starfleet Officer. I want the first transracial Starfleet Officer (transracial people are people who grew up in a different ethnic culture than their biological parents). The first Starfleet Officer with neopronouns.
I want a story about the Federation trying to ban animal meat while respecting cultural traditions. A story about the Federation dealing with democracy for plural systems.
I was going to link this comment to You, and lo and behold-