I guess what bums me out specifically about the direction star trek has headed is the overt pessimism for the future. The creators act like we've spent 40 years cringing away from Roddenberry's vision as unbearably naive. But part of the point of framing TOS from a utopian point of view, imo, is these stories are going to feel WRONG to us. These are supposed to be the stories of people who have left at least some of the counter-productive impulses and unhelpful behavior and ways of thinking behind them. Of course that seems weird to us. If we give up our darkest impulses and our ceaseless primate bickering, what stories could we possibly have left to tell?
These are the stories of the starship Enterprise! The point is to tell a story from the point of view from a radically different frame of reference from our own jaded cynicism and then imagine it as a wild adventure instead of utterly boring utopian tedium. This is difficult! It is daring! To imagine utopia and then brazenly assert it would interesting.
Unfortunately, over time, Star Trek seems less and less able to imagine utopia at all, having already abandoned the idea that anything but gritty ferengi realism is hopelessly naive. It has turned from a high-minded vision of what civilization could be, to a pessimistic review of what western civilization IS. High minded ideals undercut by corrupt politicians, greed, and our basest impulses for war and profit. There is benefit to writing Star Trek this way, you can certainly reflect the fall of the US in the fall of the federation if you like, but there are also plenty of other grimdark properties fully capable of completing that particular assignment.
The point of Star Trek is you can be better, but you have to try. And keep trying. And the first step to creating it is imagining it could exist at all, and that it would, against all our conflict-loving primate instincts, actually be fun and interesting and a far greater adventure than we can currently imagine.
Utopianism has its own pitfalls, so maybe the project was fatally flawed from the start. Either it's impossible or any utopianism that rings true would feel wrong to less socially evolved creatures such as ourselves. Regardless, I miss the days when watching Star Trek didn't leave me feeling bummed out because the future tastes like ash.
