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?
It’s always been a discussion, not an unspoken agreement. Every series and film has characters with each of those viewpoints. A viewpoint may go unmentioned for a season but it’s there.
You might be observing that there are prominent moments for one viewpoint more so than the other.
How else would means be justified, except by ends?
The phrase is “the ends don’t justify the means”; it’s particularized. Those ends don’t justify those means. Other means may be justified. You don’t use an axe to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead, in the ancient Chinese proverb, but you might use a rolled up newspaper. The ends justify some means, not others.
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 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 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.
That episode where McCoy blew up the utopian civilization of golden prosperity and peace because they didn’t fuck anymore like god intended.
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.
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.
Really enjoyed this post.
thanks
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.
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.
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??”
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.
That was not weakness. That was the entire point.
Okay, chatgpt. 🙄
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, I was already convinced it was LLM generated and I didn’t even notice that bit. The fact that their response to you is completely different seals it.
You’re surprised that someone writes differently when writing a long post about something they obviously care about vs responding to a baseless accusation that only warrants half a thought? Care to elaborate?
Do you sincerely want to understand or are you just trying to argue?
I sincerely don’t understand what would lead you to think the post is AI written, I was enjoying reading people discuss Star Trek before coming across this AI thread, and after having my human written comment called AI not too long ago it bothers me to see what seems to me like earnest writing be called AI.
That’s where I’m coming from when I say that I’m willing to argue, but I follow the core tenets of arguing I learned in philosophy 101 to assume the other person (you) have something worth saying and that questions of meaning come before questions of truth. I’m open to being wrong, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me that I am.
After reading this thread I went back and skimmed through the first several lines of the post with an eye for AI/human indicators, and found three things that gave the impression of a human touch before coming back and writing my comment. First, there was a sentence in all caps, which seems weird for an LLM to do as I believe they usually go for a more neutral tone that’s antithetical to digital shouting. Second, 7o9_99 skipped the oxford comma in at least one place and a cursory internet search tells me that LLMs tend to make full use of that.
But the big thing that I feel bad saying but easily overlooked while reading it for the content is that the post is terribly formatted. My experience has been that LLMs write nice looking paragraphs, and if it does break things out into single lines it tends to do so with bullet points. This post breaks out each sentence into a new line instead of using any real paragraphs that reads to me like a person’s stream of consciousness rather than the more structured writing of an LLM. I guess you could argue they went through and hit enter everywhere to add the new lines but that seems like more work than an LLM user would be willing to put in.
Does that make sense?
bro they called Uhura a white skin
I’m so confused. Who said that? Why was the comment I responded to edited to say the same thing you just did?
OP wrote that in another comment. CTRL+F, my dude. using an AI to write your trek love letter is so fucking cringe.
no dear is my text and my reflections
I highly doubt that, but in case it’s true, consider not allowing yourself to be brainwashed so thoroughly by LLM writing patterns.
As someone who has used em-dashes, semicolons, and other punctuation (including bullets and spacing) for clarity and emphasis since adolescence, fuck that.
This person’s using proper grammar. GET 'EM!
As someone who’s read many books, that’s a human writing pattern. Maybe you shouldn’t cuck yourself just so people don’t think you’re an LLM
I enjoy Strange New Worlds for the most part, and most of the recent series I think I like better than the loud complainers (nothing wrong with that, mind)… I think what bothers me more than the end-means problem is that it seems like everyone talks endlessly about whatever the current crisis is, and the talking seems to 1) not be interrupted by the critical time of the crisis and 2) do most of the problem solving. As in, they stop the action, take time to talk it all out, and then do whatever magical thing magically fixes the problem that we will never see or hear of ever again. It all works out perfectly, and everyone’s emotional needs are met. (except where they’re trying to create ongoing drama otherwise).
I guess it would make for a boring show if crises happened as quickly as they do IRL, and if repairs took as long as they would IRL, but I think they’ve gone WAY too far the other direction on being to talk their way out of any crisis (with a little exciting shaky-camera thrown in)
I enjoy Strange New Worlds fo
I’ve never managed to get that far. Because (like is stated and elaborated upon in the original post)…
The entire universe feels different.
Breaking coherence very early on in the first episode, to such an extreme, I cannot bring myself to carry on watching. It’s like someone forgot the brief on what and who Vulcans are, what their culture’s like, and did not pass it on to writers, directors, nor actors.
I can understand that. It didn’t bother me as much. The singing episode I skipped large parts of (although they actually had an in-universe explanation, I still rolled my eyes so hard they hurt for a few hours).
I think, for the most part, that they sort of have captured some of the more classic Trek feel, but… specific things might bother specific people, e.g. you and the Vulcans. So I wouldn’t encourage you to take another look because it’d annoy you. heh.
But… I stuck with Discovery. I liked some of what they did, disliked a lot, but it ended up mostly alright, except for the whole emo-talky thing on crack.
I think I might not be a hardcore Trek fan, though. I tend to prefer my sci-fi a bit harder (The Expanse was GREAT - books and show; growing up I read lots of Asimov. And Heinlein and the other classic era authors, but Asimov was my favorite). With the exception of Andor, while I grew up adoring the original three, I hated the prequels, was fine with the sequels, and have been meh on most of the other media (baby yoda was fun but the series got old imho) - with the exception of Andor which I think it one of the top shows of all time ever in any genre. heh.
I’ll probably watch just about any new Trek series. I like enough about most of them to overcome any things I dislike. :)
But I can totally respect a viewpoint like yours.
I can understand that. It didn’t bother me as much. The singing episode …
Glad I didn’t go further.
The one episode I actually watched at random was the singing episode. I shut that shit off like it was radioactive.
Yes, I think this is part of the same problem.
Talking was always central to Star Trek, but the dialogue used to build the solution. It clarified the ethical problem, the scientific constraints, the risks and the consequences. You understood why a decision was made and what it would cost.
Now, too often, the talking feels detached from the actual mechanics of the crisis. Everyone processes the situation emotionally, then a solution appears, works almost perfectly, and the consequences disappear with the episode.
For me, the issue is not that they talk too much. It is that the reasoning no longer feels structurally connected to the outcome.
Old Trek could spend ten minutes in a briefing room, but by the end of those ten minutes you understood the problem better.
That made the resolution feel earned.
Now it can feel as if the emotional conversation is the resolution. …
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.
Star Trek Picard is just a bad show for memberies to please Patrick Stewart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdLHKdn0JTY (sorry for the 4h video, but it’s very good)
thank you for sharing
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
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.
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.
