> Star Trek was an unique word in sci-fi (at least on-screen sci-fi) because of that bright idealism, that utopia.
What utopia? Outside of the crew of the Enterprise itself in TOS and TNG (most of the time, when not under malevolent outside influence, abd even then there are some exceptions), neither Starfleet, the Federation outside of Starfleet, nor the galaxy outside of the Federation (in roughly descending order of proximity to utopia) were portrayed as without flaws in any version of Trek.
> Star Trek, in its TNG to ENT era, was unique in terms of positivity and optimism.
Usually, this claim is made for the TOS to TNG era (or, more specifically, the era when Gene Roddenberry was directly involved). While, as noted above, it's flawed even then, it really doesn't work for DS9, VOY, or ENT.
Maybe instead of "utopia" I should've said "as close to utopia as you can get without shattering your suspension of disbelief". The world was designed as a reachable utopia, and in my eyes, the vision didn't decay fast enough when Roddenbery left the scene to be lost by the time of ENT.
> While, as noted above, it's flawed even then, it really doesn't work for DS9, VOY, or ENT.
Compared to what? Relative to pretty much every other show, I think it worked really well. The baseline is still visibly much more idealistic than everything else (including post-ENT Star Trek).
> The baseline is still visibly much more idealistic than everything else (including post-ENT Star Trek).
Picard, specifically, seems to differ from late TNG or DS9 not so much in the degree to which the Federation is or is not a utopia, but in that the focal characters are (at least initially, the arc if season one seems to have most of them evolving in the direction of more conventional ST focal characters) in places that would only have been occupied by non-focal characters.
(“Starfleet is doing bad things because it's upper echelons have been infiltrated by outsiders with an agenda that is, at least in chosen methods if not goals, anthithetical the the ideals towards which the Federation strives” is not inconsistent with the degree of idealism in TNG.)
Well, they were working on it innit? The Federation was young (I'm talking about TOS here strictly) and working hard to prove itself to the galaxy. And they met people who were further along than themselves (like the Organians.)
What utopia? Outside of the crew of the Enterprise itself in TOS and TNG (most of the time, when not under malevolent outside influence, abd even then there are some exceptions), neither Starfleet, the Federation outside of Starfleet, nor the galaxy outside of the Federation (in roughly descending order of proximity to utopia) were portrayed as without flaws in any version of Trek.
> Star Trek, in its TNG to ENT era, was unique in terms of positivity and optimism.
Usually, this claim is made for the TOS to TNG era (or, more specifically, the era when Gene Roddenberry was directly involved). While, as noted above, it's flawed even then, it really doesn't work for DS9, VOY, or ENT.