encelado748

The best progressive writing Trek did was when they addressed a social issue by having the actors pretend it wasn’t an issue at all.

Is Jay-Den being gay not exactly that? Nobody cares in universe. But somewhat it is a big thing for a lot of people for no reason at all.

I understand your point, but I think you are having a lesser opinion of new trek because you are missing some of the messages they want to share with the viewer.

In Ko’Zeine the conflict is not between self and tradition, but more about the internal conflict of Darem. The enemy here is his own crippling self-expectation, not society. I think this conflict resonate a lot with modern morality topics such as LGBTQ+ acceptance.

In Vox in Excelso is the same: the fake battle is a compromise. Both the federation and the klingon knows it is a farse. But they go with it anyway as a way to preserve their own self representation in a post burn galaxy. To me Vox in Excelso is political realism. The klingon are not treated as an obstacle to be tricked, but as political partner in a mutual charade. In the episode this is explicitly framed as a klingon solution to a klingon problem.

I am not disagreeing with you, but old trek does this all the time.

In season 5 episode 17 (the one with the J’naii androgynous race) the setup is exacly the same as Ko’Zeine: from the start you get the answer that suppressing your true self is bad. The J’naii are seen as bigoted and the federation position as the right one. I do not think there is any ambiguity about which side the viewer is supposed to take. The only difference is the end result. Or look at how Dr. Crusher treats Klingon ritual suicide in season 5 episode 16: their culture is treated entirely as a stubborn, barbaric hurdle to be overcome by the ‘sensible’ 24th-century human perspective.

And TNG is also full of examples of “the federation knows best”. In Season 7 Episode 13 the federation works around a similar problem with the forced migration on the holodeck. Or Season 2 Episode 18, where the enterprise force the merge of the Bringloidi and the Mariposans. Or when in Season 1 Episode 8 we dismiss Edo society position immediately as immoral despite them living in a paradise society.

Discovery writing is all over the place I agree, but Starfleet Academy writing does not look that bad to me. What is so much worse then previous trek? If we do not cherry pick the best of the past against the worst of the new, writing is better or on the same level of what we saw before.

Can you give me a practical example of Starfleet Academy lacking the kind of nuance you would like to see?