Well, gratutious is in the root specs of all entertainment. What's boring and forced is doing the same gratutious as others around or before you, because entertainment is all about fashion, too.
DSC has broken novel ground with the gratutious martyr complex thing, the rest being sorta commonplace for both this day and age and for the preceding decades of Trek and entertainment. ENT's novel thing wasn't decon, because every Trek show till that point had already put heavy emphasis on showing skin and curves and dedicating whole scenes to said. ENT didn't go novel-gratutious with violence, either, as TNG, DS9 and VOY had already featured their punching-bag characters who existed for reasons of pure sadism (although VOY decided to go one step further and beat up a central female character whenever they could, this being somewhat novel at the time).
What might have been novel about the extravaganzae of ENT? The emphasis of the heroes as soldiers who kill a lot for a good cause? This wasn't a thing in previous Trek yet, and in general would have been a post-2001 entertainment phenomenon.
Timo Saloniemi
