You know what show was very modern but reminded me a lot of DS9? The Expanse. It was a fully fledged universe with a diversity of characters and some enriching storylines.
I want a Star Trek show that is like The Expanse but modernized. It all comes down to how it's written and how the characters are. So far not much in the new era has been as memorable and I would say the universe building has been bad.
One of my issues with
Star Trek post 2009 has been how much it feels like everything kind of "winks at the camera" and sometimes doesn't feel like it takes
Star Trek seriously at all. It rests on tracing over the past, changing it some, pointing at it and saying "remember this and doesn't it look cooler with the new CGI" and thinking that's innovative in showing hidden depths to old characters and subjects.
This is part of the reason that, while I like
Strange New Worlds and think there are great episodes and actors in there, I don't see it as a "flagship" series that advances
Star Trek as a franchise. It's a prequel/re-imagining of old characters within a time period where they're locked into certain things having to happen ... if they insist this is the Prime Timeline and there's continuity.
And this is part of the reason I always shake my head when people get heated about all of this having to fit together in a single continuity. I don't think it would have hurt
Discovery or
Strange New Worlds at all to have been disconnected from the Prime Timeline. I honestly believe it would have helped these shows to be their own thing.
I mean DC fans can accept 5 different Batmans and Jokers, Marvel fans can live with a (Fox) X-Men universe, the MCU, and the (Sony) Spider-Man universe, but
Star Trek fandom can't go along with a new iteration of
Star Trek that's a total reboot which has no connection to previous continuity? I mean imagine a
Strange New Worlds where it was more of an open question as to whether Pike ends up in the wheelchair with the blinking light? Or whether Spock and Chapel might actually really become a couple during the TOS era? It would open up possibilities and allow the writers to go in ANY direction they wanted with the material.
I've thought about this before. I would love a show that would do something like a
Black Hawk Down version of the Klingons. What if you crossed Klingon warrior culture with a more realistic looking version of warfare and tried to actually game out what it would mean for an imperial society based in conflict that was continually at war over its history? What kind of people do you end up? What emotional scars do they carry? What collateral damage results from it?
I think modern
Star Trek tends to worry more about whether the sets and visuals look believable rather than treating the issues and characters in their stories in believable ways.
One of my biggest issues with
Discovery is how superficial some of the stories would feel by the end of the season. And I would argue how superficial it was in the world-building bled into how superficial people felt the emotionality of the characters were. The final season of the show spends 10 episodes getting to the MacGuffin, only to spend 5 minutes discussing the realities of what it would mean and whether they should chuck it into a black hole.
