Because arguments that Trek is somehow 'about' something are rooted primarily in a view of Trek that comes from post-TOS Roddenberry.
Post TOS
Roddenberry? As in, the ideas came from him, during his post-TOS Trek work? Maybe. But if you mean, the ideas came mainly from the Trek that came after TOS, and after Roddenberry, then no, not that I've seen. Granted, I haven't exactly been turning over rocks looking for the AbramsTrek Debate, but in terms of conversations about Star Trek
at large, I've seen the opposite. Most of the time when I see someone talking about what Star Trek "means", i.e. trying to paint it as deep social commentary or something that goes far beyond being just an entertaining TV show, the example held up in favor of that argument is TOS. But if you DO mean the notions pushed by Roddenberry himself (and others) at the time, that TNG was going to be this enlightened social commentary exercise, then yeah, but that was, again, mostly focused on the years in which Roddenberry had more influence over TNG: seasons 1 and 2. Once they moved past that, the series settled into something much better, and much less concerned with social commentary than with being a good show, and DS9 never even went down that road in the first place. So I still don't see the connection, and that remains the reason I posted in the first place. I'd been reading this thread to pass time and was struck by the bizarre role that TNG and DS9 seem to be playing in this discussion: as fall guys in an argument about weather or not AbramsTrek is true to the spirit of TOS.
This isn't a binary situation. I think that TNG-Trek onward bears very little resemblance to TOS on a thematic level. That doesn't mean that they are automatically bad shows, but that they are bad continuations of Star Trek. As I get older, neither show has aged particularly well to my eyes but that's only part of the point I was trying to make. TOS was an action-adventure series that featured relatable people with (then) modern sensibilities in fantastic situations. TNG and beyond tended to feature fantastic situations populated by talking props.
I don't know, I see a contradiction here. Yes, there were some fairly serious thematic differences between all three shows. But you are trying to push the notion that Star Trek isn't a set of ideals or commentary, that there isn't "some sort of meaning or purpose to the wider Trek universe", and that "It's merely a setting, a backdrop that enables human stories." So even if TNG and DS9 have tonal and thematic changes from TOS, why is that bad? They took the setting and did something different with it. Why does that make them "bad Trek"? Doesn't that just make them
different Trek? It would make them "bad TOS", but simply continuing TOS
per se was never the aim; the aim was to expand the universe of Star Trek, not just keep TOS going. Why, then, does any follow-up to TOS need to be exactly like TOS to be good
Trek?
And "Populated by talking props" IS a value judgement about the quality of the shows themselves,
as entertaining (or not entertaining) television, not simply an analysis of how they continue, or fail to continue, the thematic concepts of Star Trek specifically. You said in this latest post that your criticisms don't necessarily mean they are bad shows, but a negative assessment of TNG and DS9 as being inferior television in your opinion, on
top of being "bad continuations of Star Trek", is part of your overall presentation here, and was strongly present in the article, too, which fell back on a very tired old "TOS was human and exciting, TNG was uptight and stuffy" mantra. The article was more about TOS vs. TNG and DS9 than it was about AbramsTrek.
I guess I just don't get why those shows are somehow being painted as being
wholly representative of the mindset that Star Trek is broken due to AbramsTrek not being "true" to Trek. While at the same time, the swaths of fans who are directly comparing Abrams TO TOS itself and - whether fueled by nostalgia or reasoned analysis - coming away saying that the former is a piss-poor attempt to ape the latter and could never hope to compare to it, are being ignored. Quite frankly, I've seen accusations of "it's not true Trek!" thrown at AbramsTrek from those who are ardently fans of TOS, and are comparing the new movies directly
to TOS, far FAR more than I have seen similar accusations thrown from those who are ardent fans of TNG-era Trek, or comparing the new movies to TNG or DS9.
While reading this thread, I certainly haven't agreed with everything
Hober Mallow has said, but a page or so back, he did say one thing that struck me: the article seems to push the notion that "fans who don't want Abrams Trek because it's not true to Trek really just want TNG", without substantiating or supporting the idea that TNG has anything to
do with the argument of whether or not Abrams Trek is true Trek. And, once again, I find the rather large emphasis the article places on pointing out what you see as the ways in which TOS is better than TNG bizarre in a piece that is ostensibly about AbramsTrek and whether or not its "broken". The article asserts an unfounded connection between TNG Trek and the anti-Abrams mindset, then proceeds as if that assertion had been proven and was generally accepted by Trek fandom at large.
