Lower Decks remains very good. CBS has tried to pivot Star Trek from Sci-Fi to Space Adventure, and that’s been ugly. But not every series they’ve spun out took that tone.

Also Orville - particularly the latest season - has been incredible. Everything Star Trek is supposed to be.

Sometimes they did proper scifi.

Sometimes they did politics.

Sometimes they did Space Wizards and sometimes they did Politics and sometimes they did both.

But the harder they leaned into actual Science Fiction the more they inevitably tackled the socio-economic ramifications of those technologies and discoveries. Legal Theories like The Prime Directive and social experiments like The Kobayashi Maru training exercise and the very depiction of aliens - the ultra-logical Vulcans who constantly resist their base emotional instincts, the war-loving Klingons, the xenophobic Romulans, the problem of domesticating an invasive species like the Tribbles - all convey political attitudes and ideologies.

This is inescapable. You can’t create good apolitical Sci-Fi. Presenting the idea of a futuristic society without exploring the consequences of your modernizations is cowardly and boring.

So annoying when a new starfleet pilot gets into the hyperspace lane on impulse speed and everyone behind has to blow half a gram of dilithium braking and going around.