Movies & TV

There are grains of evil in each of new trek's productions, only before this it was more hidden. I wrote a big post about this before. But, to me, one of the more interesting things about Star Trek is the story of how humans achieved utopia and how historically contingent it is. In TOS you have a lot of that 1960s vibe, with the cold war and space alien cults that were all the rage in the zeitgeist. So humanity's elevation comes from a mixture of WW3 and vulcan solidarity. The TNG era keeps all those plot elements and shift them around a bit. The real notable points though is how DS9 made utopia about political action (the Bell Riots), and how Enterprise made it clear that it wasn't just techno-wizardry (reiterating that neither humans nor even vulcans had replicators before their foray into deep space).

What does Picard do? It makes humanity's bright future hinge entirely on magical microbes found on space. That's it. Nothing else matters. If humans don't find a techno-magical solution on Jupiter or whatever, it will fall to climate change, WW3 and it will become the biggest genocidal empire of all time in a series that already featured multiple versions of space fascism. New Trek already threw the lack of replicators out of the window way back when. I'd argue that Picard is when it all goes from clueless, cynical people bumbling about to them showing the evil of their beliefs.

To be clear Enterprise had military apologia on it. Half the show's plot hinges on a 9/11 allegory and you've got Special Military Forces Guys serving alongside the normal crew from that moment on. Even then I'd wager nobody came out and showed their asses like this. The entire thesis of the DS9 Section 31 storyline is that Section 31 shouldn't exist. Its a rogue agency. Its genocidal moves don't even win the war. The minefield, the Prophets, the romulan plot and the cardassian defection are what win the Dominion War. At best you can say that Section 31's virus gave them an in as to avoid a costly final battle. Even so its circumstantial, as it was in no way Section 31's intent or its plan.