Everyone on star trek has anxiety, panic attacks, ptsd and imposter syndrome now. It is too much!
Barclay was OK. (In TNG.) He had his episodes but they were interesting because of the juxtaposition against the others.
Like >60% of plot & characters are now about anxiety and mental (un)health. It is individuated vs collective.
I also deeply resent the attempt to create equivalency between AI and LGBT people.
No wonder people hate woke.
Individuated vs collective is a good way to put it imo. The focus of TOS and early TNG was the collective enterprise, with most characters being “shallow” and “static”. From tng ~s2 onwards, the focus became individual characters, their feelings and interpersonal relationships instead of “monster/planet/philosophical problem of the week”
But for me the biggest issue with nu trek (all trek after the original animated series with the exception of the movie) is the vibe is off
Trek has all been downhill since TOS, with the sole exceptions of the animated series and the whale movie
TOS was made by people with a (utopian, lib at times) actual vision and hope for the future. TNG and onward (especially after riker grows the beard) was made by people increasingly resentful of the utopian and “weird” (positive, silly) spirit of TOS, but forced to occasionally pay token tribute to it as they turn the franchise into “star wars but with less magic” to chase mainstream scifi bucks.
That isnt to say all trek after tos are bad, just they dont feel like they have the same utopian spirit as TOS to me so i dont like them as much
I think it’s basically straw communism to say that the characters not being so shallow and static undermines the collective element. The collective element I assume is really undermined, but you’re just surrendering the “individualism vs collectivism” framing to capitalist ghouls by acting like collectivism requires basically eliding any one person’s own humanity and interiority. The problem is surely in how the individuals are handled, not that they get to be multifaceted and dynamic and have interpersonal relationships (?!)