"For the first time, I suddenly know what it must have felt like to be someone in 1987 who saw the debut of Next Generation after a lifetime of love for the only Star Trek they’d ever known. To be like the people who were handed this strange new series with a brand new Enterprise that looked more like a space hotel than a Federation starship and told 'Nope, this is Star Trek now, deal with it.'”
A-yep.
Many TNG-era fans never really understood why TOS broke through all the pop-culture noise of its day to become a cultural touchstone, and why it didn't just attract fans, but inspired the very invention of fandom. They see TOS through the lens of later received wisdom; it was positive, uplifting, and optimistic, and TNG was its natural successor. But for its time, Star Trek was actually often edgy, though no one back then would have described it that way. In a TV landscape of Andy Griffith and My Three Sons, against a backdrop of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and a burgeoning counterculture, Star Trek was a new voice (not a lone voice -- other shows reflected cultural change as well -- but rarely with the seriousness and philosophical bent of Star Trek). It didn't reflect a perfected humanity, but one that was a little more self-conscious about trying to do better. And context matters (you might even say it's king). What seem like hokey, milquetoast lessons about ideas like racial harmony, multiculturalism, and the responsible use of power were a lot more subversive in the 1960s and 70s. Star Trek's message wasn't consistent, and it wasn't always good drama, but it wasn't vanilla, and its early audience responded to that. When TNG came along, a lot of us wondered what the hell Roddenberry was thinking. It seemed so very vanilla by comparison: everything so clear-cut, everyone so righteous, every answer so obvious. It felt more like a corporate training film about team-building than like Star Trek.
It was only after Roddenberry left the stage that others tried to nudge Star Trek back toward that more challenging place, to varying degrees and with varying success. But all the series from TNG on were trying to be hybrids that would not alienate that TNG base.
Until Discovery. They really don't seem to give a shit about that base, and that's pretty gutsy. What's more, they realize that the goalpost for edgy 'n philosophical has moved considerably. A lot of the existing ST fan base seems to think that a show with a point to make about how to do right in the universe ought to be a show in which the right thing is always done. But our reality doesn't lend itself to that kind of storytelling, and frankly, that's never been the best way to make the point, anyway.
I have little doubt that, as Discovery goes along, its POV will come more into focus. It will become a little easier to tell which way the needle of its moral compass is pointing (though I sincerely hope they always tell the kinds of challenging stories that make demands of us). It'll be interesting to see how much of fandom is willing to come along.
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