I like watching old sci-fi to see how the tech of the day was reflected in the tech or the, “future.” The original Enterprise looks like it was run on colorful 8-tracks. The TGN Enterprise looked like it was full of microwave touch-screen interfaces. The Abrams Enterprise…looks like an Apple store with a big chrome throttle. The original Alien movies probably hold up the best; aside from the CRTVs, that technology still seems like a plausible future.

For me, what becomes even more dated than the old tech are the cultural attitudes. The original series is supposed to be an egalitarian, utopian society, but they men treat the women like it’s an episode of Mad Men. TGN, on the other hand, is trying so hard not to be sexist that the romance scenes sound like they were written by a virgin who only learned about sex from HR meetings.

I didn’t mind the first Abrams movie. I thought the story was pretty mediocre, but it looked good visually, and they captured the characters nicely. The second movie went off the rails, though. They invented interplanetary transporters and cured death. It feels like that would have had massive, status quo changing consequences for the entire franchise, but I guess not.

The original movies certainly have more action in them than the series (though they’re definitely not as action-packed as the Abrams movies), and they’re also not as interested in exploring sci-fi concepts as the show, but to me, they’re defined by fan-service more than anything else. They found an excuse to put the characters in modern times, let Kirk create peace with the Klingons, and literally met God.

A lot of Star Trek fans didn’t like them. Star Trek trends more towards, “traditional,” sci-fi, which is more focused on exploring scientific and philosophical concepts in fiction (think Jules Verne or Isaac Asimov). What Abrams produced was basically just an action movie in a futuristic setting. It’s sorta like how, even though Star Wars is set in an advanced galactic civilization, it has more in common with the fantasy genre than traditional sci-fi.

That doesn’t necessarily mean classic Star Trek is better or smarter than the Abrams movies or Star Wars. In fact, a lot of Star Trek is cheesy, dated, and kinda dumb (and not just the original series; even TNG has a lot of cringe in it). However, it does mean that the Abrams films were a pretty big genre shift that put a lot of fans off.

Why would the U.S. have started trying to expand democracy after the Cold War? They were willing to support anti-Democratic coups in Iran, Syria, Brazil, Iraq, Bolivia, and probably dozens of others I’m forgetting. America was promoting capitalism during the Cold War, not democracy.

I mean…what did you want us to do? Invade Europe?