So, the proper way to view Trek is that Star Trek, more than many other shows, is meant to be a mirror through which Liberalism views itself

It is the Liberal ideal projected out into a future where they have achieved all their ideals and built their perfect society https://twitter.com/TheeOnlyAngel/status/1296709399571050502

So TOS is a Space Adventure story, where a heroic man (and his companions) travel through an unknown and sometimes hostile galaxy, fighting villains and having adventures as they impose the Liberal Ideal on the galaxy at large. This is Heroic Liberalism.

TNG is a story about the Post-Liberal Society, where the Liberal hero is a thinking man, a diplomat and (unwilling) warrior who has to come to terms with living alongside other civilizations.

Other civilizations, which are unwilling to see the wisdom of accepting the Liberal Ideal and dismantling their prior civilizations. They obviously do this from ignorance.

hat's the basis of all of TNG's ethical dilemnas, especially those that deal with Klingons/Romulans/Cardassians

DS9 comes in here too, because DS9 is the story of what that Liberal Utopia does when the other civilizations won't just accept that Liberalism is obviously the best and try to fight against it.

DS9 also the best show because it doesn't shy away from depicting the Federation as just another Empire, like any other, that wants to expand its territory and assimilate its neighbors

This speech is one of the best in the show for this very reason

So, given these priors and that these shows were wildly celebrated, why is modern Trek (STD, PIC, and Lower Decks) such hot garbage, when they have such excellent source material? Because Modern Liberalism is bankrupt

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the "End of History", Liberalism achieved all of its stated principles and proved it could outcompete anybody.

Did this herald an age of transcendence and wisdom where men shed the human condition and became Enlightened Beings beyond the ken of their ancestors? Well...

So, this necessarily causes an identity crisis. The result of that identity crisis is not to think about it, and to lose yourself in the unprecedented prosperity of the age to avoid answering the question.

Which is why Discovery is all about people behaving in absurdly modern fashion to their problems, Picard is all about how much they hate Modernity (even though they made it, because they were promised that Liberalism would solve all the problems and still nobody's happy).

And Lower Decks is ultimately a Nihilistic Fantasy about adults behaving like dumb children and laughing at fart/sex jokes because making jokes about anything else is too problematic. The humor is repetitive, though it will probably draw a laugh or two if you watched it.

Cause regardless of what we think and do, we're still trapped in Liberal World. And Liberal World is a Utopian vision that lived long enough to outlast its Utopia.

Enterprise is the early stages of Liberal navel-gazing, post-Victory, and trying to reckon with the reality of the world they see.

Their first thought wasn't "well, we did it, but the world is still fucked, let's just be hedonists", they first had to do "Well, we did it, but the world isn't quite right...did we miss a step?"

SO they look back and, through their own retrospective, they see their victory as an inevitable chain of events which led to an inevitable conclusion, like a Scientific reaction (their only mode of viewing events bigger than themselves)

This is why Enterprise isn't an origin story of the First Starship Enterprise, but a story centered around how Non-Liberal Aliens From the Future want to destroy/thwart the Enterprise because, if they do that, the Federation will never happen.

You quickly see that, if the Enterprise does what it's fated to do (according to Future History), that the Federation will come about as an inevitable result. No free will, no possible alternate path, it has to happen this exact way.

The show even ends with the Finale being a simulation on the TNG Enterprise, where Riker is watching the final journey of Enterprise-A, and ends with him and Troi sitting down to watch Archer's big speech, remarking "This is where the Federation was Born."

(This line of thinking eventually makes you tear down statues or begin doubting the importance of any one figure, because you see history as an inevitable response by the masses of men to large unseen forces that just happen because reasons)

Voyager is, like always, a bit of an odd duck in this context, because the question it asks removes one of the key elements of the other shows. It's less holding up a mirror than it is asking a more focused hypothetical: "What would a bunch of Liberals do away from Liberal Land?"

So you have Liberal Utopia ship Voyager so far away from home that they'll practically never see anything or anyone they knew ever again, surrounded by cultures they've never heard of and threats which they'd never have heard of from the furthest-flung alien visitor...what do?

And, well, judging by the show itself, it's "muddle our way through 7 seasons, let Janeway violate every Liberal precept in the name of survival one episode, then let her chastise anyone who even thinks of doing the same in like, the next fucking episode"

That show also can't manage to produce any good characters, because by the time it came out Liberalism had become bored with the ideas that would give you an Oddyseus-like Hero (The perfect model for a ship captain on a trip far from home)

And that paints the lie of Liberalism: Without the force of the State behind it, it has no real meaning. It gets abandoned when its inconvenient and used to bash someone over the head when it works.

(Now, this can be said of any governing philosophy to some extent, but I mean only that Liberalism is especially divorced from the Natural World and observable reality.)

Like, you wash up someone who's a Monarchist or a Fascist on a deserted island, he most likely has a skill or two that will help him survive, because he learned them at some point in his life cause he realized he's part of nature and wants to see what that's all about.

His worldview doesn't divorce him from Reality, so his curiosity if nothing else makes him learn more about it and what might be required to survive in it

Modern Liberalism is all about creating an artificial world to avoid thinking about Reality, cause Reality suuuuucks.