Since it looks like I have a seemingly never-ending free Hulu subscription, I've decided to take advantage of it and plunge into what was probably my favorite Star Trek series, Enterprise (later dubbed Star Trek: Enterprise). Binging with commercials is different from my other series watched on Prime or Netflix but they're not that overly intrusive. Some are actually entertaining. They even act as a sort of litmus test to the video quality of the nearly 20 year old show I'm watching.
Both when I watched during its original run on UPN with a 27" Zenith CRT, and later when I binged it using Netflix DVD rentals about ten years ago, also using said CRT TV, I never got the widescreen, UHD experience of it. Now, the version I see is likely cut from the original film stock or perhaps the later BluRay since it frankly looks as good as anything produced in this decade. Oh yes, some of the CGI effects give it away, but it's glorious to see how well this looks despite its age. Oh and sound too, that was digitally enhanced in the newest version and you can definitely hear it.
Enterprise is, IMHO, one of the best examples of the utopian future as originally sketched by the master Gene Roddenberry himself. Now mind you, I say this as I'm only a dozen or so episodes in and I know the series gets a bit more dystopian in later seasons what with the whole Xindi War arc, but I'm enjoying it for the doe-eyed wonder it portrays right now...newbie spacefarers awed by the Galaxy they wander about in.
No super complex plot, no nefarious motives, no overtly far-left propaganda. Yes, blowhard speeches are a'plentiful when dealing with the quirky Hall of Presidents-like posturing Jonathan Archer played by Scott Bakula, but his long-winded diatribes are speaking about common bonds that tie sentient species together in simple, basic ways, not admonishments about the dangers of power or elitism.
For example, one recent episode I just watched ("Dear Doctor") dealt with an "epidemic" that was ripping through an alien planet's population like wildfire. (Note: They used the more "familiar to early 2000's audiences" term of "epidemic" rather than, what it was, "pandemic" as we 2020's folks surely now know.)
The planet was populated by a race of humanoids that were supposedly more evolved and had more advanced, 21st century-like, technology. It was they who were affected by the disease. The planet also supported another humanoid race, untouched by the disease, that was made-out to be nearly tribal.
Our star trekkers were surprised that the more developed race hadn't managed to wipe out the lesser as was, according to them, the usual case on other worlds, including Earth, of course (Neandertals, Home Erectus, etc.)
But a few crew members, including the alien-species ship's doctor Phlox, were dismayed to see how the elites treated the other species as "pets" or, as implied but not outright said, "slaves," dependent and subservient to the more advanced race. Phlox was even considering withholding a stop-gap cure for the illness he had synthesized in order to let nature take its course and let the advanced species die out allowing the other people to rise up and take over the world as the new dominant population. Free at last, free at last!
But Archer was not going to "play God" and demanded that Phlox inoculate the affected people, who, by the way, did seem visibly whiter than their hut-dwelling counterparts, and thus allowing them more time to develop a more enduring cure.
Now, if this show was contemporary, Archer and crew would have started rounding the sickened elites up and placed them in "confinement zones," watched them die and give warp technology to the natives. Well, actually, if this show were contemporary, there's no way a straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied, good-looking white man like Archer would be anything but some lower decks swabby, who am I kidding!