Usually, but I love the optimistic fanfare of the TNG intro, and it has a habit of drawing me in.

Wholesome

This is extra frustrating in daily games.

Martin’s hustling us. He’s holding back for something big.

You can’t expect her to move the bishop all that way.

The lesson is forgotten the moment the next match starts.

You’re not wrong

Yes, this one was tragic.

So… psychedelics?

Great advice, but I can’t find the m8 square. What should I do next?

This is why I love TNG so much. Even though TOS is the original that laid the groundwork for everything, TNG took that “boundless optimism” and ran with it. Watching TNG inspires me to continue to self-improve and encourage it in others.

Lol, there are just so many random variations of every opening that it’s virtually impossible to know them all. It’s sometimes helpful to see what an opening is called so that you can potentially look it up later, but 99% of the time I feel like Michael in the meme.

I’m lost and genuinely can’t tell if you’re joking or mad.

I’ve still not tried it. I should probably turn off chat and give it a go.

Yeah, there’s a singular implied “universal morality” throughout Star Trek of accepting diversity and learning to not impose on other civilizations or each other on the basis of one’s biological differences or culture, even for Klingons! I’d say the rest is hard to define and subjective, as @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website said above, but post-scarcity and free agency in life to follow your passions has to be pretty close!

That’s a good point. I think this contrast between individual (often flawed) human judgment vs collectivist ideals has always been a theme. In TOS, you see Kirk calming McCoy’s knee-jerk reactions almost every episode. In TNG, it was Yar or Worf. In DS9, probably Kira.

Even then, I would say the collectivist ideals (i.e. Starfleet regulations) were more often portrayed as overly-cumbersome in implementation, which leads to someone like Kirk violating the rules in place of the ideals that they stand for. For example, how many naïve (but well-meaning) diplomats do we see in TOS or TNG? However, rules being restrictive or imperfect in an effort to support larger agreed-upon morals can still be trusted, compared to corrupt power structures, which cannot.