>>211637146
The utopian aspect of Star Trek is the background against which all of the drama of Trek unfolds. It's a crucial part of the human element of any Star Trek story, part of the human identity.
But it's always been vague and never really fleshed out because it was a Roddenberry thing, something he ardently insisted on, and he died. A lot of his other insistences were dropped -- that there could be no arguing on the ship, no interpersonal drama whatsoever -- but the utopic element of human existence is something that should never be abandoned, at least in the TNG+ timeline.
You can set very serious drama against that backdrop but you never fuck with the backdrop itself -- that is a big mistake Nu Trek made and why it doesn't feel like Star Trek.