I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT… why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I’d also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
That describes the TOS better. TNG was clearly retrograde futurism when it was launched.
That said, TOS was also a bit retrograde, because people were crazy about robots, huge computers, and virtualized worlds by the 60s.
No, it’s TNG because of all the purple sparkly stuff, big hair, and jazz music. It’s very representative of late 80s early 90s adult contemporary aesthetic, which makes sense because that’s when it’s from. TOS is some other kind of retro fruturism.