Long answer, but good answer friend.
This in particular is gold:
in this future, humanity still succumbs to the pains and pitfalls of present-day life in a way that suggests we won’t grow out of them
I thought Section 31 was some shit clinging to the bowl, but the writers keep assimilating it into the Star Trek matrix so much so that it implies the Federation of TNG is a naive facade 😔
So the Terran empire runs some kinda hunger games for the next evil emperor… and the current evil emperor is just cool with abdicating I guess?
I wish I could enjoy it, but it just feels so dumb to watch a fairy tale transfer of power in the most evil setting.