> The baseline is still visibly much more idealistic than everything else (including post-ENT Star Trek).
Picard, specifically, seems to differ from late TNG or DS9 not so much in the degree to which the Federation is or is not a utopia, but in that the focal characters are (at least initially, the arc if season one seems to have most of them evolving in the direction of more conventional ST focal characters) in places that would only have been occupied by non-focal characters.
(“Starfleet is doing bad things because it's upper echelons have been infiltrated by outsiders with an agenda that is, at least in chosen methods if not goals, anthithetical the the ideals towards which the Federation strives” is not inconsistent with the degree of idealism in TNG.)
Picard, specifically, seems to differ from late TNG or DS9 not so much in the degree to which the Federation is or is not a utopia, but in that the focal characters are (at least initially, the arc if season one seems to have most of them evolving in the direction of more conventional ST focal characters) in places that would only have been occupied by non-focal characters.
(“Starfleet is doing bad things because it's upper echelons have been infiltrated by outsiders with an agenda that is, at least in chosen methods if not goals, anthithetical the the ideals towards which the Federation strives” is not inconsistent with the degree of idealism in TNG.)