The original trilogy felt like 2000s optimistic sci fi and I hope the next ME captures that same vib

I didn't take ME1 as especially optimistic. I took it as a setting that was highly inspired by the most optimistic scifi (that didn't go outright mega posthuman/divine), but it quickly, on all levels by the end of the game, let alone the trilogy, revealed the darker, neigh evilest cyberpunk/horror underbelly or even normal existence of most alive.

It came off as a galaxy in denial. That as long as they had their structures and systems (barely to totally indirectly provided by the REAPERS), they'd be fantastic. That past near-exterminations, well they survived that so they're okay. The AI revolution over there? Well just ban AI over here and get racism on against the creator people. Class inequality? Paper it the hell over and barely mention it. Religious disputes? Not in the public square, please and thank you. Attacks from the 99% or whatever of the galaxy that hasn't been properly mapped? Let just mostly ignore that in utter hubris, until we absolutely have to give it attention.

I felt it was a galaxy full of people who hadn't truly (socially, intelligently) evolved to the level of tech of decades or even centuries ago. It had people who FELT, with some REASON that they had, like at least asari and salarians and perhaps turians. But it also showed how utterly behind even these Council races actually were - this was the point of the Reapers.

The setting absolutely had some true optimism included. Even some outright reasonable hopes - the point of the Normandy really. But I didn't feel this was a setting that was consciously and deliberately working to be worthy of its miracles it was developing. In fact, there's a technophobic subtext in it, and the novels, that something went too far, and we now can't go back - the Devil has woken, and it'll force us into the Ascension we were foolishly attempting to trigger anyway. And now we have to make the best of it, we have to grasp at what we can, with the greatest heroes we can muster, to manage some kind of a supposed win instead of a total defeat.


MEA actually felt like more bright eyed positive scifi to me, personally. Yes, they TECHNICALLY included auras of suspicion and dark histories etc etc, but I had like, almost no sense of dread. Even when I think I was supposed to. Since there was so little blowback to anything done with tech in this story, I just assumed the gist was that anything was ripe for the taking. Maybe it'll blow back majorly in a later game, but right now, its a colonization story where the writers have to be careful about the aliens (Angara), but NOT the Remnant tech all around. The robots were hostile, but I experienced it mostly as a fun shootemup rather than something costly to people in universe, just a hinderance in moving forward. There was no major trap, just tools to figure out. No huge cities were being rapidly built, but everything was leading towards a future, even just 10-20 years, where people are starting to live in great comfort. It just sucks.. for now.

MET was more 'its all good right?' for people in the setting.. but it really wasn't, and now its going to get a whole lot worse. It got very pessimistic, and by the end, encouraged the most drastic actions (RBG) in too rushed a fashion (the Blue and especially Green) to respond to immediate extinction threats. MEA was a broad and open seizing of great technological powers and I rarely felt trouble about it, besides my story theories for the future. 

'Better Beginning' 

 

Gorn

I'm currently watching Deep Space Nine and while there are complex nuanced stories, I'm still getting the "all will end kind of well in the end" even when we have just been shown it won't. Or like in Voyager we had an extremely controversial ending to the Tuvix story and no one ever mentioned him again after that episode. Back to work, business as usual. What I'm getting at is that you have to think about the stories on your own afterwards in order to really feel the emotional depth because the shows don't leave room for that before it's on to the next story. I suppose it's part of the "planet of the week" storytelling where you generally don't want to end each episode at a dramatic cliffhanger and then feeling forced to figure out how to make the stakes increasingly higher and higher with each episode.  

Which is what Discovery did, they tried really hard to show how dark things are but again we didn't have time to ponder on it, things moved on super fast from one crisis to another. But I feel it was very superficially done and the older series were more mature in many ways. The older stories are more subtly dark. So subtly that if you don't really get into it, you're left with the sense that it's very light hearted and optimistic. Old ST is all about philosophical dilemmas and believing in scientific progress while Discovery is about explosions and overacting and forced drama.

Well, not really.
Kinda, if you heard the theory that Xenomorph reproduction cycle in Aliens is an allusion to rape (Facehuggers and stuff) and Gorn in SNW are inspired by them. But not really.

Otherwise, couple of references that come to mind:
-rape gangs that Tasha Yar had to evade on her homeworld during childhood
-Tasha Yar becoming a concubine of a Romulan officer after her capture in the past
-Bajoran women being taken as "comfort women" during Cardassian occupation

Oh and there was this time when Trip Tucker from NX-01 Enterprise got accidentally pregnant.