TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

Discovery is a very flat, one-dimensional misread of Star Trek as a concept that plays fast and loose with established lore, created by a guy who harbors an active disdain for what Star Trek is fundamentally about. Discovery was an attempt to dumb down Star Trek for the average viewer by adding a bunch of action and talking down to its audience about very overt modern political issues that frankly don’t fit in the Star Trek universe.

Star Trek prior to the Kurtzman era was an examination of modern day social issues through a forward-looking optimistic lens. It imagined a world where humanity actually evolved as a species beyond our petty squabbles, and then offers you an opinion on how that could be realistically achieved by showing you how these humans interact with the universe beyond our solar system. Kurtzman’s Trek retcons all that and dragged humanity back down into the gutter that is our current modern world because he either doesn’t trust in your ability to read between the lines, or he has no optimism for humanity at all and offers the opinion that we can never and willer never evolve beyond the problems we’re having in the 21st century.

The best concrete example I have for you is with another’s Kurtzman Show, Star Trek Picard. It’s well established that in the time period Picard is in, humanity exists in a post-scarcity society. Humans do things like join Starfleet for the personal fulfillment and betterment of humanity’s understanding of the cosmos, rather than a paycheck. But in the new show there’s a scene early on where a retired Picard visits a woman living in what amounts to a space trailer and she chastises him about his privilege, because she’s living in squalor while he was a retired Starfleet captain with his own vineyard. This is obviously a mirror to the wealth inequality of today, but it makes no sense in the context of a world where poverty has been effectively eradicated.

I find the whole story very bland and one dimensional. The characters don't get consistent growth, I mean look at Tilly. She had episodes where she did some really amazing stuff, but then the next episode they turned her right back into an incompetent presenting goofball.

Also Burnham's whole story arc was that she was comically special and the chosen one. That's not really what Star Trek is imo.

Seriously you should watch more series and you may understand the criticisms more.

Overall I still rank Discovery over Picard, but just barely. Both are at the bottom of my personal ranking

Don't listen to the naysayers. I've been a trekkie since the '90s, and I very much enjoy Disco. It's not perfect (season 2 was especially messy), but most of the criticisms I hear against it make no sense to me and/or could easily apply to other beloved instalments in the franchise.