When you finally get to watch Discovery and realize it isn't actually an enormous pile of mugato dung

It's pretty terrible, not terrible enough to not see. The main problem is they made it very very difficult to care at all about anyone. Burnam is the most intollerable captain ever, they barely develop any character at all, and if they do, it's only to kill them immediately after and try and squeeze some easy feelings from us. Well developed characters are instead falsely killed, but ultimately protected by plot armor. As you mentioned, Stamets and Saru are the only really decent guys.

See, I’m torn. Because ST often gets weird and goofy, but DIS seemed to take that to another level with some REALLY questionable writing, directing, and acting at times. But that said, the big showpiece that DIS brings to the table - and imo, absolutely hits out of the park - is the pervasive theme of radical acceptance. For all the cringe and facepalm moments that the show has, THAT is a huge win - and in fact, goes to the very core of what the UFoP is supposed to represent both in-universe and in the context of fandom.

(until they did the haha he’s actually super space Hitler rug-pull)

My guy, they had him admit to blowing up his own vessel and killing everyone on board. He openly ignored Starfleets protocols surrounding new life and sentient life by sanctioning the effective torture of a creature to power the spore drive. He rejected admirals and went against their orders frequently. He slept with a gun under his pillow. He was shown to be collecting torture implements that are psychotically illegal from the entire galaxy and having a creepy room filled with those implements that also happened to have its own independent brig.

It isn't much of a rug pull if you looked down at any point...

Edit: -

He was also gathering navigational data the entire time and actively punched in extra coordinates into the Spore Drive from the Captains Chair. He then gave a long stare into the camera and said "Lets go home".

• He was exceptionally pragmatic in military strategy which isn't so common in Starfleet in general.

• The season is also littered with mirror imagery. First time Lorca is introduced is through a reflection in his window. Stamets has his mirror moment in episode 4.

• He's also littered with scars, including ones that are consistent with the shape of an Agonizer. He showed extreme interest in someone willing to break one of the biggest rules in Starfleet and used his power to pull her into his reach through some wildly sketchy means.

• The light sensitivity wasn't an obvious one as it was a new thing, it was used to canonize why all the Mirror Universe episodes in DS9 and Enterprise are dimly lit and darker, but even that hints that he's not 'normal'.

• He also behaved weirdly with Admiral Cornwall who knew him well and she even mentions that he's not the same person she knew.

• He actively set her up for something he suspected to be an ambush and then refused to go save her despite risking the ship repeatedly before. Something Saru even questioned at the time.

• He's even eating the same food that Burnham is served in the Mirror Universe.

Like I said. Isn't much of a rug pull if you look down.

I thought the last two seasons were good, but 4 was great. I still don't recommend it though because of the first three.

Ds9: where's the exploring? They're on a space station!
Voyager: where are all the aliens we know about?
Enterprise: it's been a long road.

With time, they all got their space. (This is me agreeing)

Voyager is the only series, Kate Mulgrew & Robert Picardo will save us all.

I'm just happy to have new Trek shows after like 15 years lol and now there's SO many

Plus, DIS really got into the groove after the first 2 seasons, which is a common problem IMO for many Trek series from TNG to ENT

Maybe it's simply that the format changes a lot.

TNG is much different from TOS and some people don't like that style.

I can honestly say that I find Discovery extremely frantic, boring and way too contemporary, but that's just my expectation towards Trek. Others have different tastes.

When The Last Jedi came out I went to see it with some friends who were big Star Wars fans. I thought it was fun, they hated all of it. I said to them "I guess I am not big enough of a Star Wars fan to hate Star Wars that much." The same is true for almost everything.

Nah.

Lower Decks and SNW is generally well liked even though it's new and not what people are used to (LD is a wacky cartoon comedy).

Both TNG and DS9 were bad shows in the beginning (DS9 could be described as ok-ish, but it ran concurrently to TNG in its prime, so looked worse in comparison). Fans didn't dislike them because they were new and then got use to them, they disliked them because they started out bad and then liked them because they got better. VOY and Enterprise are generally considered bad to highly flawed (ENT 3rd season being the exception because, again, it was good).

There are PLENTY of reasons not to like Discovery. You enjoyed it? Great, have fun. No need to dismiss people not liking it because it's new or whatever.

Same, I needed more after SNW and wasn't quite ready for the way 80's - '00s era Trek was filmed. I actually liked the first two seasons and thought season 3 was okay.

Spoiler alert:
But then we learned about the source of the burn.

And then season 4 happened. And then season 5 happened. It felt like all of these were leaning into my least favorite things about Discovery. By the finale, I was fast forwarding through everything just to get through it.

Watching TNG for the first time now and loving it way more than Disco :)

I salute your integrity 🫡

That’s why I like Strange New Worlds better.

Yeah, which makes the burn story kinda flop at the end. It was a good idea, a resource everyone has become dependent on becomes scarce. There was a lot of untaped potential there IMO, but a great premise. Then it gets turned into this asnine root cause. They could have done so much better. Imagine if they turned it into a tragedy of the commons. A warp superhighway wore a crack in subspace and that interacted with a nebula or something. It was a death of a thousand cuts and everyone ignored it. Maybe Starfleet even knew it could happen but ignored it because that's how they have always done it, and even if Starfleet stopped the cardasians and the gorn etc would still be using dilithum based warp bubbles (excuse after excuse)... Heavy handed, maybe, but more meaningful.

Totally second everything you state. The characters are absolutely great too, but the season story arcs with just incredible stakes are not my cup of tea. Serialized and packaged story EPs are preferred. That said I enjoy it for what it is.

Yes, the one where I'm 90% sure season 1 is some other IP that had Star Treks skin stretched over it.

They steered them back towards normal looking after the first season for what it’s worth. They literally have a character comment, “Oh hey, you’re all growing beards again.”

That's what a lot of modern Sci fi shows are doing these days, it seems.

Like the "Halo" show. It very much feels like someone took their idea for a show that got shot down, used find+replace to redo all the names and places to make it "halo" and got greenlit. And honestly I think I might have liked it as it's own thing.

People that had qaulity shows for decades expect quality. If you want to make a scifi show either don't call it Star Trek or accept the criticism

I thought it got closer over time. Season 1 tired maybe a bit too hard to feel "new and fresh", but they reined it in a lot later on. I mean, obviously bringing the SNW Enterprise crew in for Season 2 was a bit of a mission statement, but the entire back half of the show is all about getting back to Trek status quo.

Season 1 that was true where was trying to be grim dark. But I'd say that was actually one of the things they fixed.

Enterprise is a little campy but really awesome.

I really do honestly recommend Enterprise. It has highs and lows, but some of the highs are WAY high. There's some of the best of Trek hidden away in Enterprise.

Discovery is very divisive among viewers. People seem to really like it or really hate it with not much in between. Both sides have valid arguments, but people forgot there is a middle ground.

Watch it without reading any critic reviews first, is my opinion. (When I watched Enterprise, it just so happened my opinions aligned with other people's complaints. I am glad I watched it first though.)

Things that people found divisive, I really didn't. Some changes probably caught everyone off guard, hence the major controversy of season 1, but at least it was plausible that the change could align with the rest of the Star Trek universe in some way. Maybe.

Like most other new shows, it can be a bit rocky as the writers develop the story and underlying theme.

There's few different criticisms of DISCO. From different perspectives

1. People who are concerned with canon have issues with the first couple of seasons because it's set before TOS but has had a big visual reboot. They'd also probably argue that some of the story elements don't fit in with canon.

2. The first season (at least) doesn't feel very star trek, it's got this whole grim dark thing going on. That is thankfully dropped later and you do get the normal hopefully outlook.

3. Characters aren't developed very well. Even by the end I don't think we've got to know anyone other than maybe Stamets and Tilly.

4. Plots often rely on the mystery box format, which has been disappointing when they don't stick the landing

5. Plots are over whole seasons, when they probably don't need to be.

6. Because of 5 production often started before writing had finished, and it shows. So you end up with a good start, a bunch of meandering, and then suddenly bam you're at the final crisis.

I often find it an OK show.

I also find it quite frustrating that after the time jump they didn't take the opportunity to tell some different more interesting stories. Grappling with how society would have changed unimaginably for this crew compared to what they're used too (like in the forever war when we hear how earth has changed), or grappling with genetic modification (in show the eugenics wars were over a millennium ago at this point - surely the federation would have gotten over one species bad experience with it) etc etc.

Personally I thought season 4 was great.

I wished the last three seasons had been longer, like the first one; imagine the story arcs we could have gotten!

I’ll choose the Enterprise theme song over Michael’s incessant crying and moping any day of the week.

Interesting. I think the first season is beyond abysmal but if you stick with it it picks up!

Loves me some moogatoes

That just means you're weak