Which is fine. But shows like Discovery and Picard are more interested in exploring their themes through character relationships, arcs and dynamics. It's introspective and not extrospective.
It's fine if that's just not someone's cup of tea, but the refusal to accept the approach as valid or engage with the material on its own terms is silly and pointless.
I guess I'd ask what "its own terms" are. It's a show that's incredibly lazy considering the talent involved. It has little wonder or curiosity about the massive space canvas it exists in. Its visual identity is mostly tight coverage and lens flare, borrowed from most modern Superhero or Abrams style.
If it dared to do something new or have an actual underpinning to its story, more people would give it the time of day. In my opinion (and that's all it is), people generally want sci-fi that has something new to say or to truly explore some interesting themes, and yet these characters are bland and flavorless, existing merely to act in the moment with little introspection about what it's like to live in this new world. They all have their basic sketch, but that's about the depth. And those sketches are boring.
For Soji, how must it be to not truly know yourself? And yet this is all just terribly handled, with her seriously considering wiping out organic life on the flip of a switch. Do what Firefly did -- give me others who interrogate her journey, drawing us in. We don't get that here. We have an actress trying to do this all herself while supported by a terrible script.
We see gestures towards something more, but yet here we are having Q show up, still relying on the Borg, Data, Picard, 7 of 9 and everything else they can think up to lean on what came before. And of course, we also have the old chestnuts of the "rotten from within" federation -- which is the most tired trope in all of storytelling -- and this ancient alien also-ran plot.
If this show is so daring, what is it adding to the conversation? What do I know about that society that I didn't before? The show has 21 or so producers, and it's clearly just a mess creatively. Stewart was heavily involved in the writers room, and it shows -- poorly, I would opine.
I can accept that the show is more about characters than larger considerations of the verse and the federation and all of that. Okay. Fine. A different show than what I'd want, but hey, I love character stuff. What I got didn't have one interesting character in the bunch, including Picard.
The show's action leaning and reliance on cheap nostalgia are going to be subjective; some will like all that. Personally, I don't. But this show definitely doesn't have good "craft" -- shot composition, editing, score, writing. And the characters have already exposited their basic sketch. There's nothing I'm curious to learn about these people as lensed through the world they live in. And the lead in the show is literally a passenger in it, someone who is now just living in a robot body as the show shambles towards some clumsy take on blurring organic and AI. And I suspect it's all just a limp attempt to jam Q back in and have some shoot-bang while trying to establish this weak new character set.
But to your point, if the show actually has a following, it will carry on. I'd be surprised if it does, but fair play to those who want more of that. But I'm just here to provide a counterpoint, as I feel a lot of the clap-back against criticism of the show is that it's just people going: "Durr. This isn't muh TNG."
I guess I'd say that science fiction caters to a wide audience, and I would've hoped for a show that would demonstrate more ambition, more vision than this does. It's not a future I'm fascinated to think about. The characters don't spark my curiosity to learn about them. And to be blunt, the show can't even sniff anything resembling "prestige TV." It's barely even functional cable TV.
