Chris

Discovery’s problem is that firstly, it continued the obsession with prequels, where you’re on a hiding to nothing. Writing in a shared universe is difficult enough, writing new stories behind established continuity is frightfully difficult, especially when there’s a highly engaged fan base to pick up your mistakes. And secondly they originally gave the gig to people who neither knew nor cared much about the spirit of Star Trek. I think season 2 was much, much better, and they have worked really hard to try to give convincing in-universe explanations for stuff that really didn’t fit, but ultimately they effectively threw their hands up, declared the job too hard and contrived to send them so far into the future that they couldn’t do any further damage to the continuity no matter what.

Picard’s major advantage is that Stewart has the whip hand. In order to get him back, they had no choice but to do it properly. There simply wasn’t any room for someone determined to show off their own vision of the future while junking everything we’ve come to love. Patrick Stewart only agreed to do this because he saw that the proposal was coming from people who understood the most famous character he’s ever played, understood what might happen next, and were prepared to allow Stewart to input into the development.