Meh. No hate no love. I liked some of the cast but it was just meh for me. Meh.
That's kinda the problem with Discovery - lots of loud and divisive theories about what fundamental decision killed it when I think the real issue was simply that some of it
just wasn't particularly good.
The best bit was Season 2 - but then that was effectively Season 0 of
Strange New Worlds.
(and as for that turbolift chase... did they not
get the joke about the stompy things in
Galaxy Quest...?)
It's a story about humanity: our flaws, our struggles, our morality, our attempt at being better than we were yesterday.
...except
Discovery was chock full with scenes where the action ground to a halt while they all stood around and talked about their feelings. Possibly profound things were said about human nature, but thanks to the sound production and overly-naturalistic acting all I heard was "sob sob, whisper, snuffle sob". (I've since given up and just left the subtitles switched on, but it's funny how some shows need it and others don't...)
Nor is there anything wrong with a "darker and edgier" take on Star Trek - except it has already been done, time and time again. I get creatives not wanting to continually re-hash the past (even though
The Orville shows that there's an audience for more TNG-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off shows) - but you still need
actual new ideas.
Even Trek has already gone "darker and edgier" with DS9 and half of the movies. Season 3 of
Discovery is, effectively, the same premise as
Andromeda (which ISTR was originally conceived as a Star Trek rebuild-the-fallen-Federation show) - there's a whole freakin
genre of "anti-Star Trek" shows (Blake's 7, both versions of BattleStar Galactica, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, Dark Matter - no, the earlier one), KillJoys, Above and Beyond, The Expanse...) which have the advantage of not being tied down by ST's massive continuity (and continuity-obsessed fanbase).
I think we're now faced with several long-running SF/Fantasy franchises that have got too old to be able to reconcile the need to appeal to a new audience of teenagers without alienating their original middle-aged-to-senior fans, and risk losing both in the attempt. Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who... even Marvel and DC superheroes are disappearing down the confusing multiverse rabbit hole. The industry don't really want to drop these "old faithful" franchises, but I think we've gone past the point where they are "low risk" ventures.
Mostly, these mega-hits
started out as original ideas (or at least brought largely unknown ideas to a new audience). The industry needs to pluck up courage to try new ideas again... (Even Apple's
Foundation would, I think, have made a far better space opera if they'd forgotten about trying to pretend it was an adaptation of the famous book and, instead, buit on some of the new ideas used in the show).