Most conspicuous is that the design of everything in
Discovery seems to echo more of what showed up in J.J. Abrams’ alternate universe
Star Trek, and the weirdness to the timeline is so intense that
there’s been a fairly reasonable rumor going around—one sent to me by a number of fans—that the show takes place in a third timeline, something halfway between the original Prime timeline and the Kelvin timeline of the reboot movies.
This rumor may or may not turn out to be true, but it’s symptomatic of the confusion surrounding
Discovery that clouds it even more than the constant delays and production issues. In attempting to please both masters, it’s failing to entice either—not fans who have been dying to get
Trek back with all its rich history and universe-building, and certainly not people who may have enjoyed the recent movies, but can only be intimidated by the massive, complicated lore of the original
Trek canon.