Besides all of that, this show misses the point of Star Trek at its very core.
Is it being a whiny fan boy to be upset at the focus on darkness/war? When Trek (right there in the title) is about a journey of driving curiosity to the stars?
Don't you get enough of that in ten million other franchises?
Sure have some fights now and then, I enjoy it, but it should only serve as obstacles to the driving mission of exploration, to boldy go, seek out new life, etc. That IS the mission statement of Star Trek.
I just don't get it. I will never get it. This is perversion of Trek.
I won't answer for JD, but here's my take.
I don't disagree with you on what Trek should be about. I'd love stories that got back to exploration-- but I think it's myopic to say that's the ONLY thing Trek was about and that this is a perversion. On the surface, in a literal sense, yes, most of TOS and TNG was about exploration. BUT-- thematically, narratively, and tonally, Trek was social commentary. That commentary was hidden inside adventure stories to avoid being pedantic. TOS and TNG used the concepts of finding alien races with issues to mirror issues happening during the times the show aired.
While problems (like racism and sexism) unfortunately don't go away, times do change, and how we as a media-consuming society take in those stories also changes. I've said in the Orville thread that the main reason I like it is because it emulates the TNG model so well. But there's a reason Trek died with Enterprise-- that model got tired, and it didn't evolve. You can't be socially relevant and not keep your narrative keeping with the times.
The Battlestar Galactica remake basically proved this. Social commentary coming in the form of made up aliens with silly names and foreheads just wasn't cutting it. We can attack the grimdark desires of Hollywood for sure-- but when I saw BSG and heard Ron Moore say it was everything Trek wouldn't let him do, that made sense. It was no longer the cold war and civil rights movement era of the TOS, or the fall of Communism and peace-mongering of the TNG 80s/90s -- we were fighting the war on terror, we were a nation that was now rocketing down the road of being split into to strongly opposing party lines that leads to where we are now. BSG told scifi stories about what it meant to be human, just like Trek, but it did it through parallels to the Iraq war, terrorism, etc. It was fitting to the era it aired.
Back to fanboys-- the hardcore fandom that I find annoying and bothersome are the types who look at Star Trek in a literal way, and seem to only want more of the same thing. There's plenty of fanboy in me that doesn't like uneven warp-nacelled ships, or a human doing a nerve-pinch, or using the wrong insignia, or giving a 23rd century ship an OPS bridge position-- but that's just the details. And while attention to detail and unified concepts is one of the things that made old school Trek great, it's just set-dressing for a bigger concept. I have a lot of problems with fandom in general now (see my rant in the Harry Knowles thread), but there's people in this thread who decided months ago this show sucked and they would hate it because it was clearly not the same thing that they liked. And it comes out, and big shocker, they hate it. And even bigger shocker, I bet they'll keep posting here week after week complaining about a show they hate, that they continue to watch.
But again-- it's that literal take on Star Trek that defines what the show should be to them that I take issue with. As much as I love all the details, to me, the core of Star Trek is being social commentary hidden inside a sci-fi adventure that promotes unity. That is the important part... and HOW that core conceit is told HAS to be something that changes with time.
Could they do that with more exploration and production design that's keeping with continuity-- sure. Is Discovery going to pull that off? Too early to fairly tell.
But just because they change things up to an unfamiliar place doesn't mean the show should be damned before it even airs. I'm not requiring anybody to like it. I'm a life long Trekkie and I despise Voyager. But to incessantly whine and bitch about Discovery being wrong just because it's not what you expected it to be is... well-- valid if you really don't like it. But hardcore fandom does that negging at such an extreme level to the point of shutting down people who disagree.
I like Discovery, I post as much, and the response is not "That's your opinion, here's mine." It's me being quoted and told NO WRONG NOW LISTEN TO MY TRUTH WHICH IS THE ONLY TRUTH. And I think that's crap.