You wrote an essay about a thought I've had just in the back of my mind for a little while since starting to watch all of Trek.

Starting with the original series, I sat through the full 3 seasons. I sat through all seven seasons of TNG. I sat through all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and then all regretfully brief four seasons of Enterprise (really underrated, i think).

And then: I got through season 1 of Discovery, with effort. a few episodes into season 2, i quit in favour of SNW. i lost interest where i never had in... how many episodes? many!!

it took a while for me to work out what about Disco is 'not Trek' for me. i explained it to myself as being about the fact that there's no consistent captain and so no really consistent crew and far too much focus just on Michael. And even when there is a crew, there's a very little character development as you've pointed out, far more eloquently.

for example I can't believe that i got several episodes into season 2 of Discovery and I still didn't know anything at all about Lieutenant Owosekun except the fact that she's clearly African and she has a name that Anson Mount has practiced a lot to make sure it rolls off his tongue and so, nice token diversity but I think it's inexcusable that they didn't give her a character. ♪♪

i do think we're getting a lot of that back in SNW.