(until they did the haha he’s actually super space Hitler rug-pull)

My guy, they had him admit to blowing up his own vessel and killing everyone on board. He openly ignored Starfleets protocols surrounding new life and sentient life by sanctioning the effective torture of a creature to power the spore drive. He rejected admirals and went against their orders frequently. He slept with a gun under his pillow. He was shown to be collecting torture implements that are psychotically illegal from the entire galaxy and having a creepy room filled with those implements that also happened to have its own independent brig.

It isn't much of a rug pull if you looked down at any point...

Edit: -

He was also gathering navigational data the entire time and actively punched in extra coordinates into the Spore Drive from the Captains Chair. He then gave a long stare into the camera and said "Lets go home".

• He was exceptionally pragmatic in military strategy which isn't so common in Starfleet in general.

• The season is also littered with mirror imagery. First time Lorca is introduced is through a reflection in his window. Stamets has his mirror moment in episode 4.

• He's also littered with scars, including ones that are consistent with the shape of an Agonizer. He showed extreme interest in someone willing to break one of the biggest rules in Starfleet and used his power to pull her into his reach through some wildly sketchy means.

• The light sensitivity wasn't an obvious one as it was a new thing, it was used to canonize why all the Mirror Universe episodes in DS9 and Enterprise are dimly lit and darker, but even that hints that he's not 'normal'.

• He also behaved weirdly with Admiral Cornwall who knew him well and she even mentions that he's not the same person she knew.

• He actively set her up for something he suspected to be an ambush and then refused to go save her despite risking the ship repeatedly before. Something Saru even questioned at the time.

• He's even eating the same food that Burnham is served in the Mirror Universe.

Like I said. Isn't much of a rug pull if you look down.

It's pretty terrible, not terrible enough to not see. The main problem is they made it very very difficult to care at all about anyone. Burnam is the most intollerable captain ever, they barely develop any character at all, and if they do, it's only to kill them immediately after and try and squeeze some easy feelings from us. Well developed characters are instead falsely killed, but ultimately protected by plot armor. As you mentioned, Stamets and Saru are the only really decent guys.

Ds9: where's the exploring? They're on a space station!
Voyager: where are all the aliens we know about?
Enterprise: it's been a long road.

With time, they all got their space. (This is me agreeing)

Voyager is the only series, Kate Mulgrew & Robert Picardo will save us all.

Same, I needed more after SNW and wasn't quite ready for the way 80's - '00s era Trek was filmed. I actually liked the first two seasons and thought season 3 was okay.

Spoiler alert:
But then we learned about the source of the burn.

And then season 4 happened. And then season 5 happened. It felt like all of these were leaning into my least favorite things about Discovery. By the finale, I was fast forwarding through everything just to get through it.

Watching TNG for the first time now and loving it way more than Disco :)

I salute your integrity 🫡

That’s why I like Strange New Worlds better.

Yeah, which makes the burn story kinda flop at the end. It was a good idea, a resource everyone has become dependent on becomes scarce. There was a lot of untaped potential there IMO, but a great premise. Then it gets turned into this asnine root cause. They could have done so much better. Imagine if they turned it into a tragedy of the commons. A warp superhighway wore a crack in subspace and that interacted with a nebula or something. It was a death of a thousand cuts and everyone ignored it. Maybe Starfleet even knew it could happen but ignored it because that's how they have always done it, and even if Starfleet stopped the cardasians and the gorn etc would still be using dilithum based warp bubbles (excuse after excuse)... Heavy handed, maybe, but more meaningful.

Totally second everything you state. The characters are absolutely great too, but the season story arcs with just incredible stakes are not my cup of tea. Serialized and packaged story EPs are preferred. That said I enjoy it for what it is.

Yes, the one where I'm 90% sure season 1 is some other IP that had Star Treks skin stretched over it.

That's what a lot of modern Sci fi shows are doing these days, it seems.

Like the "Halo" show. It very much feels like someone took their idea for a show that got shot down, used find+replace to redo all the names and places to make it "halo" and got greenlit. And honestly I think I might have liked it as it's own thing.

Enterprise is a little campy but really awesome.

I thought it got closer over time. Season 1 tired maybe a bit too hard to feel "new and fresh", but they reined it in a lot later on. I mean, obviously bringing the SNW Enterprise crew in for Season 2 was a bit of a mission statement, but the entire back half of the show is all about getting back to Trek status quo.

Discovery is very divisive among viewers. People seem to really like it or really hate it with not much in between. Both sides have valid arguments, but people forgot there is a middle ground.