7 plot changes that doomed Star Trek: Discovery before it started

Star Trek: Discovery rubbed fans the wrong way upon launch and it did so for a variety of reasons. Those reasons are why we're here today. It's absolutely a fact that the needless changes to the lore affected how fans embraced the show, far more than any other element that defenders of the show would like to cite. At the core of the criticism, it didn't feel or flow like a Star Trek show, and even if it did, it made changes to the canon that felt forced. It felt very self-serving and at times more like pandering.

Pandering to anyone who wasn't already a Star Trek fan, and it didn't work.

While some will dismiss the criticisms, it's important to know why Star Trek has prevailed all these years; consistency. It follows a throughline that connects eras and generations to one another. It allows fans to explore the new and bold with younger fans and keeps them connected by historical events that became the bedrock of the franchise.

When you start tampering with those events, those reasons fans became fans in the first place, you start telling fans that the thing that connected them together for all these years wasn't good enough. That's where people start to have an issue. The franchise doesn't reboot, it adds on, and Discovery felt like a show that was ashamed of what came before. Instead of embracing the typical things that made Star Trek what it was, it sought to change it. It sought to make its franchise "better" than those that came before it.

It didn't strive to be the next chapter, it strived to be the only chapter worth existing. It manipulated established facts because it wouldn't fit otherwise and in doing so upset countless fans and left a nasty taste in their mouth for years to come. Discovery may have found a smaller, but more loyal audience eventually, but it's fair to say that this show never reached the heights it was intended for, and for good reason.

Sometimes it's best to not alter the past, and Discovery found that out the hard way.