Just finished watching the new Strange New World, the best new trek show. I think I've finally pinpointed the big thing that separates it from Discovery (and Picard, but that one has other issues). Star Trek, at least in the 90s era, is about the aesthetics of competence. People doing their best at very demanding jobs, in a fantastical future world. It is, essentially, a procedural where the writers get to make up most of the procedure every week.
Discovery is not written like that. It's like an epic sci-fi series, trying to grapple with big ideas and big emotions and big plots with civilization-ending stakes. Any time they tried to pull the whole "we're like a family!!" thing with that crew, I never bought it. Only like five crew members even have lines on a regular basis. The whole world feels so hermetic and small. It would've been a perfectly fine miniseries, but they really shouldn't have made more after that first season.
The thing I keep coming back to is the thing that David Sims said about it on some episode or other of the Blank Check podcast: "Everyone's always crying too much." And that's really it! It feels unprofessional. These people are supposed to be competent bureaucrats living in a fantastical future world, not a bunch of characters from a 1930's melodrama.
SNW is the return of the workplace procedural. That's why it's better.
To wit: this week's episode was a classic Shuttlecraft Accident Episode, where something wacky happens with some weird seemingly omnipotent aliens, and also the family members of some crew people show up! It was very low stakes and fun.