Never really thought about this before. At the time TNG was born, many were upset that the classic characters had no part in it. Now many people's introduction to Star Trek was seeing two or three series concurrently, each with different groups of people who barely ever mention each other. They accept it as given, but it's actually unusual. When I was introducing someone to Trek, this seemed hard for them to accept, with frequent questions like how Kirk and Spock fit into TNG, or where the Enterprise is in DS9. It's strange how we're now at a point where people would literally consider it "jumping the shark" to connect to a character who was the lead for almost half of the franchise's history.
I disagree. Discovery is almost like picking up a Batman comic every month and him being in the background playing second fiddle to Superman every issue. Sure, it can be fun once in a while. But it eventually gets tedious. And it isn't like it is something new, the novels have been doing it for as long as there have been spinoffs.
Quick tip, you might discover that Star Trek is far less tedious than you think if you take a break from whinging daily on these forums.
To be fair, "something's wrong with Spock" is the engine that drives any number of classic Trek eps: "Amok Time," "The Menagerie," "This Side of Paradise," "All Our Yesterdays," TMP, etc. Even the whale movie starts off with Kirk and McCoy wondering if Spock is all there, mentally. And I think we can safely assume that Spock did NOT murder any doctors, just like Scotty didn't actually murder anybody in "Wolf in Fold" and Kirk didn't actually kill Ben Finney in "Court Martial." "Series regular is suspected of murder" is just a standard TV trope.
If they ever needed an audio from Kirk only, he'd be the guy. Would probably piss off Shatner, unless that whole thing smoothed over by now.
I actually kinda amazed that some folks are acting as though it's confirmed that Spock is actually a murderer. Have they never watched an American TV series before . . . or are they just grasping for another reason to bash DISCO? Heck, as TV Tropes points out, this is a pretty familiar Trek plot: "Occurs about once a series in the Star Trek franchise. Usually, a senior officer is accused of committing a crime under alien law, the evidence at the trial looks pretty damning, and then at the end the heroes present The Real Cause. In Star Trek: The Original Series: In the episode "Journey to Babel": Ambassador Sarek was suspected of murdering the Tellarite ambassador. In fact, an Orion posing as the Andorian ambassador had done so. In the episode "Wolf in the Fold": Jack the Ripper in energy-being form. In "Court Martial", Kirk is accused of causing the death of one of his crewmembers. In Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "A Matter of Perspective", Riker is accused of murdering an alien scientist (and putting the moves on said scientist's wife, although the details on that part vary depending on who's telling the story). It turns out that the scientist tried to kill Riker (without him even knowing) and it backfired spectacularly. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Dax": Dax's previous host is a suspect in a thirty-year-old murder case." And yet we really think Spock is a murderer? Get real.
Whether or not he is a murderer, I'm not sure I see a good way out of the setup. Either he's the murderer, the Red Angel "made him do it" or Section 31 murdered the doctors after he escaped. None of it really captures my imagination. Though maybe they surprise me with how they execute it.
I wonder what time period the (supposedly in development) Star Fleet Academy show will take place in? I kinda-sorta believe that more then heads will explode if it's set just before DISCOVERY. [spelling edit]
Do we know for sure if he's actually the Commander of the place Spock was supposedly being held. I only remember him seemingly stating the facts as they were reported to him, not that he was actually there when it happened. (I've only watched the episode once so far)