Not sure how I feel.
In many ways I've absolutely loathed Disco. I think many of the characters are poorly written. It was billed as a "nu-trek" and trying to be different but then proceeded to spend a couple of seasons retreading a bunch of boring stuff we'd seen a million times before, just with snazzy visuals.
But I can't fault it for bringing back Trek after 15 years of wandering in the weeds.
It feels like it was cut a bit badly at the knees, with rotating showrunners none of whom seemed fully sure of what they wanted from the show itself and simultaneously trying to sell us something new but then trying to keep stale storybeats. It somehow managed to revolutionise and start off a bit stale to begin with, and fall between two stools. Other shows have stuck the landing far better.
Ultimately, it was a $104m+ per season run, in which you can see from Rotten Tomatoes from the diminishing returns in terms of professional and audience reviews. The figures probably aren't that great and have only been getting quietly worse.
I think if it were just SNW then maybe not. But thus far what I am seeing repeated by fans is that the legacy characters make the difference in enjoyment.
So, yes, not proof, but an indication of the trend.
Legacy characters work for Picard, and they work for Prodigy. In the former its been in the hope we'd see our favourites again. In the latter its because many of the intended audience likely now have kids of their own, and have someone in there they're familiar with and to allow them to tune in with.
In Lower Decks they are largely played very well for laughs or easter eggs, and work fine that way.
