I'm into Season 2 on my rewatch. The biggest thing that stand out for me is how... different Pike feels between this and SNW.
As much I generally like SNW, I think they fumbled Pike quite a bit. DSC Pike is the strong, commanding presence I expected from Pike. SNW Pike is something of a pushover, sometimes a bit too often almost pushed to the background to let other characters handle things. It's a bizarro opposite effect from Discovery with All Burnham All The Time, to SNW where it's... yeah Pike's the Captain, but what's Uhura up to today?
DSC Pike was seemed very much like a "get the job done" type, while SNW Pike has consistently shown to be fairly weak. Yeah he's dealing with the knowledge of his demise, but still.
(On a quick tangent from that, seeing Pike's relationship with Batel makes "The Menagerie" feel weird... Spock goes rogue to bring Pike to the Talosians to live happily ever after with Vina? It doesn't sit as well with me now.)
EDIT -
Had a bad day and binged out Season 2.
It made me recall my first watch and I was just as disappointed in the second go around to the "mystery box". The Red Angel story was actually really cool... except for that it's Discovery, so the outcome was incredibly obvious. I remember on the original run thinking "sigh, it's definitely Burnham, but I hope it's not." Sure enough... of course it's Burnham.
On the Red Angel, I was less laser focused on this on the first go around... although it was in my head... the whole idea of the Red Angel just stretches all believability. It doesn't really make sense as to what it is... it's a suit built in the mid-23rd century that has full time travel capability, as well being able to apparently freely move through space as well, contained into a single, suit-sized unit. Like... why do even have ships? Where the hell did all of this technology come from?!
I can "yadda yadda" away the time travel. Fine. It uses a time crystal. Sure. But like... why can the suit just fly around anywhere, have like, an uber tractor beam? That can upend buildings, transport them across thousands of lightyears while also protecting the people within the building through the trip.
Typing it out makes me just... baffled about the Red Angel. It makes absolutely no sense.
The sphere was cool. I loved that concept. The Klingon subplot through the season felt tacked on and there just because. I generally liked the Section 31 stuff, but NOT-Borg Control was alittle contrived. That just didn't fit the setting. I didn't really have an issue with Section 31 being essentially just legit Starfleet Intelligence... after what happens, I think it's reasonable things got restructured and they took their organization underground. That's fine.
One thing I had not considered on the first watch was Boreth. On one hand, I appreciate them digging into the lore and using an established place. The thing is though, it makes whole Clone Kahless thing odd. I mean, a bunch of monks who sit on a mountain of time crystals that can effortlessly move things through space-time, in a place where time is almost meaningless... used genetic engineering to clone Kahless? They also seem to get a bit lax with their security by TNG... the Klingons seemed to weary of anyone going to Boreth, but by TNG it seems not uncommon to head to the monastery and do Klingon things.
