S2 was just such a missed opportunity. So much promise. I wanted them to show a competently fascist (Con)federation. Not cartoonish supervillainy of the Mirror Universe where people stab each other in turbolifts, but an alternate universe where advanced technology coupled with serious minded but evil people created a highly successful totalitarian nightmare. We got snippets of that in S2 but it was over far too quick to get to Los Angeles (probably to save money on more sets? Shooting on location is very expensive though). Apparently, there was originally more episodes and a larger share of the season planned for the Confederation timeline.These scores make sense. S1 was divisive. So the score is split down the middle. A lot of people didn't like S2. If even I'm not defending S2, that's saying something. And then there's S3.
On top of that, Alex Kurtzman goes out of his way to say we've been heard. So there you go.
What the season really needed was basically a fascist "General Riker" acting as the chief antagonist for 2/3rds of it. Imagine Jonathan Frakes doing Riker but serious-evil, and set him against a universe-displaced Picard. That would have been something.