I think S1 of PIC is one of the best-executed “serialized” stories in the franchise.
I do think that because people don’t like some of the character decisions concerning Picard’s life and career, and because some people don’t like the ending (I don’t mind it, but admit it could have been better), there’s a tendency to dismiss a lot of good-to-great storytelling in that season. The structure, pace, complexity and development of the story was first class.
Honestly, DSC S1 was a good serialized story as well. It’s just that the ending was a bit daft, and that taints our view of the entire thing, which I think is a bit unfair.
The most irritating question is why these season-long stories are not given more time and planning on the white board. It feels like they just aren’t planned out carefully enough. Something is always “off.”
DSC S1 failed to stick the landing
DSC S2 changed focus mid-stream (we all know why). So whatever was on that proverbial whiteboard got quickly erased and replaced.
DSC S3 just wasn’t very good…they relied on new characters, new settings and new villains who just couldn’t deliver.
DSC S4 had a good ending but was poorly paced and whose most interesting character was (for better and for worse) a guest star antagonist.
PIC S1’s ending didn’t live up to the excellent 8 episodes that built to it, but I refuse to ignore the high quality of the bulk of the season because of that.
PIC S2 had a horrific train-wreck of a mid-section book ended by some pretty awesome stuff. Really quite a painful thing to behold.
SNW S1 wasn’t really serialized, but the threads they did lay down were pretty well paid-off
PRO is really the only one that hits the mark without too much to point at and say “yeah, but…”
If they want to go balls-out serialized with a future series, they need to commit to a full-out multi-season plan. They need to contract a showrunner to get onboard and plot the general story out (beginning, middle, end) and commit to a thematic core that will remain consistent throughout the story. So that way, even if they lose the showrunner or key writers, they still have the blueprint and still have Kurtzman to ensure things don’t just topple off the tracks.
They also need to create the core characters to have reasonable arcs that are resilient and can either fit-in with the direction of the over-arching story or can be respectfully written out in an organic and reasonable way. One of DSC’s biggest problems is that the characters were written for the original premise, and the further and further away from S1 we get, the more difficult it has been to organically work this group of characters into the different stories they are trying to tell. Stamets is a perfect example, but even the series lead, Michael Burnham, has less of a cohesive/organic connection to the story lines because she was really tailor-made for the tone/themes/events of S1.
Anyway, that’s just my thoughts on the whole thing.
I think a serialized Star Trek show, done well, would still be a welcome and highly entertaining piece of the franchise. But, the “done well” part is, as always, the key.