Exactly. Take the holographic displays on DISCO. Did we see those in "The Cage" or TOS? Of course not. But here's the thing: people talking to each other via two-way TV screens looked cool and futuristic in the 1960s but much less so nowadays when we routinely Skype and Facetime on our phones. So you need to dial up the "wow factor" to get the same effect the two-way TV screens got back in the day.
STAR TREK is not supposed to be a nostalgic period piece set in in a 1960s vision of tomorrow. I'll grant that some fans would love that--for old time's sake--but ultimately you want DISCO to look as cool and futuristic as TOS did back in the sixties.
What makes you think that shows set in the future are supposed to look cool and futuristic? Any more than shows set in the past are supposed to look uncool and old fashioned.
Shows set in the future are supposed to look like their events happen in the future. Shows set in the past are supposed to look like their events happen in the past. That is all.
In a story or show there should be some aspects that have a "wow factor". But the "wow factor" doesn't have to be the stuff that people use all the time everyday in their day to day lives. For example in a story set in the past the main characters could live a plain existence in drab surroundings using primitive technology centuries behind that of the writer's era. But something could happen to the main characters that takes them out of their dreary mundane existence with its "ho hum factor" and gets them involved in historical events that have a "wow factor".
Suppose a historical movie started with the day to day life of a slave, a field hand in the south. His home with be a shabby, primitive shack, his cloths would be drab rags, his life would be constant physical labor. There would be constant tension between his desire to slack off and work slow and his need to work fast enough and well enough to avoid being whipped. Then he runs off to join the Union army and enlists in the United States Colored Troops.
Then he gets to wear a uniform that is much brighter and fancier than anything he has worn before. In the 19th century fancy Ruritanian uniforms were a major inducement for voluntary enlistment. And the movie, depending on its budget, could show him participating in battles with thousands of soldiers in close order, with dozens of regimental colors, the most artistic of military objects, flying in the breeze, for the "wow factor".
And in a science fiction story set in a future FTL spaceship the people can use in their daily lives stuff that doesn't look much - if any - more advanced than the audience uses in their everyday lives. The characters can use controls to control their vehicle which aren't any more advanced than audience members use to control their vehicles. Their two way video screens don't have to look any more advanced than the communication methods the audience uses in their daily lives.
The "wow factor" can come from the vehicle they control being capable of traveling many times faster than light and taking them to many distant stars during their mission. The "wow factor" can come from their conversations with two way video screens being with people in distant solar systems using subspace radio that travels millions of times as fast as light.
It seems to me that the control interfaces used by characters in futuristic movies and television shows don't determine how advanced the societies in those movies and shows are. Machine control will have advanced to the stage that people just sit around and the machines read their thoughts and carry out their orders, with no manual control actions, long before a space opera society becomes reality. All of the man-machine interfaces used in all versions of
Star Trek seem equally retro in a space opera setting.
What makes various
Star Trek productions seem more advanced than others are the speeds of the starships, the power output of the phasers, the maximum achievable transporter range, and so on. So everything is fine so long as the starships get faster in each later fictional date and the phasers get more powerful, etc. etc.
So the only real technology bone which people should have to pick with prequels like
Enterprise and
Discovery should be with any examples of more advanced technology - in a true sense - that they may depict.
That's an ingenious rationalization, but it doesn't get around the fact that talking to people over computer screens doesn't look futuristic anymore. Today's kids grew talking to Grandma via mom's laptop, so it doesn't remotely read as sci-fi to modern audiences...
.
Yes, taking to people over computer screens does look futuristic to even kids in elementary school. Kids old enough to go to elementary school should realize that talking to people over computer screens is only done in three periods: the present, for a short period of a decade or two in the past, and the future, which may extend for decades, centuries, or millennia into the future.
So anyone who sees characters talking over computer screens knows that the story must happen in either the present, the recent past, or a future of unknown length that may last for ages to come, and thus is statistically more likely to be in the indefinite future than in the present or the recent past. So if there are any aspects of the story, such as the fashions or mention of interstellar travel, which show that it can't be in the present or in the recent past, people talking on computer screens will be seen as a contemporary action engaged in by future people, like, for example, eating in the future..
