First of all, what makes you think you can speak for "audiences" in general? Second, surely it's possible that writers have other motivations besides just pleasing the largest number of viewers. (If that were their concern, they'd be execs, not writers.)
Again, who except the bean-counters cares how it does financially? Creatively, it was the best of the three JJ-verse films. (Which may be damning with faint praise... but still, it at least had moments that evoked the feeling of a genuine Trek story.)
Yeah, it kinda does.
ST: Discovery is clearly not intended to be a standalone TV series. If it were, it would be nigh unto incomprehensible to audiences. It is situated in a pre-existing fictional reality, and it relies heavily on audience familiarity with that reality. (Consider even the largely disposable desert scene at the beginning of the pilot. Were it not for prior familiarity, much of that would have had no meaning whatsoever, from the throwaway reference to "general order one" to, especially, the delta symbol tracked in the sand.)
If you're going to work in a pre-existing fictional reality, then it just makes sense (to my mind, at least) to do your best to be consistent with what's already been established in that reality. That's all that continuity is about. To do otherwise is, creatively speaking, an attempt to have your cake and eat it too. It's saying "I'll play by the rules as long as they're to my advantage, but as soon as I don't like them I'll break them." It betrays a lack of artistic integrity.
Clearly a YMMV moment. To my mind, "Affliction" (together with "Divergence") was terrific, and did a solid job of answering a previously unanswered story question that had been bothering me (and obviously, many others) for years. Yay! (Now, the overall series that story fell in was arguably unnecessary and unsatisfying, but that's another discussion entirely.)
