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Theory: the reason "Picard" didn't resonate was because it was made by people who were in college when TNG was on instead of people who were in elementary or middle school.
The teens/twenties TNG viewers (Michael Chabon is 57) were like, "This is cool, but one day I hope they make a serious, harder sci-fi show for real adults like me." And that's the show they made.
But if you were a kid, TNG was comfort food, like spending time with a family you liked.
No one my age would have brought back Data just to give him another, slightly better funeral. That strikes me as a very "Gen X" choice.
Anyway, I think "Picard" is fine for what it is but I hope someday they let people who loved that warm, silly TNG tone make a show. (Orville doesn't count because he wants to make *the exact same show.*)
Discovery has glimmers of TNG (Tig Notaro and the bridge crew hanging out, playing word games with the lizard man), but it's held back by every season being a big interconnected "save the universe from apocalypse" story.
Every character on Discovery and Picard could be a classic Star Trek character if they were doing episodic, character-based stories.
Discovery already has a deeper bench than DS9.
I just want someone on one of these shows to eat a cellular peptide cake, with mint frosting.
