I think what I can't get my head around is this concept of "if it wasn't mentioned in TOS, it can't exist in Discovery", when TOS (and, to some extent, all of Star Trek) was made by people with a much looser concept of the requirements of sticking to a defined canon. Claiming that DSC is breaking rules that Star Trek was never good at keeping in the first place is weird, to me.
Which is a fair enough point. TNG and by extension DS9/VOY were a lot more respectful of continuity however, particularly in regards to the tech. TOS ships were slower, they had no replicators, no holodecks, the transporters would doppelganger people....which I guess they never fixed?
This is the problem of doing a prequel. The ships have to be less capable. The ideals and the way things are have to be proportionally less developed, because you wouldn't expect 19th century Europe to have greater civil rights than 20th century Europe now would you? Yet in Discovery the ships seem more capable, the officers seem to instinctively know what to do with stuff that the poor old Enterprise crew had to ponder over.
TOS established a lot of plot and setting tropes that audiences are now too familiar with, so DSC by necessity has to gloss over things like Burnham using a thruster pack which would've taken a good 10-mins of explanatory dialogue in TOS before the scene actually happened.
Rogue One is a fine example of a prequel done right imho and arguably Star Wars has less of an incentive to maintain continuity because it has a wider appeal and can get away with playing fast and loose with canon.
Putting the tech aside, in terms of ideals the Federation is much more mature by TNG era than it was in TOS, if Kirk and Co. are anything to go by. The Prime Directive is adhered to more often, though probably less than even half of the time, but still more than Kirk did by any reasonable measure. There's far more diplomacy going on, I mean hell the Federation are
allied to the Klingons by TNG. That's a story I'd much rather explore.
The Federation in TOS is well-meaning, but not pacifistic. The Enterprise Incident coming to mind, where Kirk is ordered to steal a cloaking device from the Romulans. In DSC they seem downright militaristic. Starfleet feels and operates more like a traditional Navy than Nasa with guns, which is basically what TOS Starfleet was.
DSC actually reminds me of the Movie era, where everyone wore the same red military uniforms and the stories revolved more around action. Even then we got the Shakespeare and Moby-Dick quotes (He tasks me!). That works for the films. In DSC everyone wears the same blue military uniforms, there's constant action, there's escalation instead of diplomacy or science solutions....
Idk, I really don't want to dislike Discovery. I do think Trek has to evolve and DSC is trying very hard to just that, which is itself commendable. But the Trek tropes just don't seem to be there - the exploration, the sciencing, the interesting and sometimes brilliant dialogue, the cringey humour, the technobabble (which DSC has actually kept to a minimum which is...good I guess?), the occasionally hamfisted moral lessons....
I agreed with Kara in that it doesn't feel like Trek to me, it feels more like generic sci-fi, which is an opinion that seems to be widely shared among
Virgins Trekkies.
EDIT: Didn't spot your post there:-
Because the tone on-board Discovery is typical for Starfleet? When Discovery is explicitly atypical?
Yes, but they're not even a combat unit yet they seem to operate more like a warship.