Watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds, I'm enjoying so far after watching season 1, but I personally think Paramount appeals for nostalgia more than a new public, specially with lots and lots of reference who only fans will catch.
And I start to remembering those people who complaing about Star Wars or Fallout, with the idea of franchises which need a 360 grades turn to bring something new, for example, Fallout fans complain about the overuse of Broterhood of Steel, something I think is a silly thing to complaing since is almost the face of Fallout franchise is a whole.
But my question is; do Star Trek fans has the same opinions and thoughts? Of letting go the franchise?
Image as example, also, I'm waiting for respectful discussion and not flamewar.
I would start by suggesting we look at fewer youtubers and their views on the subject. I'm tired of dumb facial expressions on thumbnails and exaggerated video titles that do not aim for calm, measured critique but to please the algorithm. And the algorithm likes controversy. So this linked video may be the outlier - I wouldn't know because I refuse to click through. These video links are more often than not efforts to increase views and thus nudge the video up in the ranking.
Is the death of the franchise nigh? Maybe. It wouldn't be its first. We have had deaths after TOS S3 and ENT S4/Nemesis. There was stuff in print or in games but nothing on screen until Star Wars became a success and the arrival of the binge streaming age/Star Wars again respectively. We may be on the verge of another lull. We are very dedicated fans of a franchise that needs to be bigger to be financially viable long term. But we are a big enough chunk of the market that executives will be tempted to bring it back.
Can Star Trek tell more stories? Sure it can. It depends on the writers. I was personally disappointed with the stories Disco and PIC told. They thought Star Trek storytelling needs to be Breaking Bad's mixed with Game of Thrones's and that equalled universe destroying threats that need to be fought every season. For SNW they learned that you can have a season long plot but you want to be more episodic. Academy is like that as well. There is a lot of fan service in them by design and references only a subset of viewers will catch. But I don't think that makes the shows less good or accessible to new audiences. And Marvel has established the easter-eggification of storytelling in modern franchises so a lot of viewers will want that.
Many scripts that became Star Trek stories were just sci-fi ideas that were then molded around the universe. There are still good sci-fi story ideas out there that can be told.
My fear is that we are at a ENT S3 point in time. It's a good season but not enough people are watching. Same with SNW or Academy. That's partially pissed off fans but also people not paying Paramount to watch it for reasons unrelated to the fandom. And the maneuvering around the Warner deal makes me fearful that all new projects will be shelved very soon for lack of funding and projected economic success. If the third lull is upon us, it's for economic reasons, not the lack of stories to be told.
100% agree with your Youtube preamble. The "pundits" over there rarely bring anything besides shallow nitpickery to the table.