Despite Star Trek: Discovery’s critical success, it was far from a fan-favorite. Though all four seasons boast an average 85 percent critical score, the audience score is at a dismal 37 percent. Since audience scores are more strongly correlated to overall viewership, Discovery simply wasn’t pulling the numbers to make it a financially viable intellectual property.
Do you not have the belief that you should watch every bit of canon Star Trek that’s available, no matter what? I do. It doesn’t take much time. Now that Picard 3 is out, I’m going to do a fast rewatch of all three seasons and see if I can understand it better, because I sure as hell didn’t the first time through S1 & 2.
I don’t think that there really can be cannon for media projects with this many different leaders at the helm, made so far apart, and without a strong source material. There’s so much media to watch out there that if I don’t like a show, I am not going to watch it just because I liked other shows with a similar naming scheme.
There is also a lot of time travel and “mirror universing” in Trek, so whatever could be considered cannon might not have happened in the same timeline as other events that are also considered cannon.