Yes! “Tug your heartstrings before doing anything else” hits the nail on the head! They completely forgot the part where they actually have to earn it. When you try to make people care without putting in the legwork, it just builds resentment. Then they try to play it off like “he is now Saru’s ward and an important part of Kelpian society or whatever the hell that was?”…a lazy " shit happens in space" would’ve been a better explanation than that tbh.

I liked what they tried with the later seasons and the new federation too. However, I feel like they swung too far in the other direction from S1 where they got too scared to have actual stakes and started doing the transparent holywood thing of introducing new characters (or trying to give an old character more plot than they had in 4 seasons) in the first 10 mins of an episode, killing them off, then expecting you to care because characters you actually know liked them.