That's your takeaway?
Mine is that in every fandom, there is a segment that is so toxic that they ruin anything they come in contact with by making sure than anything that doesn't appeal to them gets buried under unrelenting negativity and childish tantrums. This segment of fandom has climbed so far up its own ass that it is incapable of understanding that their tastes are not everyone's tastes and, well, even if they could recognize that fact, are so selfish and self absorbed that they simply don't care.
If it isn't tailored specifically to their tastes, then it's crap and must be unrelentingly attacked at every possible turn to make sure that all and sundry know just how much that segment of fandom is unhappy.
We see this with pretty much every fandom - Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, whatever.
I'd expand the fandom to other activities. There's a lot of "toxic fandom" in sports as well. And there's no shortage of toxic music fans/ band groupies.
The takeaway is that people are jerks.
Fandom in general pushes people to that, because to be a fan of something intrinsically means you are passionate about that. And passion is an intense emotion that is inherently illogical. Passion always pushes people to do dumb things. Hence the innumerable stupid romantic gestures.
(When you get down to it, stalking is basically toxic fandom of an individual.)
There's a very fine line in people getting upset and complaining about franchises. There's a very slight distinction between valid complaints and childish tantrums. And, of course, when pushed by people who disagree, it's easy for a valid criticism to become a childish tantrum. Because passion.
Entitlement comes into it as well. And understandably so: people like stuff they like, and want to like new versions of stuff they previously liked. Fandom is made up of fans. And if you're not targeting the key fans of the franchise… who are you targeting?
Obviously, franchises need to grow, and few forms of media have a large enough base to be sustained entirely by hardcore fans. You need to appeal to general audiences while trying to grown the fandom. But that's still appeal to a
theoretical audience (people who might be fans) versus the known audience. So expansion works best incrementally or supplementally. (Or, alternatively, maintaining the happiness of fanbase can be the purpose of the supplemental media.)
It's like when a band you love releases a new album and they completely change in sound. Doubly so if the new sound is more pop, so it feels like the band catering to mass markets.
Discovery is tricky and really ran into problems with this. It was trying to relaunch Trek on TV and there is a particularly diverse audience of fans. But there wasn't a lot of alternatives: it was like it or disengage with the franchise. For those fans that felt it wasn't "Star Trek" enough, there wasn't another show or the sign of a new movie on the horizon. Unlike, say,
Deep Space Nine that always had TNG or
Voyager running as alternatives.
Rather than trying to relaunch the franchise with a safe bet, like
Star Trek: the Lost Era about the Enterprise-B and a show that really feels like Trek and hits all the tropes, they went with something that was "Star Trek" almost in name only. If that show was around, people would have been much more willing to overlook some of the elements of
Discovery. But when it's the only show and the options are "watch DIS or stop watching new Trek" then that's a crap choice.
Yeah, I can just go and rewatch TNG… but I've done that already. Multiple times in the 24 years since it ended. DIS was the new Trek show people had been waiting and hoping for for twelve years. And to then have that not being something you like is beyond disheartening.
Being excited that some stranger on the internet that you don't really know likes it isn't much of a comfort.