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Originally Posted by Stuart
I think it would have made things easier continuity wise as well. If you watch Enterprise then Star Trek (i.e. following the actual chronology), it actually looks like Starfleet's technology took a massive step backwards, because the special effects were so much better on Enterprise. I'm not even thinking of the exterior shots, the on set console displays were far better.
Discovery has a tough act to follow. They have a good consulting producer Nicholas Meyer (who directed The Wrath of Kahn and the Undiscovered Country and is one of two people credited with keeping the franchise alive after the relative failure of The Motion Picture). If he is still as good a writer as he was during those two films, and if he is directly involved, I think it will do well. It seems to have a good team behind it.
I think TNG was always going to be a difficult series to follow (although DS9 did a good job). Although it had some very bad episodes (the first half of season one and a lot of season 7 for instance), it had some of the best episodes I've seen in any TV series. I think one of the things I liked about TNG is that in some of the best stories, the actual setting was almost irrelevant, which meant that some of the best episodes almost weren't sci fi.
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The best sci fi often is barely sci fi. One of the genre's key strengths is that it allows common issues to be explored from radically different angles. Star Trek TNG managed to explore society's attitude towards same sex relationships on prime time US TV as far back as 1991 (The Host, Season 4 e23) by switching a male character* into a female body part way through the episode and then discussing Dr Crusher's conflicted emotions, as she had already developed an attraction to him (latterly her).
TOS postulated a future in which Russians and Americans could serve in the same uniform, right at the height of the Cold War, and, famously, a future in which ethnically different characters could even kiss, much less fall in love, at a time when racial segregation had only just lost its basis in US law.
I'm not certain Nick Meyer will have much direct involvement in this new series. Making someone a consulting producer is usually a means of preventing copyright disputes. Ignoring the Motionless Picture for a moment (as most people do), everything that was any good about the original film franchise originated with him (though he famously disagreed with the idea of bringing Spock back from the dead). Discovery will almost certainly reference his ideas directly at various points, as it is set fairly close in the continuity to the end of the original film run, and may well pick up ideas he had but which didn't find their way into the films. If his name is on the credits for Discovery, then they easily get his buy-in for any of that.
For comparison ... Gene Roddenberry had a producer credit on TNG, but reputedly he spent most of his time writing memos to the real show producers slagging the project off.
* A Trill, except not in quite the same way they were later portrayed in DS9.