I’ve been rewatching Discovery in preparation for season 3, which started yesterday (no spoilers, please). It’s good research for my own space opera too. I just finished 15 episodes of season 1, and it really was very satisfying. I had quite a few concerns in the first episodes, but they resolved most of them pretty well.
I know lots of people didn’t want to sign up for another streaming service to watch this, but even if you just sign up for a month of CBS and binge that season, it’s something like 7 movies’ worth of content, and I think well worth any Star Trek fan’s time.