Movies and TV Shows

You're right that Kurtzman has less creative control than he did on Discovery (where he was sole showrunner for a time), so it was a bit unfair. Introducing Pike and the Enterprise appears to be Akiva Goldsman's idea from the outset in Discovery, and it seems that he and Kurtzman were the main co-creators of the series. Goldsman is evidently the main showrunner.

Nevertheless, Kyrtzman created this iteration of the universe with Discovery, and my issue with it is that a show like TOS or TNG would never be made in this universe. Picard is the clearest example of this, where it didn't even feel like TNG in any way until season 3 when it got a new showrunner after going completely off the rails. I enjoyed that immensely, but it still felt like an extended TNG movie layered on the best TOS movies. The movies for both crews felt very different from their respective series.

Likewise, SNW is not TOS despite the trappings, although it's less egregiously different than the first two seasons of Picard. It turned down the dial of the incessantly quippy dialogue of Discovery at least.

You're right that they're trying to bend what Star Trek is, and I'm fine with that to a point, but my perception is they feel like there's something wrong with Star Trek that they need to fix: it's too staid, too boring, not enough punchy dialogue, not enough emotion, whatever.

That said, I like more episodes of this than I do of the other recent shows. I just wish they had shelved this script in favor of one with a big idea, or barring that at least went with the operatic Klingon version instead...