I was thinking maybe a seahorse kind of thing.

I dunno, having Yar’s baby momma show up and drop off a kid would have been a challenge to write in the late 80s / early 90s.

It’s always been both, just with our current problems offloaded to aliens for scrutinization. That they’re no longer using aliens for commentary is the problem.

Something I would have liked to have seen is Vidiians being assimilated by choice on the basis that being part of the Collective had to be better than suffering from the Phage. Instead of them just being enemies, they should have really leaned into how horrible it would be to live with that plague hanging over their heads. It’s also implied in an episode or two that there are uninfected populations somewhere, probably under quarantine, which would have been interesting to explore.

M’Benga still wears blue. Chapel wears white, but she’s also a civilian contractor in SNW and hasn’t joined Starfleet yet, so how her uniform color interacts with everyone else is unclear.

That was entirely dependent on Stewart’s contract negotiations, though, rather than anyone wanting to kill off Picard.

They didn’t want to fire her, but she did want to quit. She wasn’t happy with the direction they were taking her character. I wouldn’t be surprised if she also had issues with the same guy McFadden did. Jadzia was killed off because Berman wouldn’t let Farrell switch to being a recurring rather than a regular, which may be what you’re thinking of.

And a malfunction has the potential to destroy all life in the multiverse.

I didn’t like that part at all. An infinite multiverse, which they state in DSC is the case, means that anything with a probability greater than zero is guaranteed. Mathematically, the multiverse should have already been wiped out at some point. It’s also a throwaway line meant to increase dramatic tension for all of ten seconds before the scene ends, and an empty threat given that following through would end the show.

I suspect she never learned how to read faces or tell tones of voice apart, which is why has so many problems when her empathic powers are supressed. She can sense sarcasm through an opaque soundproof wall, so why would she need to know that people sound different when they’re being sarcastic?