@Equals @adamkotsko and back on SNW, the only chance to get a resolution to the many abandonment traumas (Uhura, M'Benga, Spock to name some) is also a lost cause, because the archetypical "cool dad" Christopher Pike is *destined* to sacrifice himself not only in an act of duty, but in an act of paternal sacrifice.

All in all, it seems that the overarching theme of the new series is not, as themselves say, "communication", but the inevitable fragility of all forms of family.

@Equals @adamkotsko (this place is left best blank for the absolute obviousness of the abandonment theme on Prodigy)

@Equals @adamkotsko the Asha twins discover traumatically that their lives and families are fake, and Soji also that the one real person she knew was just killed; the general mental state of the La Sirena crew is of different stages of estrangement, from Jurati being incapable of involving herself with other people, to the literal orphans Elnor and Seven, who, influenced as much as Picard and Ríos by their respective institutions, replace attachment with duty to any sort of lost causes...

@Equals @adamkotsko But let's not dwell on a single character, because there's abandonment for almost everyone on the new series!

To give a fast review: Saru gets estranged of his full species by disobeying the self-destructive advice of his father; Voq, literally "son of none" loses his spiritual leader T'Kuvma and further estranges himself from his species to save it; Tilly is obsessed with proving herself to her mother, which becomes a vain attempt after the time jump...

@Equals @adamkotsko the topic of losing her mother to a myriad of different unescapable situations repeats constantly in Burnham's life, maybe synthesised on the inevitability of the death of her mirror universe version at the hands of her adoptive mother. That's (at least for me) why having her actual mother returning as a mentor in the far future feels cheap: the series accumulated too much gravitas around her loss to have the very focus of it appearing as a simple supporting character.

@Equals @adamkotsko (I'll give a try commenting from Mastodon, maybe this will go nowhere)

In the new series it seems that the main theme is of abandonment, either willing or accidental, resulting on the "children" (the crew) having to "grow up" on the parental role that's lost.

Burnham is maybe too evident metaphor here: orphan of her biological parents, one of her formative moments is escaping from her (mostly) emotionally distant foster family, and the reason why her captain/mother is dead.