All these franchises have turned into aging rock bands who play ten minute versions of their greatest hits because it's the only way they can sneak in something without fans running for the doors. It forgettable because you've seen a purer version of it before.
If they gave somebody two seasons to take it in a new direction with no call backs, would anybody watch?
I WOULD!!!! It's literally ALL I want out of these shows.
And in case you want to reply, blah blah, Nacho, you don't count: I present to you The Mandalorian. The first season and most of the second required no real knowledge of the mainstream or expanded universe. Basically, you had to know who Yoda and Luke Skywalker were and you needed to know that the Empire is bad but it got toppled in the original trilogy. All information my neighbor's dog could tell me in between feeding me orders to murder hookers. The callbacks that were woven into the scripts were expertly handled fan service: Those who knew WTF were excited, those who didn't got to organically learn some more lore without being tasked to re-experience the last 50 years.
And, also, the last two seasons of Discovery which catapulted the ship 1000 years into the future and charged the crew with rebuilding the Federation. For a show that couldn't seem to escape a fucking call back per fucking minute, they forced themselves to tell a story with about 37% fewer callbacks per episode. You could probably watch Season 3, and certainly 4, with the same level of Mandalorian's "even the dog knows this" knowledge of the Star Trek universe.
So it is possible, and the fans show up for it. Which makes the decision to fuck the franchises even more confounding. Everybody wants more Doctor Who, more Star Trek, more Star Wars. And I think most of them want NEW stuff and just settle for the fan service bullshit they're being fed because they're simply hungry for new stuff. (Though I think Doctor Who will be made an example of in the fan arena -- the fan service is now so obscene and in your face that the fans are fleeing the show. Hell, I've been gaga for Doctor Who since 1978, like, since I can remember... And I want the show to go off the air.)
