I’ve always been of the opinion that something is cannot if the owners say it is. Doesn’t mean I like it but I accept it. This is coming from the person who doesn’t like that they don’t respect ship names and registrations in Picard S3. Excelsior is NCC-2000 (insert Letter) not 90-odd thousand and something! /Rant
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’d like more Trek out beyond the current lore, it’s own thing that is in the same universe but not directly tied to anything we’ve got. Star Trek is running into that Skywalker’s everywhere issue that Star Wars has.
The best idea I’ve seen so far (IMHO) steals from Stargate by sending a ship via a transwarp one way-esque jump to another galaxy. That lets you star fresh but still dip into the existing lore if/when. Then as the series goes on slowly but surely Starfleet gets more of a foothold, builds a star base/outpost, transwarp link-thing, you get more ships, more people, more spinoffs etc.
Struck me as a “clean” start of sorts.