I know Adira was an incredibly forgettable character in probably the worst Discovery season, but Adira's "I'm actually gender neutral" coming-out talk with Stamets half a season after they were introduced was incredibly mismatched with everything Trek.

Especially with the absolutely amazing way DS9 handled the Curzon/Jadzia thing.

Edit: to see an actually good way to handle a transition on screen, watch The Umbrella Academy.

and manages to be good Trek on its own.

No, I don't actually think that. While there are some gags that work on their own (like the play on prejudice with the Ferengi), there are so many more "remember that thing from TOS, TNG, TAS, etc? Here, have it again!" (like that giant spock skeleton or the Landru-episode or when Rutherford builds a Delta Flyer). And I don't quite like that.

Contrast that with Prodigy (why does that one get to be forgotten so often though? It is really good). Janeway returns as an Emergency Command Hologram, which is a callback both to Janeway and Voyager in general and to the episode about The Doctor, when he wanted to exoand his role and als become an ECH. But they told new stories with the Janeway ECH and made her a new character of her own. Same with Chakotay, who appears later as himself (not a hologramnor some other form of copy). The same character, but new story and developement (both Janeway and Chakotay get more character developement here then in all of Voyager). Then they got Wesley Crusher back, but instead of just rehashing the annoying teenager they explore his Traveler role.
Instead of pointing at things from past shows saying "See, you liked that, didn't you? We got that here, too!", Prodigy expanded these characters and explored new stories. And it did that well.
Lower Decks did that, too, sometimes. Sometimes LD did make fun of older trek, saying how dumb something was, ok. But mostly the references were mere easter eggs that were there for nostalgia bait.

It's from a Southpark epidode called "Member Berries" where they are sentient, talking berries constantly reminding people of glory past by asking "Member? Member X?"
Usually, they are remembering pop culture icons (mostly the OT Star Wars) but also political/societal things like Ronald Reagan, when "marriage was only between men and women" or "when there were no mexicans."
By their behaviour they are constantly evoking nostalgia and because of that they've kinda become their own pop culture icon as a meme to describe nostalgia bait in pop culture media

It's a good Southpark episode, I recommend giving it a watch.

Also: Memberberries supercut