Yea generally, with S2 at least, there’s been a strange amount of not using the main cast. With Pike it seems to be attributable to paternity leave. Still, it has been to the detriment of the season, with the ending scene hanging on his apparent indecisiveness being a callback to the finale of S1 and the differences between him and Kirk … and it not really landing because it’s under-developed arc.

Beyond that, a good amount of room has clearly been made for TOS prequel work (Kirk and Scotty now), which IMO is structurally problematic but also just detracts from the main cast. Ortega, La’an, Una even, have been too easily put into the background for my liking, especially for a 10 episode per season format.