There's at minimum two pre-Destiny crises: the Gateways incident and the Borg super-cube attack on Earth, and I'm pretty sure that there's at least one big crossover event before Destiny that also fucks shit up.
The one good thing those books did, even if they did it in a fucking stupid manner.
This right here tells me we're talking past each other in terms of why I have a problem with Destiny. I'm talking about the conceptual issues of the storyline, their execution, and their ramifications on the setting, not the effect on the characters specifically.
However, it's pretty telling that you focus on these minor characters, because it proves that the books gloss over the fact that billions of people are dying at a higher rate than even the Dominion War... even though that's supposed to be a driving force of the narrative. (It honestly reminds me of Discovery's Klingon War in terms of how little emphasis and impact that has relative to its supposed narrative importance.)
The Federation is bordering/in close proximity to so many space assholes (figuratively and literally) that the fact that only four races take advantage of the Federation's weakness is in itself absurd, especially when the Federation's allies get the shit kicked out of them.
And IIRC, Riker goes full retard in his command decisions because of that.
I think - and I could be wrong here, Destiny is one of those things that's so bad to me that I purged much of it from memory - is that Geordi in particular is so egregious that it colors the entire work. I think it hit its peak when they're talking about the subspace tunnels and he's like "It sucks that we're blowing them up, they'd make exploring easier" and I'm like "Bitch, are you for real? Who gives a shit about exploring when you and your civilization may not exist tomorrow?" IIRC, Picard signs on that bandwagon too after a bit.
All they had to do was the fucking scheme from Clues (minus the fuck ups) and the whole thing never would've happened!
And you might say, "It was a pre-destination paradox!" and my answer is "David Mack and his editor should've thought this shit through more than not at all!"
Blind optimism is one step removed from straight up delusion, and when you have "billions of people are dead" as a foundational element and consequence of your story, you have to work real hard to convince your audience that cascade failure is not the inevitable result. Star Trek: Discovery also failed to do this in similar circumstances, and it was just as shit then as it is in Destiny.
The problem when you go for a big, epic thing to raise the stakes is that if you don't have any restraint, whatever ending you cook up ahead of time will be completely unearned, because the protagonists can never achieve a proportional victory to balance out what was lost.
Oh, the Federation beat the Borg/the (Disco) Klingons! What about the billions of dead. the countless ruined planets, and Starfleet being a shattered wreck? Shut up, don't think about, focus on how incredible the Borg & Caeliar ascending to a higher plane is/how awesome Michael Burnham is for sticking to Starfleet principles despite endangering the Federation!
For fuck's sake, both of these stories could've just had a half-dozen or less planets get wrecked, kept the same ending, and you could totally have your big, optimistic ending, because shit isn't fucked everywhere and the Federation can absorb that kind of hit.
