You’re right that I couldn’t think of any explicit retcons. The closest I could think of, other than technology, were Burnham being related to Spock (which you touched on), and how absolutely decimated the Federation was by the Klingons while Discovery was in the mirror universe (again, not necessarily a retcon, but it seems like it would have been mentioned more).
Regarding tech, I had legitimately forgotten that Burnham’s parents and the time suit were Section 31. That said, what other amazing tech do we ever see out of Section 31? Granted, we don’t even see much of Section 31 in other shows, outside of DS9 and ENT, but in those cases, I seem to recall them being more intelligence operatives. They accomplish their job by knowing more than others, and operating outside usual Federation conventions. It’s spy stuff, not super weapons (outside the Changeling virus). But maybe I’m forgetting things.
To be fair, nothing that they use in Discovery are superweapons and all of their tech can easily be put forward as spy stuff. We’ve also seen that Section 31 is directly involved with various classified projects to begin with, which is why they were posted on Discovery in Episode 3. Moreover, DS9 explicitly says that Section 31 was operating since the start of Starfleet but that they had almost no oversight for 200 years. They weren’t merely intelligence operators. They were active assassins who are comparable (and were directly influenced by) the CIA. They were made to take care of any and all threats to the Federation that couldn’t be taken care of within the normal scope of things. Is it really so unbelievable that this secretive black books organization has spy tech that’s unavailable and unknown to most of the populous? I mean… we do that today with various intelligence and military agencies.
That’s for the critique.
You’re right that I couldn’t think of any explicit retcons. The closest I could think of, other than technology, were Burnham being related to Spock (which you touched on), and how absolutely decimated the Federation was by the Klingons while Discovery was in the mirror universe (again, not necessarily a retcon, but it seems like it would have been mentioned more).
Regarding tech, I had legitimately forgotten that Burnham’s parents and the time suit were Section 31. That said, what other amazing tech do we ever see out of Section 31? Granted, we don’t even see much of Section 31 in other shows, outside of DS9 and ENT, but in those cases, I seem to recall them being more intelligence operatives. They accomplish their job by knowing more than others, and operating outside usual Federation conventions. It’s spy stuff, not super weapons (outside the Changeling virus). But maybe I’m forgetting things.
To be fair, nothing that they use in Discovery are superweapons and all of their tech can easily be put forward as spy stuff. We’ve also seen that Section 31 is directly involved with various classified projects to begin with, which is why they were posted on Discovery in Episode 3. Moreover, DS9 explicitly says that Section 31 was operating since the start of Starfleet but that they had almost no oversight for 200 years. They weren’t merely intelligence operators. They were active assassins who are comparable (and were directly influenced by) the CIA. They were made to take care of any and all threats to the Federation that couldn’t be taken care of within the normal scope of things. Is it really so unbelievable that this secretive black books organization has spy tech that’s unavailable and unknown to most of the populous? I mean… we do that today with various intelligence and military agencies.