decide to let billions die on a hunch
Yes, this was the worst part for me by far. The other stuff was just sort of in the realm of goofy ST and not too far out of the SNW playbook. But just letting a whole species get destroyed because "that's just how the timeline is supposed to go" was just bonkers from a ST show. Maybe if there hadn't been the option to do something else it wouldn't seem so ridiculously bad. I was hoping we would get to see the insect aliens at all, but they were just a prop to be destroyed. Really off-putting, and I'm going to be hypersus about the writing for the rest of the season.
I know Jessie Gender has done some deep dives on how problematic the SNW writing has been on a number of episodes, but this was just sort of in another galaxy of bad for me.