I'm not a huge fan of relationships in media to begin with (unless it's somehow tied into the plot), so it's possible I'm being more critical and skeptical than I should be. I'm not exactly cishet so I'm not sure that's really it, but as someone else pointed out it's still not super common for gay characters, especially male characters, to be shown as being romantically involved, which can be jarring when you're not used to it. Dunno, it's weird.

That's not a particularly unique perspective, many Trekkies choose to process Star Trek as "historical documents." There's a movie about it.

That's kinda interesting, do you remember what the movie is called? I might watch it at some point.