The Burn being caused by a magic baby having a tantrum kinda ruined the whole setting for me

The Burn has one of the most classic Star Trek explanations ever—normal human(oid) gains magic powers after being exposed to strange energies. The Burn was several classic Star Trek stories woven together to tell a new tale. It's basically a retelling of the TOS episode Charlie X.

Trauma acting as the trigger for those powers is the most believable part of the Burn. Emotions causing people to react is nothing new. It's how humans operate in real life. Entire wars have been started over the death of a loved one. Emotions acting as a trigger is not new to Star Trek either. It's been used a motivation for dozens of stories.

Star Trek has used the trope dozens of times and several in an almost identical scenario. Such as when Kevin wiped out the Husnock in response to them murdering his wife. Or Riker breaking his promise not to use his Q powers after Wesley was killed. It's a realistic human(oid) response—trauma like the loss of a loved one can trigger a reaction with no bounds.

tantrum

It's really disgusting anyone would refer to the grief and trauma one experiences over the loss of a parent as a "tantrum." Your comment is the very definition of hyperbole.

I think the cause of the Burn is a nearly-perfect example of Star Trek's humanist values, and find it interesting when people feel the need to go out of their way to misrepresent it with words like "magic" in an effort to justify their dislike of it.

Agreed. For me, the only “magic” Star Trek needed was stories about relationships that took their time unfolding, with competency. There occasionally were unexplained encounters, but the focus was always on something that could be solvable when the crew worked together. There was resolution. Plus, I really liked the episodic structure of TNG and DS9, where I could get onboard with any episode almost. Within the self contained episodes there could be “twists of fate” that exist today. No more giant fantastic leaps than we already make by believing everything is in the future with their tech.

The “new” trek is too focused on being cinematic. Discovery was interesting at the beginning but it was overly precious and predictable, and overly representative. Designed to keep people hooked. I think the quality suffered greatly. I think representation is super important, having characters with diverse identities, but doing it for diversity’s sake isn’t the way. If we’re really in the future, then people just are.