Yep, that was beyond ridiculous IMO. Not sure how they felt it made enough sense to turn into a big season-long thing, affecting the entire future timeline of Star Trek.
Though I think Species 10-C (season 4) was an awesome episode that is rather underrated.
the cruel irony is that the only reason that Kelpiens are even spacefaring is because Discovery intervened the previous season, in that regard Discovery caused the burn