Just the first argument about the reasoning of the Klingon shows a non understanding of (unintended/intended) cultural warfare. Iain Banks' "The Culture" series of books covers that problem in detail.

The point the Klingon has is that the expanding Federation isn't just a military but mostly a cultural/social threat and he's obviously right. He doesn't want his people to be domesticated and sooner or later "integrated".
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I enjoyed Star Trek Enterprise a lot too but Voyager? Give me a break.

 

How could they pose a threat of cultural contamination? They had no contact at all for a century. The only reason they're having contact is because the crazy Fake Klingons are making that contact. Your contention is illogical.

This just proves you don't actually like Star Trek.

 

Maybe it's just because I was prepared to be disappointed and didn't watch it right away because of that. As soon as it started there were a few glaring flaws but I say up and in a minute or two pushed them to the back of my mind and just went with the adventure, knowing it's not perfect from the ridiculous opening scene.

To me, that's Star Trek. Knowing that the silliness is never far from the front of your mind but you're still sucked into the story. It brought out something happy in me straight out and I felt what I felt when I first watched Voyager, DS9 and TNG with my dad years ago.

The Abrams movies were great as a spectacle but I never felt watching those what I felt watching Discovery.

I'm probably overly defensive of it because of that feeling, I'll admit.

I'm just happy to have more good Trek.

 

Firstly, where's the rest of it?! I went in thinking that Netflix had added the whole series and I could binge it. Instead it's an episode a week. Anyway, on with the review...

A lot of people have commented that it's more like a JJ Abrams Star Trek action film than a traditional Star Trek TV series about exploration and a vision of humanity's future. While I concede the point, I do think that STD (what were they thinking when they named it?) is at least slightly more thoughtful than the pure action of the recent Star Trek movies.

For example, there was at least a hint of the exploration spirit in the desire to investigate the Klingon beacon. And there was a discussion of principle relating to refusing to shoot first even if it put you at a tactical disadvantage. Further, I felt that the depiction of the Klingons was rather topical: the Federation embraces diversity, which the Klingons perceive as "they come to destroy our individuality". I hope they develop this point further in the series, hopefully in a nuanced way that goes beyond "the Klingons are villains", as it feels relevant to current public debates.

I also think it would not be possible to make a TNG/Voyager-style Star Trek today. We are no longer in the blissful years (in the West) of the 90s and the "End of History" following the end of the Cold War. Such a hopeful, optimistic tone as was set by 90s Star Trek would feel naive and a little simplistic to us today. We want to see a hopeful vision for humanity's future, yes, but a humanity which has solved all of its problems feels empty.

On the topic of diversity, I did enjoy what they did with the casting and naming of the ships. When I first saw the casting I was worried about Glee-style "one of every minority" token casting. But it all feels very natural. The world has changed since the last Star Trek TV series came out. It feels completely right that Starfleet should have a much greater Asian influence than it did in previous representations. Indeed one imagines that there will be future versions of Star Trek where people of Asian descent make up the majority of Starfleet. It is the direction that the world is heading in both demographic and economic terms. It was also an interesting nod to Firefly.

One problem I do have with the pilot is that it isn't really a pilot. At the end of the pilot we are familiar with just one character who will be in the rest of the series (assuming she doesn't reunite with other members of that crew later). As such it's impossible to comment too much at this stage about how I feel about the characters, since there's just the one. We're going to have to be introduced all over again to a new crew who will be the cast for the rest of the show - a Pilot 2.0. Given that so much of a series' quality depends on the character interactions, this means I have to reserve judgment on the show more generally until we get a feel for the characters.

Finally I will comment on the look and sound of the show. Obviously the graphics are high quality, especially for a TV show. I imagine that this was a "big entrance" and that future episodes will be more conservative with the FX budget.

However, with respect to the set design, I felt like they had discarded the one aspect of the JJ Abrams movies which I felt improved upon Star Trek, which is the element of visible functionality. The sets in the Abrams movies are not sanitised. Rather you have the real impression that this is a ship with real engineering behind it: lots of exposed girders, gantries, pumps, wiring and tubing, etc. It looked like a real ship would, with enormous sections of the ship devoted to structural support, engines, and other systems which keep the thing going. They seem to have got rid of this in STD, with everything looking neat and tucked away. It feels more like an office than a ship.

Along the lines of realism, I felt like the sound design was slightly lacking. Another thing I liked about the Abrams movies was that the weapons, despite being energy weapons, felt like they had real heft to them. That was largely due to the sound design: the weapons made quite violent noises when discharged, and would clang against metal etc. STD sound design was rather more in the "pew pew" line of traditional sci-fi.

All in all, I enjoyed the pilot as an isolated story but find it difficult to make any kind of judgment to my likelihood of enjoying the series as a whole.

 

I agree that the blatant optimism of TNG era series probably wouldn't fit in a modern Trek series, but that said, if this series turns out to be a grimdark dramafest centered purely around the war with the Klingons, I will be supremely disappointed. They need to find a good balance, like in DS9.

Why move a mis-post when you can just Trek it up a little?

 

I'm enjoying this show for what it is, but...biological instantaneous transportation? Why don't we just throw out the entirety of warp theory while we're at it.

This is a show that is not Star Trek trying desperately to pretend it's Star Trek. Its fun, in its own way. But it's failing.

Edit: Oh, and I finally figured out the uniforms. Gold = Yellow. Silver = Green. Bronze = Red. (Using Enterprise-era equivalents.) So for reasons known only to the showrunners, Star Fleet decided to have a color system, then randomly abandon it, then randomly return to it for the TOS era. Go figure.

And the rank pips are on the com badges in spectacularly tiny dots, so that you can't see them very well. This is evidently in an effort to make them useless for telling rank at a distance.

Also, 'black badges'? And multiple people with the rank of Commander, but only one of them is XO? Silly writers.

 

That was a big wtf moment for me too. That said, jump drive and instant matter transportation is canon if you can tap into the base code of the universe like the Q continuum. Maybe this is just a stupidly hamfisted way to "science up" the powers of the Q.

SOOOOO what I've gotten from episode 3 is that Discovery is a classified R&D vessel that's been given carte blanche to find, re-purpose, and develop new tech that will help them win the war, Starfleet principles be damned. Great. Now if the chars could stop being overly angry and angsty, I might be able to stop throwing things at the screen long enough to just enjoy that very non-Trek premise for the generic sci-fi trope that it is.

Also:



Seriously. JJ would have been proud.

Also: dat one Tribble just chillin.
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In most of the other series, there were always simultaneous Lieutenant Commanders, and sometimes multiple simultaneous Commanders. And the Lieutenant Commanders were often referred to as just Commander in verbal short-form.

Voy: Tuvok (lt / lt com) + Chakotee (lt com).
DS9: Worf (lt com) and Kira (maj/col/com).
TNG: Riker (com), Data (lt com), Crusher (com)
ENT: T'Pol (sub-com/com) and Trip (com)

 

I really enjoyed episode 3, more than 1 and 2 at least. I was very worried it was just going to be a war series. Though the preview for the next episode does have a bunch of war stuff it looks like. :/

 

Episode 3 has an interesting atmosphere I've never seen on Star Trek and that's *good*. There's a real inter personal dynamic with frictions and so far they avoid the usual ST tropes with slick stylised characters.

The gore they've shown slightly on the 2nd ship is also something new for ST. The small mission plot there was forgettable but the episode wasn't really about that.

The captain seems to have a lot hidden layers and the ship has a feel of these mystery village shows with a foreign intruder who feels something is wrong but has no real idea what's lurking under the surface. I'm positively surprised.

 

I finally watched episode 3.

And oh god. When the captain started monologuing about his dark and mysterious past, completely unprompted and not even sure if there was anyone behind him to listen to his soliloquy, I just burst out laughing. And from there on I just couldn't take anything seriously.

And I feel bad about it. They are trying so damn hard to be all dark and edgy, but it's just coming across as some teenage angst. And from than on I can only think of this as Star Trek in some Hot Topic gear. Fake lip rings and long terrible poems about how high school is a prison all around.

 

Oh man I loved this show. It is already feels like a ST story but it is also original. I feel like we are at the start of a a new TNG or D9 that came after TOS. It is different but it is good thing. Hell its music gave me chills. IT was awesome. I liked MC.

Now we need strong secondary cast and we are golden.

To everybody who says this doesn't feel like ST; Suck it and stop whining. IT doesn't have to be a clone of the older series. IT will set its own tone.

IT is already ten times better than the ST: Enterprise

 

This is never going to get an opposing side to change their view.

 

If you went into an Indianna Jones film, expecting a rip-roaring Indy adventure, and then it turned into an Aztec alien invasion, do we have the right to complain?

If you were super psyched up for Star Wars, but then you had Hayden Christiansen's angst forced down your throat, did we not spend the last 15 years hearing people complain that it isn't the Star Wars they know and love?

There's a difference between setting a tone, or being innovative, and being just kind of...bad at it.

This is objectively false.

 

Wait you liked Archers Enterprise? I think you are the only person I know of that does so.

 

There is a fairly large subset of the Trekkie community that LOVES Enterprise.

While it is by far my least favorite of all the Trek series, at least it resembles Trek. This show is deviating so far from the established formula, that I'm hard-pressed to even call it Star Trek. This is a hard serialized sci-fi series wearing a patchwork Trek skinsuit. Not bad, per se, just different, and not at all what I was hoping for from a new televised Trek.

I wanted holodeck hijinks, weird alien cultures, reality-warping subspace anamolies, and a few poignant parables about the human condition. I wanted mudpuppies, and tribbles, exploration and imagination and encountering the unknown.

What I absolutely didn't want is an angst ridden slog through space warfare that makes the darkest episodes of DS9 look like comedy.

You're right when you say "it doesn't have to be a clone of the older series." It can definitely be its own thing. After just 3 episodes, it already IS its own thing. But we don't have to like that thing, and our criticisms aren't invalid simply because you enjoy it.

TLDR: When you say "Suck it and stop whining," I say, "Go fuck yourself; I like what I like."

The show still has quite a bit of room to maneuver toward something closer to the Trek formula, and if it does, I will be much happier with their direction choices. If it continues to be what it is now, then, in my eyes at least, it will continue to be at the bottom of the "Best Trek" rankings. And yes, that means below Enterprise.

 

For all its faults, it was Star Trek. And right when it was finally over its growing pains, it got canceled.

If it had kept going, we could have seen the formation of the Federation, the conflict with the Romulans, etc. Instead we have space war between teenage highschool angst hyped up on firefly-hyperdrive vs. the worst excuse for Klingons anyone's ever seen.

 

Sidenote: Could a mod change the title of this thread to "Star Trek: Discovery"?
@CheddarTrek or @Jon or @Oz etc


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Episode 4 was a slight improvement, as it made efforts to move away from the grimdark angst and action (although both were still present in large quantities). Star Trek is about ethics, morality, society, science, and exploration into both the universe and the human mind. We actually got a small taste of the science aspect with Burnham's overly dramatic efforts to reveal the nature of the Tardigrade thingy, and a bit of an ethical quandary when she notices it feels pain during the jumps.

Sidebar: The Klingon stuff is increasingly forgettable. The actors can't emote for shit with all those facial prostheses, and it makes what should be tense scenes feel boring and wooden. This was just a really huge lack of foresight on the design team's part. Klingons are all about outward emotion and posturing. The Klingon actors need to be able to... you know... act.

 

It still completely pulls me out of the story whenever someone mentions the universe being permeated by mushrooms. I start laughing, and it just ruins it. Wouldn't this have been useful for the crew of Voyager when they needed to get home, and yet had no knowledge of it? Don't you think the Borg would have found it quite interesting? But alas, the writers care not, because they don't know what Star Trek is to begin with.

Still, Ep. 4 was marginally better, if only because it stepped back from the idiotic plot and actually had some character development. The ship's Executive Officer continues to be my favorite character, probably because he's the only one who exhibits genuine emotions. Also awkward roommate girl.

Other things that make zero sense are the fact that the saucer sections spin for no reason other than that the CGI guy probably thought it looked cool, and that the ship didn't stick around on the mining world to offer any sort of assistance whatsoever.

Also, their doctor sucks at his job. Phlox or The Doctor or Dr. Crusher would have fixed her right up in no time.

 

Whats really annoying me is that (this is going to sound ridiculous) the Klingon's are speaking Klingon the entire time, with just subtitles. The show isn't good enough to keep my full attention, so I have it on in the background whilst I do other stuff. I have to stop and watch any of the Klingon scenes, just so I know whats being said...not that it matters since nothing of any consequence has happened in any of those scenes.