Review: Star Trek Discovery

Just finished Ep 3. It’s an improvement.

I did enjoy it, and am looking forward to more. Though bug-eyed monsters dont appeal so I hope there isnt too much of that.

I was about to post that I was a bit dissapointed in Ep 3 and that it wasn’t as good as the previous 2 eps.

It struck me as a generic Alien(ish) monster in a ship killing people episode to be honest.

I’m just happy to have some good sci-fi on tv, whatever it is, with high production quality. I’m setting aside the Star Trek baggage for a while and just watching it as a great looking sci-fi in a sea of shitty Syfy originals.

Yeah, I’m doing the same. It seems kind of strange as a part of the ST universe, but I like sci-fi and it’s quite watchable if you look at it like that. It may also end up explaining how we got from a world controlled by a 3rd rate ‘reality’ show celeb with a mental age of 7 to the bright future that Gene Roddenberry thought we’d be well on the way to by now.

According to the Star Trek timeline we’re nearing the ‘bad times’ of world wars and repression (I’m going to hope that ST isn’t prophetic here).

And yes I know aht Gene Roddenberry <> ST timeline :slight_smile:

After the success of TNG, DS9, and VOY, even though Enterprise broke the timeline continuity that had been established, it still felt like Star Trek - at least, what Star Trek had become. (Whether TNG was similar enough to TOS/Shatner’s movies to deserve the Star Trek name I guess is up for someone else to decide.)

The Abrams generation on the other hand - it absolutely has the aesthetics, the look, to be Star Trek, but there’s no soul in it.

That leaves Discovery now, as the first new tv series bearing the name for over 10 years, with the job of having to walk the right line between what Abrams created, and what Star Trek was.

Thus far, 3 episodes in, I’m happy with that line.

BTW… The sister ship “Glenn” was destroyed… Sonequa left Walking Dead for Destiny… Walking Dead’s significant character death recently was Glenn… Hmm…

I just loved how The Captain had

SPOILERS

A Tribble on his desk. A single Tribble. Maybe it had been de-sexxed.

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Yes - heard the sound in his first scene, but can’t say I saw it until the second… Thought it was an interesting novelty - wondered if it may lead to a story unto itself… however given the end of the ep, clearly it was just a foreshadowing of the Cap’s collective impulses…

was it moving? maybe it was stuffed :slight_smile:

wasn’t the trouble with tribbles the first time they encountered tribbles? I haven’t seen it in years…

Mudd was around pre Kirk (canon) maybe they’ll bring him into this series.

Mudd is definitely in the series, Rainn Wilson is playing him. It’s just so long ago I don’t recall the whole Tribble story beats.

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Going through first episode at the moment (late adopter) - so far I’m digging it.

Spoiler/Not-Spoiler - I totally called that Tardigrades were going to get a mention.

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Hm the Klingon Subtitles are really getting annoying now. Its actually distracting and takes me out of the moment completely. I don’t see how anyone could enjoy those scenes, or not find them tiresome.

I don’t mind the subtitles. I just think the pale Klingon looks cheaply made up.

I don’t have trouble either but I am a quick reader and people read at different speeds and there are sure to be fans who do have trouble with the subtitles.

And it seems unnecessary and a bit pretentious to me.

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Thought I’d give it a bit of time before commenting. I’m actually enjoying the show as a stand alone sci-fi, but sorry, it’s not Star Trek. Too many inconsistencies for my liking.

Changing the Klingons yet again. Why? I thought maybe there’d be some explanation during the show, but so far nothing. Perhaps it’ll come later, but for now it just seems like change for change’s sake. Yes they’ve been changed before. But at that time we’d only had 3 seasons of TOS, not an entire body of work where the Klingon ‘look’ and social structure has been established.

The timeline. It’s supposed to be between Enterprise and TOS, but the technology on display is far more advanced than TOS, and even some of Next Gen. And to the best of my knowledge the ‘spore’ drive has never been mentioned before. Happy to be corrected, but surely it would have come up in an episode of the previous series, even as a ‘it was tried but abandoned concept’ reference. Unless of course it was all hush-hush?

Empathy. The previous series made you care about the characters within it. Some took a bit longer than others, but you became invested in their fate. Ok so I’m probably being unfair, it’s only four episodes in. But so far the only person I had any interest in they killed off in the first episode.

So having said all of that. I’m going to keep watching. I am interested in seeing where they go with it, and it does have potential, but I’m just not treating it as a ‘Star Trek’ series. And if they start calling the spores midi-chlorians, I’m out of here.

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Basically this is precisely how I feel. Like honestly the whole thing feels like it was a stand alone concept someone had lying around of a war between Terrans and some Alien Empire and they just started labeling things with Star Trek canon items.

I always felt that Enterprise did a good job of balancing the “earlier than TOS” period with the “production quality is significantly different now versus the 1960s” issue. With the way the jumpsuits looked like navy coveralls, ship unit patches, and the NX Enterprise looking all cramped with sharp metallic angles, I believed Enterprise as a realistic prequel to TOS (at least until the whole Xindi nonsense).

This feels like to me like it could just as easily be FUTURE Starfleet, like the various types of 29th century starfleet uniforms we have seen across multiple series. Especially if the Starfleet badges, which are actual metal pins, were in fact communicators (they’re not, but I mean, come on). Besides, the chevron is Kirk’s ENTERPRISE’s, not general Starfleet until after the end of Kirk’s five year mission (when it is adopted as the symbol for Starfleet in general). In TOS, you can can clearly see every ship and every starbase has its own unique symbol. Only the uniform design (and the command, science, and engineering symbols) is shared.

This is supposed to be in the prime universe, but it looks super-duper JJ Abrams. I would buy these uniforms and this technological look at ten years before Abrams, but not prime TOS.

tl;dr I’m watching it as a stand-alone SF series. This whole thing cannot be canon.

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Well yes, but i’d always assumed it was Abrams universe Trek.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t Star Trek, just that it’s set in the Abrams universe.

That’s the whole point of a reboot…

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