Let us discuss a new Star Trek that people have to pay for instead of watching for free. One in which the Klingons have been completely redesigned, one in which the technology looks completely different from what we would expect, as do the uniforms—all without a word of explanation. One in which one of the main characters has to reconcile human and Vulcan values. And one in which the production was fraught with behind-the-scenes difficulties.
I am, of course, talking about Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
Nothing changes, and it’s amusing that there’s been so much fulminating on the Internet about things that Trek has done before. Both Enterprise and the Bad Robot movies have given us time periods before the original series that, nonetheless, have technology more advanced than what we saw on TOS. (Hell, take out the warp drive and transporter and the original Enterprise was less technologically sophisticated than a modern Manhattan office building.) The Klingons have been redesigned more times than I can count, starting with the complete revamping of them in The Motion Picture, and the discrepancy wasn’t even acknowledged for another 17 years (in DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” in 1996), and not actually explained for another nine (in Enterprise’s “Affliction”/”Divergence” in 2005).
But this is not the first time Star Trek has switched to a pay model rather than a free one, since everyone had to shell out their $2.50 for a movie ticket to see The Motion Picture 38 years ago. This is not the first time they’ve gone backwards rather than forwards in the timeline. This is not the first time they’ve gone with a hip, new way of watching television, as nobody was doing first-run syndicated dramas in 1987, but The Next Generation paved the way for a renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s of such shows, which only petered out due to the growth of the FOX network, the rise of the WB and UPN (later merged into the CW), and tons of cable stations starting to produce their own original programming rather than just reruns of other people’s. For all those complaining about CBS All Access, that service was going to happen no matter what, and it’s a sign of CBS’s confidence in Star Trek that they are using it to try to get people to subscribe to it.
(I’ve also been amused listening to people complain about continuity violations that aren’t. Complaints, for example, about other ships having the delta as their symbol, even though other ships had different symbols in TOS—except in the first season, all Starfleet personnel had the delta, cf. “Court Martial” and “The Menagerie.” The notion of other ships with different insignia wasn’t seen until “The Doomsday Machine,” and it’s something that was abandoned by the time the movies came around. Also Klingons don’t have cloaking technology—except, of course, the Klingon Empire doesn’t have it here, either, only the one ship does, and it’s unique. How could Sarek have a human ward and us not know about it, never mind that Spock wasn’t actually on speaking terms with his father when this takes place and it’s not like Spock ever talked about his family ever unless forced into it, cf. “Amok Time” and “Journey to Babel.” And of course the use of holography, which hasn’t been seen in prior Trek productions purely for budget reasons—they had a bit of it in first-season TNG, but had to drop it because the effects were too expensive. It was Gene Roddenberry himself who provided a good explanation for this back when the Klingons suddenly became bumpy-headed in 1979: they always looked like that, we just lacked the budget to show them looking that way. Ditto the technology…)
Enough of that, though, as all of this is ultimately irrelevant in comparison to the much more important matter: Is Discovery any good?
Yes. Yes, it is. It’s not perfect and has a lot of head-scratchers, but they’re obviously telling a single season-long story here involving the Klingons, and I’m definitely along for the ride.
Having said that, let’s get a few problems out of the way. First of all, I love that they’re using Marc Okrand’s Klingon language. The movies and early TNG used the Klingonese Okrand created for The Search for Spock pretty religiously, but with each spinoff, they moved further and further away, mostly just pulling harsh-sounding words out of their asses.
But just because you’re having Klingons speak their own language among each other doesn’t free you from the obligation of making it sound conversational. Chris Obi does the best he can as T’Kuvma, the person trying to unite the Klingon Empire in a war against the Federation, but his delivery is so labored, his speeches so long, that it grinds the episode to a halt every time he talks. Obi (who is excellent as Anubis on the other current series with Bryan Fuller’s name on it, American Gods) really would have been served better by speaking a language he’s actually comfortable in, especially since the Klingon makeup remains death on facial expressions, and the power of his voice is muted by forcing him to wrap his tongue around a made-up language.
The dialogue in these first two episodes is awkward in spots. Georgiou and Burnham’s landing party conversations at the opening have been blessed a little too aggressively with the exposition fairy, and Connor’s flight-attendant riff right before Burnham goes to check out the beacon isn’t nearly as funny as the script wants it to be. In general, the scripts are a bit of a mess tonally, no doubt a result of all the different hands on it, all of whom have “executive producer” as their title.
Also, must everything be underlit? I thought we got over this with Battlestar Galactica. The bridge of the Shenzhou is way way too dark…
Having said that, there’s some excellent stuff here. The relationship between Georgiou and Burnham is a strong one. It’s rare enough to see two women of color in this kind of mentor-mentee relationship, and I’m grumpy that we won’t get to see more of it except maybe in flashbacks. As it is, seeing a TV show not only pass the Bechdel Test, but also take the extra-credit portions of it, is a welcome thing, and exactly the sort of barrier Trek should be breaking. And also why I’m disappointed that, based on the previews, Burnham is going to wind up teamed up with a white guy, with all due respect to Jason Isaacs.
Still, the Georgiou-Burnham relationship is a good one, an interesting variation on the human/Vulcan dynamic that was such a pivotal part of the original series, as well as Voyager and Enterprise. Sonequa Martin-Green’s portrayal is delightfully nuanced, showing the Vulcan training, but still giving us the human emotionalism. She tries to use logic to convince Georgiou to fire on the Klingons, but Georgiou (rightfully) stands her ground. Now it’s possible—likely, even—that the massacre we get in “Battle at the Binary Stars” would have happened regardless. But the Federation is a nation of peace who will only attack when attacked first. Yes, the Klingons will respect a show of force. However, it’s obvious that T’Kuvma was going to attack no matter what.
(By the way, if you want to see more of the Georgiou-Burnham dynamic, pick up David Mack’s Discovery novel Desperate Hours, which goes on sale tomorrow, the 26th of September, and takes place during Burnham’s early days serving on the Shenzhou.)
As someone who has written a lot about Klingon history (and made some of it up, too), I’m fascinated by the political dynamics of the empire here. The reference to not seeing a Klingon in person for a hundred years indicates that the Klingons have mostly stayed out of galactic affairs since the last season of Enterprise (when the Augment virus led to some Klingons becoming smooth-headed, thus explaining the ones we saw on TOS), with occasional exceptions like the Battle of Donatu V (first referenced in “The Trouble with Tribbles,” and also mentioned here) and the attack that killed Burnham’s family. Internecine fighting among Klingon noble Houses is a story as old as the hills, but it’s one that fits with the Klingon history we have seen unfold on screen both chronologically before and after this storyline.
What I especially love is that we see the clash of cultures. Humans unwilling to fire first, but willing to fight back if attacked. Klingons who view “we come in peace” as an insult and a lie, for whom battle is all important, and to sue for peace the way of cowards and fools. Vulcans who let logic and science dictate their actions, and who view emotionalism as something to be overcome. That clash is what leads to a state of war at the end of “Battle at the Binary Stars,” as Georgiou’s human peace offering, Burnham’s Vulcan approach of firing first based on past evidence, and T’Kuvma’s personal mission of redemption-through-war all crash into each other and explode.
It’s obvious from the previews that finding their way back to peace, finding a way to reconcile these disastrously divergent POVs, will be the macrocosmic arc of the season, with Burnham’s redemption being the microcosmic one. I gotta say, it’s nice to see a Starfleet officer commit an act of mutiny and actually suffer for it. I also was highly amused by Burnham whipping out that old Trek standby of out-logic-ing a computer, in this case escaping the damaged brig before the force field died, only unlike when Kirk did it, Burnham’s logic actually made sense…
These two episodes set things up nicely. The acting is uniformly strong. I’ve been a fan of Martin-Green since she appeared as an obnoxious boarding school student on a 2008 Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode, and she was also in the tragically short-lived NYC 22, and it’s good to see her take the lead here. I particularly like the flashbacks to her arrival on the Shenzhou, where she’s so very Vulcan (it reminds one favorably of Michael Dorn playing Worf as so very Klingon). Nobody ever went wrong casting Michelle Yeoh in anything—and hey, she even got a hand-to-hand combat scene!—as she imbues Georgiou with compassion and wit and effortless grace and wisdom. (Isaacs, who hasn’t been seen yet, has a lot to live up to following in her footsteps.) James Frain is excellent casting as Sarek (helluva lot better than Ben Cross, that’s for sure). And Doug Jones’s Lieutenant Saru is a delight, his earnestly snide commentary providing a nice dose of salt on the proceedings.
Doing this as a prequel may have been a mistake. Besides the technological issues, there’s also the fact that we know this war can’t go on too long because the Klingons had a cease-fire in place with the Federation in the early days of the original series—we know this because it was broken in “Errand of Mercy,” and another war would have started, but for the Organians shaking their fists and telling those kids to get off their lawn. Knowing the outcome is frustrating, and there’s really nothing in this story that requires that it take place in the 23rd century—the same basic story could have been told by doing what The Next Generation did so successfully three decades ago and jump the timeline by 80 years after the end of the Dominion War, Data’s death, and Voyager’s return home. The only thing we’d lose is Sarek as Burnham’s mentor, but so far there’s nothing about that character that requires it to be Sarek except for the nerdy continuity hit, and we’ve got plenty of those already.
Still, a prequel is what we got, and there’s a lot of story meat here: the war-vs.-peace dynamic, the redemption of Michael Burnham, the Klingon politics, and more. Can’t wait to see what happens next. Keep an eye on this space each week for reviews of each episode as CBS All Access releases them.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a metric buttload of Star Trek fiction, including 16 novels, 13 novellas, six comic books, seven short stories, and a coffee-table book, the latter being The Klingon Art of War. He’s also written about Star Trek for Entertainment Weekly, Star Trek: The Official Magazine, Outside in Makes It So, New Worlds and New Civilizations, and this very web site, including detailed rewatches of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. His latest work includes the Orphan Black reference tome Classified Clone Report, the omnibus Marvel’s Thor: Tales of Asgard, collecting all three books in his trilogy starring Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three, and short stories in the anthologies Nights of the Living Dead (co-edited by the late George Romero), Aliens: Bug Hunt, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, TV Gods: Summer Programming, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis: Homeworlds, and Baker Street Irregulars.
I’m still reeling from the fact that the Klingons are basically Space Orcs, and always have been.
I’m pleased that the Klingon backstory presented here meshes well with the situation I set up for the Empire in my novel Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code — okay, that book’s 91 years before “The Vulcan Hello,” not 100, but that’s close enough for rounding up. However, my first ROTF novel put the first Vulcan-Klingon contact about a century earlier than “Hello” established, but the character in my book could’ve simply misspoken.
There are a few glitches that the purists will scream over — Spock didn’t know cloaks existed in “Balance of Terror!” There was never a mutiny on a Starfleet vessel before TOS! Holograms! Robots! etc. But I’m sure we novelists can make up explanations for whatever the show itself doesn’t reconcile — it’s what we’ve been doing for decades already.
And now I have to decide whether to get CBSAA despite being in very tight financial straits at the moment. If I don’t, will I have to skip the rest of these review threads for now? Or do I just read them anyway and brave the spoilers? I don’t think I’ve ever before been in the position of not being able to see new Trek episodes. There were times when my local stations didn’t carry DS9 and VGR, but I was able to watch them over the air from a station in a neighboring city 50 miles away — with fuzzy picture and sound, but I still saw them.
I enjoyed it, as well you know. Even with my misgivings as to just how much latex the new Klingon make up seems to have in it. This limited the emotive power of the actors, as well as severely limited movement during the fight sequence. The only other miss-step for me was the telepathic phone call. That could have just as well been serviced as a flash back.
And now we wait for the next episode.
Yeah, the telepathic phone call would’ve worked better as another flashback…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@3/Wrenn: I think you meant holographic, not telepathic.
Honestly, for me the biggest misstep is James Frain. I’m afraid I find his performance rather weak, although there are moments where it seems he’s trying to approximate Mark Lenard’s delivery.
As far as Trek’s history of embracing the latest way to watch the show, don’t forget that the reason the TOS uniforms were so bright and colorful was because color television was so new and NBC wanted to show off this color technology at a time when a lot of shows were still in black & white.
@2, I think if you wait until the last episode drops, you can get the 1-week free trial, binge-watch, then cancel before paying. That’s kind of what I plan to do with American Gods, if I ever get around to it.
I’ve usually just looked at the Klingon’s radically differing looks (no forehead ridges, forehead ridges, NuTrek looking Klingons, these Klingons) as being something very boring like normal biological diversity. Plus the Klingon Empire being more than one planet, so this is the one detail I don’t care about.
It’s good to read something positive about Discovery though! I missed the premiere because I”m in the middle of moving and settling in, so if nothing else I may do the CBS all access one week free once I get internet up.
Yes, she’s getting paired up with a “white guy,” but because he’s played by Jason Issacs, or maybe because it’s a white guy at all, the previews for the rest of the season/series seem to show that he has a sinister ulterior motive. Because all Asian women are wise beneficent mentors, and all white guys, whether with or without British accent, are underhanded and sinister. Not to mention the only other male Starfleet character’s defining trait is “craven coward.” These gender/racial politics are really starting to grate.
#5
No Christopher. I meant telepathic. When Michael is in the brig. That was well after the holographic phone call when Michael found out about how the Vulcans handled the Klingons.
Michael and Sarek had a telepathic conversation while she was in the brig, to, in effect, buck her up. That could just as well, even been better, as a memory.
@9
Oh calm your butt. That’s how Star Trek has always been.
@7/StrongDreams: I’ve considered that, but it doesn’t seem quite fair. I mean, if we want to get more Star Trek TV in the future, it’s probably a good idea to support All Access and pay for it if we’re able to.
@8/LoungeShep: I’ve thought for a while now that what they should’ve done, instead of ignoring the Klingon makeup changes or using genetic engineering to explain them away, was to establish that “Klingon” is the name of a multispecies culture rather than a single species (like they did with the Xindi, except those were all from the same planet). “Klingon” could’ve meant anyone of any species who follows the ways of Kahless or is politically a member of the Klingon Empire. That way, the different makeups could’ve easily been explained as different species that shared a common Klingon identity and interbred to produce the different variants we’ve seen.
@10/Wrenn: Oh, sorry. I haven’t seen episode 2 yet.
Why did Sarek have to be her mentor? It’s like he’s the only Damned Vulcan on the planet.
I enjoyed it (episode 1 only) on a similar level to most folks here — the story was interesting, and the characters were engaging folks I’d like to see more of. The continuity and design things that people are complaining about elsewhere did bug me a little, but I could look past it because I was enjoying the story. Plus, the spacewalk stuff really was quite pretty, wasn’t it? I contrast that with the 2009 movie, which I hated, because the story made no sense and I despised…well, just Kirk, mostly, but that went a long way.
As for what I’ll do next, I already have Netflix and Amazon; I’m not paying for another service. I’ll give you credit, Keith, for offering the fairest justification of the service yet, but I’m standing my ground. I’m not going to pay for a plethora of services, each with only one show I want to watch. I think the “wait until the season is over, then binge it during a free week” plan is a solid one — the datamining will tell CBS exactly what I want them to know: there’s an audience for new Trek, but they’re not willing to pay for a service.
I agree that knowing the outcome is limiting, but HOW they get to the outcome is what I find really interesting. Are there still 24 houses by the time the cease fire rolls around, do humans commit enough to the war (and how) to earn a grudging respect to enforce the cease fire, or does internecine fighting weaken the Klingons enough to allows humans to force a cease fire. I for one hope to find out.
Having Jason Isaacs be a bad guy (why else cast Jason Isaacs) is a result of an underlying change in how Star Trek tells stories. Almost all of Star Trek can be characterized as “good guys vs bad guys.” It’s archetypical cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, etc. with the crew of the Enterprise as the good guys, fighting against a bad guy of the week. (Or a mystery of the week, or a misunderstood alien of the week. And so on.) Starfleet didn’t really have internal conflicts and even the Federation vs. Maquis conflict was rapidly muted to the point of invisibility. The only intra-Starfleet conflicts were with the introduction of the TNG season 1 parasite (which was reviled by the audience and quickly dropped) and then the introduction of Section 31 in DS9 and later Enterprise. And most of the Trek watchers I hung around with hated Section 31.
But with the second Kelvin timeline movie, Trek moves full bore into the “we are the enemy” mode, which continued with Beyond.
So now, if Discovery is going to tell a story with a heroic first officer, she can’t have an equally heroic commanding officer, or she’d be overshadowed. It would be Kirk and Spock (or Georgiou and Burnham) against the external forces of badness. (I haven’t seen episode 2, but I assume the captain gets killed and the Shenzhou destroyed, because you don’t cast Michelle Yeoh to be second banana to anyone).
So this season has to be about “we” (the Federation) screwed up, and how we can fix it, and for Burnham to be both the second in command and the hero of the story, her captain has to be one of the bad guys.
We are the enemy and we have to atone for it and rise above ourselves, especially those of us who don’t see things the right way.
OldTrek did occasional episodes like that but mostly the Enterprise crew were the good guys.
2017 is just way different from 1967 or 1987.
@13/roxana: Well, Sarek is the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, and he’s married to a human, so he’s the most logical candidate to be the foster/adoptive parent to an orphaned human.
@14/Brian: If Trek fans are unwilling to pay for Trek, then how come there have been 13 movies, and how come the DVD and Blu-Ray sets have been so successful?
@13/ Well, he IS the Vulcan ambassador to humans, given that, I understand why he is always mixing it up, human style. As “Amok Time” show, some Vulcans are WAAAYYYY more stand-offish…
@16/StrongBad: Jason Isaacs does not always play a bad guy. He’s played cop or FBI-agent protagonists in several TV series including Awake, Case Histories, and Dig. (I was going to say he’s also the voice of Batman in the animated DVD movies, but that’s Jason O’Mara.)
The first episode wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful. It left me wondering how a lot of things got through the process of writing and revising the script.
It’s established early on that Burnham is a xenoanthropologist, so it’s a bit worrying to hear something like “Klingons only understand violence” coming from her. The plot comes across as trying to hard to make this odd point of view correct. For all the scenes we’re given inside the Klingon ship, their motives still seem simplistic and lacking the depth I’d like to see from a fleshed-out Klingon culture.
I hope the writing continues to improve. Right now, I’m on the fence about whether I want to pay for the streaming service when there’s a lot of other high quality sci-fi programming out there.
2. ChristopherLBennett – At least you’re just looking at $6 per month. In Canada I’d have to shell out $25 for a skinny basic cable package and then add Space for $3.95. Plus tax of course.) Is STD worth $29 a month? I wouldn’t pay that for an all Trek streaming service.
CBS has announced that All Access will be launching in Canada next year but without many shows, STD included, that broadcast rights are owned by other services such as Netflix or Space.
A shame because this sounds like it has a lot of promise albeit with some missteps already (Let’s ditch the concept of two female, POC leads and put another white guy in charge again). Hopefully, it plays better on screen that it looks when it’s written out.
13. princessroxana – EXACTLY! Thank you!
I was pleasantly surprised with Episode One (“The Vulcan Hello”) – didn’t see Episode Two since I don’t have CBS ALL ACCESS – with Sonequa Martin-Green’s Commander Michael Burnham so fascinating a character, that I am glad the executive producers have opted to have this series seen primarily through her eyes. I hope Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou remains as a more permanent part of the cast, since she may very well be the best female Starfleet captain on “Star Trek”. Overall, I regard “The Vulcan Hello” as the best pilot episode for a “Star Trek” series, even if there is one major continuity glitch; didn’t the Klingons go to war with the Federation in the 2240s, not 2255?
As a side note, Lt. Saru is delightful, especially when he describes his heritage as a prey creature. His fencing with Burnham hit a sweet spot for me, and look forward to seeing more of him as the series continues.
Irredeemable trash. Combines the worst aspects of the reboot movies with the worst aspects of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate Universe, and expects extra cash for it too. Talk about insult to injury.
It is clear why reviews were embargoed, it is nothing more than a one trick pony and relying on the same kind of twists that Muh Night Shyamalan.
It is actually worse than Season One Enterprise, because at least Enterprise knew to wrap up the story and give us a homily at the top of the hour. I’m not along for a season long ride, mainly because it is obvious that we have less than an hour’s worth of story here and it is going to be stretched, padded, and filled, pointless subplots designed to also be padding and filler themselves, with the same kind of wandering dross that Stargate Universe and The 100 have.
It is a pile of garbage, but those that have decided to like it before it even aired will obviously not change their opinion no matter how bad it gets.
My only real complaint about the new-look Klingons was the heavily-implied not-quite-a-promise we got from behind-the-scenes that the new Klingon makeup represented ethnic differences among the Great Houses (meaning that, like Remans, these Klingons have always been around, just off-camera). Then we got that holographic audience with representatives from the other Great Houses, and they all had the new look. It would’ve been the perfect spot to drop in an unidentified HemQuch among the crowd.
As for the visuals, I actually think this production could really have benefited from a lower budget, forcing the writers and visual designers to be more restrained and not vomit CGI and “stylistic” lighting over every frame.
I watched both episodes and enjoyed them, but not enough to pay for another subscription service that only has one show I’m interested in; I’ll be happy to buy the season either on iTunes or on Blu-ray when the time comes.
I did find the first two episodes a bit … odd, mostly in terms of how they (I assume) relate to the rest of the season — this was essentially two epsiodes’ worth of backstory for the main character (or two of the main characters?), but we still haven’t actually seen the Discovery, her captain or any of the rest the names that I assume will be appearing in the opening credits in the future. I almost wonder if they would’ve been better served by making the events of the pilot a flashback or something; or at least by making three episodes available so that viewers could see more of what the regular run of the show will look like.
I for one was very impressed and am glad I shelled out the $6 for All Access. Anyone who watched the first episode should do what they can (or are willing to) in order to see the second as they are part of the same story. The second episode was a fantastic payoff from the first. I’m glad that they made the Klingons interesting after their slightly run-of-the-mill characterization in ENT.
Was anyone else reminded of the Spock/McCoy relationship when listening to the banter between Burnham/Saru? I thought it was a nice homage.
24. random22, “those that have decided to like it before it even aired will obviously not change their opinion”. The same could be said for those who decided to hate it before seeing it, no?
@26 hoopmanjh
It took me a few minutes to realize we weren’t even seeing the ship that the series proper focuses on. That’s a big disappointment for a sci-fi show that has named enough of its series after their featured ships/stations to make it a theme.
It just wasn’t a strong enough hook for me in the setting or plot side to instantly decide I was going to subscribe to the service. At this point, there’s plenty of other stuff to watch and read while waiting for the next season of the Expanse.
@17/ChristopherLBennett: I didn’t say “not willing to pay for Trek” — fans (including myself) obviously are, since they pay for movie tickets and novels, among other things. I said “unwilling to pay for a service.” That is, I’m not willing to pay an ongoing monthly fee for occasional access to new Trek. If I buy one of your fine books, or a DVD collection, that’s a one-time purchase, and I have that content forever. A service is an ongoing rental fee, and the content can be removed at any time, according to the whim of the content provider. Maybe it’s my age, but I’m not willing to subscribe to that method of media consumption yet.
The choice may be different for others, depending on their level of devotion to Trek. The only show I like enough to make that sacrifice for is Doctor Who, but that’s where my priorities are.
A couple of years ago everything on cbs.com was free, including every episode of star trek except for the Next Generation. Now it’s been completely monetized. I don’t see why people don’t have the obligation to complain about this.
Movies, on the other hand, had been around for about a hundred years before 1979 and no one complained that star trek was going to return as a spectacular motion picture.
By the way, according to web calculators, $2.50 in 1980 dollars adjusted to 2016 would be only $7.28, so the movie business is fleecing us as well.
@17/18; so Sarek is literally the only Vulcan on the planet who isn’t a racist pig?
Vulcans are founding members of the Federation and have been allies of Earth for nearly two centuries yet Sarek is the ONLY Vulcan to have Human ties or experience of Human societies? Do we really want to imply that?
@22/John Kwok: All we know from “The Trouble with Tribbles” is that there was an inconclusive battle at Donatu V in 2244. Maybe you’re thinking of the “Four Years War” that was entirely an invention of the role-playing games in the ’80s.
@29/Brian: “That is, I’m not willing to pay an ongoing monthly fee for occasional access to new Trek.”
Then cancel the service when the show isn’t on. I gather a lot of people do that with subscription services — they only occasionally renew to watch a new show, then cancel in between releases.
@@@@@ 29, sounds like a lot of trouble to go through for one darn show.
One trivial-but-made-me-happy thing – a reference (at the funeral of the first Klingon torchbearer) to him going to the “Black Fleet” – the afterlife from John Ford’s Final Reflection.
@27 I won’t apologise for feeling less than charitable to the show beforehand. The promotional materials the studio puts out are put out for the specific purpose of getting emotional reactions to the show, and to allow potential viewers to form a judgement on whether it is worth watching. It is not my fault that the emotion and judgement they gave me was a negative one. I am not obliged to look at crummy previews and then decided to feel great about a show anyway. The show is not owed good feeling just based on existing, no show is automatically owed that.
They put out stuff that did not inspire and I was not inspired. CBS made a rod for its own back, and that is its own fault. Should have done a better job of making a silk purse in the promos if they wanted me to swallow this pig’s ear.
Doesn’t anyone else think some of the acting was substandard? Especially MYeoh.
@36 Yup. Just one of its many sins. The directing and the writing was sloppy too.
35. random22, I’m not asking you to apologize, I’m just pointing out that opinions based on promotional materials are subjective and basing your feelings for a show on those promotions goes both ways. You are free to hate the show just as I am free to love it. IDIC, right :)
36. Gulasahi, I was ok with the acting. T’Kuvma’s Klingonese was a bit sloppy, but I got over it. I wasn’t expecting Oscar caliber performances, just for it to be on par with other Trek’s acting, which I feel it was.
I got to watch a Star Trek premiere with my son! We watched both episodes, even though it was a school night and he ended up going to bed at 1 AM (he gets up at 6.30), and my wife wasn’t happy… but she knows what Star Trek means to us.
My son loved it, and I just thought it was good. The whole shtick of having the Klingons reject diversity and hate the Federation’s “we come in peace” is very, very Star Trek, and it echoes the real world too closely. I also like that we see some crew banter, a nice work environment. Oh, and that Michael still retains her Vulcan education, but has allowed her humanity to resurface.
The one thing that makes it unsatisfactory as the start of a Star Trek show is that we know (if we’ve been following the news about the show) that we should only get attached to Saru and Michael (at least among the Starfleet crew), and it’s a pity, because Georgiou is excellent. We have to wait until the third episode to meet the rest of the show’s main crew.
As for the camera work, yes, it looks more like a Kelvin movie, but only a bit. It’s just that TV has changed, and while TNG/DS9/VOY had a similar look and feel, ENT changed things a bit too, and then it’s been over a decade since ENT ended. We have to get used to TV Trek that looks like current TV. The effects were beautiful, I must add.
@krad: I agree that the Klingon make-up and fake teeth make it very difficult for the language to feel natural. Hopefully, the actors will get more comfortable with both prosthetics and language. And Lorca may be white, but I love that he’s Hispanic.
@1 – Chris: I had to watch TNG on a grainy/fuzzy transmision from another city, so I feel your pain. I also didn’t get to watch all of TOS, DS9, and VOY until the 2000s. The only Star Trek show I got to watch weekly, in real time, was Enterprise, and I was a Star Trek fan and old enough for DS9, VOY, and a lot of TNG.
Is there a chance that you could pitch in with a friend or a couple of friends to pay for CBAA and watch this show as it airs?
@3 – Wrenn: Hey, it’s Wrenn! The telepathic contact is not without precedence, but it was unnecessary.
@16 – StrongDreams: I’m not sure Lorca is supposed to be a villain.
@24 – random22: “It is clear why reviews were embargoed” Sure, because everybody agrees with you on this show.
@25 – Cybersnark: 24 great houses, and we saw like, six holographic leaders. Not 23 or 24.
@27 – Jason: That banter was definitely from the same well, but with less racism. :)
@39 – Jason: I liked the acting, particularly Yeoh’s. I loved that she had her own accent.
The difference between my plan to binge the show for free and @CLB’s desire to subscribe then cancel, is that CLB will pay for a lens flare.
If CBSAA doesn’t have enough other content to hold my interest after my free trial week, that’s their problem.
@41 Isaacs himself has state in interviews that his character is the most screwed up starfleet office ever, or words to that effect.
He might not be a classic villain, but he’s there to give the Burnham character somone to be heroic and exhibit character growth in contrast to.
Or so it seems to my crystal ball.
@41/StrongDreams: “The difference between my plan to binge the show for free and @CLB’s desire to subscribe then cancel, is that CLB will pay for a lens flare.”
What?? I have no idea what that means. The difference is that I’m a professional writer and I understand that professionals can only create stuff if they make enough money to stay in business. Supporting a fictional franchise means paying for it and for the outlets that deliver it, because that’s what enables them to keep making it. So fans who try to get out of paying by one means or another are only decreasing their own chances of getting more content in the future. That’s a universal fact of the business, not specific to any one franchise or interpretation thereof.
I mean, as a consumer, I’m a skinflint. My father was a child of the Great Depression, so I was raised with frugal habits. I’m also pretty much broke at the moment, so my preference as a consumer would be to spend as little as I can. But my ability to survive as a creator is dependent on my audience being willing to pay for my stuff. So I appreciate other creators’ need for financial support and feel that I should provide it to them if I’m able to do so. The problem is that, lately, I’m not, so I’m torn.
@31/ No, of course not, but Vulcans who have willingly intermixed with humans over the years (that we have seen) have been outliers and for some grades of logic, pursuing separate but equal paths via the Federation is a logical standpoint to have. There is precedent for having an all Vulcan ship (USS Intrepid). Vulcan dragged on provided advanced warp tech to Earth, they have often decided on telling humans as little as possible, in fact, and T’pol noted that in the earlier days (Enterprise) the record before her of a Vulcan serving on a human ship was 10 days. It can be entirely logical to be allies without having to associate. So, yes, I can pretty much see many Vulcans as racist pigs, but through the example set by Sarek, Spock, T’Pol, Tuvik and others, they came to a better understanding of what the Federation means. Let’s not get into the examples of Sybok, however, some bridges are too far.
As an European Netflix customer I’ll get Discovery with my regular subscription! So I have no excuses, I’ll have to watch this. I’ll get back tomorrow after watching episode 1 with my humble feedback.
@40 Peer pressure is seldom a persuasive counter-argument.
@38 I don’t disagree, but it is very clear that some people -naming no names- are basing their defence of the show based purely on it being a Star Trek show. They aren’t even using the promotional materials, just that it exists so they must defend it against all comers. I’ve been down that road before with the NuTrek movies (and frankly this is an Into Darkness based show, on looks, acting, and general direction), Nemesis, Voyager, and Enterprise (not to mention innumerable Trek books, particularly in the DS9 reboot novels and Corp of Engineer range). All of which was fervently defended just on the basis of being part of the franchise, and all of it turned out to be dogs doings.
Being part of a franchise should not meaning automatically defending the franchise. This show is indefensible and the best we can hope for is that CBS release in one go what they’ve finished so far, junk anything left unfinshed, and start again later.
43. ChristopherLBennett, “Supporting a fictional franchise means paying for it and for the outlets that deliver it, because that’s what enables them to keep making it.”
I had the same thought and that is what convinced me to pay for it rather than pirate it. I want more Trek. I’m also hoping that with a streaming service, they will get away from a standard TV model and tinker with the content. Like a single run series, a new animated series, movies that are released on All Access. There’s a lot of possibilities there.
Quick question to those who have subscribed to the All Access service: Are there commercials?
@48 6.99 Limited Commercial Tier, 9.99 No Commerical Tier
@46 – random22: No, YOU think it’s indefensible. A lot of us liked the promo materials, and liked the first two episodes.
@47 – Jason: I hope that, in addition to DIS, we get the anthology series that Fuller wanted.
@CLB, worth noting perhaps that the basic level of CBSAA still includes commercials?
If CBS wanted to force subscribers to pay for Discovery, they would leave Discovery out of the all access free preview week. CBS chose this distribution method so they could try and monetize their 6000+ episode back catalogue and extract the $7-10 per month for one network, that cord-cutters already pay for 3 networks (on Hulu) or one network with a proven track record of offering highly desirable superior quality content (HBO).
If CBS gives me free access to Discovery for a week (with commercials) then I am paying for the program by watching the commercials and by giving CBS the chance to convince me that there is something else on their platform that is worth $10 a month for the 9 months of the year when Discovery is in hiatus. Some early reviews of the service are not complimentary.
@21/kkozoriz: CraveTV is carrying Discovery in Canada. $7.99 a month.
By the time Enterprise went off the air I was desperately tired of the Berman Era of Star Trek. I’m glad to see Discovery isn’t bringing that back. People who want to live in the 1990s have The Orville, so everybody’s happy.
@50/MaGnUs: Back when we still had made-for-TV movies on the networks, I often thought an anthology-style series of Trek TV movies depicting various key events in Trek history (e.g. the Romulan War, founding of the Federation, etc.) would be a good way to go — maybe 3-4 movies a year like they did with the Columbo and Perry Mason revivals.
ChristopherLBennett
As Jerry Pournelle used to say “Information may want to be free, but entertainment wants to be paid.”
Of course I’m willing to pay for “Star Trek.” In many ways, I have been all my life. Even those of us who binge it relentlessly on Netflix are paying for “Star Trek” right now. What I don’t want to do, however, is pay for an entirely new service just for “Star Trek,” and worse, a service that from my sense last night is not a particularly great experience. (I’m sure there are other people who want to watch a number of other CBS shows on there, but scrolling through their offerings, the ones I’d consider are already on Netflix or Amazon.) I’m more than happy to pay for “Discovery” because I really liked what I saw in these first two episodes, but I’m also more than happy to wait and buy a season pass from Amazon or iTunes so I can watch the show with a far more pleasurable user experience and at my own pace—the benefits of a 21st century streaming service, which CBS All Access appears to be ignoring in favor of presenting “Star Trek” in an almost laughably old-fashioned manner. The other CBS All Access exclusive, “The Good Fight,” is available on iTunes and Amazon Video, and I’m hoping “Discovery” will be, too.
@30/Kevin Lindgren: “By the way, according to web calculators, $2.50 in 1980 dollars adjusted to 2016 would be only $7.28, so the movie business is fleecing us as well.”
We’re not getting the same product now, though. Technology has improved in both picture and sound, the seats are more comfortable (often powered recliners), we have online ticket buying, and other perks that just didn’t exist at that time. An evening movie ticket at my local Cinemark is $9.50, which is not that far off from $7.28, but a matinee comes in at $7.85 – just a few cents above the 2016 average… but it’s 2017 now, so it’s probably right on point.
I don’t live out in the sticks, but rather in a suburb of Houston. Theaters in downtown areas of major cities likely charge much more, while more rural theaters often charge less.
For me it was was decently entertaining non-canon spinoff of Star Trek.
I wish they’d been open about it being that in the first place. I’m fine with that. I like it better than trying to tell us “no this is a PREQUEL” and then feeling free to change anything they like or inventing hokey new additions to canon (it’s like saying “I’m a vegetarian… I may eat bacon and ground meats, but I’m vegetarian.” I’m fine with either one, just don’t claim to be one while being the other).
Aside from that:
Not super fond of the main character, yet (and like Halien@20 I really don’t like the main character’s point of view of “violence is the only thing they understand” as well as the show seemingly writing itself to validate that point of view). The line from Doug Jones that we saw in the trailer “our species has been designed for one purpose… to sense the coming of death… I sense it coming NOW!” plays slightly better in context… it’s still a bad line, but at least it doesn’t necessarily indicate some bizarre telepathic danger-sense and instead just a species based on pragmatic cowardice, which could be very entertaining.
But I’m interested in watching more. I wouldn’t pay for CBS All-Access to do so, but luckily I don’t have to.
56. danielmclark
Thanks for the response. I can only say that movies in 1979 were also the product of the most advanced technology of the time. But I agree, movies have always been cheap, mass entertainment.
@53 – Chris: A series of TV movies would be nice too. As for CBSAA, since you’re having some financial isues, aren’t there a couple of friends you could pitch in with to get together, pay for the service monthly, and watch the show together, like others gather to watch sports?
Comparing CBS All Access to syndication and UPN doesn’t quite line up. The latter two were beamed into our sets by local stations. You didn’t have to hunt for them, didn’t have to pay an additional subscription.
My reason for not subscribing is simple: one show I’m mildly interested in isn’t enough. Everything else on All Access is either your regular CBS primetime junk or reruns of shows I’ve seen dozens of times. If it were on Netflix, like the rest of the world, it wouldn’t be a problem—more original content, more shows, more movies.
CBS and other networks need to realize they’re better suited as content providers rather than having “exclusive” channels on the net. They’re too late to the market with too little to provide consumers.
@60 – Uhaul: If you’re “mildly interested” in this show, why are you even commenting in a review of it? Just curious.
“The only thing they understand is violence.”
I’ll fix it for them in post:
“On Earth, when two animals strange to each other meet for the first time, there is often a display of ritualized or actual aggression, to determine which is the dominant animal and which is the submissive. This happens with many different species, including cats and dogs, non-human primates, and even some fish, and it happens in both males and females, depending on the species. Holding out an open hand is our way of saying, “I’m not going to try and dominate you today.”
“But Klingons don’t think like that, and it’s a mistake to impose human, or even Earth animal, values on them. When two unfamiliar Klingons meet for the first time, they hit each other, not to establish dominance, but to establish mutual respect. A smaller, weaker Klingon gains stature and reputation in the community by giving back as good as he or she takes. An open hand is seen as a sign of weakness and surrender.
“The Klingons expanded into space to make alliances, conquer territory, and gain resources, and they believe the Federation went into space for the same reason. And it’s mostly true, although our methods differ. We view peaceful diplomacy as admirable, the Klingons view it as dishonest, because the outcome is the same.
“They damaged the beacon to attract our attention. That they appeared when we powered up our weapons was a sign of respect. When we powered down without firing we showed weakness. Shooting them before they shoot us is the only way they’ll see us as honest; the only way to gain their respect.”
(Of course, in this case the Klingon leader is a wanna-be-messiah who wants a war so the usual rules don’t apply, but Burnham had no way of knowing that.**)
(**Although, Sarek implied that the usual rules might not work in this case.)
@50 Once again, demanding I give into peer pressure is not a convincing argument in favour of the franchise.
63. random22, He’s not trying to convince you of anything other than that some of us saw the same material you did and liked what we saw and are not offended at the throught of CBS All Access. These things are subjective. I’m sorry you didn’t like it. I hope next time they sell you on it. (I suspect that DSC will be a one season show)
#61 Because I’m a longtime fan of Star Trek in general, and mildly interested is better than no interest at all. Plus I enjoy reading Keith’s and CLB’s reviews. Simple as that.
I don’t have a problem with reboots, or complaints about continuity or style mismatch (against a 50-year old show??). This show can be whatever it chooses to be. I do have a problem with half-assed execution within that — which is, in my view, what we got.
This (episode 1) failed the key test for me, which is – is this good enough to shell out $10/month for?
Sure, there are moments where there was a glimmer of something better. My favorite moment was the look on the lead’s face when she prepared to do the EVA – unbridled joy of, well, discovery. Too bad they made her character into an idiot cartoon version of Abrams-Kirk a few minutes later. Too bad those moments were mostly buried in a compendium of most of the worst parts of the last few iterations of Trek.
The best we can hope for is that this is one of those early seasons we can look back on and say “boy, that got off to a rough start”. I’m just not sure that, in today’s world of great TV, that there’s an excuse to start off this poorly when you are asking people to pay now.
@63 – random22: I’m not at all interested in convincing you of anything.
@65 – UHaul: Okay.
Hi, all–just a reminder to keep the conversation civil, constructive, and focused on the show (meaning don’t make criticisms overly personal, and don’t take them too personally). Keep disagreements and the overall tone polite–it makes for a better discussion.
I liked the scene on the planet best, “exposition fairy” notwithstanding. I liked the camaraderie and the banter between the two women, the fact that Kirk isn’t the only starship captain who takes his first officer along on landing parties, the nature of the mission, the aliens with their really-alien living conditions and their really-alien, even a bit icky, appearance. I know that TV has to be serialised these days, but I would have loved to see that story in more detail instead of the one we actually got.
I’ve been wanting to see a Chinese female starship captain for almost thirty years. It’s nice to have that wish fulfilled. It would have been even better if she had a Chinese name, or were an ongoing character, or if I could like the uniforms or the interior starship design. But I take what I can get.
Interesting. And not bad at all. Just not worth paying $6 I don’t have every month for the privilege of watching it any more than I paid for the cable access to watch Voyager or Enterprise. Perhaps I’ll go rewatch DS9 instead.
I should also say I saw only the first episode of Discovery. If I’d seen half of Encounter at Farpoint, Emissary, Caretaker or Broken Bow, I would’ve described them as ‘mildly interesting’ too. They’re okay as pilots but not amazing. And me being a cheapskate, I’m not willing to pay to see the second half…not right now.
69. JanaJansen, I loved Captain Georgiou as well and was sad to see her go (even though I figured it would happen). I kind of view her as a throwback to Picard. He was a Frenchmen raised in France, but somehow has an English accent, while she is a Asian woman with a French (I think) name, but with a Chinese accent. United Earth for the win! ;)
Her name is Greek, actually.
I’ve signed up for CBSAA and seen episode 2 now, thanks to a certain kind donor (you know who you are). The “telepathic conference” with Sarek has precedent in the “mating bond” that Trip Tucker and T’Pol had in season 4 of Enterprise, allowing them to communicate over interstellar distances when T’Pol meditated. Presumably the mind meld Sarek performed to save Burnham’s life as a child was deep enough to create an equivalently permanent bond, allowing the same kind of mental contact under the right circumstances. So it actually fits pretty neatly into previous canon, at least recent canon.
Although it gives Spock even more reason to regret or resent the fact that Sarek never chose to meld with him.
It was cool that we got to see Michelle Yeoh get to do some martial arts, although either she’s slowed down somewhat with age or she was holding back because her character wasn’t a martial artist.
Thank you, kind donor! Glad you could cach up, Chris. Looking forward to you sharing your thoughts on each episode.
And yes, there is canon precedent for the long distance telepathic communication, but I would have preferred if it wasn’t used.
@17
“Well, Sarek is the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, and he’s married to a human, so he’s the most logical candidate to be the foster/adoptive parent to an orphaned human.”
Actually, the most logical person to foster/adopt an orphaned human is a relative. Don’t tell me her entire family, to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc were all killed simultaneously. And even if they were, I doubt any sane juvenile court would let a Vulcan adopt a human child.
@72/Jason: “Picard… was a Frenchmen raised in France, but somehow has an English accent…”
TV and movies condition us to assume that anyone speaking English as a second language has to speak it with their native accent, but that’s just a dramatic conceit, a way for a character to be coded as foreign while still speaking English. In real life, the ideal when speaking a second language is to speak it without an accent. Yes, sometimes people never lose their native accent — e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jackie Chan — but there are lots of people who can speak a second language fluently without their native accent intruding. For instance, actor Michael Vartan is French, but he speaks American English without a trace of a French accent.
Besides, if Spock can speak English without a Vulcan accent, or Worf can speak it without a Klingon accent, why is it implausible that Picard can speak it without a French accent? Heck, he was raised in a united Europe and probably learned both British English and French from childhood onward. So it would make perfect sense for him to speak both languages without an accent. Now, if he spoke French with a notable English accent, then there’d be an issue.
@76/Ragnarredbeard: Why shouldn’t a Vulcan be allowed to adopt a human child?
@76/Ragnar: “Actually, the most logical person to foster/adopt an orphaned human is a relative. Don’t tell me her entire family, to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc were all killed simultaneously.”
Why is that hard to believe? Her colony was devastated in a Klingon attack. It’s basically the same backstory as Worf — all his family members (save Kurn, who was kept secret) were killed in the destruction of the colony where he lived, so he had to be adopted by an alien family.
“And even if they were, I doubt any sane juvenile court would let a Vulcan adopt a human child.”
Now, that’s just racist. And aren’t you forgetting that Burnham’s adoptive mother, the Lady Amanda, was human?
Yes, John Luck Pickerd, the emotionally repressed, Earl Grey drinking, Shakespeare loving Frenchman. ;-)
I always assumed Picard was educated in England.
Honestly, I question whether national divisions like English, French, Italian, etc. would still be as prominent in the 24th century as they are today, or if they would’ve given way to a more pan-European identity — kinda like how Sulu was meant to be pan-Asian and Uhura pan-African.
@79
Yes, throw the race card. Interesting that you went that way. Not surprising, but interesting nonetheless.
And as for Picard’s accent, its rather obvious. He was born in France after his British ancestors invaded and replaced the native population’s leaders. Look up what happened after William the Conqueror took over England in 1066.
Krad – loved the opening to your review! Made me realise that I was judging ST:D unfairly as “non-Trek” without considering that my issues with were old news. Also, smiled that you thought that the show could have been a sequel of TNG/DS9/Voy rather than a prequel – I had the same idea myself while viewing.
Ultimately, I truly enjoyed the first two episodes (thanks Netflix) although I just can’t compare it to the other pilot episodes in the ST series. Comparing Vulcan Hello to Caretaker or Emissary; it just doesn’t work in my head (so different)
Fingers crossed that this will get the TV franchise going again.
52. Steve Roby – Not according to their website. No listing under Discovery or Star Trek.
CraveTV – Star Trek
Space says it’s available with their app but you still need to subscribe to cable and none of the cable companies were I live support the app. I like Trek but it’s not worth the hassle.
81. ChristopherLBennett – Pan-Asian or Pan-African has always seemd to me as a shorthand way of saying “We’re not really going to give them much of a back story or culture. It would be like talking about a Pan-American culture and ignoring the fact that it would include Inuit, Quebecois, Newfoundland, New England, American South, Mexican, or any of the Caribbean cultures. Most Trek characters are basically generic North Americans regardless of their cultural heritage.
UHaul: Glad you like my reviews. :)
So I hate to do this, but I take serious issue with this comment: “Comparing CBS All Access to syndication and UPN doesn’t quite line up. The latter two were beamed into our sets by local stations. You didn’t have to hunt for them, didn’t have to pay an additional subscription.”
You absolutely had to hunt for them! I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember 1987, but I am. To “hunt” for Discovery you have to go to the herculean effort of typing the words “cbs all access” or “star trek discovery” into a web browser. But if you wanted to watch The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine in first-run, you absolutely had to hunt, digging through your local newspaper’s TV listings or your local edition of TV Guide — in both cases in print, without any kind of useful search function beyond skimming every page of tiny type on crappy newsprint with your eyes — to find out which station (if any) was carrying it and what day and time it chose to air it (and it wasn’t always consistent from week or week or from year to year).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
After i watched it i remembered the ST Next Gen documentary. The writers didn’t like the fact that this was a show without conflict. I liked that. You met a crew that got along with eachother and did their jobs. Boldly explore… Discovery felt more like a ST movie where they put in too much conflict. And it focuses on just a few characters. The whole mutiny felt so forced. And that evil looking dark lit tribunal. Very enjoyable episodes but didn’t feel like a star trek series.
#86
Serious issue? Really? Okay.
Well I do remember those days quite well, and TNG and DS9 weren’t difficult to find at all–on every Saturday night after the news in my town. But “hunting” isn’t the issue I really care about; you can find anything if you look hard enough, Herculean or not. It’s the exclusive paywall offered by a single network that’s the issue.
Exclusivity to this degree isn’t the future of media. Never has been. Viewers, especially penny-pinchers like me, go where the most options and the biggest variety are, and CBS All Access (ironic name?) isn’t it.
I would say that my overall impressions were positive. At times the story seemed to drag, often during the Klingon dialogue segments, which I felt were a smidge too long, I was getting impatient with the subtitles.
I very much enjoyed the acknowledgement of the Klingon value system being different. The single most awful episode of any Trek iteration to me is the TNG episode “Ethics.” In particular the scene with Riker delivering his monologue on 20th century western civilization human values and expecting a fellow from a completely different species/culture/planet to buy into it.
Burnham suggesting that firing on the Klingons would satisfy social requirement soothed that decades long ache for me.
The biggest annoyance I felt was the sequence with Burnham and Georgiou infiltrating the Klingon ship. Star Trek has never been one to care too much about fight scenes and the schlocky nature of them in the past was easy to ignore as part of a show that didn’t take itself too seriously. With the action heavy nature and “real consequence” style of storytelling they seem to be going for it completely removes me from the proceedings when these sub 100lb women are going toe to toe with the Klingons who, with this brutal redesign, are suggested as being 300Ib slabs of muscle and born and bred warriors. I would have enjoyed seeing the women get subdued immediately, after perhaps dispatching a couple of dudes with the phasers as those are pretty effective equalizers, and then having to exploit some sort of weakness to get out of the pickle. Obviously, the Klingons won the physical battle, but it shouldn’t have even been any sort of fight. As much value as a mutiny and the “vulcan hello” offered as novel story points for Trek, this dumb fist fight felt super antiquated to me.
A lot has been said here, I won’t rehash any of it, except for two things:
1. I am curious if there is a price point where those refusing to pay for it might be willing. Is it strictly principle, or if you got the entire season for $4.99 would you be okay with it? Is it the subscription fee you’re objecting to, the dollar amount, that money is being charged at all, etc?
2. If Sarek is here, we better get references to Spock. He’s alive during the time the show is taking place. Assuming Michael is 32 (as her actor is), then prior references would put Spock somewhere in his 20s at this time. I don’t care if they pull in Zachary Quinto, have Spock send his adoptive sister a letter, or what – but he’s out there, and if they’re using Sarek, they should reference him. (Sybok would also be a good choice.)
T’Kuvma looks like he’s wearing a conical party hat in the photo above.
@85/kkozoriz: “Pan-Asian or Pan-African has always seemd to me as a shorthand way of saying “We’re not really going to give them much of a back story or culture.”
That seems likely in that context. However, in real history there have been pan-whatever movements that have played up the shared regional identity of a people rather than their individual identities — although that was usually as a reaction against colonialism, banding together as a united front to resist imposition. Still, it shows that history goes through phases. In the present day, nationalism and the assertion of distinct heritage and identity are a strong societal drive. But clearly in ST’s United Earth, that nationalism has given way to a renewed globalism, with humans defining themselves by their shared heritage first. So leaving aside the real-world factors that influenced TOS’s writers, it makes sense in-universe that regional identities on 23rd- or 24th-century Earth would be less fragmented than they are today. I figure that the Europe in which Picard grew up would be a single nation in which the different countries were about as separate as the individual states in the US — they have their own individual traditions and pride, but they see that identity as secondary to their collective identity as a nation.
@88/UHaul: Not every city had a local station that picked up TNG or DS9, and not every city had a UPN affiliate that carried VGR or ENT. As I said in comment #2, there were several years during which no Cincinnati broadcaster carried DS9 or VGR and I had to watch the distant, fuzzy signal from a neighboring city. Whereas DSC is available to anyone with an Internet connection.
And exclusive premium broadcast services have been around for decades. Cable networks like HBO and Showtime have been operating since the 1970s. True, they’ve existed alongside more conventional broadcasters, but they’ve long been the home of the most prestigious or sophisticated programming (or at least the most adult-oriented programming). And Discovery aspires to be that kind of programming, on a par with something like Game of Thrones or Westworld.
The one other piece of TOS technology missing from Manhattan office buildings is sideways elevators. No one ever mentions them when they talk about cool Trek tech.
One good thing about prequels: it means that in the future there could be a series, mini-series or movie where Michelle Yeoh is the captain. Please please please!! She’s terrific!
I have only seen episode 1 so far. I enjoyed the opening scene on the planet for the same reasons JanaJansen did, despite the clunky exposition. Yes, the Klingons have to be enabled to speak Klingon with a more natural cadence. Martin-Green made me care about what happens to her character…though I continue to be seriously peeved by the fact that Bryan Fuller stuck us with that name…cos a woman can’t kick ass or do science unless she’s got a guy’s name. Such an annoying trope (MURPH!). (Yes, yes, I know, there are a handful of women in the English-speaking world named “Michael”; that doesn’t change the meaning of the trope.) I also enjoyed the back-and-forth between Martin-Green and Jones. He does a fine job acting through the facial enhancement.
I was pretty bothered by the fact that we were apparently supposed to sympathize with the argument that the right thing to do is shoot first. So I’m reassured to read that T’Kuvma is likely to have attacked in any case. That means that the writers aren’t putting their thumb firmly on the “shoot first” side of the scale.
I’m not sure whether I will go for CBS All Access–it’s not the $7/month as much as it is the hassle and unfamiliarity of the process for me. I am perfectly happy to pay for the series in some form, though.
On Michael’s upbringing: I don’t think that it’s logical for a Vulcan foster father to put a 100% human child who’s been traumatically orphaned into the high-pressure “educational” setting we see her in, dealing with topics sure to open emotional wounds. Doesn’t Amanda have any say at all? Whatever one’s Vulcan goals in child-rearing might be, it makes no sense to drive a human child to the emotional breaking point. With Spock, there was the intent of integrating him into Vulcan society as a Vulcan, but that couldn’t have been the plan with Michael.
I don’t get the extreme reactions to this show, but I’m also fortunate that I don’t need to shell out extra for a separate streaming service. I liked the main (Federation) characters but I think they were a little hit and miss with the Klingons. Overall, I feel like this is way ahead of Enterprise which I couldn’t get through, but may end up behind DS9 and TNG.
That being said, people seem to forget how lame S1 of TNG was, how hit and miss the movies are, and how much TOS was a product of its time. The best analogy I can come up with is that this feels closer to how Rogue One relates to the mainline Star Wars as far as being a different tone and having a different viewpoint from the standard formula. It also suffers from some of the same problems as Rogue One did, in that they needed better direction in some places, they had unnecessary throwbacks to nostalgia, and they could have done better with another pass at the script.
But I also feel like TV has changed to the point where episodic shows with this kind of Gunsmoke in space is not going to work anymore. And at least what they’re doing has a better chance of being interesting to watch than we’ve seen from Trek in awhile.
@94/Saavik: “Yes, the Klingons have to be enabled to speak Klingon with a more natural cadence.”
Most of them did. The problem was pretty much just with Chris Obi’s performance.
“though I continue to be seriously peeved by the fact that Bryan Fuller stuck us with that name…cos a woman can’t kick ass or do science unless she’s got a guy’s name. Such an annoying trope (MURPH!). (Yes, yes, I know, there are a handful of women in the English-speaking world named “Michael”; that doesn’t change the meaning of the trope.)”
I don’t think that has anything to do with it, because Bryan Fuller likes giving androgynous names to his female leads, and none of them were scientists or ass-kickers. Georgina “George” Lass of Dead Like Me was a temp office worker (and apprentice grim reaper). Jaye Tyler of Wonderfalls was a sales clerk with a philosophy degree. Charlotte “Chuck” Charles of Pushing Daisies was a beekeeper, pie shop worker, and private detective. I think Fuller does it to subvert gender tropes, not reinforce them.
@90/Meredith
Personally I’d cheerfully shell out a few of my very few dollars to watch this season. No problem spending $10. Wouldn’t like to spend $20 but I would.
I not only love ST but I also think it’s important that it’s in production.
But Viacom/CBS is being scummy by trying to leverage trek to launch its also-ran streaming service. Trek has the ratings to carry a slot in broadcast nowdays…And not only is this move screwing over the fans it’s also a knife in the back of the affiliates
Glongdor: normally when I see comments talking about how women can’t possibly hold their own in a fight against big strong men, I laugh and tell them I should introduce them to the women at my dojo, including the ones who kick ass in international fighting tournaments, but I don’t have to do that this time, because one of the women you’re dismissing is Michelle Yeoh. If you think she can’t hold her own in hand-to-hand combat with anyone, you are obviously completely unfamiliar with the vast majority of her career in Hong Kong action movies. *grin*
Here’s a sample, a clip from Supercop, in which she starred with Jackie Chan:
https://youtu.be/1Ej-iuKgmvQ
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hey KRAD, will you be reviewing the rest of the episodes here too? Unrealistic as it may be, any chance for wacky rewatch-style sections? I had so much fun reading those.
Haven’t seen the second episode yet (it’s the pay-service thing) but I’ve read about what happens in it, as well as some details about Jason Isaacs’ character. (Though I’m peeved they’re not letting him use his natural English accent!)
Maybe it’s just my attraction to Jason Isaacs talking, but I do hope they don’t pull an Admiral Marcus with Captain Lorca and turn him into a villain. It’d be a lot more interesting to make him more like Ben Maxwell in TNG’s The Wounded (of whom, I wish we’d seen more)…misguided, but sympathetic. And it would be even more interesting to have him “meet in the middle” with the more peace-advocating characters as the series goes on, since many descriptions for Discovery say that the series holds up to Trek’s more optimistic ideals and shows how they’re especially needed in the midst of the worst times. (And what better message do we need right now than “people can like, respect, and learn from each other even when their life philosophies differ”?)
@96 CLB–yes, I’m aware that Fuller likes giving female characters male-sounding names. (If he’s just doing that to subvert gender tropes, does he also give male characters female-sounding names? Does masculinity not need to be subverted?) My description of the strong, smart, heroic woman who needs a male-sounding name was more about the general trope (MURPH!). Fuller stuck us with the name for his own reasons, but here it fits a larger pattern where a woman has to be depicted against gender to be smart, strong and heroic, and to do stuff traditionally associated with guys. Alex, Mac, Charlie, Andy….
I’m fine with symbolic genderplay. And no one instance would irritate me so much on its own. But this pattern does irritate me.
On the naming of Michael: an article in The Wrap quotes Aaron Harberts: “It’s his [Fuller’s] signature move to name his lead women with names that would typically be associated as male. When we were kicking around ideas … we were going through male names and we all sort of hit on Michael. The entire room was like, ‘This is a really, really interesting name.’ Of course, an archangel is named ‘Michael’ as well. It just had a lot of potency for us.” So the lead woman needs a male name because it’s Fuller’s signature move, and they went through all these male names, and Michael “just had a lot of potency” for them. Yeah. Mariah, Aretha, Judith, Karen…just not potent, somehow.
On another, happier note, I forgot to say that I’m much looking forward to getting my copy of Desperate Hours tomorrow; it’s on order at my friendly neighborhood indie bookstore.
1 – sorry u guys for no t read alllllllll the comments, is really late here and I have just finished with the 2 episodes, and my fingers are itching just to butt in the melee (sry I mean conversation) , some may say too early ok. 2 I apologize for my use of english it is not my mother tongue. 3 I am awed for the writter of this article and some commentators too, thank you very much for doing this. Ok I will simply state my concerns about the series so far: a- a prequel really? why, I mean besides all the good points made in the main article, why not explore the fuutuuuureee it is like to see a show about how Mork of Ork was growing up (backawards I mean), Wht I loved of New generations and voyager was the adventure, the new, the things not told before or not so much anyway, here we have a closed conflict and some personal redemption, yes she will suffer for her “mutiny” but no so far as the 3rd season o even less perhaps, ok. b – I really hated the holographic comunications with that “in an OLD ship” you left the Kirk´s ship in a museum, c- That coward science officer, I mean Starflet is about peace and diplomacy true, but by no means such a chicken shuld be at the bridge, even JLP would have his butt briged after half chapter. Anyway I think despite allll of that the show will give us all some entertainment and the illusion of having more ST in our lives. Maybe if we “support” this show enough the all mighty producers will bless us with a truly defiant and intelligent series not some random cooked script and easy rolling cast half saturated in SE and half drowned in excesive makeup.
The show almost lost me in the first 5 minutes. Watching the Uruk-hai from space grumble with subtitles was really tiring. But then the Federation crew showed up and it was a pleasure to watch, the main title was brilliant, the cgi effects quite good.
I still think that ST should be about space exploration and that this storyline starts with the wrong subject (a war) – I am afraid we will have a full season of Xindi-style nonsense – but I’ll give it a chance and keep watching it.
@94 Take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, because I haven’t seen the show (yet), and I am also not a parent, but as to the educational thing, it’s my experience that parents like to send their children to the same kind of school that they attended.
For example, my mother went to a Catholic school, and the only reason my brother and I didn’t also go to a Catholic school was because there wasn’t one where we grew up. We moved to another town when we were teenagers, where there was a Catholic school, and my mother definitely would have sent us there if we hadn’t objected strongly to the idea (because we were used to attending public school and moving to a new town was a big enough change on its own).
I guess the short answer would be that I think Sarek would want Michael to be educated in the Vulcan way because that’s the education Sarek himself would have gone through. If you’re a parent, and you had a positive experience with your education, why wouldn’t you want your children to have the same education? That seems logical to me. ;)
This is gonna be a fun ride.
Yay! Star Trek is back on TV, sort of!
Amazing what they were able to do in two episodes here. Georgiou and Burnham have clearly been serving together a long time, and Yeoh and Martin-Green really sell it, a credit to some damn awesome acting. Georgiou’s anger, betrayal, and disappointment in her second-in-command, her Number One (squee) is palpable, a powerful scene among so many. I loved the dynamic between Georgiou and Burnham; they sold a working friendship bond in two episodes that took previous Treks two seasons or more. It is a damn shame we won’t get to see more of it.
“Special Guest Star” Michelle Yeoh?! Nooooo….
Oh. Sorry.
I also loved, like TOS, we start off not on a maiden voyage, but well into this ship’s mission. I don’t know what will happen going forward, but that was a nice callback.
I’ve given up trying to rationalize the Klingons’ ever-changing appearances, but CLB, your explanation that the Klingons are multispecies like the Xindi is now my headcanon.
I’m glad you’ll be reviewing DSC, krad, and that you can now watch, CLB. I’m glad to have my two favorite Treksperts onboard.
I grumbled and moaned, then I grumbled and moaned some more, and finally paid for the damn subscription to CBS All Access. Star Trek, if I didn’t love you so damn much…
But Sonequa Martin-Green makes this well-worth the price of admission. As does James Frain’s Sarek. I knew there was some emotion under Sarek’s composed exterior, and Frain sells it. I’m very interested to see, if only in flashback, how Michael and Spock got along.
I am excited. Maybe it has it’s flaws, but it is a Star Trek. Cannot wait to see the next episode.
However, three things bothered me a bit:
1) The telepathic phone call, though maybe not unprecedented, worries me – not because it’s unnecessary, but the way Sarek talks about accidently misplacing his katra in Michaels head… it doesn’t seem consistent with what I know about how katra works. Shouldn’t Michael in this case be McCoy-in-Search-for-Spock kind of crazy?
2) If they have technology, that can heal somebody exposed to lethal dose of radiation (and so quickly, too), why did Spock in TWOK have to die? OK, maybe there are different kinds of radiation and maybe their technology works only on some of those, but anyway… I just felt that it took away something from one of my favourite scenes in Star Trek.
3) Oh and the way Michael survived exposure to vacuum with no side effects… I suppose it is possible to survive, if you get an immediate medical assistance, I mean, if they have tech to cure radiation poisoning, they can do anything, right? But there should be some consequences to almost freezing to death and all that. But she didn’t seem even shaken a little bit in the next scene.
Am I the only one who was amused at the fact the writers clearly have no idea of the metric system? There’s no way Michael could travel 2000 km to the unknown object in 19 minutes using jets on a spacesuit (however well designed). If it were 2000 metres (ie 2km), maybe.
Why should Vulcans not rear Human children? Possibly because their normal childrearing practices border on abuse? Because little Vulcan children aren’t noted for either sensitivity or tolerance? Granted neither are human or I would guess any other children but Vulcan adults don’t seem to mind.
@101/Saavik: I agree that there used to be a tendency in media to presume that women had to be masculinized to be strong, like back in the ’80s or ’90s, but I think by now there have been more than enough strong, non-masculinized women in media that the occasional androgynous name doesn’t represent any systematic pattern anymore. We’ve got Abby and Jenny Mills in Sleepy Hollow, Kara Danvers and Maggie Sawyer in Supergirl, Sara Lance in Legends of Tomorrow, Thea Queen and Dinah Drake and others in Arrow, Cassandra Railly in 12 Monkeys, Jessica Jones and Trish Walker and Misty Knight and Colleen Wing and others in Netflix Marvel, Daisy Johnson and Elena Rodriguez and Peggy Carter and others in ABC Marvel, etc. And as for genius or scientist women, we’ve got Felicity Smoak and Caitlin Snow and Lena Luthor in the Arrowverse, Katarina Jones in 12 Monkeys (who’s also quite the badass), Lucy Preston in Timeless, Jemma Simmons in Agents of SHIELD, etc. The androgynous-named characters (e.g. Supergirl‘s Alex Danvers or The Expanse‘s Bobbi Draper) are the exceptions, not the rule. And most of them have names that have been androgynous for so long that they don’t even sound particularly masculine; Michael Burnham is a rare exception.
Anyway, I find your position a bit ironic, since you call yourself “Saavik,” a name that follows the standard masculine naming pattern for Vulcans because the character was male in early script drafts. So you’ve named yourself after a female character with a masculine name.
@106/Tessuna: What Sarek said was that a part of his katra was “with” Burnham. That could be a figurative way of saying that the meld left a permanent bond between their minds. It fits with what we know about mind melds — that they involve an exchange of memories that can linger after the meld, with each party retaining aspects of the other’s memory or personality (e.g. Tuvok and Suder acquiring each other’s attributes in “Meld”). We know that Vulcans can establish permanent telepathic bonds, such as the betrothal bond between Spock and T’Pring or the mating bond between T’Pol and Tucker. That could be interpreted as two people sharing enough of their katras to keep them connected.
As for Spock, maybe he could’ve gotten treatment for the radiation if they could’ve gotten him to sickbay in time. The problem was that the chamber itself was so flooded with radiation that nobody could get inside (and transporters presumably couldn’t lock on, if they were even working). That’s why the farewell scene had to be played with the wall of glass in between Kirk and Spock — because Spock was trapped in there until the radiation could be bled off. And that meant there was no opportunity to save him.
As for the vacuum exposure, just a few seconds in vacuum shouldn’t be that debilitating. Although she should’ve hyperventilated beforehand to saturate her blood with oxygen (cf. the diving sequence in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation), and her skin shouldn’t have iced over because, contrary to popular belief, vacuum is an insulator, so you lose heat considerably more slowly in vacuum than in atmosphere.
@107/roman: I presume the ship came as close in to the object as they could between scenes.
@109 ChristopherLBennett: Did he really say “part of” his katra? OK then, I must have heard wrong. Also, for some reason I thought about this kind of mindmeld mainly as a betrothal thing – but now I remembered a few exceptions.
You´re right about Spock, too. It still bothers me. It is just different kind of tragic feeling: There is absolutely nothing that can be done/ If only there was a way to transport Spock to sickbay in time.
I had no idea about vacuum being an insulator, thanks! Anyway, in a situation that has like 43% chance of survival, I would expect Michael to spend some time in sickbay after, or at least appear… well, cold. Or something. Also I vividly remember some Star Trek novel where Spock got exposed to vacuum (and it even wasn´t in space). He barely survived it, and only because he´s half Vulcan, and spent pretty long time on sickbay.
@84 kkokoriz: I see Discovery, After Trek, TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, The Cage, TAS, Building Star Trek, and TrekNation on that screen.
Why would I pay for something I wouldn’t watch for free. For me the Star Trek series went off track a long time ago, I had high hopes that this latest version, sigggghhhh.
I guess all their probes must have been in the repair shop :)
Edit ADDED:Oh I guess the ship intercom system must have been on the fritz to, that is why she had to rush out of sickbay and make the long trip to the bridge just to talk with the Captain. :)
@109/110 — You mean everything I learned about vacuum exposure from Outland (in which vacuum exposure makes your head pop like an overfull mosquito) was less than 100% correct?
@106 3)
It goes way beyond freezing. Extreme rapid decompression would cause your blood to boil, cells to explode, eyes and ears to rupture, Think of what would happen to a standard balloon being exposed to vacuum, it would not be very pretty and certainly not how I would want to go.
@76 – Ragnar: In addition to what Chris said, Sarek is a powerful diplomat in the Federation, with lots of influence.
@83 – JLP: It’s because it’s not a pilot, it was designed as a prelude to the actual Discovery pilot, episode 3 of the series. Not what I would have done, but nobody asked me.
@89 – Glongdor: I know it wasn’t the Klingons, but it was TNG itself that established that being aggresive is a way to earn some aliens’ respect. See “Coming of Age”, and Wesley’s run in with a Zaldan.
@94 – Savik: Yes, an anthology series or series of anthology TV movies could give us another Georgiou story. Like Galactica gave us a Helena Cain miniseries.
@99 – Brikar99: I missed the rewatch-style sections too, but most of them are based on previous knowledge of the regular characters’ established behaviours, something we don’t have here.
@100 – missjennifer: Trailers have shown Lorca asking Michael to help him stop the war. So I don’t think he’ll be anything close to a villain, even if he might be a little bit more rough around the edges than previous captains.
@103 – Dracomilan: It’s about stopping said war. I don’t think we have to worry about that.
@106 – Tessuna: Having part of Sarek’s katra is a good reason as to why Michael needed a Vulcan education: to handle that. On radiation, you said it, different kind of radiations, different situations. We have technologies to heal gunshot wounds, but not gunshot wounds that blow up your head or heart. As for vacuum, she was exposed to vacuum for a very short time.
The first part was too slow but the action picked up in the second part.
I liked Burnham but to be honest, I thought she’d be much more Vulcan-like and less human. Did all those years of the Shenzhou really change her that much? And how unlucky could she be to have two horrible things happen in her childhood?
Frain doesn’t quite do it for me as Sarek. I’ve have preferred Cross. And hey, I left a piece of my katra in you so I can hologram-call you from zillions of miles away. No, that doesn’t work either.
Losing Georgiou sucked. Loved her character.
Oh, and as far as the holographic communication (not the telepathy thing, but the discussion with the admiral), it did kind of bug me when his holographic projection went and “leaned” on a desk in the Shenjou’s ready room. It would’ve been kind of funny (although I suppose slightly distracting) if at various points he’d walked right “through” furniture in the ready room, and maybe leaned on a desk in his own office that was somewhere in midair within the Shenjou.
111. Steve Roby – Interesting. STD and After Trek weren’t there when I posted the link.
@113 and @114: I know, right? That´s what I thought! OK, maybe it would take a few seconds before the really horrible stuff starts happening, but I´d imagine that few seconds as hell. Especially that thing about blood boiling gives me nightmares. Michael doesn´t seem like she´s been through anything hell-like, that´s the problem.
Just my $.02…
Star Trek was never free. We paid for it by watching ads. I watched Discovery Episode 1 on broadcast, where every plot point was punctuated by a commercial break that (for me) really wrecked the pacing. I suppose that like many people, I’ve gotten accustomed to watching TV without commercials (using a DVR to skip ’em, or premium/streaming services that don’t include them). Episode 2 felt like it was better paced, and much more fun to watch. All things considered, I’ll pay to watch without commercials, for as long as the season lasts. I understand the people who prefer to pay for TV by watching commercials, or who don’t have other options, but for me, it’s worth the subscription price. YMMV.
@110/Tessuna: “I had no idea about vacuum being an insulator, thanks!”
Ever had a thermos bottle? That’s how they work. There’s a vacuum between the inside and the outside. There are three ways heat is transferred — radiation (infrared energy), conduction (through physical contact), and convection (through contact with a moving fluid). In a vacuum, with no medium to conduct or convect heat away, that leaves only radiation, the least efficient of the three. Think about how you freeze much faster in water than in air. That’s because the water is denser and there’s more material to carry heat away from you. Being in vacuum is the opposite of that, so it follows that you freeze much slower. The problem is that people think of space as incredibly cold — and it is, in the parts that have had time to lose all their heat. But it doesn’t happen right away, and it only happens in the dark. Spacesuits and orbital vehicles/stations spend so much time in direct sunlight that they need cooling systems to keep from overheating.
@113/hoopmanjh: Oh, gods, Outland. Don’t get me started. “Explosive decompression” means that the air gets sucked out of your lungs (or out of a ship compartment) in one forceful burst. It doesn’t mean you explode.
@114/sdzald: “It goes way beyond freezing. Extreme rapid decompression would cause your blood to boil, cells to explode, eyes and ears to rupture, Think of what would happen to a standard balloon being exposed to vacuum, it would not be very pretty and certainly not how I would want to go.”
No. Those are myths. Here’s the science:
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html
No blood boiling, because it’s on the inside. No body parts exploding, except the alveoli in your lungs if you make the fatal mistake of holding your breath. Human flesh is more resilient that balloon rubber. The greatest danger, if you don’t hold your breath, is from anoxia, and the speed at which the brain shuts down without oxygen.
@115/MaGnUs: “It’s because it’s not a pilot, it was designed as a prelude to the actual Discovery pilot, episode 3 of the series.”
Neither one is a pilot, strictly speaking. We tend to use “pilot” to refer to any first episode, but it actually means a demo episode made by itself to sell a series to a broadcaster. If a broadcaster buys a whole season up front, the show doesn’t need a pilot, and the first episode is just a premiere.
@116/T’Bonz: “And how unlucky could she be to have two horrible things happen in her childhood?”
What do you mean? A Klingon raid killed her family and almost killed her, but Sarek found her and saved her life. That’s only one horrible thing that I’m aware of. What’s the second?
@CLB, Having Sarek stuck in her head?
@121 ChristopherLBennett: Oh. Thank you. Now, if you excuse me, I have some rewriting to do… (thankfully it wasn´t anything really plot-relevant).
@121 Yep no doubt the body does not explode, movies like ‘Total Recall’ are way over the top. However serious damage will take place in a very short period of time. Any cells exposed to the vacuum, skin, eyes and ears etc. The idea that a person could live or be revived after any length of time is just beyond reason.
Not to mention why she had to run from sickbay to warn the Captain about Klingon’s when it would of been much faster, not to mention safer to just use a freaking intercom.
But hey it’s Star Trek we have to forget about it violating cannon, bad science etc because … well because it is Star Trek.
@109 CLB–yes, in many venues we do seem to be getting past the need to masculinize women to let them be strong and/or do guy stuff. I wouldn’t say we’ve gotten over it, though: Gravity’s “Ryan” and Interstellar’s “Murph” weren’t 1990’s. Maybe this is just another sign of Hollywood’s being more culturally conservative (or risk-averse) than television these days. Though I don’t think we can blame Hollywood’s naming conventions on their pandering to the Chinese market! :-)
Still, I personally need more time to elapse before Bryan Fuller’s “signature move” of giving his main female character a male-sounding name could stand independently of this tired old pattern. I don’t think, Wow, what a bold, interesting genderplay! I think, Oh great, another woman in space named Larry.
@63 — random22, the issue isn’t about peer pressure. It isn’t about whether you hate it and other people like it. What, you ask, do I think the issue is? Glad you asked.
It’s that you’re treating this as if your reaction to the series is Unassailable Truth, and any conflicting opinion is garbage because you don’t share it.
This may be a shock to you, but personal taste is not a matter of fact. It cannot be empirically proven. It does not reflect the physical state of the universe. It is your personal reaction to something, and it is no more right–or–wrong–than mine is.
So lighten up, huh? You go on and hate on the show all you want, and I’ll defend to the death your right to do that, and I’ll never, ever, tell you you’re wrong simply because you don’t feel like I do.
Try having the common courtesy to treat others the same way.
Brikar99: As MaGnUs said, I can’t really do the rewatch categories because they’re based on knowledge of the characters and plot that we don’t have. Sorry! But yes, I will be reviewing the show with each new episode that comes out.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Late to the party, but a few thoughts….
The visual dissonance between this series and original trek is very jarring. There are certain things which technology allows us to do that just couldn’t be done in the late 60’s (bumpy foreheads, a better sense that we are in space, not just going around a model of a ship) but there are some that make no sense. One thing that is minor but representative is the transporter beaming sequence where the transporter chief touches his LCD display and slides it up. 10 years later Scotty is using a slider to do the same task. Why does the Discovery Chief need the LCD? Why not work on continuity by putting a slide bar in?
Second, after the extended prequel can we just let the klingons speak in English and we’ll all just play along that they’re speaking in Klingon? The previous commenters were right… it just slows down the scene so much that it’s painful.
Last, but something I really enjoyed was the scene in the brig where they asked “Weren’t we supposed to be explorers?” Starfleet is always been a weird dual role of both exploratory arm and military where I presume some officers gravitate towards one extreme or the other either by choice or luck or specialty (CLB’s handled it nicely in The Buried Age when talking about the officers on Picards inquiry). I hope the series sticks with this and once we get on board Discovery we’ll have a mix of the Roddenbery optimism (we come in peace) and the Ron Moore Fight styles of Trek.
All in all, I’m going to give CBS their 6.99 for the money grab….
@104 Denise L– True that! But again I say, Doesn’t Amanda have any say at all in this? Especially given that we’re dealing with a 100% human child? Presumably we’ll find out more about Michael’s childhood and her rearing by Amanda and Sarek as the series goes on, and maybe there will be more explanation about their choices.
We don’t even see Amanda do we? Like she had no part in Michael’s upbringing or at least not as an important one as Sarek. And I still say WHY did it have to be Sarek? Why not another Vulcan? Say a Vulcan educator with theories about how Humans were intellectual equals to Vulcans and used Michael as an experiment to prove his/her point. Or maybe Michael could have been a Human telepath like Miranda Jones and raised by Vulcan telepathic adepts (ie; NOT Sarek). Or why couldn’t she have been the daughter of humans living on Vulcan taken in by Vulcan friends and co-workers after their deaths. Or about a million other stories than a reprise of Saavik’s origin story.
@124/sdzald: “The idea that a person could live or be revived after any length of time is just beyond reason.”
But this was 4-5 seconds of vacuum exposure. That’s easily survivable.
@128/MikeKelm: “The visual dissonance between this series and original trek is very jarring.”
That’s what we said in 1979. We got over it.
“Why does the Discovery Chief need the LCD? Why not work on continuity by putting a slide bar in?”
That’s getting it backward, I think. The reason they used slide bars in TOS was because they didn’t have the technology to create something like the modern display. It doesn’t make sense to expect technology 250 years from now to look like what a 1960s TV show on a budget was able to create. It makes more sense to assume what Roddenberry asked us to assume about the Klingons in 1979 — that TOS was just a rough approximation of what the future looked like, and later productions are able to offer better approximations.
I do agree that it would’ve been better to have the Klingons speaking English. Although it wouldn’t have been so bad if Chris Obi could emote better in Klingonese.
@129/Saavik: Since Sarek saved Burnham’s life, maybe she chose to seek a Vulcan education and try to emulate her rescuer. If the child Michael Burnham was anything like the child Christopher L. Bennett, she might well have seen Vulcan emotionlessness as a way to avoid facing her grief at the loss of a parent (both parents, in her case). That could explain why she bonded more with Sarek than with Amanda, who would’ve been a reminder of what she’d lost.
@129/Saavik – I gotta say I’m really not getting your point about the naming. Are you suggesting that using a nominally-male name for a strong female character is some sort of sop to those who can only think of males in such a role? If so that seems like a stretch to me — if anything it’s going to annoy such folks further: they’re not only co-opting our positions, they are stealing our names too!
[Edit: I found your earlier comment farther above explaining this in more detail. On one hand I can see the idea that “strong woman character with a masculine name”, overused, is as annoying as any other trope; on the other hand if they devised a character that could be played by a male or female (that is, whose role in and value to the story aren’t based on gender), having a gender-neutral name would seem to make sense. I also suspect that there would be some concern in another direction if she were named Bubbles Lavender or something.]
@85/kkozoriz: When it comes to believable backgrounds for non-American TOS characters, I think they succeeded with Uhura. The “United States of Africa” are a bit of utopianism I still love. And the fact that her native tongue is Swahili gives her a specific origin, comparable to Picard’s, so she isn’t just a generic “pan-African”.
@103/Dracomilan: Yep, these Klingons look like something Peter Jackson put together on a particularly bad day. I don’t mind if they redesign the Klingons, but I really need facial expressions.
@105/DanteHopkins: “[…] they sold a working friendship bond in two episodes that took previous Treks two seasons or more. It is a damn shame we won’t get to see more of it.” – I agree that it’s a shame, though I find that the Kirk-Spock friendship and the Sisko-Dax friendship started out pretty strong too. And yes, it’s nice that they didn’t start with a maiden voyage.
@125/Saavik: I’m with you concerning the name. It’s irritating. Besides, it isn’t androgynous, or a male-sounding nickname, or an invented name that follows a masculine naming pattern, it’s a traditional male name. It makes it harder to identify with her, at least for me. And they never do this kind of thing to male characters. It isn’t fair.
@128/MikeKelm: “I hope the series sticks with this and once we get on board Discovery we’ll have a mix of the Roddenbery optimism (we come in peace) and the Ron Moore Fight styles of Trek.” – I hope not. If Star Trek does a war story, I want it to be of the pacifist variety.
@98 I’d find that argument more convincing if martial arts tournaments were less frequently segregated by gender and weight class.
True, if A has some advantage (skill, surprise etc) over B, they might win even if B is bigger and stronger. But the greater the gap in strength and weight, the bigger the advantage in skill has to be to cover it. (I’m less than convinced Michelle Yeoh would have the advantage against Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, in spite of his lack of martial arts training.) And given that violence and aggression is supposed to be such a big part of Klingon culture, I would expect the average Klingon crew member to have more such skill than the average Starfleet crew member.
I’d find it more convincing if a Klingon woman were to beat the proverbial out of a Starfleet man, simply because Klingons are more likely to care about learning how to fight hand-to-hand.
@117 – hoopmanjh: LOL, yeah!
@121 – Chris: Yes, I understand it’s not a pilot in that sense; I meant it in the (not technically correct) sense that it’s the episode that “sells the audience” on the show. On that, it differs greatly from usual Trek (or other show) series premiere.
@126 – DerMudeTude: Thank. You.
@131 – Chris; Michael choosing to emulate Sarek is like that TNG episode where a child loses his mother and decides to emulate Data. However, I would like to see or have mentioned at some point that Amanda had influence on her education and helped her balance both sides of it better than she did with Spock (who rejects his human side completely for the first few decades of his life). That Michael initially acts very Vulcan-like when she meets Georgiou doesn’t mean that she’s all Vulcan-like; in fact, when Sarek talks to her “in present day”, he says something like “still letting your emotions govern you”.
Burnham is far from the first woman ever to be named Michael. There are two female actors — Michael Learned and Michael Michele — with that first name, just to give an example. It’s more commonly male, but as a female name is far from unprecedented.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@133/Jana: “Besides, it isn’t androgynous, or a male-sounding nickname, or an invented name that follows a masculine naming pattern, it’s a traditional male name.”
In the United States, Michael is actually a relatively popular female given name — in the ’70s it was one of the top 500 American female names, though it was only in the top 800 by the year 2000 (source). I happen to know a woman of that name myself, spelled Michaele but pronounced Michael (which leads to jokes, since she has a surname in common with a very famous man named Michael).
But this does seem to be another case of Star Trek projecting something exclusively American into its supposedly international future (like root beer).
@134/ad: Dude, it’s Michelle Yeoh. You might as well say Bruce Lee was too scrawny to win a fight.
I bet I could win a fight against Bruce Lee…in his current state, obviously, I wouldn’t stand a chance if he was alive though.
@90 Not only is Spock alive in this time period, he’s on the Enterprise with Pike. This show is set ~10 years before TOS. We know from The Menagerie that the Talos IV story took place 13 years before the framing sequence. Memory Alpha places that in 2254. Discovery starts in 2256, so Spock should really be out with Pike still.
@136/krad, 137/Christopher: I didn’t know that. Thanks for the information!
@128/MikeKelm, 131/CLB: I guess a lot of the design aspects come down to what counts as “canon”. A visual design that really had to impart what a ship 10 years before Kirk’s Enterprise would have been like (that is, if we considered the sliders, mini-skirts, and “Jettison Pod” labels to be canonical) would be as much a period piece as Downton Abbey. On the other hand, a Trek starship without some form of nacelle/saucer design would be unthinkable.
Even the touched-up TOS couldn’t resist updating a bit of such obviously-dated tech, and it’s really hard to argue with the results:
As much as I have mixed feelings about the Abrams Trek films I think they, the first one in particular, did a great job on this, updating the look while keeping many classic Trek touchpoints; the design was something that kept me smiling throughout that movie. This show, far less so, but as CLB points out that was true in ’79 (and even more so in ’87).
@141/sardinicus: Much of the TOS technology looks outdated by now, but I find that the design has aged really well. The clean lines and the colours, especially the combination of light grey, black and bright red on the bridge, are timeless. I wish they hadn’t changed it in 1979, or 1987, or, well, now.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for your insightful review of the first two episodes. It’s a pity the showrunners couldn’t keep Captain Georgiou around, since I think Michelle Yeoh has given us the best female Starfleet captain in Star Trek history. Having her as a Malaysian of Chinese descent is an additional plus too. IMHO Episode One may be the best pilot episode of a Star Trek series, even if there are some minor flaws. I should remind those complaining about the absence of Jason Isaacs’ character that this is a show seen solely through Commander Michael Burnham’s eyes.
@141/sardinicus: “I guess a lot of the design aspects come down to what counts as “canon”.”
The word “canon” just means the body of work created by the originators or owners of a series, as opposed to derivative works by other creators such as tie-ins or fanfiction. It refers to the entire body of work in the aggregate, not to individual details thereof. After all, any ongoing series is going to be a work in progress and thus will have tweaks, revisions, and corrections made to it along the way, so that just about any canon is going to have internal contradictions in its details (James R. Kirk, lithium crystals, UESPA, Spock grinning, Data using contractions, Worf having a totally different forehead in the first season, etc.). But the series pretends that it represents an ongoing, consistent reality by glossing over the contradictions and pretending the revised version is the way it always was — so it was always James T. Kirk, dilithium crystals, etc.
“Canon” is a poorly chosen metaphor, really, because in a religious context it means the authoritative, theoretically immutable texts and doctrine of a faith, but any ongoing fictional series is going to be mutable and subject to revising itself. So an active fictional canon is a moving target, not the rigid dogma that the nickname suggests. The only way to keep a canon from changing is to stop creating it altogether.
I saw the first episode and thought it was a decent start to the series, but there wasn’t enough to hook me into paying a subscription. Everything I saw is a slight variation on things I’ve seen many times before in Star Trek, from Klingons growling about war to Star Fleeters discussing whether or not to do something about the growling Klingons. I did like the Saru character, though that probably has something to do with his similarity to the one-off Tosk character from DS9.
I’ll catch up with the series if and when it comes to DVD—yes, there are still people who buy those things. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a nice box set on my shelf.
144. ChristopherLBennett -“because in a religious context it means the authoritative, theoretically immutable texts and because in a religious context it means the authoritative, theoretically immutable texts and doctrine of a faith, of a faith,”
But that’s also incorrect because it ignores the fact that religions change their texts and doctrines all the time. The canon is what’s in force at one particular time. For example, up until 1978, the LDS church didn’t allow black men to join the clergy when all other men were automatically members when they joined. Mark of Cain and all that nonsense. The Catholic Church didn’t allow women to serve in the traditional lay roles that men could perform. There was no such thing as a female minister or Rabbi or Imam.
Canon is decided by those in charge at a particular time. As leadership changes, so does canon. A future Trek showrunner could declare that each series actually happens in their own universe and that would be the canon of the time. Someone could declare that the JJverse is actually the show that happens between ENT and TNG and TOS is the one that isn’t in the same universe. And then the next person in charge could put it back like it was.
Canon is much more a restriction on the creators of tie in content and, to a lesser degree, the current show creators. Anything could be declared canon or not canon based on nothing more than a whim.
I’ve signed up for the free trial month of Crave TV and will be watching the first two episodes tonight. When the trial runs out, I’ll decide if it’s worth my $8 a month.
@142/JanaJansen: I agree that TOS has aged well, remarkably so in context to other late-60s color TV. TNG era settled in nicely once they got past the first season’s togas and hot pants. On the other hand, ST:TMP uniforms and designs were dated when they came out and didn’t improve over time. I tend to put Discovery’s uniforms more in that later category but time will tell.
@144/CLB, 146/kkozoriz: If I may set aside the etymology lesson on “canon” for a moment and just use the meaning that has evolved relative to fandom: my point is that is is rather interesting that “Sarek is Spock’s father’s name” and “The Federation has a thing called the ‘Prime Directive'” are canon, things like the way transporter controls worked circa TOS (or 10 years before), or uniforms or hairstyles or available figures of speech, are not, and indeed cannot be without locking the product into a retro recreation.
It’s also interesting to compare this to Star Wars (which, shockingly, has been around for 80% of the time that Trek has), and which, despite Lucas’ fiddling, has never rebooted or changed its core designs, but extended and added texture to it. I guess that’s a tribute to Ralph McQuarrie and the others involved; I can think of no long-running franchise that has come close to doing it.
Why our wise and mighty captain tolerates such a coward as Saru in her bridge? cultural diversity? amusement? counterbalance AND annoy her numer 1?
@147/sardinicus: Like I said, canon refers to the whole, not the parts. The canon is the bigger story being told by all the littler stories. Character names, relationships, policies, institutions, things like that — those are concepts, important driving elements of the story. Uniforms, console controls, makeup designs, etc. are execution, nonessential details that can be modified without changing the story. True, sometimes one can become the other, as when “Affliction” and “Divergence” took the change in execution in the Klingon designs and made it part of a story. But nobody’s ever bothered to build a story around the five or six different Andorian makeups or about why Worf had a completely different forehead in season 1 than afterward. Unless a detail is relevant to a story, changing it doesn’t affect the canon.
“It’s also interesting to compare this to Star Wars (which, shockingly, has been around for 80% of the time that Trek has),”
Oh, that makes me feel old.
“and which, despite Lucas’ fiddling, has never rebooted or changed its core designs, but extended and added texture to it.”
With something like Star Wars, it’s set in a timeless fantasy era, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” So it’s not expected to be plausible futurism, and it can blend retro and space-age elements all it wants and maintain a consistent look over the decades. And it was retro from the start, a nostalgic tribute to ’30s movie serials and WWII action movies and ’50s cars and samurai movies. Even with the spaceships and robots, it’s always been intrinsically backward-looking. Since it was born from nostalgia in the first place, it follows that its revivals are steeped in nostalgia and faithful recreation of the past.
But Star Trek has always looked forward and tried to be on the cutting edge. It’s about looking forward to the changes the future could bring, not looking back to a comfortably familiar past. It’s also meant to be at least a somewhat credible conjectural version of our own future, and that makes it a moving target. As our own present advances, so Trek’s portrayal of the future must advance with it.
I enjoyed the first episode, although because of a football game going over its allocated time, and 60 minutes running late, I only saw the first 3/4 of the episode. I quite liked the CO and XO, and liked the somewhat timid science officer as well (was that Doug Jones?). But not enough to sign up for a another streaming service. Being old, I have enough trouble getting the cable TV tuned to what I want, when I want.
Disclaimer: I have not yet seen either episode, and can not comment on the actual content presented.
I had a thought in the car today about why people are so upset about the Klingdon redesign. While I’ve no doubt the nostalgia factor comes into play here, I don’t think we can reductively say “It’s just like when TMP came out,” because of Worf. He is one of the most popular enduring characters of the TNG era, spanning two TV shows and multiple films. His conflict to reconcile human and Klingon ways drew audiences in and fleshed out a race that in the TOS era had merely been “the bad guys;” worthy opponents, yes, with a few fan favorites, but little more.
Just as Wof’s popularity fueled a deeper appreciation and attention to Klingons, Spock served as a gateway to Vulcans in the TOS era. While Klingons received a revamp for both the movies and new shows, Vulcans did not. In fact, later Trek reaffirmed and cemented the TOS version of Vulcans: dedication to logic, desert world, Pon Farr, rituals, telepathy, etc.
It’s not a perfect metaphor, but consider if ENT (a show that inspired similar levels of angst) had ditched canon Vulcans in favor of something jarringly different. Now you’ve changed fundamental aspects of a much beloved character. When we look at later (or earlier) Vulcans, we can still see glimmers of Spock (even if few actors bring them to life with the same skill as Leonard and Nimoy). We can’t see Worf in these new Discovery Klingons, and I think that’s a loss unexplored by the discussion I’ve read so far.
Despite their outward appearance, the problem I had with these Klingons is that they seem to be, so far, basically the same warrior culture. If they’re going to alter their makeup and costumes again, might as well give us some new dimension to them, something a little more than coffins on the hull. For example, what if this group were completely different? What if they were all outcasts, not just the albino? What if they were a pacifist cult seeking help from the Federation and Klingon purists want them exterminated? How would Starfleet handle that?
147. sardinicus – Yes, in regards to Sarek and the Prime Directive. However, what the Prime Directive actually is, for example, has never been nailed down. It is whatever the story requires it to be. Prevents the Feds from getting involved with the Klingon civil war? Yup. Only applies to pre-warp civilizations? Also yup. Lets the Enterprise save Miramanee’s planet? Sure does. Requires Picard to let Sarjenka’s planet die but saves it because of a loophole? Indeed. Same with the planet that Worf’s brother tried to save.
There was a DS9 episode that got the date for the Eugenics War wrong and the writer admitted it was an error on his part. Yet TPTB could have made such a change and altered the prior references. It’s their toy box. They can make or break any rule they like.
They could even conceivably say that Kirk has two middle names, one starts with T and the other with R and that Gary Mitchell was unaware of the Tiberius one because Kirk was embarrassed by it.
It’s all make believe and anything and everything is subject to change or even outright removal.
@150/Alan Brown: Yes, that’s Doug Jones.
@151/Michelle R. Wood: “It’s not a perfect metaphor, but consider if ENT (a show that inspired similar levels of angst) had ditched canon Vulcans in favor of something jarringly different.”
There were a lot of people who claimed that it did. Seeing Vulcans as a military power attempting to keep humanity down and just generally behaving like jerks was jarring to a lot of people, and many insisted it was a completely revisionist portrayal (even though there’s plenty of earlier canonical evidence of Vulcans acting like condescending, racist jerks toward humans). Season 4 did a lot to show how the Vulcans transitioned from that to their more familiar form, but before then, a lot of people didn’t have faith that the portrayals could be reconciled. That’s the thing — these changes always seem less jarring in retrospect than they do when they’re new, because we’ve had time to get used to them and explain them and rationalize them. And that creates the illusion that the newest changes are more drastic. I’ve seen fandom go through this over and over.
@136 krad and @137 CLB–yup, I acknowledged in my first comment @94 that there are a handful of women named Michael in the English-speaking world. Being in the top 500 female names in terms of frequency of usage doesn’t translate into a very large number of women–according to Name Voyager, c. 550 out of a million at the (brief) height of usage. The rare usage of Michael as a woman’s name doesn’t change the facts that (1) the show’s creators chose it by going through a list of male names, because giving the central female character a male-sounding name is Bryan Fuller’s thing, and (2) most Americans hear it as a male name. Michael was the #1 name given to male babies in the USA in the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. That translates to about 20,000 out of every million.
This is not a Big Deal to me, it’s just an irritant, for reasons explained above. As it was an irritant for me in watching “Interstellar” and “Gravity.”
I liked the first episode, I’ll live with the name, I’m already a couple of chapters into Desperate Hours and it’s giving me a prequel with Michelle Yeoh, Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones playing their respective roles in my mind, yay! Plus, it looks like it will fill in a bit more about Michael’s background and status in relation to Vulcan society and culture. I’m psyched.
@155/Saavik: I don’t care what “most Americans” think when they hear a name. Majority belief does not make something true — and things that defy conventional expectations are generally more interesting. And heck, my middle name is Leslie. So don’t expect me to be sympathetic to the gender preconceptions of the majority.
Loved it! But in Oz we see it on Netflix ($10/mth), so we don’t have the money issue. Interested to see where the story goes.
@153, Vulcans have indeed always been racist jerks, or at least a large segment of the population has. Either the more enlightened part of the population has become the majority by TOS or the jerks have been forced by the shift in the balance of power to be more polite, or both.
@158/princessroxana: But that’s just it. Fandom has this idea that TOS-era Vulcans are generally really nice, but if you look at the evidence, they’re really rather hostile to outsiders. T’Pau protests Spock inviting aliens to his wedding, and T’Pring is willing to sacrifice Kirk’s life for the sake of her own plans. The Vulcans have their own starship with a segregated crew. Even Sarek, supposedly a skilled diplomat, makes racial slurs toward the Tellarites. Okay, that’s nothing next to McCoy’s ongoing racial slurs toward Vulcans, but it fits the pattern. The idea that TOS-era Vulcans were benevolent and cuddly is fannish wish-fulfillment. I remember reading Jean Lorrah’s ’80s novels The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic, which portrayed a version of Vulcan society that I believe originated in her fanfiction, and while I enjoyed the books, I always felt their version of the Vulcans was implausibly nice and charming and idealized.
@139 – grenadier: He is, and David Mack’s “Desperate Hours” novel (the first Discovery book) references that.
@147 – sardinicus: My thought exactly regarding canon.
@151 – Michelle: But these Klingons are still pretty much the same canon Klingons they’ve been since TNG, it’s only their appeareance that’s changed. And not even that much, it’s not like Klingons are now giant, six-legged spider creatures. And we can’t see Worf in the DIS Klingons, because he is not a true Klingon, he was raised by humans looking form the outside into an idealized version of his parents’s culture. Both TNG and DS9 showed us that true Klingons rarely are as honorable as Worf.
@154: Thanks for the insights. Not having watched ENT when it came out (only being peripherally aware of it at the time) means I’m missing context for some of my thoughts, and agreed: Trek fandom is a very hidebound world, ironically enough.
I guess I meant more: so, you’re making changes to the way people perceive (maybe unjustly, but perception is a strong thing) a race. That’s going to be hard for many to swallow. What if they had also changed the traditional look of Vulcans at the same time? For example, what if they’d nixed the pointy ears as being too 60s-era TV makeup department and went with some real LOTR-flavored prosthetics, maybe building a fully different head on them with crazy big earlobes that fanned out and were, I don’t know, speckled or green or something? What if they released press pictures with a cross between a Ferengi and a dragon, and labeled them Vulcans? That’s going to cause some confusion, frustration, and ridicule from people, long before they get to actually listening to whatever story you’re telling.
Again, I’m not trying to defend kneejerk “this ain’t my Trek” reactions. I’m not saying change isn’t good. I work in professional theatre, and I’m so used to seeing things move from early press pictures to final product that I take all promos with a huge grain of salt. In my world, we take pride in reinterpreting the works of some dead guy from Elizabeth England over and over again, so I’m aOK with doing it in other venues.
What I am trying to do is understand why people might feel the way they do. I think a lot of people are emotionally invested in a certain view of Klingons at this point due to the success of the TNG era in exploring that world so thoroughly. In fact, between Undiscovered Country, the TNG Klingon civil war story, and the DS9 focus on Klingon politics, we learned more about how Kronos works than Earth. When people are emotionally invested in a story, especially one represented by a character they admire (Worf), any change to that narrative may spark feelings of betrayal/bitterness.
My 2-cent, armchair profiling may be wrong, of course, and there are many here with memories/experience far deeper than mine to make better cases for or against. I just think it would have behooved the show’s marketing to understand their audience a bit better in selling these changes.
Okay So I watched the 1st two episodes. I was willing to allow for continuity errors. I was willing to have an explanation for the Klingons’ redesign that would take into account the explanation given in DS9. I was even wiling to have an explanation of why Sarek would be raising a human child, contrary to all logic. But this show lost me at the most basic of storyline issues.
1-Why are only the Captain and the First Officer on the away team dealing with drilling a well? Aside from points in TOS when Spock was acting as a science officer, the Captain and the First Officer are never off the ship at the same time. This is basic ship saftey. And when they have to be, they had an entire away team including security officers and red-shirts.
2-There is no logical reason why a Psi-null race such as humans would be able to create a telepathic connection with a Vulcan outside of physical contact. It would be physically impossible. There is no way to establish that link over a distance particularly as Vulcans are touch telepaths with other species.
3- Why the Hell does the prisoner in the brig have access to the Computer? This makes no sense. You are in jail, but you have the ability to control the prison. Yeah, that makes sense.
4-For a Vulcan, the raising of a Human child would only make logical sense if he was unable to return that child to a Human environment. We know that Sarek is the Vulcan Ambassador to the Federation. He makes frequent trips to Tara/Earth. He would return the child to the place where she would, logically, be most comfortable both physically (the environment of Vulcan isn’t really conducive to humans long term) and emotionally.
5-Michael is not biologically Vulcan. She is human. She does not have the strength of a Vulcan. It has been proven that the Vulcan nerve pinch cannot be done by Humans because we are missing the strength to preform it.
6-Why the Hell does Michael still have a job after being court-martialed for Mutiny? Mutiny and Treason are capital offenses, even to the Federation, where you would suffer a death of personality instead of physical death. The best she could be hoping for would be years in a penal colony. We know this because “Search For Spock” specifically addresses the consequences for the crew of the Enterprise going off on their own.
7-Star Trek, even in its most shark-jumping moments, has always been about the ways we will better ourselves as a species. It is about using the future setting to point out flaws within our culture, but also show how those flaws can be overcome. It is the only major Science Fiction TV series where the government are not the villains; where the heroes are a small band of renegades fighting the status quo. It is not about rebellion or revolution. It is about optimism and working together. But I don’t feel that from Discovery. In fact this whole first two episodes seem to be pushing the narrative that rebellion and revolution are what are most important, and a singular individual will always be better that the crew working together.
Overall, it isn’t the Continuity or visuals that are stopping from watching this show any further. It is the giant plot holes and poor writing. This almost makes me miss the stupidity of Zombie Vulcans.
152. Wilson, The majority of these Klingon’s are the same basic warrior culture. T’Kuvma is running a religious cult which paints him as the next messiah (Kahless). This is why their clothes (spiky armor) and their practices (entombing their dead) are so different from what we know of Klingons. As for them being outcasts, I believe it was Kol who said that T’Kuvma was collecting outcasts. While he directly looked at the albino, I got the impression that many of T’Kuvma’s followers were outcasts from society. I’m excited to see where the story takes these characters.
162. praxagora
1. Kirk and Spock did this literally all the time. Archer and Trip did it pretty often too. By TNG, it was taboo, but this early in the timeline, it was the norm.
2. Sarek said that part of his Katra resided in Burnham because of their intense mind-meld. This part of his psych is what made the communication possible.
3. Burnham could talk to the computer, but could not have it obey any of her commands. The only way she was able to make it cooperate was to out-logic it. Something Kirk was famous for.
4. Maybe she had no family and Sarek felt responsible for her because of the aforementioned closeness. Who knows? We haven’t learned enough of the backstory to make a judgement on this yet.
5. There no record of anything happening until it does, then, there is. It may be impossible for most humans, but Burnham must have ‘discovered’ (see what I did there J) a way to manage it.
6. She doesn’t have a job. She was stripped of rank. My theory is that the USS Discovery is a ship that will take on skilled prisoners so they can contribute to the war effort. War-time rules are different.
7. This show seems to be shaping up to be about the redemption of Burnham, so the central Trek themes will still totally apply. With respect, I believe you missed the point of these two episodes. They showed that rebellion and revolution will get those you love killed and get you put in prison. Had they used the “Vulcan Hello”, the Shenzhou would have been destroyed before the backup arrived that gave them a fighting chance. Burnham was completely in the wrong even though her heart was in the right place.
praxagora:
1. You’re asking that question about 50 years too late. Having the captain and first officer go down on a landing party is an old and tired Trek trope, but it’s one that we’re kinda stuck with.
2. I’m amused that you’re talking about what’s physically impossible when discussing something like telepathy, which is 100% fictional. Also the very first Trek episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” established that humans aren’t null telepathically.
3. Starfleet computers tend to talk to everyone, but yeah, that makes no sense.
4. There’s lots of reasons why Sarek might have taken Burnham in. I can think of about 50 off the top of my head. Since we haven’t gotten all the backstory yet, I’m willing to wait and see.
5. The nerve pinch is not a feat of strength, it’s a feat of precision. And we’ve seen non-Vulcans perform them, including Odo (whose strength is not superhuman).
6. Huh? She doesn’t. She ends “Battle at the Binary Stars” in prison.
7. It wasn’t pushing that agenda at all, and the evidence I would use to support it is the fact that the person who goes her own way and doesn’t work with the crew gets lots of people killed, including her captain, and gets her ass thrown in jail.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@165- Please give a Logical reason that would negate the biological reasons to return a human child to earth
@164 4- I didn’t say return her to her family. I said return her to her home planet and species. Her family might be dead but that does not negate the fact that fact that her planet isn’t. There would be no logical reason to keep the child where it would not receive the best environment to thrive.
@165, @164 – Even when Kirk/Spock leave the ship, they are never alone. They have security.
@165 But we have never seen a Human preform it and Odo is stronger than humans, and not of human species but a shapeshifter.
And while you can attempt to come up with explanations for the shark-jumping, it doesn’ excuse poor writing.
@161/Michelle R. Wood: “I guess I meant more: so, you’re making changes to the way people perceive (maybe unjustly, but perception is a strong thing) a race. That’s going to be hard for many to swallow.”
Every change in Trek has been hard for many to swallow at first — but eventually people got over it. Fandom hated the idea of The Next Generation at first. How can there be Star Trek that isn’t about Kirk and Spock? Why should we care about characters we’ve never met before? How can we possibly relate to an old, bald, French guy as the captain? TNG was hugely controversial, and it was years before most of the TOS purists finally came around (and a few of the most fanatical ones never did).
“What if they had also changed the traditional look of Vulcans at the same time?”
Then fans would’ve raised a fuss at first — and eventually gotten used to it and accepted the reality that it was the way things were now. Just like they’ve done with every other drastic change that Trek has made over the past 40 years. Like I said, these things always seem more drastic when they’re brand new than they do with the seasoning of time. First impressions should never be mistaken for final verdicts.
And really, changing the look of a Trek alien is not even remotely unusual. The Klingons have had 7 or 8 distinct looks by now. The Andorians have had 5 or 6 different makeups. The Tellarites looked different in each of their three TOS appearances, then had a different design in ST IV and yet another radically different design in ENT. The Romulans have had two or three distinct looks. The Gorn have had two distinct looks, one a physical costume, one CGI. Even some of Michael Westmore’s original creations have been completely redesigned between their first and second appearances, such as the Trill and the Ktarians. Or they’ve had subtler redesigns to improve the makeup, like Ferengi gaining sharper cheekbones, or Bajorans losing the “forked” bit at the top of their nose ridges to make the prosthetic easier to apply. Alien redesigns are so common in Trek that it bewilders me that anyone is still surprised when it happens. If anything, the surprising thing is that the movies or TNG didn’t redesign the Vulcans. They’re pretty much the only TOS alien makeup that was reused without change by later productions.
“What I am trying to do is understand why people might feel the way they do. I think a lot of people are emotionally invested in a certain view of Klingons at this point due to the success of the TNG era in exploring that world so thoroughly. In fact, between Undiscovered Country, the TNG Klingon civil war story, and the DS9 focus on Klingon politics, we learned more about how Kronos works than Earth. When people are emotionally invested in a story, especially one represented by a character they admire (Worf), any change to that narrative may spark feelings of betrayal/bitterness.”
Yeah, but all of that is about their culture and character and language, and that’s all distinctly the same in DSC. Everything the Klingons said and did and felt was consistent with everything we’ve learned about Klingons over the years, allowing for cultural and generation variations about details like how they treat their dead. The only thing that’s different is the makeup design. And Trek fans should really, really be used to aliens changing their design by now, especially the Klingons.
“I just think it would have behooved the show’s marketing to understand their audience a bit better in selling these changes.”
Nonsense. Like I said, this is no different from what has happened every single time a new incarnation of Trek has come along. We went through this with the original movies, with TNG and its spinoffs, with ENT, with the Kelvin films. There’s always some resistance at first, but eventually people get used to the new approach.
Just in general, you cannot let yourself be afraid to risk upsetting some of your audience. Because there will always be people out there who are offended by anything you do. Anything that’s remotely innovative or challenging or thought-provoking is going to make somebody out there angry. The only way to offend nobody is to delight nobody, do something completely bland and safe and devoid of substance. So you can’t go around tiptoeing on eggshells if you want to create something worthwhile. You have to take chances, to be bold, to stand up for your own vision and trust that it’s good enough to win people over, even the skeptics.
@166/Praxagora: “Even when Kirk/Spock leave the ship, they are never alone. They have security.”
Actually they often didn’t in the third season, when the show’s budget was too tight for that. Plenty of landing parties were just Kirk, Spock, Bones, and maybe an expendable guest character like D’Amato.
Besides, theirs was a stealth mission; they had to get in and out without attracting the natives’ notice. A small party makes sense in that case. And since they were bending the Prime Directive, I can see why the captain would take the responsibility for it personally.
“But we have never seen a Human preform it”
Wrong. We’ve seen two humans perform it, Jonathan Archer in “Kir’Shara” (while carrying Surak’s katra) and Seven of Nine in “The Raven.” While Seven had Borg-enhanced strength, Archer did not, which proves that a human can do a nerve pinch with the right knowledge of technique. (Picard performed what looked like a nerve pinch in “Starship Mine,” which some fans interpret as something he learned from his meld with Sarek, but it was actually intended to be a carotid artery block.)
@michelle Yeoh vs a Klingon.
Frankly I’m dubious, no matter how amazing she is fighting against other humans. Mass counts, and there is only so much you can do with skill and leverage. And Klingons are (canonically — ugh) stronger than humans, with multiple built-in physical redundancies and a cultural focus on hand-to-hand fighting.
A 100lb human fighting a 300lb Klingon should look like Westley trying to fight Fezzic. You might an advantage if you can employ a skill that the Klingon isn’t prepared to counter, but a straight on MMA match should be no contest.
@161/Michelle: “For example, what if they’d nixed the pointy ears as being too 60s-era TV makeup department and went with some real LOTR-flavored prosthetics, maybe building a fully different head on them with crazy big earlobes that fanned out and were, I don’t know, speckled or green or something?”
This again touches on what I was getting at about what aspects of a franchise count as “canon”. If you are making a version of LOTR*, or Alice In Wonderland, or Stephen King’s IT, or some other source material that started out non-visual, you can use whatever character designs and interpretations of descriptions your imagination and technology will allow. Where the source material started out in a visual medium, it’s a more subtle problem. The Marvel movies have had to deal with this, and done so mostly excellently, IMO. Personally I think a radical re-interpretation of the design for Klingons (or Vulcans or the Doomsday Machine or whatever) based on the ideas that the earlier incarnations were putting across would be fine, and actually much more compelling than just changing the uniforms and bridge design each time around.
*See the recent post here on the various visual interpretations of The Hobbit over the years.
I just wanna remind all you people lecturing Keith R.A. DeCandido on how hand-to-hand combat works that he is an actual karate instructor.
@153 It’s their toy box. They can make or break any rule they like.
Yep just like Coke ditched a highly successful soda for a new one. How did that work out for Coke? If you are too young to remember that debacle just google New Coke.
The ‘Owners’ of any product, story, game etc certainly have the right to do anything they want with what they own but the people who consume such products equally have the right to voice their dislike of those changes, and clearly I think you are seeing Trek fans balking at such changes.
@171 CLB on the other hand, we’ve had over 20 years of MMA competition now showing that size does matter. This does not negate skill and strategy, but presumably Klingons from a martial culture on board a military vessel will be proficient in hand to hand combat, making size an important factor.
@171, fair enough, but I elect to remain dubious. A trained martial artist against a bigger, heavier and stronger but untrained person — ok. A trained martial artist against a bigger, heavier, stronger trained martial artist? I will remain dubious. And I don’t think I’m being dubious of Krad, but of the show.
Although in fairness, I think the reason we have weight classes in martial competition is at least as much about reducing the risk of injury as it is about judging fighters on skill rather than on skill + size. In a life or death battle you don’t get to choose your opponent.
@172 – sdzald: “Trek fans balking” = “some Trek fans balking”. A lot of us really don’t mind.
praxagora@@@@@ 162 and others – regarding the Human Michael performing a Vulcan Nerve Pinch – my internal explanation is that, being raised among Vulcans, she was trained more thoroughly than most Humans in how to technically perform the nerve pinch. However, the lack of Vulcan (or android, or Changeling) strength, meant that it was less effective than when performed by a Vulcan. Note how much more quickly Georgiou returned to the bridge after being incapacitated vs. the normal time out for the recipient of the nerve pinch.
@173-4: Sorry, but I trust “I actually teach fighting” more than “this is what I’ve seen in fights on TV.”
And the whole point of martial arts (as a physical and spiritual discipline, as opposed to the kind used as a spectator sport) is that it isn’t how much force you use that matters, it’s how you direct it. Sure, if a bigger person gets a smaller person in a firm hold, then the fight is pretty much over, but that’s why the smaller person is specifically trained to avoid or break such holds. Every disadvantage in simple brute force can be compensated for with intelligence and technique.
Look at how Black Widow fights in Captain America: Civil War, doing these swooping acrobatic moves that hurl her whole body around. At first, I thought that was just being showy, but then I realized it was actually fighting with physics — those big, swooping moves compensated for her lower mass by throwing all her body mass into each move and maximizing her leverage. Anyone who thinks the greater weight or force will automatically beat the lesser one in every case is failing to consider the physics of levers, pulleys, and the like. Directing a lesser force in the right way can enable it to overcome a greater force.
There’s also the way Peggy Carter fought in Agent Carter and Charlize Theron’s character fought (so I’ve read) in Atomic Blonde — by going all-out, fighting dirty, using any nearby object you can find as a force multiplier and going for your opponent’s vital areas right off the bat. Being weaker doesn’t mean you’re doomed to lose, it means you’re more strongly motivated to seize every advantage you can get. And if you’re fighting against people who are used to fighting only with other men their own size, you can take them by surprise with those tactics.
@174 “In a life or death battle you don’t get to choose your opponent”
Being I served in The U.S. Army and had just that type of training and mind set. I am a small guy, when I joined I was 5′ 7″ and weighed 110 lbs. I quickly learned that speed, aggression and practiced talent could over come much larger opponents. However when faced with a much larger opponent that was also fast, aggressive and talented that I was toast.
@175 No doubt there are many, just like there were many who loved the New Coke better than the original. Only time will tell what affect it has on the Trek franchise and I certainly can NOT speak for anyone else but this Trek fan, who watched TOS on TV when it first aired, started to lose interest with the alternate time line movies and Discovery only puts the nail in the coffin for me.
172. sdzald – I was in my early 20s when New Coke happened and was a Coke drinker. I’m well aware of the debacle. That doesn’t change my premise. Coke was well within their rights to change the formulation because it was their property. Same with Trek. If CBS sells the franchise to someone who thinks that the future should look more like a Federation run by Donald Trump, that would also be their right.
Fans may have time and emotional investments in their favourite franchises but they have zero legal right to make changes. They are, however, free to express their disapproval of any and all changes and to refuse to watch any instalment for any reason whatsoever. That may or may not influence the ownership to make changes.
Even Gene Roddenberry expressed his disapproval of elements of Trek tat came after his involvement ended. That doesn’t mean that the owners were required to listen to him or to act on his objections.
I’ve read a theory that says the albino Torchbearer on T’Kuvma’s ship may in fact be the same albino that killed Kang, Koloth, and Kor’s children. Any thoughts? I think it would be cool, but might make the world too small and interrelated.
Another perspective on “canon” is that speculative fiction (both sci-fi and fantasy) tends to be the only genre(s) where characters are expected to speak only completely accurate truth at all times. If someone says “this happened 200 years ago,” we take that to mean exactly 200 years to the day. No other genre seems to place that kind of requirement –God knows, people don’t expect it or talk like that in real life.
@147 & 149: Actually, Star Wars has (perhaps unintentionally) done something really cool with its visual designs; style and fashion seem to progress in the Star Wars universe to correspond to our world.
The Original Trilogy is a product of the late 70s/early 80s –evidenced by the moustaches, the shaggy hair, the slimming fashions, and the large “tape” drives that Rogue One carefully evokes.
The Prequel Trilogy is set 20 years earlier, and is largely styled as a visual throwback to 1950s “art-deco” sci-fi. Look at the Clonetrooper helmets with their swept-back crests and the honest-to-god Flash Gordon-style rocket ship Padmé was flying in AotC.
The new trilogy is a thoroughly modern-looking story, with smooth-lined Stormtrooper armour that could’ve been designed by Apple.
The old Tales of the Jedi comics from the 90s happen thousands of years before Yavin, and show an interstellar civilization that nonetheless wears crafted lamellar armour and uses teched-out scrolls and tablets that look like something that a Roman or Shang dynasty or New Kingdom Egyptian artist would’ve come up with if science fiction had existed back then.
It’s too late now, but it might’ve made an interesting visual challenge for Star Trek to replicate that, and decide that, yes, the 2260s did look a lot like the 1960s, and the 2360s looked a lot like the mid-80s, etc.
@181/Cybernsark. Everybody wants to treat Star Trek and Star Wars as if they were equivalent and should do things the same way. They’re not. They don’t occupy the same conceptual space at all. ST is science fiction, SW is space fantasy. ST is forward-looking, SW is pure nostalgia. ST is inspired by the literary SF of the 1940s-60s and by Forbidden Planet, SW is inspired by Flash Gordon serials and comic strips and by WWII and samurai movies.
Also, ST came first, so why should it be imitating the approach of the later franchise? Historically, it’s been the other way around. The success of ST was what let Lucas convince investors that SW could succeed. The success of ST’s tie-in novel line was what prompted Lucas to develop the Expanded Universe as an attempt to duplicate it.
@180 – Jason: While I don’t subscribe to that theory, the world of Star Trek already is small and interrelated. The main character of this show is related to a main character from TOS, so…
@181 – Cybersnark: There’s a great blog (Fashion It So) that analyizes TNG’s wardrobe design because it’s “24th century fabulous and 1980s fabulous at the same time”.
@@@@@ 159, CLB, I feel pretty much the same about the Vulcan Academy Murders and IDIC Epidemic. I like them but Vulcans just aren’t that accepting. They’re kind of Isolationist Jerks with some exceptions.
In fairness to T’Pau she might normally be fine with Humans, just not at such an intimate rite. Vulcans seem to be very touchy and secretive about their sexuality. Not without reason. Those folks got problems. And I think T’Pring’s main priority was not to risk Stonn. She really loves him, ferret face and all.
Interestingly there are some indications that Amanda is better accepted by Vulcan society than Spock. She is after all an Adept of the Mt. Selaya order which suggests a high degree of both assimilation and acceptance. Of course Amanda is an unapologetic Human who has voluntarily chosen Vulcan ways and says right out she thinks their way is superior to her own. This is of course very flattering to Vulcans. No doubt there are still a-holes who are hostile to her but they are apparently a minority and she’s been accepted in some very traditional and conservative circles (ie: the Mt. Selaya crowd). Spock on the other hand is intent on being accepted as a Vulcan not a Human fellow traveler and sometimes projects a More Vulcan Than Thou vibe. Or is felt to do so. He seems to strike some Vulcans as irritatingly ‘perfect’ and make them feel inadequate and hostile. T’Pring says right out she has no wish to be known as Spock’s consort. Girl’s got ambitions and wants a man who won’t stand in her light. Stonn is apparently very happy to be her support and chief fan.
krad: Just curious, as a longtime reader of your reviews, what is your warp score of this episode?
I’d give it a 6 out of 10. I disagree with you on the acting. I thought it was very forced acting and unconvincing, especially from Martin Green. She doesn’t seem like she is that familiar with Star Trek demeanor and interaction and comes across more like a character from The Walking Dead, her previous show. I also think she is too young of an actress (in her early 30s) to credibly play the role of a commander of a major ship. Patrick Stewart was in his late 40s when TNG began in 1987; Robert Beltran was 42 when VOY began in 1995. The experience and the age of the actors it gave the characters considerably more gravitas.
I also think the dialogue is poorly written and contains a lot of stilted exposition.
However, I do think the tension between the characters is palpable and will lead to a lot of drama if it continues. That’s the main thing I liked about it and it was a nice contrast to the good behavior that we have come to expect on Starfleet bridges. The attack on the captain was shocking and unexpected.
The action scenes were of good quality and suspenseful.
@185 RMS8: Interesting that you compare SMG’s age to those of the leads in TNG and Voyager but not TOS. How old was William Shatner when Star Trek hit the airwaves?
A topic over wich I would like @ChristopherLBennett, @Magnus and if possible @krad opinion (and everybody who cares to comment too) is, Why not the future? I mean this a new show with a new, I am being optimistic here, approach and focus. Then why not set it in the future of the storyline, since we are all off the loop in productions issues I would like to have your views (EXPERT views) about it. I just can wrap my head about this issue yet i guess. Thank you :D
@186: I compared her to the leads from TNG and VOY specifically because I think their middle-age status helped their roles tremendously. I have never really watched TOS much at all because I don’t care for the acting on so it didn’t cross my mind to compare them.
@179: Yeah I think it would be hilarious if they made a show based on a Starfleet run by Donald Trump but I think you’d see a lot of Trek fans like myself wanting to hang themselves in protest haha
@179: Did you know the Klingon rallying cry “Remain Klingon” was used by the writers as an allegory to “making America great again”? http://www.businessinsider.com/star-trek-discovery-klingon-slogan-similar-to-trump-maga-2017-9
@185/RMS81: “I also think she is too young of an actress (in her early 30s) to credibly play the role of a commander of a major ship. Patrick Stewart was in his late 40s when TNG began in 1987; Robert Beltran was 42 when VOY began in 1995.”
What? She’s playing a first officer. And she’s only a year younger than Leonard Nimoy was when he first played Spock, three years younger than Jonathan Frakes and Nana Visitor were at the start of their respective shows, and six years older than Jolene Blalock was at the start of Enterprise.
@187/vickyng11: “A topic over wich I would like @ChristopherLBennett, @Magnus and if possible @krad opinion (and everybody who cares to comment too) is, Why not the future? I mean this a new show with a new, I am being optimistic here, approach and focus. Then why not set it in the future of the storyline, since we are all off the loop in productions issues I would like to have your views (EXPERT views) about it.”
My expert view is that I’m not qualified to answer that question because I haven’t seen the whole story told yet. This isn’t old-school, episodic Trek anymore; the entire season is a single 15-chapter novel for television, and we’ve only seen the first two chapters. But Bryan Fuller conceived it as a specific story that, in his view, had to take place pre-TOS. Presumably we’ll find out why as the story unfolds.
Although it already seems clear to me that this is a story that couldn’t be told post-TNG, because the Klingons have too little knowledge or trust of the Federation. Even if the alliance fell apart sometime in the future, the two powers would still have been on friendly terms for the better part of a century, and the increase in mutual understanding that resulted could not be so completely erased. The situation of the fragmented Klingon Empire also makes sense as the end result of the chaos created by the Augment virus, and in particular meshes nearly perfectly with the post-ENT Klingon arc developed in the novels by Andy Mangels, Mike Martin, and myself.
DISCLAIMER: I have only seen episode 1, so far, so comments are based solely on that.
After watching “The Vulcan Hello”, I actually found myself *more* on the fence about Discovery. A big annoyance for me was the cinematography which was clearly inspired by the Kelvin Timeline movies. I understand that it is not 1966 and that TV filming styles have changed, but do we really need subdued lights and lens flare? Worse, I already know that we are in space, so do we have to have a rolling deck? Even though I think it is *too* brightly lit, “The Orville” appeals more to my idea of what an SF spaceship should be like.
Also, I’m really trying to get my head around this incarnation of Sarek. He seems to lack the dignity and aloofness that Mark Lenard brought to the character. Also, from a sheer logistical standpoint, I would have expected Amanda to have had a prominent role in Michael’s upbringing; I really hope this is addressed in later episodes.
To those like the reviewer bemoaning yet another white male captain- gee, I thought the casting of someone like Jason Isaacs tipped their hand that Captain Lorca will in some way serve as an antagonist or impediment to Burnham’s struggle to win a truce with the Klings. I mean if that isn’t the arc of this season, I will eat my Bajoran monk hat. So they’re probably casting a hetero white male who is good at sneering as the captain, because this captain will be a jerk. Duh. Isaacs called his character “complicated” – which is a dead giveaway. He’s a probably a warrior who wants to terminate … with extreme prejudice. Sounds super fresh right!
@ChristopherLBennett thank you, from that context it makes good sense yeah. tks a lot, I do hope also that the season unfolds towards that revelation You speak of.
@189 RMS: I hadn’t read the article, but after watching the first two episodes, it was clear that T’Kuvma was a Klingon fascist. All the cues were there: the appeal for unity and cultural purity, the painting of an enemy that must be destroyed, the invoking of icons and persons of a long-past golden age… The particulars will vary – different species, different psychologies – but in general T’Kuvma is of the same mold as Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump, and Gul Dukat.
One thing that struck me was that T’Kuvma was in complete control of the situation until right near the end. He played the crew of the Shenzhou and the Federation in general like the proverbial two-string banjo. He only lets the Shenzhou open communications simply to underscore the point he makes to the Council, and he’s so confident in how the Federation will respoond that he presents Captain Georgiou’s transmission in real time and unedited. And it works! T’Kuvma may never have heard of Sun Tzu, but he embodies the statement “if you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a thousand battles”. He knows the Federation, and he knows his fellow Klingons and he used their natures to devastating effect.
In general, I like the fact that we have aliens that actually feel alien, both in this depiction of the Klingons and in Lt. Saru. We really get a sense that the Klingons have a different evolutionary background which has informed their psychology, while also getting enough “connective tissue” between them and the Klingons we saw in TOS and in TNG/DS9. And Saru’s personality meshes perfectly with his “prey creature” ancenstry. (As an aside, someone earlier in the comments wondered why Capt. Georgiou tolerated a “coward” like Saru – given his species’ background, I’d say he’s pretty darn brave!)
There’s so much more to unpack here, but Discovery definitely has my attention!
Regarding the casting of Jason Isaacs. Is it possible they cast him because they through he would best be able to play the part they had written? Its not like the producers have shown a reluctance to cast non-white people in the rest of the show. Calling them out on this seems a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.
If Isaac’s character isn’t developed as a strawman militarist and opponent of the enlightened Michael Burnham I will be pleasantly surprised. Make that very surprised.
Mentor-Protégé
Someone learning from a mentor is a Protégé
@187 – vickyng11: Sorry, it beats me completely. I would have liked a show set after VOY, or preferably an anthology that jumped from era to era.
@188- RMS81: How is Chakotay the lead of VOY? VOY was definitely an ensemble show.
@189 – RMS: That was pretty much obvious. :)
@192 – Girt: IIRC, trailers showed Lorca asking Burnham to help him stop the war she started. And it sounds like he’s doing it out of wanting the war to be over because war is bad, not because he wants to obliterate the Klingons.
The streaming experience itself gives me pause: at every commercial I had to reset everything! And that with paying (and still having commercials after paying a fee!!!!). I would certainly be happy to pay for seeing Trek, but have no interest in the rest of CBS (so I guess I would like an Amazon Prime-like alternative: buy the season and watch it through a service that works, technically speaking). Wish I had it on Netflix–they seem to have the streaming technology down cold.
And on another note: Space Orcs in Elizabethan Costume!!! What an amazing appearance they made! I kept expecting them to break out in Shakespeare quotes like Gorkon!! :)
Is it? I thought so at first, too. But the decision to have that officer be a back woman was clumsy and fraught with unfortunate implications.
I’m enjoying the story on a surface level so far, but I can’t help but notice how clumsily Discovery is handling race and racial issues.
By the end of the first two episodes, they’ve killed off one main woman of color and sent the other to prison (which, again, with her being black has unfortunate implications). They’ve darkened most Klingons’ skin tones as to leave no doubt as to them being the blackest of black and then chose to make them the representation of racism and race-based xenophobia. THEN they brought forth the only white Klingon and chose to present him as an outcast who as been abused and oppressed due to his whiteness.
This is so badly handled.
I’m not saying no one can enjoy this show; these things are indicative of the same problems we’ve had in entertainment media since the beginnings of entertainment media so they’re not a huge surprise and if we boycotted every show that ever handled race clumsily we wouldn’t be able to watch much.
However, I do think it’s important to be aware of when it happens and be able to identify it, especially in the things we love. We can still love them while be critical of the ways in which they handle important issues.
What kind of idiot kills off a great character played by Michelle Yeoh? Damme.
Why does our new protagonist have to be total screw up? And they call Kirk a cowboy!
Why do we have to explore yet again two of the most thoroughly explored alien species in the whole damme franchise?
Why does it have to be about a war? Didn’t we do this in DS9?
Why can’t we have ONE original thought or theme?
Gotta agree with princessroxana: Michelle Yeoh was my favorite character in the whole thing! I was really bummed when they killed her off. (Maybe they could not afford her?)
She was too awesome to live.
@199/Jedikalos: “The streaming experience itself gives me pause: at every commercial I had to reset everything!”
Not sure what you mean by that, since it worked okay for me. Maybe you should try a different browser, or upgrade to the latest video software or whatever. Although it’s possible they could’ve had a temporary glitch while you were watching, I guess.
@202/Jedikalos: “Michelle Yeoh was my favorite character in the whole thing! I was really bummed when they killed her off. (Maybe they could not afford her?)”
The whole season’s arc was plotted out ahead of time, at least in broad strokes. When they cast Georgiou, they no doubt already knew she would only be in the first two episodes. So I imagine they chose to cast a prominent actress in that guest role so that she’d make a strong and lasting impression in the time she had. (Sort of fixing the mistake that DS9: “Emissary” made by casting a fairly weak actress as Sisko’s late wife.)
200. Celestine, Maybe they’ll even things out by having Lorca be a xenophobic, genocidal maniac…
Seriously, why does every little thing have to be about race? Lots of people are well represented here, but there is still complaining because of the story. Can’t we just sit back and enjoy new Trek?
Edited to add: 203. princessroxana, Too awesome to live indeed. She was the best thing about these two episodes. I’m still very fascinated to see how the story handles the redemption of Burnham, but Captain Georgiou was pretty freaking great.
@204 I actually switched over afterwards and ran some Netflix and then some Amazon Prime streaming and it worked fine, so I think the problem might have been on their end. But who knows? I’m glad it worked for you!!
And they certainly made an impact with Georgiou, so that worked!
I enjoyed many many things about the two shows so far. I thought the actors were stellar, particularly Michelle Yeoh as Captain Georgiou. Can someone get her an Emmy nomination?
I greatly enjoyed Lt. Saru, who reminded me of Larry Niven’s Hindmost, which was a wonderful nod to mainstream print SF and a wonderful counterpoint to highlight the differences between human, Klingon, and Vulcan approaches to conflict.
But the plot and set up reminded me a bit too much of Enterprise Season Two. More importantly, it’s hard for me to see the “Trek” element in Star Trek: Discovery so far. I think the focus on crime, punishment, and war will mean a more introspective journey with Burnham than a literal journey. The story metaphorically kills off any notion of this being “Star Trek” when it kills off the helmsman who just wanted to be an explorer. It’s almost a shot directly at the viewer- expect no wonders.
I feel like I’ve watched a terrific episode of “Battlestar Federation” (if there were ever to be such mash up). In one way, I’m okay with that. It was well made, well-acted, even engaging.
So I liked it, but I want more.
More of the old spirit, less of the endless battle.
@207 Lt. Saru as homage to the Hindmost–that’s what he was reminding me of! Thanks!
I also get what you say about it being more a personal, introspective journey–I hope it’s not! Hopefully when she gets to the Discovery we will have more of the ensemble of explorers finding new wonders . . .
@62 — That dialogue comes from a show I would watch! Well done!
@207/jackeholt3rd: “But the plot and set up reminded me a bit too much of Enterprise Season Two.”
Do you mean season 3, the Xindi arc? Because season 2 was characterized mainly by a lack of any real focus or direction or unifying theme.
And I think you mean the Pierson’s puppeteers from Niven’s Known Space series. The Hindmost was the title of the puppeteer leader. If anything, Saru is more like Nessus from “The Soft Weapon” and Ringworld — an individual who’s “mad” enough for his curiosity to override his instinctive timidity.
@183/Magnus
Caught a TNG episode the other day with Picard wearing his suede uniform jacket, and remembered really wanting one like that back in the day . . .
@191/John R
My daughter at one point covered her eyes and cried out “AAAAH TOO MANY LENS FLARES”
@207/jacke and many many others.
I must be the only one completely unimpressed with Michelle Yeoh here. Her dialog, already written as stilted, seemed delivered phonetically. Her mask-like countenance leaves only the eyes to do the acting work (and then they put her in goggles for the whole first sequence). I get an uncanny valley vibe from the character.
I thought the first episode was interesting and I would continue to watch it every week if it were on regular network CBS. I may try to binge-watch it for free at the end of the series, as someone else suggested. One main criticism that I had was the Klingon makeup, which really bothered me and took me out of the action. It looked like a mask and it sounded like they were talking through a mask in their very stilted and labored Klingon. Very annoying. I also was not fond of the new look in itself, but the artificiality/plasticity of it bothered me most.
@207 – jackeholt3rd: Yes, Saru’s character is a bit like the Pierson’s Puppeteers! And while not exactly the same (the body shape is completely different), the design reminds me a bit of PPs too. About the lack of wonder and “Star” Trek, keep watching. The showrunners have made clear that there will be that, too.
@211 – I own the regular red TNG jacket.
As an original viewer of Star Trek I cannot recommend it! However, if those who started watching Next Generation and the rest of them I would recommend it! My feeling are pretty much the same as when I first saw the JJ version! The more I saw it, the better it became! So far I have all the Star Trek movies except those starring the Next Generation crew, along with the DVDs of all those with the ENTERPRISE in the title! Live Long and Prosper, Everyone!
$6 or $9 for the non-commercial package are way too much to pay for one series. I wasn’t that impressed with the show. I don’t like that the Klingons don’t look like Klingons and the ships are far too technologically advanced to be from 10 years before TOS. This show might have worked if it was set 50 years after Voyager and was on CW.
It just occurred to me that if Saru’s people are naturally timid and he’s the lone exception, that’s a built-in explanation for why we don’t see their species in any other eras of Trek. They just don’t leave their homeworld as a rule. I wonder if that was a consideration when they were developing the character.
@215/lonewriter: “I don’t like that the Klingons don’t look like Klingons…”
Like which Klingons? Heck, DSC’s Klingons look more like the standard movie/TNG-era model than TOS’s Klingons did.
@9 Finally, someone else who sees this.
@11 When it is forced on every type of media today, it becomes generic or appears agenda based.
Just write and tell a good story, don’t worry about meeting numbers and playing to system
They could have solved the whole “what do Klingons really look like” thing quite simply by showing a diverse group in the meeting. Instead, we’ve gotten yet another redesign. But Trek tends to show alien races as monolithic. Humans are allowed to show diversity but an alien who varies from the norm is portrayed as an outcast.
@66 Burnham didn’t turn into a JJ Abrams Kirk – the episodes both go to great pains to point out she has a traumatic history with the Klingons due to the attack and that in fine Vulcan fashion she hasn’t dealt with the emotional load of that and she has instead repressed it. This makes her thinking about Klingons suspect from the get go as the captain pointed out. It is actually pretty consistent with her backstory the way she behaved.
meh… HATE what they did with the Klingons! Just hate it. I was so excited for new Star Trek.. I’d of watched it cause I loved all the previous Trek.. but I won’t pay for CBS to do so. Geesh. It’s a bit much. Enough is Enough.
@@@@@210 and 216 — Yes. I meant the Puppeteers. But I also meant Hindmost, because Saru appears to have entered Star Fleet despite his species hesitance which means he might well be “leading them from behind.” How best to prot4ect the herd? Join Starfleet and distract people away from your homeworld. But, I remember the idea that only “mad” Puppeteers would be out in the world. Makes me rethink Saru a little.
@@@@@ 213. Yes, the body types are completely different. I was more referring to the personality and the description of Saru’s homeworld and people — their role in the Universe, if you will. Anyway, it seemed very much like Niven’s creation to me. So I though Saru was a conscious nod to Niven’s basic concept of a herd animal in space. I could be wrong, but that’s how it seemed to me.
I hope you are right about the “Trek” to come.
@Magnus: I didn’t say Chakotay was a lead, I said he was a commanding officer. I still think Martin Green is a bit young to play a starship commander believably.
@ChristopherLBennett: My mom is 68 and always refers to Chris Pine as the kid from the new Star Trek films
I am 36 and I get senior citizens clients at work who address me as “boy” on a weekly basis.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@222/RMS81: “I didn’t say Chakotay was a lead, I said he was a commanding officer. I still think Martin Green is a bit young to play a starship commander believably.”
Janeway was the commanding officer. Chakotay was the second-in-command, just as Burnham is the second-in-command. Despite the rank being called “commander,” she is not a starship commander. Captain Georgiou and Captain Lorca are the starship commanders (as a job description). Commander Burnham (as a rank) is the first officer. And as I said, she’s only a year younger than Leonard Nimoy was when he first played Spock, and older than Jolene Blalock when she played T’Pol.
@198. MaGnUs Tks for the input, yeah I would like that too, and that idea of the anthology? Awesome man. I have one with the SF ship trying to get to the galaxy´s rim (or core) and met a really xenofobic race bcoz what lies ahead (or forward ) in the voyage is so extrange and menacing that you onlly survive with the extremest of the mindsets. And yes the core theme would be LN again (sigh).
Really I wonder why SF let a 1.9 or 2 metres tall PP, not timid but outright coward, stay and be an officer in the bridge of one of their ships.
In a recent Discovery trailer, Captain Lorca says “we must win the war, but that’s just the beginning. Imagine the possibilities!” So yeah, what are the chances Lorca isn’t going to be drunk with dreams of conquest, a la Peter Weller in Into Darkness. Pretty cliched stuff, I hope they do something more nuanced.
Just a reminder to keep your comments and criticism focused on the show/episodes, rather than analyzing or passing judgment upon other participants in this discussion. Please see the previous moderator request @68.
@207/jackeholt3rd: “More importantly, it’s hard for me to see the “Trek” element in Star Trek: Discovery so far.” – I agree, and I for one don’t like that. So far, the show is too dark and depressing for my taste. I hope that it will lighten up somewhat. Star Trek used to be really good at telling serious stories, even sad ones, without becoming dark and depressing – “The City on the Edge of Forever”, “The Offspring”, and countless others. I hope this hasn’t become a lost art.
@216/Christopher: “DSC’s Klingons look more like the standard movie/TNG-era model than TOS’s Klingons did.” – Perhaps so, but all the Klingons so far have looked, and behaved, much, much more lively than the DSC ones. Everything about them is stiff and stilted, from the mask-like faces to the speeches they give. I find it painful to watch.
@224/vickyng11: “Really I wonder why SF let a 1.9 or 2 metres tall PP, not timid but outright coward, stay and be an officer in the bridge of one of their ships.” – Because he passed Starfleet Academy and is a good scientist? These people are first and foremost explorers, and he isn’t the commanding officer, so what’s the problem?
After talking so much about what I don’t like, here’s a few things I do: I’m glad they didn’t do an anthology show. I want to see the same characters for a couple of years. Star Trek has always been about characters and I’m glad that they didn’t change that. And so far, I like the characters. I like Burnham, Saru, and what little we’ve seen of Tilly. Finally, the Shenzhou, seen from the outside, looks really good. I think she’s my second favourite ship after the TOS Enterprise.
@228/Jana: As for seeing “the Trek element,” a lot of Trek stories start out dark and then reaffirm their Trekkish values at the end. This whole season is one long story. Both the Dominion War arc and the Xindi arc started out with things feeling pretty dark and grim, and got even darker as they went on, but eventually reaffirmed Trek’s values and had them win out in the end.
Still, I feel Trek shouldn’t be about wars as a rule. I’m glad to know this war arc is only meant to be 15 episodes long, not to drag out through the whole series.
“Perhaps so, but all the Klingons so far have looked, and behaved, much, much more lively than the DSC ones. Everything about them is stiff and stilted, from the mask-like faces to the speeches they give.”
I think it was mainly just T’Kuvma who was stiff and stilted; the problem is that he was the one who did most of the talking. But that shouldn’t be an issue going forward.
@229/Christopher: Okay, I’ll remain hopeful!
@214 – Robert: That’s not because you originally watched TOS, it’s because it’s you. There are plenty of people who saw TOS as their first Trek (including me) who liked the first two Discovery episodes.
@216: Chris: I hope that’s not it, I hope we see more new alien species as part of Starfleet and the Federation. Space is big, we don’t need to see them on the few glimpses (comparatively speaking) into the Star Trek universe that the previous shows have given us to accept that they’ve always been there. Just like with the revamped tech on the ship.
@217 – mbowles: Nowadays, a lot of us require these things so it’s a good story, and not a repetition of the same old exclusion tropes we’ve endured for ages.
@221 – jackeholt3rd: I know you didn’t mean the body type, what I meant is that they could have designed a bovine looking character to be the herd/prey alien, but they chose something that, in some ways, visually resonates with a PP.
@222 – RMS81: “I compared her to the leads from TNG and VOY specifically…”
Yes, you did say Chakotay was VOY’s lead. And, as it’s been pointed out, he was not VOY’s Commanding Officer.
@228 – JanaJansen: In my ideal version of a ST anthology, we would get an episode with (examples) ship/crew A past VOY, then a two parter with ship/crew B in TOS era, then a three parter with ship/crew C in right post ENT era, then an episode with a full Klingon cast, then back to ship/crew A for two parter, then a Cardassian two parter, then ship/crew B for a one-off, etc, etc, etc. Very complicated and expensive, I know. I’m just dreaming out loud.
For those calling Saru a coward, consider that the guy most focused on staying alive and safe is exactly the guy you want in charge of keeping the crew alive and safe.
Cowards are useful (and lazy cowards are even more useful, because they’re the ones who come up with more efficient and cost-effective ways to get things done).
@231/MaGnUs: I’m not saying the producers wouldn’t show Kelpiens or other new species in the future, just that the Kelpiens’ nature offers a handy explanation for why we never saw them in TOS or the TNG-era shows.
And I think Saru’s facial features are a bit bovine. He also has hooves.
I know what you’re saying, I’m saying that we don’t need those kind of explanations to get new shows. And yes, there are certain bovine traits to Saru, but you don’t say “cow”when you see him, even if he has hooves… physically, he reminds me a bit of the PPs.
@234: I’m not saying we “need” them, just that it happens to work out nicely in this specific instance.
My feelings are mixed and I think I’m more disappointed than I wanted to be, but also willing to go along a bit further and see how it goes. I do believe I may find the back-lighting and lens-flare-tastic camera circling so distracting that it takes me out of the story. These new Klingons don’t look *living* enough to me, they are so stiff and shiny they just look like actors encased in vinyl, not real flesh. I get the authenticity and geekiness of trying to do whole scenes in actual Klingon…but wow, what a momentum drag.
I think I could be along for the ride with the serialized story concept vs the episodic concept, and I’m into Trek trying it out…but it’s gotta be *good,” and not just cheap thrills. Sustained narrative, not cheating narrative. Can’t tell yet what we’ll get.
I actually don’t love Burnham, though I wanted to. But, show’s still young, so I can wait on that. In general, the not-super-original-yet plot and the special effects (ARG the back lighting was really driving me crazy!) seemed to dominate screen time at the cost of giving us much in the way interesting looks into the characters, and it’s the ensemble of characters that usually makes me like Trek. But I get that with a serialized style that could take a bit longer to unfold, especially in this case that we’re transitioning from one ship to the other. (I did love the Shenzou Captain. Alas, alas.) I also get that we seem to be headed towards a dysfunctional ship with super flawed people trying to avoid or undo their screw-ups in a desperate war situation, rather than a ship full of occasionally-slightly-flawed people exploring and becoming their best selves amid some danger that usually resolved itself quickly, and all that…and I’m not yet sure what I think about it. Optimism is a HUGE part of Trek. I’m willing to ride with Trek if they try something else, as long as the path they stray still does find ways to tie thematically to the larger star trek themes, and as long as the storytelling is good enough.
If we hadn’t been specifically told that Discovery takes place ten years before TOS in the original timeline, I would have assumed it was part of the movie universe and timeline. It has the look of the movies and feels very much like a post-Voyager series. Throwing Sarek into the mix would’ve just made me assume it’s the alternate timeline where Amanda was killed.
All in all, it feels like CBS gave the showrunners the marching orders of “destroy Axanar” and set this show in that era. Problem being, Axanar feels like an excellent Battlestar Galactica-flavored version of classic Trek, while Discovery misses that mark.
Ironically, The Orville feels more like a new Trek show than Discovery does.
@237/trike: “It has the look of the movies and feels very much like a post-Voyager series.”
But it is a post-Voyager series, in real-world terms. It’s a series made for a modern audience with modern production techniques and storytelling methods, and the niceties of visual continuity are secondary to that, because most viewers won’t know or care about such details. It looks like the Kelvin movies because both it and the Kelvin movies were made to be modern and accessible to a new generation of fans.
There is a difference between a prequel and an actual earlier installment, and they’re not meant to be interchangeable. “Prequel” means a sequel that’s set earlier, but it’s still a sequel, i.e. an installment that comes later in the real world, that’s created later and responds to the original work, that reflects the methods and sensibilities of the time in which it’s created. DSC is the newest series in real life, so of course it’s going to look like the newest series, regardless of internal chronology.
“All in all, it feels like CBS gave the showrunners the marching orders of “destroy Axanar” and set this show in that era.”
Are you joking? That’s an entirely ridiculous conjecture. Why would they need to upend their whole franchise strategy to address a minor nuisance like that, when they’ve already settled the Axanar matter the normal and sane way through proper legal channels? Besides, Bryan Fuller has been talking about wanting to do his own Trek series since 2009. He may have had the basic idea for the series for a long time. We also know that his goal was to do a seasonal-anthology series where each season was set in a different part of the timeline, this just being the first time frame.
“Ironically, The Orville feels more like a new Trek show than Discovery does.”
No, it feels like an old Trek show. It’s basically another Trek fan film, except this one comes from a guy with enough clout to get it made professionally. Actual Star Trek needs to move forward and innovate, to boldly go where no Trek has gone before, not just cater to cozy nostalgia and old expectations.
It will be refreshing when Star Trek moves forward and innovates. So far with Discovery there’s a conflict between Starfleet and the Klingons, a character struggling with human and Vulcan philosophies, with Sarek for a father no less, and said character making a mistake, which presumably puts her on the path to some kind of retribution over the course of the series. It’s a nice mix of old Trek with a shiny new coat of paint. Just waiting for the discovery now…and I don’t mean the ship.
I don’t agree that this Trek is innovating and moving forward. We’ve got a starship although this time the focus is on the second officer instead of the captain. But we’ve got Klingons as the antagonists. We’ve got the token alien officer in Saru. We’ve got a white, male commanding officer again. He’s not even allowed to keep his natural accent, instead sounding more like an American. And it’s set in the past and features a direct connection to a TOS character, more Vulcan shenanigans and an upcoming appearance by Harry Mudd.
What would have been a unique way to approach it would be to have an alien officer and have a human character have to adapt to that. Instead, it’s primarily the Homo Sapiens only club since a lot of the characters from the first two episodes won;t be on the new ship.
And I’m still not sold on the idea of having a character who’s been convicted of assault and mutiny and sentenced to life in prison being sprung and put back in the chain of command. Sure, there’ll be the token mention of he previous status but I expect it will fade into the background like the Maquis on Voyager did. This woman started a war. The bridge of a starship is the last place she should be.
And I still hate the idea of the bridge viewscreen being a window and the fact that Starfleet apparently can’t afford decent lighting. It feels like it’s set in the recent past of the JJverse instead of the “prime” universe.
I’m guessing the reason Isaacs isn’t allowed to use his natural accent is from them not wanting to telegraph too much this character is corrupt. British guy in command would scream bad guy, especially one played by Jason Isaacs.
Decided to at least do the free week and watch so.
First impression is the visuals are great, but great fx don’t make a good Star Trek. Michelle Yeoh’s actung seems stilted, but immediately want more her and less Michael Burnham.
The Klingons are the weak link for me, and that’s not good. The Klingons of TNG, DS9, and the movies had life, had personality. They stood out as a the Viking warrior race of Trek.
These Klingons are slow, lifeless, bland Klingons. Which is terrible for the main antagonist to be. They’re one step above Kazon and Kazon are forgettable.
I really wish they had the main character be Yeoh. Sonequa is decent but she doesn’t leave me wanting her leading show.
Everyone pulling phasers on each other, lol they got the props right, michey immediately wanting to shoot the Klingons, Saru all acting like the sentient cow he actually is. So far it’s weak for a pilot episode, at least Caretaker started strong.
Come on Trek, give us the Asian lead!
Oh yeah the opening credits are an improvement over Enterprise.
On to part two.
And the Klingons are still boring. Nothing about them seems threatening, I get that the designers are trying, you can tell they’re stupid trying, but it just isn’t working. Bring back the heavy metal band Viking Klingons.
These Klingons and their cotton mouthed speech actually slows the story down.
I’m guessing this is the start of the four years war and Axanar. T’kuvma is a terrible character who looks like he’s going to fall asleep, and his scenes seem like they are taking 4 years to complete.
I would say this show is a C or C minus.
It has potential I guess, not really a 5$ a month show though. But it’s alright. It doesn’t have that stylized look of Star Trek, not even of nutrek. But whatevs they Wanna be edgy and the kewls then they need to ramp up the story.
We’ll see come episode 3!
@239/Wilson: Spock was a half-human, half-Vulcan who adhered to the Vulcan way and only changed his mind in the first film. Later shows had full Vulcan characters who just worked together with humans. It seems that humans and Vulcans don’t mix much – Amanda married a Vulcan, and Miranda Jones studied on Vulcan, but I can’t think of any others. A human who was raised on Vulcan, but already became more emotional prior to the show, is a new take on things, and one I find interesting.
I’m less thrilled about the conflict with the Klingons. As Christopher said in comment #229, Star Trek “shouldn’t be about wars as a rule”, and I wish they hadn’t started the new show with a war story. Anyway, the Klingons weren’t all that important in the original show, they only started to play a big role in the films and later in TNG.
@240/kkozoriz: Agree about the lighting. And these cold white lights they do use! I wouldn’t want to live on that ship.
@241/Wilson: British guy in command – Patrick Stewart?
Dr. M’Benga studied on a Vulcan ward but we don’t know where.
@244/kkozoriz: Oh, you’re right! Also, it just occurred to me that Spock’s collegues didn’t suspect Sarek and Amanda to be Spock’s parents before he mentioned it. If Vulcan-human couples were such a rarity, wouldn’t it have stood out to them that Ambassador Sarek has a human wife, just like Spock’s father? Still, we haven’t seen much intermingling before, so it’s nice that we do now.
@242/Loungeshep: “I’m guessing this is the start of the four years war and Axanar.”
One more time: There is no such thing. The Four Years War was invented by the FASA role playing game in the 1980s. It is absolutely not a part of canonical Star Trek history. It is canonical that Garth of Izar won some sort of military victory at Axanar (“Whom Gods Destroy”) and that Kirk was on a peace mission there (“Court Martial,” “Whom Gods Destroy”), but that’s all that canon says on the matter. It was never established who Garth fought against or in what context.
In fact, the existence of a war in the 2250s is hard to reconcile with canon, since both TAS: “The Infinite Vulcan” c. 2270 and The Wrath of Khan in the mid-2280s have characters state that the Federation has been at peace for a hundred years. That may be reconcilable with a war brief enough to be covered in a single 15-episode TV season, but there’s no way it’s reconcilable with a 4-year war.
@243/Jana Jansen: “Anyway, the Klingons weren’t all that important in the original show, they only started to play a big role in the films and later in TNG.”
I wouldn’t say that. The Klingons appeared in 7 out of TOS’s 80 episodes, more often than any other recurring element outside of Enterprise personnel. The Romulans only appeared in 3 episodes and Harry Mudd only appeared twice. By the standards of an episodic 1960s series, the Klingons were absolutely the primary bad guys.
About Discovery the ship, what’s with the rings? I grant it looks really cool but what is the rationale? Seems to me they weaken the structure of the disk section as well as complicating access. Is there a reason for such extreme compartmentalization?
@246/Christopher: That’s true. But seven episodes still isn’t very much. In contrast, they appeared in six of the seven TOS films, and later Trek shows had ongoing Klingon characters and stories about the Klingon government and the Klingon homeworld. So they were not as prominent as they became later on.
Another terrific piece by Keith!
Michelle Yeoh: She had some trouble with her dialogue, which took me by surprise. I guess, on her English language films, she had more time to rehearse, to burn in the dialogue as it were.
S.M-G.: She is tall and pretty. I guess that’s why they picked her over dozens of other black actresses who could probably do a better job. Then again, it may be too soon to judge.
Jason Isaacs: Evidently the producers judged that Star Trek audiences are not yet ready for a Captain with a British accent…
Forgot to mention…
James Frain: He was born to play weaselly psychopaths, as in Orphan Black and The Cape, among many others. I don’t think he can be convincing as the noble Sarek.
@248/Jana: “But seven episodes still isn’t very much.”
Not by today’s standards, but my point is that by 1960s standards, it was a hell of a lot. It was nearly 10 percent of the episodes, which is pretty major for a strictly episodic show with minimal continuity.
@249/taras: Michelle Yeoh has been fluent in English since childhood. She’s from Malaysia, where English is the most commonly used second language. The only movies in which she’s ever had to learn her lines phonetically were the ones she did in Mandarin Chinese.
@251/Christopher: 8.86 percent, approximately :).
You’re right, of course. I guess what I meant to say is this: When I rewatched TOS a couple of years ago, I was surprised that there weren’t more Klingon episodes. TOS was less about the conflict with the Klingons than I remembered it to be, and I liked that.
@246 that was something I wasn’t highly sure of, but threw in anyways. Thanks for clearing it up!
@243 A human raised by Vulcans is new, but it’s still a character split between human and Vulcan cultures. Just like Kirk dying and being resurrected in Into Darkness instead of Spock; they’ve switched things around but the result is basically the same. Now a human raised by the Ferengi and becoming president of the Federation with the help of the Klingons–that would be new! At least in Trek.
Isn’t Patrick Stewart a Frenchman? What, he’s not? You had me fooled, TNG.
Exactly @254, it’s all the same ‘ol, same ‘ol. We have done Vulcans and Klingons To Death. We’ve done rule breaking cowboy officers who are always right. And we just did insane warmongering Starfleet officers.
Yawn.
@255/princessroxana:”We’ve done rule breaking cowboy officers who are always right.”
That’s quite a misreading of the story. Remember, Burnham pled guilty at the end. She realized that her choices had been wrong, that she’d made the situation worse at every step. If anything, her arc in the rest of the season is presumably going to be about atoning for her mistakes.
“And we just did insane warmongering Starfleet officers.”
There’s no actual evidence yet that this describes any character in the show — it’s just one more bit of Internet speculation, and the track record for that is pretty dire.
@255
You are right, though. Even if Burnham is no longer the cowboy and she’s the redemptive Starfleet character, it’s Tom Paris again.
Speaking of Voyager, if they want to rehash a concept, I wouldn’t mind if they reused the central one from that series and put a different spin on it. What if a ship was thrown into another galaxy with no hope of ever getting back home? New galaxy, new aliens? Yes, I think Star Trek could benefit from that. The Milky Way seems crowded at this point.
@254/Wilson: It’s a new variation on an old theme. Isn’t that true for most stories?
@257/Wilson: I wouldn’t like that. It would take away too many of the Star Trek elements I love: portraying a positive future for humanity, space exploration as a job, characters that are part of a larger organisation, helping others. I hope they finish the war story and do some space exploration in this galaxy.
@256, CLB, I will be ECSTATIC if the narrative doesn’t fall into the tropes I am expecting. I am not holding my breath.
I note you don’t disagree Klingons and Vulcans have been Done To Death.
@259/princessroxana: It’s not about what concepts you use, it’s about what you do with them. A story about a human raised in Vulcan culture, identifying as Vulcan, is actually refreshingly novel for Trek, a long-overdue change from the franchise’s tendency to equate cultural and political identity with species in virtually every case. (I mean, Worf was raised from childhood by human parents — it would’ve been more logical for him to be culturally human than ultra-Klingon. They tried to justify it as a result of him seeking to embrace his birth culture, but it was still something that needed to be justified.) Aside from one-shot characters like Jono in TNG: “Suddenly Human” and the defector DeSeve in TNG: “Face of the Enemy,” the closest thing we’ve seen to a main character identifying with a culture other than that of their birth species was Seven of Nine.
There is, however, such a thing as re-using the same concepts too much. That’s one reason that Roddenberry didn’t want Vulcans used in TNG, at least at the start. Here, we not only get yet another Vulcan(ish) character right from the start but they have a direct connection to a well known Vulcan character. Surely, there must be other established races that we could be learning about. Or even a new one.
We’ve had a Vulcan regular character in TOS, VGR, ENT and now STD not to mention their appearances in a number of the movies. How much coverage do the Vulcans need?
It will be interesting to see where the story goes but I’m not that interested in seeing another war, particularly one started by a Federation officer who should be spending a number of years in prison. But, that’s another Star Trek trope, if you commit a crime, you’ll always get off as long as you’re a regular and in Starfleet. Spock got off scott free on similar charges, though without the starting of a war. Kirk got “demoted” for assaulting a guard, stealing a ship and disobeying orders of the CinC of Starfleet. I was disappointed as I watched to see that Michael was charged, pled guilty and yet will be back in uniform in the next episode, presumably set shortly after the first two. This is the the person we’re supposed to be cheering for?
#258 It’s a matter of taste. I would very much like Star Trek to break free from its local galactic neighborhood. And most of the things you listed could still be done in a different, exotic locale.
Trek in my view has become, like that other space franchise, too safe and obsessed with its legacy. Vulcan this, Klingon that. And now rumor has it we’re getting Harry Mudd and the Mirror Universe yet again. O…kay. Could be interesting. I guess. Any space hippies on the horizon? How about space hippies with a pet horta? And Gary Seven on lead guitar. Dig it, man.
@262/Wilson: Sure, it’s a matter of taste, but I don’t see how any of the things I mentioned could be done in a story about a lost starship that’s all on its own.
I’m surprised that so many people find that Vulcans have been overused. I used to think that Vulcans were a beloved species, so I expected people to like a main character with a Vulcan background. Besides, there is also Saru. He’s from a new species, and so far I find him more interesting than Neelix or Phlox. Inventing a plausible alien species that feels sufficiently alien isn’t easy.
I’m not happy with the Klingon war story, but I hope they do some space exploration too. The opening scene on the planet was nice.
I really hope you’re wrong about the Mirror universe. “Mirror, Mirror” is one of my favourite TOS episodes, it has a strong, hopeful ending, and I hated what DS9 did with it.
This article encompasses so much and yet omits my personal research focus: that of speculative fiction portraying people with albinism.
Klingon Voq (Javid Iqbal) is houseless for reasons unknown, with a history of being his peers’ punching bag and hacky sack because he’s also ‘the wrong color’. When I told a friend at the University of Canberra’s #ShutUpAndWrite group, her response was ‘But that’s normal’, to which I replied, ‘You’re telling me?!’ [laughter].
T’Kuvma accepts Voq after another Klingon rejects T’Kuvma’s leadership, Voq puts his hand in Kahless’s flame and vows to stand by T’Kuvma, upon which T says Voq is his mirror and appoints him Torchbearer.
Apparently Voq is the only character to get a promotional poster but no casting announcement. According to IMDb, he’s also only in the first two episodes.
This is typical of characters in speculative fiction movies: their appearances are brief; they’re often unnamed or cited only for their color or as ‘Albino’ or similar epithet; or not even given a casting credit; then they disappear. It’s such a shame because, after Voq’s introduction, I anticipated Star Trek: Discovery providing some complex nuanced ‘meat’ for my PhD on representations of albinism in speculative fiction.
My biggest disappointment, however, is that Star Trek: Discovery portrayed what could have become a fabulous character with albinism AND USED SUBTITLES. People with albinism to the extent that our difference is visible due to hypopigmentation (we’re paler than ‘normal’ white people) have poor eyesight because pigment is more than just skin-deep: lack of pigment also affects eyes, causing poor eyesight and even blindness. One in 17,000 people world-wide has albinism; we’d like to see ourselves in stories represented well AND BE ABLE TO HEAR WHAT THE CHARACTER IS SAYING.
If you can judge the popularity of a show or franchise just look at the sheer number of comments posted from fan boys, serious critics, media consultants, and regular folk like me. [edit – then this show, or rather STAR TREK, is #1 by far]
Enormous the number of comments here, wow! The quality of the vast majority of comments is intelligent and well written.
I’ve been watching Star Trek live since the late ’60s. This will be the first series I’ll miss as I will not pay for CBS AA for a single show.
I find many premises in the show silly or ridiculous — #1 being having such a wimpy person as chief Science Officer. Best of luck to the show and all who subscribe to it, cheers! #2 – Michael traveling 2000 km LOL in a space suit and jet pack and a round trip of just under 20 minutes, 4000 km in 20 minutes — impossible, implausible, and ridiculous.
@260,CLB, I agree that a person embracing a culture not of their species is interesting, isn’t that just what Amanda did? But did it have to be Vulcans? And note the theme is the familiar one that Michael must embrace her humanity.
Hmm.. ST does have a problem with equating biology with culture don’t they?
I would love to talk about the show, and engage some of the thought provoking insight I’ve read here so far, but it’s difficult from a phone, so I’ll just offer my thoughts on what seems to be the main sticking point.
As someone who “cut the cord” years ago, I save hundreds a month by simply streaming via Netfilx and Hulu, and a variety of free sources available, not to mention the much better hd you get over the airwaves. When it came time to decide whether or not to get CBS All Access, I balked, as did many others, well represented here. However, once I broke it down, I felt foolish about ever sweating it, OVER A SHOW I WANTED TO WATCH…
Here:. At $6 a month, that’s $1.50 an episode. (In HD, and I can tell you from experience that streaming a new show episode by episode on Amazon will cost you $3 per for HD). There are few forms of entertainment NOT worth $1.50 an hour. If you’re a comic reader, you get about 15 minutes for $3 or more. Heck, a cup of coffee costs more.
Do I wish it we’re simply broadcast? Of course! But I can afford having a few less cups of coffee a month in exchange for the opportunity to watch a new Trek show each week.
Here’s hoping that slightly different perspective helps. If at least one person decides to try Discovery based on this, my work here will be done!
Cheers!
@266/roxana: “I agree that a person embracing a culture not of their species is interesting, isn’t that just what Amanda did?”
Not from what we’ve seen of the character. She lived among Vulcans, accepted their culture, but we never saw her trying to act stoic and unemotional, and what we’ve seen of Spock’s upbringing has always portrayed her as being a kinder, more human and emotional influence on young Spock, while Sarek was the one setting the example for Vulcan values.
@267/Jackanapesink: Well, it’s $1.50 for 40 minutes, so far. But that’s about 3.75 cents a minute, and your typical theatrical film these days is maybe 9 dollars for 2 hours or so, say maybe 6-7 cents per minute — not counting the cost of gas to drive to the theater, the exorbitant food prices, etc. So it’s significantly more of a bargain to subscribe to CBSAA than it is to buy a movie ticket.
But we did see Amanda as an adept of the Mt.Seleya order which suggests a high degree of assimilation. she does seem to have chosen to mute her emotions rather than suppress and deny them. And there are indications she would have preferred Spock do so also rather than be more Vulcan than the Vulcans. She and Sarek may have disagreed on that point.
princessroxana: I think that’s a generous interpretation of Amanda’s role in Star Trek IV. I didn’t see anything to indicate that she was an adept at Mt. Seleya. All I saw was a mother checking up on her son.
I freely admit that I could be wrong, though. Where did you get the notion that she was an adept?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
From the novelization. Does that count?
The learning center in ST IV was not at Mt. Seleya. The area shown in ST IV is a flat plain on the edges of a craggy mountain range, while the Seleya temple was on an outcropping between two sets of even higher, craggier mountains. The script of ST IV mentions nothing about Seleya.
@271: No, novelizations don’t count as canonical information.
Okay, I was going by the background info in the novelization and that doesn’t count.
272. ChristopherLBennett – @271: No, novelizations don’t count as canonical information.
But novels have been used as sources for on screen information. Amanda’s last name being one of them. Same with Kirk’s mother’s name. And Sulu’s first name. And Uhura’s. And Kirk being from Iowa. The novels most certainly are part of the larger body of work that the creators can draw upon.
@274/kkozoriz: No, Amanda’s surname was established in “Yesteryear,” and Kirk’s Iowa birthplace was established in the 1968 behind-the-scenes book The Making of Star Trek.
Also, you’re missing my point. Obviously the makers of film and TV productions can draw on non-canonical material if they want to. But the instances you cite are the exceptions, not the rule. There are countless things in novelizations that have been contradicted by later canon, like the bit in Roddenberry TMP novelization about Starfleet flag officers having communication implants in their brains, or the bit about Jim Kirk being named after his mother’s “first love instructor.” (Which is retroactively creepy given the 2009 movie’s revelation that he was actually named for his mother’s father.) So nothing in a novelization should be taken as true unless it’s verified by something in a canonical production.
By the way, I finally got around to watching last week’s episode of that After Trek aftershow thingie, and I noticed that on the shelf behind the host, there were some books along with the various Trek props, and the topmost of those books was our own Humble Rewatcher’s The Klingon Art of War. You’re on TV, Keith! (Or you would be if your name were on the spine…)
Oh, spiff!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, proud author
275. ChristopherLBennett – Just like things in earlier episodes can be retconned by later episodes. Quick, how may nephews does Kirk have? And as we’ve seen in STD, has Starfleet really kept the peace for a hundred year if Burnham has just started a war? What is Kirk’s middle initial? What is Sulu’s position on ship? Does McCoy know klingon anatomy (Trouble with Tribbles) or not (Undiscovered Country)? Can Trills us a transporter? Does Vulcan have a moon or not? Is cloaking technology unknown at the time of Balance of Terror or not (Xindi, Romulans in ENT. Klingons in STD)?
Things change all the time in Trek.
@278/kkozoriz: Things usually stay the same from one episode to another, but there are exceptions. Things from the novels usually don’t make it into the show, but there are exceptions. It’s a difference of degree, but a huge one.
Everything created in official Star Trek media, TV, movies, novels, comics, games, etc, is owned by whoever owns Star Trek at the current moment. There may be cases where royalties would need to be paid, such as the case of creating Tom Paris when the very similar Nick Locarno was already available or turning T’Pau into T’Pol on ENT. But everything in the novles is already part and parcel of Star Trek. Canon is just the word from on high which parts of it the licencees can use.
@280/kkozoriz: “Canon is just the word from on high which parts of it the licencees can use.”
That’s not right. The canon is the original body of work, by definition. All tie-in creators are required to stay consistent with that original body of work in its entirety. But in the case of Star Trek, tie-in creators are not required to stay consistent with other tie-ins. i.e. with non-canonical content. There is no “on high” micromanaging such things on a case-by-case basis; John Van Citters and his colleagues at CBS Consumer Products just make sure we keep our stuff consistent with screen canon, and it’s up to the authors and editors’ own individual preferences to decide whether or not to be consistent with other tie-ins.
For instance, the Pocket novels, the IDW comics, the Star Trek Online MMORPG, and the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures RPG all have to stay consistent with all 700-plus episodes and movies, but none of them are required to be consistent with each other, and so they all have their own incompatible continuities sharing only canon material in common, although they occasionally borrow a few concepts and characters from one another. STO has adopted some ships, characters, and continuity threads from the novels while contradicting them in other respects. A few IDW issues have been set in the novel continuity (mostly the ones written by novelists like our Humble Rewatcher), but most are not, and indeed IDW has no single unifying continuity to its Prime-universe Trek comics. But that isn’t dictated from “on high,” it’s case by case at the creators’ and editors’ discretion. “On high” — i.e. JVC et al. at CBS — just make sure we’re all consistent with what’s onscreen.
238. ChristopherLBennett, I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written here. Thanks for being a voice of reason regarding DSC.
Also, having seen the third episode now, it is comical how many people predictions on events have proven false. Proof positive that we really need to watch the show before we judge it.
Jason, the people overly criticizing the show before watching it will still find a way to complain even after seeing last night’s episode.
283. MaGnUs you are right of course. It’s just frustrating. So far, this is a great show that dares to do something different with the Star Trek formula and I’m thrilled with it. Like CLB said, if you want old Trek, you can watch The Orville. Personally, I watch them both :)
Makes three of us, at home, my son and I happily watch both. I’m much more excited about Discovery, though.
Agreed. Orville is great for nostalgia, but DSC is new Trek. One does not compare to the other :)
It’s interesting to see that the Klingons see the Federation kind of like how the Federation sees the Borg — as destroyers of individuality.
And it’s also interesting than an EMPIRE sees a democratic power as a threat to individuality.
@288/MaGnUs: That’s just it — we tend to expect others’ motives to reflect our own. T’Kuvma saw the Federation’s spread as cultural imperialism.
Part of it, it seems, is the whole “We come in peace” thing that T’Kuvma found so threatening. To Klingons, peace is weakness and decay. But societies must be at peace to join the Federation, so it spread must seem like a plague from a Klingon point of view.
Oh, but the Klingons like other societies to be at peace… as long as it’s under their boot.
@290/MaGnUs: Hmm, do they? Kor at least liked a challenge. He found the Organians’ obedience disgusting and was glad when “Baroner” wasn’t like the others.
I’m speaking in general, that episode was when they were coming to conquer them, because as much as any individual Klingon might like battle, I doubt the Klingon, as an Empire, would enjoy having their subjects rebelling continuously. If you just want to fight, you become raiders and pirates, not an Empire.
Seeing how often the Enterprises missions consist of showing up un invited and pointing out the flaws in other peoples civilizations, cultural imperialism seems to fit.
OK so I waited until I had a low-maintenance week when I would have time to opt-in to the free week of CBS All Access and attempt to bingewatch the first season of Discovery. I signed on last night and watched the first three episodes. After seeing the previews and reading reviews over the past year and more, I was prepared to hate it. In fact, I was looking forward to hating it. But I don’t. In fact, I am really very impressed.
Visually, for a television series, it’s astonishing. But visuals and special effects are lower on my list than for others. I’m into characters, and with a few exceptions, I like what I see. I’ve read through some of the comments and see a few people suggesting that Sonequa M-G and Michelle Yeoh were subpar. I don’t get that. At all. SMG is a solid actor, and Yeoh, IMHO, is spectacular. Sorry to see she got killed off quick, although I assume we’ll be seeing more of her, somehow some way. The rest of the cast is good too, especially Doug Jones’ Saru, who kind of reminds me, personality-wise of a cross between Spock and Phlox. And I love the idea, hinted at so far, that the captain might be a bit of a rogue, instead of another generally heroic figures as in the other series.
And it just seems that, with the critics, this show can’t do anything right. If they stick with tried and true concepts like Vulcan mutts and conflicts with Klingons, then they’re treading over old ground. (Incidentally, why SHOULDN’T a Trek series populate its cast with characters of a kind that Trek created and that Trekkies love? I’m not excited about this series because it’s a new sci fi show. I’m making time especially to watch this because it’s a Trek show.) But God forbid the Klingons look be updated to take advantage of developments in makeup and prosthetics. I just cant bring myself to get all up in arms about what the Klingons look like. I just made a mental note to myself – OK, now in this series, THAT’s a Klingon. Is that so hard?.
It is not old-school Trek, and I miss TNG in particular every time I think of it. But I’m looking forward to continuing to watch tonight, and that’s really the acid test.
I saw a comment @200 about the race-related implications of killing off a gallant Asian captain within 2 episodes, and making a black woman guilty of mutiny. But I think that’s short-sighted. Yeoh’s character is a heroic, virtuous, thoughtful, disciplined but caring captain – She’s a hero. Does the fact that a hero dies and happens to be Asian mean there’s some race thing going on? And as for Michael – this storyline is obviously setting her up for big redemption. Yes, she went to jail for a huge mistake in judgment – but not because she’s a caricature of a black criminal type. She’s a hyperintelligent, virtuous personality who just really screwed up. In episode 3, she’s already back in uniform. She’s going to be the star of this show. Seriously, what’s the problem?
Lastly, forgive me to anyone who might see this comment so long after the conversation has gone dormant, but I don’t understand why so many fans of the show seem to blame Michael for the death of her captain. Am I missing something? Yes, she committed mutiny by attacking her captain, taking control of the ship under false pretenses, and ordering a preemptive attack on the Klingons. But the Captain recovered in time to belay the order. The Klingons fired first, which is what would have happened if Burnham had never intervened. Then, on the mission to kidnap T’Kuvma, Giorgiou is killed by T’Kuvma, which, again, is something that would have happened anyway. I guess she’s blamed for her Captain’s death by something like the felony murder rule? Like – you broke the law, so anything bad that happens to anyone else during that event is your fault? Sorry, I’m not getting it…..
Welcome around, fullyfunctional. Glad you enjoyed the first two episodes, hope you like the rest and add your two cents to each discussion.
Thanks MaGnUs. Not sure my thoughts are always worth as much as two-cents, but I’ll definitely be chiming in on some episodes as I catch up with everyone….