Star Trek: Discovery: A review.

So, I watched the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. I wrote a chunk of this before watching the second half, but I have edited it to reflect what I saw.

BEWARE: SPOILERY SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN.

Disclaimer: I am a huge Trekkie, I was born into it and am one of those who have been affectionately referred to as “canonistas.” Meaning I love to nitpick timeline continuity, technology capabilities, dates of invention, starship launch dates. Places of construction, battles, uniform insignias, etc. etc. etc. So, of course there are things I am going to absolutely loath about the new show with its new aesthetic. I have attempted to put that aside (although it will still have some bearing), and look at the show as a Star Trek dealing with the principles of the show, with character portrayals, and with the story.

First: I’ll try to be nice: I loved the music. The theme was great and the music reminded me of the normal Star Trek music style as has been in place for a long time. It didn’t really use motifs I recognized, but that’s not a problem. Every show has its own motifs and style, but they tend to fit within a Star Trek soundscape. This did and I liked it for it. I liked the science officer, Lt. Saru. His character, while different from anything else we’ve seen, was both entertaining and well-acted. I appreciated that the Klingons spoke in Klingon; this is some dedication that we rarely see as most of the time Klingon will be spoken briefly before moving to English so that the Earth audience can understand them. “Lock phase cannons”: well, if this is an older ship and they haven’t been outfitted with the “lasers” of the Cage era Enterprise, then this would make sense as we are not told when these came into service.

Next: what I didn’t like/have concerns about. This is a longer list, so I’ll try to categorize it.

Main titles: Ok. This is a nitpicky preference. I didn’t care for the artsy title sequence. I would have preferred it better if they had had at least some space shots with stars and the ship going to warp. That would have at least been consistent with what has come before. It doesn’t mean this is bad. It’s just not a direction that I would have gone had I been in charge. It’s more in line with the modern shows like Game of Thrones of Westworld, which have great opening titles, but that sort of thing just feels a little out of place here. While the disassembling of the Type II TOS phaser and reassembly into the new Discovery phaser was kinda cool, for me it had a sort of Orwellian hint of history being re-written…. But I’m a cynic, so take that as it is. (see it for yourself: Here)

Aesthetics: I’m going to join the many out there: I loathe the look that they decided to go with in the show. The uniforms while snazzy and still in Enterprise blue with the Cage department colors, just look out of place on a ship in a fleet that has apparently been in war (due to Captain Georgiou’s comments). That and Deltas on everything? Really? That’s a J.J.-verse (excuse me) Kelvin-verse thing that was blissfully absent in the third incarnation of that series. Ranks are also next to impossible to figure out. TOS and TNG had an easily understandable rank system, glance at the collar, look at the sleeve and voila, you’ve got a basic idea of who outranks whom (granted, the TOS films are harder, but there’s a system [and I like it]). Rank in pip form on the delta badge is a terrible idea. You have to squint to see who is in charge. Even the Admirals only have a wreath around their badge…. The weapons? Meh. The phaser looks phasery, so that’s not bad. I don’t see a great need to redesign it, but there are reasons they did. The rifle has a certain throwback look to the phase pistols, so that was nice. Basically: the hand-held devices, while different, weren’t so different that they raised my hackles (timeline continuity me is still miffed, but not as bad as with, say Kelvin-verse hand-helds). The Shenzou’s bridge was not bad, it had some knobs and manual controls (like joysticks!), but there were a few too many holographic displays and Kelvin-ish controls for my liking. The ships are not ugly, per se, but they aren’t great…. Not enough smooth lines that even Enterprise had. Too many angles… And the Klingons ships? Just. No. They don’t fit in the iconography of what we understand to be Klingon in shape or color. While there can be a variety of ships, I didn’t see anything resembling a Klingon ship from Enterprise in the fleet that showed up at the end of part one. The sound design was also rather annoying. The phasers had the distinctive “pew-pew” of the Kelvin-timeline and while there were some sounds that were appropriately placed (the viewscreen scanner and photon torpedo launcher) all the button and alert sounds, though from the Star Trek database (which is huge) were terribly out of place and took me out of the story as I heard a warp containment alarm used for a different sensor alert. Klingon alerts being used for Starfleet red alerts and so on. While sounds can be multi-purpose, it just threw me off when so many were used for things that weren’t even close to their original purpose (and they were TNG LCARS, not the right time period)

Klingons: Yes, I’m putting this in its own category. While this is part aesthetic, it has to do with portrayal as well. First: Why do people insist on making aliens, especially bad guys, hairless? While some Klingons have been bald (notably Chang in Star Trek VI), it wasn’t a species-wide trait until Into Darkness (which is in an alternate timeline). If they are trying to say that there are a variety of Klingons… Sure, that can happen, look at the spectrum of humanity. However, if all the Klingons are supposed to look like this, then we’ve got another reprehensible act of Orwellian whitewashing. 

Kahless the Unfogettable - Ancient times

TOS - Motion Picture - TNG

Into Darkness Blingon - STVI General Chang

Discovery's T'Kuvma

As a side note: someone has suggested that these may actually be the Hur'q or Fehk'lihri. Maybe. It would explain their "trollish" look.

Aside from the Klingon symbol (logo? Emblem?), nothing was recognizably Klingon. The armor didn’t have elements (if you recall, some stylistic choices and elements [such as belt buckles]) carried over from show to show), that were recognizable. The Bat’leth didn’t look like a bat’leth, nor did it look anything like a utilitarian blade made primarily for decapitations and the spilling of entrails.

Kahless' Bat'leth (the very first one)

Traditional Bat'leth

Discovery's Bat'leth

Even Into Darkness' Bat'leth was better!

While I greatly appreciated the Klingons speaking Klingon (and accurately from what I could tell), they had a sort of muffled way of speaking; a manner that sounded much more like mouths impeded by prosthetics than the Klingons in the post Motion Picture era. The language lost its harsh sound and became softer and more mushy sounding. Not as aggressive as I am used to. While I have since been informed that the time line does allow for 100 years of lack of Klingon/Federation interaction, I personally find it a bit out of character. Klingons are more like Vikings, they don’t usually stay and hide for an extended period of time. It sounded more like someone saw the Tomed incident from TNG or the lack of Romulan interaction in TOS and were like, “let’s do that! But with Klingons! It will be more exciting!” That and these Klingons lacked a joyful warrior spirit. Klingons revel in battle, exult in the ability to fight. They don’t see aggressors as threatening their very existence (unless it’s the Borg, but that’s different), they see it as a challenge, something that they can fight and kill with abandon. These Klingons have nothing of the Viking warrior ready to celebrate a battle well fought as they honor those who went to Valhalla after an honorable death (er, I mean Klingon warriors and Sto-vo-kor). That and there seemed to be some sort of ham-fisted attempt to insert some President Trump digs; whichever side of *that* fence you fall on, I’m just getting sick of the focus on that and nothing else. While the Klingons did fights in the second part, there was no joy in battle, it was just a thing that they did to show themselves that they were united under T’Kuvma. Also, we have had some decent representations of Klingon religion in the past (how many Worf-centric episodes were there?), so this whole thing of preserving the dead and the “light of Kahless” felt somewhat contrived. I think they are trying to make the Klingons into a more sympathetic race which…. Feels more like they are hijacking the name and some elements in order to make some sort of point rather than using what was already there to make a point consistent with the race as it has existed. The Klingons were originally viewed as the Russians or the “bad guys” who then became our allies, but were still the same sort of people. These are not the same sort; While we are dealing with a period of Klingon history that we don’t know very much about, it seems ridiculous to say that they would have changed so much for a very short period of time (even Enterprise explained the Vulcans acting weird better). Perhaps they will explain the discrepancies other than saying “it fit the character” or “it helped the story.” Drastic design choices in-universe need to be explained with an in-universe explanation; we got to it eventually with the move from smooth forehead to bumpy forehead. They made the change now, they can make the explanation now, I don’t need to wait 40 years for that.

Characters: You heard me right. I didn’t like the characters. This does not mean I think it was poorly acted. I was impressed with the actor’s ability and range, but I did not like the characters as they were written. Captain Georgiou was a decent character, I had little problem with her. She was a Starfleet captain who was cautious after the last few battles she has been in and reveled in being able to be an explorer and do-gooder (from the first part of the episode). She is also willing to sacrifice herself, another Starfleet great. I like Lt. Saru, he added a sort of humor to the show and his banter with Burnham was great. The other bridge crew didn’t have much to distinguish them (I’m not sure their names were spoken on screen), other than Lobot man and an android (maybe? She went to sickbay though...). The Klingons were unremarkable characters in the first episode, more one-dimensional and just standing around talking rather than planning their next move or challenging honor or something. There was that bit with Voq, son of none, which was interesting, but not in a particularly engaging sort of way. T’Kuvma felt more like a whiner than a Klingon leader. None of the fire and his voice just wasn’t powerful. He felt like the poor man’s version of Gorkon mixed with a religious fanatic. 

The main person I want to talk about is Commander Burnham…. To be perfectly frank… her character was unlikable and inconsistent. She’s arrogant and presumptuous (and not in that Kirk swagger sort of way, or even in the Messiah-complex Sisko manner either), is led by her emotions (for reasons that will likely be made clear at a later point [although I can hazard a guess it has to do with that colony attack we heard about]). 

My logic "informs" my emotions. Emphasis on the  "".

She talks about trust and having logic and then proceeds to fail to give a logical explanation to her captain and then doesn’t trust Georgiou when she makes her decision, preferring to mutiny instead. Her sarcasm and banter and the beginning of the first episode were fine (almost great), but I think the attempt to make this character the main focus and give her some sort of depth backfired and made her more annoying. In the second episode, she didn’t do all that much; we see how much she has changed via the numerous flashbacks, but they didn’t give us more reasons to like the character. In fact, it just put in sharp relief how much of her training she had abandoned. Becoming more human, yes, but she seemed to have put all the logic of her Vulcan upbringing aside. That and it made it seem like her being put on the Shenzou was more an act of nepotism than actual merit in Starfleet (say her record is spotless and intellect is fantastic, great; but she clearly hadn’t risen up through the ranks).

She did have a mildly good idea to capture T’Kuvma, but then when the captain is killed, she seems to toss logic out the window and proceeds to set her phaser on kill in a clearly emotional reaction to seeing her friend and mentor killed rather than completing the mission to prevent more deaths. The only thing that she did that was respectful of the rank she had and the system she worked in was when she pleaded guilty to all the charges leveled against her, even then she had a plaintive comment at the end, that just took her from arrogant and pretentious to just plain pathetic. There’s a plan for a character arc, no doubt… But based on what I’ve seen, it’s going to take a lot of work to salvage this character. We are also going to get some sort of Tom Paris moment when she is taken out of prison in the next episode; it does explain why she is going to be bunked with a cadet (to some extent); she’s a prisoner and has no rank, but still the whole thing feels forced.

Minor point: Sarek’s portrayal (while well-acted) did not feel like Sarek. There was too much humor (in the form of sarcasm) and too much sympathy for Burnham. While some may say that this makes sense due to Sarek having a human wife, Sarek caring for a full human with a clear push towards her being more human (by his leaving her with Captain Georgiou). He never did this with his own half-human son and so it feels inconsistent to have Sarek be willingly close to someone while pushing his own blood away. And the katra part…. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Cinematography: I really didn’t like the weird angles and the lens-flares. For heaven’s sake, this is a TV show, not an Abrams film! Give me straight, level shots except for the dramatic moments and drop the lens flares. I like to be able to see what I’m looking at in a way that I might actually look at it, rather than guessing at more elements. 

Story: The story felt a bit disjointed to me, especially in the first episode. While pilot tend to suffer from this issue, after all the time that they’ve had to work on it, I was expecting more polish. It jumped around a bit and the flashbacks didn’t help that at all (that and they didn’t really add to the story). It felt like one of my attempts to write a script where I wanted to flesh out characters on both sides but then was stuck with time constraints and so left it with those elements in, but shortened and cut so that they will fit. Some of that may have had to do with the attempt to make this show have a primary character, which I think is a poor choice as Star Trek has always leaned in the ensemble direction and got progressively more so as time went on (I think Enterprise was very much an ensemble show towards the end). The second half was a little better as it had something that it was focusing on: the immediate Klingon threat. But even then, the jumps between the Klingons and Starfleet emphasized that there wasn’t all that much going on and that we were just getting the view from two different sides. This can work in some situations, but it really didn’t here…. This may be more of an editing thing, but it made it less enjoyable to watch. The plot wasn’t bad, but it just did not engage me as other stories have in the past. The tone is darker than most other Star Trek shows, which is fine, but I’m a little tired of the dystopia trend in modern science-fiction (well, not a little tired… I hate it). The conflict between the characters, though I knew it was coming, felt forced. Conflict for conflict’s sake is just as bad as not having conflict for the sake of not having conflict; it needs to make sense in the story and with the characters. It didn’t seem to fit here, so I wonder if this jettisoning of the “Roddenberry principle” will work out for them in the long run. It remains to be seen if it fits the ideals of Star Trek, so I can’t comment on that other than that there was talk of hope and optimism (from Captain Georgiou), but none shown. So, there was lip-service to the ideals of Star Trek and a better humanity, but I didn’t see it exercised.

Continuity, technology, and other smaller things: A lot of this has been mentioned in previous sections, but some of it is worth touching on again in the context of the larger Star Trek universe, especially as this is supposed to take place within the prime (not Kelvin) timeline. So, some first points. As I said before, my initial gut reaction that the Klingons being in isolation for about 100 years was absolutely wrong. I checked my dates and the last canonical appearance of the Klingons in Enterprise was just about exactly 100 years before Discovery takes place. Therefore, it is plausible. Next (and yes, everyone will hate me bringing this up), the ships, uniforms, and weapons do not fit with everything else that exists around this same time period. The year is 2256. The original starship Enterprise, however, is supposed to have launched in the year 2245, and the first TOS pilot is supposed to have taken place around the year 2254. Based on this, we should be seeing TOS style ships, weapons and uniforms. Even if Starfleet had special uniforms for different groups (which is possible), the fact that this takes place directly within established canon events makes things a bit frustrating. True: Kirk doesn’t take command of the Enterprise until 2265, however, it doesn’t mean that The Cage didn’t happen. It was re-canonized (after just being a dropped pilot) in the episode The Menagerie. I won’t go into more nit-picky details. Just suffice it to say, the technology and look does not fit with what exists canonically at the time. Of course, some will point out that things needed to be changed to make it more relevant. Sure, but not if you’re trying to set it in the prime timeline. Then consistency needs to come into play. There is a Department of Temporal Investigations in Starfleet, after all, whose only job is to make sure the timeline doesn’t get changed (to say nothing of the 29^th and 31^st century temporal police). Get is right! 

Enterprise era - 22nd Century

Discovery - 2256

Star Trek - "The Cage" - 2254

I’ll leave continuity there as the dates make my case for me. I have also seen that they may be following the idea that elements from Star Trek 2009 fall into the prime timeline. I am familiar with the theory, but as I’ve pointed out before, there are far too many inconsistencies for that to work. There was also a moment where the beacon blinded the ship. I distinctly heard that the light was overloading the photonic sensors so they couldn’t get any readings. If I may be slightly condescending: a starship has more than one type of sensor. This would not prevent them from detecting what was going on. And where was the whole idea of submarine warfare that has been in place since Star Trek II? In submarine warfare, you don’t rely on what you can see, you rely on what you can hear and what your instruments can tell you. This was sadly dropped for this episode to add a tension that simply didn’t need to be there. There seemed to be a huge point made that Starfleet doesn’t fire first. That is generally true, but Starfleet is willing to give warning shots. Also, there was a moment in the brig where an ensign was saying “we shouldn’t be fighting, we’re explorers, not soldiers.” Forgive me for belaboring the point, but Starfleet has always had some military aspects and so, while they prefer to not fight, they are always prepared to fight as you never know what kind of hostile alien you may encounter, regardless of your intentions (i.e. the Borg). The Warp core explosion of the Europa also didn’t seem to be as violent as it should have been; meaning it should have damaged or destroyed the Shenzhou, based on its proximity.

Short caveat: some of the design and timeline issues have to do with the fact that this show is being made under the license that Paramount has with CBS to make the Kelvin timeline films. So, they cannot use prime timeline material (ships, uniforms, weapons, characters, likenesses, etc. without permission). Why they did that? I have no idea. It seems rather stupid to me, but that may explain some of the reasons why things don’t look right. 

Overall verdict: I will wait (like Q) to see whether or not Discovery earns its place among the stars. As of right now, it has not given itself any help to prove to me that it will. However, Enterprise had a rough start as well; that managed to get great later on and even assuaged my timeline concerns (though I still complain about them from time to time). Is it possible for Discovery to redeem itself and its main character? Yes. Is it likely? Not based on what I’ve seen… Will it live up to the ideals of Star Trek? That remains to be seen. If the writing gets a bit better, if it focuses on telling good stories rather than focusing on the fact that it has a “diverse” cast, and if it can reconcile some design choices with canon material, then it will move from “meh” to “good” in my book. But until then…. The trial has only begun.

We shall see if you are worthy to join us amongst the stars.