Star Trek Discovery: Initial Thoughts

After waiting through one final insult from CBS — an Oprah/Frank Luntz focus group segment on 60 Minutes — the world finally got to see Star Trek Discovery.

My full review will wait, but here are some initial thoughts:

Episode 1 is not a good lead-off batter.

Whoever sat in the board meeting and said “let’s only show the first half of a two-hour episode!” should be fired immediately. The first episode is mostly exposition and scenes with no consequence that barely has a hook to get viewers back. The second episode is better, in that respect, and actually develops the story to the point where casual fans might invest time and money.

Wait, what’s the story? Who are these people?

There’s a ton of exposition, but you never feel like you know either the Captain or Burnham until late in the 2nd hour. The motivation of the villains is treated very superficially and not actually explained beyond generic tropes, even though we listen to various monologues and speeches. If all you watched was the first hour, you wouldn’t care about any of these characters. These are writing issues.

Nit-picking canon mistakes is very easy.

Despite pleas from the producers, there are a list of “canon” issues. This is a problem they brought upon themselves by insisting over and over again that they were taking pains to respect the canon. You can’t say that when fans like me exist who will know that Starfleet doesn’t get holographic communication until the 2370s and Donatu V was in 2245.