Hello everyone! Mike here. Just in case you’ve been living in a cave: STAR TREK DISCOVERY HAS PREMIERED!!! I watched both episodes of the series “pilot” and I LOVED IT! Here are some random thoughts:
**SPOILERS**
- I love that these Starfleet officers have had years of peace (the Romulan War is long over and they haven’t seen a Klingon in 100 years). They are explorers – first and foremost. They’ve done battle drills and training but they have no real military experience.
Sonequa Martin-Green is brilliant. I love her and can’t wait to see where she takes the character of Michael Burnham. I also want to say how happy I am to see a woman of color leading this show!!- I wasn’t familiar with Michelle Yeoh before this and I’ll be honest– I was hesitant about her based on the trailer. I’m happy to say that hesitation was unfounded. She delivers a powerful and subtle performance as Captain Georgiou. I feel like I immediately knew who she was and understood her command style. I would
- Star Trek has always been used by writers (like Gene Roddenberry) to make a statement about our current issues. Using aliens as an allegory the writers can hold a mirror up to us and make us see our flaws. Bearing that in mind, I saw the Klingons as a clear stand-in for the white supremacists and alt-right extremists (i.e. Nazis) that are in the news today. They are anti-immigration – in that they think the Federation is pressing against their borders. They are obsessed with the purity of their race– and unifying all Klingons under one nationalistic flag. T’Kuvma is a messiah-like zealot who could easily be compared to any number of dangerous political figures today. This is good Star Trek!
- Saru is clearly the stand-out supporting character. I love how alien he is– almost like Arex from the animated series. He could be the Spock/Data/Odo/7 of this series.
- The sound effects are SPOT ON! I love that they worked in so many sounds from previous Trek shows.
- The main title is a beautiful piece of music and the animation was boldly different from all other Trek shows.
- The uniforms look great!! I love the blue. It ties in nicely with Enterprise and the Kelvin. The new insignias are slick!
- So many good things to talk about! The ships, the special effects, the props, the dialog all honor what has come before. Very nice.
My only issues:
- I really hated the holographic communication technology. I’m ok with this show looking more advanced than TOS due to the realities of TV production today. I want the tech to look super cool and not like a 60’s low budget tv show. However, I see no advantage to changing canon and ditching view-screen communication for holograms. There’s no point to it- other than it looks cool. I know I JUST said that I want the show to look cool, but I also want it to look like Star Trek. The holograms just feel too Star Wars for me. It’s a pointless upgrade that messes up canon.
- The Klingons are cool looking but I wish they had hair. More importantly, I wish they had better dentures! The false teeth seemed to get in the actors’ way and caused them to speak slowly and with difficulty.
Hailing Frequencies Open 