Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 Review

I’m a big Star Trek fan. I’ve seen every episode of every series and movie multiple times. I just came to it later in life than most. When I first got around to watching Star Trek, it was late 2008/early 2009. There wasn’t a Star Trek series on air and the “Nu Trek” movies hadn’t come out yet.

I didn’t know who Romulans, Tellarites, Cardassians, or the Jem’Hadar were. I didn’t know what a disruptor, dilithium matrix, Black Hole, or bar of latinum was. I had no idea how the various cultures of the Bajorans, Risians, or Ferengi interacted. But, I learned.

I plowed through season after season and came to love characters like Miles Edward O’Brien, Jadzia Dax, Tuvok, Data, Neelix, Geordi La Forge, Uhura, Spock, Quark, Jonathan Archer, Tom Paris, Charles Tucker the Third, and so many more. I got hip to the lingo. The odd fascination to the 20th century of Earth as if nothing really existed culturally between 2000 and 2150. Sure, there were various events that were alluded to and touched on, like the first Warp Flight, the Bell Riots, and the Eugenics Wars, but overall, there’s this very odd deficit to the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd centuries. All of that’s okay though, because the universe is rich overall and is ever expanding.

Before we go any further, I need to spend a little bit of time explaining what I feel like Star Trek excels in various formats. My favorite Star Trek series is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for various reasons, mostly because I believe it has the most cohesive storylines/story arcs overall and the best character development. Star Trek: The Next Generation got the wholesome feeling right and really laid down the guiding principles of the Federation well. Star Trek: The Original Series did a great job with well-contained, episodic action, even though at times it could be downright cheesy. Star Trek: Voyager, the series I like the least, really hit home that every person does the best they can in every trial and tribulation. Star Trek: The Animated Series showed that Star Trek could appeal to just about everybody, even kids. Star Trek: Enterprise, gave us a wonderful amount of universe building by showing just how the United Federation of Planets came together. The “Old Trek” movies (featuring The Original Series and The Next Generation crews) gave Star Trek an opportunity to tell powerful stories in a short amount of time, but they usually ended up pretty weird, for better or worse. And finally, the Nu Trek movies showed that Star Trek could be a beautiful, sexy show.

So, when I heard that there was going to be a new Star Trek series that I was going to be able to watch as it aired, I was super excited. I would get to see the Star Trek universe evolve. I would get to see new characters introduce in “real time.” I would get to have the excitement and wonder each week seeing each episode and then the “held breath” of what the next episode would bring based on the teaser.

Star Trek: Discovery started off innocently enough. I watched the first episode and was unsure, but optimistic. I liked that they were taking the Klingons in a new direction and exploring the “religious” side of their culture in a different way. The Klingon ships looked and felt alien. I thought the premise was a little thin, but had the ability to be built out. Then, things started happening… and it wasn’t always good.

The technology that the first season is based upon is the Spore Drive. The Spore Drive is a technology that the Federation is experimenting with that allows for long range, near-instantaneous jumps (a sort of teleportation of the ship, similar to Battlestar Galactica). The Spore Drive leverages the Mycelial Network, which ties practically any point in the universe together, as well as other universes if leveraged correctly. Due to the universe already built by other shows, this technology was doomed to fail and be swept under the rug, as it was never seen or mentioned by other previous shows. The closest thing that any other show does have are the transwarp conduits in transwarp space, which is featured in Star Trek: Voyager.

Star Trek: Discovery centers mostly around Michael Burnham, a human that’s was raised by Sarek, the father of Spock, after her parents were killed by Klingons. Yes,you read that right, that Spock, which is another fun bit of trivia because no other movie or show has ever hinted that Spock had a stepsister or any other sibling for that matter. In essence, we are already given a couple of different ways the writers have been screwing with the Star Trek Universe.

Next, we’re given the combination character of Ash Tyler/Voq, but the writers couldn’t decide what to do with him once they made the reveal. After the reveal, they sent him on a journey of “self exploration” and kept backtracking on their decisions to the very end. This was evidenced in so many different ways and after a while, I gave up on that character, even though he had the potential to be a really great character.

Next, we end up in the Mirror Universe, only to discover that Lorca, who’s been leading the ship for a number of episodes, isn’t from the Prime Universe, but instead from the Mirror Universe, and then we kill him off because he was doing all of this just to take over the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe. In return, the crew also brings Mirror Universe Georgiou back with them to the Prime Universe because they don’t want her to die, but then end up just casting her off to do her own thing off screen rather than driving her character one way or the other.

Onto the Federation-Klingon war, which apparently hinges entirely on the Discovery ship and crew, but because they aren’t around for 9 months, the Klingons decimate the Federation even though the Klingons can’t seem to work together at all. The way that the war was wrapped up was terrible at best and psychotic at worst. Sure, let’s just plant this bomb in the middle of your planet and then give the detonator to ONE Klingon (that other Klingons think is worthless) to use as a power play and unite the race. This is the definition of building a house on sand.

While we’re talking about the Klingons, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine the Klingons to have a bunch of Orion slave traders just hanging out on their home planet. They are too proud of a culture. They are too dominating as a race to allow such pettiness to be happening in their “back yard.”

We aren’t given a chance to connect with the characters, but when we are, those characters are discarded. See Dr. Culber, Ash Tyler/Voq, Lorca, and Georgiou for details. Instead, we have characters that are around EVERY episode, but we don’t know anything about them other than their name and that they perform some function on the ship. It’s like the writers forgot that each one of those characters have lives. They went through Star Fleet Academy and specialized in something. They have interests, they have hobbies, they have quirks, but we don’t get to see any of that. That’s why discarding characters like Lorca and Ash Tyler/Voq pisses me off so much.

After watching this first season of Star Trek: Discovery, however, I’m disappointed. The writing overall is lacking. The stories have trouble driving to a point. The threads that are created are too thick and have too much weight to them to be tied off so abruptly in a number cases. The entire first season was built on a foundation of sand, which sets us up to have a hard time trusting the characters and events that come along as being “fact” versus “fiction.” The writers have a lot of work to do to build up viewer trust again and I really hope they don’t botch it.