Before we talk about anything else, we have to talk about this whole unpleasant CBS All Access business. The Star Trek: Discovery pilot episode aired on CBS affiliates, but later episodes will only be available through the CBS All Access streaming platform.
CBS is boasting that this show will be even more serialized than Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in its later seasons. They want people to get hooked on the show so that they will shell out the $9.99 or more a month for All Access.
Some people, including some Star Trek fans, are so turned off by this that they won’t even tune in for the first episode.
I can sympathize. I hardly ever visit the websites of CBS shows because those websites are more interested in getting me to sign up for All Access instead of giving me the particular bit of information about the show I’m looking for.
So then why should I tune in for the pilot episode of a show that may very well have been conceived for the sole express purpose of rustling up more CBS All Access customers?
But please look at this way: once most of the money to be made from streaming the season’s episodes has been made, those episodes are almost certainly going to come out on DVD and BluRay. That’s a revenue stream CBS won’t ignore.
Even if you really, really like Discovery’s premiere, you can wait a few months for the other episodes on disc? I know I can.
With that out of the way, the next thing to talk about is which timeline this show is set in and at what point on that timeline. It is said to take place in the “prime” timeline, not the “Kelvin” timeline of the recent movies (derisively known as the “J. J.-verse”), but some fans aren’t convinced yet.
Discovery falls roughly halfway between Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation, a decade before the original series. So there’s definitely the potential for the Discovery crew to run into a young Kirk or Spock. And we also know that Sarek, Spock’s father, appears in the show at least once.
Okay, on to the review.
★★★★☆
Some guy blathering on about torchbearers in an alien language. That’s how Star Trek: Discovery starts. The language is Klingon, and he’s speaking to a bunch of Klingons, warning of intruders whose greeting is “We come in peace,” which he says in English.
The second scene shows Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and Lt. Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) walking in the desert of a planet inhabited by some strange non-humanoid beings.
The Bechdel test is only one metric, but it’s a metric this show is already doing better by than all previous Star Trek series pilots. The two women, a human and a half-human half-Vulcan (correction: both human, a commenter pointed out), talk about finding a well and releasing its water so as to end a drought without violating the Prime Directive.
The main storyline is the discovery of a strange object in an asteroid field. It’s too narrow for the Shenzhou, Georgiu’s ship, to maneuver around in. So Burnham goes out there with a jet pack and encounters a Klingon who tries to kill her.
I will freely give “spoilers” and CBS won’t mind, because, you know, they want you to get hooked on the show and sign up for All Access. So Burnham survives her encounter with the Klingon, and makes it back to the Shenzhou badly injured.
After a single Klingon ship decloaks, Georgiu gets in touch with Admiral Anderson (Terry Serpico, whom you might know as Major Sherwood on Army Wives).
It’s decided: the Shenzhou will not retreat, since the ship is in Federation space, but will not shoot first either.
Burnham contacts Sarek (James Frain), who suggests that the best course of action with the Klingons is to attack first. Burnham gets insubordinate to try to implement Sarek's advice, which did include a caveat that it might not work in the current situation.
Before the Shenzhou can fire, several Klingon ships drop out of warp. Georgiu is angry, livid, at Burnham's insubordination, and remands her to the brig. That’s where the first episode ends, followed immediately by a reminder that the second episode is already ready for streaming on CBS All Access.
This Burnham character is very intriguing. Unlike Spock, she does not make much of an effort to hide her human side (this was because of my misunderstanding). Her back story with the Klingons is probably something that will be elaborated as the show goes on.
I find Frain disappointing as Sarek, but then, it’s just not possible for him to be Mark Lenard. I do like Frain better than Ben Cross, who played Sarek in the 2009 movie.
In one of Burnham’s flashbacks, we see Vulcan schoolchildren learning in those bubbles much like the ones in the 2009 film, each child isolated with a computer that quizzes them lightning round style. Not that I’m a pedagogue, but it seems like a terrible approach to learning, whether for humans or for Vulcans.
The technology on this show seems to me to be more advanced than it should be, and that’s even after making allowances for the budget limitations of the original series. For instance, 3-D video communication is something that was very rare in the previous series, I can only think of one example, from Deep Space Nine.
All the subtitled Klingon talk got on my nerves. Normally, I prefer subbed to dubbed, but that’s with Earth languages which the actors can readily carry natural conversations in.
Also, the Shenzhou is an ugly ship, in my opinion. Wasn’t there supposed to be a Starfleet ship called Discovery? I guess we won’t see it until the second episode, which, you know, All Access.
In his various Nitpickers’ Guides to Star Trek, Phil Farrand says he goes easy on a show’s pilot episode. I think this is as good an approach for critiquing a show as it is for nitpicking.
In response to my review of The Orville, a pale imitation of The Next Generation, two or three people said that it’s wrong to dismiss a show just after a viewing of the pilot episode.
Now that I’ve watched three episodes of The Orville, I don’t find myself revising my opinion like I did after watching Bull’s second episode (the Bull pilot episode was terrible, it would have worked better later in the season). The Orville is not the Star Trek show anyone was waiting for.
The situation with Discovery is different. Since I’ve already decided I won’t sign up for CBS All Access, the pilot is all I’ve got to go on for the next few months.
And based on just the pilot, I say that this show is definitely worth watching, worth waiting on the discs to come out.
Discovery cedes the time slot on the broadcast channel to Wisdom of the Crowd, another CBS attempt to put a new spin on the tried-and-true crime procedural.