CLAView.Com

So far this is quite a confronting series. It is clearly a significant reimagining of the Star Trek universe. It’s quite a different star trek reality that we are more familiar with. The Klingons extremely ornate starship is quite different to the spartan style of previous incarnations is almost overwhelming. The concern of burial rituals is also quite a departure from normal expectations. 

A human vulcan ‘number 1’ Michael as a female also somewhat unusual. The overall feel so far is that this feels more like high fantasy than science fiction. The shoot first, ask question later did not seem consistent and the back story explanation seemed quite weak, sure Michael should have more of a personal experience of why that was the case rather than just ‘learning about it at school’ . So far this has too much of a war movie feel than star trek that even in the script they admit it. Why are they doing this?  So far only watched the first 2 episodes but this is really quite tiresome so far.

3rd episode in and it’s not improving by very much. A commandeered research vessel called the   USS Discovery is now a military vessel, so this is how it is going to be , war series essentially.  Now a spore drive as a kind of strategic advantage. This is strangely so similar to Dune, spore=spice.  This is really quite abstract. A giant tardigrade that somehow controls the spore drive now with all kinds of forced ethics in play.  I still find the klingons require extra attention because they are speaking native Klingon with subtitles. It makes it realistic in some ways but requires extra cognitive time to process their dialogue, not so much what they are saying but the style of the language even when reading the subtitles is almost like old English. 

5th episode was a little stronger with the captain being kidnaped, ending up on Klingon Prison Ship, also introduced a classic character Harry Mudd . A bit more self sacrifice with the chief scientist controlling the spore drive rather than the tardigrade was a major relief to dealing with dubious ethics. 

6th episode provides a bit more background on Michael Burnham . The relationship between Capt  Lorca and the admiral seemed a bit too extreme but there certainly was a nice plot twist. I’m still not a big fan o the war theme and it still seems a bit visually overwhelming, for example the excess nebula and the compositing of the vulcan home world seemed overly extravagant 

7th episode is perhaps the closest to a normal star trek episode so far. Still not quite classic and a bit derivative being a time loop situation… the ending of the episode was a bit wrecked though, a little preachy. 

8th  starting to look a bit better with an exploration of a new planet, although it seemed so similar to the movie Avatar in its' style and concept. 

9th was actually pretty well wrapped up but the PTSD scene were a bit harrowing for star trek . The ending again was a bit too confusing, seeming to almost end and then not. Though finally they end up in a Star Trek Voyager situation but this at least makes the second season more likely to be like sar trek discovering new places at least. 

Nope, the parallel universe is even more dark and miserable.

Ok so now I understand, in episode 12 it turns out that the crazy captain from the beginning of the show was from this alternative super dystopian universe. I’m starting to understand that this version of star trek is just more like a bad LSD trip, almost literally using a spore drive essentially analogous to magic mushrooms. 

Episode 13, though exciting in an over done manner, seems to have wrapped things up nicely. But seriously, they end up 9 months ahead of time? and the Klingon Empire  has won.  They really can’t get out of this rut of weird star trek dark universe situation.  But I guess it’s always interesting to see what happens next and how they are going to re-star-trekify this all. 

Episode 14, really still not liking some of this. there was a small moment that seemed good like the return of the admiral, but the rest not so good. … what the .. captain Georgio back too? how does this work? yes dramatically this is interesting and exciting but I really still want to get back to exploring. 

The writers seem to be very into constant plot twists.  The spore drive and then going to terraform a planet to make more spores  to map the homeward of the Klingons. I’m so not a fan of the spore drive. I really secretly hope that these episodes are all part of an elaborate hallucination of a character who has been infected and then wake up in a universe with no spore drive technology.  

Yay! Thank goodness that's the end of that season.  But I did find it a bit rushed that somehow the Klingon Empire got reunited so relatively quickly. Now really looking forward to some classic trek.