Star Trek: Discovery premiere charts a new course for Trek
Star Trek: Discovery has beamed down, now we wait to see if fans accept it.
WARNING: This post may contain spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery. If you haven’t watched the new series you may want to turn back now before we go to warp.
CBS debuted the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery last night. The first episode aired on CBS, but the second was reserved for CBS All Access. The good news is that Star Trek: Discovery appears to be a well thought out science fiction show. The bad news is that most people in America probably won’t see it.
For the first time in the history of Star Trek, we don’t have a series that’s focused on the captain of the ship. Instead, we are following our new “number one” Michael Burnham. Burnham is a human that was raised on Vulcan by Sarek, the father of Spock. Burnham is the first human to attend the Vulcan science academy and therefore has a sort of split Vulcan, but also human, personality. Burnham’s character is really fun and seeing her charge headlong into the action like Kirk, but also rely on logic like Spock was fantastic.
We are also two episodes into the new series and we haven’t yet seen the Discovery herself. So far Star Trek: Discovery has focused on the Shenzhou. These two episodes set up the conditions of the Star Trek universe when Discovery takes place.
There’s plenty to love if you’re a Star Trek fan; Lt. Saru is going to quickly become a fan favorite and I can’t wait to see someone cosplay him. There were also some big changes to a universe that fans are very attached to. We aren’t talking about the look of the technology, it’s obviously not going to look like it did in the 1960s. We are talking about bigger canon issues.
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The show is in the Star Trek prime universe; that’s the universe with the original Kirk and Picard, but not everything lines up perfectly. Star Trek: Discovery is supposed to take place ten years before Kirk takes over the Enterprise and about a hundred years after Star Trek: Enterprise. The Federation is well established, but not quadrant sized like the Federation of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The biggest change is the Klingons. The look of the Klingons doesn’t bother me, but the beliefs of the Klingons have changed a lot. The Klingons were never particularly religious and they never much cared about burial rights. Klingons saw the bodies of the dead as empty shells that didn’t really matter much. Both of these facts change with Star Trek: Discovery.
The Klingons of Discovery are angry about the Federation because it’s a society made up of many different races. The Klingon leader T’Kuvma is all about purity. We also discover that the lighter skinned Klingons are not as important or honored as the darker skinned ones. Star Trek has always taken on the big issues of the world it’s in, and now we have Alt-Right Klingons.
Overall the show was fun, entertaining, and intriguing. It looks like it’s going to be a great ride. The only thing left is to see if CBS’ gamble of only putting the show on CBS All Access pays off.
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What did you think of the first episodes of Star Trek: Discovery? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments.