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Season 2, Episode 1 of Star Trek Discovery: My review

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So, Discovery has come out with its second season, and it definitely appears to be coming in swinging. But before I start talking about Season 2’s first episode, it’s probably important to talk a bit about season one.

Season one was controversial, to say the least. Here are a couple of issues that fans have brought up.

  1. The Klingons don’t look like Klingons. This is what happens when you hire makeup artists who watch episodes of Survivor instead of shell out the money for Netflix account where they could have watched episodes of the previous iterations of Star Trek.
  2. The star isn’t the captain. That’s just kind of blasphemy, the sort of obnoxious oversight that would cause Kirk to leap at an enemy with both feet and then fall down on his behind, commonly referred to as the Kirk Maneuver, or Kirk Fu.
  3. Technology that surpasses all previous LATER IN THE TIMELINE Treks. Spore drive? The ships? Actor’s wigs that actually look like their own hair?
  4. Did I mention Klingons?
  5. A misleading plot that was going somewhere but took time to get there. I’ll talk about that later.
  6. (spoiler, so don’t read this part if you haven’t seen the show) Michelle Yeoh dies almost as soon as the show starts. Michelle Yeoh. The best actor and most enjoyable character dies almost as soon as the show starts. And then we get her again, which is great, but this wasn’t until long after the parametics revived me and helped me back to my remote.
  7. (spoiler, so don’t read this part either) The Mirror Universe showing up almost as “hey, oh yeah, we’re doing this now, and we’re going to be doing this for the rest of the season”).
  8. The main character (and possibly its the actress herself) is not very engaging. Just there. And she’s the sister of Spock. Okay, we need another number.
  9. Sister of Spock? Really? This is the one they mention in Episode 14, right? Oh wait, they never mentioned her. She’s kind of unknown to everyone. And she’s a human. Not a Vulcan. Um, okay. I guess we’ll have to wait for Season Two to figure out her deal with Spock. I just hope we don’t focus the entire season trying to figure out her deal with Spock. Oops, spoke too soon.

That being said, the first season was actually pretty good. Most people who hated Star Trek Discovery didn’t give it more than the first three episodes, which dragged on so badly. Once the season picked up, it never let go, and that’s what made it completely worth it. But you had to actually buy into that and stick it out. Fortunately, I was still being revived by the paramedics at that time, so I was stuck in front of the TV. (Aside, I am only joking. No need to send condolences, unless it’s in the form of money, then I’m feeling better and could end up keeling over any day now, so send LOTS of money).

Which brings me into Episode 1 of the new season. It’s filled with a lot of wow factors in this episode, so much that I ended up watching it a second time.

And that’s when I started to see the problems. Let me mention a few:

  1. Is this season really The Search For Spock? I kind of remember another movie with that title before.
  2. We waited until the second season to start fleshing out the main character. This isn’t a slice of an onion being presented. This is backstory that should have been in the first two episodes.
  3. Spock as a mean-spirited, anti-sister brother right off the bat just seems odd. Sure, Spock might have grown since then, but not sure I like this version of Spock’s child.
  4. Captain Christopher Pike. It really feels like they just read a lexicon of Star Trek characters and then add one of them to the mix. But it makes no sense. Think about it. He’s the captain of the U.S.S. Starship Enterprise, which is broken, so he’s going to go galavanting on Discovery for a season (or however many episodes he’s cast) before going back to his own ship. Navies don’t generally do that. I assume Starfleet doesn’t either, as everything else seems to show the future navy as very much like the present navies. He’s going to stay with his ship as it’s being repaired. I always hate the badly written plot device of trying to figure a way of squeezing someone into a story where they surely just don’t belong. Pike has his own adventures. If you want to see them, make a show called Star Trek: Enterprise: The Pike Adventures.
  5. Ensign Silly. Tilly? The running gag on Discovery. Her naivete is cute at times, but they’re trying way too hard to oversell a very minor character. She’s starting to become Wesley Crusher, and that’s when people are going to start throwing things at her. Or at least hope the strange aliens who call themselves Klingon might throw something at her, like a batliff.
  6. Section 31. Seems that Michelle Yeoh’s doppler double from the mirror universe is going to involved somehow. I could imagine her starting it, or at least being quite instrumental in getting it going. My one complaint is that we’re already hearing “Section 31” in the trailer for the second episode. The agency is supposed to be extremely secret, almost so secret that the agents themselves wouldn’t often talk about it to others, and even to themselves. A good series of writers would have developed her character within a shadowy organization and not even mention who they were. EVERY Star Trek fan would know who they were, and that would have been good enough. Never revealing it would have brought that cloud of their mystery into the mix and would have made it awesome. If they really wanted to reveal it, it should have been a final moment revelation AT THE END OF THE SEASON.

Not a whole bunch, but a few that could easily bog down the rest of the season. I hope they figure out how to get around those.

What they are doing is setting up a nice mystery that I hope they do something stellar with. Stellar. See what I did there? Stellar? Like stars as in Star Trek. Oh, I’m so funny.

But yeah, they could so something amazing with this and as they proved in season one, they do have awesome writers that once they’re given some space really know how to do something with it.

I’m on the fence with the whole Section 31 thing. One thing I thought would make it awesome (even with their revelation already) is for the whole series to be leading to reveal that Discovery is the instrument that causes Section 31 to come to life because everything about Discovery so far has been “it’s a secret ship that even Starfleet knows little about”. They kind of set that tone right from the very first episode when the main character is recruited into their ranks from her prison cell. Part of the problem with the first season (and even in a few moments of the first episode of the second season) is that they kind of forget about that. The writers treat Discovery as just another ship when before it was pretty secretive in what it was doing and even how it was built. It’s sad if they just ignore that and try to make it a happy, Starfleet vessel.

So far, I’m interested in continuing. Not a fan of CBS All Access crap. I’ll be honest. I don’t watch a single show OTHER than Discovery on there. I don’t really like ANY of CBS’s shows that I’ve seen. If they’d put more intriguing science fiction on there, I would, but even their few selections they do have are either badly written or designed by people who think we want shoot em ups in future settings. But what do I know? Maybe that IS what people wants these days. Look at some of our leaders we choose. But that’s another story.

Now that Spock (Zachary Quinto) has come out of the closet, will it affect his Star Trek career?

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First off, I have to say “hats off” to Zachary Quinto for coming out of the closet as a response to a bullying incident that he felt warranted his revelation of his gay lifestyle. Quinto, who is best known for playing Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the sinister Sylar on the television series Heroes, probably could have remained incognito about his sexual lifestyle and no one would have really suspected (or even cared), but now that he has revealed his personal background it should be interesting to see where things go from here.

The reason I mention this is because of a distinct hypocritical situation that is probably going to play itself out over the next few years. You see, Star Trek has always been one of those shows that likes to think of itself as forward thinking and taboo breaking. It was known for the first interracial kiss that occurred between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, was thinking of quitting Star Trek, Star Trek lore reminds us that Martin Luther King, Jr. told her she couldn’t quit, that she was making strides for the Civil Rights Movement that were happening in front of the audience in ways that no one else could do at the time. Whereas she thought she was playing a simple part, and not receiving the recognition deserved, others saw her as the ground-breaking maverick who would forever be remembered for her accomplishments.

It seems somewhat ironic, or surprisingly symbolic, that Lieutenant Uhura is again involved in another stride forward from Star Trek, as it is her reboot relationship with Commander Spock that breaks the traditional lore, showing her involved in a relationship with the Vulcan, whereas none was suggested before during the Leonard Nimoy era of Spock. Now, this Spock is going to be seen in a completely different light, because now everyone going to see the new episodes of the reboot will forever know that the new Spock is being played by a gay man. If seen from the eyes of the Star Trek universe, this should be seen as nothing but a step forward, as some of the newer episodes of the later series, like the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were not afraid to explore very controversial and ground-breaking ground in this area, including an episode where the Enterprise’s doctor, a woman, rekindled a romance with a species hopping former lover who was now in the body of a woman, causing one of the more awkward love-scenes between two women in a way that was quite brilliant in that it was not exploited, comfortable or in any way frightened of what it was attempting to portray.

However, even though the show might be ground-breaking and willing to explore new ground, I wonder if the fan base feels the same way. While I have zero problem with an outed gay man playing the iconic Commander Spock in the new reboot, one has to wonder how the loyal fans will handle the same kind of scenes where Kirk and Spock were conquering the galaxy together. Even during the straight days of the two iconic galactic heroes, there was a spread of fandom fiction that postulated the possibilities of Kirk and Spock being gay lovers, and quite often such portrayals were seen with harsh indignation from other fans. The very idea that Kirk and Spock might have even been suspected of homosexuality filled pages and pages of fan blogs about the two characters, and quite often there was an immediate condemnation of the very nature of the idea.

So, how will fans handle this sort of a character going forward? Will they be able to separate the actor from the character, or will they feel an apprehension with Quinto as the iconic Spock? When they see Spock wooing Lieutenant Uhura, will there be a sense that something’s just not right, as it is very hard to see the character through the eyes of an actor who is perceived to be faking a romantic involvement (even though that’s what most actors are supposed to be doing anyway)? Much like the criticisms of Rock Hudson after it was discovered he died of AIDS and was secretly gay, are audiences capable of that suspension of disbelief, or will they spend their time over analyzing every scene, kind of like music critics over analyzed Melissa Etheridge’s lyrics after discovering she was a lesbian, believing that somehow that changed the very nature of any love ballad she may have composed?

Personally, I find Quinto to be a brilliant actor and look forward to the many roles he will continue to play, but at the same time I wonder how much criticism he will receive as the indominable Spock, now having to live up to the baggage that will now be added to the part.