TV

Star Trek TOS – Season 1 – Part 1 – E01-13

So, this one feels slightly tricky. I have been making notes about episodes as I watch them, but also I have been writing up some on a private forum and having some back-and-forth there. Actually, maybe this will make it much easier.

Anyway, since Discovery is over, and I am caught up on Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, I decided to move on to Star Trek, The Original Series (TOS). I really want to rewatch the TNG era stuff, but I am kind of trying to knock out all of the “older era” stuff first. Also, as it turns out, I really have not watched TOS, basically ever. I have watched the TOS movies a whole lot, I have seen TNG and DS9 a ton. I am sure I have watched a few TOS episodes here and there, though so far, non of it seems familiar at all.

I have kind of gone back and forth on how to break this up. The “new shows” are all framed around ten episodes seasons and arcs, which makes things pretty short, comparably. Discovery is 15 episodes less and 2 seasons longer. I don’t think 10 episode chunks really works out too well either, that makes 8 posts total. Also, I am not really doing “write-ups”, just more, thoughts and observations. Not to mention it’s a nearly 60-year-old show with a planet of fan analysis and thought on it. I am not really “breaking news ground” here for anyone but me.

One thing I do want to throw in a bit is some occasional thoughts on how it relates to the new shows and that expanded continuity. So anyway, basically, some episodes may get lots of detailed comments, and others may get almost nothing.

S01E01 – The Cage

Side note, I watched this after watching later episodes, just before The Menagerie. The Cage is the originally unaired, then 20 years later aired pilot. Unlike the main show, the core cast consists of Captain Pike, Mr Spock, Number One (who does not have a real name) and a Doctor whose name I forget. No one else is familiar, even the Yeoman chick is different (not Yeoman Rand). Pike, Spock, and Number One would “go on” to be the main cast members in Strange New Worlds.

Which leads me to my first note, Pike comments about “I’m not used to women on the bridge” to Yeoman Colt. Which is funny in the context of both Discovery and Strange New Worlds, where there were plenty of women on the bridge. Both ships had women at the helm. The show itself also makes it an in joke since Number One is right there piloting the ship, and is literally second in command.

The episode itself kind of feels really rough and the acting, especially by the non main cast feels kind of stiff. There is also some neat stuff that I kind of like more than what we got. Like how they put on those little jackets on the away mission. The Jackets are ugly, but this sort of gear is something that shows up a lot more in the current gen Trek versus a lot of the older Trek where they just wear their uniforms all the time. It’s also interesting how many little “Trek lore” things are there, like Talos system is the main focus, and they mention Rigel VII and “M Class” planets. They mention Orions and there is a green Orion girl at one point. I don’t think there have been any Orions mentioned or shown at all at this point where I am in the main Kirk episodes.

There is also a lot of weirdness. They mention using “Rockets” which feels like it was replaced by “Impulse Engines”. They go to “Time Warp” and mention how humans have “broken the time warp barrier.”. They also push it right up to “Time Warp Factor 7”. At this point in the main episodes, most of the time, Enterprise only goes Warp 1. I think in one episode they pushed it to Warp 4 or 5.

The whole plot also had this weird underpinning note about a race of aliens who got so caught up in watching and following dreams (TV) their society collapsed. Feels a bit contradictory for a TV show. The whole show weirdly feels MORE Sci-Fi like than the main show has. I mean, Star Trek is definitely Sci-Fi, but The Cage just feels a bit more so in some ways.

It’s probably worth noting that there are references to this episode later in Discovery, when Pike has to return to Talos. I honestly can’t even remember WHY he went back, but he did.

S01E02 – The Man Trap

There is a lot of weirdness around order film d and order released, but I am just going off the order listed on Paramount+ and IMDB.

During a seemingly routine checkup away mission, Bones runs into an old flame, but she has been replaced by some sort of shape shifter who is sucking the salt from people to survive. Something like 4 or 5 people are killed, which is kind of nutty. I have started keeping a sort of running tab of how many crew members died, though the deaths seem to have slowed down quite a bit.

You can really tell they are still trying to get a handle on what exactly they want the show to be with style and uniforms.

S01E03 – Charlie X

Just to go a long with my running tally of death, they mention at one point that the Enterprise has 428 crew members. The Enterprise has to escort a seeming regular young man only to find out he has telepathic powers. The kid kind of feels like a sort of Q/Human hybrid, he can sort of “make whatever he wants happen.” The kid is really annoying and the whole thing is kind of a metaphor for puberty I think.

Three people are killed in this one including Yeoman Rand, but by the end, everyone is restores, except the crew of the Antares, which was listed as 20 people.

S01E04 – Where No Man Has Gone Before

Speaking of Q, I believe this episode was reconned in a book that the cause of the ESP powers gained by the crew members was from a lost/trapped member of the Q continuum. There seems to be a lot of push on telepathic and ESP powers in these earlier episodes, I suppose it’s a cheap and easy way to make it seem futuristic without actually having to have fancy effects. There are also a lot of weird uniforms in this one.

A few things that feel off. They track down an old Earth ship that drifted to the Galaxy’s edge 200 years ago. Star Trek Enterprise I believe was 100 years ago and was the first really Warp Capable Earth Ship, and I am not sure First Contact was more or less than 200 years, but either way, that seems really too early.

One thing though, I really found interesting. In Star Trek Discovery they go to th edge of the galaxy and they have to leave the galaxy and breech the barrier and everyone acts like it’s a HUGE deal, it’s “never been done.” But here we are, episode 4, maybe even the first one actually produced, and they are exiting the galaxy.

Nine people died in this episode.

S01E05 – Naked Time

Aye, it’s Nurse Chapel finally. I am sure anyone who cares knows, but Chapel in TOS, is played by Majel Barrett, who also played Number One in the Cage, and later plays the ship’s computer voice and Leaxana Troi. She was Gene Roddenberry’s girlfriend at the time of TOS and later they were married. Roddenberry of course being the creator of Star Trek.

Chapel in this feels soooo so different than the SNW Chapel. Honestly, for what I have experienced so far, Chapel from SNW would have almost been better as a version of Yeoman Rand. Rand is in this show a lot and goes on away missions and such a lot. Rand feels way more like a former war fighter that Chapel on SNW is shown to be.

Naked Time is one of those “people put it in lists” episodes, and it’s one of the better ones so far. I believe this is the first time we have seen Sulu, and he gets to run around with his shirt off sword fighting people. Also notable for firsts, they are calling the medical area “Sickbay” now instead of of “The Dispensary.”

As for the plot, there is basically a virus going around the ship that causes people to become emotionally less inhibited. Both Spock and Kirk have some pretty good moments here, but Spock’s is definitely better than Kirk’s.

We have had some form of singing in two episodes now as well, which makes the musical episode of Strange New Worlds feel less random. Like, singing in Star Trek has been a thing since forever too!

The episode ends on a random time travel moment where they sort of rewind time a few hours to avoid getting the virus in the first place. I am told this episode was supposed to air later and lead into another time travel themed episode, but I have not gotten there yet.

S01E06 – The Enemy Within

It’s Thomas Kirk(er)! That was a little TNG joke, they basically did this plot in TNG with Riker. Kirk gets split into two people by a transporter accident. It’s not quite the same as Thomas Riker though because Kirk has his personality split as well, one Kirk is aggressive and rude and the other is meek and cowering.

Because they are not sure what is happening with the transporter, Sulu and some others get stranded. I guess there is only one transporter room. Didn’t the Enterprise have a medical transporter in Strange New Worlds? Oh wait, that technically has not happened yet, despite being in the past. No shuttle to manually rescue them either. I guess they all got destroy d during that battle with Control years ago, no wait, that didn’t happen in the past yet either.

Ok, I’ll stop.

This is probably my favorite episode so far and feels the most “Like Star Trek” of everything so far.

Bones says the line for the first time, “He’s dead Jim!”. In relation to the death of the poor Space Dog in a costume.

S01E07 – Mudd’s Women

Mudd is one of the few reoccurring characters in TOS Lore. And one of the few that I had heard of before watching the show. I believe (and I may be wrong, i didn’t double check), Mudd shows up in 3 TOS episodes and one episode of the TOS Animated show. He is also in 2 Episodes of Discovery and maybe at least one TOS video game.

When he shows up, he uses a fake name. Despite that his real name is in the show title, and that the Closed Captions for the show, list him as “Mudd”. Maybe neither of those were an issue during the original run. Mudd is trying to sell some women as wives to a bunch of miners on a barely habited planet. What the heck is with all the mostly deserted planets in this galaxy? How is it at all sustainable for 1-5 people to live alone on a planet? Especially for such an important resource as Lithium Crystals, which I think may be the first mention of them, though it’s not clear if this is the same as Dilithium used to power the warp drives. Shouldn’t there be a fairly large operation on this planet? How do they even get the crystals off the planet?

Anyway, it turns out that Mudd’s women are actually “ugly and older” than they appear, but he keeps giving them some sort of serum to make them more desirable, both visually and through some sort of pheromonal interactions, to everyone. Before they arrive at the planet though Mudd’s identity is revealed and there is a pretty amusing trial because Mudd in general, is an already wanted criminal. It’s not real clear what happened to Mudd in the end though. The women end up with the men, despite their “lack of beauty”, and Mudd retreats with Kirk to the Enterprise, but then he just sort of vanishes. Did they throw him in the brig?

I also want to take a moment to compare this Mudd a bit with Rain Wilson’s Mudd from Discovery. This Mudd is a lot more of a jokey goofball than the Discovery take, who is quite menacing really, especially after murdering Lorca dozens of times in a time loop. I think I might like this Mudd a bit better really.

S01E08 – What are Little Girls Made Of

If I were making an “essential episodes” list in relation to TOS and Discovery and SNW, I would definitely include this episode. Season 3 of Strange New Worlds is supposed to have some plots involving Doctor Korby and Christine Chappel and basically will probably serve as a prequel to this specific episode. The Enterprise heads to planet Exo 3 to meet with Doctor Korby who was Christine Chapel’s former fiancé. Kirk and Chapel beam down together because Korby insists on showing Kirk what his research has found. It turns into an android fueled Invasion of the Body Snatchers episode.

Didn’t we do this plot? The Evil Kirk Clone thing?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. And there were a couple of Redshirts sent down as well, but they quickly get killed off, add in two for the Body Count, which seems to have lessened quite a bit since the series started. Kirk gets replaced by an android which gets sent back to the Enterprise, these androids want to get off the planet I guess, though I’m not sure why they went to so much trouble since Kirk would have just, beamed them all up if they had asked. Fortunately, Kirk was smart and gave himself a “fake memory” during the clone process and the fake gives itself away by insulting Spock.

Meanwhile Kirk is stuck on the planet fighting androids trying to escape, he tries flirting with the lady android to no avail, sadly, he doesn’t try to flirt his way past the big male android. Also these androids are a good example of why we need Assimov’s laws of robotics. Because they are kind of murderous. Chapel doesn’t serve a ton of purpose on the planet other than getting just generally traumatized by pretty much everything. Tricked by fake Kirk, and tricked by Korby and just generally kind of terrorized.

Kirk also mentions his brother George Kirk at one point, which was the first time that came up.

S01E09 – Miri

Hey! They found Slartyblartfast’s backup Earth! It’s just like Earth, same continenbts and everything. Apparently this was a sort of, concept that was supposed to be more prevalent in TOS, the whole “other Earths” thing. This one is populated by some zombie people? I guess? Or it’s just some sort of weird ageing virus. They encounter a small colony of Children who, age weirdly, or something, they are all hundreds of years old, but still children, the virus basically makes them go crazy and age rapidly when they reach puberty.

Also, 3 trained miners running a planet alone was kind of ridiculous, but a dozen or so actual minors, running a planet alone, for hundreds of years, WHILE battling the occasional zombified crazy adult, that’s a bit much. It’s clearly just an excuse to reuse the sets from the Andy Griffith Show.

Anyway, the away team contracts the virus, which gives them 7 days left before they all die from it, and because the children stole the communicators, they have no way of quickly synthesizing a cure using the ship’s computer. Ok, more accurately, Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Rand all get the virus, the random redshirts don’t seem affected at all. Rand basically admits that she has wanted to get in Kirk’s pants, though in a very round about way, and to make a reveal that is wholly unrelated to wanting Kirk to notice her.

Miri, who is one of the children that the away team befriends, has basically fallen in love with Kirk. They sort of use this as a tell that she is “about to become a woman” because she is having “womanly feelings”. It’s a little creepy, but at one point Kirk shows up and the other kids start calling him “Mr Lovey Dovey” and start chanting “BONK!” or something similar at him.

(INSERT BONK MEME)

It does lead to a funny line at the end were Kirk comments that he isn’t into “older women”. Given Miri, while physical is, 14 or 15 I guess, is in fact, like 200-300 years old.

They manage to cure the virus in the end, but like Mudd, it’s not real clear where the kids went. did they just leave all those kids there alone? They also never even attempt to really explain why this planet looks EXACTLY like Earth. Also, why didn’t they call this episode “Neverland”?

S01E10 – Dagger of the Mind

Man, what a weirdly predictable episode, though it was pretty good. The Enterprise is transporting supplies to a prison planet, and I immediately thought, “they are going to also beam something up and it will have a prisoner inside.” and sure enough, they do.

But it’s not just any prisoner, it’s actually the escaped director of the prison. It seems his assistant(??) has basically brain wiped everyone on the planet into being perfect obedient slaves. This is pretty much just an excuse for Kirk to go down to the planet with some random woman whom he apparently sort of had a thing with at a Christmas party. It’s kind of weird, because we have never seen this character, nor the Christmas Party mentioned several times. She is supposed to be McCoy’s sort of, representative, to prove that the prison is fishy, but all she does is side with the crazy prison doctor.

Anyway, Kirk gets captured and pseudo brainwashed into thinking he is madly in love with this random woman, something that doesn’t seem to get resolved or cured at all by the end of the episode (this is starting to become a trend). Eventually though the mad doctor gets knocked out in the brainwashing chamber and becomes a vegetable, then a dead vegetable.

Did I say I enjoyed this episode? Maybe it wasn’t so great. I do believe this was the first time Spock did the Vulcan neck pinch thing and the Vulcan Mind Meld.

S01E11 – The Corbomite Maneuver

Ok, maybe I was thinking of this episode as the one I enjoyed.

Because I like tracking these little “first time” moments, McCoy says thing he is known for, “Damn it Jim, I’m a Doctor not a shuttle conductor.” I am pretty sure that’s new. What the hell is a shuttle conductor?

The Enterprise encounters a mysterious cube blocking their path. You might wonder how you can be blocked in the vastnness of space, well, it moves to keep blocking them. There is also this really annoying and winey crew member ont he bridge with Lieutenant Bailey. I have a note in my notes that simply reads, “Spock hates crewman Bailey.” Anyway, they end up shooting the cube with phasers to escape. I am pretty sure this is the first time the ship has fired phasers at anything. We don’t have torpedoes or shuttle craft yet but we have phasers!

The little cube though is replaced by a big sphere that threatens to destroy the enterprise, but offers them ten minutes to “pray to their deities.” Bailey kind of flips out that everyone is so calm about their imminent doom and he gets relieved of duty. Who is this joker again? Kirk bluffs the alien that they won’t be killed so easily because they are protected by a fake material called Corbomite, so instead the Alien ops to tow the Enterprise to a nearby planet and leave the crew stranded there. The ship manages to out maneuver the alien and escape from it’s clutches, and the alien reveals himself to be a much smaller, and much less menacing enemy, who was just looking for friends, basically.

They leave Bailey behind to be the alien’s friend. There are so many ways to go with this on head canon. Did Bailey make the alien decide to end itself? Did Bailey annoy the alien enough that the alien kills him and then decides humanity must pay for his suffering? Yet another unresolved plot device I guess.

S01E12 – The Menagerie Part 1 | S01E13 – The Menagerie Part 2

I mentioned at the start I thought it would be fund to wrap around back to Captain Pike for this post. Let me just start off, watching The Cage and The Menagerie back to back was a huge mistake. The Menagerie Part 1 is like, 50% clips from The Cage. Part 2 is like, 99% clips from The Cage. Part two is so much repeated material I don’t even have any notes on it. They just went back to “present day” when they needed to insert a commercial break.

Part 1 at last has some interesting set up plot. The Enterprise gets summoned to Starbase 11, only to discover that no such transmission was actually made. It turns out Spock had altered the data banks to force the ship to Starbase 11, where a crippled Captain Pike now resides. This Pike is AFTER the “Pike saves some cadets and becomes a wheelchair-bound paraplegic” moment that was shown to Pike during Discovery and that haunts him in Strange New Worlds.

Spock does more computer manipulation and hijacks the Enterprise, basically telling the crew that Captain Kirk has sent them on a secret mission. That mission, is to return Pike to Talos IV, so that he can live out his life in the comfort of fantasy created by the Talosians. Apparently going to Talos IV is the “only death penalty” still on Starfleet’s books, which seems a little extreme honestly. Also, Pike, realizes Spock’s plan and protests, very adamantly. Pike does not want this.

Anyway, Kirk and the Station 11 Admiral head out in a shuttlecraft to chase the Enterprise. We FINALLY have shuttles! Well, a, shuttle. the shuttle isn’t capable of keeping up though and runs out of power, and Spock rescues them, but not before locking in the ship’s course and locking everyone out of the computer. Do they not have Cybersecurity in the future?

Anyway, what follows is a trial of Spock for the mutiny, which mostly consists of clips from The Cage. In the end, it turns out the Admiral riding along with Kirk was also a Talosian illusion, and there was no actual court marshal and everyone is saved” from the death penalty.

Yay? I guess? I mean, if I were Kirk, I might still be a little upset with Spock.

So that wraps up my part one for my Star Trek The Original Series thoughts. Future installments may be a bit more brief, at least, they won’t have as much “introduction” tacked on to the front.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

Aug 5th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Despite that I’ve been writing about Star Trek Discovery, what really brought me back to Star Trek was Strange New Worlds. I had tried and given up on Discovery several times, not making it past the first episode, and I wasn’t hearing much great and Star Trek Picard. I was hearing good things about Strange New Worlds. I know the timelines and continuity is iffy, but it’s essentially a prequel series to The Original Series.

Something I kind of realized when starting SNW, is that I have never really watched TOS. I have seen episodes here and there for sure, and I have watched the movies many many times. I even have a pile of notes on the Animated series somewhere so I could forget to blog about it. But I have not really watched TOS properly. I may have to fix that. I am fairly familiar with it, but more with elements from the movies. For example, I forgot Nurse Chapel was there on TOS quite a bit, she is a main character here in SNW. There are actually several minor crew members in SNW that are also minor crew members in TOS.

Anyway, I also am aware of Captain Pike and how he fit into TOS. He was captain in the TOS pilot, and in a later episode after he was basically crippled into a space wheelchair thing. Basically, he was Captain of The Enterprise before Kirk. Which is the story SNW is showing us. The more interesting TOS character here is young Spock, who served under Pike before serving under Kirk. Rounding out the TOS characters is Uhura, who served as Communications Officer under Kirk, though she is a lot more floaty in her duties here under Pike. Part of her story is sort of, finding her place.

The show has its own share of new characters though, or in some cases, fleshed out minor characters. Pike has his Number One, who didn’t have a name in TOS, or in her Season 2 Discovery appearance. She gets a name finally, though it’s funny because her first name is “Una”, which is suspiciously close to “Uno”. There is the previously mentioned Nurse Christine Chapel, and her partner in crime Doctor M’Benga. Chapel was fairly present in TOS, but M’Benga actually did appear as well in a couple of episodes. The main cast is rounded out with Security Chief La’an Noonien Singh, whom is a descendant of well known Star Trek villain Khan Noonien Singh. And lastly, probably my favorite of the new characters, Lt. Erika Ortegas, who helmsman under Pike.

Oh right, there is also Captain Christopher Pike. I am really enjoying Pike as captain, though he does come off as feeling very Kirk-like at times. That may be a side effect of just how much more like Star Trek this show feels as a whole. Especially next to Discovery (Though I watched Discovery AFTER watching SNW). Unlike Discovery, this show is all about the crew and their interactions with each other.

There is a lot of strange irony going on that Ortegas is my favorite character here, and Unlike her character and feel like I know more about her character than most of the Discovery Crew. The irony being that Ortegas isn’t even a very fleshed out character. There was even kind of a memory episode where everyone lost their memory and Ortegas summed up her entire character as, “I fly the ship.”

Which bring up another thing I like about this show, it’s much more episodic in nature. There are hints of an underlying narrative, but it’s just that, it’s an underlying narrative, and less so a running plot thread. There are also a lot of subtle nods to various things in Trek. Characters that show up later again and such. A lot of the show revolves more around the character interactions as well, which is so nice because part of what makes Trek enjoyable is a fun crew that gets along. We still get history for these characters as well, with touches on La’an’s unsteadiness about her ancestry, or Chapel and M’Benga’s time during the Klingon War where they did some.potentially shady missions. There is exploration of Spock’s relationship with his Vulcan fiance T’Pring, complicated by his increasing feelings for Nurse Chapel.

But there are also a lot of fun goofy stuff going on. We get an entire musical episode when the crew encounters a special rift with a proclivity for music. There is also a really fun crossover episode with Lower Decks, where two of the Lower Decks members, Ensigns Boimler and Mariner, are transported to the “real world” past.

We also get some nods at things to come. Pike is haunted by a memory he was given during his time on Discovery, about his future death. He knows he is going to die and he knows there is nothing he can do to stop it. There are also several cameo appearances by a young Lt James T. Kirk. I am a bit torn on Kirk. The actor does a really good job and I like his character, but he doesn’t really look or act like Shatner. Funny enough, he looks like Jim Carey, who is most responsible for parodying Kirk and basically creating the “Kirk… talks like … he hasa weird… speech impediment” trope, that isn’t really very accurate.

Kirk doesn’t yet serve on the Enterprise though, so he only shows up occasionally.

Anyway, rather than push seasonal write ups, I figured I would wrap Season 1 and 2 up into one, general thoughts, write up. Overall, Strange New Worlds is really great though, and it’s done a great job of pulling me me back to Star Trek.

Star Trek Discovery – Season 1

Jul 1st, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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I have been mostly avoiding the newer Star Trek shows. One, I was under the mistaken impression that they were either part of the New Movies timeline, which I dislike, or they were yet ANOTHER new Timeline. It does not help that Discovery really, REALLY feels like they initially intended for it to be a new new timeline.

Everything about this show really feels way more advanced than other Trek shows, which is way weird because on the timeline of Trek Show continuity, it’s second after Star Trek Enterprise. It happens roughly 10-15 years before Star Trek TOS. I am sure the actual dates are out there, but like I said, roughly.

But we have holograms all over, and hologram displays on the bridge, and a ship that looks like a late TNG-era ship in Discovery.

And the Klingons. The Klingons are really fucking weird. Spoilers (for a now quite old show), I think this was a big complaint and they do eventually fix it in a handwavey way I will probably mention when I get to Season 2. The excuse here is basically, these Klingons are kind of a cult for very old Klingon ways. They also have this big ship covered in coffins which vaguely resembles a Klingon Battle Cruiser in shape, but it’s bigger and looks nothing like a Klingon Battle Cruiser.

There is also a core plot part of the show and the ship in the Spore Drive. Which is basically a Deus Ex Machina Warp Drive running on mushrooms and magic that transports the ship instantly. It does have some interesting limitations on its use, but it really feels like the show runners hate the usual time urgency that pops up in Trek shows a lot.

Star Trek isn’t the Expanse, where everything takes weeks to travel between places, but Warp still is “slow” in that it acknowledged the limitations of just how fuck huge space is.

Which kind of touches back on why I have been avoiding this. And not for trying. It took me three tries to actually stick with it. It really feels at times like the writers just don’t quite “get” Star Trek. I know, I probably sound like a big picky nerd, but all of the older shows just had this particular feel. They presented a perfect nice future with people who excel at what they do and the conflict was solving the problems of others. Sometimes the drama on this show feels like it’s a bit much.

Also the weird tech I consistency really bugs me. It’s gotten better as the series has gone on, but it would have been much better had they just gone another 100-200 years past TNG and made a “future, future” Trek show.

I mean, that’s kind of how TNG got away with a lot. Someone knew they could make things work better production-wise than a show made in the 60s and to not make it feel weird they just, aged up the timeline. Why can Enterprise D go to Warp 9 versus TOS basically maxing at Warp 6? Because it’s THE FUTURE! It’s the Future’s Future!

You ever wish you had a reason to feel bad for a ten foot tall micro-organism?

Over time, it does kind of feel like the writers realized this and rolled things back a bit. Also, the USS Discovery is supposed to be a super advanced prototype sort of ship, so you could sort of write off some of the inconsistency that way, except the first two episodes take place on the USS Shenzhou, which is just, a normal boring Federation starship.

The show also eschews its Trekisms in other ways. USS Discovery does not seem to have a Chief Medical Officer, or Chief Engineer, or Chief Science Officer. Or at least, they are not main characters. The crew complement and ship layout are also confusing. When doing Spore Jumps, the saucer parts of the ship start spinning, do people have quarters in these areas? Sometimes they do these weird internal Turbolift shots that also make the ship seem much more hollow than it actually is. The aft section seems to be like 90% shuttle Bay. It’s just, really not clear. Once again, not really sticking to the “grounded” parts of Star Trek sci-fi

The plot itself is alright, with some interesting twists at the end of the season that I will avoid for spoiler reasons. The whole thing is basically 3 acts with a two-episode setup front-ending it all. The set up 2 part episode takes place on the Shinzou and sets up Burnham’s history, this leads into some Klingon War stuff and a bit of an “episode of the week-ish” format. They also explore the Spore Drive quite a bit during this part. Then there is part teo, which is a visit to another far-off place, with a twist at the end that would have actually been more interesting if the surprise clue for it was not revealed the instant it happened. Then we return for the third act and Deus Ex wrap up the Klingon War, which has almost destroyed the Federation in Discovery’s absence.

If Burnham is a bit of a Mary Sue character, Discovery is definitely a Mary Sue ship.

Speaking of Burnham, is probably worth commenting on the characters a bit. There is another non-Trek thing going on here where there are only like, 5 crew members we care about and the rest of the bridge crew are literally just set pieces. It actually felt weird when they suddenly all started talking during the last few episodes of the season. They seem to be pushing some of the secondary non-federation/crewmember characters a bit more to make up for the smaller “main cast”.

The main character is Michael Burnham, who has no rank during this season but basically serves as Science Officer. She is also Spock’s adopted sister and is perfect in everyway! (/s). It’s really weird how much Ambassador Sarak shows up in this show and never shows up during Strange New Worlds where Spock’s is a main character. Anyway, she lost her parents at a young age and Sarak took her in to raise her as a Vulcan to strengthen human/Vulcan relations. This is all explored more in Season 2.

Discovery’s 1st Officer is Saru, an alien from a planet that is driven by fear and survival. He often commends the Discovery and Shenzou when the captain is busy, as 1st officer. He doesn’t get a ton of background but he is one of the more interesting characters in the show. He also is very tall and has this goofy way of walking.

The spore drive is a bit part of the ship and plot and is controlled by Stamets, who essentially serves the role of Chief Engineer, but he isn’t and works with plants and spores and the space magic of the show. His characterization is a bit inconsistent, early on he feels very anal and strict, but over time he seems to just be, kind of worried but not so much, most of the time. He is also gay, we see his Doctor Boyfriend a few times, but for much of this season Doctor Boyfriend is kind of a non-character until we need to sympathize with this couple more for “plot reasons”. He is, an ok, character, I find him a little annoying at times.

Sylvia Tilly, a Cadet, or Ensign or low ranking officer who works under Stamets. She is also Burnham’s roommate and as such, more or less Burnham’s best friend, eventually. She is bubbly and insecure, and kind of feels like she exists to make Stamets come off as more likeable sometimes. Just kidding, she exists to be the Mary Sue character when the plot needs Burnham to suffer. I expected to like Tilly and maybe overtime, but for season 1, I found her to be a bit, really annoying.

Lastly, the remaining important character , is Captain Lorca. Whom I disliked at first, but then is style of Captaining kind of grew on me and I found that I really liked him. Then I kind of really disliked him again. But that doesn’t really matter by Season 2.

Honorable mention I suppose to Ash Tyler. He has the most convoluted and weird story line going on, and he becomes Burnham’s love interest pretty quickly, and we are supposed to like him, I guess, but man, I sure don’t like him. Especially because of his participation in the previously mentioned “Doctor Boyfriend is kind of a non character until we need to sympathize with this couple more for plot reasons,” moment. Because unlike Stamets alone, Stamets+ Doctor Boyfriend was pretty good and interesting.

Anyway, that about sums up my general thoughts on Season 1 and my “before I really watched” impressions.