So, I hated Season One of Star Trek: Discovery.
Loved the characters, but hated the writing. Loathed it; detested it; despised it. You can read all about it, if’n you like.
But: some shows get better. Some Star Trek shows certainly do. And Season One had enough backstage garbage fires to give one hope that Season Two might be better, more solid, more coherent.
I’m not a glutton for punishment, and I’m not here to hate on Discovery. And you know what? If new Star Trek just isn’t for me, that’s OK too. Not everything is.
The deal I made with myself is this: I’m going to give Season Two three episodes. Take its measure; test the waters. See if it’s for me.
If I don’t like it, I’ll stop.
While I’m figuring out whether I like it… well, while I’m figuring it out, I’m gonna write stuff down. It’s not a bad way of figuring stuff out, plus, I get to share.
So, here’s eight initial thoughts about the Season 2 premiere — minor spoilers for the episode.
- This episode wasn’t painful. That’s already a HUGE win over almost all of Season 1.
2. On the other hand, the genre of this episode, with no ambiguity whatsoever, is “action-adventure.”
Not SF; not space opera; also not the melodrama and intrigue that were a lot of Season 1. The new order of the day is thrills, urgency and action. The big moments are all:
- “I need to take command of the ship; this is an UNBELIEVABLY URGENT EMERGENCY”
- “We need to fly through the asteroids; and we’re gonna DO IT ON MANUAL”
- “This CGI sequence of a ship doing daredevil stunts represents THE POWER OF MATH”
- “While we do our Starfleet stuff, we’re gonna MAKE SOME NOISE.”
I think Season 1 was going for “Star Trek, but actually Game of Thrones,” while Season 2’s goal is “Star Trek, but actually Star Wars.”
3. Which is a HUGE SHIFT for the series! If this is representative of the season at large, it’s an out-and-out switch of genre.
The episode is NOT SHY about, pretty blatantly, renouncing Season 1 and signalling that Season 2 is going to be way different.
Pike’s big intro is “I am NOT LIKE that S1 Captain you had, nu-uh, NOPE”. He also comes in swinging to disarm some repeated criticisms of Season 1 — addressing why the DISCO uniforms are different from TOS’s; insisting that it’s totally important to know the names of everybody on the bridge.
I don’t know how much this signals where DISCO is trying to go, but it’s definitely intent on distancing itself from where it’s been.
4. That being said: I strongly suspect the high-octane action focus might be more of an initial hook than the show’s entire nature. I’m not gonna judge this show by its pilot.
Mostly because that’ll probably be really hard to sustain over a whole season. Partially because they did this last season, too — a pilot that was primarily a tone-setting prologue, (and, that had a way bigger budget). Only then did they start fleshing out the actual premise.
I can’t say I like this structure — I suspect it’s built to appeal to a very broad demographic, get them to subscribe to CBS’s streaming service, and only then can they get to the actual story — but it’s important not to extrapolate too much from the first episode.
5. It’s kind of disturbing how much this season seems to be set up as a prequel to TOS-era Trek. Is that really what we need now? Really?
Because those are the big draws this episode sets up — Pike and Spock. It’s hard seeing how this kind of a season leaves any oxygen for the actual original Discovery characters. Indeed, this episode doesn’t seem to kick off any arcs for Burnham or Saru. Stamets gets “grieving for his husband” and Tilly gets “handwave-y science project of great import,” neither of which feel very significant at this point.
The Spock arc begins with a combination of “Spock as a kid was kind of an asshole” and “Spock got obsessed with (HANDWAVE-Y PLOT DEVICE)” — so this feels like a FedEx quest, at whose end a broken Spock will be Redeemed by Burnham’s Love and Humanity. Meh. Of course, It doesn’t have to play out that way, but that is what I’m reading here as the opening promises.
6. Michael Burnham’s character continues to be woefully poorly-served by the show’s writing. Yet again, instead of letting Burnham express meaningful character now, she’s gets “development” by glomming on yet another slab of mysterious, angsty backstory.
Back way-back-when on Vulcan, various awful things presumably happened. In the now, though, Burnham’s not much else beyond a thrill-seeking action hero — largely because those are the only scenes she gets. Her ten-second attempt to comfort Tilly has more heft to it than anything else in the episode — so it’s unfortunate we only get ten seconds of it. I see I’ll be renewing my #LetMichaelJoinABookClub campaign for the new season.
7. Somehow, I really liked Jett Reno, the weary engineer and improvised doctor the crew comes to rescue. She’s badass, unquestionably competent, but also exhausted. We only get a few minutes, but… she feels like an actual goddamn adult. I liked her. In a show which seems to think that “optimism” means going “YAAAY US WE’RE AWESOME AND ETHICAL” every now and than, we could definitely use a McCoy or an O’Brien. Kudos to actress Tig Notaro, and I hope the character continues well.
8. On reflection, the reason I opened promising “minor spoilers” is because almost nothing happened in this episode that wasn’t already in the season teaser.
In fact, almost nothing happened in this episode, period.
So, in summary: this episode nailed the niche of high-octane, low-thinky-bits action-adventure full of Trek-y namedropping. Which TBH is exactly what I think a lot of the production is aiming for — using Trek’s name-recognition as a springboard to launch generic adventure aimed for mass-market appeal, not for the SF or space opera audience.
Taken for what it is, it’s cheerful, light, fun, and devoid of nutritional content. That’s… not a great place to be. Definitely not what I’m looking for as a Star Trek fan; and not really healthy for the production itself, if it seriously does want to build a devoted, invested following. On the other hand, it does seem like a huge step up from the sloppy, incoherent, shock-happy mess of Season 1 — and, building up to interesting arcs and themes feels much more doable in even a very generic adventure show, over one that’s be-gritted and plot-twisted to death.
And it’s only the first episode. And it’s renounced the evils of Season 1. And it’s kinda fun.
DISCO is dead. Ummmmm. Long live, perhaps, DISCO?