I just got the Blu-Ray last week, and I’ve been binge watching it today on Boxing Day. I just finished DIsc 3.
Visually I’m finding that the episodes are kind of soft and not as sharp as say TOS, TNG or DS9 on Blu-Ray. They kind of look as sharp as Enterprise on Blu-Ray—-although Enterprise was done at the beginning of the HD era and the transfer process of the film (not to mention Season 4 being shot on either 1080i or 1080p videotape —-S4’s camera’s internal VCR could only record upto 1080i, but an external one capable of 1080p recording could be hooked up) was not as refined back then as it is now.
The DTS-HD (which I hear as normal DTS on my surround system) does a good job, although when I compare it to the 5.1 mixes for TOS, TNG, DS9 & Voyager, Discovery doesn’t have that “surround punch” that the others, even on DVD in Dolby Digital 5.1 (and matrixed from 2.0 surround) mixes have. Discovery seems really center heavy and doesn’t have that panning across the channels.
As for bonuses, while I’ve watched some trailers, and haven’t listened to the commentaries, the other bonuses don’t seem to be as well produced as the bonuses that were made for the other series and movies. In some cases, the bonuses are boring and I’m just hitting the menu button midway through to get back to the menu.
As for the Season itself——do the writers and producers even know what they are doing? Burnham, she’s the most uninteresting series lead that I’ve seen. I wish they would just kill her off. Christopher Pike, I’m sorry but I’m not getting that this is the same Christopher Pike as was played by Jeffrey Hunter. I realize that I’ve seen Jeffrey Hunter’s performance quite a bit, but even Bruce Greenwood played a better version of Christopher Pike, and one who you could believe was the same person (albeit in an alternate universe) as Hunter’s Pike. Plus I’m finding that Anson Mount just doesn’t have the same chemistry as Hunter had with both Leonard Nimoy’s Spock and Susan Oliver’s Vina with Discovery’s Spock and Vina.
And with Spock, again this actor just doesn’t seem to have the right chemistry with anyone. And he’s presenting Spock as his sterner self from the Kirk years, and not the Spock that we saw in “The Cage” or WNMHGB.
And the Stamet-Colbur relationship, these are the guys I thought were making Colgate or Crest toothpaste commercials in Season 1, but this Season, they should’ve left Colbur dead. I just haven’t found there to be any chemistry between these guys in terms of the romance angle. If they were playing best friends from high school or Starfleet Academy, who got assigned to the same ship and had different lovers, it might’ve worked better, but the romance between them, I’m finding the actors are just trying to force it and play it to hard, and that chemistry that’s needed is not there. I don’t support same sex romances and relationships, but at the same time when I watch other movies and TV shows with heterosexual romances and relationships, there are some where the actors have the right chemistry and there are others where both actors just don’t and it comes off as forced. And on Discovery this is one of those where it comes as forced.
And once again, I’m finding the whole season is rather generic sci-fi. I’ve had to remind myself a few times that I’m not watching Babylon 5, but Star Trek, since there are quite a few scenes where I thought Bruce Boxleitner and the rest of the living Babylon 5 cast had come in and started doing a B5 episode.
So, overall, I’m so-so on the series. And overall, I find that Discovery works better as an alternate reality series than one set in the Prime universe. But I won’t see Season 3 until the Blu-Ray comes out next November/December.
