Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x02 - "Battle at the Binary Stars"

She's the only one so far who felt like she actually belonged in Trek.

 

Yeah. You get the feeling that they thought "we'll sell this by having a mini action movie before the series starts because Trek is too slow and boring for the dummies in the main audience". I think that is a mistake.

 

I was under the impression that Klingon females (per Gowron) weren't allowed on the Council, but there appeared to be at least one (with the headdress) in the group of holographic leaders.

The Klingon language scenes really continued to feel quite muddy in the second ep, although I noticed that the Council members didn't seem to have as much makeup caked on and were able to enunciate their words and generally facially emote better than T'Kumva and his brood. T'Kumva and his people honestly sounded like they had whole bags of marbles in their mouths when they spoke. Perhaps that was intentional, or perhaps the T'Kumva scenes were filmed earlier, using more "experimental" makeup design, which they later perfected and streamlined for the Council member actors to be able to deliver their lines better. Don't really know - jury is still out.

As others have said, the second ep was definitely a step up from the first, agreed.

 

Azetbur was chancellor long before that. The novelverse explained it as her successor being a prick who wanted to stamp out her legacy with some good old-fashioned sexism.

 

Ah, got it - makes sense.

 

I feel That was only a recent change in the 24th century

Gorkon’s Daughter took his place, and another female Klingon, I don’t remember who, was offered a seat in either TNG or DS9

 

She needed to die because it caused Burnham to make the choice to switch her phaser from stun to kill, so that hse killed T'Kuvma, and prolonged a war that they beamed over to stop by capturing him alive.

 

In other words, her death was convenient to the plot.

 

I heard Yeager and Earhart.

 

PART TWO: "Battle At Binary Stars" (SPOILERS)

PROS:
* Hey, look, now we've got something happening. It's almost as if the premiere was supposed to pick up here to keep people in their seats. (Sorry, folks. Should have signed up for the second half of the premiere we said would be free.) Dialogue and action move a little better here now that we've reached the meat and potatoes part of the pilot.


CONS:
* "Let's just go ahead and start a war with the Federation after listening to this religious cult leader who has been disgraced in the past." Well, that was easy.
* Pewpewpewpewpewpewpew.
* Ramming another ship was awesome in Nemesis, so apparently they chose to use the same strategy here. It works, just as it did there, because clearly the commanders of those ships are morons who act far too slowly to move their faster than light capable vessel out of the way of this 100 mph ramming speed taking place in 3-Dimensional space.
* Pewpewpewpewpewpewpew.
* Georgiou and Burnham beam over to capture T'Kuvma. That is to say, the Captain and First Officer beam over to a hostile vessel to capture the new Klingon Messiah. This will go well I'm sure.
* I'd imagine in the next ten years, they'll gain the ability to beam back the dead Starfleet officers. Kirk is definitely going to need that transporter capability, because, well, man, that is a lot of dead abandoned redshirts.
* We don't get to see Discovery in this episode at all (well, except for the season teaser), but now Burnham has been drummed out of Starfleet and is sentenced to life imprisonment. What will happen next? Find out on CBS All Access.

I have CBS All Access for another month (thanks, tech support!). I'm hoping things improve greatly from here. As it stands, I'm not sold yet.

 

I also heard Earhart.

 

A friend sent me this list of names:

Clarke, Shran, T'Plana Hath, Kerala, Sue, Ride, Earhart, Dana, Edison, Yeager and Europa.

 

2nd ep much better, but really tiring of Federration ships getting the crap kicked out of them routinely....

You can be explorers and still have your ships well armed and shielded...... oy vey

 

I really really want to like this new show but so far I'm not too impressed. Not bad enough that I won't continue to watch (for now).

First of all I don't like what they did with the Klingons at all and I'm not just talking about the new look. The Klingon speech was forced, wooden and well....boring. I don't like the ISIS/Egyptian characterization of the Klingons. The substance of the story was akin to a popcorn flick. I enjoy the JJ films as a mild diversion, actiony turn off your brain fun. But if we are getting 15 popcorn flick-esk episodes a season, I will be really disappointed.

 

One thing did bother me: Starfleet fleeing the battle without any concern about those ships they left behind, including the Shenzhou.

Also, I bet the Klingons are pissed that Burnham and Georgiou planted a bomb inside one of their dead. Very dishonorable.

 

This sums up my feeling as well. It's an interesting start. An unexpected approach to start the story this way, and hard to judge till we see more of where it's going, but I was entertained as I was watching it, am already starting to feel invested in the characters, and want to see more.

There's awkwardness to these Klingon scenes, but it could just be pilot working-out-the-kinks. The clips of Klingons in the season trailer already felt smoother. And it's a much more effective redesign on screen than it was in the advance pics, in motion it's more recognizable as Klingon.

That tribunal at the end was odd, in that it felt so... un-Federation. But these are minor complaints.

Do we know that 37 minutes is a set run time for them? I assumed they were doing the streaming/cable thing where it's 42-ish minutes but the precise length fluctuates depending on how long the creators feels it's need to be that week.

And she identified herself as from the House Of D'Ghor, which is maybe the same as the evil house in the DS9 ep "The House Of Quark"? Which heavily involves the rights of Klingon females.

 

This I did have a problem with. They have, what, ten episodes or so to show us they understand Trek. Right now they showed us they understand the general audiance who lined up for JJ Trek.

Pretty much right out of JJ Trek 1. Still, it's not as if they didn't do equally silly things in TOS.

I didn't mention this in my comment above, but while I like Burnham, the mutiny bothered me to no end. In Trek of old there would be dialogue, set up and lots of wrestling with such a choice. But here she's just like "fuck it, I'm doing this". A reflection of the state of the ADHD style modern audiences who care not for nuance.

My biggest fear is that Trek, starting with the JJ movies and continuing her, is "just another franchise" now, not unlike what Star Wars has become. Trek lasted as long as it did (like Star Wars as well) because it has that element to it that set it apart from all the rest. So far this show lacks it. So this better just be a prologue that is not representative of the series as a whole, because if the rest of the series is just action bullshit, crap Klingons and focusing on little more then Burnham then it doesn't deserve the Trek label.[/QUOTE]

 

Especially when you're a military.

*Runs*

 

Not sure where you're getting Egyptian from. But they're not just ISIS. They're basically the resurgence of the right in the West, particularly in Trump's America. I think the makers of the show are patting themselves on the back for how clever their allegory is, but I personally found it as subtle as a sledgehammer. They're going to have to get more intelligent than that if they're going to keep me interested...especially for the Klingons, a race far more developed in the Trek universe than these episodes would lead you to believe.

 

The teaser with the asteroid was just to recreate the concept Art Ralph McQuarrie did for Trek that inspired the Discovery.