Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x01 - "The Vulcan Hello"

It's a...7 out of 10 for me.

I watched the first two episodes as a single pilot....it was ok.

I like:

- The production

- Opening credits

- Set and costume design

- The overall look

- The fact that the show does not have the Captain as its central protagonist



Not liking as much:

- The cast (apart from Michelle Yeoh, the cast aren't really making an impression on me)

- Unmemorable characters and moments

- Predictable death of a certain character



In fact, it's possibly the least memorable Trek pilot i've seen.



I'll stick with the show since i'm a Trek fan and it's costing me nothing extra to watch. For now, it's competent but i'm not fully engrossed as I was in previous Trek pilots. But, again, i'm looking forward to seeing where Michael's journey takes us.



I suppose this episode...

Spoiler

...this serves more as a Prologue? Like an origin story and the real series, in terms of the crew, ship and overall journey begins next week?

 

I was not a fan of the holo-communicator, the klingon cloaking device, or the look of the klingon fleet (shouldn't there be a few D7 out there? With them being "all" the houses and stuff? I hate the klingon re-design, but even more that, despite the redesign, the klingons are more clichéd than ever.

However, all of that concerns only canon. Which is secondary to the plot and characters in my book. It is there where they did an extremely mixed job. I thought the introduction was great. But it was WAY too dependend on previous Trek lore - I'm NOT going to recommend that to my non-Trek friends! They won't get much out of it. And while I'm a big fan of how they began their story, I'm not a fan of the direction they're taking it - Trek had enough war stories. This is one isn't bringing anything new, or frankly interesting to the table.

 

"Hey, can we kill the overhead lights so I can see my holographic display?"

"Low light levels have the potential to create tripping hazards, but I see what you mean."

"What's better yet? If we adopted 'gumdrop' switchology. They work perfect under nominal ambient illumination, are ergonomic, and don't strain the eyes."

"Good idea. Draft up a white paper and send it Starfleet Engineering. I'm sure they will see the merit of your proposal."

Oh and, who destroyed the subspace communication relay? Why the cloaked Klingon ship!

I don't like knowing the answers that the crew have yet to find. Had it turned out to be Harry Mudd, that would have been surprising.

 

That scene serves the important role of being the 'save the cat' moment. For those unfamiliar with the term, it comes from a book on screenwriting called, coincidentally, Save the Cat. From Wikipedia:

As big time fans, we take it as a given that Starfleet is a noble, benevolent institution and its officers likewise, but other viewers won't be going in with that assumption. To them, Starfleet's just going to look like some space military at first. Hence the opening scene to establish our leads' hero creds. Without that scene, they'd have been acting purely in self-defense across most of the two parter, working to protect their own hides from the Klingon threat: Not an immoral motivation, but not an altruistic one, either.

 

The desert scene was basically just Into Darkness' opening scene but better/worse worse/better.

 

That scene serves the important role of being the 'save the cat' moment. For those unfamiliar with the term, it comes from a book on screenwriting called, coincidentally, Save the Cat. From Wikipedia:

As big time fans, we take it as a given that Starfleet is a noble, benevolent institution and its officers likewise, but other viewers won't be going in with that assumption. To them, Starfleet's just going to look like some space military at first. Hence the opening scene to establish our leads' hero creds. Without that scene, they'd have been acting purely in self-defense across most of the two parter, working to protect their own hides from the Klingon threat: Not an immoral motivation, but not an altruistic one, either.

 

Coincidentally - that was my favourite part of the 2-part episodes: Star fleet travelling around the universe, visiting strange new aliens and planets, doing good, and bickering while doing it. That was my "Star Trek moment" of the premiere.

 

I once read a great quote by King on this. I wish I could remember it. It was in reference to Carrie and I remember laughing at it.

But yeah, the gist of it was something about throwing away the first few chapters you write because they're never needed.

 

It's as if The Orville and Discovery are the result of some kind of a "The Enemy Within" type malfunction.
Too bad there's really no way to fix it; We could have had ONE really good show.

 

Yeah. I think having the first two episodes being the equivalent of the "Kelvin"-cold opening of ST09 was a creative misjudgement.

They should have jumped right to the meat of the story - the Discovery - around during the middle of the first episode.

 

Oddly enough, I was typing this up as you were, Rahul. I agree.

Obviously, its hard to say for sure until I watch the first few episodes with Discovery actually in it, but I can't help but think they could have done so much better with the structure of this if they designed the whole Shenzhou part of the story as a flashback with the story showing how and why Burnham failed while the story started on Discovery.

 

As I noted in the Orville thread months ago, I said they should have given the franchise to MacFarlane back when he first asked for it.

I still think so.

 

That's absurd, and incorrect. It was absolutely nothing other than a marketing tactic.

Let me tell you how many pennies "courtesy" is worth to CBS...

 

That's an oddly unobservant claim from someone who says that they're a writer.

(Of course, that's something that anyone who might be paying attention will have many opportunities to throw back in my face. ).

 

Me neither. He seems right on target to me.