REVIEW TUESDAY: STAR TREK DISCOVERY

STAR TREK
DISCOVERY

Star Trek, one of the most iconic and influential global television franchises, returns 50 years after it first premiered, with Star Trek: Discovery. The series will feature a new ship, new characters and new missions, while embracing the same ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers. 

Set roughly ten years before the events of the original Star Trek, the series follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they discover new worlds and civilizations, while exploring the franchise’s signature contemporary themes. The season-long story line revolves around an incident and an event in Star Trek history that’s been talked about but never been explored.

That's the official plot. But with a fifteen episode story-arc in this first season, we had a couple layers and some big surprises. The two-episode pilot starts aboard the USS Shenzhou when they are faced against the Klingons. Michael Burnham (Sonnequa Martin-Green) accidentally makes a provocative move that sets off an intergalactic war. In an attempt to make matters worse Burnham commits a treacherous act against her Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and ends up with the Klingons wrecking the Federation Fleet. 

The show starts you in that direction, then spins you in a completely different direction. Burnham ends up getting intercepted en-route to prison for court-martial by the USS Discovery with their mysterious Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs). That's when the show really picks up. The first half of the season is dealing with the Klingons. The second half throws the Discovery into a parallel universe from which they must escape. 

There were some surprisingly clever twists and turns along the way. The writing was a bit unorthodox for a Star Trek series, but that's probably why it actually kept me tuned in for the entire series. I liked it. Pretty much the only thing I didn't like about this show was the distribution. You had to buy them one episode at a time from CBS directly. WTF?

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