Yahoo News Star Trek: Discovery review: boldly goes somewhere new
*WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS*
It may have taken us some time to get here – including months of delays as the release date was pushed back (and pushed back again), as well as the departure of original showrunner Bryan Fuller – but Star Trek: Discovery has finally made it onto our screens more than ten years after the last Trek TV venture Enterprise fizzled out, ready to once more boldly go where no one has gone before.
And, for the most part, the two-part series premiere does exactly that, following the path of the USS Shenzhou a decade before Captain Kirk's five-year mission in the original series as it encounters the Klingons for the first time in over a century and paves the way for the inevitable war to follow.
By the end of the first episode, Star Trek: Discovery has introduced us to a world where Federation Space is on the brink of disaster, and by the beginning of the premiere's second part Starfleet is at war, with all the death and devastation that entails. So, to say that this is not a series content to debut quietly is an understatement.
Sonequa Martin-Green quickly proves herself as an engaging lead who is more than capable of fronting a series, walking the line between the clashing ideologies of human emotion and the Vulcan logic of her upbringing with grace and charisma.
Her First Officer Michael Burnham is the undisputed star of the show whenever she's on screen, whether that involves bemused conversations with her Captain (Michelle Yeoh), trading barbs with Science Officer Saru (Doug Jones) or, even more impressively, commanding attention when pitted against some impressive scenery, such as flying through space on her way to inspect an unidentified object, dodging asteroids all the while.
The world we're presented with too is suitably cinematic, offering sweeping landscapes and sumptuously tech-ed out starship sets that are a joy to look at, making full use of Discovery's significant budget to look the part of a revitalised sci-fi classic for the streaming age.
But for all the bluster and bravado that Discovery launches with, there still feels like a way to go before it can be termed an outright success – if that point can ever be reached at all. There are significant pacing issues, interrupting the action sequences with flashbacks and Klingon councils that are either unnecessary or linger too much on clunky world-building and dialogue.
There's no doubt these lengthier scenes are intended as a nod to the long-time Trek fans, although probably to the show's detriment here. There will be those viewers who are familiar with the planet Vulcan and its people and who'll be gratified to see Spock's father Sarek (played here by James Frain) as they tease out that ever-mysterious connection between him and Michael, and how she came to be Spock's adopted sister.
It does feel though that his moments on-screen come at odd times – stepping aside from the USS Shenzhou facing down a Klingon ship to talk through strategy, for example, or a flashback to a much younger Michael learning that her human heart is going to be a problem in making rational decisions.
Not only do these scenes tackle the themes and problems that Star Trek has tackled several times over in its various incarnations, but the flashbacks in particular also do little to deliver on any real sense of mystery – it would have been far slicker to stick with teasing the connection between Michael and Sarek in the present, and letting their history reveal itself naturally.
The Klingons overstay their welcome as well. The first introduction any new Trek watcher gets of this world is the Klingons calling to unite their clans and prepare for war, opening the series with a race who are calling to take arms against everyone whose mission is that old lie "we come in peace". A compelling start, for sure, but the time and attention the show later devotes to them, their plans for war and, yes, their language is not as easily accessible to those unfamiliar with the franchise.
Nevertheless, there is a lot to be excited about here, and plenty that seems fitting of a 2017 premiere. On first contact with the new series, it's clear CBS are planning to play it safe in terms of not contradicting all of the Star Trek history that came before it, offering yet more progressive characters and gleefully enjoyable sci-fi action sequences, even while the tension is high and the stakes even higher.
Klingon warlord T'Kuvma's (Chris Obi) call for a united race and the preservation of their nation may hit a little too close to home in today's society, but in Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael we've been gifted a character who's more than able to traverse potentially tricky depths.
Throughout the premiere, Michael proves she cares more for her people and her captain than Starfleet's principles, so it's particularly cruel that by the end of second part 'Battle the Binary Stars', Michael no longer has to wage war with the two binaries of her upbringing. War is engaged, her Captain has been killed and she's been stripped of all her ranks and sentenced to life imprisonment for the counts of assault, insubordination and mutiny she collected over the course of the two hours.
As Discovery is geared up to head off in an entirely new direction when we come back for episode three, going into the next chapter feels like an unknown, as if the series is premiering anew once again and this two-part premiere was more an extended prologue than anything else.
But at least if there's one thing we can expect to see, it's more lens flare – these days, you just can't make Star Trek without it.
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