Amph “Let's Fly!” - Star Trek: Discovery [Paramount+/Netflix/CraveTV]

Oh, yeah...I didn't really catch her name during the actual episode itself and it wasn't until later when I was reading some synopsis that I saw "Michael" and was like "huh?".

 

So the gist I'm getting from many elsewhere and from reveiwers is that it's between okay and good. I'll give the first two episodes a look at tonight. Cautiously optimistic.

 

At first I thought Michael was the last name. But then I remembered that it wasn't.

 

Spoiler

Did they seriously just kill off Michelle Yeoh in the freaking pilot, seriously? That's hugely disappointing if she's really dead.

 

Spoiler

Yes they did. I actually don't have an issue with it, since Jason Isaac's character comes off to me as someone more in that gray operating area of Star Trek which appeals to me more than Yeoh's character that was more rigid.

And I don't really know if this needs to be tagged since the episode has already aired.

 

I was hoping for Lt. Commander George Michael.

 

If that were so, I think I might pay to watch this. Because whether it's a sly reference to George Michael or to George Michael, it's pure comedy.

 

Spoiler

Wait, she died? Was I not paying attention or something? Last thing I remembered was there was that white glare and everyone was covering their ears, and then the Klingon fleet shows up. Or does this happen in the second episode which I didn't get here?

 

It was such a waste if that's it.

 

Well I did notice it mentioned her being a guest star in the opening credits, so *shrug*.

 

Just watched the first two episodes. Much better than I was expecting, which admittedly isn't a high standard to hit. Someone I follow on Twitter compared it to Babylon 5: The Gathering and I totally get what they mean. It feels very much like a prequel, much more so than the other first episodes of the other Trek series'. I liked it enough that I'll watch the next episode.

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As soon as it said 'Guest starring' in the credits I figured her goose was cooked.

 

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I think the ending of episode 2 is a good example of why every Starfleet ship should have at least a small contingent on MACOs.

 

You know who I thought was great? T'Kuvma as the main Klingon baddie. I think I just dug him because he comes into the show fully formed and saying, and truly believing, that he is Khaless reborn. And, hell, maybe he was! We don't know how the Klingon afterlife works! There's also a juxtaposition

Spoiler

with both Burnham and the Klingon albino losing their mentors, even though T'Kuvma was only a mentor for about an hour to the new torchbearer but that seemed to make an impression. If the new albino no house torchbearer is going to be main antagonist now, he has a lot to live up to cuz in two eps T'Kuvma really made an impression

All Klingon talking for their scenes is a pretty bold choice but I kinda loved it cuz it's so weird (and it makes more of an impression when they speak English). I may never quite wrap my head around the redesign but character-wise they certainly stand out. These guys are nasty as all heck, very isolationist evil jerks and "Remain Klingon!" is an amazing hook.

Also when they took out the Admiral's ship, just how that whole scene played out I thought was great, nice creeping sense of terror there ("Intentional antimatter containment breach!" just sounded so "yikes!" as the ship was SLOWLY BEING RIPPED IN HALF, AHHHHH!!). And even the Klingons tractor-beaming their dead back to the ship had a nicely weird sense of afterlife. These Klingons seem to be invested with a righteous fury that they have an almost spooky supernatural quality to them. Khaless reborn is on their side and things will turn out good for them with victory.

I thought the music was great too, very sweeping and enhanced the emotional quality of moments.

And did really dig the weird-robot-head Lt. on the Shenzhou bridge and the redhead at the conn with the big sympathetic eyes. Even though we may not see them on the Discovery, I hope they still pop up.

I have a feeling

Spoiler

Despite the "Guest starring" tag, maybe Georgiou isn't dead and gets captured / goes native with the Klingons. Although there's more than a few interviews where the showrunners are saying she's dead, always was going to die, her dying is in the core frame of the show's story. However, I think I remember way back when Yeoh was cast that they mentioned her as a villain. So maybe she'll come back all Klingon-d out. However, I'm not exactly sure WHY the Klingons would hang onto her if she wasn't dead.

But also the 2nd ep had a flashback of Burnham arriving on the Shenzhou at her peak Vulcan upbringing mode so one flashback to that implies more flashbacks as we see how over 7 years her more human side came back to the fore.

2nd episode.

Like everyone is saying, it's a two-part pilot really like TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. CBS just yanked the rug underneath that by only airing the 1st half. I think it did a disservice to the episode's story, frankly, cuz the 2nd part is all climax and payoff. For all of the chatter about this being a sprawling, serialized story, the pilot is actually kind of self-contained backstory.

Basically, Burnham has to face her biggest fear, considering she had her life ripped away by Klingons. And then it happens again. Kind of dark, actually. But I do buy that would invest in the "Vulcan hello". It worked for the Vulcans, she was raised by Vulcans but deep down she's still freaked out by the Klingons. And I do think it's quite ambitious that in the freakin' pilot episode we got ourselves a mutiny. I ain't see that in a Trek pilot before. Once again, it is a pretty big choice to have Burnham pull a mutiny all off the jump and stripping her of her rank really gives her a mountain to climb for the season. I did find her likable. You know what I loved? When she's talking to the head injured Ensign, him getting exploded outward was great, and then you see her stuck in the force-field just sitting there. Her having to convince the computer to shoot her out into space was also kind of an awesome Trek staple of "outsmart the artificial intelligence."

And it worked really well

Spoiler

when she is beamed out about literally a hand length away from grabbing her Captain's body and then it just changes to her staring at the Transporter pad, nothing in her hand. And she just starts sobbing. Admittedly, it's sort of like Spock's "MOTHER!" reaching moment from Abrams' Star Trek but I thought it was different enough to not be a complete lift.

I do think it's interesting that we haven't really seen what the show is really about because this was almost just a prequel to the actual show (I kept waiting for The Discovery to arrive in the 2nd half but never did). And they mention how next week's episode is basically "another pilot". If you think about it, it has a 15 episode order but the first two eps are sort of one story so that really makes it actually a Netflix-sized 13 episode season with a two-part movie pilot.

Here's a whole bunch of interviews, they also reiterate that the pilot is basically backstory / prologue but spoilers for those who didn't see the 2nd half cuz it's basically all about that

hollywood reporter interview

TV line interview

Deadline interview

Also not really surprising, CBS All Access sign ups just jumped, like, a hellova lot

 

Oh and speaking of delays, I found it somewhat amusing (and frustrating) that the air was delayed by 18 minutes due to NFL overun to OT in the afternoon, then 60 minutes, then Star Trek. But Space couldn't start airing it at 8:30, they had to wait until CBS pulled the trigger. So they whipped together 18 minutes of filler / promo interviews with the cast and crew.



It was kinda fun, yet "argggghhh! This has been pushed back years from it's initial announcement date and we still gotta wait 18 minutes!"

Also, bonus for Netflix users outside North America, you get Klingon subtitles

https://io9.gizmodo.com/if-youre-outside-the-us-you-can-watch-star-trek-disco-1818732487

So that means you can watch Klingons speaking in Klingon while reading Klingon



Wheels within wheels!

 

Watched them both again, I like it.

It's grown on me because I know what i'm looking for this time around and the Mass Effect effect isn't as distracting. By that, I mean putting your protagonist (Michael) in the middle of secondary characters you know little about (names, backgrounds and overall purpose). That's why I think my favourite moments are any of those which give clues as to Michael's relationship with Captain Georgiou; if we had more of that, I would have been more drawn to the character.

The crew characters are still screen filler but, and most importantly, Michael has grown on me as a lead character. Lets see what next Monday brings.

I just feel lot of the character investment has been wasted by the fast tracking of the seven year history shared between the few of the Shenzou. But again, maybe the idea was to get to the central arc of the series early on and then slowly build up the character and her context to the story. Whereas, every Trek pilot before this has done precisely the same in reverse; put the crew together, get to know them and then bring on the threat. Discovery has gone in reverse.

 

The Starfleet crew at least seemed to be bending over backwards to not call it a cloaking device at first, so perhaps they'll get by on a technicality. The 2009 Star Trek had a deleted scene set in 2233 with Klingon ships decloaking, so there's precedence for them having the technology already. And of course, while the first TOS episode to feature a cloaking device treated it as a new and unprecedented development, so did the second episode to feature one, so the continuity with that one was screwy even before Enterprise gave them to the Romulans and the Suliban.

Discovery does look odd as a direct Original Series prequel (especially as it's contemporary with The Cage), but it does fit right in as a sequel to the NX-01-Franklin-Kelvin progression. I get the feeling that, for all the fan complaints, in another 16 years it will be an accepted part of the visual continuity along with Enterprise.

There's been a tendency to assume that the world of Star Trek is uniform with a neat technological and aesthetic progression from one era to the next, but I'm starting to like that it's more complicated than that. It's kinda always been that way. In the 20th century PCs, pagers, and the International Space Station exist alongside interstellar DY spacecraft and cabals of scientists creating genetically advanced dictators. In the 24th century we see the 70+ year old Miranda and Excelsior designs still active right alongside the sleek Galaxy and Intrepid classes. The TOS Constitution ships could have been created as a bold departure from the starships of the day, sleeker and more efficient than the massive Kelvin, her rounded nacelles and smooth white exterior abandoning the boxy, angular configurations of the day and harkening back to the first of Starfleet's warp ships like the Bonaventure and the Daedalus. The interfaces forgo the informational cacophony of huge touch screens and holograms for simple, efficient, easy-to-read screens. No gleaming metal corridors to remind you that you're in space--just simple walls will do.

Or at least that's how I justify it. To be fair, this particular part of the 23rd Century seems rife with technological dead ends (like the lateral vector transporters) and odd holdovers (like the phase cannons), so it makes it easier to forgive (possibly by design) both some of the apparent anachronisms of this show and some of the early installment weirdness of TOS.

I'm really looking forward to getting into Discovery proper--for me, the two episodes were a promising start. But it's a very strange way to start a show, and for the first time I'm wondering if it'll be able to hook an audience. The people I know who watched the first episode on TV are either opposed to signing up for another streaming service, or don't understand the concept. I had thought the first episode broadcast would be the introduction to Michael through her time on the Shenzhou, and the first episode on All Access would introduce the Discovery. But as-is, anyone watching on CBS would have been left with half the story, and the All Access subscribers still haven't met the rest of the crew or seen the ship. And bizarrely, the people paying for All Access had to wait while the broadcast version was delayed--this won't even be a factor in any future episodes!

I had also been hoping to see Trek taken back to basics a little bit more, to try and sell non-Trek fans about what's really fun and engaging about the show. But I'm not sure there's a lot for non-fans to grab on to--it seems to me that extended scenes of Klingons speaking in Klingon about Klingon philosophy would be throwing new viewers in the deep end. It's a weird combination with the redesign--alienating the fans expecting to see something more familiar while bombarding the newcomers with a heavy dose of established lore that, while interesting, is in no way vital to appreciating the franchise.

(It may be hypocritical, but although I've been withholding judgment, I now find the Klingon redesign annoying on a number of levels, in spite of the obvious "it's just like when it happened in 1979" argument. They gave themselves an easy out by establishing that different houses have different looks, so why not throw in some of the established Klingon designs? Not only that, some of the lore surrounding the Klingon appearance would have tied in perfectly with the new backstory revealed here. The physical transformation of the Augment virus would be an effective way to explain why the Klingons have isolated themselves and would fit thematically with T'Kuvma's claim that the Federation is coming to remake and destroy the Klingon culture. Plus, the standard-issue helmets of the Kelvin-timeline Klingons would be a neat way to explain why no one has seen a Klingon in a hundred years, in spite of the occasional battles and raids. Arg.)

All that said, this is TV Trek on a breathtaking scale, and it's a more promising start than most of the other series. Can't wait for next Sunday!

TC

 

I like the Orville more then new Trek, especially the Female episode! the New Trek show just seemed to serious and boring even Abrams Trek had more Jokes as did TOS ...

 

Oh yeah, I don't like the look of the Klingons. I'm used to the TNG and DS9 Klingons.

 

The Klingons make very fine Remans or Xindi. Even Abrams Klingons were more on point than this.

 

lol, I was actually thinking they looked kinda like Ferengi.

 

That's not the first time I've heard that, but I don't see it, lol.

TC

 

They remind me of Xindi. I admit when the 24 houses came on screen I was peeking to see if any TOS or TNG Klingons were there but, alas. However, to point out those were the High Council Houses, the Klingons we know just may not be high council members.

One thing that make me sad, and it wasn't in the 2 episodes so it's probably never going to be on the show, is that the episode titles weren't there. Star Trek *needs* episode titles on screen, dangit, even TAS had it. Hell, even Orville has it! That's one thing I can't figure out why they didn't continue with.

There's another interview with Kurztman on EW and he brings up an interesting point and says we'll never find out if the "Vulcan hello" would have worked. I think it might have, maybe not stop the war before it began, but certainly at least it wouldn't have been as messy and chaotic as what actually happened. (Burnham probably would have been court martialed anyway, probably Georgiou too if she had done it)

Maybe this is unanswerable at this point, but if Burnham had fired at the Klingons, would the outcome would have been different? Is this basically a trap that would have resulted in the same outcome no matter what they did?Well, that’s exactly it. One of the questions I think the audience will be asking, and Burnham is asking, is: Did I start this war or would this war had happened anyway? And what is the difference there? And would my friend and surrogate mother still be alive if I had acted differently? That’s going to be a point of debate. I’ll spoil one thing: We’re never going to answer that question for you. The audience will have to decide.

 

I don't either. I don't mind their look changing a bit in concept because I'm all for taking advantage of modern makeup capabilities and for the creators putting their own stamp on visuals aesthetics but ... I think they pushed it too far. Also, the actors seemed to be having a hard time with the dialogue and I suspect their teeth are the culprit. Everyone had the marbles in the mouth thing going on and it was really dragging down their delivery.

 

The only thing I don't like are the Klingons and the uniforms. It takes place during the same time period as the Cage yet they uniforms are completely different. Not to mention that they shouldn't be wearing the arrowhead insignia at that time it was only the Enterprises. So continuity is out the door. I'm also not fond that they made "Michael" the adoptive daughter of Sarek, that just seems like a forced connection to TOS. Other than that, it's not terrible.