1x02 Battle at the Binary Stars

The second episode does bring the action with an extremely impressive space battle, though fortunately not entirely at the expense of character. I was particularly intrigued by the flashbacks to Burnham's Vulcan upbringing and her initial arrival on board the Shenzhou (finally answered my question about the weird "lateral" transporters, too!). I loved the sneaky tactic of beaming a warhead onto a dead body, and the resulting explosion was great.

I wasn't quite expecting the deaths of what seemed to be main characters (although honestly, I wasn't completely expecting Michelle Yeoh to hang around all that long), so seeing T'Kumva meet his end this early was surprising. It didn't really feel like Burnham did much to try and capture him, as was the initial plan - couldn't she have stunned him and then beamed back with him as her prisoner?

Her interactions with the computer in the brig felt like something we've never seen before on Trek, as typically when a character tries to engage the computer in some kind of speculation or discussion it ends up getting confused. But I liked it. I'm a little bit sad, though, that the computer voice isn't provided by Majel Barret, as there were so many rumours going around that she recorded a vocal library before passing away which could be used to synthesise her voice.

The Klingons feel like the weak point to me. The redesign bugs me a little bit, but not enough to ruin things. More problematic is if they insist on speaking Klingon all the time then it really slows scenes down due to how stilted the actor's dialogue becomes. However, I quite like that they've given them much more of a culture and meaning, as opposed to the drunken "honourable" warrior caricatures that '90s Trek reduced them to.

I'm impressed that the show has done enough this early to make Captain Georgiou's death have an impact. I must admit, thought, that I'm quite surprised that we still haven't seen the USS Discovery.

The second part of the pilot is such a contrast to episode 1. While ep 1 is all about discovery, wonder, exploration; the ideals of Star Fleet, and it's ultimate goal. Ep two is about the Klingon's, everything that Star Fleet isn't; War, Violence, Destruction.

The whole episode is the rebirth of a broken and scattered Klingon civilization. And at the front is a daring and bloodthirsty Klingon leader ready to seal his place at the front of his people with the blood of StarFleet and his own people. And for the StarFleet who had no contact with the other for over 100 years, they walked into a trap and played right into the Klingon's hands.

Ultimately this surprised attack blindsides the Star Fleet to the point of walking into a massacre, losing too many to count. But it also lead to Michael's mutiny over her mentor. But a mutiny based on love and admiration, based on a need to save her people and crew.

Finally when all the cards were on the table, Phillipa and Michael come together to take on the leader of the Klingon. To gain back the advantage and to even the battlefield. But even this will come at a price at Phillipa is killed. But in exchange Michael kills the new leader. An eye for an eye.

Watching Michelle Yeoh fighting a Klingon was badass and a highlight of the episode. Soneque is a heavy weight in her acting skills. Watching her go from glee and wonder to frustration, anger, desperation, and ultimately heartbreak is a beauty to witness.

The battle scenes are at the scale we expect from great SciFi. Watching the contrasting ships of the Star Fleet (cold, metalic, blue), with the Klingon (full of organic material, full of art and life even in its disctruction).

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.