Star Trek: Discovery - My Review (so far...)

I suppose I should start this by saying where I'm coming from.

I do like a bit of Star Trek. I even quite like the bad films - like Star Trek 5 (the one where Kirk meets God and calls him a git). Its not that it always good science fiction, or even that it is always good fiction. But is has always been something different to most other television sci-fi. An ensemble based fiction built around optimism for the future, something Gene Roddenberry visualised from the outset. Through 5 different series the program has tackled issues associated with race, gender, trans-gender, disability and social exclusion. It isn't about diversity, but diversity is in Star Trek DNA. Its a hopeful, positive future where humanity is constantly striving to be all it can be in an occasionally hostile but always dangerous universe, and that is what makes Star Trek unique.

It has also taken great pains to stay, roughly, internally consistent. Really we've only got Doctor Who and Star Trek as comparitors for very long-running sci-fi television. We know what a Klingon Battle Cruiser looked like in 2156, 2265, and 2367, and what Klingons look like (and where there is inconsistency in this the series is charmingly and sarcastically self-aware). Its not perfect but over 50 years they've managed a remarkable degree of consistency - we see technology change from Enterprise, to the original Star Trek series, take a leap forward to Next Generation and progress through Deep Space 9 and Voyager. We can place many pieces of technology to where they arise a points within 300 years of history - and thats pretty remarkable, as a television concept.

In the real world I think we're all ready for new Trek. By the end of Enterprise we'd had Trek series from 1987 to 2005, and it was feeling tired. It was time for a break. But I'd have hoped that producers would have learned something from the (relative) failure of Enterprise and declining sales of the recent Kelvin timeline films and give us the two things that I think fans have been saying they want - something that is tonally and conceptually Star Trek, and that goes further into the future (rather than a third prequel). But that isn't what we've got with Discovery.

There are some things to like in Discovery. I thought Michelle Yeoh was brilliant in the pilot episodes, and the production is genuinely cinematic in scope. Its pretty. But the main character of Michael (played by Sonequa Martin-Green) is a deeply unsympathetic (not to say stupid) character who manages to start a major war by stabbing up a Klingon (they've been strangely re-designed) on a mission that ought to be done by a drone but isn't, and then mutinies because reasons, before doing precisely what she warned they oughtn't do because that would start a war. Oh, and mind-melds now allow mental contact across whatever distance is necessary. 

Then there's the instantaneous teleportation across the universe by means of panspermian fungal spores that facilitate quantum travel, but that can only be controlled by a monstrous giant tardigrade. I shit you not. Its like the fevered fanfic ramblings of a teenager who aspires to be either an astronaut or a microbiologist but who isn't willing to do the reading.

This new series pays no respect to Roddenberry and his primary stance that Star Fleet officers work for rather than against each other. It ignores continuity, changing principles that have been good for the last 50 years of Star Trek on a whim, retro-fitting technologies we saw developed decades or even centuries into the future. I can't forgive the lack of continuity, nor can I accept that Star Trek is better when it abandons the (ultimately) hopeful view of the future. 

I would also criticise the producers for this crap. Through simply putting a diverse range of people in important roles (and not making a big deal out of it because in that future it is not a big deal), Trek has always been a beacon for those who believe in a diverse future - fans understand and love that. Yeah, look around for a while on Twitter and you'll find someone spouting crap about that being a betrayal, but you can also find people on Twitter who believe the world is flat, dinosaurs are a hoax and that Scrappy-Doo isn't shite. Article after article seems to have been constructed around these very rare nutjobs, not because they're representative but because much of the press wants to denigrate sci-fi fans, and the producers have ridden this wave, effectively pointing an accusatory finger at its own (baffled and needlessly insulted) fan base. 

But my bigger problem with this series is the characters or, rather, the lack of them. Star Trek has always been based around an ensemble cast, and decisions key characters take are either part of that character growing, or due to the influence of other characters. Discovery is about Michael Burnham - and that's it. Ultimately Star Trek has always been about the journey - physical and metaphorical, and by giving us a deeply unlikable lead character rather than an ensemble, on a ship that can instantly appear anywhere thanks to the worst  McGuffin in science fiction history, Discovery has ripped the soul out of Star Trek.

I want to love Discovery. I really do. But I don't. This isn't just 'well it'll get better after the first season' jitters, this is a sickness at the heart of the series, from concept, through scripting, to production. Its terrible. It isn't Star Trek.