Episodes like TNG's "Chain of Command" showed that Starfleet was still willing to conduct clandestine acts, and "I, Borg" exposed that Starfleet was still willing to de-humanize those who it labeled as "others". Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country (my personal favorite film in the franchise) explored how years of conflict with the Klingons had made Kirk and his crew (and the top brass at Starfleet) bitter and borderline racist. Some of the best works within the Star Trek IP are good because they challenge the series' own lofty ideals. That isn't to say that every series, movie, and episode of Star Trek has to have everybody getting along all the time and living happily ever after. Star Trek isn't perfect, but it has always provided an ideal to strive for. That is a society that I would want to live in. That cooperative mentality allowed us to overcome poverty and tyranny, reduce disease, and provide a post-scarcity quality of life that allowed virtually everyone to live comfortably and happily and to pursue their dreams and aspirations without the burden of having to make ends meet. People from all over the Earth had mostly set aside their differences and decided to work together so that humanity could explore the galaxy side by side with whoever else was willing to join them. Star Trek became so popular, and remained so culturally relevant, at least in part because it depicted a hopeful, forward-thinking version of humanity's future. I'm going to start with the more important of the two: that Star Trek: Discovery betrays the spirit of Star Trek. Discovery isn't optimistic or forward-thinking Instead, I want to talk about how I feel that the show betrays the series' foundation as hard science fiction, and how it actively avoids the very spirit that made the Original Series and Next Generation so beloved. Spock plays his usual game of semantics to justify his obscurance of the truth. In fact, the aesthetic look of the show is actually one of its strengths. These complaints are mostly pedantic and silly. I'm not going to complain that the tech looks more advanced than Original Series tech. I got that out of my system before the show even launched. I'm not going to complain about how the uniforms and badges are anachronistic. It does bother me that the Klingons also seem to be culturally dissimilar to the established Klingons, but I won't harp on that either. So I'm not going to spend this review talking about how the Klingons look different. That's come up when I've talked about this show to people in person. I won't be offended or upset.īefore I go into the details, I want to at least try to dispel the idea that I'm just an angry fanboy who is butt-hurt that the series doesn't strictly adhere to continuity. Oh, and feel free to comment, even if you do so with spoilers. If so, feel free to ignore such comments, or let yourself be giddy with the dramatic irony. Maybe later episodes have resolved some of these complaints. I've been deliberately avoiding information about the post-hiatus episodes, so information and opinions in this post may be outdated by the time I get around to publishing it. I'm running behind on this show since I don't have a CBS All Access subscription. I finally got around to watching the entire first half of the first season of CBS's Star Trek: Discovery series.
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