A new Star Trek had me very, very excited……and I was still hopeful after the first episode. In the end, I have little to no interest in watching more after watching the second episode.

The intro was very different from your standard Trek. It had a Westworld vibe but with something closer to Trekkie music. It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t hugely inspiring. I figure it could grow on me given enough time. Little did I know that the allusion to Westworld would be more than a passing comparison.

The MC is Michael Burnham, just her. She grew up on Vulcan after her parents were killed by Klingons…..end backstory…..end character. She’s supposed to be a bad-ass, and she’s certainly capable, but I felt no connection to her. Pick any other named character and I felt more for them than for her. There was also a tiresome repetition to the whole thing. Oh look, another Vulcan-esque First Officer.

Plot was a bit of an issue. Both episodes were used to establish the Klingons (more on them later) as the big looming antagonists and to get the MC in the position they want for the rest of the season. Basically a two episode prologue. Two whole freaking episodes and then with the end of episode two everything changes so the type of show you thought you were watching might all just be an illusion.

The Klingons. Oh boy. I have zero issue with the fact that they got a visual reworking. That is if it had worked, which it didn’t. First off, the makeup is barely functional. Trek has a long history of highly expressive, intensely emotional Klingons. The Vulcan had more emotion than all the Klingons combined. They can barely speak let alone convey any sort of feeling. As a result they don’t convey the menace they were intended to have. In anything they were just one big continual annoyance and distraction to the viewing experience. They looked fake too. Had their appearance been close to the standard, even if more stylized, then it wouldn’t have felt like a burden to watch them.

In summary, the Klingons negatively impacted everything, the MC lacked character, and will 99% of the first two episodes were decent the last 1% felt like the beginning of a bait-n-switch. Thankfully I used the trial for CBS All-Access so I’m not out anything. Unless it was really, really good I was just going to wait until the end of the season a pay for a month and then binge it but I don’t know now. That sneak peak at the rest of the series makes it feel like an entirely different show…….and not very Trek-like. Again, the MC is just a weak character even though she’s a hyper-capable person, and with her being the only hook into the rest of the series there’s just no compelling reason to continue.

So I’m going to wait and see what everyone else makes of the rest of the season and go from there. In the mean time I’ll be over watching The Orville, which might be more Trek than Trek.

Robert