There are spoilers ahead.
The episodes opens with the Klingons, so lets start there. I did't really like the redesigns of the Klingons, the same way I found the Kelvin-Verse redesigns unnecessary. They did grow on me as the episodes progressed. There is one Klingon. Voq, who is houseless because he has been abandoned seemingly for being paler than his Klingon brethren and this coupled with the main bad guy T'Kuvma seems to be bringing the Klingons together for fear that they will be tainted by the Federation races. Is this a cultural taint he is talking about or is he actually meaning a alteration to the Klingon race? We've already seen some Klingon genetic manipulation in Enterprise in order to explain the TOS and other Klingons is this going to be something similar?
Another piece of Klingon-ness is their cloaking technology. Discovery seems to suggest that this is the first time they have seen the Klingon ship cloak so did they do their deal with the Romulans between the Enterprise-era and now?
We also see a redesign of the Bat'leth that seems to stay similar to the original but with more fancy twiddly bits, but this seems to be the thing with all modern day movies and TV where "flat" is a bad word because of HD tv. Just look at all the texture added to superhero costumes in the movies rather than flat colors. The Klingon space suit did look great though. A first of it's kind here?
Oh and they spelled Qo'noS correctly here!
So to the credits. A nice no here to the TOS credits, so much so that I thought they were going to use the thing in it's entirety.
Now onto the federation characters. Michelle Yeoh is a great Captain Phillipa Georgiou. I've been a Michelle Yeoh fan for a while so was really happy to see her in Star Trek.
Saru: Played by Doug Jones Saru is going to become the Data, Doctor and Phlox character of Discovery. The alien race he plays, a Kelpien, is the first time we've seen them and they look good, not going down the traditional Trek route of slightly knobbly facial features. Even over the course of just these two episodes I hope we see more from him, maybe his own episode, although I'm not sure Discovery's story structure is going to be handled the same way as the older series.
Michael Burnham: So Sonequa Martin-Green plays the main focus of Discovery and she does it excellently. She was a favourite in Walking Dead (while I was watching it) and once again, when I heard that she had been cast in Discovery I had high hopes. Once again i just a few flashbacks we see an evolution of her from a Human attempting to mimic her Vulcan peers to a Human with a logical approach to problems, taints by her own emotions. We may see more of Burnham's outbursts as she struggles with the suppressed emotions during her time on Vulcan.
My only fear with Burnham is that the whole "caught between two worlds" thing was already done with a few characters, most notably with Spock and this one even has Sarek and his family as well. I'm not sure this was a great idea, but it may prove to be the opposite of Spock's story as Spock struggled to be more Vulcan, Whereas Burnham seems to be more Human.
I like the character and look forward to seeing how she develops over the series. I love how she was taught the Vulcan Nerve Pinch!
Other stuff: We have Phase Cannons rather than Phasers in another call back to Enterprise with a mention of transporter technology development.
Hologram communication seems to be included here so that the characters can march around and react rather than be stuck on a static screen.
The flashback to Burnham's arrival on the ship had lots of classic Trek noises on the bridge which was great.
There are a lot of slanted shots here mimicking the Kelvin-verse movies rather than the original series. I suppose this is just modern TV now....
Why did they not send a security team when Burnham and Georgiou boarded the Klingon ship? I know Kirk was always beaming down to danger but they had plenty of time to gather a few "red shirts" and help out. Maybe this is the reason, as they didn't want to go the whole "Red Means Dead" route and maybe killing a number of them during this scene would just reinforce that.
All in all, I liked Discovery and am looking forward to seeing a lot more, especially Harry Mudd!! Finally a good reason for Monday.
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