STAR TREK: DISCOVERY SIGNALS PROMISE
NEW TV SERIES ALSO CARRIES SLEW OF EXPECTATIONS
It’s been more than a decade since Star Trek explored the frontier of television. J. J. Abrams brought the franchise back to the big screen in 2009 with a sexy, adventurous reimagining of The Original Series crew a few years after the much- maligned Enterprise ended an 18- year television streak for the franchise. While the Star Trek movies offer a perfect landscape for action, the serials have always favoured complex stories about space exploration, the nuanced politics of diplomacy, humanity’s innate urge toward exploration, the inner workings of imperialism and a host of social issues.
Given the current political climate, the new Trek series Discovery signals promise, but a 51- year- old sci- fi franchise with an encyclopedic canon memorized by i ts loyal fan base means that any new series comes with a ludicrous number of expectations. Original showrunner Bryan Fuller’s departure over creative differences following a slew of production and casting delays dampened fan spirits, and with each episode costing roughly $6 million, Discovery would represent a risk for CBS even at the best of times. However, the stakes for the series are further raised by the network’s hopes to leverage the franchise’s monumental fan base to also make its All Access streaming service a success.
Instead of focusing on the captain, Discovery follows First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa MartinGreen) as its primary protagonist. It’s 2256, roughly 10 years before the time of The Original Series. Burnham inadvertently initiates the first of several moving pieces in a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingons.
The premiere episode, The Vulcan Hello, focuses on the first encounter between the Federation and enemy alien species in at least a century, when an unrecognizable object in Federation space is spotted by the USS: Shenzhou, helmed by Captain Georgiou ( Michelle Yeoh). Burnham barely makes it back alive from her investigation of the vessel to report that the symbolic craft belongs to their nemesis. A slew of bureaucratic arguments between the crew and a Starfleet admiral ensue, with Burnham and Lieutenant-commander Saru ( Doug Jones) arguing helplessly against the upper chain of command for the use of restraint.
The premiere ends with a cliffhanger, which is frustrating but possibly only because we’re not used to Trek being a serialized program — another first for Discovery. ( The second episode aired immediately after the premiere.) The Vulcan Hello establishes the tension between Klingons and the Federation, spending some time with a new conservative sect of the honour- based alien culture that Trekkies haven’t seen before. The Vulcans are led by T’Kuvma ( Chris Obi), who is hell- bent on uniting other Klingon groups to protect itself from the Federation.
Discovery creates a distinctive esthetic in t he Klingons’ intricate, ornate insignia and the USS starships and Starfleet uniforms. Elsewhere, the show copies the Abrams’ signature esthetic with colourful lens flares and the post- millennial glossy Federation sheen modified for the television screen. But a few shots look marvellously cinematic. One memorable sequence finds closeups of Burnham excitedly nearing the mysterious vessel, followed by an establishing shot of her as a bright speck dwarfed by space.
Discovery looks and feels slick, its cinematography and editing adeptly match its themes about the breathless prospect of discovery enjoyed by its protagonists and the infinitesimal space those human feelings and existence take up in the universe.
But the premiere tries to do too much narratively, and no amount of visuals can accomplish in 42 minutes what Gilmore Girls- paced dialogue can in terms of exposition. This is where the constraints of a sci-fi show about space federation politics become apparent; the premiere falls back on lazy, staged dialogue to explain a bunch of character development — for example, Burnham and Georgiou talk about how long they’ve known each other in the initial scene to establish their mentoring relationship.
Cramming too much into the premiere of a highly pressured show like Discovery is a forgivable offence, though. If this is to be a serialized program, it’s the longer arc, especially around t he Klingon characters, whose place as stand- ins for real- life political tensions is obvious, that will be more important to judge as the show goes on.
But after a single episode, it’s simply too early to tell if Discovery will live long and prosper.