Eh, watching so much STD spoiled me, if anything.
I did like Captain Pike, though, even if he is somewhat disturbingly like a combination of Mitt Romney and John Kasich. It figures that Pike & Crew are...on hold.
My thoughts on the series: I don't feel up to typing out a whole review as I intended, but here are a few snippets...
THE GOOD:
* It's nice to see a Trek series finally get the special effects it deserves (along with a few sets that it doesn't) and a budget that makes it look non-cheesy.
* The casting, while a bit uneven IMO, is generally good. Anthony Rapp often does a better Alan Tudyk than Tudyk does. Jason Isaacs was disturbing, but apparently that was the idea. If you liked Captain Lorca, you'll
love the character he plays in The OA. Michelle Yeoh gives you two characters to rate: if you like one you'll probably dislike the other, and vice versa. And Doug Jones is truly Great as Mr. Saru - with the caveat to come.
* The Discovery itself is a sort of love it / hate it kind of ship: I can see how they made a modest effort to make it look Retro, and it at least isn't Cheesy or Claustrophobic.
THE BAD:
The Abrams/Kurtzman/Goldsman/etc crew were entertaining to me back when I was watching Fringe, especially in the last couple of seasons, and Super 8 is a great movie, but I really don't entirely love what they've done to the ST universe. (The first cringe-inducing thing they did was use an actual distillery, complete with transparent water-filled pipes, as the set for the Enterprise Engineering deck. I'm still convinced that they did it to pocket some set building cash. This atrocity was exceeded by portraying the interior of the Discovery as a hollow shell filled with elevators, roller coaster tracks, and pipes.) I also don't like the way they take a few grade school scientific facts and factoids, and try to substitute them for actually having some knowledge of physics, biology, or engineering. The results for me are almost always Grating - especially when they get grade school science wrong, as if mis-remembering it from an old standardized test or two they took 20 years ago. Like, you know, about the three dimensions of space, or how the First Law of thermodynamics means that bodies can't be destroyed. I particularly love how the characters, who are supposedly experts in their fields, have out-loud conversations about these things at times of crisis...very, very reassuring.
THE BAD CHARACTERS:
I liked Michael Burnham for a few episodes - until it became clear that for whatever reason - personal acting philosophy, bad direction, bad drugs - Sonequa Martin-Green not only wasn't going to dial her intensity down below "10", she wasn't going to dial it down
to 10. As if that wasn't bad enough, she started crying at the drop of a hat. Way to go, guys! It seems that even hundreds of years in the future, women are still destined to portray sobbing, irrational hormone bombs. Speaking of sobbing: why is it a good idea, or even one that makes sense, to have a girl raised as a Vulcan turn out this way? Then there is Sylvia Tilley, a living cartoon who is always called by her last name, apparently because it sounds Ditzy-er. I don't think I've seen Mary Wiseman in anything else, so I'll just
really hope that she isn't playing herself. How worrisome that babbling, insecure Woman-children are going to be the Engineers of the future.
THE GOOD CHARACTERS:
Anson Mount/ Captain Pike, as I already noted, and Rebecca Romijn/ Number One, who I really hope will be given a name when/if she returns. Wilson Cruz, who has managed to age just 20 years in almost 30, can be a little too Fey at times, but hey - at least he isn't McCoy! And really, most of the other cast.
WORST MOMENTS:
* Anything involving the "Spore Drive."
* Wiseman doing a hair toss instead of just pretending to be knocked around.
* Burnham and her mom getting together to talk in horrible, loud stage whispers (as if that would deter any decent listening device), and then starting to cry - while still stage whispering. I just had to first, mute them, and then zap ahead, after what seemed like half an hour of it.
* Just about
ANYTHING INVOLVING KLINGONS. That includes ersatz Klingons. I guess I was supposed to suspect Ash Tyler from the beginning, but I wasn't expecting the writers to be sniffing glue whenever they wrote anything about what he turned out to be...
* Ruining the great alien costuming of the original ST pilot with GIANT CHEAP PLASTIC HEADS. Seriously, did they buy a truckload of them from the costumers for "Prometheus"? I wish they had at least also bought the makeup that was used to make them look like actual, living heads...
* Saru discovering that he's a predator, not a prey animal. No one else figuring out (or remembering!) that prey animals always vastly outnumber their predators, not the other way around.
THE BEST MOMENTS:
* The battle during the season finale. It didn't make a lot of sense, of course, but it didn't suck.
* Most of the scenes with Pike. Seriously, I am NOT a Mitt Romney fan. It's just an odd coincidence...
The "MEH" MOMENTS:
Most of the rest of the two seasons. After trying to write their own plot lines in season 1, and doing a less than stellar job, so to speak, the show was virtually rebooted as 'Star Trek: ReDiscovery' as they mined old favorite plots and characters. The re-imagined Harry Mudd episode was actually OK, but the whole Terran Universe knockoff, even though much more detailed and richly depicted than in the past, was IMO less satisfying and interesting than either the TOS version or the Enterprise version.
Ok, that was more than a few snippets. Just be thankful I have arthritis in my hands.