Finished Episode 3 and my worries increase a little. This just doesn't feel like Star Trek to me, it feels like an episode of Stargate or something. Especially with the oogie-boogie alien they run into there. The new Captain has a great actor but the Captain character is the sort seen before as a villain or antagonist of TNG or VOY episodes of the starfleet officer who forgets what starfleet even stands for. The writers having him say the line "makes me seem mysterious" did not engender a laugh from me but an eye-roll. Just because your ship has strange mood-lighting doesn't mean hand-waving that it's there doesn't make the Captain seem any less the Bad Guy here. In short, Context is King did not make me more excited, but it at least didn't push me completely away yet; though it nearly did if Micheal had been right about what the Captain was upto.
Response to above thoughts:
--Galloway, I totally get where you're coming from; that is exactly the feeling I'm getting too. Big reason I'm hanging on right now is because I remember hating ENT when it first came out and DS9; but, when I went back to watch the series they both turned out alright (well, DS9 is great; ENT is just okay, but still worth watching). So, I'm hoping that DIS finds its footing back in the Trek verse and touches back to the core Trek principles (which the Chief Engineer actually espoused: even if his technobabble of biology and physics made me groan.)
--Solluk & Naira, I agree DIS should've been set ahead of VOY and not before TOS. For all the new shiny tech, there's a disconnect of fan-knowledge that says: "wait, I don't see this stuff in the rest of the timeline" feeling. For fresh faces nothing is wrong, just anouther sci-fi tech with weird rules: but, to any long-time fans these stick out like sore thumbs. Star Wars ran into the same problem with its prequel movies where the past looked more advanced than the future. With ENT at least they LOOKED like they were pre-TOS; they were obviously not upto the same firepower or tech level as Kirk's Enterprise. If you're gonna base a story on bleeding-edge new tech; then put us in the future.
--Atwood, I'm glad you're enjoying it, I really am. I mean, I may not like ENT, but there are huge fans of that series; some of my friends HATE Voyager, but they still think Picard is cool. It is a good sign that someone here is actually enjoying the show; that's usually a sign that at least some hope remains for the show to be good down the road even if I don't think it is quite yet.
Though, for me, as someone who was a happy kid watching The Next Generation gleefully or reruns of the original Star Trek whenever it was on TV: Discovery just feels not Star Trek. Having watched all the TV series (and some of the cartoon) and the movies: Discovery stands out as strange to me. Star Trek, over the years, has reinvented itself to fit the modern times. Each show had a different feel and different take on Roddenberry's Star Trek. Time and again, writers have struggled with modern TV writing style and Roddenberry's idealistic sci-fi future. Not to say Roddenberry was perfect; some of his stuff is a little off-the-wall but at least it was fun. Since the 2009 Star Trek, CBS has been taking a different direction to attract new viewers. I get that, TNG was a different show from the original -so different the Picard/Kirk debate lives on; DS9 was different from TNG with the line I'll never forget of "I'm not Picard" ringing in my head from Sisko.
Trek is no stranger to change, but, what makes Star Trek unique to me in all the Sci-Fi I consume is this: it shows a brilliant future that I wish was happening. For all the danger: there is always the hope of discovery, hope of enlightenment, and hope of values possibly being changed for the better. Star Trek was not a show of the scrappy rebels against the evil Empire; it wasn't Earth fending off the alien menace from the stars; it was Humanity as part of a larger Galactic Community trying to figure out its mysteries. Sure, there were the Klingons and the Romulans and whatever big bad Empire threat....but the crux of the show was always about the Trek...the journey...the learning along the way. That was what made Star Trek special and dear to me.
With 2009 Trek, they wanted big explosions and rapid action. Stuff it with the diplomacy, lets get to our Apple-designed starship and get into a shoot-out. A drastic over-simplification, but that's the feel I got. But, they still took moments to look like Star Trek, to say the words of Star Trek, and Kirk was still Kirk and Spock was still Spock. I can't have Shatner, Nemoy, and Kelly gallivanting across the stars; I know that. But, the AU Star Trek stuff is still Star Trek; if a bit 21st century actiony for my taste. Discovery, just doesn't feel that way to me.
They could've named the show Star Trek: Mutiny or Star Trek: Burnham or whatever....but they choose, with forethought, the name Discovery. When I heard the title, I was ecstatic. We were gonna see a return to Trekking the Stars and all that. But then we learned it was gonna be a war story....involving the Klingons. That took the wind out my sails. The uniforms then highlighted how little Trek-like this was. These aren't starfaring explorers, they are soldiers in a war. They aren't trekking the stars, they are fighting amidst them; even DS9, with its war, still spent a lot of time expanding on the Starfleet and non-Starfleet characters as people who had to make choices about what they believed in and what they were fighting for; heck, some episodes had nothing to do with the war, just anouther day on a busy busy space station. Discover is every other Sci-fi medium I consume and it no longer feels unique to me; just....standard sci-fi fare. While, standard sci-fi is okay (i mean, I play the games, watch the shows, etc) but: standard sci-fi doesn't get me excited nearly as much as a good Star Trek show does.
So to you Atwood, I say I hope -desperately- that I am wrong. That the few glimmers of hope that this show will be awesome come to pass. That this show will just get better and better and I can be as excited as you for the next episode. But for now, I'm just wary that the Star Trek I was hoping for just never will happen again. Maybe this is the the final change that I just can't deal with, the last boundary I cannot cross. Or maybe, once the series is done, I'll be able to go back and see a show prove me wrong.
--Kirok...I hate to admit it....but I did like the space battles in episode two. Much as I just went on a rant about exploration and all that...a good space battle is hard to be mad at.
.....
Nitpicks of the week:
--Why is the Chief of Security such a jerk?
--Why were the prisoners eating in the mess hall?
--Black Alert? Really? Why not Red Alert? What is wrong with that? That's serious time, time to grim up...why a new alert?
--Why is there a Cadet aboard a serving starship with "Above Top Secret" material aboard?
--"Above Top Secret"
--Why is Burnham calling the man by his rank? Just why? There's no reason she should be expected to or have the privilege of doing so. She's not on a pleasure cruise and isn't on vacation.
--Why is the Cadet with the Prisoner? Just why?
--H.R. Giger called: he wants his monster back.
--Yes show, you told us why the Cadet is there but she's a CADET! Are you guys crazy? Is Starfleet that hard up they are putting CADETS on starships? Then again Wesley wasn't even an officer...and he flew the Enterprise-D so, what do I know.
--Hah! You got me show! You almost made me think this was a stupid plot about super evil officers doing super illegal things....except maybe you are? You do know this is a BAD idea right? Section 31 wasn't a good idea either.
Alright, that's out of my system. If you read this entire post, then I owe you one homemade pastry. If you didn't, well I don't blame you.