I have to admit that I only became somewhat of a 'Trekkie' only a few years back. Out of sheer boredom one day, for the hell of it, I decided to watch each and every episode of the original series. I have to admit, I was blown away. The original series to me wasn't good because of the acting or the cheap special effects or because of the great chemistry the characters had on set. It was because of the writing. In my opinion, some of those stories were the best stories ever on TV.
When I was a teenager, I remember watching 'The Next Generation' Star Trek series (The series that came after the originals). I remember rooming with someone at this event I went to and he put the show on. It wasn't my choice to watch the show. But I remember being hooked on it. I think they were running a marathon on the show and we both stayed up late watching episode after episode finding it hard to turn the TV off.
Flash forward to a few years ago. I watched all the original Star Trek movies (And enjoyed them) but hesitated to watch the reboots. I honestly just didn't think that a reboot of the original characters could ever go down well in a movie. But I decided to watch 'Star Trek: Into Darkness" the 2nd of the reboots first because it was free on Netflix. My mind was blown away. I then watched the first reboot simply called 'Star Trek' and was blown away even more. Last year, the third installment came out and I think it was so far, the best of all three. So I'm somewhat of a Star Trek fan.
I watched a little bit of all the Star Trek TV series that came out after The Next Generation. I wasn't impressed by any of them. Sometimes, I couldn't even make it through one episode without switching it off. Trekkies are tough to please. Everything is and will always be compared to the originals and the next generation.
Star Trek Discovery has a lot of expectations to live up to.
When I first heard that Discovery was going to air and air on CBS All Access, I immediately thought that the show was doomed before anyone watched any of it. A lot of people are turned off by the idea that they would have to pay a monthly fee to watch an extension of a TV series that has been around for over 50 years. I thought 'What are they thinking?'. Sure, the die hard fans are either going to pay for the streaming service because they HAVE to watch the new show or they are going to boycott the show over the fee. I also think that having to subscribe to another streaming access application is going to make it tougher to lure in a new generation of Trek fans. Just saying. As for me, no way in hell would you get me to pay an additional fee to watch a Star Trek TV series on TV. But, I'm a resourceful person and have my ways to ensure that I don't have to resort to that.
I made the decision to put off watching Discovery until after I've read some reviews on it. I didn't want to waste my time if I didn't have to. If the reviews were going to be mixed then I decided that I would watch it, if most of them weren't that great then I'd pass. Well, they seemed to have come in mixed so I decided to catch up Discovery after the 2nd episode was aired.
First thing I noticed about Discovery was the Cinematography. It was just like the new movie reboots which is good. Nothing at all cheesy about the special effects and I also think that they weren't overdone like so many shows with CGI are. The second thing I noticed was that there were two lead women in the opening scene. It became clear to me that one was Captain and the other was the first officer. It didn't bother me that the ship was going to be female run, but what did bother me slightly was that the acting wasn't that good.
As the episode went on, I must admit, I couldn't take my attention away. The story line progressed quickly and seemed very interesting to me. Even though it was the all too familiar Federation versus Klingon story, there was something about it that I enjoyed. The Klingons were impressive, as were their kingdom and their ships.
There was very little chemistry among the federations ships crew unfortunately (And the charachter Chemistry has to be improved on). That being said, by the end of the episode I remember thinking 'Wow that was pretty good' and wanting to immediately jump to the next episode. Episode 2 was great. It moved fast and set itself up nicely for the 3rd.
I do see promise in Star Trek Discovery. If they continue to develop the new characters and continue to impress on the stories it has hope. But it needs to progress otherwise it will start to become boring. I think it's possible to develop more chemistry among the cast and if that doesn't happen then it can ruin the rest of the show.
Overall I must say so far Discovery has been enjoyable to watch and pleasantly surprising. Will die hard Trekkies like it and stick with it? Hard to tell so far. I'm giving it a chance and I think it would be worth it for die hard Trekkies to do the same.
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