A couple weeks back, I finished watching the first season of Star Trek: Discovery.

It’s interesting to have a single main character as the focal point instead of the entire bridge crew. I enjoyed the season’s shows, but they crammed so much  fan service into season one (Harry Mudd! Tribbles! Mirrorverse! Klingons war! Spock has a sister!) that I can understand why some were put off by it all. (And, I’m reminded, most of the series which came before needed a couple seasons to find their legs.)

Plus the spore drive…. OK, it’s an innovative way to expand on something that exists in nature (at least, on a terrestrial scale), and the idea of a space-faring tardigrade was also interesting. But man, the “magic mushroom” jokes pretty much write themselves. (Not two episodes in to season two, even Captain Pike can’t help but make a joke about it.)

I’m interested to see what season two has to hold.

It’s been three years since the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery; so, probably about time I started watching it.

Binge-watching my way through Star Trek: Picard over Labor Day weekend was my introduction to Star Trek with continuing story arcs. Not the episode here and there that tie together for a big episode (or two) at the end of the season, but rather the idea of each episode advancing the same story. (Granted, I’m only four episodes in on Discovery, but that’s how it’s gone so far.)

The show’s definitely darker than the Star Trek of old, and I have to remind myself this is set a decade or so prior to The Original Series, and the events of “Errand of Mercy“. But the characters!

It’s so-far fascinating to watch the development of Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the introduction to Cadet Tilly (Mary Wiseman) was, if not “fun”, then perhaps “awkwardly relatable”. Particularly when she meets her new roommate (“The only other female ‘Michael’ I’ve ever heard of is Michael Burnham, the mutineer; but you’re not her, right?” … long silence.) On the other hand… Not really liking Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs), but I assume the writers did that intentionally.

Mixed feelings on yet another way for the Klingons to look, but, I’ll adjust. And it is interesting to see “the Klingon war” before The Original Series. These are definitely a more war-like variety of Klingon than what I’ve seen before.

The “mycelium drive” seems a bit too much like a “magical plot device.” I suppose the same could be said about the warp drive from the previous shows, but it just seems like a huge stretch that this is somehow a source of faster-than-light travel. (Plus, these are apparently “cosmic fungal spores” — that really opens the door for “magic mushroom” jokes.)

So, four episodes in, out of three seasons… I suppose I have some more binge-watching to do.