Some fans have complained that “Discovery” has betrayed the idealistic, optimistic spirit of its earlier fleetmates. I don’t think that’s the problem. “Star Trek” is a kind of national mythology, and it has every right, maybe even the creative obligation, to change to suit its times. (Weirdly, Fox’s joke-not-a-joke “The Orville” is more slavishly like the original series.) Two decades ago, “Deep Space Nine” (for my money the best “Trek”) also focused on the compromises of war.

Rather, “Discovery” feels like it’s adrift between the adventure-of-the-week format of its network-TV predecessors and the kind of complex serial favored by cable and streaming. It has the trappings of serious pay-TV drama: darkness, willingness to kill major characters “Game of Thrones”-style, even profanity. (This “Trek” sets its phasers to “F.”) But they’re mostly superficial.

The most direct antecedent for “Discovery” might not be any “Trek” series but the 2004–09 reboot of “Battlestar Galactica.” That series was also a bleaker riff on a previous series, turning the struggle of humanity against the Cylons — a society of robots that mankind created — into one of the best fictional treatments of the war on terror. Ingeniously, it rethought the Cylons as monotheistic zealots, murderous but with a culture and ideals that could not be easily dismissed.

It would seem that “Discovery” wants to do something similar for the Klingons, the alien enemies (and eventually, allies) who, here, have just united against the Federation. Here, they’re isolationists whose rallying cry — “Remain Klingon!” — one producer has said intentionally echoes Trump-era nationalism.

These Klingons also have elements of cultlike fanaticism, and there’s reference to their having carried out “terrorist” attacks. (They’ve also gotten a makeover, with more prominent prosthetics than their old forehead ridges.) The result is a generic, bellicose mishmash of an enemy, whose subtitle-heavy scenes slow the show down rather than add depth.