Well, I just watched the first 2 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery (ST:D? That can’t be right) – the newest Star Trek TV series created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, and set 10 years before Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the U.S.S. Enterprise.

At first, I didn’t know what to think about it. What I did know was that it wasn’t ‘classic’ Star Trek. Then I realized that it didn’t have to be. Why should Star Trek: Discovery meet my own nostalgic expectations just because I miss Kirk and Spock, Picard and Data, Odo and Quark, Seven and the Doctor? I should embrace it for what it is instead of nitpicking over things I would’ve done differently if I was the showrunner.

Like many younger fans of Star Trek, I was introduced to the films and series by my father, at the age of 11. We watched The Original Series and The Next Generation together, and then I went off and watched the other series by myself.

I fell in love with the whole thing immediately, even more so than I did with Star Wars – of which I was already a huge fan. The space battles grabbed me from the beginning, just as they grab every 11 year-old boy. But there was more beneath the surface of technological utopianism and space exploration. Underneath it all there was the underlining belief that the human race could become just like the crew of the Enterprise and strive to better themselves through other means than the accumulation of wealth and material things. Star Trek always strove to imbue the young and old alike with a strong sense of morality, of right and wrong. In other words, what my parents didn’t teach me about right and wrong, I learned from Captain Picard.

This is what Trekkers have come to love about Star Trek and what we all have in common with one another. All Trekkers grew up on Star Trek, so to speak, and it is because we grew up on Trek that we’ve come to feel shame when non-Trekkers refer to the new J.J. Abrams’ films as Star Trek, which they are not. They are their own thing.

We also have certain expectations of what a new Trek television show should look like. I feel confident in saying most fans would like Trek to continue to “explore strange, new worlds” and “boldly go where no man one has gone before”, instead of giving us another damn prequel.

Then, in comes Bryan Fuller – the guy behind Pushing Daisies and Hannibal – to save the day like Kirk at Camp Khitomer in Star Trek VI. I was a fan of his work and knew he was very liberal when it came to pushing boundaries on TV. It seemed like the perfect match – Star Trek and Bryan Fuller coming together to make Star Trek great again!

Yes, there were a few worrying signs that the prequel was doomed to fail. Bryan Fuller getting replaced as showrunner was a particularly worrying sign since Fuller is actually a Trekker himself and even was a member of the writing team on Voyager and DS9. Oh, and let’s not forget that the production of Discovery was delayed not once, but TWICE! The standard complaints about “white genocide”, after they cast a young African-American woman in Sonequa Martin-Green in the lead role, were to be expected, sadly.

But questions were also raised about the streaming service the show was going to air on in the United States – CBS All Access. Would fans pay $6/month to watch a Star Trek show they weren’t sure was going to last? These are all valid worries, but Trek is one of the most successful sci-fi media franchises in the world. People would tune in anyway.

And then came the night of September 24, 2017. After returning from a weekend at my cottage in the Kawarthas (The Ozarks of Southern Ontario), I go to the DVR and I see it there. It’s waiting for me like the Holy Grail: TWO WHOLE HOURS OF BRAND NEW STAR TREK.

Then I hit play and… a football game ran late, so my recording was screwed-up. I hustled over to my laptop and found it on PirateBay and… it was beautiful to watch and all, (the uniforms, the ships, the authentic ship noises, the teleporter effect, the familiar Trek fanfare of BUM—-BUM BUMM—-BAA BUM BA BUM BUMMM—-BA DUM!!) but it didn’t feel like classic Trek. Not the Trek I remember. But maybe that was a good thing.

I’m going to compare the pilot episode of Discovery to an Original Series episode I watched on TV the day after the pilot aired to illustrate my point.

If you don’t remember this gem of an episode from The Original Series, that’s okay. Let me refresh your memory. “The Apple” is an episode that sees Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise violate the Prime Directive, as he so often did, in order to free a primitive tribe of people from the powerful supercomputer – or “God” – that ‘looks after them’. It’s basically a riff on the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where Eve is tempted by the Devil to bite into an apple even though it was forbidden by God. In the episode, the apple isn’t really an actual apple, it’s freedom from the supercomputer – the tribe’s God. The tribe soon learns that Kirk’s crew seem happy to go where they please and love whomever they want, so they accept Kirk’s help and destroy the supercomputer/God. In other words, they bite into the apple, only to discover how sweet it tastes. Gene Roddenberry took a tale as old as time and turned it into a Star Trek episode that explores ‘freedom’ and ‘social justice’ – timely topics in the 1960s, which was a decade that saw the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Pay Act, and the Gay Rights Movement.

Which brings me to the present day and the pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery – an episode that isn’t a ‘one-and-done’ episode like “The Apple”, but rather an introduction to where the Federation was at in the year 2255, in the Star Trek universe. We follow Commander Michael Burnham – the first officer aboard the U.S.S. Shenzhou – as she involves herself in a diplomatic incident with the mysterious Klingon Empire. Spoiler alert: she kills a Klingon in self-defence, suggests to her captain that the Klingons respect an opponent in battle more than one who comes in peace, doesn’t get her way with her captain, and then assaults her captain before the whole Klingon fleet shows up to kill them all.

Is Cmdr. Burnham a flawed character? You bet she is. Is this a show Gene Roddenberry would’ve created? Never. But maybe that’s a good thing. “The Vulcan Hello” is basically the 10-page prologue you read at the beginning of a thick novel. And that’s the way we should view it. It gave us a glimpse of how far humanity has come by the 23rd century, and how far they still have yet to go. Burnham is supposed to represent the best of humans and Vulcans, and even she gets involved in conflict with the Klingons and with her fellow officers. I suspect we’ll see Burnham become an accomplished Starfleet officer by the end of the series, or maybe even by the end of the first season.

Discovery isn’t The Original Series and it definitely doesn’t align with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future of humanity, but it isn’t supposed to…yet. And that’s the key word: yet. This implies the series will work towards the future we see in Picard and Janeway and Sisko’s time. Fans of The Orville – Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi dramedy that is the love child of Star Trek and Galaxy Quest – say Discovery isn’t optimistic and fun like The Orville. They think The Orville “feels more like classic Trek at the moment”. The same Redditor who made that comment went on to sum up how I think most of us sci-fi fans feel when he says that “The Orville is too much on the light hearted/comedy side while Discovery is too far on the serious side. All I wanted is something in between them.”

Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, starring – you guessed it – Seth MacFarlane!

This is an interesting point because, right now, sci-fi fans can watch both shows and compare the two on a week-by-week basis, which is a pretty unique situation. The Orville is familiar with its look & feel and episodic plot, while Discovery has a serialized plot and reminds me more of Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. I would argue both The Orville and Discovery pull off their intended vibe pretty well. I would also argue that nostalgia is influencing sci-fi fans’ opinions, at the moment. They’re looking at classic Trek through rose-coloured glasses and refusing to embrace the Trek we need amidst the current political climate.

We don’t need a polished, clean Trek; we need a morally ambiguous Trek that shows humanity’s transition into the bright future that Roddenberry imagined. We aren’t in the 1960s anymore, so we don’t need to air episodes like “The Apple”. We need an updated Trek, a Trek show that has a serialized plot like the best shows on television right now (Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Handmaid’s Tale, Better Call Saul, Stranger Things, etc.). We need a Trek show that tackles more current issues. Issues such as those explored by the creative minds behind The Handmaid’s Tale and American Gods – a topic I explored in my last post.

So, please, don’t nitpick over how you would’ve had things play out on Discovery. If you don’t want to watch it, don’t watch it. Netflix has every season of every other Star Trek series for you to watch until your heart’s content. I believe Galaxy Quest is even on Netflix. I for one will continue to tune in every week (I live in Canada where the show actually airs on TV on a weekly basis) blissfully unaware that the trolls aren’t watching it.

Star Trek: Discovery isn’t the Star Trek of old, but maybe that’s a good thing. We don’t need it to promote social justice and interracial kisses because that’s not the day and age we live in anymore. We live in a society that is afraid of change; case and point: Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Oh, and look at that – the first episode centred around the Klingon Empire going to war with the Federation because they were afraid joining the Federation would destroy their culture, their individuality, what it means to be Klingon. So a religious, nationalistic minority urged the rest of their empire to go to war because it was the only way for their empire to thrive. If that doesn’t sound familiar, it’s basically what is happening in the United States right now.

If you don’t agree with me on this, then all I have to say to you is: GOOD DAY, SIR!

To the rest of you: Live long and prosper.