There’s a real life paradox to Star Trek Discovery. The series takes place 10 years before Captain Kirk’s original five year mission, yet it was filmed 50ish years later for a much more demanding audience, with much better technology. That is almost impossible to reconcile.

When Gene Roddenberry brought the original Star Trek to the small screen, it was ahead of its time in so many ways. Travel in the stars, an incredibly diverse cast that included the first black woman to be a regular on series TV, and a Russian 20 years before the end of the Cold War. The reality, however, was that the technology and production values of TV were in their infancy. Hell, I still had a black and white TV when I first started watching Star Trek.

Therein lies the challenge. How do you produce a prequel to a show that was shot in the 1960’s when color on TV was the latest greatest 50 years later?

Challenge #1 – Audiences have way more sophisticated palates. We want visual effects that are way more over-the-top. When CBS brought Enterprise to TV in 2001, they did a remarkable job of making the flagship look like an earlier iteration. It was spartan, it was functional. It looked like a first version. One of the greatest parts of all the series featuring the Enterprise is that we got to see her grow. The production design of the USS Discovery (and the Shenzhou, for that matter) was not pre-Original Series….and I don’t care. The visual elements of Discovery were, of course, the best, by far. Many a fan complained that it was so much more advanced than TOS that it couldn’t take place before it. OK, I guess. Point taken.

Challenge #2 – Audiences want more sophisticated plotlines. The earlier Star Trek properties were primarily week to week episodic TV. New stories every week, with the occasional 2 parter, and some recurring characters. There weren’t big, complicated season long arcs. Audiences are done with that. We’ve grown up. We want deeper plot lines with much more gutwrenching consequences. Discovery delivered on that, with several lead characters dying in the first season, and with some pretty unexpected twists and turns. (Full disclosure: there were some expected twists and turns too -things were telegraphed like a Jay Culter pass.) The Federation is in its infancy during Discovery, and producers did a nice job of showing just how tenuous that coalition was.

Related: David Duncan ranks the pre-Discovery Star Trek series

Challenge #3 – Connection and canon. Some fans would argue that this is where Star Trek Discovery failed. In the connection part, they did a nice job of bringing some things together with the universe that they were helping to lay the foundation for. The inclusion of minor characters like Sarek (James Frain) and Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson) was a great way to connect to The Original Series. Both actors were really great, but Wilson was fantastic. Additionally, the story arc that introduced the Mirror Universe was very well done and had some nice surprises in it. I’m always impressed when writers can find a little thread in source material and really expand upon it. Wrath of Khan is the perfect example of that. The original episode “Space Seed” is so campy and over the top, and yet producers created a Trek masterpiece out of seeds sown in that episode. (Did you see what I did there?? I kill me.)

From a canon standpoint, one place that Discovery really succeeded was in the casting of a very diverse crew, with an Asian-American captain, a black first officer, a Kelpian science officer, and an android on the bridge crew alone. That was a building block laid down by the Original Series that could easily be followed. There are lots of things, however, that could not be reconciled exactly with a show that was conceived and filmed over 50 years ago. Personally, I’m glad that the producers didn’t feel tied to this. They did take advantage of the world building from the past 50 years – The Federation, the Klingons (although they took a few liberties here), and the basic technology of communicators and phasers and transporters were all pretty true to the look of the Original Series.

As for the stretches (or full on ignoring) of canon, well, I’m glad they did it. This was my moment in time – my throw canon to the wind liberation event. I realized as I watched it, I didn’t really care about canon anymore. Gene Roddenberry, one of my all-time heroes, could not have possibly foreseen what would become of his little, campy, low budget science fiction show. When he wrote it, he wrote it for the 1960’s. He laid some foundational stuff, but every series, produced in a different time, needed to make their stories work and be relevant to the audience of the day. Being handcuffed by canon is no way to write a good series. And, despite its failings, I think Star Trek Discovery is a good television series.

Related: The Grumpy Geek takes over RANKED! and gives the 1 to 10 on Trek films

For me, the visual element of a live-action science fiction series is in the top elements for success. We can certainly check that box. Good characters and fun storytelling are right at the top of my list too, and overall, I think Discovery, FOR THE MOST PART, achieved those, as well. I enjoyed Sonequa Martin-Green’s take on Michael Burnham immensely. I always loved Spock’s inner battle between his Vulcan birth and his partial human upbringing. Burnham was the other side of that coin – human by birth and Vulcan by upbringing. Green did a great job with it, not only in the day to day inner struggle, but in the series long evolution of the character. I enjoyed her as much as any Trek character over the years. Michelle Yeoh was fun to watch, as well, from the sage mentor in the beginning to the much different character that she played at the end. Doug Jones portrayal of Saru is a joy to watch. A different kind of a character than we’ve ever seen before. Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca was a point of consternation for me, but wrapped up satisfactorily (notice the vanilla endorsement) in the end. And finally, Mary Wiseman was a real delight as Cadet Sylvia Tilly.

Was the series perfect? Absolutely not. The story in the final episode needed one or two more episodes to flesh it out fully. It was a rushed and unsatisfying ending. I never warmed up to the Klingons. Either the dramatic change in look or the use of the Klingon language with subtitles. I’m not familiar enough with the lore to know if the divided houses of the Klingon Empire were a thing in canon or if Discovery invented that. I did like that. And finally, through most of the season, I didn’t like the attitude and mission of Star Fleet, but, I came around to that more with the revelations at the end. There were some big problems here for me, like the much more gritty tone. I’m not a fan of grit for grit’s sake, and Star Trek was never really a place for grit. Like really with the F-bombs? Not sure that could have been handled worse.

Shop: Stream Discovery, read companion books, or get yourself a cool tee right here

Overall, I rate a book or movie or TV series on a few things. I look at the visual elements, the characters, the plot and storytelling. For Discovery, I loved the visual elements, canon be damned. I really enjoyed most of the characters. There were problems with the storylines, no doubt about it, but I still give them points for the good stuff they did, and for some of the risks they took. Despite the rushed and somewhat unsatisfying ending, I never really found myself bored or wanting to turn it off. Is there room for improvement? You bet. I’m glad they have a second season to give that a try.

What’d you think? Is the grumpy one full of it? Did he get it right? Leave a comment below.

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The Grumpy Geek, Pete Herr is the author of “10 Things We Should Teach You In High School and Usually Don’t”. He is the oldest geek in the Geekiverse by a factor of two. Follow Pete Herr on Facebook, Twitter,and Instagram . If you don’t he gets Grumpy. You don’t want to see him Grumpy.

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