Featured TV on DVD Review: Star Trek: Discovery: Season One
November 27, 2018
Star Trek: Discovery: Season One - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray
Star Trek: Discovery is the first TV series in the Star Trek franchise since the untimely, and well-deserved, early death of Enterprise. It was part of the launch of CBS’s streaming service and it helped increase subscriptions to that service, so in that regard, it was a success. Is it also a critical success? Or did it thrive during its first season more out of curiosity than anything else?
Unlike most Star Trek shows, this one has a continuing storyline, so if I described the plot chronologically, we would run into spoilers before much of the main cast was introduced. Because of this, I’m going to split the plot into three sections. Firstly, there’s the Klingons, who drive the plot. At this point in history, pre-TOS there is no real Klingon Empire but 24 great houses that are at war with each other as much as they are fighting any outsiders. One Klingon, T’Kuvma, dreams of reuniting the houses and forming a great empire. His plan is to show them the real enemy is the Federation of Planets, who plan to assimilate the Klingons with their false claim of “We come in peace.” His plan is simple. They will damage a Federation signal relay, wait for a ship to come and repair it, initiate a conflict, and then escalate the conflict enough that a war begins between the two sides. With a common enemy, the Klingons will reunite under one house.
While that is the instigating incident, the plot mostly follows the main character, Michael Burnham, a human who was adopted by a Vulcan, Sarek, yes, Spock’s father. When the TV show begins, Michael Burnham is the First Officer of the USS Shenzhou, the ship called in to investigate the damaged Federation signal relay mentioned above. The Science Officer, Saru, is nervous about the situation, but as the captain, Philippa Georgiou, points out that Saru’s species, Kelpien, evolved from prey animals and they have developed an overly sensitive sense of danger. When Burnham also thinks it could be a setup, Captain Georgiou is intrigued and a plan is made to discover who is responsible and why. As I mentioned above, this is a trap and when they spring the trap, they are left face-to-face with a Klingon Bird of Prey, which had been watching them while cloaked.
At this point, Starfleet tells Captain Georgiou to hold until reinforcements arrive and to not engage. It has been so long since anyone from the Federation encountered the Klingons that they don’t know how to move forward. Burnham decides to contact Sarek for advice, because the last time Vulcans encountered the Klingons, they managed to avoid a war and establish diplomatic ties. His advice is simple, fire first. The Klingons are a warrior species, so firing first is a sign you respect them as warriors. Burnham goes to Captain Georgiou, but of course she rejects it. So in response, Michael uses the Vulcan nerve pinch to knock her out and try and convince the rest of the crew the captain agreed with her plan. This doesn’t work and she’s arrested for mutiny. Worse still, when the admiral arrives in the flag ship of the Federation and says the magic words, “We come in peace.”, the Klingons attack en masse. There are lots of causalities on both sides, including Captain Georgiou, and neither side can really claim they won. However, the war between the Federation and the Klingons has begun and with the latter’s cloaking technology, they have a serious advantage.
After the battle, Michael Burnham is put on trial for mutiny and she doesn’t even fight the charges. She is transported with other criminals, an accident occurs and the ship is rescued by the USS Discovery, captained by Gabriel Lorca. The USS Discovery is one of only two ships equipped with an experimental technology, which would be invaluable to the war, if they can get it to work. That’s where Burnham comes in. She has scientific knowledge that could help solve some of the technical problems and since it is war time, Captain Lorca can force her to work on the problem, at least for the three days it will take to repair the ship she was on. He has the power to override the court and allow her to stay full time, but she would have to agree to that. She doesn’t, much to the relief of the USS Discovery’s first officer, Saru. He’s not the only member of the USS Shenzhou on board and none of them are particularly happy to see her.
She’s assigned to Engineering, working under Lieutenant Paul Stamets. She even gets a roommate, Cadet Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), who is non-neuraltypical. She’s very happy to have a roommate, but also initially intimidated by Michael. By the time the three days are up, she’s changed her mind about staying, but only after being convinced that the experimental technology isn’t a biological weapon, but a drive capable of teleporting the ship near instantaneously.
And that’s where we run into unacceptable spoilers.
Simply put, Star Trek: Discovery: Season One is in my opinion the best first season of a Star Trek show since the original Star Trek. Granted, The Next Generation started slowly, as did Deep Space Nine, and the less said about Voyager and Enterprise the better, but this show still got off to a great start with a number of major assets. At the top of this list is the cast, which includes many veterans, as well as newcomers. The latter includes Sonequa Martin-Green, who is very compelling as Michael Burnham, while Doug Jones is one of the best creature actors of all time. He has well over 100 TV and movie credits and you rarely get to see his face. I also like the diversity of the cast. Mary Wiseman (She has no movie credits, so she’s not in our database.) plays the first non-neuraltypical main character in a Star Trek show and seeing this kind of representation is important. Star Trek has been ahead of the curve on this issue through most of its run and it usually gets push back from the same groups.
Another main selling point of the series is its ongoing story and production value. This is easily the best looking Star Trek series and it has some amazing special effects and production design. It’s not quite blockbuster movie level, but close. The ongoing story also means there’s a lot more depth to the plot, which is appreciated. That’s not to say there are no one-off stories. The return of Harry Mudd is a good example of that and one of my personal favorite episodes of the season. ... Then there’s the big switch in the middle of the season, that I can’t talk about. It is so frustrating that I can’t talk about it due to spoilers, but it turned a good season into a great one.
On a side note, there are some who don’t like the new designs for the Klingons, as they are too different to the previous versions. It does take a few episodes to get used to, but I like them, as they do look more alien and indeed more varied. On the other hand, I think the Klingon language was a mistake. It does sound sufficiently alien, but it is also very slow. I remember reading somewhere that Spanish speakers tend to say about twice as many syllables per minute as English speakers do, but both languages convey about the same amount of information per minute. So it is not impossible for a language to be this slow and still function as a language, but I think it is an unnecessary obstacle to enjoying the show.
Disc one has launch promos and a trio of featurettes. The first of these is Discovering Discovery, a 17-minute look at the creation of the show. Standing in the Shadows of Giants is an 8-minute look at the music of the show and how they tried to pay homage to the original show and setting itself apart from it as well. Creature Comforts is a 16-minute look at the makeup and costumes.
There are three more featurettes on disc two, starting with Designing Discovery, a 12-minute look at the set design of the show. Creating Space runs 13 minutes long and looks at the creation of the special effects. Finally, Prop Me Up is a 13-minute featurette about the props. That’s self-explanatory.
There are three featurettes on Disc Three, A Woman’s Journey and Dress for Success. The former is an 11-minute featurette about importance of diversity throughout the Star Trek franchise and how that continues with Discovery. Dress for Success is a 21-minute featurette on the costumes. The final one, Feeding Frenzy is ... kind of a spoiler.
The final disc has two more featurettes, the first being a Season One Promo. Finally, there is a 41-minute long look at the season overall.
There are also deleted / extended scenes on 6 of the 15 episodes.
The lack of audio commentary tracks is disappointing, but the overall quality of the extras is still great.
I grew up on Star Trek and while Star Trek: Discovery does some things differently than other series in the franchise, for the most part, these changes work. By the end of Season One, I was completely hooked. Additionally, the extras on the DVD / Blu-ray are more than enough to be worth picking up.
The Show
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, James Frain, Jason Isaacs, Doug Jones, Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp, Rainn Wilson, Michelle Yeoh, Christopher Obi