Star Trek: Discovery
8/10
First episode out of the two-parter. And it seems adequate. Woohoo!
So far it seems pretty good. They've left the lead character in a bit of a tough spot, it'll be interesting to see how she does. The only minor pet peeve I had with it:
Was it really necessary to change the appearance of the Klingons? (Again!). There was some of speculation before the show aired that this was just a
sect of Klingons who were bald... no, apparently it's all of them.
The original show-runner, Brian Fuller, who quit fairly early on in the production, apparently had the Klingon shake up in the first pitch to CBS. This series is very focused on Klingons, and he wanted to depict them differently from the other shows. One executive producer said of Fuller's pitch that he wanted them “not be the thugs of the universe, that they be sexy and vital and different from what had come before.” That take seems to have stuck even after Fuller left due to creative differences with CBS. I'm not sure about the "sexy" part, but they certainly are different. There will also be 24 different Klingon houses depicted in the series, and each will be somewhat distinct in appearance. So far, they have only shown a couple of the houses in the series, and the changes are minor between them, but we may see more diversity in future episodes (I have only seen the first).
By the time this filtered down to the Klingon actors on set, they had apparently fleshed out Fuller's intent a bit more. Here is what one of the actors, Mary Chieffo had to say about her take on the Klingon redesign: "Obviously the hair was the biggest thing people noticed, or the lack thereof. And I will attest to the fact there is a reason my ridge goes back the way it does. There are sensors and pheromones … There is a whole reasoning behind it that is adhering to what has always been true in Klingon canon … So I deeply believe we are in line with what has come before but is also adding a new kind of nuance."
I saw the show for free. I considered paying for CBS All Access, but then I looked at their list of shows which seems pretty meager compared to Netflix and Hulu.
I am with you there. I haven't decided where I will eventually land, but I did enjoy the first episode, so I would like to see more. Unfortunately, CBS is treating their streaming like it is a regular TV show, putting out new episodes a week apart until November 5th, which will only include the first half of the season. The second half will begin airing in January. So, subscribing now means you will have to pay for 6 months or more of the service to watch the entire series. At the cheap end, where you get the privilege of both paying $5/month and watching commercials, that's at least $30. If you want to watch "reduced commercials", you have to pay an additional $3/month, so about $50 if you are signing up just to watch Star Trek. Simply put, fuck that. If they had a decent product to offer outside of Star Trek, they wouldn't have to resort to shenanigans like that, and would have more of a "come for the Star Trek, stay for our awesome streaming service" attitude, and dump the series all at once like every other decent streaming service does.
So, that leaves me with three options for watching the series. Option 1: wait until next spring, when all episodes are streaming, and then pay for a month and binge it all. I have a feeling, given what they are already doing, that they will figure out a way to keep me from doing that, likely by putting the streaming episodes in rotation, so only a handful are available to watch any given month. Option 2: wait who the fuck knows how long for the series to come out on Blu-Ray. This is likely to cost just as much as the streaming service, somewhere around $30 is what a single season of a series typically costs, but at least I will own a physical product, and I can watch it entirely without commercials. Finally, option 3: pirate the series. For the record, I am heavily leaning toward option 3, because fuck CBS, their money grab, and their shitty streaming service.
