Star Trek Discovery, your thoughts?

[Ravenshire]

I am getting it on Netflix for no additional charge.  I do think it is a mistake for the show to be essentially Pay per view.  I mean, it works for Game of Thrones, but come on.

Now that I've sat on it a few hours, I like it even more.  It was cerebral enouhg to begin with.  There was a lot, actually, to tie it more to ToS.  Not visually, that's all very modern, but it had:
Longtime friends/collegues
A touch of humor, not too campy as in ToS though
Some action, but not like non stop action
Quite a lot of thoughtful dialog between the characters
Actions and plot directly relating to modern social issues
Like religious fanaticism, nationalism (Remain Klingon!) and xenophobia

And honestly, the Klingons were pretty cool.

This looks to be a bit of a history lesson into why the Klingons have such a huge grudge against the Federation.  Which is a nice premise for the season, I think.  I mean, in ToS the Klingons were largely 2 dimensional bad guys, pretty much representing Russian, right?  In TnG, they became friends (sort of) and there was some exploration of their culture.  Now we'll get to see what led up to that, with what seems to be a pretty interesting story.

I will definitely watch the next few.  I hope they don't drop the ball.

After finally watching the two part premier, I've got to agree with Aroura.

Having said that, it was still a series premier and they are almost never as good as the series that follows. Character introduction and development, expositions, all the stuff that the series relies on has to happen in the first episodes. I think they did a decent job with that while managing to keep the show entertaining enough to follow up. Did they make mistakes? Of course. Was it perfectly canon? Of course not. Still, it was more "Trek" then either "Enterprise" or "Star Trek: Lost in Space/Gilligan's Island... er... Voyager."

One thing they did that bugged me, Sarek having an adopted daughter. Much like Spock's half-brother, it breaks canon. It's mentioned at least once in TOS that Spock is Sarek's only child. Half-brothers and step-sisters are typically something that gets into official records or get discussed between life-long friends. Kirk most likely would have known about them both, especially in a friendship in which they had been through death, and life together.

For those complaining about too many Klingons, the Klingon Empire is historically the Federations greatest threat. The Romulans were always primarily isolationist, the Cardassians hadn't been encountered yet and the other "bad guy" races have either been Federation members (Andor, Tellar, etc...) or were never major threats. Who else does that leave within the timeline that won't break canon? This is back-story on why the Klingons have always been aggressive and even as allies, it was always a tense alliance.

All in all, it's a good start to what can be a very good addition to the "Star Trek" universe. Will it shine in the 2010's the way the original did in the 60's or the way DS9 did in the 90's? No way to tell yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Keeping it behind a pay-wall in it's primary market may be it's undoing, though. Especially if CBS can't find a way to bring more to their corner of the streaming market. Having tons of back-catalogue stuff ain't gonna cut it when competing with the original programming from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the others.