Before “Star Trek: Discovery” premiered Sunday night, it had been more than 12 years since a new episode of the decades-old franchise had appeared on TV.
During that sad Trek drought, the world changed considerably.
The smartphone transformed from a luxury gadget to a necessity, regimes changed in the Middle East as pockets of the western world embraced isolationism, and “froyo,” “photobomb,” and “face-palm” found their way into the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
In the United States, things got particularly weird as we shuffled through presidents as ideologically-opposed as Star Trek’s Vulcans and Ferengi.
With all of this juicy human drama just sitting there, “Star Trek: Discovery” should have been prepared to boldly go into the golden age of television, a poignant reminder that some of our most pressing issues have always been best addressed through the lens of space explorers grappling with new life and new civilizations.
Instead, creators Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman waste this monumental opportunity by dragging viewers on a joyless trudge into well-charted territory.
It’s a tragedy — not just for die-hard Trekkies who have already suffered from an absence of new episodes and a handful of middling cinematic adventures, but for the medium of television as a whole.
The premier, titled “The Vulcan Hello,” sets up a likely war story as First Officer Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green, accidentally kills a Klingon soldier while investigating a mysterious object floating in space.
The incident prompts the Klingons, now rendered as snarling space monsters clothed in what appear to be wedding dresses from an HR Giger bridal line, to attempt to unite their fractured empire in retribution.
In one of the most uncharacteristically Star Trek moments in franchise history, Sarek, a well-known Vulcan from previous outings now portrayed by James Frain, advises Burnham to somehow avert war by firing on the Klingon’s first.
Burnham attempts to comply, but not before temporarily fragging her ship’s captain with a Vulcan nerve pinch.
So the huge moral quandary turns out to be: Do you shoot your enemy first and risk war? Or do you not and risk, I guess, more war?
While there may be some immediate resonance today with two different cultures preparing for mutual annihilation, it’s a concept that has been thoroughly probed by Star Trek during the Cold War.
The fact that this is the primary question posed to viewers highlights the disappointing direction the series seems destined for.
Now, it could get better.
Star Trek pilot episodes have always been relatively weak compared to what followed and this could very well be an instance of that.
The remainder of the season will be made available exclusively on the CBS All Access streaming service, so maybe this was a crass attempt to goad a wider audience into signing up for the pay-for service while knowing that Trekkie fundamentalists will be there no matter what.
And it’s not like the series is completely without promise.
Star Trek: Discovery received glowing praise in the lead-up to its release for wisely casting black and Asian women as its leads.
Yes, there was a bit of an online outcry among some claiming that this was some dastardly form of political correctness, but, honestly, anybody who has passionate opinions about Star Trek knows that it’s a franchise that celebrates diversity and consistently pats itself on the back for moves like having a Russian at the helm in the original series or featuring one of television’s earliest inter-racial kisses.
As characters, both Burnham and Georgiou shine, as does Doug Jones’ Suru, an alien from a planet where his species is literally treated like a piece of meat.
But despite compelling characters and some fun dynamics between them, it’s useless if the show simply finds itself without anything interesting to say.
The drama is similarly stilted by the puzzling decision to set the series 10 years before the 1960s original series, meaning that despite whatever happens in Discovery, viewers know that within a decade we’ll have a scenario in which the United Federation of Planets survives, the Klingon decide to all grow goatees, and Star Fleet will begin to issue color-coded uniforms that make it easy to predict who will get killed on away-missions.
The opening episode also uses gimmicks to build tension rather than actually investing time in characters and putting them in situations wherein we genuinely care what happens.
The biggest is the slanted camera angle that 80 percent of the show seems to be shot in, something that film school students will tell you puts stress on the audience, but loses its effect when nearly every scene looks like it’s being filmed by a fleet of cameramen with neck injuries.
These are nit-picky issues that can be forgiven, but like multiplying tribbles, the shows larger troubles are impossible to ignore.
Like most science fiction, Star Trek works best as a mirror on society. The show has gazed into that mirror and instead of seeing a broken world in need of Star Trek’s historic optimism, it seems to have discovered, well, very little.
Justin Duckham (@Jduckham) is the senior Washington correspondent for Talk Media News. In addition to being a radio personality heard nationwide, he is a life-long sci-fi fan.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
