Thank Kahless, Star Trek is back! Now we can obsess over it.

After watching the first two episodes, I was struck by the writers’ attempts to mislead the audience. The title of the first episode, “The Vulcan Hello,” suggests that it would be about the Vulcan greeting, “live long and prosper,” but it was actually about attacking Klingons. The captain we first meet, Georgiou, seems like a central character, but she died by the end of the second episode. I appreciate that the writers are trying to zig when they could zag, but the first thing I said to my father on Sunday was “I bet Michelle Yeoh dies.” It had to happen — why would there be two captains on one show about a first officer? Someone’s got to go.
Here are some other predictions.

  • Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty awful over its first three seasons, as was VoyagerDS9, my favorite Trek, took multiple seasons before it took off. Enterprise, which seems to have many detractors, actually beat the curve and reached warp 4 by the second season. I predict that Discovery will be good by the second season.
  • (But this will not stop people from complaining about it.)
  • I predict that Michelle Yeoh will return, either through flashbacks or (possibly this should read “and/ or”) in the sort of crazy way that Tasha Yar and Kes returned to TNG and Voyager.
  • I found Sonequa Martin-Green’s calm Vulcan behaviour unconvincing. I predict that her human side will become more assertive and her acting will become more convincing as a result — in other words, she will follow the same acting arc that Brent Spiner did as Data, that Jerri Ryan did as Seven, and that Jolene Blalock did as T’Pol.
  • I predict that much of this season will recall the Dominion War and the Xindi War — an overarching plot that allows room for episodic digression.
  • I predict that because most of the Treks seem to have an evergreen quality to them on Netflix, studios will be less likely to cancel Discovery, even if it struggles to compete against The Walking Dead, whatever HBO shows on Sundays, and Sunday Night Football.
  • I predict (and hope) that we’ll call the show DSC rather than STD.

I do hope that the writers feel free to deviate from Trek traditions. I didn’t enjoy how slowly the Klingons spoke, nor did I like the cold, spacious bridge of the Discovery. Still, the last thing I want to see is another remake of The Naked Time. Obviously, I hope to see the deflector dish used for weird, last minute solutions to bizarre singularities, but, on the whole, let’s go places no Trek has gone before.

What are your predictions and aspirations for Star Trek: Discovery? One commenter wins a book from our stacks.

Author

  • Ryan Skardal

    RYAN SKARDAL, on our staff from September 2010 to November 2018, is an English teacher who reads widely but always makes time for SFF.