The first episode of season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery should've been the pilot episode of the entire series. In fact the entire premise of the third season should've been what this show was about in the first place. But the fact we're getting it now is pretty cool. I'm not going to go into much detail, but I actually liked Burnham a lot more in this single episode than I have in the entirety of the previous 2 seasons of the show.
The new world of the 32nd Century is so refreshing to me because it actually feels like Star Trek is moving forward after nineteen years of being in prequel territory starting with Star Trek: Enterprise in 2001 and then moving into the trilogy that came out from 2009 to 2016, and then with the first two seasons of Discovery. Even Star Trek: Picard felt like it was stuck in the past since Jean-Luc Picard is the central character and we had Riker, Troi, Seven of Nine, Data, Icheb, and Bruce Maddox show up, with lots of references to TNG along the way. Same with Lower Decks in many ways.
I think the best way to describe the setting of this third season is Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda meets Firefly. The tech looks more advanced than that, but the location we visited in this episode very much felt like a place that Dylan Hunt and his crew would visit in Andromeda with a hint of some of the places that Mal and his crew visited in Firefly. That's all I can say without spoiling anything.
The new character they introduced in this episode, Book, feels like they're taking a step back though. He's the typical hotshot, loner, pilot character that we've seen a thousand times in everything from Star Trek to Star Wars, and even Firefly and Dark Matter. He even has a furry sidekick in the form of his cat, Grudge. I'm interested to see where Book goes as the season progresses, but right now, I'm not blown away by the character like I was with Pike last season or even with Saru in the first season.
I think this season is a response to the realization that people are just done with prequels when it comes to Star Trek because Star Trek is all about moving forward, but it feels like we've done very little of that since Voyager ended in 2001. I'm excited to see where this season goes. Though I do think that Burnham and Book need to find the Discovery in the next episode because then you run the risk of what happened with the first season, where the ship was introduced three episodes in, characters didn't get developed and you're left with too many characters and not enough of them that people actually care about. Which was the biggest problem that the first two seasons had. At least to me. It's why I had such a hard time with a character's death last season and the revelation of another character in season 1.
Overall this episode was pretty strong for a season opener. I actually liked it better than the season 2 opener, which was also pretty good. I'm hoping that the season doesn't go downhill from here like season 2 did, but I'm optimistic that they're finally giving us good Star Trek again. Which is something we Trekkies have been asking for since Discovery first started in 2017.
That's it for my review of the season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. I'll be back next week with more reviews and most likely a Living with Disabilities post. So until then have an awesome weekend. Later.
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