Star Trek: Discovery

This is light years removed from being a perfect TV show, but it already shows signs of being a great one.

All told, Discovery still has some storytelling kinks to work out with the Klingons, and all the breathless action in the first two episodes didn’t leave a ton of room for character development beyond Burnham. But the seeds for a compelling series are definitely there--and, best of all, it feels like Star Trek.

Listen up, Star Trek fans: sign up for your CBS All Access account now, because the most exciting and daring take on the franchise is happening there, and even if you don’t love it right out of the gate, it’s going to create conversations you won’t want to miss.

You respect the ambition of unspooling this story gradually, but the third episode also retroactively makes the two-part prologue feel even more overextended. This feels like a show struggling to find its heart. But at least Martin-Green gives it a pulse.

Happily Star Trek: Discovery strikes a balance between what diehard Trekkies love about Roddenberry’s universe and what J.J. Abrams injected into its theatrical resurrection. Ethical dilemmas and a clash between cultures and traditions comprise the fore of the narrative, but the hours don’t skimp on phaser blasts and broadcast-appropriate carnage.

Discovery is action-packed, has its main narrative set around a Federation-Klingon war, and heavily borrows from the visual style of J.J. Abrams’s rebooted Trek films, replete with lens flares and metallic set dressings, far from the day-glo delights of the original show.

Star Trek: Discovery, while commenting on today’s pessimistic political landscape, never wallows in despair. It’s characters still striving for the utopic ideals of Star Treks past.

There is space action, and human interaction, and some attempt to represent the Klingon point of view with more than the usual nuance and sympathy — words not customarily associated with Klingons, whose very appearance, all bumpy brows and bad dentition, and guttural way of speech belie those notions.

Discovery introduced a compelling new hero, an even more compelling new alien, and a whole new war. But mostly it did negligible damage to a revered franchise and its legacy. Discovery is perfectly fine.

It’s the moral murk that Burnham must wade through that gives Discovery its tantalizing possibilities.

What viewers saw so far was exciting, fun stuff with potential for a great “Star Trek” series, but the material in the first two episodes serves as prologue.

Star Trek can be whatever it wants. Discovery is Star Trek. Maybe even, in time, a really good merging of past traditions and present television.

One of the things that makes Star Trek so good is that it really believes in peace and inclusion and all that good stuff. It really wants to create a world where these ideals have become the guiding principles of humanity and its many interplanetary allies. Star Trek is best when it’s hopeful, but hope shines brightest amid horror. On some level, Discovery knows both of those things, and that’s why it’s a show I’m eager to keep watching.

Soars in ambition and devotion to Star Trek history and mythology, but stalls with certain plot details and stilted dialogue.

Star Trek: Discovery feels like it's just finding its footing. On the promising side, Doug Jones is already a standout as Science Officer Lt. Saru, who's from an alien race called Kelpiens. And James Frain is perfectly cast as Sarek, the Vulcan who veteran "Trek" fans know as the father of Spock. The relationship between Burnham and Sarek is one of the more intriguing aspects of Star Trek: Discovery.

Star Trek Discovery is perhaps a little too dull and a little too indistinguished to really make that impact. The performances are all routinely good, and there’s nothing about its production values that’s easy to fault, but it’s also hard to find a lot to celebrate in full. That said, the leads definitely have fine chemistry together, particularly Martin-Green and Yeoh.

Sonequa Martin-Green is a star I'd gladly watch navigate from one end of the TV universe to the other...The opening hour had to hook audiences so completely that they'd be willing to follow the show to subscription VOD platform CBS All Access. In this respect, the Discovery premiere feels like a failure to me, albeit an entertaining and occasionally epic and ambitious failure.

Despite being outfitted with some interesting wrinkles, Star Trek: Discovery is an unspectacular addition to the existing fleet of "Trek"-branded series. The result, creatively, makes for an awkward liftoff, one perhaps most notable for its commercial mission, which is to entice new subscribers to CBS All Access.