The Vulcan Hello

Star Trek: Discovery is a series anticipated with bated breath, the return of Star Trek to its home as a syndicated weekly television series. The question was after a 12 year absence could Discovery bring Star Trek to a new generation of fans and mollify the pensive fan community that have waited so long for a new series?

Based on the first episode the answer is almost a complex as that question.

Star Trek: Discovery

Episode 1: A Vulcan Hello

A monologue, intended to sound poignant and quickly introduce the themes of the show is so much of a sci-fi trope at this point you probably knew it was coming before you even loaded the show in your streaming service of choice. In this case monologuist du jour is T’Kuvma (Christopher Obi) and I suppose we should address the elephant in the room: Yes, they’ve changed the Klingons again.

I’m more sanguine about this than some other fans of the old shows. Seeing the Klingons turn from racist caricature of the Japanese into, well, a less racist caricature of the Japanese means that I’ve already seen them change once and clearly the decision has been made to make the new incarnation of the Klingons more inhuman and less like actors with Cornish pasties taped to their foreheads.

This hasn’t been without a trade off though. The Klingons of the 90’s may have looked very human, fangs and foreheads aside, but it also gave the actors an unobstructed field to use their facial expressions to portray characters who tended to be bombastic and larger than life.

By comparison Christopher Obi’s performance is much more understated, but sometimes I worry that we’re losing some of the performance in the heap of prosthesis used to create the new Klingons. Only time will tell as we see more of the Klingon characters.

T’Kuvma makes his opening statement to a throng of gathered Klingons, that they must ‘Remain Klingon’ and then telling them of the Federation’s great lie; “We come in Peace”.

A decent start. I like seeing basic assumptions about the Federation as de facto ‘good guys’ being challenged, and “we come in peace” is universal enough that even if you’ve never heard of the Prime Directive you should be able to keep up with what’s going on.

We cut to a desert world where Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and her first officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) as they hike through the desert to restore a well dried up by a passing meteorite and get out before a decades long storm strands them on the planet.

When Burnham realises they didn’t have as much time as she (very accurately) predicted, and they can no longer communicate with their ship, Captain Georgiou leads them out into the desert and signals their ride by walking Burnham in a circle whilst talking about her future. As their ship the U.S.S. Shenzhou appears through the dust cloud approaching on them Burnham is astounded and we pan up to reveal Georgiou’s route had mapped out the Starfleet chevron in the desert.

Cut to credits, which are kinda cool. A lot of people told me how ‘Star Trek’ they looked, but since they weren’t just a ship wooshing past the audience at warp speed I assume they mean how much Star Trek paraphernalia they cram in. There are ships and phasers all looking like John Eaves concept sketches which, given my utter adoration for Eaves work on Star Trek, I had no problem with. The main theme itself, a riff on the original series movie theme, was fine but largely forgettable.

We cut back to the First Officer’s Log, recorded by Burnham, and we’ve landed at the Trek I know and love. We’re in space, there’s a problem, here’s an officer telling us what the problem is. In this case something has taken a bite out of a Starfleet communications post on the edge of Federation space. On the bridge of the Shenzhou we’re introduced to the ship’s second officer and foil for Burnham; Lt. Saru (Doug Jones) who has detected something beneath them.

Anyone familiar with Doug Jones’ work as the Pale Man or Abe Sapien will know he has a tall, slender frame and possesses a talent for using his body, especially his hands, in ways that feel uncanny and strange. Talents which are on display here to make Saru unsettling and alien, but combined with a cautious, put upon manner that managed to be endearing rather than whiny.

The ‘something’ they have detected doesn’t show up on sensors and so unable to take the Shenzhou closer due to asteroids, and eager to show off what they can do with an effects budget, Burnham goes for a space walk ‘fly by’ of the mysterious object, despite the radiation present in the system.

This sequence is pure ‘rule of cool’, on a smaller budget they’d have just beamed to the object and poked around on a soundstage for a bit looking intrigued but concerned. Here we get long swooping shots of the outer hull of the Shenzhou and how small Burnham is compared to it, which is a nice touch that I wish they did more of.

Here Discovery suffers from the same issue that the ‘Nutrek’ movies did where they seem to want to be constantly in motion, showing action even when nothing is happening, rather than taking the time to establish context. How far are these objects from each other? Show me why they can’t send a shuttle instead of a vulnerable human body, becoming more irradiated by the second. They tell us Burnham has 20 minutes but we never really understand how dangerous that is until they tell us the that time is running out.

The result is we arrive at a series of destinations we’re told to care about (and broadly do, thanks to the cast being engaging and likeable) but without the journey to build up tension. In the movies this was understandable, keeping an action romp breezy and under two hours means sometimes you need to cut to the chase, but the scope of a series affords more time to enjoy the journey and I hope it’s something Discovery takes advantage of as the season moves on.

Burnham arrives at the object and finds it to be some kind of ship made of stone and metal. It reacts as she lands, extending wing-like pylons before she sees an armoured figure that her suit identifies as Klingon. The figure attacks but she activates her pack and impales him on his own sword, before tumbling off into space, her visor cracked, unconscious as the Shenzhou tries to bring her back on board.

After a cut we return to the dead Klingon who bore the title of Torchbearer for their Sacred Beacon, who is interred within a sarcophagus and T’Kumva seeks a volunteer, finding one in a pale Klingon not of noble blood who proves themselves by holding their hand in a flame to show their devotion. For those of us in the know there’s talk of the Light of Kahless, the mortal warrior turned-god of the Klingon people, and talk of unifying the 24 noble houses of the high council.

Meanwhile more world building takes place as a radiation burned Burnham lies in some kind of sickbay contraption being healed of her injuries as she relieves her youth as a child on Vulcan being asked questions in a pod, her answers falling apart as they turn to questions relating to an attack on an outpost that she was explicitly caught up in. As she stops the test she speaks to a Vulcan nearby which, as it turns out, is Sarek, father of Spock.

I understand that world building has to happen but I’ve always been a little wary of attempts to mine Star Trek’s vast and esoteric canon as it tends to disappear down a rabbit hole of internal references cribbed from over 700 episodes that you should not be obliged to watch. As it is the references here are reasonably light; you can guess Kahless is a god from the context the Klingons reference him in and you only need to know Sarek’s relationship to Burnham.

Burnham wakes up and rushes, still burned and in need of treatment, to the bridge to inform the captain that there are Klingons here, and we learn that the Federation hasn’t dealt with the Klingons in almost a hundred years making everything old effectively new again. They target the beacon to force the Klingons to talk to them and a ship decloaks to menace them with T’Kumva preaching to his followers about the prophecy of uniting the Empire against their enemies.

Burnham, having been healed, rushes back to the bridge from sickbay as the Klingons light the beacon, whiting out the screens aboard the Shenzhou. Burnham contacts Sarek for advice which amounts to “Hit hard, hit first”, the Vulcan’s having attained a relationship with the Klingons by striking first whenever their ships met. Unsurprisingly Captain Georgiou, being a Starfleet captain, is averse to shooting first and asking questions later and summons Burnham into her ready room when the argument gets heated.

Unable to get the answer she wants Burnham knocks out the Captain with a Vulcan nerve pinch in a move that feels a little weird, as she strides out on the bridge and orders the crew to load torpedoes and fire on the Klingon ship, over Saru’s objections. However as the order is given Captain Georgiou shouts it down, appearing on the bridge pointing a phaser as Burnham and instructing security to arrest her as a fleet of ships drops out of warp, the Klingons have arrived.

Walking the line between existing fan and newcomer was never going to be an easy task. The die hard fan in me felt a little disappointed in not seeing more Trek in this pilot of Star Trek. When I think back to my own first brush with the show, Encounter at Farpoint, the Next Generation Pilot, I recall being struck by how it embraced an idea that was huge and profound and utterly alien. By comparison Discovery is more human, more about foibles and conflicts and less about exploration and the great unknown.

At the same time though I’m happy that Star Trek: Discovery has resolved to be a solid science fiction show first rather than an homage to the great ideals of Trek. It might not feel like the Star Trek I know and love, but I feel like there’s an in here for viewers who haven’t been on a journey with this show for decades. I love classic Trek and believe it has a place on syndicated TV, but I won’t begrudge Discovery for having to find its own way.

In this way they’ve been diligent in making sure they cribbed components from what people know from Star Trek in popular culture. The Federation are peaceful, the Klingons are bad and presumably off the starboard bow, start from there and then let the audience learn together, occasionally rewarding us long time fans with small tidbits and references so that we’re always just a half step ahead.

If I have one criticism it’s the ending. Burnham doesn’t feel like she has a solid motivation to attack her Captain and her friend, the threat of the Klingon’s isn’t really established at this point other than Burnham’s flashback, and even then it doesn’t feel strongly tied to her actions, making her motivation seem vague and the cliffhanger feel forced.

Overall though I enjoyed The Vulcan Hello, as a pilot it succeeded in making me want to know more about these characters, to spend time with them and learn about them, and left me immediately amped up for Episode 2, which conveniently was released at the same time.

Next time: Battle at the Binary Stars