Redshirts Roundtable: The Outlook of Star Trek Discovery

“An Obol For Charon” — Ep #204 – Pictured: Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Photo Cr: Michael Gibson/CBS © 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

Andrew Depledge:

Overall I’m pretty happy with the handling of Discovery over the first season and a half, they’ve made some well appreciated course corrections, but their direction is solid.

I’m with James when it comes to my first reaction to Discovery, I was cautiously optimistic, the players involved in making it had credibility, the cast was shaping up nicely, but somehow I had a gut feeling something was going to be wrong. When the release delay was announced and Bryan Fuller exited I was both worried about the behind the scenes details and relieved that they were hopefully taking their time to release a product they could stand behind.

I think I had an old school mentality when it came to streaming, likely from living in an extremely remote area and having been less exposed to all things online for the past decade, my first thought was that it wouldn’t have “TV money” behind it, this is a case where I was happy to be wrong because the budget is incredible, as are the production values.

The top 5-8 characters were well presented during the first season, while oddly the bridge crew felt like props, had they been Redshirts I could understand, maybe even forgive, but even redshirts have names, in the first season I felt like the crew of the Discovery didn’t. That’s certainly been course corrected a fact that’s especially highlighted by the latest episode in which we lost a character in a heartbreaking fashion, 12 months ago I’m not sure we would have noticed.

With the new season and the new Captain we finally have a family aboard the ship, the DASH drive is little more than a plot device that we’re all just waiting to be explained out of existence, even though there’s something (admittedly not-trekly) cool about it. The Klingons are back to normal, despite the fact that we kind of expect to see the Original Series look return. Course correction complete.

Now with the news that Anson Mount is not a part of the third season I feel a little trepidation, wishing he had been able to stay, but Discovery has proven to be a good ship, and she’ll do fine without him.