Josh Reviews Star Trek: Discovery Season Four — Part One

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Episode 01: “Kobayashi Maru” — The new uniforms look better than the bland outfits the Disco crew were wearing in the final moments of the season 3 finale.  I like the emphasis on brighter primary colors, in the style of the Original Series.  Though I still don’t think the uniforms look great — the lengthy jackets seem awkward to me.  I did like Burnham’s maroon leather away suit though.  I loved hearing the Enterprise theme music when we got a glimpse of the new Archer Spacedock.  I liked getting a glimpse of Kelpian society in this new era and it was fun to hear Saru expressing some good ol’ classic Star Trek idealism.  Book continues to be my favorite character on this show (though I’m afraid they’re going to turn him glum and bitter following the horrible tragedy he suffers at the end of the episode).  Other than that, this episode felt rife with the usual things that drive me crazy about Discovery.  The episode builds to a big catastrophe on a space station and a frenetic action sequence.  But none of it makes any sense.  If the visual effects show the station swinging through space at a rapid speed, why is everyone just fine, albeit upside down, inside?  Why was Discovery surprised by a HUGE wave of giant space debris??  They have ships’ sensors that should have seen that stuff coming well in advance!  Then, they activate shields and spread them around the ship and the space station.  But somehow both Disco and the space station are still getting pulverized by all the space-rocks!!  How are the rocks getting through the shields?  Do the writers not understand what shields are?  Why is everything exploding on the Discovery bridge if the shields are up??  Then there’s the crisis with the crew trapped on the space-station.  I can think of a billion ways they could get off the station even though Disco’s transporters are offline.  Doesn’t the station have transporters?  Why are they relying on the station’s one escape vehicle, doesn’t Discovery have lots of shuttlecrafts?  Doesn’t Discovery have tons of little droids (we see them in this episode, and ugh, I still hate seeing these Star Wars droids in Star Trek) who could zip over to the station bringing space-suits?  The whole thing feels like fake drama, just nonsensical stuff happening without any reason.  Burnham once again acts impulsively and recklessly; it’s even more silly now that she’s the Captain.  (The episode-long pissing-match between Burnham and the Federation President seemed crazy to me.  Both women acted very unprofessionally, wasting a ton of time sniping at one another.)  The show seems to have forgotten that Stamets was pissed at Burnham at the end of season three (which I’m OK with, because Stamets acted like a baby), but he’s still insanely unprofessional again here, wasting time asking on the comms if Culber and Adira were OK when he should be focusing on his job.  I liked seeing (checks Wikipedia for the name of the bridge crew character I still don’t know four seasons in) Lt. Rhys in command, but why did we introduce yet another new Disco crew member (the young and jovial Lt. Christopher), when the show can’t be bothered to spend the time to develop the bridge crew we have?  And where was (checks Wikipedia again to find the name) Lt. Bryce for most of the episode?  Was the actor unavailable?  This episode is called “Kobayashi Maru” but the no-win scenario we get here doesn’t really amount to anything.  Everyone acts all devastated at the end because the station commander gets killed, but we barely know him (and what we did see of him was him being very unlikable, being petulant and argumentative as soon as the help he’d called for arrives, followed by his then threatening Tilly and Adira with a phaser), so his death doesn’t make much impact.  This needed to be Tilly or Adira dead at the end for the episode’s climax to have landed with the weight it was supposed to have.  (Also, hello, once again the show not only ignores not only all previously established Star Trek continuity but ITS OWN as well.  Burnham talks about the Kobayashi Maru test but did all the writers forget that Burnham never attended Starfleet Academy??  The Discovery series premiere established that she transferred to the USS Shenzhou directly from the Vulcan Science Academy, did it not?? AARGH!!)  I keep hoping this show will get better and I keep getting smacked down and reminded that this show is just not very good.  This might actually be the worst season premiere the show has ever had.  (I was excited by the first episode of each of the three previous seasons, though each season then wound up disappointing me…)