The Vulcan Hello (101)

[GateWorld]

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - SEASON ONE
THE VULCAN HELLO
EPISODE NUMBER - 101

A routine repair mission for the U.S.S. Shenzhou turns up a mysterious artifact, and First Officer Michael Burnham's decision to investigate sets her crew on a path toward volatile conflict with a Klingon warship.

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[DigiFluid]

I am enjoying so far! Lots of very Star Trekky stuff, and so far it's threading that canon needle very well.

And you know what? Forget the complainers--these Klingons are awesome.

[Annoyed]

Yeah, I liked the premier. Enough to subscribe? Don't know. Since they aren't releasing it on any app I can get for my TV, I'd have to buy either a Google or Amazon dingus, as well as a subscription. I will definitely wait a while before committing to this.

Not a good marketing plan, in my opinion.

[P-90_177]

Not seen it yet but good to know since I know Digi and I share a lot of common opinions and Annoyed is so difficult to please.

[pscard]

Personal review...

The Good:
The CG effects were done very well and I liked the use of TOS background sound effects.
Definitely a good story.
Nice to see Sarek again in a Trek episode.
The acting for the most part was also very good.
The Klingon language sounds consistent to what Marc Okrand created.

The Bad:
The performances of Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh seemed almost wooden.
The uniforms and the EV suits are not consistent with the time period.
At that time, Star Fleet did not allow women to command starships (see TOS: Turnabout Intruder), however. I personally have no problem with it.

The Ugly:
They changed the Klingons. Again.
They've redesigned the Klingon ships.
I'm afraid this show will not follow Trek canon.

Final thoughts:
I'd be willing to give it a chance, but so far it's not available On Demand and I don't have a desire to pay for CBS Access on top of my $141 cable/internet bill.


Here's the IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5171438/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[Annoyed]

Well, Jar Jar kinda trashed the idea of having to follow canon in this franchise.

[Spimman]

Well, Jar Jar kinda trashed the idea of having to follow canon in this franchise.

Did you just confuse Jar Jar with being a part of the Star Trek franchise?

[Annoyed]

Did you just confuse Jar Jar with being a part of the Star Trek franchise?

Not at all. I was referring to Jar Jar's 2009 "Star Trek", and it's disregard of 40 years of what has gone before.
If he wants to create content for an existing franchise, he should work within its established framework, not ignore it and do what he wants.

PS: I am of course referring to "Jar Jar Abrams", not the Jar Jar character from the Star Wars franchise.

[GodAtum]

A few observations:

I'm surprised the Klingons are the bad guys. Based on ENT I thought it'll be the Romulans.

Based on history, I'm surprised 1 Klingon death cased a war. Surely he died in a fair fight, so they would just respect the person who killed him.

The Captain should listen to Vulcan advice and fire on the ship first.

[thekillman]

A few observations:

I'm surprised the Klingons are the bad guys. Based on ENT I thought it'll be the Romulans.

Based on history, I'm surprised 1 Klingon death cased a war. Surely he died in a fair fight, so they would just respect the person who killed him.

The Captain should listen to Vulcan advice and fire on the ship first.

The klingons were already looking for war. That death was just an excuse.

Although i found this episode to be weird and occasionally jarring. An example: Racism.

So our second in command is blatantly racist to her science officer. It's not super-weird except i thought Trek was supposed to be post-racist but oh well. Then, the admiral reminds our second in command that "She should know about the problems of assumptions based on race" (or something to that order), which was a weird dig at her being black? I think? It seemed to come across as very acid in stead of a caution, so at this point i was still confused about the show's actual tone. Then, we learn the science officer is of a race of prey and can feel death coming (so, is racism justifed or not?) and that the vulcans avoided war by fighting the klingons at every turn, which sounds like war to me. We the audience know the klingons are out for war, and then our second-in-command is racist again and again suggests all klingons are warlike. After which, she knocks out the commander and seems to assume command.

My issue with this isn't racism itself (plenty of stuff on that in plenty of episodes), it's this constant back-and-forth with no real clear direction here. Considering that it seems justified (e.g. science officer and klingons), the admiral's words are very weird. And isn't star-trek supposed to be post-racism? I don't get the angle. Why are the klingons, this supposed race of fearsome warriors, so impressed by a nobody burning his hand? Why are none of the other houses jumping on the chance to be a Torchbearer when that's supposedly such a high-value position?

It's not my only problem with this (what was the point of walking miles through the desert just to shoot down a well, when they could've beamed in and out in a fraction of the time?), but i though this vagueness was not a very good sign.

It looks pretty, and i don't care very much for the wooden performance (for one, people not speaking their native tongue come across as wooden by default), but it just comes across as weird and ambivalent. Like, if they could beam their officer a good portion of the distance, why didn't they? it took her nearly half her time to get to the object, so why didn't she instantly turn around when it hit below half?

[VampyreWraith]

Yeah, T'Kuvma was looking for war. I'm pretty sure he set the whole thing up looking to start one (they damaged the relay thing knowing that a ship would come to check it out).

The right to be Torchbearer seemed to be hereditary and I don't think being Torchbearer was a high value position in general among the houses (the dead Torchbearer's brother didn't even want the job and he doubted that anyone would actually come if they lit the beacon).

I think they were trying to say it was a culture thing and not a race thing. Michael made some comment about that. In her mind she's not being racist, she's just judging them based on what she knows about their culture (colored by her past experiences). I think her attitude towards the Kilingons was pretty understandable, given her background. I think the Admiral's comment to her about knowing better than to make assumptions based on race was because she was a human child brought up by Vulcans. Michael comes across as a bit stuck up in general though. I don't think anything she said to the science officer was much worse than McCoy's constant grumbling about Vulcans in TOS.