TV Series/Blu-ray Set Review: 'Star Trek: Discovery - Season One'

(C) 2018 CBS Studios/Paramount Home Media Distribution

On November 13, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek: Discovery - Season One, a four-disc Blu-ray set of the newest television series in the Star Trek franchise. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery is the seventh television series set in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s and the first new show to premiere since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.

Although it was co-created by Kurtzman, one of the writers of 2009's Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Discovery is not set in the Kelvin timeline in which the current feature films are set. Rather, the new show's setting is the Prime timeline seen in all the other television series. Like Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, but its tale takes place a decade before the five-year mission of Capt. James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy aboard the USS Enterprise. 

Star Trek: Discovery's first episode, The Vulcan Hello, premiered on September 24, 2017, on the CBS television network and on CBS All Access; the other 14 episodes of the series aired on CBS All Access in the U.S., Bell Media in Canada, and on Netflix in 188 other countries. Predictably, this decision was not popular with many Star Trek fans; the previous series had aired on broadcast TV, starting with Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek: The Original Series; airing the show on a streaming service was, in their minds, a break from tradition. Some Trekkers said they would subscribe to CBS All Access to watch Star Trek: Discovery, while others said they would wait until CBS announced if the show would be released on home media but would not sign up for another pay service just to see a Star Trek series.

Like most of the previous shows in the 52-year-old franchise, Star Trek: Discovery is mainly set aboard a starship in the United Federation of Planets. It exists in the same century (the 23rd) as the Starship Enterprise from the original series and the first six feature films, and three guest characters from Roddenberry's Star Trek also have supporting roles here: Sarek (James Frain), his human wife Amanda (Mia Kirshner), and Harcourt "Harry" Fenton Mudd (Rainn Wilson).

Star Trek: Discovery also sticks to other traditions from previous Star Trek series, including an alien character, Science Officer/First Officer Saru (Doug Jones), that is the "outsider" of the crew, a role analogous to Leonard Nimoy's Spock or Brent Spiner's Data; the dramatic conflict created by Starfleet's dual role as the Federation's space exploration agency and its de facto role as its Navy/Coast Guard; and the premise that the Discovery's crew is, like that of the franchise's two Starships Enterprise, a family of sorts.

However, show creators Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman decided early on to break with Star Trek's established episodic format and went for a serialized format instead.  In Star Trek: Discovery, we follow Specialist Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the crew of the USS Discovery during a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

Fuller (who also created Pushing Daisies and Hannibal) made the daring decision to make Burnham the series' lead character rather than, say, Jason Isaacs' Captain Gabriel Lorca. This allows Star Trek: Discovery to explore Star Trek's galaxy and dramatic themes from a new and different perspective that isn't limited to telling stories that focus on a starship's captain.

Because streaming services allow content creators to have more leeway than traditional over-the-air or even cable TV channels, Star Trek: Discovery differs from its Star Trek siblings in other ways as well.

1. Episode running times vary widely in length. Some are 44 minutes long, others have a running time of 37 minutes
2. Taking a cue from Ronald D. Moore and David Eick's Battlestar Galactica reboot, Star Trek: Discovery is filmed in a way that doesn't make the show look like it's shot on a studio set. It doesn't have Galactica's rough "shot like a documentary" style; visually, it looks a lot like the current Star Trek films, even though the setting is the Prime timeline of the William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy/DeForest Kelley series
3. Even though the series is intended for general audiences, its origins as a "streaming service" show give it freedom from CBS's Standards & Practices division (the censors)
4. This is the first Star Trek series to devote its attention to one serialized story arc

As I said earlier, Paramount Home Media Distribution and its CBS Blu-ray label released the four-disc Blu-ray set on September 13. It presents all 15 Season One episodes in 1080p high definition with six audio tracks (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese) and subtitles in 12 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Finnish). 

In addition to the usual grab bag of behind-the-scenes featurettes by CBS Home Entertainment, Star Trek: Discovery presents Season One of the series, divided  thusly:

Disc One: 

1. The Vulcan Hello
2. Battle at the Binary Stars
3. Context is for Kings
4. The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry

Disc Two: 

1. Choose Your Pain
2. Lethe
3. Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
4. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Disc Three

1. Into the Forest
2. Despite Yourself
3. The Wolf Inside
4. Vaulting Ambition

Disc Four:

1. What's Past is Prologue
2. The War Without, The War Within
3. Will You Take My Hand?

My Take

When I learned in 2016 that CBS was bringing back Star Trek to television as a series for a streaming service, my reaction was, shall we say, ambivalent. 

On the one hand, I was one of those Trekkers that felt the now-defunct United Paramount Network (UPN) had not done a good job of supporting or marketing the previous Star Trek series, Enterprise. I liked that series, even though UPN made demands on creators Brannon Braga and Rick Berman that hampered its proper development and hastened its cancelation in 2005. 

Because I liked Star Trek: Enterprise, I wasn't reluctant to watch a second prequel series that would take place before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series. After all, Enterprise had covered only part of the 1966-1969 series' backstory but never got around to showing the Earth-Romulan War or the origins of the Federation's long-running Cold War with the Klingon Empire. 

On the other hand, I didn't want to subscribe to CBS All Access streaming service just to watch one series. I used to be quite the couch potato before the 2010s, but the change in my routine once my mother got seriously ill changed my viewing habits along with every other aspect of my life, so I don't watch as much TV as I once did. 

So when Star Trek: Discovery premiered last fall, I predicted that either I'd watch the show if and when CBS released the first season on home media, or not at all. 

Well, as you can see, CBS did, indeed, release Season One on Blu-ray, and I was able to watch it.

Is Star Trek: Discovery a worthy entry in the storied franchise created over half a century ago by the Great Bird of the Galaxy? 

I think so, yes. Even though it doesn't quite look consistent to the 1960s era show (a series that was made on a miserly budget because NBC didn't quite believe in Roddenberry's creation and was not inclined to invest more money for better sets, costumes, or effects makeup), it still adheres to Star Trek's tradition of exploring socially-relevant themes and couching them in science fiction terms. 

I also like the cast of leading and supporting actors that make up Star Trek: Discovery's ensemble. In addition to Sonequa Martin-Green, Jason Isaacs, and Doug Jones, the cast includes a veritable ship's company of actors that includes Shazad Latif, Anthony Rapp, Mary Chieffo, Michelle Yeoh, and Mary Wiseman. 

The writing is also consistently good, although the series' serialized structure (unusual in a franchise that began as a traditional episodic-format TV show) and its third-episode-is-the-pilot conceit may throw first-time viewers for a loop. Like 24, Star Trek: Discovery devotes all of its episodes to telling one large story, albeit without the "events take place in real time" conceit of the 2001-2010 series and allowing for many interesting subplots, some of which are steeped deep in the lore of Star Trek: The Original Series. 

In short, even though Star Trek: Discovery is not your grandfather's Star Trek, it is still a show that deserves to be watched by fans and casual viewers alike. It's superbly well-done and full of the sense of wonder and, yes, discovery as its characters set out to "boldly go where no one has gone before."