Star Trek: Discovery

Where to begin...

For starters, it claims to be in line with the original series and its timeline yet nothing on display lines up with it or even visually resembles it. Instead it tries to replicate the look, feel, and energy of the JJ Abrams/Kelvin timeline movies(lens flares aplenty!) but it even fails at that.

The characters are mostly bland, stereotypical, and unlikeable.

It feels like everything that the original series tried to say has been thrown out the window to appeal to one-sided politics, Gene Roddenberry was trying to present hope and optimism for the future but here as far as Discovery is concerned the future is to be pretty but cold and uncaring.

As for the acting it ranges from good to okay mostly, very talented performers such as Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh, Anson Mount, and Doug Jones all try their hardest but only in tiny glimpses are able to make the rough material work.

I would have to agree with other commenters that you are just better off with The Orville instead, far better Star Trek series.

The first season was ok and had a promising start but it rapidly decayed into a sappy soap opera set in the Star Trek universe. The characters in the show and the plot have all the potential needed but the continuing agony of ongoing psychology sessions (they call them episodes) is making me reconsider my future and I'll need counselling, long into the future, for having watched this. Writing this is part of my exposure therapy after season 4 where my brain was set to stun. But seriously, so disappointed that the focus was on giving out life lessons and not writing good Star Trek stories. I get it that you can have positive messages in shows, not a bad thing, but this is just way too much, at the expense of a potentially good series.

In my personal unscientific rating scale 4=Forced myself to watch to the end but didn't really enjoy and won't watch it again.

The first two seasons were awesome. Very good writing. Now with the third and especially the fourth season, the writing is horrible. Everything is overly dramatic. Pretty much every cast member annoys me now. I'm guessing the show got new writers after the second season. If that's the case, then they should have end the show there. Where did all the creativity go???

I'm sort of enjoying this in parts, but why oh why is the main character, Michael Burnham, bursting into tears or looking tearful in nearly every one of her scenes? Who on earth would write a Commander who is supposed to have had a Vulcan upbringing but is both emotionally unstable and incapable of making the kind of flash, life and death decisions required of command? The whole of everything can be at stake and yet she stands around crying about one thing ot another, agonising with someone while people around her are suffering and dying and the world is coming to an end yet again and you are thinking for God's sake get on with it and stop blubbering. The amount of emotion had me in tears, not of empathy but boredom. The amount of slow moving, soul-searching scenes is a drag on what could otherwise be a good show. The gratuitous violence is too much and unnecessary. I have commented previously in another place about the current annoyingly cynical use of gay or lesbian relationships in every series and film these days. The right to a relationship of your choice and way of life is an accepted thing now, so why is there a pushy political agenda which I think is patronising to gay people in that the producers assume that gay people won't watch anything without a gay person in it? Sci-fi fans are sci-fi fans no matter who they are, and it is partitioning gay people rather than treating them as normal viewers like the rest od us. I also found some action very confusing. The special effects are great, though. We're into Series 3 so I don't expect the crying to lessen. I tend to go and make tea now in the blubbery moments, but one can only drink so much tea in an hour or so.

80% Adolence Drama + 10% Extra Stupidity + 10% Star Trek = ST Discovery. Compared to ST TNG / PICARD / ST New Worlds this series unfortunately has all the ingredients of high school summer camp. The actors / actresses are great, it's the plot writers that seem to focus the topic with realistic actions. Current plots and individual interactions are predictable. Final Season starts with two large Federation ships with near a thousand crew members going to get ancient Romulan artifact in a pre-determined hostile environment only to transport only three Star Fleet crew members to confront two armed thieves. End Result = Mission Failed = Start of final season series plot. Good grief!!!