The Girl Who Made the Stars

Story: Brother
Written By: Ted Sullivian & Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2019

Discovery has had some rough times behind the scenes.  Despite the fact that CBS and Alex Kurtzman are working to expand the franchise and launch a ton of very different types of shows, their first show has had some rough times behind the scenes.  In the first season CBS and co-creator and original showrunner Bryan Fuller parted ways, and his longtime collaborators Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts stepped up and took the reigns of the show.  I felt that the behind the scenes shake-ups caused some of the rougher aspects of Season One.  It started off with some issues for sure, and it could very well be said that a lot of the issues that hurt that first half had to do with creative decisions Fuller had put into place.  In the second half though, things began to take shape and became a more enjoyable show.  So I was hopeful for Season 2, if this new group that seems to have figured out their direction are going to have all the time they need to launch the second season, it will probably work out better. 
And then Berg and Harberts apparently became such little tyrants in the writing room that CBS and Kurtzman had to step in, fire them both, and Kurtzman was forced to takeover showrunning duties. Will these shake-ups cause further problems for the show on screen?  That is yet to be seen really, but at least based on this first episode...it can still all work out.  

The show picks up exactly here Season 2 left off, with Discovery face to face with the original Enterprise.  Pike comes aboard and immediately takes command of the Discovery.  We find out that Pike and the Enterprise have actually sat out the Klingon War, as they were on their Five Year Mission and too far out to battle Klingons, and Starfleet apparently decided they didn't want the Enterprise to come back for the war.  Which is...sure.  At least we know that Starfleet wasn't massively desperate at the end of the war right?  But whatever, I will go with it and go with Discovery's plans of trying to move on from this war I don't think most of the writing staff even wanted in the first place.  

We find that Pike and the Enterprise have been trying to figure out the origin of these signals that are out in space.  They move to track down one of the signals, end up in a crazy steroid belt thing.  They end up in little flyers and somebody dies and eventually they get to a ship crashed into an asteroid, which has several survivors on a Federation ship. The only conscience survivor is the Engineer, Jett Reno, who has been doing her best to keep her crew alive.  They rescue the team, Burnham gets left behind just briefly enough to see a vision of a Red Angel, and then is rescued herself.

To be honest until they got to Tig Notaro as Reno on the crashed ship, I was kind of bored with the exciting asteroid sequence.  It wasn't horrible, but I just found myself beginning to drift into thought.  But Notaro is always fun to see, so I perked up once she arrived.  I do like Mount as Pike, he seems like a good Captain, and a good contrast to Lorca.  Overall, this opener sets the stage for a new Chapter in Discovery, and one can only hope they have their ideas more in order than they did when they launched the first year, and that the cloud of behind the scenes shake-ups don't yet again taint the shows.

The heart of the opener is the looming cloud of Spock, and Burnham's strained relationship with her foster brother.  I thought stuff was well done.  The cliffhanger reveal is that Spock has left the Enterprise on leave to seemingly search out the same signals on is own, and his childhood nightmares seem related to these signals, and the image Burnham briefly saw on the ship.  Here we go.    

NEXT TIME: Terralisia

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