Star Trek: Discovery

Last night CBS launched the first new Star Trek franchise in the US since the demise of 'Star Trek Enterprise' in 2005.

The first episode was launched on their main channel, but the second (immediately after) and all subsequent ones will be only available via "CBS All Access" which is an on demand service. Netflix are licensed to show it in the UK from today.

I must say, I am rather impressed with the production values, although I've only watched the first few minutes of the first programme so far.

I wanted to post the title sequence, which is very impressive, but it's blocked on YouTube in the UK.

It's based around elements of design and construction.

http://i63.tinypic.com/15s1lwl.jpg

Courtesy of a nice article in Radio Times. I finally found a working UK link to the clean title sequence here ( sans Actor names):


I like the theme music, it certainly has elements from many of the previous franchises.

Eh, I'm not a fan of the theme. It jumps pretty jarringly between the opening bing bongs (hey look, we made that note go up instead of down, so that's new!), the main theme, and then the fanfare at the end.



Ye-es... any idea why? I can't see any link between the schematic theme and the premise as revealed so far. Enterprise evoked a spirit of exploration and discovery, but I'm not sure what these titles are meant to evoke. And they do look a bit like the titles on a PS3 space-racer.

As for the series, well... people are saying that Seth MacFarlane's new series, The Orville , is the better of the two Star Treks currently airing, and it's hard not to agree on the evidence available so far. The Orville may be a comedy - though it's a lot subtler than its trailer would suggest - but it has much better dialogue and is closer in look to previous Treks than Discovery (that's not to say change isn't good). I'm starting to think Seth MacFarlane just really wanted to make Star Trek but has to put in a certain number of jokes so he can get away with calling it a parody and not get sued.

And the Klingons... hmm. None of them showed any range in their acting - mainly because they all spoke in Klingon all the time, so even if they had put any emphasis of any of the staccato syllables, it would have been lost on all but the most hardcore of viewers - and they clearly hadn't had enough time to get ufed to their profthetic teeth. And as for the crew's execution of their "plan" at the end... well, that went a bit wrong a bit quick, didn't it? "Don't do this thing! It would be really bad if you did this thing!" "Oop, did the thing."

I love the visuals, but the theme itself is really lacklustre. I mean they have concerts playing incidental music from the likes of Jerry Goldsmith and Ron Jones's Star Trek contributions, that's how good the music was on Star Trek. I can't imagine anyone being excited hearing this theme in a concert. It's very basic, you can't hum it as there's nothing to hum really. In fact if anything it reminds me of the kind of music you got in the later series of 'The Next Generation', which was deliberately made into musical wallpaper by the producers.

Would you have preferred a vocal song, like Enterprise used?

I'm not as much of a hater of the Enterprise theme as others. In fact i grew to like the later version of that theme, but no i'd just prefer something like all of the other Star Trek themes, a memorable piece of orchestral loveliness. In fact the only version of the Star Trek theme i didn't love was the original DS9 theme, which i thought was a little slow. The newer version was much nicer.

I even liked the original version of the Enterprise theme music, although the later one was preferable; but my favourite of all the TV series has to be Voyager, simply because of the co-ordination with what were amazing CGI graphics of the time.

I'm not liking the inclusion of the original series fanfare at the end of the title sequence for Discovery, but I can see the logic for including it, as it emphasises the placement of this franchise strictly within the time frame between Enterprise and the original series. Apparently, if the franchise continues, the design elements within it will move towards those exhibited within the original series, despite it being difficult to show 1960s "flashing control panels" as an advancement.

Enterprise had partially moved passed the concept of just showing "planets and star travel" with the use of both a real and imaginary history of travel. I think Discovery's title sequence evolves that n a nice way, whilst appreciating that viewers don't need to see a "CGI ship hurtling though space" to understand the principle nature of the programme any more.