‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 1, Episode 3: Sometimes Down is Up

It's not Star Trek in the sense of what we've seen of Star Trek prior to the JJ Abrams timeline split. It's Star Trek for the 21st century, catering to an audience that seeks entertainment in war, strife, and dark situations. It's representative of a humanity losing hope.

Episode 4 with the space hippo telling spores where to take the Discovery instantaneously, was just too much. That's a shark jump. I'm not surprised that with episode 4 the New York Times is no longer accepting comments. I was hoping episode 3 marked a permanent change, but no. So ep 4 was the last episode I plan to watch. CBS should cancel this abomination and put Nicholas Meyer in charge of a new Star Trek show, one that honors canon and continuity. Put it in the TOS timeframe or after Voyager, just do it right. A slight deviation here or there by accident is forgivable, but diving into intentional canon violations as with the lobster Klingons, and making the logo of the entire show a canon violating use of the USS Enterprise insignia, is unacceptable. And populating the Discovery with crew members who snipe at each other like contestants on some reality show doesn't help. The whole show is a giant absurdity on so many levels.

Sorry but I don't like this new show. It is nothing like Startrek....just cannot like it. it should run under some other title.

The closed captioning referred to "[tribbles cooing]", so yeah, they were tribbles.

I'm all in for this show. To those who complain that this isn't "Star Trek," I disagree. It's simply a different perspective on the show's history/timeline. Star Trek always had rogue captains, we just never saw one up close. And the ethical utopia portrayed in Next Gen didn't arise overnight. As Picard and Kirk were often fond of telling people, the Federation had to evolve to the points it reached in the 23rd and 24th century. "Discovery" is a chance to show how it got there, how it went from where we are now to where Picard and company are in the 24th century. Discovery appears set to show us how those ethical and moral battles were waged and won. I also look forward to what they do with the Klingon storylines. I've been an ST fan since childhood (I was born the week the original series went on the air). But I'm not so hung up on canon that I can't suspend my disbelief and just enjoy this for what it is. I think they're off to a great start. One specific note about this reviewer's assertion: "it is implied that the (shuttle) pilot's safety tether broke and she was sucked into space. We don't know because she is never brought up again" I would have liked to hear something about how that ended up. She was wearing a suit, and presumably could have survived long enough to be picked up by Discovery, which appears mere seconds later. And for the commenter below who suggested Georgiou may reappear, I wouldn't be surprised. There's a reason they didn't recover her body.

I've watched all three episodes. Georgious' death was sad to me since she seemed to be the voice of 90's star trek. In the little screen time she had, the character seemed to represent the spirit of the federation that lured me into watching star trek. many people seem to think that star trek needed more "realism", for instance the whole not having money on the next generation... as for the first three episodes, however fun to watch (when you give up thinking you are watching star trek, beacuse you are not), the feeling that this is a sad version of a dream. star trek fuled the imagination of many, many who became scientists, who became explorers, and many more who became clerks, and so on... all of them at least had hope for the future. the need to understand the roots of the problems that we face everyday, small and big. so far this show is a shoot'em all. the only starfleet officer who refused to shoot, was killed so the show could be about a guy who seems to be ok with killing a pilot just to get a new crewmember in his shadowy ship. i will probably keep on watching, hoping it gets better. hoping this show can still do what the new movies cannot. take star trek forward, to keep the dream of peace alive.

It's a long shot, but it's possible that the tribble on the captain's desk is more than just fan service. Remember that tribbles and Klingons are natural enemies—tribbles can detect Klingons even when they've been surgically altered, and to the Klingons they're an ecological menace that nearly destroyed the Empire. Maybe something useful to have in a war against the Klingons.

"It has the opposite problem that faced “The Next Generation” at its beginning. In the Times review of early episodes, critic John J. O’Conner wrote in 1987, “The rest of us can only hope that things get a little livelier in coming weeks.” Thankfully that show eventually found its (warp) core!" See William Shatner's documentary "Chaos on the Bridge" for the reasons why "Star Trek: Next Gen" was so wobbly it's first two seasons and how it finally found it's footing in the third.

"Very rarely does a series hit the reboot button so soon, but here we are." Tsk, tsk. Perhaps we should have a reviewer with a little more familiarity with Star Trek. Of course, the original Star Trek had two pilots, but for very different reasons than this one (the network thought the original pilot was "too cerebral"). There is no problem here - the first two episodes was the set-up for all that is to follow. This series follows a character much farther down the chain of command - and I mean REAL FAR DOWN - that the other series did. This series is about consequences of actions. I suspect that we are going to see some consequences for Captain Lorca's choices - but maybe that's what Michael Burnham is there for - to rescue his behind. You see, not all Starfleet captains can be James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard. I think that we're going to see just how different a Starfleet captain can be. I think that because Starfleet is in the midst of a war, it's a little too tied up to be the Starfleet of the original series, of TNG, and so on. So we may actually have the luxury of seeing it grow into those future shoes. Elsewhere - I originally thought that the Discovery looked like a pizza cutter - but then, Facebook doesn't do it justice. The first appearance of the Discovery was more breathtaking than I originally expected. As to the tribble - it's clear that Lorca is interested in all sorts of alien animals, as his (illicit?) menagerie seems to show. Bottom line - I LIKE IT!

I think Georgiou is alive to be used by Klingons as bait to lure the Discovery crew. Lorca seems to want Michael as a patsy or guinea pig for his machinations. Oh he's evil; his security officer is a frakkin' Cylon. I like Anthony Rapp's portrayal, it's refreshing to see a Trek officer who doesn't give any fraks, and I like that Michael's roommate is a bubbly, chatty oddball. After decades of stilted Trek cadence it's nice to have another socially awkward character; maybe she's Reginald Barclay's gran.

I sure wish I could see this show!

"1. The plot is all over the place. A prisoner transport ship is manned by one pilot?" Captain Lorca admitted the whole thing was staged to covertly get Burnham onto the Discovery. "And why does Captain Lorca insist on Burnham being part of the crew?" Captain Lorca literally explicitly said why he chose Burnham. Both of your complaints were directly addressed in the episode, its like your being intentionally obtuse.

3. There was no "reboot" from the pilot: much like Ned Stark died at the end of the first season of "Game of Thrones," Captain Georgiou was killed off in the first episode ON PURPOSE to set Michael's narrative arc. She is clearly seeking redemption for her act that killed 8,192 people, and Captain Lorca is (seemingly) offering it to her - much like Joffrey's beheading of Ned Stark established basically the entire "GoT" plot for the subsequent six seasons. (And again, this too could be an indirect callback to TOS's own original pilot, from which a) the original captain was essentially killed off and b) the only "survivor" onto the main series was the character who grew up on Vulcan.) 4. Yes, the show's narrative style is vastly different from any other "Trek" series. That's because television has drastically changed in the 25 years since their heyday. (No, I am not counting the lackluster "Enterprise" as part of said heyday.) A great point of comparison is "Westworld," a show initially dismissed by critics for being "confusing" and "dull" - but ended its first season as arguably the most acclaimed new series since "Breaking Bad." Finally, I'm curious how many of this show's armchair critics were also outraged when Rey in "The Force Awakens" knew how to speak Wookiee and fly the Millennium Falcon without any explanation as to how. Rey was never a Mary Jane, as the nerd critics initially complained, and her abilities will likely be explained in "The Last Jedi." Get it yet?

I just got around to watching the first three episodes of "Discovery," and I've been most frustrated not by the show, but rather by the criticisms of it lodged by both the critic and other posters -- none of whom appear to "get it." Maybe I'm less bothered than others by nonlinear storylines, having recently finished the "Twin Peaks" reboot, but since it seems quite clear these things need to be pointed out: 1. There is no canon. I repeat: THERE IS NO CANON. The series is set 15 years after Nero has entered this particular "Trek" universe, and thus all bets are off in terms of "respecting the last 50 years of 'Star Trek'" or even seeming "continuity errors" like tribbles being on the Discovery or the Federation using the Enterprise crew's symbol "too early." Moreover... 2. We already *specifically* know - from the last three films - that the "war hawks" within Starfleet have no moral qualms about using technologies Nero and Spock brought back with them from 130 years in the future. Remember Admiral Marcus (in "Into Darkness") using Future Scotty's trans-warp equation to catch Kirk by traveling vastly faster than any existing warp speeds? Captain Lorca is basically trying to figure out how to do something similar with spores - or at least that's what he told Michael. (This may also be an indirect callback to the series finale of "Voyager," in which Future Janeway killed the Borg by imploding its sub-space (a.k.a. trans-warp) network of tunnels.)

Jason Isaacs out acted everyone on this show in episode 3 - he's a class apart - and the plot is somewhat interesting in episode 3, unlike the two horrible episodes that preceded it and in which Isaacs didn't even appear; mostly it's unfortunate the show doesn't respect the last 50 years of Star Trek. Very hard to understand some of the decisions made for this series.