Three years later I have a chance to watch Star Trek: Discovery and Season 1 was very good. It's set a few years before TOS (and in Season 2 USS Enterprise has just returned from her first 5-year mission under Captain Pike).

The show focuses on Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and in episode 1 she is First Officer on the USS Shenzhou under the command of Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). During an encounter with a Klingon ship (the first Klingon encounter in decades) Burnham commits an act of mutiny trying to save her ship. Unfortunately it's for naught and she starts a war between the Federation and Klingons.

Episode 2 begins a few months later with Burnham in prison. She is enlisted to serve on USS Discovery commanded by the unconventional Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) who believes Burnham did the right thing (Lorca is a bit of a shoot first kind of captain). First Officer Saru (Doug Jones) was science officer on Shenzhou and is not so sure about Burnham.

Discovery is equipped with an experimental Spore Drive. Apparently mushrooms all over the universe are interconnected in Mycelial Space, which also touches all alternate universes. It feels so crazy at first but they treat it seriously always and after a while I got used to it. Reminds me of science fiction stories that take one super science thing and extrapolate the rest on top of our normal world. Well, Spore Drive is the super science thing on top of the Star Trek universe.

Season 1 has three phases. The first half is the war with the Klingons. Then a few episodes trapped in the Mirror Universe. Then a few episodes back to resolve the war. It ends in a slight cliffhanger but Season 2 starts a whole new arc.

The special effects are amazing. They spent a lot of money per episode and it shows. The stories and characterizations are pretty good. As I mentioned it's a serial story and not all the episodic. 15 episodes means that the arc has to keep moving and there are no extraneous episodes.

Overall Season 1 is quite excellent.