Here's what critics thought of 'Star Trek: Discovery'

The reviews are in: Did Star Trek Discovery boldly go where no Star Trek film or series has gone before? In many ways, yes (women of color!), but as with all infant TV shows, it has the potential to grow as well as to fall.

Critics took kindly to the first three episodes of Discovery, two of which aired Sunday on CBS, but it remains to be seen if this is the Star Trek savior we've been waiting for.

For more on what critics thought of Discovery, read on. (And here's Mashable's Chris Taylor with his take on the premiere.)

First impressions

Maureen Ryan, Variety:

But there are reasons to hope that “Discovery” will be promising addition to the “Trek” canon. If it capitalizes on the conflicts at its core, and if it embraces the ambiguity and complexity baked into its DNA, “Discovery” could provide viewers with the kind of character-driven, space-set sci-fi narrative that has long been missing from the television scene. It’s early days yet, and the CBS All Access drama, which contains some wobbly elements, may let lapse into the usual array of alien-of-the-week formulas, but this voyage has potential.

Zach Handlen, The A.V. Club:

There are problems, and some clumsy writing (especially in the first half), and god only knows if they can sustain this momentum and sharpness, given the behind-the-scenes problems and the inherent difficulty of making anything that stays exciting and funny over 20+ hours. But after assuming for months that this would be a disaster, I’m relieved to report that it is not. Far from it. The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery are thrilling, moving, and frequently unexpected. Just as importantly, for everything questionable about the design, it still feels like Trek.

Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge:

The show certainly isn’t perfect. Discovery’s first episodes also feel a lot like an extended prologue, establishing Burnham’s personality and the overall premise of the Klingon conflict, but not much more than that. By the end of the first two episodes, there’s still no sign of the actual USS Discovery, where we’ll be probably be spending the bulk of the season. Burnham has landed in Starfleet prison, and T'Kuvma (initially, the series’ presumed antagonist) is dead. It’s hard to predict at this point what the rest of the show will actually look like.

Nostalgic origins

Maureen Ryan, Variety:

The first three hours of “Star Trek: Discovery” provide serviceable space opera and reasonably exciting interstellar battles. And as a whole, the drama takes the optimism at the core of Gene Roddenberry’s vision and, in the tradition of the best of the “Star Trek” canon, uses it to examine the choices of well-intentioned characters faced with compromises, mysteries, alien cultures and moral dilemmas. “Discovery” may be set in a time of war, but it is not uniformly grim; there are some welcome comedic touches that hit the mark without detracting from the drama’s generally earnest approach.

Matt Zoller-Seitz, Vulture:

But it’s also notable as a rare work of true science fiction in a medium that too often settles for science-fiction-flavored action, science-fiction-flavored horror, and so on, amping up superficial thrills while neglecting the attention of ideas that distinguish the genre at its best. Splitting the difference between commercial slickness and graphic-novel solemnity, this Trek offers PG-13 violence, audience-pandering exposition dumps, cliffhanger endings, Game of Thrones–style pomp, and a touch of Lost’s mystery-box plotting, but also poker-faced musings on quantum science, moral relativism, logic vs. instinct, race vs. culture, and the military’s tendency to corrupt science in service of war.

Daniel Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter:

These are definitely not your father's Klingons, but I don't think my father really had Klingons, and neither do I. The show takes the pragmatic, not completely original, approach that Klingons are basically a foreign culture that the Federation is imposing its own cultural standards upon. This is also an argument that Seth MacFarlane made in an early episode of Fox's The Orville, but I was interested enough in the manner Discovery treats the Klingons as both primitive in their fierceness, but also spiritual and ordered in their own way. So it's not quite as simple as "Klingons bad, everybody else good."

The cast

Maureen Ryan, Variety:

Martin-Green is charismatic and quietly forceful in the lead role, and her character is an outsider in many ways, which gives “Discovery’s” writers a lot of interesting psychological territory to explore. Her professional relationships in the present and her personal bonds from the past are mostly fraught and complicated, and “Discovery’s” handling of those aspects of her story may well determine whether it becomes must-see viewing or not. The capable cast around Martin-Green — which includes Doug Jones, Isaacs, Anthony Rapp and Mary Wisemen — all make fine first impressions....Though “Discovery” has a number of patches of leaden exposition, the mentoring relationship between the two women is nicely sketched out by Yeoh and Martin-Green.

Zach Handlen, The A.V. Club:

Martin-Green, who gets stuck with holding a lot of this together, gives a performance that delivers on the potential she showed back when she was stuck being grim and fighting zombies; her optimism in the opening scenes, her efforts to balance Vulcan logic with human feeling, her utter despair by the end, all mark her out as a character to watch.

Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge:

The supporting cast — at least, those who have shown up so far — are also enjoyable to watch. Frequent Guillermo del Toro monster-performer Doug Jones does excellent work as Saru, bringing a mix of Spock/Data-like calm combined with an almost neurotic fear of danger. And Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Philippa Georgiou is a steadying presence to rival even Jean-Luc Picard. Beyond that, though, the dialogue and banter between the crew is just genuinely entertaining. Viewers are told these people have been serving together for years, and it’s believable. Their interactions feel far more natural and realistic than the sometimes stilted, formal scripts of Trek series past.

Star Trek Discovery is now available on CBS All Access.