Star Trek Discovery Recap: “Vulcan Hello”

Season 1 / Episode 1 / CBS All Access Before this weekend and Star Trek: Discovery, the last episode of a Star Trek television show aired twelve years ago with the series finale for Star Trek: Enterprise, but the wait for a new Star Trek has been even longer for me. I watched Voyager for four seasons until it became clear that the show runners had no intention of ever delivering on its great concept of a Federation ship lost in space. I was so disappointed by the premiere of Enterprise that I skipped the entire series. That left me to subsist on movies after Deep Space Nine ended. The movies have ranged from abysmal (Nemesis and Into Darkness) to okay (Star Trek’s 2009 reboot and Beyond). Needless to say, when Star Trek: Discovery was announced a couple of years ago, I was ready. Discovery has the unenviable task of resurrecting “true” Star Trek. Fans of the franchise have been very vocal about their displeasure with the J. J. Abrams film franchise reboot. They’ve viewed the last three movies as Star Trek Lite, as the movies have action and comedy but none of the deeper exploration of humanity, culture, and science that has been the hallmark of Star Trek since the original series. Discovery must please the most die-hard of Trekkers, those who have stuck with the franchise since Enterprise’s ignominious end, while inviting in new potential fans and justifying the expense and bumps along the road that CBS has endured by bringing Star Trek back to the small screen. In essence, …