Star Trek: Discovery - can it survive ‘prequelitis’?

The highly-anticipated television series Star Trek: Discovery has premiered in Los Angeles ahead of its first public broadcast - and initial reactions suggest there’s plenty to satisfy the fans.

The show is to air on CBS on Sunday in the US and on Netflix on Monday in the UK, but no advance copies have been made available to reviewers, so audiences have had little to go on other than a few trailers.

“Anticipation for the upcoming series has been high,” says Eric Diaz on Nerdist, adding that many fans have been afraid the latest Trek series would turn out to be “Trek in name only”.

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The trailers released so far looked “sleek” and “action packed”, says Diaz, but they also looked “a little too reminiscent of Star Wars”. Trek has always been about more than just cool sci-fi action, argues Diaz, with stories tackling “the human condition” and “larger philosophical issues” than mainstream sci-fi franchises usually deal with.

Dusty Stow on Screenrant says Discovery has been the subject of “massive pre-premiere scrutiny”. The critic notes that the initial series creator Bryan Fuller “departed under acrimonious circumstances” and subsequent producers have proclaimed their intentions to “discard some of Star Trek’s fundamental tropes”.

Stow says they seemed to be leaning toward a darker, more serialised iteration. Others noticed “some alarming symptoms of prequelitis”, adds the critic, pointing out that series lead, Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is revealed as the never-before-mentioned adoptive human sister of Star Trek icon Spock.

None of these issues seemed to matter after the premiere in Los Angeles, says Stow - the reactions were “almost universally positive”.

The Radio Times notes audiences were under strict orders not to reveal details of the first two episodes screened, but were allowed to offer feedback.

“So far it’s safe to say the verdict is positive, with particular praise for lead Sonequa Martin-Green,” says the magazine.

Echoing the sentiments of many who attended the premiere, one viewer tweeted: “Phenomenal visuals, outstanding cast, Sonequa rocks!” Another praised the show for “acknowledging the old while embracing the new”, while others posted clips of their excited reactions.

Star Trek: Discovery, the sixth live-action Star Trek TV series, is set before the events of the original Star Trek, which debuted in 1966 and imagined humanity in the 23rd century. Like all previous Star Trek TV series, however, Discovery follows the adventures of Starfleet, an exploratory peacekeeping organisation formed by the United Federation of Planets.

The 15-episode season will be in two parts. The first eight episodes will air weekly in the UK on Mondays from 25th September, with the second half resuming in January 2018.