The Vulcan Hello

** 2 stars out of 5

Meet T'Kuvma, flashpoint of Internet troll rage. And so, Meet the Klingons. (Deploy heavy sighs.) Elaborate, baroque samurai lobster costumes, combined with trying to read subtitles printed across them and you'll be hard pressed not to make terrible cursing sounds too. The stilted, gargling speeches through big pointy teeth (for some reason also made slower & deeper by computers) will remind you you're losing hours of your life you'll never get back. And the new make-up. If you thought the 'Into Darkness' Klingons went too far with their piercings and weird contact lenses, let's see what further mutations have to offer. Pointy ears? Why not. Four nostrils? Watermelon size skulls & velociraptor claws? Yeah, that'll be off-putting. When the motive behind the changes is revealed around episode 9- believe me, it wasn't worth it. Since you insisted, there's a picture of one in the middle panel:

If you're just champing at the bit to make sweeping design changes, why not just call your new beast-men a new name, or call them an existing race we never saw? (Still a chance in season 2 to tell us these Klingons were Tzenkethi pretenders all along?)

And now, Minute Two. Remember how happy everyone was to learn during the much-beloved Star Trek V that Spock has a secret brother? Meet Michael Burnham- secret sister! She estimates storm arrival to the second but can't recognize what geometric pattern she's walking in. Her Starfleet calls somebody they haven't first contacted "Crepusculans", thank you very much. (Of course, the locals call humanoids "Stink Monkeys" so it evens out.)

Meet Captain Philippa "It's Hard to Believe You've Served Under Me For 7 Years" Georgiou. She's fun. Meet Saru "Give Forever Fishman a big hand to go with his big shoes" The Cowardly Celpian. Meet Keyla "Blink And You'll Miss Her" Detmer and the Cannon Fodders... uh, Shenzhou bridge crew. Meet a Klingon Torchbearer- a straw man with the worst bat'leth design in recorded history. Meet Voq & L'Rell- (the pale one and the girl one).

My niece points out what this oblivious cis male missed: in a crisis the captain and first officer each call white males to help them.

Their force ghost "fathers" (I still have a hard time swallowing the presence of holograms in this "prequel") give them opposite advice and start a fight between them. It's a good thing Vulcan logic can come to any conclusion. Meet Sarek, the Vulcan Ambassador whose horrible advice exacerbates Michael Burnham's mental breakdown.

Star Trek is back. Sorry.

That Which Survives

** (2 stars out of 5)

Screw purple mountains' majesty: this mysterious planetoid also has purple sky, patches of purple grass, and a woman in sky-purple dungarees. She insists: "I am for you. I must touch you."

This is not as good as it sounds: at her touch your every cell explodes.

Landing party stranded in a quake! Ship hurled 990 light years away! Unstoppable woman popping up from nowhere and killing at random!

Spock is fidgety and persnickety (perspockety?) all episode. Maybe it was when he banged his occipital region against the arm of the chair. Still, the man had his whole brain removed and weathered it better than this...

Mr. Spock refers to the makers of the purple artificial planetoid as 'a very high culture'.

I think I agree. What sort of space weed were they smoking when they built a superheavy planet for the sole purpose of dispensing creepy/sexy telepathic holograms? Holograms which sporadically read as life forms and are genetically coded to destroy only ONE individual intruder at a time? Seems like a weirdly elaborate and inefficient defence plan from a very high culture indeed.

Or is it another broken computer story? If it was broken- what the hell was it supposed to be doing? Deadly purple photocopier, I suppose.

The 'door' effect of Losira the hologram folding up in three dimensions is pretty damn cool.

Triplicating under the lights of her whirlygig disco cube, playing deadly touch football, and with some space weed percolating, this was probably more fun. I can't fault it for looks and action.

So, what is "That Which Survives"?

As Captain Kirk would have it in today's moral that is no moral:

"Beauty... survives."