Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 4

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've ran out of Star Trek: Discovery episodes to review, so now I'm reviewing the series' second season overall. That's 12 or so hours of television, so it's lucky for me I've got a good memory. Wait, I forgot to include the Short Treks in that... or shouldn't they count?

Star Trek spin-offs have rarely had much luck with their second seasons, despite the 'Growing the Beard' trope getting its name from Will Riker's season 2 look, as at this point they were typically still sorting themselves out both in front of and behind the scenes. Sure their first seasons were often worse, but Trek's sophomore seasons have been plenty awkward in their own right. Discovery found itself with a new showrunner five episodes into the season, so it's been living up to Trek tradition behind the camera, but was its second year enough of a mess on screen for it to truly be considered proper Star Trek?

Honestly I don't think Discovery is set up in a way that allows it to fail as spectacularly as previous series, as it has much shorter seasons and it's too serialised. Sure it can put out some rubbish, but it just doesn't have what it takes to produce episodes as legendarily terrible as The Omega Glory, The Outrageous Okona, Threshold or A Night in Sickbay. And unless the budget gets slashed, there's no way it'll ever inflict a Shades of Gray style clip show on us either.

Though does that mean this has actually has a shot at being the best second season a Trek series has ever had? Is this block of episodes really capable of going up against the seasons that gave us The Trouble with Tribbles, The Measure of a Man, Whispers, Projections, and Regeneration? I am going to answer that question for you! Eventually. After I've rambled on about Michael Burnham and time travel for ages first.

I'll also be dropping SPOILERS for the whole season, from Brother to Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2, and maybe some older Trek as well, so if you haven't seen it yet you should probably go watch it first. Unless you don't care about having the whole plot ruined for you; I know some people aren't really that bothered.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the second half of Star Trek: Discovery's second season! That's If Memory Serves to Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2, all created during Alex Kurtzman's time as the show's showrunner. He was already the executive producer, plus he's the guy in charge of all the other new Trek projects being set up, but after five episodes he took the reins on Discovery personally, like an admiral or commodore taking command of a starship. Which usually goes pretty well in Star Trek to my recollection.

All these reviews were written right after I watched the episode and the next time trailer, so you're getting my first reactions and genuine predictions. You're getting SPOILERS as well, and not just for Discovery as I'm considering the rest of Trek to be fair game as well. Especially the Kelvin Timeline movies.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's my second part of my Star Trek: Discovery season 2 review; the part where I actually start to review actual episodes of Discovery's actual second season instead of the Short Treks! 

Below this introduction you'll find reviews for the first seven episodes of the second season, Brother to Light and Shadows, basically covering the time that season one showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts still shared the captain's chair. Before they were kicked out for yelling at writers and spending too much money, or whatever actually happened there.

These reviews were all written right after I watched each episode, so you're getting my first impressions and legitimate cluelessness. You're also getting SPOILERS for each episode and I'm considering the rest of Trek to be fair game as well. Plus somewhere in here you'll find a free bonus spoiler for the Ray Bradbury story A Sound of Thunder (hint: it's in my review for The Sound of Thunder).

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 1

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I vaguely remember mentioning that I wasn't going to be reviewing Star Trek: Discovery's second season, but I went and did it anyway. I can't help myself.

Nothing's been going exactly as I planned to be honest. I decided to nick the format from my Doctor Who review marathon from last year and cover a whole season of episodes in a page of micro-reviews to save myself a lot of work. Unfortunately my brain didn't cooperate and hundreds of words came spilling out as usual, and I realised that if I put all the text I'd written into one long article it would be one long article.

So I've split the season up into four parts instead, which is still considerably less than the 15 it could've been. Well, 19 actually, as this first part features tiny reviews for the four tiny Short Treks that came out before the season began. I'm not sure if Short Treks is technically a separate series or not, but the episodes have a similar title sequence, they feature Discovery characters, two are set on the ship itself and they've all got the same style. So I'm including them.

I actually wrote these reviews up right after watching each episode, with no knowledge about what was going to happen next beyond what was in the trailers, so I can promise genuine confusion and wrong guesses. This also means there'll be SPOILERS for each episode, and the Trek that precedes them, but I won't be spoiling what happens next. Because at the time I didn't know.