Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Boldly going where no "Trek" has gone before.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 16, 2019

This review strives to be as spoiler-free as possible but it does cover some basic plot points from the first several episodes. None of the later season twists are revealed.

Star Trek Discovery feels intimately familiar yet irrefutably different. It's the first small screen Trek since the prequel series Enterprise and while the universal Trek canons and cores are firmly in place and as it borrows and builds around characters and ideas and places and themes from classic Trek, it also forges a completely unique identity. Its focus is not on the ship's captain but rather a Starfleet mutineer who finds reprieve in time of war, a war she ignited. The show introduces a new ship, a new propulsion system, and is unequivocally unafraid of boldly going beyond the limits that stopped previous Star Trek shows not from reaching their full potential but rather from approaching their stories with the sort of deeply intimate and very raw humanity -- and beyond -- that Discovery embraces. The show is exceedingly dark, brutally violent, thematically gritty, and there's no language filter. Most of the characters hold firm to traditional Federation principles but embrace who they are, which does not always jive with the more family friendly iterations of Star Trek past. But it's outstanding, a breath of fresh air that does the impossible, reinventing a 50-year-old-franchise while maintaining a fairly strict adherence to everything that has made Star Trek one of the preeminent franchises in entertainment history.

Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is the future of Starfleet. A human raised on Vulcan by the venerable Sarek (James Frain), father of Spock, Burnham is exceptionally talented and highly intelligent, the best of humankind melded with the discipline and logic of a Vulcan. She serves under one of Star Fleet's most decorated captains, Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), on the USS Shenzhou. When Burnham inadvertently kills a Klingon during a routine investigatory mission and sparks a showdown with the hostile and warlike alien species, she consults with Sarek, with whom she shares a telepathic bond, and realizes that the Klingons will only respond to strength, that the Shenzhou must take the initiative and take the fight to them. Her captain disagrees with the tactic. Burnham incapacitates her, takes command of the ship, and instigates a fierce battle in which 8,000 humans are killed. For her actions, she is stripped of rank and sentenced to life imprisonment while the universe explodes around her, as the Federation wages an increasingly desperate war against a unified Klingon Empire.

Six months later, a routine prisoner transport runs into trouble and Burnham is brought aboard the USS Discovery. Her captain, Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), is determined to win the war against the Klingons at all costs and identifies Burnham as a potential key cog in Discovery's efforts to spearhead the path to victory. The ship houses a unique, radically advanced propulsion system known as the "spore drive" that allows the ship to instantly appear anywhere within the known universe, but it requires a biological interface linked to the ship to serve as navigator. That living being is a dangerous creature known as Tardigrade, which Lorca also wants to weaponize. As Burnham, who has been given the unranked title of "specialist," begins to understand the creature, she is slowly integrated into Discovery culture, at first shunned for her actions but gradually accepted by her crewmates, including ship's engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), her eccentric roommate Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), and Discovery's first officer, a former Shenzhou crew mate named Saru (Doug Jones).

Burnham's journey is obviously front-and-center throughout the season, and one of the most compelling early season dramatic angles is how she is forced to integrate into the Discovery crew, both how she chooses to deal with her new realities and how her shipmates process the reality of who she is and what she has done. A character who was raised in the cold logic and emotionless responses of Vulcan finds herself surrounded by deeply held and readily obvious emotions: anger, fascination, and fear stemming from who she is and what she has done. She is blamed for the war, for destroying families and friendships, for shifting Starfleet’s mission from exploration to combat. Burnham's growth both within herself and amongst her shipmates -- particularly Tilly and Saru and, later, Lt. Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) who is introduced several episodes into the season -- is certainly the series' leading edge, but Discovery challenges, builds, and in some ways literally reshapes almost every one of its primaries along the way. "Static" is a word that is not in Discovery's vocabulary. Every episode is fresh, character arcs never remain stagnant, and the show nicely balances the continuation of its overreaching story with sometimes radical character revelations, changes, and departures that offer heightened narrative drama but are always intimately interconnected with the larger story.

Season one effortlessly folds in classic Star Trek lore. There are components within the series that recall each of the existing TV shows (and even the new films; Discovery's score sounds like a hybrid of classic TOS refrains with Michael Giacchino's work on the Abrams films), but it's certainly most ground in classic Kirk-Spock-McCoy Star Trek with design cues that are more closely related to Enterprise, particularly ship and uniform design. The season's primary arc involves a war with the Klingons but eventually makes a transition into something else, a departure that is based around a single original series episode, one that has been revisited before in other Star Trek series but never with such gusto, depth, detail, and interconnectedness. These episodes rewrite much of what came before in the series but in a way that respects reality and throws a few twists out there, too. Every episode is in some way a standout, whether those that deal intimately with the characters, explore the savagery of war, or hearken back to classic Star Trek structures and styles, such as in "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum," which may as well have been ripped straight out of Roddenberry's original series or The Next Generation. The season's weakest episode is its last. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but it feels rushed, underdeveloped, too quick to bring the season to a close and too eager, it seems, to introduce season two with a spectacular tease.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One's 1080p Blu-ray presentation can be both rewarding and frustrating. In a broad overview, the picture is quite good, with high end textural intimacy and impressively saturated colors leading the charge. On the downside, macroblocking and banding are fairly regular visual components, the former in particular seeping into darker corners and backgrounds. One of the most pronounced examples comes in episode five, an episode taking place largely in low light within a dank, dreary Klingon holding cell. While such issues are frequent throughout the run, that flip side high end detail and color often save the presentation from its less desirable qualities. Facial features are particularly striking, with impressive intimacy across a wide range of characters, skin types, makeup, and prosthetics. Fine line, pore, freckle, mole, and hair detailing are exemplary in tight, as are the complex and seamless prosthetics seen throughout the season, notably Klingon foreheads (and L'Rell's scar) and Saru's headpiece, which is one of the most visually engaging alien headpieces in Star Trek history. Locations enjoy robust textural firmness and clarity, even if Discovery takes its cues from the spartan NX-01, lacking the brighter colors on the original Enterprise or the more plush and homely accents on TNG's Enterprise D. Colors are quite good, albeit without much in the way of prominently loud, intensive hues. Federation blue uniforms are a standout, offering good color depth and detail. Digital and holographic readouts bear the fruits of high yield color pop and saturation, standing out particularly well against Discovery's unassuming dark grays and blacks. Black levels sometimes struggle to hold depth but skin tones appear fairly accurate within the show's generally lower light constraints.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One beams onto Blu-ray with a generally good, though not perfect, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. This is not a huge, intense track. Space battles, phaser firefights, and other sounds of raucous conflict are a little more timid than one might expect of the most technology advanced Star Trek show ever made. The track does take full advantage of the width and depth the 5.1 configuration affords the material. Sound elements are appropriately immersive, including those battle scenes, even if they lack the raw power and depth one might expect of them. Discovery environmental effects are very nicely integrated, including coms chatter, beeping machinery in sick bay, and sweeping doors heard as they open and close. Music over the opening titles is clear and well pronounced with full stage coverage. Score throughout the season follows suit, and a dance party in one early episode blasts out popular beats with impressive engagement into the stage and a quality low end accompaniment. Dialogue can be a little shallow, particularly Klingon dialogue, but clarity, positioning, and prioritization are usually fine.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One contains extras across all four discs. Each episode save for the pilot also includes a Promo (1080p, various runtimes) that previews the season and individual episodes. Deleted and extended scenes can be found with each episode's selection tab while most other extras can be located under the "Special Features" tab. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase.

Disc One:

• Launch Promos (1080p, 4:44 total runtime): Pre-release previews for the series.
• Discovering Discovery: The Concepts and Casting of Star Trek: Discovery (1080p, 16:40): A discussion that includes the franchise's legacy, finding this series' place and purpose in that legacy, the family atmosphere amongst the key crew, casting key parts, character details, parallels to today's political climate, the Klingons' place and purpose in the series, and more.
• Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Creating the Sound of Discovery (1080p, 8:07): Creating this show's musical identity, music's place in the series and how it defines the entire show and individual episodes alike, and more.
• Creature Comforts (1080p, 15:55): Digital design, redesigning Klingons with classic connective tissues, building Saru and L'Rell, costuming, and prosthetics.
• Deleted Scene (1080p): Scene from "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry."
• Extended Scene (1080p): Scene from "Battle at the Binary Stars."

Disc Two:

• Designing Discovery (1080p, 12:11): Designing and building bridge sets, crafting captains chairs, lighting, and Klingon set pieces.
• Creating Space (1080p, 13:08): A detailed exploration of making a key scene from the season's debut episode.
• Prop Me Up (1080p, 12:54): Phasers, communicators, swords, emblems, medical devices, and more: designing and crafting some of the key props seen throughout the season.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Scenes from "Choose Your Pain" and "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad."
• Extended Scenes (1080p): Scenes from "Choose Your Pain."

Disc Three:

• A Woman's Journey (1080p, 11:14): A closer look at the female characters who play a prominent role in the series.
• Dress for Success (1080p, 21:28): An in-depth exploration of the costumes seen in the season: Federation, Klingon, design choice, construction, and more.
• Feeding Frenzy (1080p, 6:42): Making a meal that two characters share in "Vaulting Ambition." This extra can be found under that episode's selection tab.

Disc Four:

• Season 1 Promo (1080p, 1:01): A spoiler-y season one collage with critic blurbs.
• Star Trek: Discovery: The Voyage of Season 1 (1080p, 40:53): A season overview: themes, storylines, and characters and character interactions with a fairly linear progression through season one.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Scenes from "What's Past Is Prologue" and "Will You Take My Hand?"
• Extended Scenes (1080p): Scenes from "What's Past Is Prologue."

Star Trek: Discovery - Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Would Gene Roddenberry be pleased with Discovery? Hard to say. The show has more in common with Deep Space Nine than it does any other series, even if it's set a decade prior to the original series' timeline. In Discovery, the "strange new worlds" are often found inside the characters, not throughout the universe in which they operate. It's the most human, raw, real, violent, and unafraid of the franchise and arguably the most dramatically engaging. It manages to take Star Trek in a new direction while holding firm to the series' essential roots. It's a spectacular show and this reviewer cannot wait for season two. Paramount/CBS' release of Star Trek: Discovery - Season One features good 1080p video that is not without flaw, a fair lossless soundtrack, and a healthy allotment of extra content. Very highly recommended, and collectors should be sure to check out the attractive SteelBook alternative.