Oh, but I wanted it to be good!
The sets, props, costuming, make-up, and special effects are all great. Truly, these capture the original spirit of the show, and this is the reason I was loathe to rate this one star. So, I gave this three stars for the visuals. Unfortunately, this is where my ability to say anything great about this show ends.
I love Star Trek. I am one of the biggest fans. And I know fans like to make fan stuff, and put it up online, and we all high five each other. And that's great. I appreciate the effort. I really do. But, this just made me cringe. Many, many times.
The writing just simply is not very good. The episodes feel like badly written speculative scripts. Much of the dialogue is unnatural, and filled with tropes and clichés that reference the original source work. These don't "prove" to me that the work is any more legitimate, or that the people creating it are "such great fans" of the work that they pepper in little references to the past work - These are annoying, and only serve to remind me that I'm watching something that just isn't remotely as good as the original. There is a difference between CONTINUING something and COPYING something. From what I've seen of this show, it serves as a poor copy of the original, and just doesn't provide anything continuing or new at all.
I dislike saying anything bad about the actors. They're people putting themselves in front of the camera, and they're trying to put on a good show. I also feel badly because they are clearly struggling with poor writing. But, I feel it needs to be said that a MAJOR PROBLEM with this show is the people they have cast in the main roles just are not very talented or charismatic. I hate to call for the entire main cast to be scrapped, but that's the only thing that would get me to watch any more of this. (And to find some better writers, please.) I'm really sorry. Many of the guest actors have done a great job. And, of course they would - They're seasoned actors. Most of the people in the main cast are at the skill level you would expect from a high school production. They're just not very good. Again, I'm sorry. Uhura and Scotty are the least offensive casting choices of them all. What we have is a captain that doesn't look like the captain, act like the captain, or charm like the captain. A Spock that looks kind of like Spock, but is soft spoken, has apparently confused showing lack of emotion with having a complete lack of energy, and stiffly delivers dialogue practically verbatim from TOS. A McCoy that doesn't look, act, or sound like McCoy at all... Sulu is Asian, so they got that right, at least. But, again, many of these shortcomings can be attributed to what is genuinely bad writing. The interaction between the characters was a part of the original TOS charm. (Spock and McCoy's banter, with funny quips and retorts, for example.)
I stopped watching this at the second episode, Lolani. I just couldn't stand another minute of this. SPOILER ALERT: For the better part of the episode, Kirk is wringing his hands about what to do to save the poor little Orion slave girl. This poor girl who stabbed somebody in the neck and killed them, threatened a crewman with a knife, attempted to seduce Kirk, and then seduced a crewman and convinced him to steal a shuttle craft for them to run away together in. (This same crew man is later seen wandering around freely on the ship, and is allowed to man the transporter. Uh huh.) Rather than do the obvious thing (offer to buy her from her master) he decides to invite her master on board the ship, p!ss him off so that he takes great pleasure in NOT selling her to him, and then sends the two of them back to the slave owner's ship. So what we have here is an indecisive captain who walks around moping and whining because he can't do anything, who seems to think insubordination is okey dokey, and then completely bungles an attempt at diplomacy. (This is not the captain... nope.) So I'm pretty irritated at this point with the show, but it isn't over yet! Kirk looks off in the air, kinda' funny (stroke?) and then inexplicably decides to violate direct orders from Starfleet to pursue their ship, to try to transport her from their moving ship onto his moving ship, only BOOM! The ship exploded. (Wow. How convenient.) Did Lolani blow it up? Probably. Nobody really knows. It just goes BOOM and Kirk walks off the bridge, all sad, while everybody sits there, stupidly. Spock doesn't say jack about what caused the explosion. He just stares, too. But how CONVENIENT to blow that ship up, eh? This way we can say Kirk TRIED to do something, but is saved just before he ruins his career. Please....
Terrible, TERRIBLE writing.
The sets, props, costuming, make-up, and special effects are all great. Truly, these capture the original spirit of the show, and this is the reason I was loathe to rate this one star. So, I gave this three stars for the visuals. Unfortunately, this is where my ability to say anything great about this show ends.
I love Star Trek. I am one of the biggest fans. And I know fans like to make fan stuff, and put it up online, and we all high five each other. And that's great. I appreciate the effort. I really do. But, this just made me cringe. Many, many times.
The writing just simply is not very good. The episodes feel like badly written speculative scripts. Much of the dialogue is unnatural, and filled with tropes and clichés that reference the original source work. These don't "prove" to me that the work is any more legitimate, or that the people creating it are "such great fans" of the work that they pepper in little references to the past work - These are annoying, and only serve to remind me that I'm watching something that just isn't remotely as good as the original. There is a difference between CONTINUING something and COPYING something. From what I've seen of this show, it serves as a poor copy of the original, and just doesn't provide anything continuing or new at all.
I dislike saying anything bad about the actors. They're people putting themselves in front of the camera, and they're trying to put on a good show. I also feel badly because they are clearly struggling with poor writing. But, I feel it needs to be said that a MAJOR PROBLEM with this show is the people they have cast in the main roles just are not very talented or charismatic. I hate to call for the entire main cast to be scrapped, but that's the only thing that would get me to watch any more of this. (And to find some better writers, please.) I'm really sorry. Many of the guest actors have done a great job. And, of course they would - They're seasoned actors. Most of the people in the main cast are at the skill level you would expect from a high school production. They're just not very good. Again, I'm sorry. Uhura and Scotty are the least offensive casting choices of them all. What we have is a captain that doesn't look like the captain, act like the captain, or charm like the captain. A Spock that looks kind of like Spock, but is soft spoken, has apparently confused showing lack of emotion with having a complete lack of energy, and stiffly delivers dialogue practically verbatim from TOS. A McCoy that doesn't look, act, or sound like McCoy at all... Sulu is Asian, so they got that right, at least. But, again, many of these shortcomings can be attributed to what is genuinely bad writing. The interaction between the characters was a part of the original TOS charm. (Spock and McCoy's banter, with funny quips and retorts, for example.)
I stopped watching this at the second episode, Lolani. I just couldn't stand another minute of this. SPOILER ALERT: For the better part of the episode, Kirk is wringing his hands about what to do to save the poor little Orion slave girl. This poor girl who stabbed somebody in the neck and killed them, threatened a crewman with a knife, attempted to seduce Kirk, and then seduced a crewman and convinced him to steal a shuttle craft for them to run away together in. (This same crew man is later seen wandering around freely on the ship, and is allowed to man the transporter. Uh huh.) Rather than do the obvious thing (offer to buy her from her master) he decides to invite her master on board the ship, p!ss him off so that he takes great pleasure in NOT selling her to him, and then sends the two of them back to the slave owner's ship. So what we have here is an indecisive captain who walks around moping and whining because he can't do anything, who seems to think insubordination is okey dokey, and then completely bungles an attempt at diplomacy. (This is not the captain... nope.) So I'm pretty irritated at this point with the show, but it isn't over yet! Kirk looks off in the air, kinda' funny (stroke?) and then inexplicably decides to violate direct orders from Starfleet to pursue their ship, to try to transport her from their moving ship onto his moving ship, only BOOM! The ship exploded. (Wow. How convenient.) Did Lolani blow it up? Probably. Nobody really knows. It just goes BOOM and Kirk walks off the bridge, all sad, while everybody sits there, stupidly. Spock doesn't say jack about what caused the explosion. He just stares, too. But how CONVENIENT to blow that ship up, eh? This way we can say Kirk TRIED to do something, but is saved just before he ruins his career. Please....
Terrible, TERRIBLE writing.