Well, it’s finally here. I’ve been waiting for over a decade.

And I’m still waiting.

This is not Star Trek.

I tried to give it a good chance. I saw the “Klingons” in the trailer. I figured they were some new alien race. Then I heard that they were Klingons, and I worried.

But I didn’t worry too much – they’ve changed the look of the Klingons before. Of course that change has now been explained in canon, and changing them in a show set 10 years before Kirk is problematic, but I suppose if you’ve got clever writers you can explain it.

Plus, the label on it says “Star Trek Discovery”. Discovery! it doesn’t get more trek than discovery! That’s what it’s all about!

So I watched the 2 hour JJ Abrams TrekWars (TM) movie that was the pilot. But it was clearly just a prelude movie. The actual pilot will come with episode 3. So I kept watching.

I saw a million issues. Violating the prime directive (which is now called “general order 1″ for some reason) in the first 5 minutes wasn’t a strong start. The “Klingons” who speak Klingon like someone who doesn’t speak Klingon reading Klingon off a page while wearing half a ton of latex which stops them from speaking properly wasn’t a good sign either. The idiot main character who does every. single. thing. wrong isn’t winning me over. Everything looking wrong wasn’t a good sign either. But I tried to be impartial and fair.

Episode 3 was… meh. Episode 4, very meh. But it wasn’t un-fixable. Maybe they were just trolling me, daring me to stop watching before they do something amazing to fix all this brokenness. Maybe this is the rogue starfleet ship where the captain is a cunt and has recruited a band of cunts to assist him in his mission of being the biggest cunt of the 23rd century, and soon we’ll see an actual starfleet ship come along and bring this renegade to justice. By the end of episode 4, this seemed unlikely, but I was willing to give it a chance.

And then you had to go and say fuck.

I was already completely disgusted by the time you said fuck, that was just the final nail in the coffin. Let’s go through some of the issues I had before you got to the “oooh, let’s be edgy by saying fuck!” moment:

1. Starfleet has zero concern over using creatures for it’s new propulsion system – their only concern is where to get more creatures. That is not Starfleet.
2. A Captain telling an admiral “my ship, my way”. Lol. Not even Kirk would be so ballsy. If Kirk had tried that at the height of his career (and let’s be clear: he’s the most decorated officer in starfleet history, having saved the planet many times) the admiral would have blinked, removed him from command, and had him institutionalised because he’s clearly lost his mind.
3. Crewmember: “I think we’re hurting this creature when we do this thing”
   (acting) Starfleet captain: “Shut the fuck up!”
   Note: Saru – the least cunty person on the ship – says this. This is just how starfleet is now – everyone is a cunt, principles don’t exist. So we go from an immature but well-intentioned humanity in Enterprise, to 90 years later and everybody is a cunt, to 10 years after that and it’s utopia. Riiiiiiiight.
4. What the fuck is Harry Mudd doing on a klingon ship? Why is it Harry Mudd? There is absolutely no reason for him to be there. Apart from “fanservice”, I mean.
5. Speaking of fanservice, why bother with fanservice when it’s very very abundantly clear that you hate your core audience? Here’s a tip: Star Trek fans want Star Trek, not “Generic Action/Sci-Fi/Drama #48911″. So when you remove everything that makes it Star Trek, it’s not going to go well. Adding a bunch of little fanservice references (almost all of which either break canon or severely bend it) is not helping, the problem is at the core of what this awful, awful shit is. When I see these little fanservice references I think of Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson inserting their fanfic characters into the main Dune universe to try to legitimise themselves.
6. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there were no female Klingon captains at this time. The Duras sisters are unusual in TNG/DS9 canon. I seem to recall an episode of Deep Space Nine where Quark enters into a sham marriage because Klingon women can’t lead their house. The Klingons are obviously not as progressive as the humans are in this universe. It really seems like you are going for SJW-trek. Which is a pity, because Star Trek doesn’t need that! It was already diverse! The original series didn’t have to bother with the whole “look at how diverse we are!” thing, it just was diverse. That wasn’t worthy of comment in-universe, because it was unremarkable to have a russian or a black woman on the bridge. You’re actually taking a step backwards by screaming at the top of your lungs about how progressive you are. If you want to see a great way to deal with gender politics and to be progressive, go look at Quark’s mother’s arc in Deep Space Nine. Real Trek has already dealt with all this stuff, and done it in a much less hamfisted way.

…And then came the straw that broke the camel’s back: Starfleet officers say fuck now? The phrase “fucking cool” is about the least Star Trek thing a person can possibly say. Yes, there have been precedents, like the ill-advised time Data said “oh shit” in one of the movies. But that was a horrible moment we’d all prefer to forget. You’re not being edgy by saying it, you’re just making it even less Trek than it already was.

And just in case my bile hadn’t already risen:

1. The captain leaves Harry Mudd as a prisoner on a Klingon ship! Have I mentioned that this is not Star Trek?
2. OMG you have gay characters! The cunty doctor and the cunty scientist are a couple! A gay couple! An INTERRACIAL GAY couple! How amazingly progressive of you! It’s a pity you seem to think that gay men don’t hug or show real affection beyond ruffling each others hair while talking about how they were worried because the other was in danger. And with the huge budget you have, couldn’t you have found a couple of actors who have some chemistry together?

There are probably other things, but I’d have to watch this godawful dreck again to list all the issues. And there’s no way I’m doing that to myself.

In conclusion, fuck you. This is not Star Trek.

Maybe, if the Internet is swept with comments like “OMG these guys are geniuses! This IS Star Trek!” in 10 weeks, then maybe I’ll think about watching the rest of them. But we all know that’s not going to happen, because you don’t give a shit. You wanted to make Generic Action/Sci-Fi show #48911, not Star Trek.

The funniest thing about this is that if you had given this show any other name, I’d be all over it. I love me some dark sci-fi. I’d love to see an adult sci-fi show with tons of drama and heaps of conflict between cunty characters. But not in a Star Trek Show. You would literally have been better off calling it “Generic Action Sci-Fi show #48911″. I’d watch that, and I’d probably enjoy it. But because you’ve slapped a Star Trek label on it, I spend the whole time just thinking about how apparently everyone in Starfleet was a cunt 10 years before Kirk came along, and how every single thing is broken, and how Gene Roddenberry is turning over in his grave.

Dear Jason Isaacs: You dared me to not watch it? Challenge accepted!

There is a positive here: Next time I watch Enterprise, I’m gonna be all like “OMG this is amazing! They put in so much effort!”. In a strange way, by not giving me a new Star Trek series, they’ve given me a new Star Trek series – I’ll have to go and re-watch Enterprise, because it’s gonna seem awesome compared to this.

And there’s another positive: William Shatner is no longer the cuntiest Trek person! Say hello to your new cunty overlord – Jason Isaacs!

And there’s yet another positive: maybe after this horror show is over, Star Trek will finally be dead. With a little bit of luck this will manage to de-value the entire franchise, and it’ll go to its grave for another 20 years or so. And in that time, since the franchise won’t be worth anything, maybe we’ll get some good, real Star Trek in the form of the fan films you’ve done your best to ban.

I think I’ll go watch some real Star Trek to wash this taste out of my mouth.