The whole "only on CBS streaming" (in the US-- in other parts of the world it can be seen on Netflix, who is paying for about half the production in partnership with CBS) just killed the whole deal for me.
CBS has NOTHING I want to see on broadcast, WHY would I want to PAY for their lousy "streaming service" to see ONE show?? Answer: I don't and I won't. I bet that's the clincher for about probably 80% of the people who MIGHT actually watch it otherwise.
I've been following the development of this new series for awhile, and it's been one train wreck after another. I don't like the "Abrams-Drek" crapola AT ALL... that idiot turned Star Trek into "just another friggin comic book movie". Not that I particularly have anything against comic book movies; I will OCCASIONALLY go see one, if the mood strikes me, but it's just to waste 2 hours munching on popcorn, as those movies have NO MEANINGFUL STORY and are just designed to separate mall rats from $10 bucks of their parents' money. That's NOT why I watch Star Trek... that's not why I've seen every one of the original series episodes at least a dozen times... and every one of the original crew and TNG movies probably 2 dozen times or more (with the exception of "Nemesis" which just sucked). Why I've watched every TNG episode probably ten times... DS9 and Voyager sorta took a walk off the map and I quit watching them about halfway through and after the first year, respectively-- TNG was closer to "real Trek" than they would ever be. As it seemed Trek was wandering "further off the reservation" with every iteration, I didn't even watch "Enterprise" in it's first run... I was sorta "burned out" on Trek at that point. Later when I watched it in reruns, I was impressed-- took awhile to grow on me, but it had the same sort of "spirit" as the original Trek, and told some pretty good stories (except for that entire "temporal cold war" thing, though the Nazi lizards from outer space episodes were good). "Enterprise" was just hitting its stride when it was canceled IMHO.
Then JJ Abrams took the entire franchise and flushed it straight down the toilet... his "reboot" was a decent popcorn munching movie (despite the retarded "Thelma and Louise" moment with young Kirk and his uncle's car) but that's ALL it was... just meaningless, vapid action sequences-- Trek reduced to a vehicle to deliver mass quantities of CGI with absolutely NO story and NO MEANING WHATSOEVER. Basically, just taking a CRAP on the original. Same thing JJ Abrams has done with Star Wars now-- Episode 7 was just a CRUMMY remake of the original Star Wars episode 4 from 1977. I don't expect anything better with the new SW movie, or ANYTHING that JJ Abrams does...
Anyway, after "Discovery" having been reset a number of times, recast, restaffed, etc, I don't hold much hope for it. By all accounts, it's just another meaningless, empty means to deliver mass quantities of CGI, like that's all that matters...
Thing is, everybody thought that about the original Star Wars back in the day... As soon as Star Wars proved there was an audience for sci-fi "done right", everybody and their cousin in Hollywood tried to cash in on that... and cranked out a LOT of "crummy" sci-fi... Heck even the first Star Trek film, "The Motion Picture" fell victim to it-- nearly 3 hours of cutting-edge (for the time) special effects, but done on a basically rehashed version of an original series episode "the Changeling" (the Nomad probe story). It very nearly killed the Trek movies in the cradle, had they not turned to Nicolas Meyer, who realized that CHARACTER DRIVEN STORIES were what Trek was all about... without it, it's a comic book farce, just like the old "Batman" series from the 60's...
Heck I bet the occasional "POW!", "BAM!" or other such pop-ups would look right at home in "Discovery"; they certainly would in Abrams-Drek...
After his first two strike-outs, I wouldn't even waste my money on seeing the last Trek movie. Don't plan to either, not until they start making something worth seeing.
"Star Trek Continues" and "Axanar" was TEN TIMES better than anything the studios have put out for a LONG time now... and Discovery, sadly, looks NO different.
I'll content myself to watch anything made before "Nemesis" and enjoy it again, thoroughly, rather than watch some popcorn-munching nonsense.
Later! OL J R
