Star Trek: It has always been about hope!

I found myself feeling hopeless on Sunday night....

When it was announced that Star Trek was making its long awaited return in 2015 I was ecstatic, it had been almost a decade since production wrapped on Enterprise and I needed something to look forward to, to be hopeful for.

Whither it be James T Kirk engaged in mortal combat with Khan, Jean-Luc Picard defending the Federation against a Borg invasion, Benjamin Sisko protecting the Alpha Quadrant against the Dominion, Jonathan Archer helping to lay the foundation of Starfleet or Kathryn Janeway attempting to bring her crew home, Star Trek has always been about hope.  

However by the time the two hour series premier of Star Trek Discovery had concluded I was not left with a feeling of hope, but rather a feeling of hopelessness - this was not the Star Trek I had grownup with.

Discovery has a much different feeling to it, a very dark and hopeless feeling. 

Set roughly a decade before the events of the original series, Discovery begins with a confrontation between Starfleet and a fractured Klingon Empire. The Klingon's have been absent for almost one hounded years, other then popping up every now and again to kill colonists as a reminder that they are still out there - and that's how we meet our main character Michael Burnham.

Burnham is orphaned during one such raid and is adopted by Spock's father Sarek. Sarek places Burnham in the Vulcan Science Academy, and once her education is complete he logically returns her to the human race by placing her aboard the USS Shenzhou under the command of captain Philippa Georgiou.

It is during her service as the Shenzhou's first officer that Burnham sparks a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire, betrays her shipmates, and ultimately causes the death of her captain before facing a court-martial and being imprisoned for life.

Star Trek has always been about hope, but the premier of Discovery left me feeling hopeless.

As we look forward to next weeks episode it's fair to assume that Burnham will somehow evade her life sentence and once again find her way onto the bridge of a Starship. 

However in a series that opened with so much aggression and has already killed off what was believed to be a central character, this show feels like it is tapping the darkness that is the Kelven timeline as opposed to the hopefulness that was always just beneath the surface in the original timeline. 

With that in mind I can't help but wonder if Star Trek Discovery will be the CBS All Access attempt at Game of Thrones in space, only time will tell but here's hoping that the shows helmsmen sets a course in the right direction in the weeks to come.

Because Star Trek has always been about hope.