We’re way behind on TV watching, but last night Becky and I started in on Star Trek: Discovery, Season 5. We’ve enjoyed Discovery thus far, so of course we’re gonna watch it through the final season. And while I still love the characters and want to see another season of story with them, I’m not sure I love this format for a Star Trek series.

Maybe it’s because I’ve recently been watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 for the first time and enjoying the long seasons full of individual episode stories, but the first two episodes of Discovery make clear that it’s about a single story arc over the season. And the story and directing moves feel clunky and obvious. There’s the need to re-introduce each of the characters while they narrate a little bit that you need to remember about their backstory. There’s the whole “get the band back together again” trope that brings Tilly back to the Discovery crew. There’s the “one last job” trope for Saru. (Also, I love Doug Jones, but feels like his makeup crew slipped here - I don’t remember his teeth and lower lip being visible underneath the facial prosthetics in earlier seasons.) Episode 1 sets up the quest and gives us the lovable rogues who are ever so briefly positioned as villains before one of them is immediately revealed as Book’s family… it’s just too much.

Historically, Star Trek has kept most of its drama on ship or in very limited location shots because big cinematic production is expensive. With computer animation getting cheap, Discovery has moved a huge amount of the action onto planetary surfaces. Episode 2 has Burnham and two other characters riding high-speed speeders (a mash-up of a snowmobile, a jet ski, and a Return of the Jedi-style speeder bike) across a desert planet to escape an avalanche. It’s really more Star Wars than Star Trek at that point. The desert village and market could just as easily be Mos Eisley as anywhere in a Star Trek universe.

And then there are the musical cues. I don’t remember any previous Star Trek shows leaning so hard into orchestral scores. This is much more movie scoring than traditional TV scoring. And while composer Jeff Russo weaves hints of the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme motif in wherever possible to make clear that this is Star Trek, all the things he has the strings and horns doing make it clear he’s been listening to John Williams' Star Wars sound tracks quite a lot.

In the end I’m gonna watch it because dang it, it’s Star Trek, but I’m ready to go back and finish up DS9, where I can be sure that I’m watching Trek and not some Star Wars universe show on Disney+.