I just have to say, this is the best Star Trek since Enterprise.

Not that that’s a hard bar to get over. Like, the bar is digging into the ground. But still, it’s nice to see improvement. And improvement this is. I don’t know if the show will keep this level of quality (probably not), but I hope it does, or even keeps improving.

This episode is “OK”. (Last one was “Meh,” the first was “Bad”.) There were scenes (plural) here that are funnier than the entirety of the last two episodes combined. This was not a laugh riot by any measure, but it had some good gags. There’s still a bit too much of that modern ironic-absurdist humor that I’m not terribly fond of (I like my absurdism old-fashioned), but at least most of the rest of the humor feels appropriate for a Trek show.

A big part of the success of this episode is that there is simply Mariner. Sure, she is still the Mary Sue; even though she gets taken down a peg, she’s still completely right in everything she says (it’s only that someone outdoes her at her own shtick, after giving a lecture – to a superior officer – about her shtick). Also, Boimler is able to do his thing without Mariner being right there. Part of the problem is that Mariner absolutely overshadows and humiliates Boimler in every instance, so him being without her lets him shine in his own way. (Now, if they’d only let that happen with her.)

I also appreciated that the show lets the senior staff not look like a bunch of baffoons (excepting the captain). Ransom, the XO, might be a Kirk/Riker knockoff, but he shows how he was able to rise in rank. The rest of the senior staff also shows their competence, in smaller ways.

This episode is better than the last one. It’s funnier (I laughed twice). Mariner is slightly less annoying. This is far less of a parody and more a straight comedy. If I must give a rating, it’s Meh. (Last episode would be rated Bad.)

Again, Mariner is the worst part of the episode. As I said, she isn’t as annoying, but she still is. Her major character flaw from the first episode, her dangerously impulsive nature, is gone. Now she’s merely a free spirit. But she moves extremely squarely in Mary Sue territory. The only time she does something strictly wrong, it’s [spoiler] not actually wrong, but just helping her buddy out.

The other thing that continues to bug me is that they keep Boimler (or whatever his name is) as the buttmonkey. It’s one thing to take the uptight prick down a peg or two, but he isn’t that. They just won’t give this guy a break. His main job just seems to be making Mariner look better by comparison. He’s obviously also supposed to be in the straightman role, but the point of the straightman is that they are usually correct/right, and that never happens for this character.

I still don’t know who this show is for. The humor is quite immature, and not particularly smart. Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself (that top pic is one of those times I laughed), but CBS is trying to market this show as a proper Trek show (not the for-kids cartoon), and Trek fans skew older, more mature. It’s trying to catch that Rick and Morty audience, but they won’t want to watch this, I’d bet. It’s too Trek, and we know that isn’t very popular right now, despite all the money being thrown at it. Once again, it’s clear that Trek fans made this show – you can’t make the above pic by just skimming Memory Alpha (which is how STD and Picard were written). But other Trek fans don’t really want to watch this either.

It wasn’t terrible. It’s got that going for it. Of course, Picard also wasn’t terrible in the first episode, and showed some promise.

I went into this thinking it’d be quite terrible. Not only was the art completely uninspiring of confidence in quality (generic calarts garbage), but the trailer was quite attrocious. About 90% of that was in this first episode, but fortunately the worst parts of the trailer weren’t here, and the trailer didn’t deliver the top jokes (though obviously it thought it would). And it seemed like it would be the generic modern comedy cartoon, which is something I don’t want in a Trek show.

It actually was that last thing. I still don’t want that in a Trek show. This didn’t feel like a Trek comedy show, but rather a parody of Trek, like you’d see on Family Guy or Robot Chicken (the similarities to Rick and Morty aren’t just in the art). I don’t like that sort of manic, frantic, silly humor (that still somehow manages to stretch a joke too long much of the time) generally, and I don’t think it fits with the Star Trek aesthetic. Trek has done comedy, sometimes even being funny, so it’s not like Trek has to be serious. But this isn’t it.

All that I could tolerate, though, if it weren’t for the main character. Mariner is by far the most annoying character on the show, but she’s obviously supposed to be sympathetic, at least as far as a modern comedy lead is allowed to be. She’s made out to be a Michael Burnham, but “funny”. But Burnham was a big part of what makes STD bad, and Mariner follows that trend. She’s a headstrong, manic, stubborn woman who’s nevertheless always in the right – she’s only rebelling against the stuffy regulations, after all. She’s contrasted with, and in conflict with, the senior staff, who are all jerkoffs, so you know she’s in the right, even if you’d rather she disappeared from your screen forever. This show might even be decent, if it weren’t for her. I don’t see her get any better.

Since it didn’t completely put me off in the first episode, I’ll give it at least a couple more, see if it turns out. I always hope that these new shows will turn out ok – that they’ve learned from their mistakes, and improved and made something better. My hopes are constantly dashed, but Trek is about hope for a better future. So here I am.