-Episode-
A solid opener! Exciting and action-packed, but not as in-your-face as the start of the first season. More time is devoted to the supporting character banter. Tilly is great fun as usual, and everyone feels warmer in their shoes straight off the bat. The episode feels like a reminder of how good the show got towards the end of the first season, with a hint of how much better it can get.
The plot itself was a little basic and standard Star Trek, but that's what the fans want right? We didn't really get much new information, but it's early days for season two. Last season we didn't have a clue what was going on until episode three!
-Captain Pike-
Anson Mount does a great job of balancing a mixture of what we've seen from original series youngest Pikey, and the 2009 reboot ol' Pikers as a now middle-aged and middle-ground version. Visually, Pikey-pants 3.0 (or is it 2.0?) looks almost exactly how you'd expect, and attitude-wise he's a new-ish type of captain again. He has the confidence of Kirk and the wisdom of Picard, so we'll call him Captain Pirk Pikard from now on until this changes. I'm confident that going forward we'll get more depth to the character.
-Spock-
The difference between recasting Spock and recasting Pike is that the latter was a previously lesser known and fairly one-note character. Spock is iconic of the whole franchise, and Sci-Fi in general. Zachary Quinto did the impossible of successfully portraying his own believable take on the character only 10 years ago! I think I would rather they just keep mentioning the Spock story, without ever showing him. If they get this wrong, it could easily break Discovery forever.
-Conclusion-
So far, a strong, if not overly interesting start. It definitely has a little sprinkling of that fun feel of 90s Star Trek, which I think they'll build upon because I've just read that Jonathan Frakes is the director of episode 2...
