I just started this show. I haven’t really liked any Star Trek show since STNG, so I kept putting this one off. Mostly because Picard hasn’t been well received
I am halfway through season one. I am not sure what to say about this show. I don’t love it. Parts have a lot of promise and parts are just so clumsy. It has a serial story, but it is clear that whoever is writing it is still thinking episodically. Things are really sped up and the writers have an obsession with illustrating backstory in the worse way. So many scenes with laborious dialogue.
The show is also a lot more realistic view of the federation than previous Trek products I have seen.
Overall there is enough goodness to keep me watching and again, I don’t love it.
I don’t consider “fan service” to be a pejorative.
Neither do I, but it will put off a group of viewers. Obviously a legacy sequel show should be fan service, but S1/2 were so far off the mark it cones off as jarring in S3.
I thought S3 was pretty great, but admittedly because it gave me everything I was hoping it would. Not perfect. Certainly not something I can recommend to anyone who didn’t see the TNG movies when they were fresh. But to anyone who did suffer through that cast getting trotted out into a series of terrible, grim, geriatric action movies, S3 is fantastic.