Ben Lindbergh

and it became kind of a slog.

The other thing, look, the dialogue, not the best at all times, right?

I think there's a lot of acting talent here on display.

Holly Hunter plays the head of the Academy.

Paul Giamatti, chewing scenery big time with all the prosthetics here, shouting and striding around the sets.

There's a lot to like there.

Holly Hunter loves to sit in unusual, atypical alignments.

She never met a couch that she couldn't stretch out on or a captain's chair for that matter.

It's a slow start.

And I was not sold on this series after the first few episodes.

I kept going largely out of loyalty to the franchise just to see where it went.

And I was rewarded because the later part of the season actually gets good because

And partly because it sort of abandons that low stakes.

It's just interpersonal drama.

And it becomes kind of what Star Trek often does, which is an existential fight for survival.

And sometimes the science and the premises, they can kind of strain credulity a little bit.

But once you start to see these young ensigns, these cadets,

strut their stuff in these real world situations as opposed to fake flooding and tests and all of that, then the series really starts to soar.

You know, then we go from impulse speed to warp and then the season ends and there's only one coming and the death sentence has already been pronounced.

So that's unfortunate.