Captain's Log: The Maiden Voyage of Discovery

Many early criticisms of DSC highlighted fundamental differences between DSC and past Star Treks, one of the examples being the missing "captain's logs". We have now seen that criticisms along these lines were on-point and that DSC's departure from expectations was intentional.

The recent episode "What's Past is Prologue" seems to revert to a more familiar form Trek. At least on board Discovery. I found it interesting that acting Captain Saru's "Captain's Log" entry was made before the crew found out Lorca wasn't who he claimed to be. I think this is an important distinction as it showed that the crew of Discovery was being held back from Federation ideals by their imposter captain. Without Lorca around, the crew functions as the type of Starfleet crew we're used to seeing on screen. It was natural and appeared nearly immediate. They didn't need to be told "your captain was not of the Federation" in order to operate according to the ideals of the Federation.

Additionally, we've been with this crew through some crazy shit. We haven't focused much on the crew, but they've been there for the ride. Detmer presumably suffered a brain injury at the Battle of Binary Stars and we saw the glare she gave Michael in episode 3, and her character has come a long way since then. Similar for the other bridge crew. Ariam got some (long overdue) dialogue in this past episode, but it was long overdue because she's been through the crazy shit. We want to hear from these characters because we've observed their experiences.

What I'm trying to get at is that the "prologue" introduced us to the crew. In previous Star Trek shows, we just start with a fully-assembled crew that we never saw come together (which was fine of course). This time, we've seen these crew members along their journey to become a cohesive Federation crew. We just might even see characters like Saru and Detmer accept Michael as one of them, despite what happened at the Battle of Binary Stars, because of the events and growth that we've seen this crew go through. They (the crew, not just the captain issuing orders) made sure their plan to destroy Charon included rescuing Michael. Imagine being told, after Episode 3, that the crew without Lorca would ensure that Michael isn't left behind. I would struggle to believe that, but here we are.

I think we'll be seeing a more familiar flavour of Star Trek moving forward. We'll get "captain's logs" and other familiar things. We've had a ship, we now have a crew, and we just saw the maiden voyage of Discovery. I can't wait to see what's next.

What do you think?