10 Best Action Set-Pieces In Star Trek
7. Battle Of The Binary Stars
The first episode of Discovery is all about establishing the Klingon threat and the Federation's error in blundering through first contact. Basically, Discovery is all Burnham's fault.
At the very end of that premiere, the two fleets are head on for what, at the time, was the biggest staging of a space battle in Star Trek history. It delivered.
At the centre of this has to be the moment in which the Klingon cleave ship rips through the USS Europa as it attempts to save the Shenzhou from falling into the asteroid field. Interesting that this move would also show up in the final, climactic battle in Such Sweet Sorrow when the Klingons joined that fight.
Rather than being anything clever, the confrontation is perhaps Star Trek's second most realistic galactic confrontation after the demise of the USS Kelvin. It's a fully three dimensional encounter and more of ships throwing explosives at each other than weaving majestically through phaser fire and torpedo trails. This is a battle of attrition.
The advancement in technology is more than evident when Burnham escapes from the brig with a good proportion of the ship exposed to space.