Star Trek: Discovery 5 Ups & 3 Downs From 'Context Is For Kings'

We may be a little late with this one, but it'd be criminal not to talk about Sunday night's episode of Star Trek: Discovery, 'Context is for Kings'.

The episode, set some time after Burnham's court martial at the end of the second episode, really upped the stakes, providing an accurate representation of what we can expect from the series going forward and, more importantly, a brilliant hour of television in itself.

It was a marked improvement over Discovery's pilot, and while the show does (admittedly) have a long way to go before it can lay claim to being among the very best Trek shows out there, the signs we've seen so far have been encouraging. It very much feels as though the series is carving out its own identity within the wider Trek canon, crafting a story that feels both salient and even necessary in regards not just to Roddenberry's world itself, but within the milieu of 2017 too.

A few niggling issues aside, Discovery's latest episode feels like a breath of fresh air. Occupying something of a tonal middle ground between the Abrams reboot of 2009 and the original, non-Kelvin timeline, the series has taken to the franchise not in an attempt to rekindle nostalgia (although it does come into play), but to reappraise its founding tenets in a period that feels distinctly un-Trek like.

It's inevitable that it won't please everyone but - as far as Trek goes - Discovery is right up there with the very best.