I have absolutely no difficulty ignoring every single shortcoming of certain audiovisual aspects of this production that can all be explained away with one of two words: budget and copyright. What I can not ignore however is the amateurishness of several other aspects that do not require a high budget, only talent in writing and staging. The beginning is rushed, the dialogues lack substance - mostly because choreography is almost non-existent, people just stand or sit around awkwardly wherever -, the succession of some scenes is very mechanical - consecutive scenes inorganically delivering mandatory backstories in a manner that is violating rules of writing as basic as "show, don't tell" -, while others have absolutely no relevance for the plot, they just serve to deliver awkward one-liners.
All in all the entire delivery of the plot falls so flat, it fails to convey even a modicum of suspense, danger or urgency despite all the efforts of all those professional actors. Their characters are believable. What happens to and around them is not. If I wouldn't have seen some of the original actors reprising their former roles and some others who played favorite characters in other franchises, I doubt I would've stuck around for more than half an hour, and through all of the first episode (of two?) only four scenes brought forth an emotional response out of me that wasn't indifference or disdain, but actual resonance with the portrayed events.
Then there's the fact that the ever present moral dilemma each and every classic Star Trek episode came with is completely absent here, save for the last few minutes of the episode, which makes it a meaningless footnote instead of a source of tension shaping the episode. Therefore I'm sorry to say, but this is not just not a good feature length film/pilot/whatever, it's also not good Star Trek.
All in all the entire delivery of the plot falls so flat, it fails to convey even a modicum of suspense, danger or urgency despite all the efforts of all those professional actors. Their characters are believable. What happens to and around them is not. If I wouldn't have seen some of the original actors reprising their former roles and some others who played favorite characters in other franchises, I doubt I would've stuck around for more than half an hour, and through all of the first episode (of two?) only four scenes brought forth an emotional response out of me that wasn't indifference or disdain, but actual resonance with the portrayed events.
Then there's the fact that the ever present moral dilemma each and every classic Star Trek episode came with is completely absent here, save for the last few minutes of the episode, which makes it a meaningless footnote instead of a source of tension shaping the episode. Therefore I'm sorry to say, but this is not just not a good feature length film/pilot/whatever, it's also not good Star Trek.