As good as Star Trek has ever been.

It did go downhill with the boring, cliche explanation of the red angel, and the boring, cliche AI villain, and the super dumb 'time crystal' turn. And the retcon to explain why nobody's heard of Michael Burnham or the spore drive was eyeroll-inducing.

But Pike was great. Spock was (shockingly) even better. I actually hope the Pike series comes together. Cancel the Section 31 series and run Star Trek: PikeSpockNumberOne instead.

Despite the fact that I can never seem to get fully behind this show, I'm actually REALLY looking forward to season 3. I've been wanting to see Star Trek visit the FAR future for a long time. It'll allow them to really break new ground in a way that TNG did. And the way they set it up might let them improve on the Voyager idea. It'll also finally force them to avoid the cheap mindless callbacks that have held them back so far. So far they've managed canon in the worst possible way: thinking they need to explain trivial things like the lack of technology in the original Enterprise, while at the same time being willing to undermine the logistics that defined the next 100 story years (spore drive). Now that they're situated in the far future they can just make their own show, and it will probably be a lot better. (They'll still go to the fucking mirror universe at some point, though.)