Watched the first episode of Strange New Worlds with Kev last night — it’s fun! It’s certainly in the style of classic Trek, with a first contact theme to the first episode, episodic structure, and a handsome white guy captain who gets to flirt with an alien woman in the elevator.
It’s interesting thinking about how this will play with more conservative Trek fans — there was a moment on the bridge when I was like, oh, hey, we have white guy in charge, plus Spock, and then a host of attractive women from various ethnic groups, all smiling approvingly at the captain. Captain gets to make a couple of stirring speeches too. The hero fantasy, updated for the modern age?
I did particularly like how they established the new Uhura as a young prodigy from line one; I hope they give her some opportunities to demonstrate that. In Diane Duane‘s books, if I’m remembering right, Uhura is working on her doctorate and maybe updating the universal translator? They did let the communications officer (Hoshi Sato) on the short-lived Enterprise have that kind of role, and there was a charming little bit in this one where Uhura demonstrates that she has unexpected knowledge of an alien culture in a critical moment, so I’m hopeful.
I think my favorite moment of the episode was when Uhura and Chapel introduced themselves to each other. So charming!
New Chapel has also gotten an upgrade — she’s still hot, but she gets to wear pants (hotly), and she’s established immediately as having serious smarts, with the ability to do complex genetic manipulation on the fly. Why she still has the title of ‘Nurse’ is a little beyond me, but perhaps in the Star Trek era, ‘Nurse’ means something completely different than it does now. 
Dr. M’Benga was good so far, looking forward to learning a bit more about his personality / backstory.
It was interesting, the little bits of Discovery, etc. that they wove in; I was a little surprised by Spock’s early reference to missing his sister, but it makes sense in the current timeline.
Overall, fluffy, light, fun. Not exactly interesting? But I don’t think that’s what they were going for with this episode, and I’m willing to cut them some slack; it often takes shows several episodes to really find their feet.