It's very possible that Michelle Yeoh's character dies in the first episode. One theory is that the USS Shenziou is defeated during an unexpected ambush by some previously unknown Klingon tribe. Some people have speculated that the fucking ugly USS Discovery seen in the Comicon trailer a few years ago is a hybrid ship made from the working parts of the Shenziou and a Klingon destroyer.

Unfortunately, I have to agree that this show has disaster written all over it. Here are my problems with it in no particular order:

--the setting. As has been stated repeatedly already: why the fuck would you set a show ten years prior to TOS? There were references to this huge Klingon-Human military campaign at Axenar in this time period, but so what? Address that in one episode of a show set in a far more interesting time, either between TOS and TNG, or after TNG/Voyager. This choice of setting leads to many problems, not least of which is:

--continuity. TOS was made in the 60s and yes, was very futuristic for the audience of that time (I know, I was there...ok, as just a kid, but I grew up on the reruns). But, to create a ship and crew set [italic]before[/italic] the period portrayed (2250s?) and use higher technology such as touch screens and transparent displays that are far more sophisticated than the clicking relays and transistors on perfect board of TOS ships creates credibility problems from the very start.

--so Lt. Saru is part of a race designed to sense imminent death? WTF? Can you imagine the Herculean contortions the writers are going to have to go through to explain why he didn't come in as the deus ex machina and save the heros every goddamned incident? If I were a red shirt stepping on the pad in a landing party that included Lt. Saru, I'd be looking for any glum expression on his face and would jump off before beaming started.

--In the TOS episodes and books, a central part of the Sarek/Spock dynamic was Sarek's disowning of Spock after he chose Starfleet instead of the Vulcan Science Academy for his professional career. Now we have Michael Burnham (btw:Michael? For a woman's name? WTF?), presumably another child of Sarek with a human, and she too goes into Starfleet? Do you think Spock might've mentioned this along the way in seventy something episodes and six+ movies?

--How the fuck is the USS Shenziou so much more advanced than the Constitution class Enterprise that is yet to be commissioned? Are we going to start off with another time-traveling excuse for shitty writing? Or, worse, if it is the same time period then this shows the producers don't give a fuck about continuity.

--Bryan Fuller--by all accounts--was run off the project he created because of head butting against network execs who didn't give a fuck about Trek canon, continuity, honoring fan loyalty, etc. If he washed his hands of the whole thing, that's fucking scary. (He is still hired as a creative consultant, but he has little to do with DSC at all).

--the content delivery method: not on broadcast TV, not on Netflix (except for Europe, and after a year probably in America) but on a paid CBS-All Access outlet? What new fuckery is this? It's like they have intentionally decided to make this fail before even one episode is aired. It's NBC moving TOS to 10PM Friday (and wondering why ratings took a nosedive) all over again.

I honestly, truly want Trek to continue on TV again. It's been too long. But with this shit show in the making, it's almost like "The Producers" in that the execs seem to be saying "we need to do absolutely everything possible to make this bomb spectacularly!"