Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x02 "Ad Astra Per Aspera" - eviltoast
Logline

Commander Una Chin-Riley faces court-martial along with possible imprisonment and dishonorable dismissal from Starfleet, and her defense is in the hands of a lawyer who’s also a childhood friend with whom she had a terrible falling out.

Written by Dana Horgan

Directed by Valerie Weiss

  • CaptainProton@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    A mediocre episode whose saving grace was the message. I get what they were going for and I agree with it, as an episode though… meh. It would have been nice to see the Federation fight back a little bit, just for drama purposes. The vibe I got was that even the prosecution was not 100% on board with the law but since it was a law they had to uphold it; imo it would have been more interesting to have a more passionate prosecution. Measure of a Man had Riker, Drumhead had Satie, both good opponents for the heroes. Who was the antagonist here? The bald Vulcan guy who spoke for 2 minutes?

    Also the flashback made me feel like the director thinks I’m some sort of idiot who can’t remember what happened a few minutes ago. What was the point of that?

    I also feel like the episode squandered the opportunity to explore the theme of genetic engineering itself. Why is it so dangerous anyway? Would’ve been nice to hear that side of the argument.

    As a sidenote, I don’t like how bigoted the Federation appears to be; this whole ban on augments never sat right with me, not in DS9 and not now.

    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      1 year ago

      The antagonist was pretty clearly the bald Vulcan guy. The prosecutor didn’t think the law was just, but it was her job. Kind of like Riker being forced in Measure of a Man.

      I think it was made clear in DS9 and reinforced here that the whole Federation POV was entirely because of the scars on earth of the Eugenics Wars. I feel like it’s maybe analogous to the Patriot Act - passed because of a traumatic event, but now decades (or centuries on) kind of hard to justify for anyone, but getting rid of a law is hard.

      And the entire point of the episode was the Federation is bigoted against augments, and no - there’s no good reason for it. It’s about as good as the argument that because Mao and Stalin were atheists, we should ban atheism - as if THAT’s what made them horrible people. And there’s nothing in the canon to imply that Khan and the other augment war lords were war lords and fighting the wars because they were augments.

      I’ve said other places I think this hypocrisy of the Federation is actually pretty justified in earlier Trek, we may not like it - but it’s not because of nuTrek IMHO. Of course, because Prequel, they also can’t fix it.