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Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x08 - "Under the Cloak of War"

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They went ahead and plundered many of DS9's best episodes here (Duet, The Siege of AR-558, It's Only a Paper Moon) along with liberal helpings of other things we've seen before (in e.g. Jetrel, Nor the Battle to the Strong, TUC), but I found myself enjoying the drama and character work they got out of this quite a bit. Each of the above treated their subject matter more thoroughly and more insightfully, e.g.
  • what to do with war criminals?
  • how to deal with PTSD
  • war as humanity's 'original sin'
Etc etc. But even in this somewhat superficial form, it was good stuff, Star Trek stuff.

As many others, though, I'm confused about the ending, mostly because I don't know what they're tryng to say here. I'm glad that the clichéd "People with a grudge fight it out in an athletic contest" did NOT lead to them coming to an understanding à la "The Icarus Factor". And there may be something to M'Benga's position here - there may very well be people who've done such bad things that they deserve death in a "live by the sword, die by the sword" kind of way. BUT, and this is (as so often in recent Trek) a problem in the writing, all that we see of the Klingon on-screen is a rather pleasant person. The only moment where I thought "this guy may yet have a dark side to him" was when he grabbed M'Benga's arm rather violently asking him to spar. But that isn't enough, simply on the level of cinematic storytelling, to give the viewer reason to believe that they are seeing an SF version of Hitler. Even Kodos in "The Conscience of the King" was written and portrayed in such a way that one could picture him as having been this genocidal tyrant. This guy? Not so much. It's all in the dialogue. And in an episode that's so unafraid to get graphic (for Trek standards anyway), I wonder why they didn't show or otherwise demonstrate viscerally what he did during the war. This, then, makes the ending unsatisfying.

But here's another all-caps BUT: Perhaps that was precisely the intention. Keep us wondering about the issue in a "In the Pale Moonlight" sort of way. If so, then it certainly worked.

But one more question to y'all: We are to assume that M'Benga's story as further told by Chapel is BS, right? We don't really see the fight after all. This was cold-blooded murder, no?
 
Eddie Roth said:
They went ahead and plundered many of DS9's best episodes here (Duet, The Siege of AR-558, It's Only a Paper Moon) along with liberal helpings of other things we've seen before (in e.g. Jetrel, Nor the Battle to the Strong, TUC), but I found myself enjoying the drama and character work they got out of this quite a bit. Each of the above treated their subject matter more thoroughly and more insightfully, e.g.
  • what to do with war criminals?
  • how to deal with PTSD
  • war as humanity's 'original sin'
Etc etc. But even in this somewhat superficial form, it was good stuff, Star Trek stuff.

As many others, though, I'm confused about the ending, mostly because I don't know what they're tryng to say here. I'm glad that the clichéd "People with a grudge fight it out in an athletic contest" did NOT lead to them coming to an understanding à la "The Icarus Factor". And there may be something to M'Benga's position here - there may very well be people who've done such bad things that they deserve death in a "live by the sword, die by the sword" kind of way. BUT, and this is (as so often in recent Trek) a problem in the writing, all that we see of the Klingon on-screen is a rather pleasant person. The only moment where I thought "this guy may yet have a dark side to him" was when he grabbed M'Benga's arm rather violently asking him to spar. But that isn't enough, simply on the level of cinematic storytelling, to give the viewer reason to believe that they are seeing an SF version of Hitler. Even Kodos in "The Conscience of the King" was written and portrayed in such a way that one could picture him as having been this genocidal tyrant. This guy? Not so much. It's all in the dialogue. And in an episode that's so unafraid to get graphic (for Trek standards anyway), I wonder why they didn't show or otherwise demonstrate viscerally what he did during the war. This, then, makes the ending unsatisfying.

But here's another all-caps BUT: Perhaps that was precisely the intention. Keep us wondering about the issue in a "In the Pale Moonlight" sort of way. If so, then it certainly worked.

But one more question to y'all: We are to assume that M'Benga's story as further told by Chapel is BS, right? We don't really see the fight after all. This was cold-blooded murder, no?
Click to expand...

I don’t think it was premeditated.
M’Benga certainly knew what he might do if the ambassador didn’t turn on his heel and walk out right now, indicated by opening the box with the knife.
And then he lied about it together with Chapel, taking advantage of the ambassador’s big lie because the knife had the DNA of the Klingons he claimed to have killed all over it.
He provided M’Benga with a pretty solid alibi for his own murder.
The lie is the most damning part.
It’s a little like Data firing the phaser at Fajo and lying about the discharge being deliberate, IF you assume that Data actually intended to kill him at that exact moment.

similarly we could assume that M’Benga didn’t intend to kill the guy, it happened during the altercation, but because the Klingon was a lying bastard anyway he took advantage of the easy alibi and just not risking destroying his life with a murder charge.
 
Meanwhile, there have been plenty of occasions where Klingon blood has been red, both before and after TUC. Just look at any time Klingons would cut themselves on TNG and DS9. Not to mention bloodwine is red.

The only reason Klingon blood became pink in TUC was because the studio wanted the movie rated PG, but if you had red blood floating around in zero G it would have warranted a PG-13 rating.
 
Interesting concept but quite dull execution, didn’t excite me at all. I’m also appalled that M’Benga killed an ambassador and apparently there won’t be any repercussions.

Good to know more about the adrenaline booster and pain nullified we’ve seen at the beginning of the season and great as always to see a non stereotypical Klingon.

7
 
Still processing this one. This was the Klingon War episode we needed in DSC to make that conflict more than just a map in the background of Lorca's Ready Room or a few lines rattling out statistics. M'Benga in this episode was just riveting to watch. I don't know what grade I'd give it but this is easily the first time since DS9 that Star Trek has looked and felt like a real war.
 
Deeper exploration into war and darkness than Star Trek usually attempts (with notable exceptions from DS9, as others have noted). It wasn't a feel-good episode, but it was impactful and believable.

I appreciated the added context this provided for S2E1.

M'Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas remind me a bit of post-Vietnam War characters in shows like MASH, which I find good, interesting and odd in equal measures.
 
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Why are people assuming there won't be any repercussions? The musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was all about repercussions as I recall.

M'Benga told the ambassador to leave him alone, to go away.
I also got the impression that Chapel had somehow manipulated DNA evidence to make sure there was none of M'Benga's on the weapon (because that's her field of expertise).

This was one of those morally ambiguous episodes that I appreciate. I feel like the ending that seemed abrupt to some was an indication that there will be consequence down the line. But also, not everything can be easily resolved. We wouldn't have veterans committing suicide, homeless, or drug addicts if that were the case (although, in rl we could be doing WAY more about that.)

I thought all the MASH-type scenes were done well. When we followed that kid from Chapel's fingers in his chest making his heart beat, to talking about his home, the conversation about signing up to explore and then ending up a soldier on the front lines, to the point when he heads off to battle as fodder - it's a classic trope but I still yelled, "no" at the telly when he came out in his uniform, resigned but ready. That actor nailed it.
 
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