Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x07 - "What Is Starfleet?"

[Rahul]

5. Nu-Trek has obviously abandoned the Roddenberry ideal that humans or humankind are more sociologically or mentally advanced in the 23rd Century. The characters are pulled right out of our own life and times in terms of their reactions, motivations, and emotions.

I mean everyone is still ridiculous peak ... They are super hot well trained well behaved science geniuses. Everyone of them is a MARVEL-like superhero.

It's just not so noticeable because everyone on tv is nowadays. Remember when television had fat & ugly actors with slurry speech? That was more realistic.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Glad to see all the positive reactions here..! Am genuinely surprised by the hate for SNW season 3 and this episode in particular online... Even Jessie Gender is calling this episode 'a failure of ST'... Glad that the BBS is mostly a place of positivity and love for ST..!

The BBS's  KRAD had nothing but great things to say, calling it "A brilliant episode of Star Trek, a fantastic hour of television and one that reinforces the Trek ethos of compassion over violence, of understanding over blindly following orders."

I particularly love the first two paragraphs.

Unfound Footage — Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “What is Starfleet? - Reactor

This week's episode tackles a confusing bit of Star Trek lore: how exactly does Starfleet function?

reactormag.com

 

[Tuskin38]

It's just not so noticeable because everyone on tv is nowadays. Remember when television had fat & ugly actors with slurry speech? That was more realistic.

Poor Mary Wiseman over on Discovery was constantly attacked over her physique.

 

[indranee]

Loved this one. It made me very emotional. Felt it deep in my heart.
PS. I'm going to give it a rewatch tonight before grading.

 

[Racefuel]

Watch more TOS and you'll see GR himself didn't follow that ideal in MANY of his stories and scripts that he himself wrote. TOS character WERE ALWAYS more 'contemporary' for their day.

He really tried to put that ideal into practice more in TNG - which is why that series always has come across as really sanctimonious and there become fewer episodes of it I'll bother to watch for that reason while I still will honestly watch and enjoy any TOS episode (with the exceptions of TOS S3 And the Children Shall Lead and Way To Eden).

"We no longer ENSLAVE ANIMALS FOR MEAT"

Yeah..TNG S1 was peak GR Pontification.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

7

An extra point for Pike playing the Mandolin.

There have been episodes that explored the military aspect of Starfleet and its ability to remain ethical. Discovery Season 1 did a decent job of this. Telling this story through the voice of an arrogant ideologue made this episode a headache.

 

[indranee]

Hi BBSers,

As mentioned in previous episode threads, my family and I like to watch new Star Trek together, but I always check here first to make sure there isn't anything inappropriate for a 10YO (like heavy gore, or upsetting themes like child death- for calibration, the episodes we've skipped are 1.6, 1.9, 2.8, 3.3 & 3.5).

Could the good folks of the BBS please give me a (spoiler-free) heads up if there's anything too much for this ep? Thanks!

Why don't you sneak in a look before watching it with the rest of your family? Just a suggestion

 

[UssGlenn]

A flagship is where a flag officer sets up shop I believe in real life (correct me if I'm wrong). In which case the only times the Enterprise qualifies is when Admiral Kirk was in command for the first 3 TOS movies, and that time Shelby took command of the F before she got shot up by Borg. I suppose Admiral Janeway running around in Prodigy counts too.

In modern times, it has come to mean the ship (or vehicle, or product) chosen to represent the entire brand. So when they say the Enterprise-D was the 'Federation flagship,' the meaning is that even though there is no flag officer embarked, this particular ship is seen as the one best representing the 'ideal' or 'product' represented by the whole- in this case, Starfleet, and in a broader sense the entire Federation, and its ideals.

Yeah, Starfleet uses it both ways, for the Enterprise they are using it in the same sense that modern commercial store do. For example, LEGO's flagship store is in London in Leicester Square.

 

[DarKush]

This episode was another winner for me. Three in a row now. Hope SNW keeps it up, though I'm already eager to get past the umpteenth Vulcan comedy episode (seeming a comedy episode) next week. I do have my nitpicks for this episode, but my positives are:

-Liked Uhura getting to play the major role.
-Learning more about Ortegas.
-The scene with M'Benga where he is caught being less than truthful about his past.
-Pike being a decisive captain.
-Beto's ulterior motive.
-Lutani. Nice designs for the aliens and their ships and it just goes to prove that the SNW creatives have it in them to create original antagonists once again. I would like to see more of them.
-Jikaru. Another nice design (that being said, if the Lutani had already experimented on this creature why they needed Starfleet to bring it to them didn't make much sense, but still I liked the moral problem doing so posed for the crew).

 

[indranee]

The Menagerie already showed us that the TOS Enterprise had internal cameras.

Yep, also Turnabout Intruder comes to mind.

 

[FredH]

I thought the shot of the Enterprise with informational text superimposed (like “LENGTH 445.6 METERS”) should have also superimposed the words “HAPPY NOW?”.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The Menagerie already showed us that the TOS Enterprise had internal cameras.

Internal cameras should be superfluous: the sensors will record all the information necessary for a digital image file and more.

 

[Yistaan]

I thought the shot of the Enterprise with informational text superimposed (like “LENGTH 445.6 METERS”) should have also superimposed the words “HAPPY NOW?”.

The Enterprise has had more length debates than the Executor at Star wars

 

[Airmandan]

Do they have to change the plaque every time the ship gets a refit and it gets shorter or longer nacelles?

 

[Fateor]

That was a very interesting episode, this and the previous episode have been the standouts of the season. I've felt that while this show has tried to do "unique" episodes, this is the first one that really felt like it was pushing a boundary. Examining Starfleet's role in the Federation is a very interesting idea, you could easily see this being a documentary about the Navy or something similar. I think it really elevated what this episode would've been if it was just the vanilla alien weapon plot. I do wonder how this documentary would've been received inside the fictional world. I'm not sure Starfleet comes out looking particularly good for having signed up to this biological weapon in the first place, plus the documentarian asking a bunch of war vets about what killing people felt like seems a bit irrelevant.

Using real life as an example Starfleet will probably release the full facts of the mission to the public and completely discredit him.

Given what we know of Starfleet, those full facts are probably something like

"We were asked to help transport a non-sentient bioengineered creature to a planet being invaded by hostile aliens for use as defensive protection. Unfortunately it turns out we were lied to about both it's level of sentience and what it's use would be."

I think I only have two nitpicks regarding this episode. The first is that if that guy put a floating camera 6 inches from my head I'd snap at him too. It lent itself to some unique cinematography, but I'm not sure it was actually good cinematography. Secondly, I found the Ortegas sibling conflict to be a bit clumsy. Making him Ortegas's brother gives him a bit of immediate sincerity that a random journalist wouldn't have, but I'm not sure making them estranged did much. I'm not sure Ortegas is ever identified inside the documentary as his sister, which would make all her comments come off much more hostile than they normally would.

Still, I think it was a solid episode.

The guy was obviously a recent film school graduate who only got the okay because he was Ortegas brother.

And knowing what I do, that level of cinematography is exactly what you would expect from a recent film school graduate.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Beautiful episode. Loved the new aliens and mothra. There was a great emotional core to this episode, I feel like it was also commenting on the franchise as well. Star Trek is the characters deep down.

The documentary style was very interesting and it made for a very nice change up in the way the episode was presented to us. Kind of gave me In the Pale Moonlight vibes.

Overall, extremely engaging and showed the cast off very well.

 

[Yistaan]

The guy was obviously a recent film school graduate who only got the okay because he was Ortegas brother.

And knowing what I do, that level of cinematography is exactly what you would expect from a recent film school graduate.

Beto Ortegas was a fan of Robert Rodriguez who claimed that directing could be learned in 10 minutes and thought that Rodriguez's episodes of Book of Boba Fett were the height of cinematography.

 

[indranee]

So he's the Spock of WNMHGB who hasn't become as open with his new captain, as he was with his previous one.

Really would be interesting to see how Kirk and Spock develop and become the eventual compatriots that we saw in TOS.

I'm more interested in seeing the HOW and WHY of the change Spock would be undergoing before that happens.

 

[firehawk12]

Not going to lie, as someone who used to work in FOI, the opening of the episode made me laugh really hard.
I'm sure whoever wrote it gave it no thought and only noticed how a lot of reporters will point out that they use FOI processes to get records, but that silly opening title screen basically opens up so many stupid nerdy implications about the Federation that no one wants to get into.


The episode itself was okay. It reminded me of Axanar, which I know we don't talk about nowadays, and the conceit reminded me of a Vietnam war story from like China Beach or Tour of Duty, where a reporter is trying to report on something grey. That was okay up until the silly reveal about the brother having a chip on his shoulder about Ortegas almost dying and all that. I just felt that was just a shallow way to end that conceit instead of actually questioning the accountability of Starfleet (did Michael ever really own up to her part in the Klingon war? I don't even remember) as an institution. That and it makes no sense that they'd keep that footage in these classified records. Like why wouldn't the brother have deleted that part before sending it off to Starfleet?

I think if they played it as a straight episode, with basically the Encouter at Farpoint story where they need to save the alien that people didn't know was sentient, it would have been much better. I don't think it was a bad episode per se, but I think the "high concept" nature of it failed because of how it ended.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I get the impression this documentary is less WHY WE FIGHT and more like Netflix true crime verging on permission to let Umberto do his podcast.