Was Beyond a commentary on how poorly the US govt. treats armed forces veterans?

Or am I reading too much into it?

I know that Krall was an evil guy and nothing excused his actions, but his gripe with Starfleet was legitimate, if you ask me.

Was this supposed to be a commentary about how the US has had a history of treating its armed forces veterans pretty poorly?

 

It would be fitting as a commentary for the film. It is what Star Trek does and I wouldn't be surprised if they did consider these as an allegory to that sad reality.

 

That seems to me a bit of a contradiction. Nobody is born evil, some people become it.
Exploring that change isn't an excuse for their acts, but accepting that their grudges might be real (and overcome by a different, better, person) is reasonable.
Explaining monsters is the best way to prevent more. If some people are just born evil, then it will happen again, whatever we do.

 

Seeing how many times the captains through out the series had an issue against starfleet but followed due to duty, it makes sense that starfleet would have former officers with grudges. But as for veterans, now that you mention it, it makes sense! Guess its sort of like Rock with nicolas cage haha

 

I'm pretty sure Pegg or Jung actually mentioned this in an interview somewhere

 

It's a bit difficult to see what part of Edison's grievance was "legitimate". He flew in outer space, was caught in a wormhole, and got stranded where no man could go to rescue him. Who was to blame?

Perhaps Edison was told to fly a ship with substandard engines that created wormholes on every third firing. But that was more or less like early jet or rocket fighter pilots agreeing to fly aircraft that had relatively low odds of not exploding: even the Nazis asked the pilots pretty please before strapping them to these firecrackers. If an engine failure stranded Edison, he in all likelihood had signed up for it.

Edison's main argument seemed to be "I am a soldier, I want war and I hate peace, especially with the enemy". If that is to be somehow associated with real-world veterans, it's a rather unflattering description, and actually suggests that veterans should be treated much more poorly...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Perhaps his "frontier-pushing" assignment was tailored to get him as far away from everybody as possible, aliens and humans alike? He flew a ship with no shuttle hangars and no personnel transporters... His superiors might not have wanted him to interact with anybody much!

That the war veteran did get a ship to command may reflect a situation where there were so many war surplus ships that they could be used for managing the surplus soldiers. Or then only soldiers dared sail into outer space now that everybody knew there were Romulans and other horrors there?

Timo Saloniemi

 

My honest take away was that Starfleet felt they were rewarding Edison with command of a starship, since that is regarded as rather prestigious, regardless of the era. Edison, though, saw that as a demotion and not a good use of his skills, and then he felt abandoned.

 

Edison thought people in the Federation were snowflakes, in the parlance of the today. He thought they were weak and the Federation abandoned him and his kind by making peace with and embracing former enemies as friends and allies.

You'll find parallels for this throughout history but there's plenty to chew on in today's world. For instance, the historical and reincarnated "America First" movement became resurgent as "Terra Prime." None of this is new. Many soldiers maintain prejudices against those they fought against.

I don't think it really gets into how the Federation treated Edison other than him being given a command after the MACOS were disbanded.

 

Interesting responses, everyone.

That's why I asked if I was reading too much into it.

 

I mean, if anything, it's an actual reflection of why we need to take care of veterans. There are a lot of psychological aspects of living every day assuming that a certain group of people is a potential enemy.

There's a lot of resentment among some veterans and sometimes that takes the form of hostility and even racism.

 

Perhaps it was. This topic is on the front running of the Trump administration's agenda. Only time will tell.

 

I didn't think about it that way, but boy does that make alot of sense.

I just really wish Krall had found a way to atone for his misdeeds by the end of the movie. He was Starfleet family after all. That would've been very Trek.

 

Kinda hoping the next antagonist is teachable.

 

We see something like it before the Dominion war with OBrien and Maxwell. Maxwell is very much in the same vein as Krall, and Kirk is (badly) portrayed along similar lines in STVI before doing what Krall didn't. A big part of Krall is that he was...sort of...stranded. And to survive he had to go native....while hating the native so much.

 

I wanted to add that I don't think the message of this movie is the end-all and be-all of how veterans react. It's not a closed book. There's plenty of discussion opened about what Starfleet or the Federation could have done to integrate him into the multicultural world he'd become a part of.

It's a question that dogs us today. Veterans who come home from war without adequate ways of coping with what they might have seen or things that might have happened are easy recruits for extremist xenophobic groups in America. What can we do to help them? Or, even, what can we do to improve conditions?