After beholding this episode for a second time I have some additional revelations to add to my previous post pertaining to this latest adventure of Captain Pike and his swashbuckling crew.
La’an was bullied as a child for being a descendant of an infamous augment, this ‘blight’ in her family tree was common knowledge amongst all of her peers. She might not have even known about it herself at the time and could have been totally oblivious to the fact that she was being bullied, thinking that these interactions were perfectly normal and socially acceptable as she had never experienced anything different. First of all, I question why at such a young age the children (and adults) around her had been allowed to make this connection as surely the supervisors supporting her would have put some kind of safeguarding measures in place, having known that this common knowledge and the negative social reactions and connotations towards it would have been detrimental to La’an’s mental health and future prospects? It would be a bit like finding out that one of your class mates was descended from Ghengis Khan or Kodos the Executioner. Secondly I ask why she was still being judged for the sins of her ‘long lost and more than twice removed’ ancestor? Why did people find it so hard to realise that La’an is a totally separate and unique individual? The answer could quite simply be that she was surrounded by nasty bullies from a very young age. La’an, though not being an augment herself (I don’t think, though it could be a twist and she actually is? Maybe ‘everyone ever’ in Star Trek is descended from an augment, but no one actually realises it yet! Haha!) took out her frustration and anger resulting from her past experiences of being tormented on to Number One who had just been revealed to be an augment too - just like her much hated and maligned ancestor. La’an projected all of this pent up rage on to Una using all of her might, becoming one of the bullies that she once was a victim of herself. I did find it somewhat redeeming that the Illyrian’s only decided to augment themselves as a way to adapt to their planet; not because they wanted to become Pah Wraiths or Gary Mitchel’s. Instead of destroying (I presume?) their home planet so that it changed to cater for them (terraforming?), they left their planet alone - hopefully it is a paradise of sorts full of nature and wonders and not a wasteland or a desert, in which case terraforming would have been the better option! Is that a fair trade off though? Eugenics to protect the planet and nature itself? Or is this just an excuse for eugenics?
Una Hid her eugenics secret from the Federation so that she could join Starfleet, it is a similar story to that of Doctor Bashir, but to be fair he never knew about this connection until later on in life. When Una admitted her ‘mutant’ status to Pike, I think that he probably already secretly knew that she was an Illyrian augment… he was quite blazé about it and didn’t seem surprised.
Maybe he has Section 31 connections…
I also need to give credit to Una for helping M’Benga to keep his daughter alive by diverting power to the transporter buffer that she is being stored in.
I still stand by my original grading of 7.5/10, which I rounded up to an 8, this was the nearest whole number available on the episode rating poll at the start of this thread.
