That's going to be awkward when he next sees Una. He chose his side and his side lost.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x02 - "Ad Astra Per Aspera"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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That's going to be awkward when he next sees Una. He chose his side and his side lost.
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As @Charles Phipps points out, he did address the question, and he sided with the law. He made his choice, and he chose to uphold an unjust law. That he claimed it was "nothing personal" does little comfort for the person who may go to prison for 20 years because she had the temerity to be born an undesirable.
The way April acts in that scene, it’s like he feels betrayed by Pike, and feels Pike set him up to be raked over the coals. Plus, I’m guessing that a LOT of the brass already suspected Pike knew about Una and hid it. So for all we know part of the reason he’s so pissed is that many in Starfleet Command just wanted the whole thing to go away with a plea bargain, and maybe April helped push that along to save face for himself and Pike, only for Pike to get the lawyer and put the Federation and Starfleet on trial.
I thought the implication that the Federation strips people of citizenship and sends them into exile was weird, like we don’t believe in the death penalty except if you go to Talos IV kind of weird.
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Which means April needs to ask himself what he's protecting, and that a man who is supposed to possess as much integrity as he does is willing to not only uphold an unjust law, but feel betrayed when his friend doesn't go along with him in that complicity.
April wants to protect Pike as, using something from the US military code in the 1990s, two officers might protect one another after someone under the Don't Ask Don't Tell law were to come out as gay. It's not about protecting the gay soldier, but about making sure your own ass is covered, and April feels betrayed because Pike stood up for that gay soldier instead of April.
And every day he deals with Pike and Una will be one where he wanted to send her to prison for most of her life. Pike and Una may not be furious over it but I suspect April will be.
And is doubly hypocritical because he was willing to overlook Spock STEALING THE ENTERPRISE.
He is a HUGE bigot. Like Admiral Cartwright levels.
But you're meant to sympathize with him when he turns down Pike's drink and he says he would have talked up Una if he was given the chance. I assume that's meant to show he was conflicted anyway.
Heh, yeah, like where do you even go? The Orion syndicate? lol
Perhaps April will sort things out. Like in a MASH "For the Good of the Outfit " kind of episode.
I didn't get the feeling he was gung ho to convict her and send her away. My read was that he was trying to walk a fine line between supporting Federation policy while giving Una every positive comment he could. People can read that as chickenshit, cowardly, self-serving, etc., but I never felt like April was out to get Una.
I don't think April was angry because he wanted Una to go to prison and Pike was getting in the way of it. I think April was angry because he was put in the position of looking like a 23rd century equivalent of an "uncle tom" who was supporting a policy they likened to apartheid and slavery.
Really?
There's nothing in canon to support most of the major powers using it.
Per Enterprise, the Klingons' attempt at it was a disaster, and both that incident and Archer's battle with Soong's augments probably colors Federation policy to some degree.
There seems to be no physical differences between Vulcans and Romulans, and since Vulcans are governed by Federation law, that would imply the Romulans aren't modifying their genome.
The only exception would be the Dominion, with the Jem'Hadar and Vorta.
Did you miss the scene between him and Pike later? He was completely willing to defend her character, but he never got the chance.
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I didn't sympathize with him, my response was "don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you."
In matters of civil rights, if you get upset that someone wants to defend their very existence instead of take a plea deal that sweeps it under the rug while erasing them as a person, you're complicit in the injustice. April is complicit in the injustice, and he showed repeatedly that in the matter of someone else's rights, he's more than willing to look the other way if it protects his interests.
Let's redo the court room scene, but this time in our time period.
Courtroom Scene said:
Those were his words in that court room, before he met Pike later in his quarters, and April had the nerve to be upset at Pike because Pike wouldn't let them all sweep it under the rug. He can claim he wanted to defend Una's character all he wanted, but he threw her under the bus when the time came to stand up for her, because he wanted to protect his career, and his prejudices.
Defending her character doesn't mean much when you defend a law calling her subhuman and say she doesn't belong in Starfleet.
This issue is just baked into the ST universe thanks to the Eugenics War and Khan. I actually thought this episode did a great job linking the Federation's fear of genetic augmentation to past travesties. And, shocker, people and organizations aren't always rational. Fear frequently trumps rationality. And these types of cruel things can persist on their own inertia for far, far too long until enough people stand up and challenge it.
This episode did a great job of showing how Starfleet/Federation is less than perfect. And the extreme fear of genetic augmentation that causes injustices is just one example of how it's less than perfect. It fits in rather well IMHO.
But this episode isn't really about genetic augmentation anyway. It's an allegory. The writer found a clever way to use an aspect of Trek's existing lore to say something important about today's relevant issues. I applaud that!
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10 for me.
"Measure of A Man" level great.
"Measure of A Man" level great.
It's probably a very old law that was written when the Eugenics Wars were still fresh in people's minds, and then was simply never challenged and just kept existing, like laws banning homosexual acts that were written in colonial times finally being repealed >100 years later. I read that in some places they still have laws that seem very silly today that are only still in effect because they were not repealed.
Una says the episode title is the pre-Federation starfleet motto. Which is true, it shows up several times on the starfleet emblem in Enterprise
I wonder how that came up in the writing process. Did the writer know that? Did someone else in the the writers room know? Was it a complete coincidence?
I wonder how that came up in the writing process. Did the writer know that? Did someone else in the the writers room know? Was it a complete coincidence?
The law doesn’t call them subhuman. In fact it’s the opposite.