It's insidious.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x07 - "What Is Starfleet?"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Just like the Federation.
Wait till everyone finds out you can combine it ice cream.
Just like the red notification popup saying TERMINATED when Robau is stabbed
Reminded me of this from Unification:
SAREK: No. I never knew what Spock was doing. When he was a boy, he would disappear for days into the mountains. I asked him where he had gone, what he had done, he refused to tell me. I insisted that he tell me. He would not. I forbade him to go. He ignored me. I punished him. He endured it, silently. But always he returned to the mountains. One might as well ask the river not to run. (lies down again) But secretly I admired him, the proud core of him that would not yield.
BETO: Captain Batel, I understand the Cayuga was lost on your watch. Why didn't you go down with your ship? Do you have survivor guilt? What will you do differently with your next command?
BATEL: [REDACTED]
BATEL: [REDACTED]
BATEL: [REDACTED]
BATEL: [REDACTED]
BATEL: [REDACTED]
BATEL: [REDACTED]
I'm watching it right now. I tend to agree with Sean on most downs, but not this time.
I can still get draft A&W at their restaurant about a half hour away. I'd love some right now. And they sell floats, too.
He visited it twice in Yesteryear. Once as himself and once as his cousin. That makes 4, doesn't it?
True enough.
He also would visit it properly a year after Yesteryear, making it 4.
I don't know if showed up in a previous episode, but Spock's meditation lamp is based off the one Tuvok and T'Pol had in their respective shows
Someone might have complained it said a"$+&le, (the sorry state of reading comprehension here)
I will admit, that was silly. It's like the graphics people interpreted a script instruction a bit too literally. IE, I imagine the script might have had something written like "bio monitor indicates alien patient has flatlined" which the graphics people decided rather than showing a flatline they went a head and had the word FLATLINED appear on the monitor.
I went 7. Probably a bit stingy.
I found Erica's brother a pretentious wank, but at least he figured it out by the end. Or rather Uhura figured it out for him.
The end was definitely better than the beginning.
It is very Trek at the end. The Jikaru is beautiful. It didn't hit me in the feels the way it did with some others.
I found Erica's brother a pretentious wank, but at least he figured it out by the end. Or rather Uhura figured it out for him.
The end was definitely better than the beginning.
It is very Trek at the end. The Jikaru is beautiful. It didn't hit me in the feels the way it did with some others.
This was a good episode, but I have to give it a 9 instead of a 10.
This should have aired first, before “Shuttle to Kenfori”. M’Benga’s non answer on scrubbing surveillance logs does not matter anymore.
Ortegas seems to have issues with the Klingons, the Gorn and the Lutani. Plus, the Romulans, as revealed back in S1. Is this going anywhere? Since we’ve seen that being in Starfleet offers no cover for her prejudices, regardless as to what Starfleet means to her.
Really odd that the episode was so short, when they could have tacked on another twenty minutes. There were so many people in interview and subjects to touch on.
- Chapel is present throughout the documentary, but is never interviewed once by Beto.
- Beto brings up the Cayuga, but doesn’t interview Batel who is still onboard as made evident in the episode, even though he should be familiar with who Batel is by this point. It just feels like it was only brought up to make canon that Uhura’s Academy roommate dies in every reality, and not just ST’09.
- We don’t get a few brief words from Scotty, or any archival footage from “Through the Lens of Time”, including of Pelia, Korby and Gamble, despite Beto filming then.
- There’s not even archival footage of a Klingon battle cruiser when Beto narrates while comparing the Federation and Klingon Empire in his documentary intro. And everyone would be familiar with the Klingons after the war that happened only years earlier. So, there’s no reason for that to be classified.
- Beto never interviews the Edosian bartender from “Wedding Bell Blues”, even though she accepted a job offer to work on the Enterprise.
- We also don’t see it delve into the crew's hobbies too much at all. Which would have been a way to develop the crew more and the relationships they've formed, especially Una.
- It's a largely human perspective on what Starfleet is. Even the aliens interviewed look like humans. In-universe, who’s the audience for this? Does anyone really believe that Starfleet wouldn’t emphasize the diversity of their crews? It's hard to believe that Starfleet would have approved of this, when they are the ones that allowed for classified footage to be used in the first place. And likely had a hand in editing the whole thing.
Even if the episode is actually about manufactured transparency, it could have been done a bit better. It does not even acknowledge Starfleet’s role in the war with the Klingons, or black ops like Section 31 operating in the open, or ask if Starfleet expansion is responsible for the hostility of the Gorn. Not even a "that's classified" or "no comment" response. Even with the Lutani-Kasar subplot, SNW didn’t say anything with it. They could have, since they made the case of the Lutani being associated with the Klingons, but they didn’t.
It made Beto look like a hack instead of a critical journalist.
This should have aired first, before “Shuttle to Kenfori”. M’Benga’s non answer on scrubbing surveillance logs does not matter anymore.
Ortegas seems to have issues with the Klingons, the Gorn and the Lutani. Plus, the Romulans, as revealed back in S1. Is this going anywhere? Since we’ve seen that being in Starfleet offers no cover for her prejudices, regardless as to what Starfleet means to her.
Really odd that the episode was so short, when they could have tacked on another twenty minutes. There were so many people in interview and subjects to touch on.
- Chapel is present throughout the documentary, but is never interviewed once by Beto.
- Beto brings up the Cayuga, but doesn’t interview Batel who is still onboard as made evident in the episode, even though he should be familiar with who Batel is by this point. It just feels like it was only brought up to make canon that Uhura’s Academy roommate dies in every reality, and not just ST’09.
- We don’t get a few brief words from Scotty, or any archival footage from “Through the Lens of Time”, including of Pelia, Korby and Gamble, despite Beto filming then.
- There’s not even archival footage of a Klingon battle cruiser when Beto narrates while comparing the Federation and Klingon Empire in his documentary intro. And everyone would be familiar with the Klingons after the war that happened only years earlier. So, there’s no reason for that to be classified.
- Beto never interviews the Edosian bartender from “Wedding Bell Blues”, even though she accepted a job offer to work on the Enterprise.
- We also don’t see it delve into the crew's hobbies too much at all. Which would have been a way to develop the crew more and the relationships they've formed, especially Una.
- It's a largely human perspective on what Starfleet is. Even the aliens interviewed look like humans. In-universe, who’s the audience for this? Does anyone really believe that Starfleet wouldn’t emphasize the diversity of their crews? It's hard to believe that Starfleet would have approved of this, when they are the ones that allowed for classified footage to be used in the first place. And likely had a hand in editing the whole thing.
Even if the episode is actually about manufactured transparency, it could have been done a bit better. It does not even acknowledge Starfleet’s role in the war with the Klingons, or black ops like Section 31 operating in the open, or ask if Starfleet expansion is responsible for the hostility of the Gorn. Not even a "that's classified" or "no comment" response. Even with the Lutani-Kasar subplot, SNW didn’t say anything with it. They could have, since they made the case of the Lutani being associated with the Klingons, but they didn’t.
It made Beto look like a hack instead of a critical journalist.
His shitty camera work was enough to do that.
But also I wondered why they even needed it. TV including Trek has made it very clear when someone has died without explaining it with slang like this. It was an odd inclusion but also unnecessary.
I gave this episode a positive review when I first watched it, but after thinking about it for a few days, I think my opinion on it has really soured. There's a good foundation for an episode here. I like how SNW feels free to try different episode formats, but unlike the musical or puppet episode, this one is an experiment on a more dramatic subject. For me, it boils down to two reasons why I don't think this episode was a success -- the incredibly sinister nature of their mission, and the bias and ineptitude of the documentarian.
This is a weird storyline. This Mothra creature that the Enterprise is ordered to escort is clearly a subjugated species forced to be a barely controllable weapon of mass destruction. Is the hope that this is just a MAD scenario to end the war? Because it really feels like the only conclusion to this war is that they use the creature to completely irradiate an entire planet. The censored Starfleet orders is an interesting approach, but I think in the end this episode would've really benefited from a badmiral, providing more context to what appears to be one of the most controversial moves we've seen Starfleet make on screen. We got a dozen episodes discussing Section 31's choice to use a biological weapon against the Founders, but nothing here.
The second problem lies with Ortegas himself. He's here under false pretenses at worst or has a massive bias at best. As many people have noted, he's a pretty poor filmmaker. His camera-work, particularly the mobile shots, are dreadful. He spends his time asking war vets what killing feels like, exposing their classified history, or filming them while they process the news that their close friend has died. The documentary he produces does feel like a modern, Netflix-style documentary, but it's a pretty poor one. I can only imagine any Federation citizen would be somewhat baffled watching it. In the end, it's revealed that his whole purpose for making it isn't to actually explore Starfleet's purpose, but to make a hit piece to... punish? his sister for signing up and putting herself in harm's way. I think this is a damn shame because there are some interesting ideas to explore here, some that many of us have pointed out ourselves over the years. I think they should've gone one of two ways. Either he should've been a legitimately neutral, unbiased fly on the wall, asking them for their opinions on Starfleet's role. It is weird in the enlightened future they enlisted into a Victorian-feeling command structure. It is weird that the closest analog in our history to "exploring strange new worlds" on a warship are the Conquistadors. These are interesting questions that the episode almost wants to tackle, but after a sketchy-ass mission, Ortegas instead makes up with his sister and comes to a much different conclusion about the mission we just witnessed than I would have.
I've seen some discussion about how Ortegas's amateurishness is intentional, and I do think that is true. Pike snaps at the annoying camera in his face twice, Lt. Ortegas once, Una once as well. He's clearly bad at his job, but... why? I'm not sure why they felt the need to have him make a bad documentary, and if anything it calls into question how he managed to get Starfleet to sign off on personal, several mission long access to the "flagship" of the Federation. Is it a personal favor from Pike to Lt. Ortegas? She herself who has been on thin ice for this season and clearly doesn't want her brother there either? If you're going to go with the "he's a bad film student" route, I think his documentary should've been a complete secret. He boards the ship as simply a personal visit to his sister, but while he's there he begins hiding in bushes and taping his candid conversations with members of the crew. It would be incredibly immoral of him, sure, but I think it would vibe a lot better with the 'chip on his shoulder' vendetta than what we got, while also explaining how any of this got made and released in the first place.
In the end, while I initially thought this was one of the standout episodes of this season, I think I've come around and soured on it myself. I do understand the people who really enjoyed this episode, but there's just too many holes in what we are presented with that I don't think this will stand the test of time well at all.
This is a weird storyline. This Mothra creature that the Enterprise is ordered to escort is clearly a subjugated species forced to be a barely controllable weapon of mass destruction. Is the hope that this is just a MAD scenario to end the war? Because it really feels like the only conclusion to this war is that they use the creature to completely irradiate an entire planet. The censored Starfleet orders is an interesting approach, but I think in the end this episode would've really benefited from a badmiral, providing more context to what appears to be one of the most controversial moves we've seen Starfleet make on screen. We got a dozen episodes discussing Section 31's choice to use a biological weapon against the Founders, but nothing here.
The second problem lies with Ortegas himself. He's here under false pretenses at worst or has a massive bias at best. As many people have noted, he's a pretty poor filmmaker. His camera-work, particularly the mobile shots, are dreadful. He spends his time asking war vets what killing feels like, exposing their classified history, or filming them while they process the news that their close friend has died. The documentary he produces does feel like a modern, Netflix-style documentary, but it's a pretty poor one. I can only imagine any Federation citizen would be somewhat baffled watching it. In the end, it's revealed that his whole purpose for making it isn't to actually explore Starfleet's purpose, but to make a hit piece to... punish? his sister for signing up and putting herself in harm's way. I think this is a damn shame because there are some interesting ideas to explore here, some that many of us have pointed out ourselves over the years. I think they should've gone one of two ways. Either he should've been a legitimately neutral, unbiased fly on the wall, asking them for their opinions on Starfleet's role. It is weird in the enlightened future they enlisted into a Victorian-feeling command structure. It is weird that the closest analog in our history to "exploring strange new worlds" on a warship are the Conquistadors. These are interesting questions that the episode almost wants to tackle, but after a sketchy-ass mission, Ortegas instead makes up with his sister and comes to a much different conclusion about the mission we just witnessed than I would have.
I've seen some discussion about how Ortegas's amateurishness is intentional, and I do think that is true. Pike snaps at the annoying camera in his face twice, Lt. Ortegas once, Una once as well. He's clearly bad at his job, but... why? I'm not sure why they felt the need to have him make a bad documentary, and if anything it calls into question how he managed to get Starfleet to sign off on personal, several mission long access to the "flagship" of the Federation. Is it a personal favor from Pike to Lt. Ortegas? She herself who has been on thin ice for this season and clearly doesn't want her brother there either? If you're going to go with the "he's a bad film student" route, I think his documentary should've been a complete secret. He boards the ship as simply a personal visit to his sister, but while he's there he begins hiding in bushes and taping his candid conversations with members of the crew. It would be incredibly immoral of him, sure, but I think it would vibe a lot better with the 'chip on his shoulder' vendetta than what we got, while also explaining how any of this got made and released in the first place.
In the end, while I initially thought this was one of the standout episodes of this season, I think I've come around and soured on it myself. I do understand the people who really enjoyed this episode, but there's just too many holes in what we are presented with that I don't think this will stand the test of time well at all.
Has anyone else considered how did a young, inexperienced filmmaker get such a prestigious gig? If the Ortegas family had a high ranking relative in Starfleet command, that would make sense cos I doubt nepotism will disappear anytime soon in the future.
But no one questioned why or how he got the gig.
But no one questioned why or how he got the gig.
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