“Under the Cloak of War”

Hmmm. That was . . . hmmm. Well, not light-hearted kittens and rainbows, at any rate.

. . .

The entire episode I felt Robert Wisdom (a legendary actor, btw) was playing the ambassador/general all wrong. He wasn’t playing him like a Klingon. He was playing him without any sense of pride, ego, or personal sense of honor. Without any sense of power, commanding presence, or gravitas. A Klingon who had come to renounce war, who had taken the difficult path of going over to the enemy for the purposes of making peace, on the strength of his convictions, a legendary warrior who was a general no less, would be doing so BECAUSE OF his sense of honor. It would be because his sense of honor had directed him that it was the right thing to do, no matter how hard, so that is why he had done it. He would NOT have abandoned placing any value on his honor as this portrayal made him seem he had.

This is somewhat explained (much too late) in the final ten minutes of the episode when it is revealed that the ambassador is in fact a coward who ran from the battlefield and did not earn his “legendary warrior” reputation. He has been stealing it. And he knows it. So he has no sense of honor about him because if he kept that sense of honor it would demand he kill himself. And he won’t do that. He is a coward. So he has in fact lost it. And he is trying to make himself into something else instead. Something—someone—important and valued enough by others in the hopes that will replace the role that sense of honor occupied in giving him a sense of self-worth. Which is how he is trying to live with himself.

It makes the character work as to his believability, I guess, but I don’t know that it makes the character work for the purposes of the episode. Imagine the character had instead been unapologizing and unfazed by the things that had happened during the war and his role in it, reckoning it was his duty and his honor demanded it, but still no less determined to make sure it never happens again. He would not necessarily be giving full-throated defenses of what happened on the planet, but he stoically would not bow or give concessions over it either. And that was the person who came aboard the Enterprise and whom the war veteran crew members had to interact with. Imagine the tension as they had to bury their impulses and act properly “Starfleet” about it. A bit like Miles O’Brien and the Cardassians, no? Plenty of fertile additional territory to mine there. Star Trek has hardly said all there is to say on that kind of subject. In fact it has barely scratched the surface.

Would that not have made for a better episode?

But this is not that episode. They did not go this way so that the episode could service M’Benga’s character in a different way. They could have made this an “idea” episode, a classic Star Trek “morality play” episode. Instead they decided to do a “peel back the layers and examine what makes one of our characters tick” episode. And that’s fine, but personally I think it’s less interesting. (And no, I’m not sure it was possible in this case to accomplish both at the same time without it feeling trite, or “pat.”)

. . .

If this was a classic Star Trek episode, M’Benga would have confessed to Pike at the end. He did not. That is an interesting choice. It’s a thin line M’Benga walks with compromising his morality and the show walks with losing the audience from being on M’Benga’s side consequentially. But it is a line that I feel both just barely walk. Because when M’Benga says to Pike that he “did not start this fight,” we understand that from M’Benga’s perspective, the fight in sickbay that he is speaking of did not start there in the sickbay. It started on the planet years before. It was the same fight as far as M’Benga is concerned. And it seems like Pike understands. Pike is not convinced about the order of events in sickbay but accepts that rationale enough to not push the matter. He’s not happy, or comfortable about it, but he also knows he was not in the war himself and therefore cannot exactly grasp all the angles on the morality of the situation. It’s a hell of a scene, that final one in sickbay, and Anson and Babs act the hell out of it as far as I’m concerned.

All else aside the acting all around was very strong in this episode, I thought.

Or maybe that Pike can grasp all the angles on the morality of the situation but that, not having been there, he doesn't have the right to judge. So he accepts it when M'Benga makes it clear that as far he (M'Benga) is concerned the sickbay fight is the same fight from the planet in the war and that he therefore did not start it nor ask for it.

. . .

I'm on board with this "haunted war veteran doctor" portrayal of M'Benga because it's fairly novel for Star Trek (in that it's a medical doctor rather than someone like Kira), it's interesting, and Babs acts the hell out of it as far as I'm concerned. But the show has to be careful not to overdo it, either. Most hand-to-hand kills in the entire war, Section 31 trying to recruit him for his black ops skills . . . what? When would that have happened? He's supposed to be spending most of his time in a hospital. Maybe once or twice a front could have spilled into a hospital and he had to do some things and he found he was uncommonly good at them and word got around, but come on. Don't overdo his badassery, show. Also, did they teach these skills in medical school? No. Don't get unrealistic on us.

. . .

@ SlackerInc

Lots of dancing around the question of if Starfleet is the military in this episode, eh? That one ensign at one point flat out states "I'm a soldier." Then again, maybe that was him telling himself what he needed to so that he could go do what he had to. But what, then, considering both his attitude and the circumstances, is the difference, really?

Not wanting to be the military doesn't make you not the military if you go and act like the military.

What a tonal shift from the last episode.

I think this was on par with DS9's Dominion War episodes, showing how the Federation ideals clash with the real world. It will certainly be controversial for being so "un-Trek". There's no happy ending, there's just the sinking feeling that a war never really ends in the heads of those that were affected by it.

The acting was stellar all around, particularly M'Benga and Chapel. And that final scene with M'Benga and Pike just demands a continuation in the future.

It was certainly an impressive, thought-provoking episode but if you'd ask me to rate this episode on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd have no idea where to put it. I'm still sitting here trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. I guess that's war for you. It doesn't make sense.

@Jeffrey's Tube
Security forces have a dual role. Internal security forces are normally called police and maintain internal security and external or border security is the military. Any society of laws separates these two for, I hope, obvious reasons.

If the primary role of an institution is defending against similar organizations from other countries then it is a/the military. Of course during imperial times especially fleets were used for gunboat diplomacy which muddies the waters somewhat.

Here memory alphas definition:"Its principal functions included the advancement of Federation knowledge about the galaxy and its inhabitants, and knowledge of all areas of study, both scientific and non scientific fields and all others. Starfleet's ancillary duties included the defense of the Federation, and the facilitation of Federation diplomacy. "

I have said it before and I will say it again. Starfleet is an organization sui generis. It is an organization with military capabilities but that is not it's primary role. The Federation effectively has no military. Considering the ever increasing US military budget, that might be a hard idea to wrap your head around for some but by definition Starfleet is not the military. As Nichelle Nichols put it, Starfleet is the spiritual successor of Nasa and not of the US Navy.

As promised, now that we have a fresh thread here's the episode ratings post I've been working on.

In recent comments, I've been talking about IMDb user ratings of episodes as regards my hated "Elysian Kingdom" as well as, on the flip side, the Lower Decks crossover "Those Old Scientists", which gets a very high rating. This all awakened my geeky love for compiling ranking lists. Comparing "nuTrek" series (and sticking to just the first two seasons to compare like to like), I wanted to norm them to Jammer's four point scale. So I generously set the highest-rated episode as a perfect four stars and went down from there (which meant subtracting 5.4 from each ten-point rating). I could have set the lowest-rated as zero and gone up from there, which would make each of these numbers lower by 0.7, but I feel like that is too stingy.

And of course some would no doubt argue that I should have instead multiplied everything by 0.4, but that looks way too generous to me, compressing everything to a range of 2.4 to 3.8, and I just don't think that accurately captures people's reactions to the episodes they liked less (what it indicates, I think, is that a ten point scale is less than ideal because people just don't use numbers like 2, 3, or 4 out of 10).

In any case, regardless of how you scale the raw numbers, the ranking order will come out the same. And in that regard, please note that the SNW episode I hate so much, "The Elysian Kingdom", is in fact the lowest-rated of all live-action nuTrek. (cue fist-pump-baby meme) This is even more striking when you notice that the next SEVENTEEN least-liked episodes are from DSC or PIC, and the five highest-rated episodes are ALL from SNW (and in fact are the only episodes on the list averaging three stars or higher). People clearly like SNW in general more than the other two shows (as do I); and yet they also clearly see "The Elysian Kingdom" as the worst of them all (as do I).

The other detail that surprised me was that there were no DSC episodes among the seven lowest-rated.

0.7 "The Elysian Kingdom" (SNW)
0.8 "Mercy" (PIC)
0.8 "Two of One" (PIC)
1.0 "Monsters" (PIC)
1.0 "Watcher" (PIC)
1.2 "Fly Me to the Moon" (PIC)
1.2 "Hide and Seek" (PIC)
1.2 "Point of Light" (DSC)
1.2 "Saints of Imperfection" (DSC)
1.4 "Farewell" (PIC)
1.4 "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" (DSC)
1.5 "Stardust City Rag" (PIC)
1.7 "Assimilation" (PIC)
1.7 "Will You Take My Hand?" (DSC)
1.8 "Absolute Candor" (PIC)
1.8 "Perpetual Infinity" (DSC)
1.8 "The Butcher's Knife..." (DSC)
1.8 "The Red Angel" (DSC)
1.8 "The Serene Squall" (SNW)
1.8 "The Vulcan Hello" (DSC)
1.9 "An Obol for Charon" (DSC)
1.9 "Choose Your Pain" (DSC)
1.9 "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1" (PIC)
1.9 "Lethe" (DSC)
1.9 "Light and Shadows" (DSC)
1.9 "Such Sweet Sorrow" (DSC)
2.0 "Among the Lotus Eaters" (SNW)
2.0 "Battle at the Binary Stars" (DSC)
2.0 "Brother" (DSC)
2.0 "Maps and Legends" (PIC)
2.0 "The End Is the Beginning" (PIC)
2.1 "Lost in Translation" (SNW)
2.1 "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" (DSC)
2.1 "The War Without, the War Within" (DSC)
2.2 "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" (PIC)
2.2 "Through the Valley of Shadows" (DSC)
2.3 "Context Is for Kings" (DSC)
2.3 "Ghosts of Illyria" (SNW)
2.3 "The Broken Circle" (SNW)
2.3 "The Sound of Thunder" (DSC)
2.4 "Broken Pieces" (PIC)
2.4 "Lift Us..." (SNW)
2.4 "New Eden" (DSC)
2.4 "The Impossible Box" (PIC)
2.4 "The Wolf Inside" (DSC)
2.5 "Despite Yourself" (DSC)
2.5 "Into the Forest I Go" (DSC)
2.5 "Penance" (PIC)
2.6 "Children of the Comet" (SNW)
2.6 "Project Daedalus" (DSC)
2.6 "Spock Amok" (SNW)
2.6 "The Star Gazer" (PIC)
2.7 "Vaulting Ambition" (DSC)
2.7 "What's Past Is Prologue" (DSC)
2.8 "All Those Who Wander" (SNW)
2.8 "If Memory Serves" (DSC)
2.8 "Remembrance" (PIC)
2.8 "Strange New Worlds" (SNW)
2.8 "Such Sweet Sorry, Part 2" (DSC)
2.8 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" (SNW)
2.9 "Nepenthe" (PIC)
3.0 "Charades" (SNW)
3.0 "Memento Mori" (SNW)
3.2 "Ad Astra Per Aspera" (SNW)
3.7 "A Quality of Mercy" (SNW)
4.0 "Those Old Scientists" (SNW)

A solid episode with quite the twist, but I cannot help but feel that others, particularly 'The Wounded' and 'The Siege of AR-558,' offered more substantive treatises of war and its effects. I mean, Chief O'Brien's simple 'I hate what I became because of you' stands up incredibly well against anything here. And unlike a prior episode or two, where the running time ought perhaps have been cut a tad, this may have benefited from being lengthened, with further introspection (e.g., another scene with Spock trying to reach Chapel; anything more from Ortegas). Like many other episodes in the series, then, I found this one to be good/very good, but leaving me wanting more (and not in the positive sense).

Otherwise, I enjoyed the return of one particular actor; I will be that person and say I appreciated the return of the Klingon look of old; and I hate that the prologue reminded me of the awfulness of the first season of Discovery (abandon a war story line to venture to the mirror universe?! sigh).

I think the data scientist in me is having a seizure...

I really hope that this episode exposes the incredible acting prowess of Babs to more people.

My only gripe with an otherwise excellent and haunting episode, as echoed in part by Jeffrey's Tube is the decidedly un-Klingon like behavior of the Ambassador. Not so much the mannerisms--it's along the lines of the elite Klingon from Star Trek 6, or Ron Canada's Advocate Ch'Pok (DS9). For all the talk of behavior during the war, there was no mention of honor or honorable actions or motivations springing from it. That bothers me, because unless Klingon warrior culture changes radically in the 70-80 odd years before TNG, it strikes hollow, and rather more like a human living large on a lie.

Special honors goes to Jess Bush's acting as well. She's had a string of episodes where she had to demonstrate real emotional nuance, while others just got to play hijinks. Even last episode, ostensibly a whole comedy, her scene in the turbolift with Boimler had me kind of tearing up at the end.

@Booming
"As Nichelle Nichols put it, Starfleet is the spiritual successor of Nasa and not of the US Navy."

That is an excellent way of making the distinction. However, there has to be some other solution, since all of the various ranks (and the organizational features) are naval.

Another lighthearted, silly episode?? When are we going to get something more serious for a change? ;-)

But no, seriously: the perpetual naysayers are going to have to take a different tack. (I can imagine them saying it was too violent and morally grey to be "true Trek", and there's an argument to be made there, but the unsettling moral ambiguity was part of what I liked about it.)

I liked this quite a bit. I can't go for the full four stars because there were some corny war movie tropes and dialogue ("You find him and MAKE HIM PAY"), but it was very solid, a lot better than something with this general outline easily could have been. Three and a half stars.

Interesting that @Jeffrey's Tube seemed to like it less than most in the series. I can see how the alternate version he suggests could definitely work (bolstering my theory that we could actually crowdsource a good, serious episode script), but I was good with the way they actually went as well.

@Jeffrey's Tube: "Lots of dancing around the question of if Starfleet is the military in this episode, eh?"

I dunno. There was talk about peace and exploration, but as you say, the ensign called himself a soldier and it was definitely a M*A*S*H style military hospital (I liked that commander btw in a small role, Starfleet's version of Colonel Blake). As @Sigh2000 points out, Starfleet ranks map closely to those in the US Navy. @Booming wants to back your play and say "by definition Starfleet is not the military", but that's an assertion that does not fit the evidence or the basic definition of that word, so it's weird that she says "by definition" although I don't think English is her native language.

I think we just have to say Starfleet is a military organization that in peacetime does a lot of exploration. The people who resist this seem to me to be engaging in special pleading, tying themselves up in knots because of their own personal antipathy for the military. If they have warm feelings for a fictional group of people, it can't be the military because they don't like the military. (The "no true Scotsman" fallacy strikes again!)

JT, did you see the list I posted? I hope we've put to rest the question of whether I was all alone on my own island when it comes to my dislike for "Elysian Kingdom". :-)

@Daniel: "I really hope that this episode exposes the incredible acting prowess of Babs to more people."

He's very good, but he's still awfully hard to understand a lot of the time. And I was literally born in the same country M'Benga was! Has to be even harder for people who didn't grow up around Kenyans like I did.

Pet peeve gripe -- this one aimed at the graphics people on the production, who otherwise do a great job. They have an annoying tendency to flash overly simplified alert messages really large over/on top of whatever status display the user is working off of. I've seen it in Engineering, on Ortega's flight status display, and tonight on a medical monitor. I know it's really for the audience's benefit, but man, is it really bad UI/UX design.

For instance, if Ortegas is in the process of piloting the Enterprise through a tricky maneuver with possible imminent collisions with debris, the last thing she'd want is her screen console tracking the ship through the debris field to have large letters saying "COLLISION IMMINENT" obscuring the data that she needs.

This week, it was a medical display that was tracking vital signs that suddenly flashed "NO LIFE SIGNS" in the middle of the screen when the surgical patient went into cardiac arrest. In medicine, if you're tracking the various vital signs and their trends, (as also in flight status) what you need is an alert to specifically what is wrong. "NO LIFE SIGNS" is less than useless because not only did it draw attention away from the various vital signs that constitute life (heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, neural activity, etc...) it doesn't provide any information as to what needs to be fixed. If the patient is clinically dead with a root cause of respiratory arrest/failure, then flashing RR=0, or SpO2 < 80% in different colors or highlighted gives them a clue as to what to do. In the case of the ensign being operated upon, flashing cardiac status going to zero (or even begrudgingly, "CARDIAC ARREST") would have been the proper approach to signal to Chapel what went wrong.

It's along similar lines as in Star Trek 2009, in the opening sequence when Capt. Robau's life signs were being tracked while he was on the Romulan ship. When he was murdered by Nero, the status display on the Kelvin said "TERMINATED", as if somehow sensors could detect if someone was being killed vs. their vital signs going to zero or just cutting out.

Okay, rant over.

@SlackerInc - I do agree, that was what prevented me from warming up to him/his character initially, but I also tend to turn on captions when I do a second viewing, so it doesn't bug me as much anymore.

Also, I noticed dialogue in general on the new Trek shows tend to be really harder/easier to discern depending on whether I'm watching on the laptop, on earbuds, or through my Dolby Atmos home theater system.

@Slackerinc

Starfleet is absolutely a military organization but because of its exploration and science aims it's akin to the armed forces and NASA being merged into one organization. It's also likely that the captain has a lot of leeway with whether they lean more towards the military side or the NASA side. Jeffrey Hunter's Pike was more military, but the rest of the captains (Lorca aside) have been on the NASA side, hence the relaxed protocols when there isn't an active conflict.

In a lot of ways the Enterprise-D is the perfect encapsulation of this. On the one hand it's a relaxed ship (let's bring families!). On the other hand guess who's charging into high risk situations? I hope those civilians are OK with the risk of being blown up!

Cool little tidbit btw that we saw the origin of M'Benga's unusual use of the transporter pattern buffer. Tough moment when they had to clear that buffer and it retroactively became the case that they had ended him without fanfare or any chance for last words and whatnot.

@Daniel: "I noticed dialogue in general on the new Trek shows tend to be really harder/easier to discern depending on whether I'm watching on the laptop, on earbuds, or through my Dolby Atmos home theater system."

Which ways do you find harder/easier? I have a decent HTS as well, but most of the time I can't turn it up as loud as it would need to be to hear dialogue as clearly as I'd like, especially with the AC on (and while my wife and daughter enjoy the dynamic range-compressing "Reduce Loud Sounds" on our Apple TV 4K box, that is anathema to me). I often use headphones if I'm the only one watching something, and I find that's when I can hear the best; but even then M'Benga is tough.

@John: "Starfleet is absolutely a military organization but because of its exploration and science aims it's akin to the armed forces and NASA being merged into one organization."

Yeah, I totally buy that. NASA in its formative years was loaded up with ex-military pilots anyway.

"I hope those civilians are OK with the risk of being blown up!"

LOL, yeah...that was kind of weird for sure.

This had such a promising start. I really enjoyed the flashbacks. I appreciated the backstory of M’Benga’s super soldier serum and the bit with him storing wounded officers in the transporter buffer, all of this added some nice dimension to the character. I liked the twist reveal as well- in theory.
Execution was a big issue in this one for me. The Ambassador’s character arc doesn’t seem to really resolve, which feels odd. There’s no real catharsis for him- he never drops the smugness and never seems to really understand where M’Benga is coming from even after the big reveal. This felt super off to me- all the pieces were there setting this up as a journey for both M’Benga and K’Rul and it doesn’t get there at all for K’Rul.
The directing at the climax had me scratching my head too- I initially thought it was supposed to be ambiguous as to whether M’Benga actually killed him or if he might have killer himself to frame M’Benga, though admittedly that wouldn’t make much sense, but how it was executed had me confused.
And I’m starting to get a little off put by Pike’s consistent passiveness with… everything. He seems to exist in nearly every episode this season as a captain on the sidelines letting the crew just act however impulsively and unprofessionally as they want. This is a good piece of his character in doses but it’s really seeming like it’s the only part of his character we see. This took me right out of the ending- your CMO admittedly kills and ambassador on your watch, and the response is: ‘there may be an inquiry, womp womp’. Pike’s passiveness over something that should be nothing short of a diplomatic incident is borderline farcical.
In the end I’m not sure what the message was supposed to be. This episode was begging for understanding and catharsis between opposed characters with a rich backstory, and in the end the message is… M’Benga has PTSD and that’s difficult? Ok. We knew that. The ending really undercut what seemed obvious to be building to something much more substantive.

I am really waiting for that expiry date of the spock/chapel ship. Like so far you wonder why the writers felt they needed to make this pairing canon? what because they felt tos chapel was too much of a pathetic character they need to apologise for that in 2023.

so far, the show is why spock/chapel just dont work. they cannot seem to agree on anything or be content fully with eachother. I know Bolmer has already told chapel that spock is going through a phase but the writers did not even make it believable why they needed to date for a while with equal convincing happiness unlike the creepy ass spock smiles that freaks people out.

I always thought spock would be the one to call it off but i am sure they will have chapel do it because that will be strong feminism pov for the woman to walk away.

Carl: Is K'rul the same as Rah?

I have to agree with you that Pike is going overboard with the laid-back dad style of captaincy. Maybe I'll go back and watch some of his earliest episodes on Disco and see if he's changed. If he has, then it might be because of his knowledge about his future. But if that's the reason, then I think he needs to have a crisis episode about it, because if I were serving under him at this point, I'd be subconsciously thinking I could get away with pretty much anything.

I do think this is a strong episode, especially because of the acting, but also the directing seemed very effective. The flashback story advanced and meshed with the current-Enterprise story very well, which isn't always true. When Rah grabbed Mbenga's arm, there was a swell of tense music which didn't crescendo until a couple of seconds later in the related flashback.

The plot was well written, but a couple of things confused me. What exactly does "bills and bows" mean? I looked it up and apparently it refers to ancient English weapons, but how did it relate to the situation Buck used it in? And why does Mbenga consider himself the Butcher of J'Gal? He didn't kill those millions of people. What am I being obtuse about?

Finally, what is the significance of the red System Alert screen at the very end?

In my personal system, I'm giving this a plus, but not without questions. And in the Ready Room interview, Babs doesn't whisper, so I wish Mbenga would stop doing it.

@SlackerInc
Ironically, it's when I'm on the laptop or listening with the AirPods, when I can pick out dialogue much better, though at the expense of atmospherics. I think Babs' voice is harder to discern because there's a simultaneous mid-range + low range aspect to his voice, and the lower frequencies tend to get crushed with stuff sent to the subwoofer.

Re: civilians on the Enterprise-D, I know what Roddenberry was trying to go for with families and the hotel-like environment with carpets, but in all practicality, it just didn't work with the stories they were trying to tell. Ethically, they'd have to have evacuated non-essential crew to the saucer section and separated every time they were in a dangerous situation, or a battle. Oftentimes the Enterprise, as flagship, was sent out on missions as sort of force projection, which is anathema to having civilians, and civilians' family members on board.

The closest thing we have to Starfleet in mission and practice is NOAA and the NOAA Uniformed Service Corps. NOAA's mandate is primarily scientific research. They have ships and hold naval ranks in line with the rest of our uniformed services. They get firearms training, but only use them in defensive capacities only. In times of war, the President can call up and convert NOAA resources to the military, but it's never had to have been done before.

@The Queen-
The Butcher of J'Gal from the Klingon side was coined because General Rah was thought to have killed his own subordinates (the three Captains) in the process of retreating and defecting. They didn't consider the killing of noncombatants butchering. M'Benga said that he was the butcher because he was actually the one, using the green shot, who killed the Klingons.

The "system alert" part of the screen at the end was to put a point on M'Benga's log--that even the things you think you might have fixed might never actually be fixed.

@The Queen
Uhhhh yeah idk where I got K’Rul from hahaha

"Bills and Bows" as exclaimed by the Commander (played by Clint Howard, brother of director Ron Howard, and acted in various incarnations of Trek since 1966) is an old English battle call to arms. Bills were hook-like speared weapons, and bows were the bows of archers - Bills and Bows: Spearmen and Archers.

Daniel - Thanks for your insights. I watched it twice and still missed the point about his killing the captains as part of his defection. (And I had subtitles on, too.) Also the idea of the system alert light being a metaphor was something that didn't occur to me.

In your first post you commented on Rah's unKlingon behavior. Wouldn't that be because he was actually a coward? But also, he does state at one point that he decided the war was "without merit.," which I thought was interesting wording.

@The Queen
Given that the last 30 years of Klingon lore in Trek was steeped in honor, the decided omission of that term was confusing. I don't know if it was intentional. If I was being charitable, I think his whole un-Klingon behavior was emblematic of his cowardice. That he was so without honor that he was... human. (In the sense that the Klingons would consider being called human the ultimate insult)
The problem is that the premise requires several steps of logic that isn't illuminated for us to follow. It's all something where a couple of lines of dialogue changed would have made the entire difference.

On a side note, knowing what I know of Klingons from watching Star Trek, I absolutely wouldn't trust Rah. An honorable Klingon would have probably committed ritual suicide instead of being allowed to be captured by the enemy.

@Daniel: "Ethically, they'd have to have evacuated non-essential crew to the saucer section and separated every time they were in a dangerous situation, or a battle."

Totally. Instead, what, they did it once? (I could be way off as I've still not seen most of TNG, my one main blind spot in all of Trek--at least until I stopped watching DSC and PIC and those started to pile up.)

"The closest thing we have to Starfleet in mission and practice is NOAA and the NOAA Uniformed Service Corps. NOAA's mandate is primarily scientific research. They have ships and hold naval ranks in line with the rest of our uniformed services. They get firearms training, but only use them in defensive capacities only. In times of war, the President can call up and convert NOAA resources to the military, but it's never had to have been done before."

Which then is still not very close, as this episode illustrated very well. Not a lot of NOAA veterans with PTSD from the horrors of all-out combat.

I liked this episode - a lot. It was really attempting to channel some of the deeper, messier character studies from DS9 (it ultimately played kind of like a speedrun of Duet inverted). That said, the episode wasn't without flaws.

Starting with the positives, Babs hit it out of the park again with his performance as M'Benga. I wasn't a fan of the retcon of his character as being a PTSD-affected veteran at the start of the series, but here it does pay off in some interesting ways. Unlike some, I loved the darker turn that the episode took in the final act. I don't think we're supposed to explicitly agree with M'Benga's decision to murder Dak'Rah (let's be clear, that's what happened, even if Dak'Rah started grappling with him first). Still, it's understandable from a character perspective. I liked the ambiguity of Dak'Rah up through the end - we're not sure if he's genuinely sorry for what he did, or he just decided that being a cold-blooded killer didn't work any longer, so he moved on. And that final scene between M'Benga and Pike, with the simmering tension, is great, as it begins to show fractures in their friendship and potentially (should M'Benga be discovered) the reasons for his demotion.

All of that said, my God, this is a contrived plot scenario to put one of our main characters into the situation of murdering a dude in cold blood while still being sympathetic.

While I don't mind revisiting the Klingon War per se - Discovery really fucked up, never showing the actual human toll of the war - these scenes just reminded me how little the chronology of the war made sense. The war was from May 2256 to some unknown point in 2257. So the war lasted - not particularly long, to be honest. Yet a lot of the framing of the past scenes - like M'Benga having a past in special forces that he "put behind him" to focus on medicine - really seemed to infer the Klingon War was going on for quite a while. Obviously, even a short conflict can transform a nation (Ukraine has only been at war with Russia for less than a year and a half), yet it just reminded me of the sloppy worldbuilding that Discovery had done.

Also, nothing about the setup made sense to me. First, they had to create a scenario where the (hidden) crimes of Dak'Rah were as bad as Gul Darhe'el. There was an awful logic behind the Nazi analogs in Duet, but here, I just don't see it. There's arguably sometimes a twisted military strategy behind killing civilians, but the episode made it clear he was killing Klingon children as well. For what reason? To make him unforgivably evil, I guess? Also, while it's true the Federation believes in second chances; I found it completely unbelievable that a former Klingon general who was known to command a group that engaged in war crimes and claimed to have killed his own officers would just be waved into the diplomatic corps within...two years it seems like?

Also, a minor quibble, but once again we have Ortegas-bait, as the trailers/preview clips suggested we would dig deeper into her own psyche as a veteran, only for it to be another M'Benga/Chapel episode. Ortegas's reasons for not liking Dak'Rah are also pretty shallow - she just comes across as being a racist; M'Benga (and, to a lesser extent, Chapel) had a reason for personal animus.

Still, it was an interesting episode and a good character study. The lack of suitable setup/worldbuilding just means it's inferior to the DS9 episodes it's clearly meant to harken back to.

@Karl Zimmerman: "Also, while it's true the Federation believes in second chances; I found it completely unbelievable that a former Klingon general who was known to command a group that engaged in war crimes and claimed to have killed his own officers would just be waved into the diplomatic corps within...two years it seems like?"

Yeah, that's fair--I hadn't thought about that.

I've noted this before: it can be perilous, even if generally fun and enjoyable, to get into online discussions of shows I watch. When people make valid, well-argued criticisms of something I hadn't taken note of when watching, it can retroactively reduce my assessment of the quality of the episode in question.

I see it differently than you as regards Ortegas, though. I still think this was a good episode for her.

@ Booming

"Security forces have a dual role. Internal security forces are normally called police and maintain internal security and external or border security is the military. Any society of laws separates these two for, I hope, obvious reasons."

Only in the last two hundred years or so. It makes sense for the way our societies are structured now but it's hardly like a single unitary force isn't a viable system.

@SlackerInc

"JT, did you see the list I posted? I hope we've put to rest the question of whether I was all alone on my own island when it comes to my dislike for "Elysian Kingdom". :-)"

I don't maths. I'm a lawyer. You might as well be speaking Greek. (Actually, I would understand Greek a hell of a lot better.) I have no idea if anything you did was done correctly or if it amounts to anything of substance or what. I'm sure other maths people will be along to interpret for me shortly, if they care.

However even if The Elysian Kingdom is the least-liked episode of new era Trek so far, so what? It doesn't prove your hyperbole of it being "widely considered the worst episode of Trek ever and one of the worst hours in the history of television." (Paraphrasing, but you said something similar.) It does not prove it is disliked at all, let alone widely disliked or hated. One of Shakespeare's plays has to be the worst, after all (Titus Andronicus--fight me, go ahead!). Put The Elysian Kingdom up against Threshold or Let He Who Is Without Sin or Move Along Home or Code of Honor or These Are the Voyages or . . . well, you get it. Most Star Trek fans would not even think to include it amongst that kind of ignoble company. The least like it may be, but it is still perfectly serviceable.

This does make me wonder what I would consider the worst single episode of the new era. It is hard to separate out individual episodes of some of the more serialized Treks to point to and say "that one! That one is shit!" I would guess it is one of the middle season 2 Picard episodes. Maybe the one with the gala. Can I just consider all of Picard season 2 a single episode? It basically is. One long, incredibly shitty episode. I'd take an entire season of Elysian Kingdoms over Picard season 2 and I may not have maths behind it but I'd bet most Trek fans would, too.

. . .

re: Civilians on the Enterprise-D

I have read that the original intent with the series was to have the saucer separate all the time whenever combat came up so the civilians would be out of harm's way. However, after Encounter at Farpoint they realized they could not do that from a production standpoint. Also from a dramatic standpoint that it would have bogged things down and it just wasn't as potent to have only half the ship in danger.

@Jeffrey's Tube

We've had plenty of Klingons who are peaceful at heart but martial in honor, most particularly Worf. So I thought it was a subversion to reveal, "What about the Klingons who are dishonorable--but that doesn't make them like Duras or other scumbags who fake it?"

@Karl Zimmerman

"Also, while it's true the Federation believes in second chances; I found it completely unbelievable that a former Klingon general who was known to command a group that engaged in war crimes and claimed to have killed his own officers would just be waved into the diplomatic corps within...two years it seems like?"

I can absolutely see it. Let's not underestimate the propaganda value. How effective he actually was as an ambassador vs. just a figurehead--I think by the end of the episode we understand he wasn't any kind of great man and was just the latter. His Federation diplomatic team would have been doing all the real work while giving him the credit for the propaganda--errr, "diplomatic"--value.

Despite the reputation the Federation was cultivating for him and the usefulness of that, as an actually skilled ambassador, Sarek he was not.

@ C.T. Phipps

"We've had plenty of Klingons who are peaceful at heart but martial in honor, most particularly Worf. So I thought it was a subversion to reveal, "What about the Klingons who are dishonorable--but that doesn't make them like Duras or other scumbags who fake it?"

A good point. Is it believable a Klingon like that would have gotten where the ambassador is and has been by the route he is alleged to take, though? It seems to me that if he was indeed what the show had initially presented him to us as--a Klingon who is peacefully minded but doesn't care at all about martial honor, as you put it--rather than what he was revealed to be at the end, that doesn't make for a believable character. To have been where he is said to have been he either had to have believed in honor and kept that but shifted his conception of what the honor demanded of him, or never had honor and only pretended to all along which would have made it impossible for him to genuinely become the altruistic peaceful minded person he claims he has become. It is too much of a required shift in a person's sense of identity for any person to make otherwise.

So I guess, as far as I'm concerned, there wasn't any scenario where the episode could have played it "straight" with his character as the episode initially presented him to us as and it would be believable.

@Jeffrey's Tube
" I have no idea if anything you did was done correctly or if it amounts to anything of substance or what."
I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level) and did have a look... it is almost like a case study in what not to do.
Well, I guess in a sense it did what it was supposed to do: Prove him right, in his view, but that is really it.
Let's point out the most glaring issues.
- The transfer of one scale into another serves really no purpose. You already have a comparable system at imdb.
- An actual scientific study would then look at stuff like rating numbers. The time it was released and other factors that could influence ratings.
- During the transfer numerous errors were made
- What is the point of transferring a 101 point continuous rating scale (IMDB) into a 9 point hedonic scale (Jammer's system) if you then treat the 9 point scale as a 41 point rating scale.
- and so on

@Jeffrey's Tube
"Only in the last two hundred years or so. It makes sense for the way our societies are structured now but it's hardly like a single unitary force isn't a viable system."
In dictatorships the line between the two is often very blurry. Especially if there is domestic unrest. For example Spain still has the Guardia Civil besides the police. It flourished under Franco and wasn't abandoned afterwards because of this kind of general amnesty after the democratic transfer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Guard_(Spain)

But as you point out, modern nation states, especially democracies, often separated these forces because democracies normally do not need to defend themselves from the populace, different from monarchies and dictatorships.

I don't think there is any country that has true separations of power in which internal and external security aren't separated.

What an abrupt gear shift from the last episode! From virtually weightless comedic fluff to a very grim look at the after-effects of war for the veterans.

I'm glad SNW has decided to not ignore this ragged loose end from Disco's first season, which that show concluded with such whiplash suddenness it completely undermined the impact it may have otherwise had. Commenters above have noted Pike's passivity in this one, but this actually tracks to his original portrayal in Disco season 2: an important story thread for him was his guilt over not being there for the war, because the Enterprise was off on a five-year exploratory mission. So it makes sense to me that he is essentially treating M'Benga with kid gloves at the end; on some level, he doesn't believe he has the right to condemn him for what I think he knows was murder.

That said, I think this has been an emerging and unwelcome theme from season 2 in general: Pike is not being challenged by the plots or the other characters to confront his own shortcomings this year. The show has been very content to let him be laid-back, and to have that relaxed attitude always be the right answer, something that last year's "Quality Of Mercy" potently demonstrated to be catastrophic in the wrong situation. I hope the writers have noticed this trend and will course correct in the future.

Pike aside, this was a strong episode for the rest of the cast. Babs Olusanmokun, Jess Bush and Melissa Navia all gave very different portrayals of their lingering traumas and the way they diguise them (or not). Number One gets to show her competence as a right-hand man running a tight ship so that Pike can be the perennial Good Cop. Uhura's youthful naiviety was well-played too.

As others have noted, the weak spot is the actor playing the Klingon ambassador, who is a little bit *too* un-Klingon to make this material work as well it should. It's nice to have a character come along who reminds us that entire species are not their stereotypes (see also V'Lar from ENT's "Fallen Hero"), but this was on the wrong side of the ledger for me.

As far as Trekkian meditations on the horrors and traumas of war go, I think it's better than "The Siege of AR-558", an episode I always thought was undermined by cliched writing and acting for the guest stars, but not as good as "The Wounded".

It was also a much better character study of M'Benga than his last showcase in "The Elysian Kingdom", which basically just had him led around in a daze by the script. This time around he has real agency in the outcome and it's fascinating to see where it ends up.

While I’m a Star Trek fan, I take note that, “Yes, it’s murder, but it’s murder of the Klingon version of Eichmann.”

One of my complaints about Deep Space Nine is the fact that Gul Dukat is meant to be a Nazi officer and the show waffled between the idea that he was redeemable or not. I feel like they made the right call by settling on the fact, “Dukat is incapable of reform and will always be a monster because the kind of man who did the thing he did is incapable of seeing what he did as wrong.”

Weirdly, my biggest comment about this episode is, "How stupid is the Federation?" Going with the above Eichmann example, General Dak'Rah is a guy SO SCUMMY and SO DISHONORABLE that the Klingons call what he did mass murder and this is a guy the Federation appoints as an ambassador. It's akin to appointing Ted Bundy or Jim Jones to be the ambassador to the United States. Yes, Ted and Jim would know United States culture but it's an insult and I can't imagine did the Federation any favors. It really goes a long way to suggest the Federation does not understand the Klingons on ANY conceptual level.

I also hoped we might have example Klingon handling of Medical Workers vs. Federation more with chapel. Like the Mandalorians in Star Wars, Klingons seem to consider medical staff to be valid military infrastructure and presumably their medics are armed combatants as well.

@Booming

Maybe, but the differences are often a hair less than many people think. The United States has had the FBI functioning both as an internal dissent weapon as well as an enemy of serious crimes. The Department of Homeland Security has also crossed more than a few streams.

@Karl Zimmerman

My take on Dak'Rah is that he's meant to essentially represent the kind of quintessential dishonorable Klingon. He's a chameleon psychopath (or their equivalent) who gets to the top of the military by being a monstrous butcher and war criminal but then things are fucked up enough that if he ever returned then he would be executed. So, instead, he fakes a "Come to Kahless" moment and joins the Federation while blaming his officers for his crimes.

The Federation, believing anyone who claims to be good rather than a self-interested monster, accepts him. Though I'd say he's less Gul Dar'heel than Gul Dukat who switched allegiances whenever it was conveinant. He would have happily been friends with Sisko and Kira (ugh) if they hadn't been revolted by him.

@Jeffrey's Tube: "It doesn't prove your hyperbole of it being 'widely considered the worst episode of Trek ever and one of the worst hours in the history of television.' (Paraphrasing, but you said something similar.)"

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't say that was "widely considered". I only said it was MY opinion. But you then volunteered your finger-wagging assessment that I was all alone on an island with that opinion. Only then did I go and look at the IMDb user ratings and find that it was the lowest-rated episode of SNW by a wide margin. Later I went through the other shows and determined that it was the lowest-rated of all episodes in the three shows' first two seasons. Which you are now countering with the point that technically:

"One of Shakespeare's plays has to be the worst, after all"

Duuuuude. I've gone to bat defending you against allegations of being a shill, and now you're comparing nuTrek to Shakespeare?!? C'mon now.

"The least like it may be, but it is still perfectly serviceable."

Hard disagree. (And I recall someone else commenting just earlier today that it was a "dire" episode, which is a good word for it.)

"Also from a dramatic standpoint that it would have bogged things down and it just wasn't as potent to have only half the ship in danger."

I also wonder: why would the separated saucer not also be in danger? Did it have warp capability? Seems like it would be a sitting duck for an unscrupulous enemy.

@Booming: "I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level)"

Oh dear, you really don't understand how this makes you sound, do you?

"and did have a look..."

With, as we are all keenly aware, no preexisting bias or axe to grind against the person who posted the numbers! LOL Oh no, not you. You went into it with the most impeccably impartial stance. Almost like the gold standard of a double-blind study. ;-)

@Tim C: "The show has been very content to let him be laid-back, and to have that relaxed attitude always be the right answer, something that last year's 'Quality Of Mercy' potently demonstrated to be catastrophic in the wrong situation."

What a great point! This is the countervailing upside to engaging with comments sections: keen insight like this. And that is still my favorite episode of the series (an opinion that seems to be shared by several others).

@C.T. Phipps: "It's akin to appointing Ted Bundy or Jim Jones to be the ambassador to the United States. Yes, Ted and Jim would know United States culture but it's an insult and I can't imagine did the Federation any favors."

Also a good point. You guys are definitely chipping away at my admiration for this episode. Ah well.

Funny (but not so funny) enough, Rah probably received what was an honorable death from M'Benga. Whether that was enough for him to enter Stokovor, is another matter.

@C.T.Phipps
There are some concerning signs in the US. True. Homeland security is one, militarization of regular police forces is another. The FBI is a different matter in my opinion but I'm in no way an expert.

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t a fan of DS9, but I get annoyed when people compare this episode to DS9 episodes that also dealt with the subject of war and act like that show set the gold standard. Personally I always thought that show was overrated and its examination of war wasn’t nearly as insightful as fans make it out be. Setting that aside, I think this episode of SNW succeeds not because it has anything new to say about war, but because it allows the actors to show what they’re capable of. Babs is obviously the highlight, though I still sometimes struggle to understand what he’s saying. But I continue to be impressed with Jess Bush and judging by the trailer for next week’s episode, she’ll get another chance to show how versatile she is. Even Una got a good scene or two, as if the writers suddenly remembered she’s the first officer. My big gripe is that the teaser lead viewers to think this was going to be an Ortegas episode, but she really only had one or two good moments. Melissa Navia deserved better. Overall, this season is doing a good job fleshing out certain characters and showing how well the show can pivot from comedy to drama.

@Slackerinc

To be fair, I don't think his ambassadorial duties were to the Klingons. Still, it shows the Federation really does struggle with trying to deal with cultures that have views of retribution and lack of forgiveness. You'd think the Andorians would understand.

The actor who played the Klingon was not a convincing Klingon. Even if he was going for a traitor Klingon, he didn’t have a commanding portrayal of the gravity of the role.

Contrast with the guest actor Illyrian lawyer in the Una trial who was very convincing.

Ortegas got short changed again. They could have easily given her some more content. I’m starting to think he role is intentionally sidelined to be a minor character.

Chapel is a great actress and her facial expressions and timing are wonderful. She felt like a nurse in a war zone.

Pike is continuing his irritatingly passive demeanor. According to Boimler he’s a benevolent, peaceful Angel man. But he’s starting to come off as a pushover and pansy.

Una was a good first officer this time.

The Klingon ju jitsu was stilted and not even MBenga could rescue that situation. The resolution of the story was poignant but the lead up to the death was just not good dialog.

as a ER doctor the portrayal of Mass casualty and triage difficulty was excellent. The VFX were excellent. The CGI wall blended into the background and didn’t seem fake at times like in the other episodes like children of the comet.

For these reasons the episode is saved but only enough to get to 3 stars. Almost gave it 2.5, but MBenga was stellar.

He’s becoming a breakout star.

MBenga rising. Chapel Rising. La’an rising.
Ortegas no longer falling but being held down.
Pike falling precipitously.
Una stagnant. Uhura stagnant.


3/4.

@SlackerInc: My favourite for this show is still "Memento Mori", but "Quality Of Mercy" is definitely up there with the best. As for that IMDB list, I'm not surpised most of those lowest-ranked episodes represent the majority of PIC S2, which I think is easily the worst season of Star Trek ever produced. (And it's got stiff competition when TOS S3 and TNG S1 are things that exist!)

As for "Elysian Kingdom" though, I just can't bring myself to hate it, even against my critical faculties. I rewatched it a few weeks ago and Anson Mount's performance as the cowardly adviser is still worth the price of entry alone.

And "Such Sweet Sorrow" *definitely* doesn't deserve to be ranked as Disco's best entry; that show has at least five vastly superior episodes from the first two seasons that I can think of just off the top of my head. SSS was too padded and flaccid for what was meant to be the Ultimate Battle For The Universe. (I mean shit, they even stuck a clip show in it!)

@Daniel: that's an interesting thought there. Do you *just* need to die in combat to get into Klingon heaven? Surely you need to have lived an honourable life as well...

@ C.T. Phipps

"Weirdly, my biggest comment about this episode is, "How stupid is the Federation?" Going with the above Eichmann example, General Dak'Rah is a guy SO SCUMMY and SO DISHONORABLE that the Klingons call what he did mass murder and this is a guy the Federation appoints as an ambassador. It's akin to appointing Ted Bundy or Jim Jones to be the ambassador to the United States. Yes, Ted and Jim would know United States culture but it's an insult and I can't imagine did the Federation any favors. It really goes a long way to suggest the Federation does not understand the Klingons on ANY conceptual level."

Well that's the thing. They're Klingons. Not humans.

Dak'Rah is not considered dishonorable by the Klingons. That word is never used. They hate what he did, but they thought he was doing it for his own convictions. His own honor. They hate him because he went against the Empire, but they respect him. Therefore he's the right person to send.

It's also a show of strength by the Federation to send as ambassador one of their own most feared generals who defected to them to now act on their behalf. Klingons will respect that, too.

The Federation DOES understand them. Klingons are not humans, Klingon psychology is not like human psychology, and Klingon society is not like any human societies. It's actually not like you described at all.

@ SlackerInc

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't say that was "widely considered". I only said it was MY opinion. But you then volunteered your finger-wagging assessment that I was all alone on an island with that opinion. Only then did I go and look at the IMDb user ratings and find that it was the lowest-rated episode of SNW by a wide margin. Later I went through the other shows and determined that it was the lowest-rated of all episodes in the three shows' first two seasons. Which you are now countering with the point that technically:"

Nah, you act like your deeply hyperbolic opinion on the episode is a widely acknowledged truism. It's not.

"Duuuuude. I've gone to bat defending you against allegations of being a shill, and now you're comparing nuTrek to Shakespeare?!? C'mon now."

Shakespeare is merely an easy example. Pick any other set of relatively consistent datapoints you want. It's facetious to suggest I was in any way comparing Star Trek to Shakespeare in terms of their relative quality to one another and furthermore, I'm certain you know this.

I generally liked that. It was a heavy piece that gives much to think of, which I very much ap­pro­ve, even more so since it is only the sec­ond cere­bral epis­ode in this sea­son. The epis­ode is also very dark (does any­­one really doubt that M’Benga killed the ge­ne­ral out of ha­tred, pain and dis­gust with­out any need for self-de­fen­ce?) and the dark­ness really ser­ves a the­ma­tic pur­po­se: A re­flec­tion of the ef­fects war has on veterans.

While comparisons with “The Wounded”, “The Siege of AR-558”, “The Un­dis­cov­er­ed Coun­try” and “Duet” are some­what justi­fied (and, in part, also ex­agger­ated), the first thing that came to my mind was “A Pri­vate Litt­le War” (ironi­cal­ly, the very epis­ode that intro­duced M’Benga) be­cau­se that epis­ode is about the cor­rup­tion suf­fer­ed by our heroes in a war, an the bad de­ci­si­ons they make under that dur­ess. This epis­ode feels to me like an at­tempt to redo APLW in a much bet­ter way (with­out all that hor­rib­le 60s sex­ism), and I rate it a success.

However, there are also problems. First, I don’t under­stand the set­ting. Last time we heard of it, L’Rell was Chan­cel­lor, and since she is basi­cally a pup­pet of the Fe­der­ati­on, what is the need for a diplo­mat ne­go­tiat­ing trea­ties with Klin­gon dele­ga­ti­ons? Es­pe­ci­al­ly, a diplo­mat whom the Klingons de­spise be­cause he de­fect­ed rather that fight­ing to the last drop of his pur­ple blood? No Klin­gon will stay in the room when­ever that petaQ enters.

The next point is how immersion-breakingly un-Klingon Dak’Rah is writ­ten and play­ed. First, I judged that a bug of the epis­ode, but by the end it be­came clear that the “Butcher of J’Gal” is a cow­ard com­ple­te­ly de­void of ‘Klin­gon ho­nour’ (in any sense) and just try­ing to sur­vi­ve. It is left open whe­ther he has pre­tend­ed long enough to really be­come a man of peace (nice con­ti­nui­ty!), as he some­how claims, or whe­ther he is still just an op­por­tunist. I like this am­bi­gui­ty, be­cause it al­lows to ima­gine that Dak’Rah could have be­come use­ful for the cause of peace had not M’Benga butchered him.

Speaking of M’Benga: I never liked him in any of the pre­vi­ous epis­odes, but now finally he has be­come an inter­est­ing cha­rac­ter, and one of the grey­est that was ever fea­tur­ed in the open­ing cre­dits of a Star Trek show (Odo, per­haps, comes close?). Is his guilt the rea­son why he will give up his CMO posi­tion later? Or will he get re­pri­manded and de­mot­ed? I am not sure what the wri­ters plan to do with him in the fut­ure, but please don’t redo the Jurati man­œuvre. This is a much more se­ve­re case than Data in “The Most Toys”, be­­cause it pre­vents no fu­tu­re crimes. Despite my sym­pathy for M’Benga’s argu­ments in the final con­fron­ta­tion with Pike, I have to con­clude that he has to face some form of punish­ment.

I also like the return of the Panoramix potion, which was cool but also un­der­explain­ed in “The Bro­ken Circle”. That whole epis­ode now makes more sen­se than before.

P.S.: What happened to the Deltan parsley? It’s irritating when­ever Chekhov’s gun forgets to fire.

[[Dak'Rah is not considered dishonorable by the Klingons. That word is never used. They hate what he did, but they thought he was doing it for his own convictions. His own honor. They hate him because he went against the Empire, but they respect him. Therefore he's the right person to send.]]

I mean, the Klingons are explicitly said to call him The Butcher not the Federation.

This one gets 3.5/4 from me. Babs Olusanmokun is just riveting. I would put it right up there with the great Harris Ulin in DS9's "Duet." Could not take my eyes off that performance. This was also a great showcase for Chapel. The stark depiction of the pointless brutality of the Klingon War was something that conflict, which happened largely off screen in DISCO season 1, really needed. But like others here, I must admit that I think Robert Wisdom's portrayal of Rah is not quite pitch perfect. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Robert Wisdom, his performance as Bunny Colvin in HBO's "The Wire" is one of the best things about that series, and that was a series PACKED with great performances. Just not sure he was the right person to cast here. Although if the writer's brief was for Rah to be the most atypical Klingon male in the Quadrant, then maybe this works...I don't know. But it seemed to me M'Benga's speech to the soldier about never giving up even when all hope is lost, was the MOST Klingon thing said in the whole episode. Certainly Kor, the Dahar Master, would have agreed.

The producers do get bonus points for including a fiersome, badass. Andorian commando here. It makes sense that folks trained by the Imperial Guard would be valued Federation soldiers. Wish they'd given him a nitpre to do.

L'Rell is no longer the chancellor. The person is a male.

The Deltan parsley was an ingredient in the jambalaya.

@Tim C: Interesting, sounds like you line up pretty well with the IMDb consensus (other than cutting “Elysian Kingdom” more slack than it deserves, lol). Even JT hates PIC S2! (I tapped out after S1.)

@Galadriel: Wait, what? The Klingon chancellor is a Federation puppet?!? This is supposed to still be true when Scotty is fighting Klingons in TOS?

This was the closest they have came to having the feeling of a tng or ds9 episode. I don’t mean that to say this episode was great, but it did have the feeling of 90s trek at least more so than ever before. Along with deep and realistic interpersonal moments (Spock trying to change the subject because he notices Chapel uncomfortable) this episode also asked questions that didn’t have easy or clear answers. It was interesting to explore a idi amin/ pol pot/ Qadhafi type sociopathic character who has a lot of charisma but it’s hard to be nice to . I’ve always been amazed you don’t hear about oj simpson being refused service at more places. Business owners are allowed to refuse service. I would fall more on the Ortegas side where I could not just play nice and pretend the guy was a swell being. This was a very solid episode. One of the better ones easily.

@Booming
“There are some concerning signs in the US. True. Homeland security is one, militarization of regular police forces is another. The FBI is a different matter in my opinion but I'm in no way an expert.”

Are the signs in the US most concerning now or would you pick one of the other multiple consecutive years you’ve been constantly slandering an entire country? You clearly gave a United States size hole in your heart. This isn’t the place for xenophobia. (I know. You’re going to come back saying you were talking about facts and whatever. Clutching pearls. You can save it. )

@Cody B
Considering that this is an American forum at which American shows are discussed, American issues coming up should not surprise you. It might appear so but I certainly have no animus towards the US. Ask me about any other country and it wouldn't sound much different. All countries have lots of issues. The United States are somewhat unique because being a global empire puts huge strains on a society. The high military costs of maintaining an empire of this scale negatively effects investments in other areas and democratic institutions in general. Just today the US senate okayed a new defense spending bill of 877 billion which is more than the next dozen or so countries combined. The British Empire was barely able to sustain it's two power policy for 30 years which aimed at the British having a bigger navy than the next two powers combined.

My strongest emotion towards the USA is worry. We already have Russia with it's thousands of A bombs getting more and more unstable by the day. So if the USA overcomes it's current and sadly deepening problems and as a benevolent empire guides us all to a better future then that is perfectly fine with me.

"I know. You’re going to come back saying you were talking about facts and whatever. Clutching pearls. You can save it."
What are you? 12?!

@Cody B You first say episode wasn't great but then say very solid--isn't that same thing, tomato tomahto--just wondering

L'Rell isn't a Federation puppet. At the end of Discovery season one, Section 31 has put antimatter bombs in volcanos all around Qo'nos that, if detonated, would devastate the surface of the planet and perhaps render it uninhabitable. She Who Is Our Lord and Savior, Michael Burnham, gives the only detonator to L'Rell, who uses the leverage to get the rest of the Council to fall in line behind her and end the war with the Federation.

Having turned over the detonator, the Federation thus has no more leverage over L'Rell. It's in fact a plot point in Discovery S1: Burnham choosing to have faith in L'Rell and not keep a boot on the Empire's necks like 31 wanted to, or even used the bombs like 31 certainly would have considered. Burnham choosing the "proper Starfleet" thing to do.

. . .

In S2 of Discovery L'Rell is still chancellor but it cannot be said things are going well for her. Her hold on power is tenuous, her enemies numerous and she is vulnerable through her half-human son. In the season finale she shows up to in a Klingon cleaveship to watch Discovery jump to the future with full knowledge of what they are doing, which makes little sense considering Pike and co then keep that knowledge from the Federation, but the Empire knows . . . all because the writers wanted to write an "emotional goodbye" scene for all the show's recurring players before the time skip meant we would never see any of them ever again . . . like how the hell did Sarek and Amanda manage to make it to Discovery to say goodbye to Burnham in the middle of all that also . . . well anyway.

. . .

I would have to go back and listen again, but I thought I heard the Dak'Rah refer to the chancellor as a "he" in this episode which would mean it is no longer L'Rell. That's believable. L'Rell was only in power because of the threat of a "big stick," which really only works for a short time if she doesn't consolidate her power and prove herself a competent ruler, and she hadn't done either of those things. Plus how much of a threat is a big stick if the others don't believe you will use it? A few years in, with the war now behind them also, it gets less believable she will use it. And maybe she even had the bombs removed herself, reckoning they were too horrible a threat to remain.

I loved the episode. I just think the so called ambassador should have been played more like a Klingon, coward or not. He was portrayed too human friendly, like something never seen before.
On the other hand, for me, Discovery S1 was a deception simply because the Klingon war was unceremoniously skipped/ignored. The Dominium war was great to watch and the opportunity was lost.
This episode tries to remedy the gap. 4 stars for that.

@Leif

Because I said it was the closest thing to tng or ds9 Paramount+ has done. but I don’t think it’s as good as a CLASSIC ds9 or tng episode. I was trying to make that distinction and ended up wording it weird.

Sorry. Something was "lost in the translation". LOL I meant Discovery S1 was a "disappointmen"t. It doesn't make much of a difference tho.

Oh btw I haven’t read every single comment but I haven’t seen Clint Howard brought up. He’s the older guy at the beginning of the episode. He is Ron Howard (Richie from happy days, Uber famous director, father of Bryce Dallas Howard) brother. Clint was the baby at the end of The TOS episode The Corbomite Maneuver. Balok.

NO ALIENS OR WORLDS!!! JUST KILL ME NOW!

@Cody B Didn't he also play a stoner on the Klingon/Orion planet who gets high with Tilly in Discovery season 1 finale??

After being rather unimpressed by the first four episodes of this season, I was afraid that SNW had already front-loaded its "best" episodes and would continue even further downhill from there. But I liked Charades, Old Scientists charmed a lot of people (though not me), and now Under the Cloak could be considered one of the better episodes in the series. I wasn't completely won over by it because of its really dark tone and unsettling moral implications but I appreciated what it was trying to do and the execution was appropriate for the most part. At least we finally got a SNW episode that is food for much thought and philosophical discussion, which is exactly what I'd been asking for.

Babs as M'Benga is at his most M'Benga-ish, with his haunted portrayal reaching its peak intensity, though he mumbles and whispers his way through it all like never before. I thought I'd gotten accustomed at understanding him without subtitle support but I really struggled this time. It's also interesting that just the mere sight of Rah is enough to evoke a full on panic attack in which M'Benga has to run away, but this doesn't exactly square with his cold-blooded determination to seek retribution. He'd been carrying that knife around with him for quite a while after all. On that note, M'Benga has so many skeletons in his closet he could really use a Chamber of Secrets with which to stash all the illicit goods he's got lying around so carelessly: a murder weapon, his illegal Super Soldier injections, his stowaway daughter... etc.

Pike, for his part, is doing his best the follow the dictates of Starfleet under trying circumstances, while also being on hand to occasionally remind the rest of the crew as well as the audience of the principles at that lay at the heart of the Federation. And this reminder is sorely needed since Pike often seems to stand alone among an unruly crew that apparently has other ideas in mind. Still, you'd think that he'd at least have the wherewithal to maybe...NOT produce a guest list for Rah's honorary dinner in which a full 50% of them hate him with a passion and have non-trivial trauma-informed justification to just stay the hell away from him.

I thought the episode would follow the well-worn path laid out by a few thematically similar TNG/DS9/VOY that start out having the exact same plot beats as this, where the rising tension culminates in a physical altercation leading to some important revelation or reconciliation. But that's when the plot changes tack entirely and I wondered where things were going during M'Benga's spar with Rah, which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at first since you need to know the later plot twist to understand where M'Benga was going with "who put up the greatest fight?"

This twist and the confrontation the follows raises some provocative questions about the limits of redemption and how reformed war criminals should be treated. What strikes me as rather telling about Starfleet is how willing it is to roll out the red carpet for someone who is so widely known and infamous for his war crimes. It would be a very different episode (and one which has been done before) where a celebrated diplomat or expert in their field is disgraced when the truth about them finally comes out in the course of the episode-- but here, it was known all along. M'Benga makes much of the implications that Rah is actually a coward because he fled from battle rather than kill his own kind, but I don't think this revelation is as devastating as Rah think it is. It is doubtful that if the truth came out, he would lose ALL credibility, or that all his diplomatic successes would count for nothing. Maybe it would be a big deal in Klingon society, but Rah has since turned his back on all that and it seems to me that the Federation should be more concerned with his having killed many civilians than any past cowardice.

There's also an interesting debate about whether the Legend of Rah and its associated benefits outweighs the lies it is based upon, and whether it's always a good idea for the truth to come to light. I am inclined to agree with Rah on this (especially as his renewed purpose seems to be genuine, as others have noted that he has done a lot of good), and M'Benga doesn't do a very good job of arguing his case since he is mostly preoccupied with vengeance as he says "you never paid for what you've done", which really has nothing to do with the lies underpinning Rah's legacy. So yeah, Rah's "lies" and his cowardice in battle are kind of red herrings.

I also have some problems with the ending since the way the "evidence" was analyzed was kind of dumb. They go to the trouble of confirming that that murder weapon was the knife of "The Butcher" and leap to the conclusion that Rah must have used the knife to attack M'Benga who then acted in self-defense. All of this superfluous of course since M'Benga conceivably could have taken the knife off of Rah, or stolen it in advance in order to kill him. Chapel's false eyewitness testimony is supposed to seal the deal but I mean, really?? Did it not occur to anyone that, obviously, these two would cover for each other after everything they went through together, combined with their very obvious hatred of this man whom they both had motive to kill? Are there no security cameras in a future starship or must everyone rely on hearsay and 'Scout's Honor'? Also, isn't it a little suspicious that a man was stabbed with a knife...in sickbay..with two medical personnel present...and they couldn't save him with all their advanced technology?

I'm also left to wonder about how we, the audience, are meant to grapple with the morally ambiguous fallout. I think the showrunners tried to leave it as a moral grey area on purpose and let the viewers decide for themselves whether M'Benga and Chapel are vindicated or just terrible people. At least Pike is around to highlight all the typical Federation touchstones that should rankle our conscience in that what happened is at least very troubling. And it is clear that we are meant to feel unsettled as those sentiments are underscored by those eerie musical cues. It seems very unlikely that M'Benga and Chapel will face any serious repercussions for their actions as we know that they seem to be doing just fine in TOS. And they've gotten away with every other questionable thing they've done, so why start asking questions now? This is regrettable since in another series, such cold blooded murder and complicity would be enough to signal a drastic change in character if not a heel turn to villainy. But in our normally cheerful Nu-Trek, they'll likely go on to do their frivolous sing-along musical next week and forget forever after that any of this ever happened.

I just wish that that the big ticket themes and messages within SNW were as unequivocally optimistic and humanistic as its usual light and carefree tone.

Other thoughts:

- We get somewhat of an explanation as to why M'Benga's Super Soldier shots aren't in wide circulation after this. Hopefully this settled people's questions and complaints.

- I liked how it explained the risks and implications of attempting to save dying people within the transporter buffers... in the past this has often been a Get Out of Jail Free Card, which seemed a bit lazy.

- It looked like the guy holding the camera during the flashbacks may have Parkinson's Disease since the cam kept on shaking even during the quieter talky scenes.

- So M'Benga and Chapel go back.. way back.. and share a lot experiences and trauma that only they would understand and even continue to work together to this day. I'm surprised that SNW didn't romantically pair them together rather than Chapel and Spock.

This episode kept my attention, entertained me, disturbed me and left me with questions to which there were no clear cut answers

...That's a good show, imo. It does make me realize why Dr. MBenga probably ended up leaving the Enterprise eventually, and that's how we got Dr. Boyce and then subsequently Dr. McCoy, presumably.

I really liked this episode a lot and would say it's my second favourite of the show after the S1 finale.

It reminded me a lot of various really good TNG and DS9 war-story type episodes: The Wounded, Duet, and Reunion (which also ends with a Klingon fraud dead with a knife in his chest). It REALLY reminds me of Nor the Battle to the Strong. That's an episode that I don't love; this is a lot better because of the obviously superior effects and the much, much better acting.

Loved the Klingon ambassador (and love the actor, who was great in The Wire).

I have a feeling this stunt by M'Benga and Chapel might have consequences to some degree. I was surprised when Una's backstory suddenly returned when she was arrested, but I'm glad it did. I think this is sort of like that.

Why was La'an not at the dinner? Pike couldn't have substituted her in place of one of his emotionally scarred crewmembers? Read the room! I totally believe that the Federation would embrace this ambassador and use him politically in spite of the controversy. I totally believe that Pike would be also be on board. And I totally believe there would be members of the crew who would not accept it. It's an interesting, complex episode, and I really like it.

So was this season being filmed while S1 aired? If so, would S3 be the first season to be written with actual fan feedback? I admit don't know how productions really work in the streaming era. (Funny story: I see cars parked in my area with SNW production crew badges hanging from the rearview window. The show is filmed not far from where I live.)

This is the style of episode I'd like to see more of from SNW -- something tapping into the geopolitics of the era and its effects on the crew, which naturally revolves around the tense relationship between the Federation and the Klingons. We know it has to totally break down in the lead-up to "Errand of Mercy". I think this is a decent character episode -- probably the best of SNW S2 with M'Benga and Chapel. It doesn't work out that well for Ortegas though b/c of how she has been written up to this point -- the character is beyond salvation. Did Ortegas really have to say "fricken"??

The "MASH" unit scenes were well done -- they felt realistic and M'Benga and Chapel really sold the desperation of the situation. This was a good use of flashbacks and tying them into what was taking place on the Enterprise with the Klingon ambassador.

But the best part for me, and what elevates this episode, is the Pike/M'Benga bit at the end -- there's some good, weighty dialog here about justice for victims versus a 2nd chance and who gets to decide. I liked the lines from M'Benga about Pike not having lived his life and some things don't deserve forgiveness.

But it also seems ridiculous that the Federation would give the Klingon ambassador a 2nd chance if it so easily would make some of its personnel highly uncomfortable. But maybe at high-up levels, the brass is so detached from reality...

The young soldier that M'Benga patched up and who goes back to fight -- this also felt true. I thought of "Nor the Battle to the Strong" and "The Siege of AR-558" -- really loved those 2 DS9 episodes and this SNW episode captured some of that vibe.

M'Benga and Chapel make a good team -- SNW has done a good job developing these 2 together. The Chapel/Spock relationship gets touched on too but it's really weird to see Spock acting so human -- he should be more aloof. Even Boimler was wondering about this in "Those Old Scientists." But perhaps this can be explained by lingering effects from "Charades"?

3 stars for "Under the Cloak of War" -- good vehicle for M'Benga who decided to go and fight with his Protocol 12 and his pontification on becoming a butcher on J'Gal. Good to see the military aspect of Star Fleet again in action as that is what it primarily is and M'Benga understands the aspect of war in hopes of achieving peace. The Klingon ambassador living a lie and trying to carry it on may have fooled the upper brass of Star Fleet but at the working level, it didn't work. Interesting dynamic and themes touched on here.

@ Bryan

"So M'Benga and Chapel go back.. way back.. and share a lot experiences and trauma that only they would understand and even continue to work together to this day. I'm surprised that SNW didn't romantically pair them together rather than Chapel and Spock."

Yeah I had the same thought. It does seem like they have that vibe but I guess it's just the actors' chemistry with each other. It wouldn't surprise me if they write toward this eventually but right now they want to explore the Spock angle and I bet they aren't quite sure what they want to do with M'Benga's family status yet. He might have still been married while on J'Gal . . . he might even still be married! He after all mentions a family, not just a daughter, in this episode. I think if his entire family was his daughter he would probably have said daughter.

@ MidshipmanNorris

"It does make me realize why Dr. M'Benga probably ended up leaving the Enterprise eventually, and that's how we got Dr. Boyce and then subsequently Dr. McCoy, presumably."

Just to go full ST nerd on you, Boyce is actually M'Benga's predecessor. He was the CMO during The Cage. Dr. Mark Piper is the ship's doctor during Where No Man Has Gone Before. And then McCoy during The Man Trap on. It's somewhat of an open question whether Piper was actually the CMO before McCoy or if McCoy was the CMO for the entire five year mission from the start but was off-ship on a different assignment during that episode and Piper was filling in. It would not surprise me if at some point SNW decided to go that route and introduce McCoy as M'Benga's direct successor with no mention of Piper.

There's also speculation that Where No Man Has Gone Before happens during the first year of the five-year mission and the rest of the show is years 2-4, and that McCoy only came aboard for year 2 on . . . and more speculation that Gary Mitchell was actually Kirk's first officer the entire first year until he died in Where No Man Has Gone Before, after which Spock took over! I always thought that last bit of speculation was a cool idea.

@ Rahul

Nice observation about the potential disconnect between the brass and the rank-and-file and how that angle might be in play here, too.

Ortegas comes off as your racist aunt who is normally so fun and quirky until she sees a Black person on the news and you wish she had an off switch

Just have to comment how funny it is to read this Booming troll, who is most definitely a non-college educated 20-something saying “I do data analysis at a very VERY prestigious university (think Oppenheimer level)”.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard something as fake as that in my entire life. You’ll be talking about your girlfriend from Canada next.

So funny.

My take on the subject is that Pike’s own argument defeated itself. M’Benga, to me, was flat out confessing to Pike without precisely saying the words and Pike knew it. However, Pike’s argument is that a murderer going free if he does good things is superior to a murderer being punished.

So, what the hell is his argument for arresting M’Benga then? M’Benga as a doctor who has saved countless lives and will save countless more. Arresting him would only stop him from doing so. So Pike had no choice but to leave in order not to be a monstrous hypocrite.

(People are also complicated and Pike has his own feelings about “murderers who go free who do great good” with the “Ones who Walk away from Omelas” episode that I’m blanking on the name right now. The “what if I told you he murdered children” was where Pike decided to let it go even if he didn’t want to investigate anyway)

I really enjoyed this one—reminded me of some of the grittier war eps from DS9. Altho, I had to watch the final confrontation between M’Benga & the Klingon twice because I thought looking at the fight through the frosted glass was supposed to be Chapel’s POV & that she lied during her testimony about what she saw. After rewatching, I realized she WAS in the room and witnessed the whole thing, but the way the scene was blocked out & edited was confusing to me.

I also did not have the same problem others had with the portrayal of the Klingon, but only because I thought post -TOS Klingons were always portrayed vey “one-note” & predictable, and I preferred the more nuanced approach that John Colicos gave in TOS, which, for me, made Klingons much more interesting & cunning.

Also: really enjoyed Clint Howard’s return to Trek as the war-weary, metaphor-mixing wild man in the beginning. The flashback scenes in general were well-done here and shed some important light on the characters of the Doc & Chapel.

@Jeffrey's Tube: "She Who Is Our Lord and Savior, Michael Burnham"

Wow, JT, I didn't expect rhetoric from you that dripped with such acidic derision. Nice, I approve! (Helps that I tend to roll my eyes at Burnham to a similar degree.)

@Cody B: Interesting factoid about Clint Howard! I didn't know any of that, but I did mention that I thought he did great in a small role as the commander of the M*A*S*H unit. (I like the way @Gilligan's Starship described the character in the comment just above mine.)

@Bryan: "Babs as M'Benga is at his most M'Benga-ish, with his haunted portrayal reaching its peak intensity, though he mumbles and whispers his way through it all like never before. I thought I'd gotten accustomed at understanding him without subtitle support but I really struggled this time."

Watch out, Bryan: in some quarters they will accuse you of being racist or at least an ethnocentric "ugly American" for this. ;-) (Which is wild, when you think about it, like there is some moral dimension to a literal inability to perceive what someone is saying. I guess maybe they might argue the moral part is how you're just supposed to shut up and not gripe about it.)

"On that note, M'Benga has so many skeletons in his closet he could really use a Chamber of Secrets with which to stash all the illicit goods he's got lying around so carelessly: a murder weapon, his illegal Super Soldier injections, his stowaway daughter... etc."

LOL! Good point.

"Still, you'd think that he'd at least have the wherewithal to maybe...NOT produce a guest list for Rah's honorary dinner in which a full 50% of them hate him with a passion and have non-trivial trauma-informed justification to just stay the hell away from him."

In fairness, he said early in the episode that he was literally ordered by higher-ups to have veterans of the war socialize with the ambassador as a goodwill gesture.

"Rah has since turned his back on all that and it seems to me that the Federation should be more concerned with his having killed many civilians than any past cowardice."

I agree.

"Also, isn't it a little suspicious that a man was stabbed with a knife...in sickbay..with two medical personnel present...and they couldn't save him with all their advanced technology?"

I wondered the same.

"But in our normally cheerful Nu-Trek, they'll likely go on to do their frivolous sing-along musical next week and forget forever after that any of this ever happened."

This is also a good point. Kind of awkward timing to have that be the very next episode.

@Rahul: "But it also seems ridiculous that the Federation would give the Klingon ambassador a 2nd chance if it so easily would make some of its personnel highly uncomfortable. But maybe at high-up levels, the brass is so detached from reality..."

I'm sure some personnel were highly uncomfortable when Truman integrated the armed forces, or when Obama ended DADT. It's not up to them. They just have to salute and fall in line--or resign their commissions in protest (which both my dad and his cousin did for opposite reasons during the Vietnam War: my dad because he was against the war, his cousin--an Air Force colonel who had flown missions in WWII and Korea--because he felt the civilian leadership was being too restrictive in terms of what targets they were allowed to bomb).

"Good to see the military aspect of Star Fleet again in action as that is what it primarily is"

Watch out, there are a couple commenters here who won't like that statement!

@Mal01: "I don’t think I’ve ever heard something as fake as that in my entire life. You’ll be talking about your girlfriend from Canada next.
So funny."

I won't go quite that far and call her a liar (I as a rule give people's online claims the benefit of the doubt unless and until they are incontrovertibly proven to be false, even if they aren't my favorite people), but it was definitely funny--and cringey.

@C.T. Phipps: Good analysis.

@Mal1
"who is most definitely a non-college educated 20-something saying “I do data analysis at a very VERY prestigious university (think Oppenheimer level)”"
I'm actually 4... 35. Oh and the Oppenheimer things was more on point than I thought. Einstein and Heisenberg were faculty members here. WHAAAAAAT!?!

"You’ll be talking about your girlfriend from Canada next."
I'm mostly into men but hey why not. Maybe I should go polyamorous... that's what the younglings do now, don't they?

"So funny."
I aim to please. :)
What I wrote about SlackerInc is true though. Even a first year student would spot the stuff I pointed out. It's really basic stuff

Kisses!

My take on Dak'Rah as a Klingon is that he was probably born to a Great House (almost certainly has to as this is before the Great Council), got his Generalship through nepotism, and proceeded to utterly fail (from his perspective) in this battle.

Losing all of his officers and running from a battle, he realized he'd only get a dishonorable death so he concocted his BS story about killing his men for being dishonorable. He thus adopts a "defector of conscience" story and adopts as much in the way of human mannerisms as possible and that he left the Klingon Empire because of their nasty warmongering.

The Federation buy it and ignore the Klingons calling him the "Butcher of J'Gal" as typical Klingon espionage and lies when they're actually telling the truth. They want to buy that he's a Klingon who saw the light and the guy is very good at social manipulation. Basically, they think he's Worf. However, he's not even Gowron (who was many things but not a coward). He's Duras.

The real question, though is what M'Benga said about wearing a mask so long that it becomes the real you. Dak'Rah committed countless war crimes but came to the Federation and acclimated to life there. He's not willing to own to his crimes (and justifies them through various ways) but may have simply adopted the culture of the Federation and come to believe his own lies. As a man who was never a true believer in the Klingon way, maybe he's now a "weekened warrior" of the Federation and a harmless peacenik.

But does that mean he is reformed? Does that mean that punishment for his crimes should not happen? Is all retribution revenge?

So with both seasons in the can before S1 aired, I would think Season three will be even better with feedback and fan reactions to factor into their thinking (well, I hope they factor in!).

This was a very good episode. I agree with others the Klingon just didn't seem like one, but once we got to the end and found out he ran off and took credit for murdering his officers, he is a coward and would not act very Klingon.. so it kind of made sense. Although, he must have had something going for him to get to the rank of General. So overall I think they didn't do the best they could with him. That knocks a half star out of it for me. I did like his near desperation to get a war veteran to partner with him to get some "cred" and some good "photo ops".

Looking at the crew, the best character development in the series has been the Doc and the Nurse. Uhura has been decent, Spock a little on the light side... the rest are still house plants for the most part. Pike, I don't know what to make of this. He is just kind of there cooking food and giving quiet advice and being willing to cover up for any of his officers (this week he is willing to cover up a murder!) . I hope they get more meat on the bone for him next season.

"She Who Is Our Lord and Savior, Michael Burnham"


I absolutely love this :) So true.

@Colin Daniel Lindsly, Jeffrey's Tube

Yes, you are right — missed the dialogue at 22:30–22:53 im­ply­ing the Chan­cel­lor is male. So the Klin­­gons got rid of L’Rell who was (α) in­stal­led by Fe­dera­ti­on (thanks to to WMD con­trol), (β) is backed by Fe­der­ati­on (who sent op­er­a­ti­ves defending her against op­po­si­tion), (γ) arrange for the monks at Boreth to wel­come Fe­der­ati­on guest and (δ) sent war­ships to as­sist a Fe­der­ati­on ves­sel at the re­quest of her for­mer part-time hu­man boy­friend. I uphold my statement that she was a puppet, or at the very least a vassal.

While some might compare Rah to an Eichmann who deserves to be hunted down, tried by a hostile tribunal and summarily executed for his war crimes (and so it is a great relief when M'Benga saves them the trouble), I find myself leaning more toward the opposite camp which would say that Rah is a flawed but ultimately redeemable character who should've been permitted to continue doing the positive work that aligns with his renewed peaceful purpose of building bridges between warring cultures.

At first glance, this appears to puts one in the unenviable position of arguing that war criminals should face no consequences as long as they promise to be good from now on, or that we must enter into a cold utilitarian calculus to see if the positive results such a person could achieve could ever make up for their past harms, such as the loss of civilian lives incurred under Rah's orders. But I would argue that even though in general terms war criminals should be brought to justice (what ever that may mean in each case), Rah is no general case, and also that no such utilitarianism is necessary or even applicable.

First of all, Rah is not a human but a Klingon whose culture often normalized barbaric practices, and in the interests of continued peace between the two species, and to avoid still more far-reaching bloodshed, it likely would have become prudent or even necessary to bury the hatchet and not seek further retribution. Also, even between human cultures, it is not uncommon for a plea deal to be included in a voluntary defection arrangement especially when it comes to high value targets or high ranking officers. It effectively wipes the slate clean in exchange for cooperation or valuable information, so to punish them at some arbitrary point in the future would be double jeopardy. That doesn't fully protect them from vigilantes like M'Benga from going after them, but this would be a personal vendetta and nothing more, and not really morally defensible within the norms and principles of that society.

It is also a matter of principle, especially those of Starfleet, that permits Rah to do his good deeds unmolested, not because he could ever fully make up for what he's done, but because that society values redemption and second chances, and I have no reason to believe that the trust that has been placed in him has been abused. Sure, you can imagine an elaborate backstory for him in which he cunningly played Starfleet in order both save his own skin and flourish as a nihilistic bureaucrat in a cushy position who talks a good talk but actually accomplishes little of consequences. But this would be mere fan fiction.

The main reason I don't see him this way is because of what actually plays out on screen and not in my own headcanon: I really do get the sense that the actor is playing him with genuine conviction and purpose. We know that he has lied in the past about one thing he is probably ashamed of, but does this necessarily mean that he is lying through his teeth with every word he utters? I don't think so. The key is noticing the difference between how he acts when we know he's lying and when he's speaking the truth. I contend that he is actually not a very good liar at all in how he tries to avoid the subject altogether and then when cornered, has to pause and turn his eyes to away to make things up. If he were truly a diabolical mastermind, he would play up his false legend and bask in the adulation he receives. It would be very easy to portray him this way, but then he would be a very different character altogether. Therefore when he apparently speaks with passion and vigour about his new purpose without evasion or delay, I am inclined to believe it is real in absence of solid evidence to the contrary.

And would it really be so unusual for a Star Trek character to have a checkered past who we are nonetheless expected to, and eventually do see in a positive light? Even if they managed to sidestep what would officially be meted out to them under the full extent of the law? What of O'Brien and his comrades from the Cardassian War, where they did some things that they are now not so proud of (well maybe a few of them are still proud). The other side in both of these wars probably did far worse, but isn't the point here is that war leaves no one completely without sin...and when all are touched by war, who remains that can throw the first stone?

The end felt a little forced for me.
Not like I scuffle with people on a regular basis but when I have it's never descended into plunging a knife/D'k tahg into the others chest.
Robert Wisdom came across, like a cross between the clone of Kahless and Sybok as well.

I would have much preferred an entire episode of Star Trek ER and a whole story regarding the medical side of the war. I think that would give you enough PTSD without adding slaughtering Klingon's to the mix.

Also

@LatexZebra: "The end felt a little forced for me.
Not like I scuffle with people on a regular basis but when I have it's never descended into plunging a knife/D'k tahg into the others chest."

Okay, but even when you have scuffled, I imagine the other person in the scuffle was not someone you know to be a war criminal who killed kids as well as people you cared about.

@SlackerInc Haha. Not knowingly.

Don't get me wrong. I do understand his motivations for wanting to kill him but, for me, I think it would have been better if it was an actual fight than some pushing and shoving. But then I suppose him being such a coward would prevent him from actually throwing a real punch.

A lot of people think Klingon honor actually permits the massacre of noncombatants due to the actions of people like Duras in ENT and the behavior of Kor. However, I should note this is not actually true. "House of Quark" makes it clear that cutting down a Ferengi helpless before you was dishonorable and worthy of dis-commendation. The lawyer, Kolas, makes it clear that he's utterly disgusted by the massacre of refugees and believes Duras will LIE (and did in fact) about them being terrorists to gain unearned glory. Klingon honor says anything to achieve victory is justifiable but pointless massacres are still high on the monster scale.

Trivia:

Clint Howard's character Martinez: "people call me Buck". This could be a coincidence but likely another Toronto reference. Buck Martinez is a long time broadcaster (and former player) for the Toronto Blue Jays Major League Baseball team.

Shouldn't the Klingons in the flashback have had shaven heads?

Also, why did his ridges go all the way over the top of his head?

A good episode but the ending let it down, mbenga got away with murder. Hopefully they revisit this and this is the reason he leaves the enterprise.

The episode had good intentions, very good acting by the doc and the nurse, but something wasn't right.. I dunno...I wasn't as engaged as I was in the DS9 war episode. Maybe this story needed two episodes.
I hate the 10 episodes seasons...

I have to confess I was hoping the doc would leave the series at the end of the episode, his voice is like scratching your fingernails on a chalk board..

Pike has started to really annoy me. He is not their daddy or best friend, he is their captain. He seems more invested in winning Federation's next MasterChef that commanding Enterprise.
And having Mbega calling him by his first name when talking to Chapel?

"Burnahm, this hell is your doing!" (me during the the war flashbacks)

@ Bryan

"And would it really be so unusual for a Star Trek character to have a checkered past who we are nonetheless expected to, and eventually do see in a positive light? Even if they managed to sidestep what would officially be meted out to them under the full extent of the law? What of O'Brien and his comrades from the Cardassian War, where they did some things that they are now not so proud of (well maybe a few of them are still proud). The other side in both of these wars probably did far worse, but isn't the point here is that war leaves no one completely without sin...and when all are touched by war, who remains that can throw the first stone?"

Let's not forget Kira was an actual terrorist.

@ WARPFACTOR

"Shouldn't the Klingons in the flashback have had shaven heads?"

Yes, but does anyone want to see Discovery-style Klingons ever again? No. Let's just leave this one alone imo.

@ theBgt

"And having Mbega calling him by his first name when talking to Chapel?"

That's Star Trek tradition in doctor-captain relationships. McCoy, Crusher, and Phlox did it. They want us to think Pike and M'Benga are old friends, but they balked at telling us exactly how old, just having M'Benga say "too many years to count," probably because they didn't want to be locked into too clearly defined a backstory for M'Benga yet. They seem like they're still working out the exact details since deciding on this new direction for him.

@Greg -- I didn't catch the "Buck Martinez"! I'm mad at myself for missing it. Buck's a terrific baseball broadcaster and one of my favorites in all of sport. But I wonder what is SNW's "obsession" with Toronto?

And as for Clint Howard -- how many Trek series has he been in now?

@Mal01-- par for the course from this forum's biggest troll -- and quite pathetic. Just hope folks on here don't attribute any credibility to this obvious charlatan. I recall somebody saying on another threat that this troll doesn't even watch the episodes but just uses the forum as a personal blog. That's very poor form.

@SlackerInc -- I agree with you that people like Ortegas, M'Benga etc. have to fall in line if this is the edict from the higher-ups that they should extend all the courtesies etc. to the Klingon Ambassador. Star Fleet is primarily a military outfit after all -- but that fact might get obfuscated on SNW due to Pike's congenial (and, for me, inappropriate and unsuitable) command style. With SNW under Pike it's more a pleasure cruise -- look how spacious their quarters are!

But of course we know there won't be any discipline coming from Pike for the transgressions of his subordinates. And I also do believe the circumstance created is somewhat tone-deaf from the higher-ups. Maybe the episode could have provided more meat behind the Federation aligning itself in this way with the Klingon Ambassador.

The episode was okay/good for most of the runtime. I mean, we’ve seen this kind of story many times before, on TOS, TNG and especially on DS9. I’m even willing to suspend my disbelief into accepting that the idea of war criminal doesn’t really exist in the Federation as Pike echoes that “everyone deserves a second chance”, even the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal, apparently. Not only a second chance, but a well-regarded appointment. It was interesting to see Chapel’s and M’benga was flashback even though it was clearly by the numbers (and the idea that M’benga is sought out as a kind of superhero to save the say is a bit silly, I feel).

I also didn’t feel the episode gave enough justification on why Dak’rah is the best person for the job given how controversial his past is. Wouldn’t it be better to appoint an ambassador who didn’t murder civilians? Ah, but then we wouldn’t have an episode.

But what drops the episode low for me is the ending. Sorry, but I call bullshit with a capital B. M’benga should have been arrested and taken off the ship for a thorough inquiry. The fact all he gets is a little slap on the back of his hand from Pike is ridiculous. Also the dramatic events at the ending happen too fast, including a weird cut where Chapel sees the silhouettes of M’benga and Dak’rah and then in the next shot she’s right there in the room.
This incident should’ve opened an episode, not closed it. I really don’t buy anything that went on in the last 10 minutes or so of the episode.

Back to being a day behind everyone else, but here I go...

Quite an interesting premise, delving into the kind of 'war is hell' experience and moral ambiguity we saw in S6 and S7 of DS9. Generally I think there's a lot that can be told about the interplay of memory and trauma in such cases, and I think I understood what this episode was aiming at.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with SNW, the execution was rather off and bungled how it dealt with the concept it was trying to investigate.

What did this episode have to say about its core ideas? Not much. War is hell and leaves people traumatised. Trauma leaves people emotionally inflexible. The end.

Apparently war also makes Starfleet officers profoundly unprofessional, with little emotional detachment or self-control. The dinner scene (Pike and food *again*) was highly implausible and served only as an opportunity for the veterans to parade their feelings publicly. And we're clearly meant to be on their side when they do so. I found it cringeworthy.

The biggest failure in this episode was unfortunately its key revelation. I am not sure what actually happened - was Rah a liar, or a coward, or both? And why it's cool that M'Benga is revealed to be even more of an expert assassin than actual Starfleet special forces (but he doesn't do it anymore, until he does), what was he actually trying to do? Kill Rah, I think. So how and why did Rah get away? It was all terribly muddled and confusing. I sort of understood what was intended because of the tropes involved, not because of what was actually shown and told on-screen.

Likewise the death of Rah. What happened? I'm not sure - did M'Benga kill him in a fit of anger and then claim self-defence with 'Chapel' backing M'Benga up, or did Rah really attack him? Is it meant to be ambiguous?

That said, I think M'Benga was more than good enough in his focus episode. 'Chapel' was also very good. Una got to do something first officer-like for two whole episodes in a row. Clint Howard turned up. They tried to flesh out Ortegas a little bit, but made her come across as unprofessional in a different way, alas.

Nothing in this episode was egregiously bad from my point of view, it just left me confused. I was mostly irritated by the contemporary dialogue ('We got this. We got this.' etc). 'Transport incoming' was how ever very evocative of a bullying workload in the field.

Interesting enough idea, very odd execution.

@Jeffrey's Tube

I do not mind Doc and Captain addressing eachother with their first names, even if, as you very well pointed out, "they balked at telling us about it".
But the Doc calling the Captain by his first name in front of other crew?
They are not high school classmates.. Geez!

@Booming
'I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level)'

Classic @Booming. You could just say Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, - no need to be coy, if that was you trying to be modest.

"What happened? I'm not sure - did M'Benga kill him in a fit of anger and then claim self-defence with 'Chapel' backing M'Benga up, or did Rah really attack him? Is it meant to be ambiguous?"

What clinches it for me is that before the fight breaks out we see M'Benga open a box with the Klingon dagger inside -- the very dagger that he had originally intended to kill Rah with during the war, and also one which he must know would make an ideal murder weapon since it would deflect suspicion off M'Benga. At this moment, M'Benga is in conflict with two sides of himself -- the side of him that is still back in the war and wants revenge, and the side of himself that just wants to move on, as a doctor and a Starfleet officer. Hence, he initially warns Rah to just stay the hell away from since M'Benga knows that he cannot repress that former side of him from taking over as long as Rah is near. I find it revealing that he has the dagger close at hand even before Rah enters the room, so you know the extent with which he has wrestling with that murderous temptation.

Although we don't see it clearly, I believe that the fight was triggered initially by Rah grabbing M'Benga, as we have seen him do several times before. This isn't because Rah intends to physically harm him, but because he has an annoying habit of using physical contact when he's in a passionate or persuasive mood, as we've seen before. It's worth noting that Rah is unarmed and doesn't know that M'Benga has a weapon at hand until it's too late. Also, when he went to sickbay to see M'Benga he'd have no way of knowing that M'Benga knew his dark secret, and therefore had no motive or means by which to kill M'Benga to silence him. Rah grabbing him was all the impetus M'Benga's darker needed to act on what he had already contemplated: cold-blooded murder.

@Greg
'Why was La'an not at the dinner?'

La'an will only be invited when Pike is hosting the Gorn.

Perhaps Pike's knowledge of his own fate has him warped, and re-traumatising his subordinates is the only thing that makes him feel anything. Hence also his passive laid-back demeanour all the rest of the time and obsessive cooking. Blunted affect.

We saw from 'Among the Lotus Eaters' that Pike is a fount of misplaced rage waiting to kill someone.

Yes, I am joking.

@Bryan: Or slightly hot-blooded murder, with a soupcon of semi-premeditation thrown in.

@RAhul: "With SNW under Pike it's more a pleasure cruise -- look how spacious their quarters are!"

Haha, it is a tad palatial.

The sickbay fight is supposed to be ambiguous as to what exactly happened and how prompted it was or was not, but we the audience are given to understand that M'Benga did not strictly have a need to use that knife on Dak'rah.

I don't think this episode is for me. I don't like gore. I didn't turn it off but I did have to fast forward through some scenes.

I was extremely moved by Dr M'Benga asking the Klingon to "please leave me alone." I hope I have the strength to tell my enemies that.

I feel like I need to rewatch the entire episode, but the script is so sloppy, it doesn't really deserve it. Still, it would have made a great TOS morality play with a rewrite. Very Starfleet-is-military vibe. Ortegas reminding everyone that she's not just a bad officer, she's a liability.

Lots of good ingredients, but prepared poorly.

I think that if the showrunners REALLY wanted to cast doubt on what happened and suggest that there MIGHT have been some element of self-defense in M'Bena's part, that ominous final scene between Pike and M'Benga would have played out very differently. M'Benga's all but confesses without explicitly saying so and there's a ton of subtext here that casts him in a very suspicious light.

Meanwhile, it's in the showrunners's interests to try their best to keep the audience on M'Benga's side since he's not some guest star, but a member of the ensemble cast and an essential part of the protagonist team. Therefore they're gonna try to have their cake and eat it too: M'Benga is a shady anti-hero who does some shady things but they're still gonna try to frame him in the best light positive, even when he does those shady things. Therefore, any ambiguity we see, such as the fight blocked from our view, is there solely to soften an unavoidably negative framing of M'Benga. Because if we had seen it play out as I had described, witness with our own eyes the visceral act of M'Benga plunging that knife into an unarmed man's heart, it would be a very brutal and tough thing to unsee and would forever taint our reception of him...such that every future light-hearted and goofy thing they intend to do with M'Benga in the future would fail.

*best light possible, not "best light positive"

I have to say, it takes some audacity to have one of your main casts commit pre meditated murder (he had the knife on hand and opened the box, he was ready to use it or at least provoke the Klingon to have to use it) and have the captain cover it up and still cast him as a loveable sympathetic figure.

I like grey area characters (every human is flawed, has a past, has secrets, etc. ... its very human). So, I am on board with this. In saying that, it is quite something to see this in a Star Trek show with a regular cast member.

Part 2 of my last comment.

We have had this before in Trek (Sisko covering up Garek murdering people in "the pale moonlight). Not sure why that slipped my mind when hitting send.

Still surprising to see it happen now!

@Lynos
'This incident should’ve opened an episode, not closed it. I really don’t buy anything that went on in the last 10 minutes or so of the episode.'

Excellent point. Agreed.

@Bryan
'Rah grabbing him was all the impetus M'Benga's darker needed to act on what he had already contemplated: cold-blooded murder.'

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation of the chain of events. The scene in sickbay makes much more sense to me now having read it. That said, like @Lynos suggests, I think the episode would have worked much better if the killing of Rah had a) been at the very start; b) had not been shown at all, or had been shown from conflicting viewpoints, underscoring the ambiguity of what really happened; to thus c) avoid the startling conclusion that M'Benga, a Starfleet officer, committed pre-meditated murder and d) 'Chapel' and Pike helped him cover it up; admittedly e) without explicitly saying that's what they were doing. Such an approach would leave the audience to decide what they would have done if they were in M'Benga's situation.

Regarding M'Benga being a super-duper assassin and a doctor (I can't recall who mentioned this), it is plausible that M'Benga was a special forces soldier who also ended up having a medic rolr, and chose to specialise further. Given thd fact that he developed an aversion to killing, I don't think these two character aspect are mutually exclusive or contradictory.

I also agree about the strong chemistry between M'Benga and 'Chapel' - this has been evident for quite a few episodes now. Excellent work by Olusanmokun and Bush time and time again.

@Bryan
'Meanwhile, it's in the showrunners's interests to try their best to keep the audience on M'Benga's side since he's not some guest star, but a member of the ensemble cast and an essential part of the protagonist team.'

I of course see your point, but I think you're giving the showrunners a little too much credit here: they still essentially depicted M'Benga committed pre-meditated murder, and had his colleague and captain sweep the full facts under the rug.

NuTrek has form for this: Jurati murdered Maddox and basically got away with it. I think it's a bit of NuTrek blind spot, with not all actions having consequences if they're committed by a core cast member, whereas a far more mature writing approach would be to avoid ending up portraying said core cast members literally getting away with murder to start with.

As someone suggested, why not also have the possibility of Rah having committed ritual suicide out of shame at his cowardice/dishonour in there as well, as part of the overall ambiguity? Admittedly that might turn this episode into more of a whodunnit than a reflection on the traumat of war, of course...

@Dirk
'Ortegas reminding everyone that she's not just a bad officer, she's a liability.'

Yes, in two separate scenes no less. SNW is rapidly turning into the Ortegas character assassination hour - no ambiguity there.

I did guffaw in the last episode in which Ortegas said she admired Mayweather. Very on the nose as to how the writers and producers gave both of them short shrift. Quite meta, I thought.

Bok R'Mor, yeah.. I'm not implying that this "have your cake and eat it too" approach is the very best storytelling trick that the showrunners could come up with. I'm simply explaining what I perceive to be their rationale as opposed to the usual ways in which such ambiguity might be employed.

@Bryan

To be fair to the showrunners there is at least an interesting debate and discussion of the episode's ethical themes coming out here, which is something PIC never managed in the whole Jurati fiasco.

As I said: SNW is actually quite good at concepts, but mostly fumbles the execution (interestingly, in S1, there was a tendency to redeem episodes in their final 10 minutes, whereas here the last 10 minutes rather undermine it).

Also: we do all agree that this is M'Benga's actual focus episode, do we not? His scenes with 'Chapel' in 'Broken Circle' don't really count as a focus episode in my view.

Weirdly, a thing that occurred to me in this episode is this is possibly the ONE time I would ever think using Section 31 would be justified since DS9. I would have loved to have it reveal that Dak'Rah was manufactured by a Operation: Paperclip, except the idea wasn't science but DIPLOMACY.

"Starfleet Intelligence grabbed me, lied about my involvement in the massacre, gave me a fake honor and had me going around various planets where I told about how corrupt as well as awful the Klingon Empire was. It's been incredibly effective and we've caused many races to join the Federation or settle the feuds the Klingons have been promoting for their own interests."

I would 1000% prefer THAT Section 31 to the one that does horrific war crimes like experimenting on Changelings.

@C.T. Phipps
Such a busy and very interesting thread that I forgot to respond to this point of yours earlier:
'A lot of people think Klingon honor actually permits the massacre of noncombatants due to the actions of people like Duras in ENT and the behavior of Kor. However, I should note this is not actually true.'

What about the Battle of Tong Vey ('Rules of Engagement')? It's explicitly stated that the Klingon warriors slaughtered men, women and children - non-combatants - when they overran the defences. It's also explicitly stated that Worf does the same in his holosuite programme; that doing so is an integral part of the reenactment of a glorious legendary battle and implicitly not seen as morally dubious within Klingon culture.

Worf was raised on Earth by humans, so one could argue that he is trying to be 'more Klingon than the Klingons themselves', I suppose.

(To be candid here I think the writers and producers of the various Trek series down the decades have been terribly inconsistent about the precise nature and limits of Klingon 'honour', mostly due to whatever stereotypes the episode in question is interested in buttressing or overturning.)

@Bok R'Mor

To be fair, that actually makes it realistic. If we go by a lot of real world honor cultures, the Klingons fit right in where the rules against these kind of massacres exist but they still happen all the time. As with the Duras example, Klingons often lie about their glories.

Worf is basically the Paladin version of a Klingon as he follows the code as written versus as Klingons often use it.

@C.T. Phipps
I thought a bit about your Quark example earlier and the reference to the Battle of Tong Vey and it does actually allow (counter-intuitively) for some internal in-universe consistency, if we frame it thus: Klingons look down upon Ferengi as cowards incapable of putting up a fight and therefore are not 'worthy' of being 'put to the sword' 'despatched to Sto-Vo-Kor' etc and do not count as a kill that 'enhances' a warrior's honour; whereas defenders and inhabitants of a besieged city have (collectively) demonstrated their 'worthiness' as opponents by withstanding the same warriors' onslaught and can be 'despatched to Sto-Vo-Kor' (or whatever euphemism a Klingon might prefer); killing them thereby augments Klingon glory.

The distinction is thus not the standard combatant/civilian or guilty/innocent distinction as in Earth culture, but rather an worthy/unworthy opponent distinction. In Klingon culture, civilians can apparently be slaughtered if they are classified as belonging to a group that overall has put up a decent fight.

(I am a little unsure about whether non-Klingons can actually end up in Sto-Vo-Kor in Klingon thinking. Perhaps Klingons only kill Klingon civilians in the above situations, which would make them curiously selective war criminals in only targeting civilians of their own ethnic group.)

Admittedly it's all rather appalling, but that's the only way I can see that we can square this particular circle on the basis of the information we have been given.

@Bok Kor

I dunno if it's actually a hole that needs to be squared, though. History is full of men who did utterly dishonorable things that were held up as great war heroes even though it directly contradicts their religion or stated ethos. Indeed, one thing that is brought up repeatedly by Klingon stories (Ezri Dax and the laweyr from Judgement) is that Klingons routinely violate their own professed codes.

But you could well be right. Christopher Bennett ("Watching the Clock") is a continuity master and seems to think that Klingon honor doesn't really recognize noncombatants or massacres.

Re: Klingon Honor, I never got the sense that Klingons would find the massacre of civilians a praiseworthy thing to do, but I did get the sense that they would be much more inclined to dismiss or sweep under the rug such tactics, especially as compared to humans.

@Bok R'Mor
"La'an will only be invited when Pike is hosting the Gorn."

Lol.
The more I think about "Memento Mori", the more I feel it hasn't been surpessed yet in terms of excitement and ingenuity. A really good episode and the only canonical retcon episode in NuTrek I actually really like.

"Perhaps Pike's knowledge of his own fate has him warped, and re-traumatising his subordinates is the only thing that makes him feel anything. Hence also his passive laid-back demeanour all the rest of the time and obsessive cooking. Blunted affect."

That is actually I really interesting idea but I'm not sure the writers are clever enough to go there, or we would have seen it already. I think at this point it's safe to asasume that the handling of Pike's character has taken a nosedive since season 1. Yeah, yeah, I get it, the actor had a kid and was busy, but it is what it is. They could've written him better in the few minutes he IS on screen.

The MVP of this show for me has become nurse Chapel. I really like Jess Bush in this role and I think she has become more confident in the role since season 1. Her nurse Chapel expresses passion, doubt and compassion in just the right amounts, and she was the best thing in this episode as well. She is fast becoming my favorite character on SNW. Let her command the ship and make Pike the head cook. She is showing much more resolve and decisiveness then the actual captain.

The more I think about the ending of the episode, the more I dislike it. What can I tell you, I like my Trek doctors to NOT be murderers. It's fine to have a conflicted character, but even if M'Benga acted in self-defence, his muted responses when Pike "interrogated" him shows no remorse for killing another human (Klingon) being.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a PTSD riddled ex-assassin be in charge of the safety of the crew and of the guests who come aboard the ship. M'Benga is obviously unstable emotionally. What happened to the concept of professionalism and good-old-fashined screening in Starfleet?

Let's reiterate: an offical Klingon ambassador came aboard the Enterprise at the request of "very high up" official in Starfleet to carry a very sebsitive duty, and ended up being killed by the ship's doctor.

There better be consequences for this, dear writers.

The Klingon War is a sort of wretched legacy from Discovery. Because the easiest thing to do in order to create drama is to invent a whole new war. Much has been said about the havoc that Discovery has wreaked in the canonical pre-TOS timeline, I would rather see the war ignored by SNW, but since it's the same creators/production company, I guess they can't help themselves.

Two other random thoughts:

- Man, the corridors on this ship are as empty as they are pretty. Is there nobody else on this Enterprise other than the bridge crew?

- Spock was attempting to synthesize a drink for Rah in the lounge. Are replicators supposed to exist pre-TOS time?

A correction to my post above: of course the Klingon War was not "invented" by Discovery, but it is the first show that has delved into it in detail and mined it for all its worth in terms of drama (basically now deciding that the protagonist of Discovery, and none other, has caused the war to erupt), and the echoes of that treatment continue in SNW, including stylistically.

@Lynos
"Are replicators supposed to exist pre-TOS time?"

According to Memory Alpha they certainly do exist (the repair station in ENT: Dead stop has it, also Gary Seven in TOS:Assignment Earth). How long it took the Federation to master the technology to create palatable food is murky.

In TOS the Enterprise had food synthesizers on board, though that may just be a different name for the same thing. And in Star Trek VI we suddenly see the Enterprise-A having a fully equipped kitchen including cooks. AFAIK we never get to hear about stores of food on the ship.

And then there are the implications of having replicators being able to create food from energy: would the Enterprise still need to transfer grain between colonies, even in an emergency? Do agricultural colonies still make sense?

So for me its neither a clear yes or a no. And it doesn't help that its Spock trying to create something special for a guest of honor, thats when you start doing things you are normally not allowed to do, e.g. using a prohibitve amount of energy just to create a cup of coffee.

Did anyone see Balok from the Corbomite Maneuver in the medical camp?Sorry if this has been said 10 times already!

Yes, it was Clint Howard. Was mentioned above several times. :-)

@Jammer
'M'Benga had actually stormed in to complete Trask's failed mission, aided by his serum, and he took down Rah's key men (the ones that Rah later claimed he killed himself), and Rah fled as a coward. M'Benga is actually "the butcher of J'Gal" and Rah is a liar who took his cowardice and spun it into a tale of reformation. Meanwhile, M'Benga has had to live with those killings while they got publicly co-opted by the man who reinvented himself.'

I think a fundamental weakness in the execution of this episode is that I wasn't even sure of what had actually happened on-screen before I read your detailed summary here and @Bryan's very helpful detailed summary of the sickbay scene yesterday. Now, no doubt people will dismiss that and say it's a 'me' problem (as the parlance is these days), i.e. that the audience is failing the creators, but as a general rule your viewers should be able to follow what is going on fairly easily, which I don't feel was the case here.

@Lynos
'The more I think about the ending of the episode, the more I dislike it. What can I tell you, I like my Trek doctors to NOT be murderers.'

This is my view as well. It just doesn't sit right for me either - I also dislike 'Chapel' and Pike covering it up as well. That said, I do recognise that the writers and producers at least gave a plausible reason for their choices throughout this episode. It's a morality play, albeit one in which I end up on the other side to the writers and producers, out of issues of principle. That's not a bad achievement for a NuTrek show, to be entirely fair.

@Jammer “The moral murkiness of it all is reinforced in Rah's death, staged am­bi­guous­ly be­hind frost­ed glass where nei­ther we nor Chapel, who as a wit­ness ex­oner­ates M'Benga, can quite see what ac­tual­ly happened.”

At 44:06, we see the two arguing behind the frosted glass wall. Four se­conds later, Chapel en­ters sick­bay and wat­ches the fight from a lo­ca­tion with a red door in the back­ground. The ca­me­ra swit­ches back to the frost­ed glass view, the mur­der happens, and at 44:16 we see Chapel walk from her for­mer po­si­ti­on just a few steps to look down on­to the fal­len Klingon.

I am sure she observed the fight from a short distance (maybe 3 me­ters) with no ob­stac­les in her line of sight. I also take that she and M’Benga both lied to Pike.

@Bok R' Mor
"'I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level)'

Classic @Booming. You could just say Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, - no need to be coy, if that was you trying to be modest. "
I trust my audience.
About being modest or coy, there is a reason that these words do not exist in the German language (Don't look that up).
I'm actually not a big fan of the whole elite university thing Germany established almost 20 years ago but I still have to play along, considering that I will soon jump into the free market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Universities_Excellence_Initiative

@Booming
'About being modest or coy, there is a reason that these words do not exist in the German language (Don't look that up).'

You know, I would never ever have realised that you were the most German German academic from Germany if you didn't tell us it in every other post of yours on here, haha.

Have you given any of SNW a go yet? For example, you could have easily turned this episode thread into one of your interminable anti-American rants about US geo-politics, given that the episode is quite beholden to M*A*S*H at one point. I'm surprised you're foregoing the opportunity.

@Galadriel
"At 44:06, we see the two arguing behind the frosted glass wall. Four se­conds later, Chapel en­ters sick­bay and wat­ches the fight from a lo­ca­tion with a red door in the back­ground. The ca­me­ra swit­ches back to the frost­ed glass view, the mur­der happens, and at 44:16 we see Chapel walk from her for­mer po­si­ti­on just a few steps to look down on­to the fal­len Klingon."

Yeah, that was very confusingly edited. We see Chapel watching the two fight, and then we cut to an outside view of the room through the frosted glass which is done for our "benefit". It's an odd choice that basically tells the audience "you don't get to see what happens in this scene".
It's directed and edited in such a way as if to suggest we are in Chapel's point of view, since we cut from her looking at the men straight to the frosted glass. But of course she is actually in the room with them.
It's a clumsy scene.

It's a common style in suspence movies, where the crime is shown in such a way where you are kept out of certain information in order to not spoil it.
But here it's not done in order not to spoil. it's done to keep the ambiguity and to leave the details of what happened between Chapel and M'Benga. But it just feels like another pointless mystery box to me.
Because it's enough that i suspect M'Benga is lying to immediatley have a knee jerk reaction to his character being the ship's doctor and a starfleet officer.
Just let the characters face the music (maybe next episode?) and save us the mystery. These kinds of narrative choices feel to me like writers who don't have confidence in their own characters.

Presumably food synthesizers are more limited than true replicators (which themselves do have limits). An easy explanation would be that food synthesizers can assemble food from pre-made base ingredients on a molecular level and apply heat and such to approximate cooking in a compressed timeframe but cannot create those base ingredients.

So, as a bad example, it can make bread from gluten* but cannot make gluten. Wheat is grown by the Federation not for use as wheat but as something to be rendered down to gluten for use in food synthesizers.

*Yes I know that's not what gluten is or how bread works.

@Bok R' Mor
"You know, I would never ever have realised that you were the most German German academic from Germany if you didn't tell us it in every other post of yours on here, haha."
I really wouldn't know how to construct the sentence you are referencing without mentioning it.

"Have you given any of SNW a go yet?. I'm surprised you're foregoing the opportunity. "
No, third season of Picard was the end if NuTrek for me. Participating a little here is my Trek epilogue.

" For example, you could have easily turned this episode thread into one of your interminable anti-American rants about US geo-politics, given that the episode is quite beholden to M*A*S*H at one point."
Seriously, are you some kind Americanophile?? I understand that people often base significant parts of their identity on their home country but you are not even American. What I say about the United States is neither anti-American nor a rant. If you see it as such then that says more about you than me.

This last 10 minutes of this episode seemed strangely rushed and muted after all the intense build up. I don't think there's any ambiguity about what M'Benga did behind the frosted glass. He murdered Rah. In his mind the war is still going on and he completed his mission (partly in an attempt to gain peace of mind?) Was he right to do this? No, in my opinion. I understand why he did it but should he get to act as judge, jury and executioner? I hope this act doesn't just never get mentioned again and that instead it gets developed further in a future episode and that there are repercussions. Left like this it feels morally and emotionally unsatisfactory.

Was the frosted glass used by the writers because they couldn't actually face showing the disturbing sight of a Federation doctor murdering someone?

I agree Rah seemed rather 'Klingon lite' but we find out the reason for that in that he is a coward and without honour in his own eyes and has lost his Klingon identity and has tried to create this new one. He was an interesting character with potential. And SNW kill him off! *eyeroll*

The Spock/Chapel romance is such a drag and I hope it's over soon. Spock seems to be the one shown as having to learn about Chapel, placate her and adapt to her. I mean he's trying but it all seems rather one-sided and unSpock-like, more Data-like.

@Lynos

The entire point is to be ambiguous about it. It's edited confusingly on purpose. That's war.

It's that exact depiction that pays off the themes and allows the episode to succeed on an artistic level.

Interesting that everyone keeps saying M'Benga "murdered" Dak'rah. He certainly killed him, and it is certainly strongly suggested that he did not strictly need to kill him to resolve that confrontation that had turned physical. Is it "murder," though? If you can so easily answer that question then the episode didn't do its job for you.

Why was it morally "okay" for M'Benga to kill Dak'rah two years ago but not now? When you think about it and strip that question all the way down to a fundamental or primal level, what's the difference, really? Extrapolate from there (I'm too tired at present to go further into it, but it would be nice to wake up tomorrow and see someone else had done the work for me!)

I love how people are calling her 'Chapel'. Very apropos and I'm going to have to remember to adopt this convention. She's a good character, but (like 'James T. Kirk'), she just doesn't seem like the person we knew from TOS.

@Bryan: "Therefore they're gonna try to have their cake and eat it too: M'Benga is a shady anti-hero who does some shady things but they're still gonna try to frame him in the best light positive, even when he does those shady things."

Great analysis, well supported.

@dave: "I like grey area characters (every human is flawed, has a past, has secrets, etc. ... its very human). So, I am on board with this. In saying that, it is quite something to see this in a Star Trek show with a regular cast member."

It really is! I find it exciting and invigorating, but I can understand how some Trek fans could believe it violates the "Roddenberry ethos".

@Bok R'Mor: "Regarding M'Benga being a super-duper assassin and a doctor (I can't recall who mentioned this), it is plausible that M'Benga was a special forces soldier who also ended up having a medic rolr, and chose to specialise further. Given thd fact that he developed an aversion to killing, I don't think these two character aspect are mutually exclusive or contradictory."

I agree. The most elite special forces officers are extremely intelligent and highly capable, so I have no trouble imagining such a person taking this route.

"they still essentially depicted M'Benga committed pre-meditated murder"

I dunno, I think his weakly protesting that the guy should just leave him alone suggests it's not quite what we normally consider premeditated murder, where he would plan it out and then take steps to try to provide himself an opportunity to carry it out. Maybe "pre-contemplated"?

"You know, I would never ever have realised that you were the most German German academic from Germany if you didn't tell us it in every other post of yours on here, haha."

LOL!

@Jammer, another spot on review.

@Jeffrey's Tube, the difference is that two years previous he was in charge of a large Klingon force that was committing war crimes. Killing him at that point is more than vengeance, it is a defensive measure to stop more atrocities from occurring. It's hard to argue that this is still the case when M'Benga kills him.

And although I have argued repeatedly that I don't think it's cold-blooded, premeditated, first degree murder, it sure looks like second degree murder or manslaughter to me. He didn't need to pull out the knife to protect himself or others from death or grievous injury.

Five stars. The only episode of NuTrek that I would place on my All Time best Trek list.

Just fantastic. For me, this was the single best installment yet in that often-mined Star Trek vein of "confronting past evil." And there have been many very good installments on that theme.

Bravo.

@Booming
'Seriously, are you some kind Americanophile??'

Oh dear, here we go... You're on a US forum, owned and operated by an American, about a US television franchise involving eight or more US television series, on which a majority of visitors and posters are likely to be Americans, and yet you seem to act as if 'Americanophile' might have negative connotations here. (Or do you mean am I a kind Americanophile as opposed to a nasty Americanophile?)

I'm not American, no, but I do recognise that this is primarily a forum about Star Trek, not somewhere where I can turn every thread into a lengthy discussion of my personal gripes about US society, US politics, US history, US foreign policy etc.

I'm actually very fond of Germany, by the way, but don't turn Star Trek threads into lengthy discussions about German society, German politics, German history, German foreign policy, etc, despite these directly affecting me and the country in which I live.

Because this is a Star Trek forum. About Star Trek. That US television franchise that occasionally brings Americans and Europeans (among others) together.

You should give SNW a go, @Booming, if only because I generally find your Trek-related views to be quite refreshing and interesting, and your posts entertaining.

@SlackerInc @Jeffrey's Tube

The question is thus whether M'Benga had malice aforethought, is it not?

@Jeffrey's Tube
"The entire point is to be ambiguous about it. It's edited confusingly on purpose. That's war."

Sorry, have to say I didn't quite get the argument (although I welcome it).

How is the direction and editing of this scene support the theme of war? It's not like we're in the middle of a battlefield and bombs are going off and nobody's sure what's happening. It's a brightly lit room with three people in it.

We start with the two men struggling behind the glass. We cut from that to Chapel entering the frame from the right, looking ahead. The shot sequence would suggest this is her POV and she is watching the two men behind the glass.
We then cut again to the glass, reinforcing to us that indeed we're inside Chapel's POV.
Then Rah falls down and Chapel hurries forward, and now we see that she was inside with them all along, just behind behind M'Benga's shoulder.

In traditional film grammar, when a character looks to a partriculat point in a three-dimensional space, you would usually cut to the character's POV. Here's a really good string of examples from the movie Paris Texas:

https://youtu.be/0YMCWR8jzpU?t=43

Now, you don't have to follow all the rules in filmmaking, but if you break traditional film language you need to do it it in a way that makes sense, has a point, and doesn't confuse the viewer (the ending of Silence of the Lambs is a brilliant example on how to break editing rules to great effect).

This entire scene is very very sloppy in terms of editing and direction. I have a little background in this area so I allow myself to say so.

What if the scene went along this way:

1. Medium two-shot: M'Benga in front of the box with the knife, Rah behind him putting a hand on his shoulder.
M'Benga throws Rah's hand away and turns, cut to medium wide two shot.

2. Chapel walks down the corridor towards sickbay (build suspense and establish her entrance).

3. Two shot behind the frosted glass. Both men argue and push each other.

4. steadicam shot or handheld shot going behind Chapel as she enters the room from the middle of the frame.

5. cut to reverse enagle, we see Chapel enter the room from the midle of the frame with the two men blurred in the foreground.
(we've now established the geography of the scene and that Chapel is in the same room with both men and is watching what's happening. We still don't know what she actually sees.)

6. cut to two-shot of frosted glass again.

7. cut back into the room. Rah falls with a knife in his chest. Chapel hurries forward.

@Lynos

“The MVP of this show for me has become nurse Chapel. I really like Jess Bush in this role and I think she has become more confident in the role since season 1. Her nurse Chapel expresses passion, doubt and compassion in just the right amounts, and she was the best thing in this episode as well. She is fast becoming my favorite character on SNW. Let her command the ship and make Pike the head cook. She is showing much more resolve and decisiveness then the actual captain.”

I agree and I was surprised Jammer’s review didn’t discuss her role more. Because although it’s clearly an M’Benga episode, Chapel is a big part of it. I continue to be impressed with Jess Bush. Prior to SNW, she didn’t have a lot of acting experience. And yet she’s demonstrated she can handle whatever the writers give her. Action, romantic comedy, drama. She can do it all. And judging by the trailer for next week’s episode, she can sing and dance as well. I know a lot of people here aren’t wild about Chapel’s pairing with Spock, especially since we know it won’t last. But I almost think the writers went down this road less because of what happens in TOS and more because Bush and Peck have such great chemistry. It’s becoming increasingly hard to reconcile this version of Chapel with the one we see later. But I no longer care because the writers and Bush have made her such a likable and interesting character who, despite now being in a relationship with Spock, thankfully isn’t defined by that relationship. It’ll be interesting to see where they take the character. One thing is clear. The producers really struck gold when they found this actress. I hope they make even better use of her next season, if there is one.

@Bok R'Mor
You're not alone, I knew I would have to read Jammer's review to make sure I had all the details of the denouement. It seemed like the doctor was claiming to be the butcher at the end, but that twist is a bridge too far when you're trying to follow a whispering character through a lot of different scenarios. I don't know if it's standard procedure for assassin doctors to keep weaponry around, but how many times have we seen a doctor use a hypospray much more effectively?

I guess I can see why fans here don't take issue with Ortega's chronic insubordination. At a state dinner, she ignores the XO's direct command. Oh, no problem, we've already stolen the Enterprise, ignored the prime detective and the CMO murdered a major diplomat that we were given the mission to escort and show every courtesy.

The whole nuTrek emotionally damaged crew doesn't really sell the idea that it's the flagship or that they were getting much done before Kirk was in charge. I had much higher hopes for this season.

@Lynos
"Man, the corridors on this ship are as empty as they are pretty. Is there nobody else on this Enterprise other than the bridge crew?"

It's just the bridge crew. I am convinced that they forgot to hire extras.

@Bok R' Mor
"and yet you seem to act as if 'Americanophile' might have negative connotations here."
That connotation exists exclusively in your imagination.

(Or do you mean am I a kind Americanophile as opposed to a nasty Americanophile?"
Neither. I meant what I wrote. I can understand somebody loving the USA, I can understand the opposite. I just wanted to know if you are one.

"I'm actually very fond of Germany"
Seriously?! Maybe you should check if their is lead in your tap water.

"You should give SNW a go, @Booming, if only because I generally find your Trek-related views to be quite refreshing and interesting, and your posts entertaining."
That is very nice of you to say but I made it as far as I could. I just want to lie in the Picard part of the NuTrek desert and wait for the end. Have fun!

I can appreciate that a few people want to leave open the possibility that M'Benga didn't murder Rah -- either because they think he may have acted in self-defence, or because their baggage is so great that it irrevocably sucks them into an amoral gravity well where the only the transcendent logic of war reigns true. I beg to differ on both accounts but I have yet to see a fully fleshed out and coherent argument with which to engage. I welcome it, but I don't feel like making that argument for them.

For now I'll just say that the ambiguity is not the thematic point, but a smokescreen to make the rushed and muddled denouement merely LOOK purposeful and "artistic", as well as to curb our harshest judgment of M'Benga. It's as if the writers had a lot of balls in the air they were juggling and wasn't sure if they had the time or the capacity to convincingly catch them all, so they called on the audience to say "Um, here... you do it!"

The thematic point of the episode, by the way, doesn't require any of this ambiguity, since the writers were at least confident enough to plot a clear and coherent narrative and thematic through-line that had to culminate either in crisis or harmony. That they chose crisis over harmony is not a problem -- you can argue that it is the more realistic of the options -- but it's just too bad that the writers were not willing or trusting enough to let loose the fully ramifications of that daring choice and had to resort to such a smokescreen.

That said, I think the fact that the vast majority of us have, I think correctly, read the conclusion as "M'Benga murdered Rah" is a testament to the showrunners that, despite this needlessly tacked on ambiguity, the episode was successfully able to convey its subtext and implicit truths without having to shout them out.

@Bryan
'That said, I think the fact that the vast majority of us have, I think correctly, read the conclusion as "M'Benga murdered Rah" is a testament to the showrunners that, despite this needlessly tacked on ambiguity, the episode was successfully able to convey its subtext and implicit truths without having to shout them out.'

Excellent post. I fully agree. I suppose when we boil everything down to it the real question this episode actually poses is simply, 'Is M'Benga right to murder Rah?'

I would argue the way the episode os presented, the writers and producers expect an equally simple answer to that question: 'Yes.'

Glad(?) to see I'm not the only one that was confused by the way the ending confrontation between M'Benga & the Ambassador was filmed & edited.

I'm all for ambiguity if it's relevant to the story & gets people talking (these threads are like the modern equivalent of the "office water cooler conversation.") But I also find that a lot of current-day writing/filming leaves more head-scratching and the need for After-Shows™ so the creators can explain to you what you just saw. That's just lazy filmmaking.

I realize filming styles & film language have changed over the decades, and you don't need to hit the audience over the head like in the 1930s or even 1960s TV Trek, but we've slipped a bit, from the constant gripe of tv viewing audiences about scenes that are drastically underlit, to the current trend of audiences WANTING subtitles/cc because they can't hear the dialogue*.

*Also back n the 1960s tv producers knew the medium they were making it for and that not everyone could afford a 25" Zenith color TV and a good portion of the audience was going to be seeing their shows on a 13" Sears black & white TV with rabbit ears antenna. Your show/images/actors/dialogue HAD to read if you wanted anyone to tune in.

The whole point was to tell us that war is bad and does PTSD ?
So brave, so deep. My brain can't deal with so much wisdom and layers.

I presume KurtzTrek's still KurtzTrek.

Eye roll

*this* being the highest ranked episode of the season is a farce.

I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on this episode. I thought people said the next episode was going to be a musical. I braced for a crash landing. At first, I was really enjoying this episode, despite the Klingon being miscast. I was anticipating a serious ass whooping being handed down at some point. Everything was definitely headed in that direction. And then the fight choreographer from Hades showed up and all but ruined the episode. He's probably the same walking dildo that "choreographed" this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk6QM0BQuds

It took me right out of the story. However, I was prepared to forgive this transgression. Selective sudden onset amnesia with a spritz of eye bleach can be rather useful at times. But they just couldn't stick the landing. At some point, it always comes down to the execution. You have to put on screen what you think you have on paper and how you see it in your mind. If you don't execute properly, the screenplay doesn't matter. You end up with phaser fire being dodged after the trigger's pulled. This whole season has been such a let down compared to season one. And now I still have Cop Rock in Space to look forward to. Bummer.

A fascinating episode. Good to see the series back on serious ground again. As I said about These Old Scientists, the ratio of silly outings to those that are committed to good Trekkian story telling is out of whack (4 of 18, 22.2 percent) too high when the seasons are so brief.

As an aside... serious hat tip to Jammer himself for the fabulous review.

Jammer, you nailed it.

Storyline inferences from S2 E8: Under the Cloak of War (4/4 10/10)

The scene in Sickbay between M'Benga and Rah is the finale for the Special Forces Mission and Battle of J'Gal. The timing of M'Benga leaving his Commander chest opened, turning to Rah, fight starts, Chapel walks in, clearifies the outcome especially after the prior Klingon Judo session between M'Benga and Rah.

At Captain Pike's dinner M'Benga considers Ambassador Rah's "full impact Mok'bara" session request an End-Game to "you make them pay" for the massacre of Colony Athos during the Battle of J'Gal. M'Benga saw one path to do the deed and remain in Starfleet, Klingon shame and honor.

M'Benga confirmed he could beat Rah in hand-to-hand combat without Protocol-12 during the Klingon Judo session. He confirmed Rah wanted him as an ally to maintain the "Butcher of J'Gal" lie and do anything to remain Klingon Ambassador.

M'Benga set the stage with his Commander chest containing the Klingon "Butcher of J'Gal" blade. Once M'Benga revealed he was the "Butcher of J'Gal" to Rah he opens the chest allowing the now desperate Rah to take the blade and commit suicide for his cowardice. M'Benga fought to stop Rah's suicide. Rah:"So selfish a human!". Chapel witnesses Rah's suicide but reports the fight as self-defence stating the "Butcher of J'Gal" blade killed all 3 Klingon Warriors. Pike:"I'm just shocked that Rah would attack him like that". M'Benga's superior combat skill protected him whatever happened.

This episode's Sickbay Biobed scenes show M'Benga repairing Biobed#2 damaged during Gorn attack at Finibus-3. The closing shot is Biobed#2 screen red "System Alert" suggesting a hidden Gorn infection lurking inside, eluding to the imminent Pike/Kirk Gorn invasion.

Extrapolating beyond this point, M'Benga will reprise his combat Commander role and distribute Protocol-12 among select Enterprise crew to survive the Gorn invasion. Sadly M'Benga dies saving Pike whom fulfills his destiny saving cadets while absorbing deadly radiation. Season 3 Kirk is promoted to Captain of the Enterprise and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally gets on course without Rhapsody.

Ortegas is Level 1 angry because of the atrocities, and because she is something of a xenophobe.

Chapel is Level 2 angry because of the atrocities, because she was there, and because it was an especially searing experience for a newbie.

M'Benga is Thermonuclear angry because of the atrocities, because he was there, and -- the critical point -- because Rah made him into what he did not want to be. For all of M'Benga's talk about the suffering of others, it is his *own* suffering that affects him most powerfully.

That is what makes this episode special. It's not the usual study of good vs. bad, in being the selfless against the selfless. It is one form of selfish pitting against another. I mean, M'Benga is more than just selfish, calling him that alone would also sell the episode short. He is, quite wonderfully, both.

I'm sticking beside my comment that this is the best NuTrek episode. Easily.

I'm almost a bit bummed that I agree with Jammer on this being a 3.5 and not a 4, because I struggle to find and verbalize a good reason outside of it being a tad deritative of a handful of DS9 stories.

4s just have that "je ne sais quoi" that this did not to me. I've seen Jammer describe his criteria for a 4 as "I'll know it when I see it" in the past and I totally get what he means by that. This was an episode I was engrossed in and found interesting, but was ultimately not blown away by. Maybe it's just the somewhat familiar territory - if a story of this type was a Star Trek first it might have felt different.

I guess I just find it unfortunate because if this episode with this topic and this insane production value and great acting (Bunny Colvin anyone???) couldn't hit that mark, the season probably will go without. Lots of good, fun, intruiging, and competently told episodes, but no timeless classics thus far.

Sorry, I meant "selfless against *selfish*". A bad typo.

@Lynos
'The more I think about the ending of the episode, the more I dislike it. What can I tell you, I like my Trek doctors to NOT be murderers.'

And also endangered the ship while he was hiding his daughter in the buffer.

Why we are supposed to like M'Benga?
He basically joined (or used) the ship to try and save his daughter, not giving a dime about his shipmates.
I dunno if PTSD is the cause of his behavior, but clearly he does not belong in Enterprise or any Starfleet ship, at least not before (and if ever) he manages to solve his issues.

This is cheap and lazy writing and at the end it justified murder.

And I see so many people in various forums agreeing with M'Benga's actions and it is terrifying. Since when taking the law into one's hand has become a good thing?

I am really surprised Jammer liked it so much.

@theBgt

"And I see so many people in various forums agreeing with M'Benga's actions and it is terrifying. Since when taking the law into one's hand has become a good thing?"

Before this becomes a big debate, I just want to echo that I find the Murdering Doctors and Vigilante Justice mentality a bit jarring for Star Trek. Because this isn't Batman we're watching, nor even the more libertarian sci-fi that celebrates the lone gunman be it Heinlein or what have you. Those tropes are fine for the appropriate receptacles and audiences for them. But Trek has traditionally been a mostly-optimistic Large State Utopian society that may get caught up in the occasional war now and then, but at least they always knew where they stood and what they're fighting for. They understand what principles are at stake should they lose and possibly acquiesce to the Klingon, Romulan or Cardassian ways of governing that run contrary to those principles.

I always got the sense that the Federation, and Starfleet in particular, may have gotten itself dirty in the course of those wars, but they always knew where to find their north-star; they always managed to find their way back home. They were not forever compromised like M'Benga here. And even if some of its soldiers quite understandably suffered from PTSD as a result of those wars, this was never an excuse to throw up their arms and say "well I guess I'm just broken and it's all your fault, so whatever happens happens and you should just be grateful that I don't fuck things up even more than I already have." And to his credit, M'Benga was actually very close to honoring his better self. He just chose not to when things got really hard. And that's not okay. No would ever promised that it would be always easy to uphold those Starfleet principles.

Ok, I'm seeing a lot of comments that are saying M'Benga lied at the end. But what I saw was ambiguous, if not tilted toward M'Benga telling the truth.

Was it supposed to be obvious one way or the other?

Also, I really feel like this episode is supposed to be an answer to In the Pale Moonlight. Doesn't quite do it, but really solid overall.

The 180 from last week was jarring, but as others have said, now I'm ready for the musical.

@Kyle

"But what I saw was ambiguous, if not tilted toward M'Benga telling the truth."

There is an element of ambiguity, but some aspects of this are more ambiguous than others. "Who started the fight?" is ambiguous. "Did M'Benga really need to fatally stab Rah in the chest?" is less ambiguous.

One clue that M'Benga isn't being entirely honest is that he never comes clean about who the legendary "Butcher" really is. The DNA evidence that appears to exonerate him is based on a lie that only he knows is a lie. The fact that M'Benga never says "Actually, that is my knife, not Rah's, since I am the true Butcher and not him as was widely believed" should seriously make you question everything else M'Benga and Chapel say in support of his supposed innocence, since we know for a fact that having him stay silent during that debriefing is a lie by omission.

@Bryan

First time commenter - I agree that M'Benga wasnt being completely truthtful...maybe I'm just thinking that there has to be a set of norms and tradition passed down later, where we see eventually get to Picard in STNG reading Wesley the riot act about StarFleet and the Uniform being about the Truth - period. Some actions may be defensible, like Sisko in abetting Garack in the murder and lies to bring the Romulins into the Dominion war, but the war was over with the Klingons in SNW.

Separately, I like Chapel, Spock is growing on me, Pike is good, but would prefer he spends less time in the kitchen. Una is great.

La’an, Una, Pelia, Ortegas, and Pike all will basically die or vanish by the end of this series. That’s fucked up.

I don't think the episode deserves 3.5 starts, but I liked Jammer's review quite a bit. Sometimes the star rating is not everything (actually, most times).

@theBgt
"Why we are supposed to like M'Benga?"

I think throughout M'Benga's arc, we are supposed to identify with his plight of PTSD, and him being this morally grey doctor. These types of characters are prevelant in today's drama. Heck, we have entire masterful series led by morally grey characters and often outright criminals and murderers. When did we turn from cops and doctors and even lawyers (honest ones) carrying shows to identifying with criminals, I don't know, but you can't argue that audience tastes have shifted.

"Good" characters are perceived as boring. Why do you think Pike is sidelined in his own show, and the ones who get the most exposure are the traumatized ones such as La'an and M'Benga and even Ortegas? Because they are perceived by the writers as more interesting.

From a screenwriting point of view, it's easier to write confliced, morally ambigious, traumatized characters. The drama is already built in. Usually these characters would have something dark in their past that made them the way they are and they suffer endless internal conflict. It's harder to write good or heroic characters. Most of TOS or even TNG characters wouldn't fly today (no pun intended). They would be seen as too boring and vanilla. I mean, who cares about professionals who are just good at doing their job? Who are good at probem solving? It's not interesting if they haven't seen the horros of war of were tortured in captivity.

Look at how the writers are struggling with the character of Pike. All they have on him is that he knows what happens to him in the future. He was portrayed in previous episodes as accepting it and apparently all we see so far corroborate that.
So what do we do with him? Well, we can have him be the captain of a starship and write him this way, but I think they lack the confidence to do so.

Captain Pike just being the captain to his men is "too boring". He doesn't have the trauma and bahaviour issues Michael Burnham or Lorca or even Rios has.
God forbid he just serves as the legendary figure of authority he is supposed to be. I mean, I still haven't seen one good reason why Spock would steal the Enterprise years later and risk court martial in order to help his captian. What really inspires Spock in Pike? His Jambalaya?

@Bok R'Mor: "The question is thus whether M'Benga had malice aforethought, is it not?"

I don't think that's the only question, no (after all, you can have malice aforethought without committing murder or any crime). I think a jury that had all the information would put a fair amount of weight on the fact that M'Benga repeatedly asked the guy to leave him alone, and then (I think) Rah grabbed him first--which makes it technically true that M'Benga did not start the fight, even if he ended it in an unjustifiable way.

@Lynos: "In traditional film grammar, when a character looks to a partriculat point in a three-dimensional space, you would usually cut to the character's POV. Here's a really good string of examples from the movie Paris Texas:"

Great movie. I agree with you about the film grammar. Your shot outline would make sense.

@Bryan: "I can appreciate that a few people want to leave open the possibility that M'Benga didn't murder Rah -- either because they think he may have acted in self-defence, or because their baggage is so great that it irrevocably sucks them into an amoral gravity well where the only the transcendent logic of war reigns true."

Huh, I don't recall anyone saying M'Benga was innocent and only acted in self-defense, which makes me wonder if you're talking about me. If so, I want to reiterate that I do think M'Benga is guilty of manslaughter or second degree murder. Just not first degree murder.

@Quincy: "And then the fight choreographer from Hades showed up and all but ruined the episode. He's probably the same walking dildo that 'choreographed' this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk6QM0BQuds"

Whaaaat? You just linked to possibly my favorite fight scene of all time! The method of the kill was ingenious. Great needle drop too, that Low song. (RIP Mimi)

@HaveGun_WillRiker: "4s just have that 'je ne sais quoi' that this did not to me. I've seen Jammer describe his criteria for a 4 as 'I'll know it when I see it' in the past and I totally get what he means by that."

Yup, nailed it. Love this.

@singh: "First time commenter"

Welcome! I thought you added to the discussion in a thoughtful way, hope you are planning to stick around.

@SlackerInc

"Huh, I don't recall anyone saying M'Benga was innocent and only acted in self-defense."

It's moreso that they think the ambiguity of the fight scene means that it's a complete coin toss as to whether M'Benga is guilty or innocent. For me, this is equivalent to arguing that he's innocent and acted only in self-defence since if it's truly anyone's guess, they might as well choose the outcome that jives with their subjective feelings on the matter. But in either case, whether they believe this due to their own convictions or whether they hedge on the ambiguity, they are actually ignoring the breadcrumb trail of subtext and implicit revelations leading to a far more damning conclusion. Maybe at first glance it appears that the haziness cast on the fight means that absolutely anything and everything is open to interpretation but this simply isn't so. And if it were, it would undermine the careful storytelling that builds up or it and make for a significantly weaker episode.

Shocked to see this get the highest rating from Jammer this season when there have been a handful of better episodes this season and from last season that got lower scores, that all have objectively less problems.

The ultimate one here, is the point this episode makes is very Un-Trek and in a bad way. We have three Starfleet officers in an advanced state of humanity that act in a way that makes it clear we have no cures for PTSD in the future with all of our advanced medical tech and emotional understanding of others. Kirk In Undiscovered Country feels way more relatable, even if he didn’t get over it like he does by the end of that film. Here, M’Benga kills a man because he couldn’t get over his PTSD, ignored all the good this man was trying to do, he and Chapel lied about it, and at least for now faced no consequences for this. It’s especially egregious considering the man was officially Starfleet personnel. For all the problems people have with the quips of the bridge crew all series long being “unprofessional” this is far worse and way more unprofessional than anything we’ve seen of the SNW crew. How am I supposed to like these two characters moving forward? They didn’t behave here like enlightened future people, they behaved like regressive nationalists. And we are just supposed to ignore this and move forward to the musical number next week. We went from having the two DOCTORS on board to being “a family man who cares very much about his child” and “an emotionally unavailable woman pining after an even more emotionally unavailable man” to reducing them in the blink of an eye to two racist war criminals.

I guess my main issue here is you can make the grey philosophical points this episode tries to make without assassinating the characters of two members of our bridge crew without resolving it. Maybe they will down the line, but I know at least for now they won’t be doing it next week.

Last season Memento Mori and Quality of Mercy were certainly better than this, and so were Ad Astra, Tomorrow, and Those Old Scientists this season.

Really hoping that after this seasons obvious heavy Gorn battle finale coming that we get an I, Borg style treatment of them, to ease the sting of treating the Klingons like they’re just monsters we’ve gotten here. The “some things in this universe are just evil” doesn’t work twice in a 10 episode season format when you’ve already dedicated that to one big bad.

@JohnR
‘M'Benga is Thermonuclear angry because of the atrocities, because he was there, and -- the critical point -- because Rah made him into what he did not want to be. For all of M'Benga's talk about the suffering of others, it is his *own* suffering that affects him most powerfully.’

This is very perceptive. I think you’re correct. Your explanation of the two selfishnesses (of M’Benga v Rah, and vice versa) is persuasive for me as well. It is clear from what I could make out from the last 10 minutes of the episode that M’Benga was singularly determined to act – the careful placing and opening of the box, the half-hearted ‘leave me alone’, the killing, and then the cool ‘I didn’t start the fight, Chris’ argue in favour of a very planned action. ‘Selfish’ has other connotations that aren’t necessarily applicable here but I can’t think of a better description and I think your point is correct.

@theBgt
‘I see so many people in various forums agreeing with M'Benga's actions and it is terrifying. Since when taking the law into one's hand has become a good thing?’

People are taking their lead from the writers and producers. It is self-evident that we as an audience are meant to not only sympathise with M’Benga (which is of course logical given what he, ‘Chapel’, Ortegas and the others have gone through); we are also meant to approve of his final decision, and probably even the cover-up afterward. The message of this episode, when push comes to shove, is that in certain situations, if you are triggered enough, it is morally acceptable to commit pre-meditated murder. Your feelings and self-actualisation are more important than another person’s life, and the other person deserves it anyway. Note that the writers and producers seem to understand that there is legal inconvenience in doing so, so they show that it is morally acceptable for you and others to cover it up afterward as well (actually compounding the situation).

I want to make it clear that this is absolutely not me castigating NuTrek here. This is a darkening of Trek that began late in DS9 and is nothing at all to do with NuTrek per se, and this episode is actually very accomplished in sparking a good old Trek debate about morality and ethics. This is an episode in the vein of ‘In the Pale Moonlight’ – and Jadzia was, legally speaking, also famously an accessory to murder in ‘Blood Oath’. There are several other episodes as well.

The difference here is that I can’t help but feel that in pre-late DS9 Trek the writers and producers would have demonstrated some kind of institutional consequences for M’Benga’s actions (and ‘Chapel’s’ and Pike’s), and there would have been a speech about Starfleet values, whereas here the writers and producers clearly endorse M’Benga’s (and ‘Chapel’s’ and Pike’s) actions. Therefore it is no surprise that many viewers do as well. They’re meant to.

@Bryan
‘And to his credit, M'Benga was actually very close to honoring his better self.‘

Agreed. I can’t help but feel that prior to late DS9, the episode would have shown M’Benga being tempted by his demons but ultimately choosing the better path. The drama would have been in him realising that he was on the way to preparing to commit pre-meditated murder, and correcting course and wonder what had become of him. He would have ‘confessed’ to ‘Chapel’ and Pike, not implicated them. There would probably have been the revelation that Rah was a liar and a coward, and episode would have made it clear that M’Benga nearly ended his career (and Rah's life) for things that were not even what they seemed in the first place.

@Lynos
‘I think throughout M'Benga's arc, we are supposed to identify with his plight of PTSD, and him being this morally grey doctor. These types of characters are prevelant in today's drama. […] From a screenwriting point of view, it's easier to write confliced, morally ambigious, traumatized characters. The drama is already built in. Usually these characters would have something dark in their past that made them the way they are and they suffer endless internal conflict. It's harder to write good or heroic characters. Most of TOS or even TNG characters wouldn't fly today (no pun intended). They would be seen as too boring and vanilla.’

I agree. That’s part of a general pop cultural shift that has become quite clichéd since the 1990s (I don’t have time to trace its origins, but I would argue that it originated in part in the then-exciting trend for more mature writing in comics in the mid-1980s, moving through the first excellent Batman film (1989) and then mainstreamed from there).

One of the things that attracted many people to TNG was that it portrayed a bright, clean, positive, optimistic future that you would like to live in. The Enterprise D looked like a place you would like to work when you grew up, and inspired many people in real life to get involved in science, technology and engineering. But for writers, it creates a quandary because it makes writing extremely difficult. Conflict reveals character and if people are just diligently doing their jobs in an outstanding way there’s little to play with, no matter how inspirational it might be for the ‘nerds’ in the audience (as they were called at the time, and there was absolutely no over or covert prestige in it unlike the very mainstream ‘geek’ culture today!).

Just one point: tragic backstories in Trek have a long history all the way back to TOS, again caused by writers’ needs. See what Bernd Schneider playfully calls the ‘Starfleet Orphanage’ here:
https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/biographies1.htm#other

@SlackerInc
‘I don't think that's the only question, no (after all, you can have malice aforethought without committing murder or any crime). ‘

I would argue that what is portrayed of M’Benga in this episode for the most part fulfils the requirements for mens rea and actus rea in common law jurisdictions. I’m no legal expert, so I would like a lawyer (Jason R.?) to give their views here.

Just one final point that I’ve been pondering: how would this episode have played out if the focus character had not been M’Benga, but ‘Chapel’ or Ortegas? There were three characters explicitly shown to share M’Benga’s trauma from the war with the Klingons. We would have three completely different episodes and storytelling processes if the culprit in the murder had been the other two characters. Imagine if the final twist had been that it had been ‘Chapel’ who had murdered Rah, *not* M’Benga, despite M’Benga having been shown to have been leading up to it. Imagine if all three had conspired to kill Rah and then thought better of it.

There is a lot of food for thought here and in that sense this episode has been very successful in that regard. I'd also like to say @Jammer's review and the thread overall have been excellent as well.

Just an afterthought regarding the roles of M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas and their attitudes to Rah.

If this had been an episode of Trek pre-late DS9, I think it’s reasonable to conjecture that the overall structure of the episode would have been a whodunnit. Rah would have been introduced as the supposedly reformed ‘Butcher of J’Gal’ and we would have seen pretty much the same reactions from the crew, although more likely in private to the captain and/or first officer in Pike’s ready room. There probably would have been scenes of M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas sitting drinking discussing their own trauma and how they should interact with Rah. The camera would have lingered on each of them dramatically and it would have been clear to us that each of them, separately and as a group, were struggling with feelings of wanting to act in a vengeful way.

There probably would have been a scene in which Rah was in a shuttlecraft with all three of them – perhaps they have to provide medical aid to a rebel Klingon planet that has made overtures to the Federation. Una would likely be present, as Pike would not be stupid enough to leave Rah alone with three people who have a grudge against him. It would make sense to have Ortegas (pilot of shuttle) and two medical personnel (M’Benga and ‘Chapel’) accompany Rah on this mission. There'd be a redshirt as well, just in case the three of them tried anything.

Anyway, the shuttle gets shot down, or crashes, and both Rah and Una (and/or a redshirt) are seriously injured. And here is the dilemma and moral drama: M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas have to choose who has the better chance of survival. Now this should be a matter of triage and the Hippocratic oath for M’Benga and ‘Chapel’, but Ortegas is adamant that by letting Rah die they have an opportunity for justice for the victims of Rah and the war, and Ortegas sows that seed of doubt in how they should act. Perhaps we even see ‘Chapel’ contemplating a hypo-spray that would kill Rah, and M’Benga seeing her contemplating it, and that they give one another a look of recognition and understanding (we think it is a 'green light').

Rah dies and Una and the redshirt live. We don’t see what decision M’Benga and ‘Chapel’ made, but they say to Pike and Una that they shed no tears for the Butcher of J’Gal, the colony was aided as it should have been, and Rah has become a martyr for peace and reformed relations between the Klingons and the Federation. Rebel Klingon colonies are rallying to Rah's memory.

It then revealed via flashback in the final scene between M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas, again sitting together in the equivalent of Ten Forward and drinking as before, that with his dying breath Rah confessed to M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas that he was a coward and a liar who fled and had never even committed the atrocities he had boasted about (or some such – whatever the actual episode showed). That he was a figurehead for Klingon propaganda just as he was intended to be a figurehead for peace propaganda. He was happy to die so that his dishonour would end. The flashback reveals that Rah died immediately after his confession and M’Benga, ‘Chapel’ and Ortegas explicitly state that they could not have saved him anyway (i.e. they did not compromise their principles) but they all admit that before his confession they were tempted to take the opportunity to kill him to avenge the war's victims. Una joins them and they say nothing, glancing at one another in silent understanding of a line almost crossed.

I am fully aware that an episode written like this is unlikely to be made today.

Why are people suddenly writing 'Chapel' instead of Chapel? What did I miss?

@Bok R'Mor
"Just one point: tragic backstories in Trek have a long history all the way back to TOS, again caused by writers’ needs."

I think one key diffence between then and now is to which extent they are preoccupied by their past.

For me, much of the magic in non-contemporary Trek is to see strong, kind, highly evolved human beings represent the human race out in space. It doesn't mean they are cardboard or shallow characters. It means that they are evolved to a degree where they are strong enough to be starfleet officers despite any traumatic events from their past. We are not reminded of their past every two episodes.

When Starfleet is made of people like you and me and every second-rate "morally grey" character in drama today, what's so dang special about it? Where's the magic? The whole ethos of Star Trek is that it presents an EVOLVED human society. Who's the real contemorary human beings on the show? All those petty, egoic aliens they meet along the way.

There has never been a more wonderful, uplifting meditation on the possibilty of us pulling ourselves by the bootstraps out of all the muck and becoming a kind, sophosticated, enlightened society, than what we see in Star Trek.

So traumatic doctors who resort to killing is not really what I'm looking for here. It's the wrong show for that.

@Lynos
'Why are people suddenly writing 'Chapel' instead of Chapel? What did I miss?'

I think it's just me doing it. I've been writing 'Chapel' for a while because Jess Bush's character is so radically different to TOS Chapel (not in a bad way).

It's not a dig at Bush or the character, as I think 'Chapel' is actually very well done and absolutely one of the highlights of SNW.

@Lynos

“Why are people suddenly writing 'Chapel' instead of Chapel? What did I miss?”

That’s their way of saying this character is Chapel in name only. I tend to agree. It’s almost impossible to reconcile this version of Chapel with the version we see later in TOS. Don’t get me wrong. I love what SNW has done with the character and I especially love Jess Bush’s performance. But it’s a huge stretch to believe someone who’s confident, ambitious, and so easygoing will someday turn into a pathetic woman stuck in the same job pining away for a man who wants nothing to do with her. This is why a lot of us are wishing this show took place in an alternate timeline.

Dr M'Benga planted a weapon at the crime scene with DNA evidence to incriminate the person he killed. Wow, that's a long, long way from the doctors I have admired on Star Trek. Unless I am wrong? I would like to be informed if I am - but it definitely seems like he planted a weapon at the scene of a homicide. No different from planting a gun that matches ballistic evidence.

I don't think the intentional lack of clarity helps this script. And Pike is losing a lot of credibility by not launching a full investigation. He is really starting to seem like a big wet noodle. Why didn't Dr M'Benga call security when the Klingon came into sickbay? Especially if he knew something potentially really bad was going to happen? Does it just come back to that they didn't hire actors to work security?

The more I think about this dumb episode, the more I think I'm going to forget about this show in a few weeks. The argument that this is not Star Trek gained a lot of weight with this episode.

@Bryan said:

>>The fact that M'Benga never says "Actually, that is my knife, not Rah's, since I am the true Butcher and not him as was widely believed" should seriously make you question everything else M'Benga and Chapel say in support of his supposed innocence, since we know for a fact that having him stay silent during that debriefing is a lie by omission.
~*~*~*~*~

That really sums up what happened here best, I think. Dr. M'Benga straight up iced the guy and proceeded to cover his tracks. Chapel supported his story cuz they're friends and she doesn't want him brought before a tribunal.

But the minute someone at Starfleet Headquarters sees that report, I'm gonna bet that there are going to be questions and explanations FOR CENTURIES!!* Which is why I think this is gonna come back to bite M'Benga and possibly Chapel at some point.

Are they setting up an exit for M'Benga, to introduce McCoy to the Enterprise? It sure seems like it, and as Bus Tickets** go, this is a fairly decent bit of storytelling meat to have for a reason.

*"Deja Q."

**"Being Put On A Bus" is a way of saying that they removed the character from the storyline quickly and often with spurious reasons, usually because the actor either quit the show or was written out of it. But in this case, they seem like they're trying to do better by Dr. M'Benga than just saying "he went back to Earth to head up Starfleet Medical," like with S2 TNG and Dr. Crusher.

Dirk, that's actually an interesting question if what M'Benga did is tantamount to "planting." It's not a typical case of that since the lie of The Butcher of J'Gar appears to be plot contrivance that conveniently works out in M'Benga's favor because everyone assumes it is Rah's dagger by the DNA evidence on it. But M'Benga didn't plant this evidence on the knife after the fact -- it was already there. In case anyone didn't catch it, the DNA evidence is the blood of the Klingons who had been killed by it years earlier in the war, who Rah had falsely took credit for killing. But as I said earlier, M'Benga's failure to come clean about the truth of the knife, that it was actually his own knife and he did not actually disarm or redirect it from Rah's attacking hand, as Pike and the others had incorrectly believed -- and M'Benga's lying by omission is almost as bad as if he had planted a murder weapon, or the DNA on it, after the fact.

I should add that M'Benga's testimony is probably a bit more damning than the implications of a mere lie by omission, since there must have been a point where he was officially questioned on the matter before that final "off the records" chat with Pike at the end. The episode makes it appear as if he gets to sit in silence or plead the fifth, but it's much more likely that he would have told more explicit lies to to cover his tracks. This is just another example of how the subtext of what is not shown is more important than the ambiguity of what is explicitly shown, and that this ambiguity cannot serve as a convenient excuse to indemnify M'Benga in any way that the audience or the writers would like.

@Bryan

Regarding DNA, do you recall if any Star Trek episode ever mentioned something akin to a DNA "half life" or decay rate? I vaguely recall Dr. Crusher mentioning something along these lines.

After a quick search, it looks as though forensic scientists are already testing various ways to determine how old a DNA sample might be. One would assume, then, that in the 23rd century scientists would have a fairly accurate way to analyze the "freshness" of a DNA sample. If so, a Starfleet investigation would discredit M'Benga's already dubious explanation in no time.

@Moldorf

I might be misunderstanding but I don't see how a discrepancy in the age of the blood DNA on the knife would affect the outcome since surely all the characters must already must be on the same page about the age of the various blood traces.

Where a closer analysis MIGHT throw some doubt on M'Benga's testimony is with the fingerprints. I didn't catch this earlier but it seems that Rah's fingerprints somehow got on that dagger: you can see this on the screen showing the computer's analysis of the dagger. We don't know if M'Benga planted those finger prints there after Rah was already dead, or if Rah had touched the knife after he got stabbed, or perhaps even snatched the knife in the course of the struggle. I'd say these possibilities are in order of most likely to least likely. Either way, since it isn't Rah's knife, the only prints of his would have been fresh ones. Maybe finding no partially decayed fingerprints of his would shed some doubt on this assumption that it's Rah's knife.

@Lynos

It is not about writing boring characters, it is about not be able to write at all.
Most of the NuTrek writers do not have any kind of vision or talent...they just think that by copying the "Peak TV era" tropes (like antiheroes) they will also make good TV or even make Star Trek more "relative".
This was really obvious with Disco, when you thought the scripts were written by AI that had to follow a specific checklist. But I am afraid it is also impacting SNW.
I found nothing boring with the TNG characters who did not murdered anyone in cold blood and get away with it.
I really detest all this trend about characters being interesting because they had a very traumatizing past.
And I hate this whole vengeance extravaganza that seems to have become the new normal in TV and in the movies and soon in our lives.
And in any case, I never watched ST for having main characters like M'Benga, Burnham, etc and captains that keep forgiving them.

IMHO, the only new ST series that seems to really love and respect Star Trek is Lower Decks.

@SlackerInc
Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 2:19am (UTC -5)

"Whaaaat? You just linked to possibly my favorite fight scene of all time! The method of the kill was ingenious. Great needle drop too, that Low song. (RIP Mimi)"


Well, there's no accounting for taste!

That fight was straight out of the nursing home. Two toothless paper tigers arguing over who's going to get the last cup of vanilla pudding. Yet, we're supposed to believe these guys were ruthless killers?

No. The method was retarded. A simple groin attack would have freed either of them from either of the other's "holds." Somehow assaulted nuts never occurred to anybody.

The song was mildly interesting, though.

@Bryan

My thought is that M'Benga's DNA would appear twice. The decayed DNA would reveal that in his testimony M'Benga had neglected to mention a much earlier interaction with Rah. An investigator would then pursue this line of questioning: why is your three-year-old DNA on Rah's knife? Why did you fail to disclose this previous interaction?

M'Benga might be able to lie his way out of the discrepancy, but his credibility would be in question. I suppose he could claim that he tangled with Rah during a covert operation (juiced up on Protocol 12, of course), but, given the admiralty's interest in making the ex-general feel welcome, that claim would be quickly countered by whomever was in charge of M'Benga's missions.

I didn't catch that about Rah's fingerprints. Very interesting, indeed.

Extremely well made. As a war story it relates to DS9 "The Siege of AR-558" but this was much darker. The theme reminded me about Voyagers "Nothing Human".

The switching between the polite scenes, M'Benga's and Chappel'S struggling and the MASH scenes was excelent made.

In my opinion the strongest (but I an not sure the best) SNW episode so far. Complaint; it was not really Sci-Fy.

@Moldorf

Ahh, I get what you're saying now and yeah, if they had done that thorough of an analysis, they might have discovered that. I dunno though...does merely touching an object leave behind DNA? The actual analysis they did seemed to suggest that it doesn't because M'Benga's name appears under the category of "Fingerprints" but NOT under the category of DNA. So if the analysis is to be believed, he left behind no traces of DNA, old or new. However, maybe if they had done a different type of analysis, it would have suggested a different conclusion... or perhaps the technology for detailed of an analysis doesn't exist until the TNG era.

I wonder if the Doc and Chapel will get together at some point?

Hmm. One wonders if the people who now have a problem with M'Benga murdering Rah also have a problem with Data attempting to murder Fajo? And if those self same people who have a problem with Pike's leniency in the face of M'Benga's unprovable crime also have a problem with Worf not being drummed out of Starfleet and/or court martialed for his murder of Duras in front of three Starfleet eye witnesses by an outraged Picard, as opposed to the savagely bowel liquefying, wrist slap dressing down that he gave him instead?

One can only wonder.



@Moldorf
Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 2:41pm (UTC -5)
@Bryan

"My thought is that M'Benga's DNA would appear twice. The decayed DNA would reveal that in his testimony M'Benga had neglected to mention a much earlier interaction with Rah. An investigator would then pursue this line of questioning: why is your three-year-old DNA on Rah's knife? Why did you fail to disclose this previous interaction?

M'Benga might be able to lie his way out of the discrepancy, but his credibility would be in question. I suppose he could claim that he tangled with Rah during a covert operation (juiced up on Protocol 12, of course), but, given the admiralty's interest in making the ex-general feel welcome, that claim would be quickly countered by whomever was in charge of M'Benga's missions.

I didn't catch that about Rah's fingerprints. Very interesting, indeed."


M'Benga was wearing gloves. How would his DNA end up on the knife? In any case, I'm pretty sure that given his abundant medical knowledge and penchant for transporter innovation M'Benga would have no trouble getting rid of any traces of his DNA and would've known to do so.

Starfleet never knew about his involvement as the Butcher of J'Gal. The last thing they could've even possibly heard about was that he was approached by his Andorian friend about the mission and turned him down. All of them were killed before he took the mission and had no chance to report anything.

Rah wouldn't have told the truth. Not only didn't he know the truth, he was a coward and was trying to avoid prosecution and execution, so he went along with the narrative that already circulated.

Whoops, I did not mean to imply that I think Dr M'Benga faked evidence or DNA, only that he provided it at a very convenient time (for the script). And then him or some undisclosed person stuck the knife into the Klingon. (Planted it is probably the wrong choice of words.)

Examining a small part of the script:

40:50
Dr M'Benga: "I don't need to know any more than I already do. Now, please go away."

The Klingon spouts some bullshit about how that he thinks him and the doctor are alike and tells the doctor not to let his pain cloud his judgment.

41:28
Dr M'Benga, holding hands together as if in prayer: *Please* leave me alone.

At this point, I really think that he should have called security. He did ask him twice, and I felt like it was very sincere.

43:49
Dr M'Benga opens the case with the knife, and says to the Klingon "why couldn't you leave me alone?"

The Klingon blabs some more, the doctor verbally defends himself:

44:04
Dr M'Benga: "I said no"

At this point the Klingon has his hand on the doctor, and they cut to the blur of the frosted glass and a fight ensues. After watching this, I honestly don't think I can fault the doctor for his actions - if you're being attacked by a Klingon, you have to do what you have to do. But I think it was lazy and sloppy scripting (directing too).

This reminds me of the film A Clockwork Orange, where a widower is a confronted with the man who murdered his wife. If I recall, the widower was unapologetic about what happened next.

@Quincy

I don't remember all the relevant plot details of those episodes from which one might argue what the difference is. One important consideration that may explain why most viewers would want to condemn M'Benga but not Wolf or Data is that Duras and Fajo are unambiguously framed as despicable people whom we, the audience, would feel some satisfaction or relief in their deaths. This is not so for Rah, or is both portrayed and framed more ambiguously, and I think there is room to have some empathy for the person he has become, and even see him in a positive light. Again, this due to the way he is portrayed by the actor and the absence of any narrative framing tricks that would cast him in an obviously negative light, and not due to how severely the viewer judges him or is able to forgive his past crimes.

@Bok R'Mor and others

Ok, thanks for the clarification regarding 'Chapel'. Honestly I'm not sure it's needed since if we do that we'll need to put quotes around other characters' names, Uhura for example.
In my mind I've divorced SNW from TOS as far as canon goes because really, almost nothing fits. The relationships between the characters and the way said characters behave do not sync at all with TOS, so as far as I'm concered it's sort of a non-canonical version of these characters, as if I'm reading a Star Trek novel or something.
Once I do that, the show becomes much more fun to watch.

@Lynos
'Honestly I'm not sure it's needed since if we do that we'll need to put quotes around other characters' names, Uhura for example.'

It's not important; just an idiosyncratic habit. I'd probably do the same for 'Uhura' out of consistency, as well, as she's also nothing like TOS Uhura.

My view is that Jess Bush's character and portrayal could have just as easily been a new character. The actress and the character she plays are intrinsic to the show and works well. I've said the same of Paul Wesley as NuKirk too: Wesley should have been brought on board as a different, entirely new character. He works fine - he just doesn't work as James Kirk for me.

You are right that I am a bit of a hypocrite here because I don't give Anson Mount as Pike and Rebecca Romijn as Una the same treatment. That's partly because Pike and Una were only in two and one TOS episodes respectively. Likewise M'Benga, who was only in two TOS episodes.

The jury is still out for Peck as Spock for me - I have more of a problem with the writers and producers portraying Spock as the butt of all jokes, or as a clown, or as an emotionally incontinent adolescent than with Peck's portrayal per se.

Your point is taken!

"he wounded are beamed in for emergency care "

This gets at one of the sillier things about Star Trek going back to TOS.

A transporter functions by disintegrating a person at the origin site and rematerializing them from their stored pattern at the destination.

There is no reason why a transporter would have to rematerialize anyone with their injury in tact (or disease, or really any affliction). It;s also why episodes like TNG's "Ethics" didn't work. It's hard to get excited about fabricating a functional spinal cord when the transporter already does that every time it's used.

Another TNG episode, "Unnatural Selection", shows exactly how this technology ought to be properly utilized.

A transporter-like chamber really should be the key surgical tool of any sickbay. Essentially the contraption from the film "Elysium".

@theBgt

“I found nothing boring with the TNG characters who did not murdered anyone in cold blood and get away with it.”

Oh you mean like when Worf killed Duras? Tell me again what penalty Worf paid for that. A reprimand? Wow, what a harsh punishment for committing murder. “Hey, Worf. Even though you just killed a guy, we’re not going to court martial you, give you a dishonorable discharge, demote you, or even suspend you from duty. Nope, just go back to your station.”Seems like the fans of TNG and DS9 are wearing nostalgia glasses. Cause while they’re so busy trashing NuTrek, they seem to have forgotten what OldTrek was actually like. I’m not saying the new shows are great. Discovery and Picard were awful. But let’s not pretend TNG and DS9 didn’t have problems. SNW has given its human characters something half the humans on Berman Trek never had. Depth. Chakotay was a block of wood. Mayweather was a mannequin. Even Ortegas, my least favorite character on SNW, seems more like an actual person after 2 seasons than Chakotay did after 7.

@Jax Don't go there, it wrecks about half of all ST episodes if you think that way.

Not that you're wrong. There's no reason, in principle, for Star Trek people not to be "backed up" on the equivalent of an external drive (screw that clear the buffer nonsense) regularly and then restored when needed. And "Unnatural Selection" indeed opened a Pandora's Box that no ST series ever followed up on.

A long time ago, I'd dreamed up and partially developed/written a (Season 1 or 2 era) DS9 story revolving around this idea. The gist was one of those random Gamma Quadrant species comes by. A Starfleet/Bajoran contingent beams over (the docking tech was not compatible) to welcome them. A bunch of these aliens beam over, have a blast at Quark's and seem cool. Then one of the Bajoran security people who had been on the initial visit to the alien ship is killed by other station hoodlums unrelated to these folks. He's tossed over the railing from the upper level of the promenade and his neck is snapped. Friendly GQ aliens see this and quickly use their transporter (and his pattern from his previous visit) to restore the guy to life. Because, you see, these GQ people practice serial immortality via the transporter. Fine for them, but for the restored Bajoran fellow, this creates conflict with Bajoran religious beliefs and heavy drama ensues on the station. Spoiler alert, aliens made to leave and the Bajoran dies for real (suicide or killed by Bajoran mob, I don't think I'd decided).

And then of course, you should be able to create as many copies of Riker (or Boimler) as you wanted.

Imagine if you were beamed to sickbay, with a horrific injury still intact and got all fixed up.

Later, your now healthy self is beamed down to a planet as part of an away team, and you rematerialize and suddenly have that horrific injury again because the transporter technician forgot to clear the "injured" pattern.

@Jax

I don't think it would be too hard to come up with a legitimately sci-fi sounding concept of why transporters can't cure disease.

Starting with the fact that a "stored pattern" would be incredibly complex. Imagine pinpointing the location of every single atom and subatomic particle of the body. That would mean each subatomic particle along with their quantum states (already huge number of variables). As far as I'm aware current work on quantum teleportation has only shown experimentally teleportation of entangled, unknown complex quantum states, so in fictionalized terms the "pattern" of a human body or even a single cell that a computer in Trek stores could be said to be a cohesive, entangled and possibly indefinable whole. Each piece of information dependent on another.

So even if a functional human spine could be synthesized, transporting something it in isolation from the rest of the body would arguably be far more difficult than transplanting it surgically. I know "it's too complicated" doesn't lend itself to exciting sci-fi but here it would likely be the most realistic explanation.

@Balok

"The closing shot is Biobed#2 screen red "System Alert" suggesting a hidden Gorn infection lurking inside, eluding to the imminent Pike/Kirk Gorn invasion."

How do you know this? I thought the "System Alert" was either:
[1] a suggestion that maybe M'Benga was storing the Ambassador in the pattern buffer for some reason, or
[2] an analogy/allegory for the ongoing conflict inside M'Benga's psyche.

In my head canon the transporter simply looks for human cells, copies them atom by atom, and then moves them to the new location. It doesn't look for what is broken or wrong. That's why it will filter out germs (bio filter) but not damage. If your spine is cut in half it won't notice.

And yes that's silly, but it's sci-fi not sci-fact. Not all science has to match up perfectly with our understanding of physics.

Even storing a cell's "patterns" in the computer isn't very scientific, since the Heisenberg uncertainty principle says we can't know both the position and momentum of subatomic particles at the same time with any degree of accuracy. Particles simply don't have well-defined positions, movements, energies. And storing and copying someone's "patterns" is one thing, altering them is quite another.

@Lynos: "Why are people suddenly writing 'Chapel' instead of Chapel? What did I miss?"

I didn't originate it, but I dig it--and my interpretation is that it's because she's a good, well-written, well-acted character, but she bears little resemblance to the Nurse Chapel we knew in TOS. [After writing that, I see @Bok R'Mor explained it pretty much the same way. I would add that I do think Uhura is close enough to the TOS version not to need the quotes, but YMMV.]

@Quincy: "That fight was straight out of the nursing home. Two toothless paper tigers arguing over who's going to get the last cup of vanilla pudding. Yet, we're supposed to believe these guys were ruthless killers?"

They're ruthless killers, but not stylized assassins with acrobatic martial arts moves. Which is much more how I prefer it. Their primary roles were as espionage agents, not badasses.

@Cynic: "Don't go there, it wrecks about half of all ST episodes if you think that way.
Not that you're wrong. There's no reason, in principle, for Star Trek people not to be 'backed up' on the equivalent of an external drive (screw that clear the buffer nonsense) regularly and then restored when needed."

Agreed. We have to just accept that it sends you from one place to another exactly the same, and that's it. I did find "Tuvix" really interesting, but that has to be treated as a fluke you can't control or replicate.

SNW is quintessential Trek and half of you are too rigid to see.

Is Jammer's review system for SNW based on the 24th century warp scale? You can never reach 4 / 4 (lest you wish to turn into a salamander). How else to explain the unsightly, shoddily written nostalgia-fest that was Picard S3 having a higher cumulative score than the best season of Trek in 20+ years.

I will say every instance of transporter shenanigans convinces me more and more that transporters are just mass murder devices. Your body is ripped apart atom by atom every transport, and just because a clone gets put together at the other end doesn't mean your consciousness goes with it!

4/4 for me. I'm so used to modern TV tension being built on trivial things, or by one sentence never being uttered that would completely resolve the dispute. And I'm also used to writers making the choice clear by the end of the episode.

This episode is full fledged grownup stuff, forcing my sense of justice to have an all out brawl with my sense of mercy and forgiveness. Kudos to the writers for never really falsifying Rah's attempts at redemption, even as its origins become suspect.

And also, extra appreciation for using Ortega's normally carefree, easygoing personality to convey the serious conflict at play. And definitely to sets and lighting for the MASH scenes. They just FEEL right.

@DogFace
"Oh you mean like when Worf killed Duras??

Worf killed Duras as part of internal Klingon conflict. Part of Worf's character (a warrior first and foremost, let's not forget) was always that he occupied these two worlds at the same time. It should be noted that the fight with Duras was not on the enterprise or on any federation of starfleet territory, but on Duras's ship. Duras is also an unambiguous bad guy and murderer and he taunts Worf. I am not saying what Worf did was fine and was the "evolved" thing to do, but I think the way Picard handled it was appropriate. The situation was clear and that's the choice that the captain made.
It should also be noted there was not ambivilance at the end of the episode and Worf did not try to hide anything. He was ready for harsh punishment if need be.

Here we have a starfleet doctor who stabs a Klingon emissary to death, and in his own sickbay no less (the place where he's supposed to save lives), and shows almost zero remorse about any of it (since the episode doesn't want to make it clear it was self defence, we can't really assume that it was), and then is flaccidly "interrogated" by his ineffcetual, undecisive captain.

The smiliarities are only very skin deep.

@Bryan
Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:01pm (UTC -5)
"@Quincy I don't remember all the relevant plot details of those episodes from which one might argue what the difference is. One important consideration that may explain why most viewers would want to condemn M'Benga but not Wolf or Data is that Duras and Fajo are unambiguously framed as despicable people whom we, the audience, would feel some satisfaction or relief in their deaths. This is not so for Rah, or is both portrayed and framed more ambiguously, and I think there is room to have some empathy for the person he has become, and even see him in a positive light. Again, this due to the way he is portrayed by the actor and the absence of any narrative framing tricks that would cast him in an obviously negative light, and not due to how severely the viewer judges him or is able to forgive his past crimes."



But those aren't the objections they were raising. If that's what they meant they should say that instead of what they actually said.

One person was upset that M'Benga played judge, jury, and executioner. My question is was he similarly upset that Data attempted (and Worf succeeded) playing judge, jury, and executioner? It's a legitimate question. You can hand wave it away by claiming that Rah was depicted as more redeemable than the others, but this person only mentioned Rah as being interesting, not redeemable in a minor part of his post, so clearly he was mostly focused on the judge, jury, and executioner aspect. That's what set him off.

Another person was upset, but didn't tell us why he was upset, other than that he didn't like what happened in the last 10 minutes of episode. We can only speculate why.

Yet another person just had a problem with "NuTrek" and some of its reoccurring dark themes that he thought this episode exemplified. There's no need to speculate further. They either didn't see the earlier darker themes of TNG, TOS, DS9, etc. or wouldn't honestly acknowledge them if they had, at least, that's been my experience arguing with such people.

These are the people I'm talking about. There are more like that, but I won't bother mentioning them. The ones I looked at said nothing about the issues you were concerned with and I have no need or desire to speculate how they may, or may not, have arrived at those issues in any myriad number of ways that they somehow failed to mention.




@SlackerInc
Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:48am (UTC -5)

"They're ruthless killers, but not stylized assassins with acrobatic martial arts moves. Which is much more how I prefer it. Their primary roles were as espionage agents, not badasses."



No.

They're not killers at all.

They're very clearly geriatric actors who couldn't even convince themselves of the scene they were acting.

If you've ever seen a real fight, especially one where someone was actually killed, you should know that.

No one needs acrobatics. Choreography comes in all shapes and sizes. With the proper team you can make a more convincing fight without Ang Lee style acrobatics.

The one guy that worked for the company worked as the head of security and as an assassin for the company. If he was unable to handle himself in a fight he should have picked another vocation. That scene was utterly ridiculous.

And what's even more ridiculous is on a show with one of the most interesting sci fi treatments in modern television media of the concept of free will vs determinism all you want to talk about is this stupid "fight" scene.

That's telling.

@Lynos

You say the similarities are only skin deep, but your own description shows the opposite. M’Benga showed no remorse over killing someone. Neither did Worf. M’Benga was questioned by his captain and then given a pass. So was Worf. A reprimand? Big Whoop. Picard let him resume his duties like nothing happened. As for the location of where the killings took place, what difference does that make? Would it have better if M’Benga killed the Klingon in Engineering? I would argue that what Worf did was worse. He went looking for Duras in order to kill him whereas M’Benga hadn’t planned on killing Rah and even tried to get him to leave. And don’t kid yourself. Worf didn’t kill Duras as part of an internal Klingon conflict or because it was part of his warrior character. It was revenge and nothing more. Yes, Worf was ready to face the consequences of his actions. So was M’Benga. Both he and Worf lucked out that their captains didn’t call for serious disciplinary action.

I thought discovery was so annoying with so much unresolved PTSD. Turns on there’s a bunch of it still on Strange New Worlds. I get it that it has to be there to cause drama. I can’t stand discovery but the complaint that everyone was unprofessional rings hypocritical now.

Except pike has FTSD

The issue is that these people are now committing crimes and it’s getting excused. DS9 introduces the darkness but I think it’s getting a little carried away. People can have a past and have baggage without needing to murder for retribution.

Also they don’t need to do a mutiny either and start a war with the Klingons. But I guess Michael had to be anointed savior so she had to cause a conflict that she alone could resolve.

As a pacifist generally I think MBenga was in the wrong. You don’t need retribution. That’s not justice.

The more this episode sits with me I’m increasingly disturbed by MBengas action. Chapel as well.

Star Trek is supposed to bring out the best in us. It shouldn’t be a showing people getting their behavior excused because they’ve had hard times. That’s kind of what’s wrong with society today. Every is blaming the system when they do fucked up shit.

Revising this episode rating to 2/4 stars.

"Worf was ready to face the consequences of his actions. So was M’Benga. Both he and Worf lucked out that their captains didn’t call for serious disciplinary action."

That depends if you think M'Benga was being entirely truthful in that he acted in self-defense, and that he didn't start the fight. Pike certainly seemed to take his word for it and hence, saw no need to take any disciplinary action. But we, the audience, know more than Pike knows. We also know how to read between the lines, apparently unlike Pike. Most people, myself included, think we should doubt M'Benga's and Chapel's testimony.

One alternative interpretation is that Pike actually was able to see through M'Benga's lies during their final talk, but decided to let the matter go. Even if this were so, however, I would argue it wasn't a matter of Pike letting him off easy with the implication that we, the audience, should follow Pike's lead and be lenient in our judgment of M'Benga as well. It's just that Pike had no evidence (at least none that he knew of) with which to assign blame to M'Benga. He cannot punish an officer based on a mere hunch. Pike here was acting appropriately as a Starfleet Captain but again, since we know a little more than Pike, and are not Starfleet Captains ourselves, our judgment is not as constrained and we can find fault where Pike could not.

Also an interesting tidbit about that final chat between Pike and M'Benga. M'Benga is able to look his captain straight in the eye and speak with conviction, "I didn't start the fight." Not once, but twice. Could it mean that he's really telling the truth? Or that he's such an excellent liar that even we, the audience, cannot detect even a trace of evasion or deception in how those lines are delivered?

To both questions I would answer no. When Pike asks the question, he is referring to the fight in sickbay, but when M'Benga answers the question he is providing a much broader answer. The "fight", in his mind, went all the way back to the war, where M'Benga took on a personal vendetta which "started" with Rah's brutal tactics during that war. And that is how M'Benga was able to simultaneously lie, and also speak with honest conviction.

@Bryan: "And what's even more ridiculous is on a show with one of the most interesting sci fi treatments in modern television media of the concept of free will vs determinism all you want to talk about is this stupid "fight" scene.
That's telling."

Oh, for god's sake. GMAFB with this nonsense. I'm going to have to send you my ophthalmologist bill for how hard you're making my eyes roll. YOU brought up this scene, and I responded to that. If you had brought up any of the scenes that addressed the issues of free will vs. "fate"/determinism, I would almost certainly have weighed in, as that is one of my favorite series of recent years.

As for "I didn't start the fight", your explanation is possible, but I think it's more likely that Rah started the fight in sickbay, but that doesn't necessarily excuse M'Benga escalating it to a fatal stabbing* instead of just scuffling as they had already done earlier.

*I do think it's interesting that there was never any part of the interrogation shown where M'Benga was questioned about what lifesaving measures he took right after the stabbing, given that Rah was literally already right in the middle of a Starfleet flagship high-tech sickbay.

So I didn’t comment on last episode but I really liked it. I’ve only seen 1 episode of lower decks and I hate it. But the crossover was fun - it was in the tradition of ‘goofy’ episodes but gave a new spin with the animation, was well acted, and Pike seemed ‘captain-like’. This episode, about the Klingon War PTSD, was everything terrible about Nu-trek. Completely un-earned, weird ret-con backstory, blatant copy of previous ST episodes without the writing to support the drama…just, ugh.

@SlackerInc

You know that that was Quincy's quote, not mine, right?

"I do think it's interesting that there was never any part of the interrogation shown where M'Benga was questioned..."

I think it's very interesting that he wasn't seen being formally questioned, period. That chat with Pike would have taken place after the official interrogation, and was completely off the record. This was partially done in the interests of time, but I also think it's revealing that they chose not to show any of that....because if they had, it would have painted M'Benga in an even worse light. You don't like my interpretation but I think it's much more poetic and thematically relevant that M'Benga speaks with that double meaning. A proper interrogation where there would be little room for such artful equivocation wouldn't have any this advantage.

@DogFace

What can I tell you. We can agree to disagree. I outlined the bulk of my reasoning for the argument. It's also a matter of feeling that cannot necesserilly be articulated through logical explanations. When watching Reunion, I feel that Worf is still a strafleet officer I can trust, even after what he did. When I watched this episode and the credits rolled, I immediatley changed my opinion regarding M'Benga and felt really disappointed and incredulous about his behaviour. And I like the character. But the episode is executed in such a way (writing, acting, editing, direction) where all I was left with is a deep distrust in M'Benga as a starfleet officer and as a doctor. I think that's what the writers were going for. But I think treating a main Trek character this way goes against the ethos of Trek.
Just my opinion.

@ThatERguy
"Star Trek is supposed to bring out the best in us. It shouldn’t be a showing people getting their behavior excused because they’ve had hard times. That’s kind of what’s wrong with society today. Every is blaming the system when they do fucked up shit."

Yes, yes and yes.

@Bryan
"But we, the audience, know more than Pike knows. "

That is one of the problems here and it's a script problem. When we, the audience, knows more than the captain does, it weakens his character. Imagibe if this episode was dome more from Pike's point of view. But Pike has been relegated to a supporting character role very early in the season and stayed there. The reasons may be due to real world reasons, but it's still a damn shame.

@SlackerInc
"I do think it's interesting that there was never any part of the interrogation shown where M'Benga was questioned about what lifesaving measures he took right after the stabbing, given that Rah was literally already right in the middle of a Starfleet flagship high-tech sickbay."

Ha. That is a very, very good point.

@ThatERGuy
" It shouldn’t be a showing people getting their behavior excused because they’ve had hard times. That’s kind of what’s wrong with society today. Every is blaming the system when they do fucked up shit."

Just throwing this out there. If somebody has PTSD, then that person is mentally ill. If a person got that mental illness while being in service to the state and the state didn't treat it properly, then one could say that the system is responsible. In other words, there is not bootstrapping yourself out of a serious mental illness.

@Lynos

"When we, the audience, knows more than the captain does, it weakens his character."

Not necessarily. There's a place for dramatic irony. It's required for intrigue and suspense. Why should captains be magically exempt?

"Imagine if this episode was done more from Pike's point of view."

That wouldn't happen though because de-centering Pike is part and parcel with this "featured character of the week" approach. You can't emphasize some POVs without de-emphasizing others. I also think that this is quite deliberately an intrigue-type plot where those elements would have been undermined if it were shown entirely from Pike's limited POV.

Just re-watched the episode and found it to better/more compelling on second viewing. Will revise my previous critique and say the episode does compare to some of the best in the franchise on the subject of war.

Still, as before, I wish there was some sort of breakthrough for any of the Starfleet characters who were part of the war. Number One mentions that everyone's path to forgiving is unique, and not linear, which is undoubtedly reasonable and true, but there was no progress toward such an end. To suggest that any one of Ortegas, Chapel, or M'Benga ought to have changed their feelings, even if a tad, may be quaint - admittedly, I may act similarly to them - but Trek of yore has offered examples of such a possibility (see Chief O'Brien in 'The Wounded,' or Captain Kirk in Star Trek VI). In short, then, I just wish the episode offered a sign that these characters were on a path toward healing.

@Booming

The writers aren’t innovative enough to think of new ways of dealing with psychological stresses other than the tired 21st century ways of passing blame on others.

Yes PTSD is real. And it’s devastating.

Does it excuse premeditated MURDER? Absolutely not. I really like Mbenga but I’m seriously starting to doubt his judgement. Between his daughter in the buffer allowing the ship to get infected, murder in the name of revenge, and making an illegal super serum, it’s no wonder he gets demoted before TOS.

Again I really find his acting compelling. I just find him lacking in judgement. Surely there are better ways to cope with the various stressors in his life than the way he has been shown to choose.

I know Star Trek doesn’t need to be sunbeams and daisies but this darkness is most unwelcome for a show normally designed to be aspirational.

I’m shocked jammer gave this 3.5/4. This episode will age poorly. I tend to think Mbenga will begin a downward spiral. After all that’s what rage, desire for revenge, and MURDER do to people.

This episode justifies MURDER.

What kind of a society allows that? Is this the Old Testament? Surely we are past that as a society by that point in the future. There’s no money. There’s replicators. But if you’re mad at someone just f*kn kill them.


MURDER.

Also, mental illness is no excuse for this behavior. People with PTSD who cannot handle their trauma need to be medicated and surely not in charge of a starship medical operations. I don’t see how he can be allowed to continue in this role.

He’s a doctor! As a doctor myself I’m appalled by his behavior. They need to address whether or both doctors in the future have the Hippocratic oath. He must not be allowed to get off scot free with murder. I will have lost all respect for Strange New Worlds if they brush this under the rug. I don’t think they will but if they do I will be joining the ranks of the rest of the hate-watchers.

M’Benga is unhinged.

Time stamps for sickbay conflict illustrate that the doctor tried to defuse the situation verbally.

40:50
Dr M'Benga: "I don't need to know any more than I already do. Now, please go away."

Rah speaks about how that he thinks the doctor and he are alike and tells the doctor not to let pain cloud his judgment.

41:28
Dr M'Benga, holding hands together as if in prayer: *Please* leave me alone.

[More talking from Rah, and some shouting.]

43:49
Dr M'Benga opens the case with the knife, and says to the Klingon "why couldn't you leave me alone?"

The Klingon blabs some more, the doctor verbally defends himself:

44:04
Dr M'Benga: "I said no"

On a careful rewatch, it's absolutely clear that Dr M'Benga verbally defended himself three or four times. I've been in close quarters fights that were similar, I understand how hard it can be to diffuse conflict with an aggressor.

"Please go away" is very clear. Rah puts his hand on the doctor before the fight starts. Honestly the only things you can fault the doctor for is not calling security earlier, or not grabbing a hypospray instead of a knife. But the direction was intentionally confusing, and I agree that the "have your cake and eat it too" approach does not serve the episode well.

*Or a phaser for that matter. I found the loud annoying Klingon to be so abrasive that I would not want to be in the same room with him for very long, and I wouldn't fault anyone for being nervous or ready to defend themselves. They reintroduced Sybok last season, I wish they would have fashioned the script around him instead.

@SlackerInc
"...Rah was literally already right in the middle of a Starfleet flagship high-tech sickbay."

Agreed, it makes no sense at all. Also it seemed like the Klingon was overweight, plus they're supposed to be very tough. I think he would be able to take a knife to the gut without instantaneous death. If they have tech like an organ regenerator, it seems a real stretch that he died on the floor of sickbay. (Unless they waited a few hours before telling the Captain, which brings the question, is there an autopsy? And by whom?)

You are excusing a doctor taking the life of another intentionally. As a doctor myself that is anathema to absolutely everything we stand for. He must be removed immediately.

How can the crew trust him ever again.

He has repeatedly shown awful judgement. They must address this grave act or the show becomes NuTrek condoning murder. PTSD is not an excuse.

Is already been shown Mbenga can beat him in hand to hand with submission. But his desire for revenge made him into a berserker. What an awful ending.

SNW wanted shock value and stooped mighty low to get it. Until this episode this was my favorite trek. Now I’m rethinking everything.

@Dirk

Sure, but "verbally defending" himself is one thing, and physically defending himself is another matter entirely. Just because Rah was being a nuisance who wouldn't go away when asked, even placing his hand on M'Benga's shoulder, doesn't mean that he initiated a physical alteration. Also this isn't just some random schmo who came outta no where and did this: this is a Starfleet Ambassador to whom some diplomatic courtesies are expected: such as maybe not coming to blows when he takes on certain liberties, or assumes more familiarity than others would.

For me, the turning point in M'Benga is when it goes from "please me alone" to "why couldn't you leave me alone?", at which point he's opening the dagger case...importantly, Rah hasn't made any physical contact with him yet...and a moment when the audience should read Rah's demeanour as imploring and pleading rather than as hostile will violent intent. It is at this point that M'Benga has reached the point of no return -- he intends to kill Rah no matter what Rah says or does, not because Rah has overstayed his welcome, but because he can no longer hold back his vengeful impulses. And in his mind, he did his due diligence: he gave Rah "fair warning" to turn away from this deadly fate. I really don't think that the audience is meant to think that such a warning excuses what follows.

Also, what complicates things is that it's not a simple matter of Rah bothering M'Benga in spite of his pleas to leave him alone. M'Benga also baits him with assaults to his character and conduct, in to which, the normal response is to defend himself, not to turn and leave. Even more significant than this, M'Benga reveals that he knows Rah's secret... which Rah thinks could harm his reputation if that secret ever go out. That's a HUGE revelation and not something he could walk out on right then. So I can't say I really blame Rah for sticking around to defend himself and try to persuade M'Benga in light of all the mixed messages he's receiving.

I think nuisance is totally the wrong word. Go visit a hospital and act like him and see what happens. They don't put up with that shit.

Also, if you're going to travel with diplomatic credentials, it's a good idea to actually act like a diplomat.

This exchange probably should have unfolded during their friendly spar earlier rather than in sickbay. However, the revelation that led to the escalation of drama was M'Benga's card to play, not Rah's. And it just so happens he played this card in sickbay. It looked like he was almost about to say what he knew during their spar, but delayed. Maybe because he didn't have the dagger with him, without which he couldn't bring about full closure? Either way, Rah didn't come to sickbay intending to stir up trouble so the analogy of the uncooperative dude barging into a hospital is completely blind to context.

Instead of protesting repeatedly in a futile way to be left alone by someone who obviously wasn't going to leave him alone, M'Benga could have simply left the room himself and cut the entire altercation short, or at least taken it somewhere where the likelihood of witnesses increases.

M'Benga could have backed down and backed away and tried to find 'Chapel' - or anyone else.

M'Benga could have called security. M'Benga could have even initiated an emergency transport for himself, based on what we have seen previously in SNW.

(Admittedly all this is easier said than done for most people, but M'Benga is supposedly a former highly trained special forces soldier, remember.)

Instead we see M'Benga carefully opening the box with the knife in it and shortly afterward Rah is lying on his back with the same knife embedded in his chest, dead (no back-up organs in this Klingon!).

Is there CCTV in sickbay?

As dumb as it sounds, they need to hire some actors to work as security guards. (And extras!) The Enterprise is supposed to have over 400 people on it, not 10. This script would not work on fully staffed shows/ships. A nearly deserted ship is needed to support the story.

I absolutely think that the doctor was not professional, and I agree he should have walked away. I've mentioned that he should have called security. I would be interested in hearing what @ThatERguy thinks. I'm not trying to excuse Dr M'Benga's behaviour; and I really think it's due to inexperienced writers, trying for shock value.

@Bok R'Mor
Sometime between Star Trek 3 and TNG they removed all the CCTV cameras, otherwise it would have destroyed a lot of TNG scripts!

@Bryan
You have a ton of good points, thank you for clarifying the episode. I could not stand this character, I find his personality immensely abrasive. Doubtless that coloured my perception. I think there was a good attempt to show TNG characters taking the high road as much as possible, and I don't feel that way AT ALL about nuTrek.

@ Bryan

"To both questions I would answer no. When Pike asks the question, he is referring to the fight in sickbay, but when M'Benga answers the question he is providing a much broader answer. The "fight", in his mind, went all the way back to the war, where M'Benga took on a personal vendetta which "started" with Rah's brutal tactics during that war. And that is how M'Benga was able to simultaneously lie, and also speak with honest conviction."

Correct.

I think most people are missing that THIS is the point of the episode. The . . . arbitrariness of saying "it was okay because we were at war but it's not okay now." The artificiality, or fiction if you will, of proclaiming the social construct of a "declared state of war" makes any difference. When in a very real sense, if Dak'rah deserved it then, he deserves it now.

It's a mediation on the primal nature of experiencing what M'Benga experienced on that planet vs. the thin veneer of civilization and how far it holds and whether it is even rational to think of it as so and even if so, where the line is. M'Benga arrived at an answer for himself. It is for us to debate it. This is a topic explored in other war fiction, but never in Star Trek quite like this before.

It's not an episode about PTSD at all.

It's not "enlightened future human" as we expect from our Star Trek protagonists, but that's the point. THAT'S how bad the war was for M'Benga and Chapel, and to a lesser extent, Ortegas.

. . .

In the exact same setup--exact--would Nog have knifed Weyoun?

Would not surprise me.

@Dirk

Sure, anytime~ The episode at least grants plenty of room to perceive Rah either as sympathetic, despicable or any shade in-between... and for what it's worth, I agree that emphasizing the humanity and benevolence of its main characters is a TNG staple that would wane by the time we reached Nu-Trek. And that is tendency I have sorely missed.

[[You are excusing a doctor taking the life of another intentionally. As a doctor myself that is anathema to absolutely everything we stand for. He must be removed immediately. ]]

Yep, and M'Benga would agree it is anathema to who he is.

However, the person he killed was the Klingon Eichmann.

So, he has to deal with the fact that the other option was to let a monster go unpunished and live a life of luxury, claiming to be a man of peace.

@ThatERguy - I don't think the show is *condoning* murder. I think it's just a thing that happened, and moral judgement is in the eye of the beholder. Much the same as Janeway murdering Tuvix, or Data attempting to murder Fajo, it's left to the viewer to decide if it was right or wrong.

O'Brien murdered his cellmate over a piece of bread. Does that not count because it was only in his mind? It was real as far as he was concerned.

Two and half stars. Well executed and acted but it also feels like a retread and remix of past Trek material. In short, there’s nothing truly fresh or great here.

The good: Always glad to see Clint Howard. And a return to traditional post-1979 Klingon prosthetic makeup (though it clashes visually with the Discovery pilot flashback) in the ambassador. Finally, the story builds some tension toward the end.

The bad and the meh: there’s a thin line between paying homage to a franchise’s past and stealing from it because the writers are too lazy to come up with anything new. This episode feels more like the latter to me.

Jammer’s comment that this story “shows how the episodic structure allows Trek to basically be anything it wants” is a nice way of saying this series is no less tonally erratic than other recent Trek shows.

Jammer mentions the echoes of Star Trek VI and DS9 but I think he neglects a key difference: Those shows earned their payoffs richly from years of stories, while this one drops a DS9/ST 6 story onto an undercooked Discovery plotline and trusts our vague sense of familiarity to carry it.

Star Trek VI built on decades of consistent TOS characterization and clever Cold War allegory to pack a surprising punch. It’s a bit dated today but still plays well.

DS9 had little allegory but more richly textured and consistent universe building. It hit an early dramatic peak with the season one story of a Cardassian war criminal and gradually built a fictional war-torn arc throughout the series.

This episode builds on…nothing. It has no allegory and no coherent universe to build on. It would work better had SNW taken the time to build its own Klingon adversary storylines. But the Klingons don’t appear in SNW or Disco as consistent baddies ala TOS. So this all comes off to me as empty, superficial atmosphere that feels plodding and unmoving, with extra helpings of cognitive dissonance for anyone who knows prior incarnations of the Trek franchise.

The lack of transition and foreshadowing building to the final act reveals is characteristic of recent Trek’s erratic storytelling masked as dramatic reveals. There’s no narrative consistency to these stories. And this particular one has nowhere interesting to go: A mysterious character like this ambassador can be either misunderstood or tortured, and we’ve seen every possible iteration on Trek from Kodos and Gorkon to Garak. Yawn.

whats worse

MBenga pre meditating a murder and trying to make it look like he was defending himself?

Or

CAPTAIN PIKE willing to cover it up and just act like the case was closed, nudge nudge wink wink I support my officers!

And, were either justifiable.

Dax and Task Force Grandpa murdered probably dozens of people. To be fair, though Sisko was a little grumpy about it.

Starships, Pirateships what's really the difference??

Oh and she probably did at least some mild cannibalism. Pre-meditated cannibalism.

@ThatERguy makes a valid point that physicians take the Hippocratic oath, so M'Benga should actually probably be held to a higher standard.

@Bryan: "You know that that was Quincy's quote, not mine, right?"

No, I definitely didn't or I would have properly credited him. My apologies. @Quincy, see the above comment for what was apparently supposed to be a reply to you.

@ThatERguy
"SNW wanted shock value and stooped mighty low to get it. Until this episode this was my favorite trek. Now I’m rethinking everything."

Modern Peak (lol) TV era: everything for the shock moments, even if nothing makes sense.

I have accepted the fact that SNW is just a brighter (in colors) DISCO with a better cast and with the benefit of some already established ST characters.
The writing is not good and I think it would be much much better if they could make more episodes, cause it would probably help them built this world better (as Trek fan pointed very well).


Shock.. you know what a good storytelling shock is?
(BSG SPOILER)
.
.
.
Dualla

Poor D...

@C.T. Phipps "Yep, and M'Benga would agree it is anathema to who he is."

Yeah, I think that's the bit that many people are missing. M'Benga's biggest personal issue with Rah. When he tells Rah, "I am the butcher of J'Gal.", it's not to brag. Rah forced him into the role, and he's clearly haunted by it. Rah's ruthlessness at J'Gal forced his hand. Rah is responsible for what M'Benga feels is broken in him.

And Rah's insistence in forcing his hand continues to present day. "Leave me alone!" isn't just a throw-away line. With Rah constantly in his face, he's being backed into a corner; forced into a choice he doesn't want to make.

It's not really meant to be justified. It's meant to be grey, or even dark. And that's what I like about it. Writers these days often don't have enough faith in their audience to accept a resolution that doesn't tie everything up with a tidy little bow. I don't think we're meant to just give M'Benga a pass for what he did. I think it's meant to be a sign of darker things to come.

And on M'Benga in general: When the series first began, it seemed like they were going to make him the "Zen" character. The master of emotional control. And they still feed that narrative, with him giving Spock the harp to help control his emotions, for example. But he clearly has issues. And this is often the case with real life "'Zen' personalities". They'll often seek out calm to subdue their emotional vulnerabilities. ANd in fiction, IMO, it makes for a more interesting character than someone who is an unflinching archtype.

This was... Grim, to say the least.

The episode actually manages to flip things on their head a fair bit; whereas the Federation usually preaches diplomacy and fellowship and the Klingon Empire represents honor, war, and conquest, here we see a Starfleet Medical Officer who served in a war zone and basically turned into Uma Thurman against a group of Klingon officers and a Klingon diplomat who is, in every sense of the word, a cowardly manipulator. It's disquieting and very much the antithesis of what ST and the Federation typically represents. That's actually a good thing though; not every member of Starfleet is a lawful good hero, and it would be ridiculous to assume as such.

This was one of the best episodes of the modern-day Star Trek series that have been released in my opinion (I didn't watch the crossover episode with Lower Decks yet as of writing this, things have been busy). I don't know what is going on this season, but Season 2 of Strange New Worlds has been consistently good so far. My issue with the show after Season 1 was that it was very uneven in general, with some bombs and some rockets, so to speak. It's nice to see that SNW has seemingly found its footing thus far; I've immensely enjoyed this season up to this point. And here I was predicting the show would be very short-lived after the first few episodes of the first season

Good stuff.

"Not every member of Starfleet is a lawful good hero, and it would be ridiculous to assume as such."

No one is claiming that every member of Starfleet deserves a medal, and morally grey or even villainous Starfleet officers aren't anything new. Starfleet admirals like Doughtery who twist the logic of "the needs of the many" to their own nefarious ends, or those that abuse their rank and power to go on a personal vendetta. Betrayers and turncoats who do as much damage as they can before and after they formally switch sides like and Eddington. Bona fide psychopaths like Sudo. Whatever the hell Seska is suppose to be. And so on.

We all remember those characters. I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't feel shortchanged by the way the story handled any of their arcs. Because the writers knew what to do with them, in which it was usually clear to the audience that we should be frowning upon their misdeeds and they would either receive their comeuppance or they would have a redemptive arc: sometimes with a combination of both, such as in the case of Sudo.

From a storytelling POV, I don't think what M'Benga did is problematic in and of itself, and it certainly breaks no rules of plausibility that a character like him exists. It's just that it would make for more satisfying television if we got a more decisive conclusion rather than uncomfortably leaving everything hanging with a half-assed "you decide, audience!"

At the very least, M'Benga's arc is begging for a proper denouement that legitimizes the gravity of what happened, whether he comes clean and boldly faces the consequences of his actions rather than cowardly hiding between half-truths, false legends, and taking advantage of the lack of evidence to continue on like nothing happened. OR: maybe has a change of heart in which he shows true genuine remorse with a redemptive arc, quite poetically, like the man he killed. Perhaps he'll mange to sidestep the full moral or legal ramifications -- again, much like Rah -- but at least it won't all be for nothing from a storytelling standpoint. Then, at least some character growth would come from it. And from the viewer's POV, that's often just enough.

I’m gonna watch this episode one more time and try to prove to myself it’s not the worst one in the series. The ending really guts an otherwise great episode.

I’m starting to be annoyed with these episodes have giant unearned secret startling reveals. Still loving SNW and I hope this was only a temporary hiccup.

Alternate Episode Title:

Under the cloak of premeditated first degree murder

@ThatERguy

It is ok, you don't have to burn your brain with reruns in order to like it :)
Take it as it is, a better version of Disco :D

@Booming
Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 5:04am (UTC -5)

"I think the data scientist in me is having a seizure..."



Have you been following the data fraud fallout from Harvard's Francesca Gino and now Stanford's Marc Tessier-Lavigne?

Gino: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Tm3Yx4HWI
Lavigne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHfVZ5rvxqA


The lack of consequences, especially for Lavigne was rather disturbing. What's going on in academia?

Now we have some questionable reports on a room temperature superconductor coming out of South Korea. Most physicists seem fairly skeptical, but nothing's blown up yet. In fact, I think I read there was a replication. While I'll keep my fingers crossed that it's a real phenomenon, I won't be holding my breath.

A war story with sci fiction trappings. If you're into war stories maybe you'd like this episode. I simply didn't care.
I like Pike. I like Spock. I like the idea of Uhura, though this portrayal of her hasn't grown in me. I like Carol Kane and her usual wackiness. That's about it. The other characters simply aren't interesting.
Mohawk girl is bland. Chapel is a homewrecker. Security girl is one dimensional. Una is stoic and Sam Kirk, why is he even there? They could all die in a shuttle accident and I wouldn't care.

@SlackerInc
Tue, Aug 1, 2023, 12:37am (UTC -5)

"Oh, for god's sake. GMAFB with this nonsense. I'm going to have to send you my ophthalmologist bill for how hard you're making my eyes roll. YOU brought up this scene, and I responded to that. If you had brought up any of the scenes that addressed the issues of free will vs. "fate"/determinism, I would almost certainly have weighed in, as that is one of my favorite series of recent years."

"No, I definitely didn't or I would have properly credited him. My apologies. @Quincy, see the above comment for what was apparently supposed to be a reply to you."





How the hell did your brain fart so hard that you forgot who you were talking to? lmao! I hope you lit a match!

Point stands. I only used the clip to illustrate what was lacking in this episode. That's literally what it reminded me of. I didn't expect anyone to even care about this clip, let alone actually defend it. I didn't initially mention the show in the same breath as that clip because I was ashamed that it was a part of such a good show. If you had been the one who brought it up, I would've said yeah, $#!%y clip, but did you see the rest of the show?

@Quincy
"Have you been following the data fraud fallout from Harvard's Francesca Gino and now Stanford's Marc Tessier-Lavigne?"
No, I actually never heard of them but giving it a quick look. She is on administrative leave and I doubt she will recover from that. Seems like they are already looking into other studies of her. I don't know how it works with tenure in the US but I would assume that she either steps down on her own or is fired/put on indefinite leave. Her career is obviously over.
The other guy already stepped down in disgrace.

"Now we have some questionable reports on a room temperature superconductor coming out of South Korea."
I'm following that, too. There are apparently two other teams close to it but who knows.
I still remember a big case a while back from South Korea. There is a Netflix doc about it "King of clones". I'm always puzzled why people manipulate their data. If it becomes a successful study then people will try to replicate it which means that sooner or later they will find out or the scientist will be forced to replicate it. Maybe it is like with people who do Ponzi schemes. First you cheat a little to be more successful and then you have to cheat more to cover up the earlier cheating. The stress of that alone would kill me.

"What's going on in academia?"
People. Some people cheat, in science, business, everywhere.

Here, about the study and the guy that kicked off that entire autism vaccination nonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc

@Cody B Oh I see no worries..Ididn't mean to nitpick yourwording was just curious

Didn't anyone else wish this had some strange new world or anomaly or alien in it--at least as a subplot??

@Leif staying true to his mission. Gotta respect that on some level.

@Bok R'Mor (and others)
"whereas here the writers and producers clearly endorse M’Benga’s (and ‘Chapel’s’ and Pike’s) actions."

Do they? Specifically what aspects of the episode makes you draw that conclusion? The lack of a moralizing speech? Something else? I didin't read the episode as an endorsement of M'Benga's actions, more like a "this is what happened and we understand why."

I don't think we had "moral grayness" on this ep. We had writing cowardness and teen trek being teen trek.

Rah did horrible things, but now is doing important work for peace. But teeneger crew is not in the mood to act accordingly, and it is not like Pike is gonna leave his pans to, I don't know, be Captain and enforce shit anyway, so everybody is free to just pout.

But ok. I still could go on with it had M'Benga DECIDED to kill the guy. Like happened on House MD (if you know, you know). But no. M'Benga decided nothing. It was just this super forced accidental fight. And it's not the case of "M'Benga did something wrong" — not even with a question mark in the end, because they spent the entire episode pre-making a case for being right to kill the guy.

I don't think I'm gonna be around SNW for much longer.

And let's not forget to point out Spock is completely demoted to supporting character, eh? Well, how could he not be? We can't have a voice for logic, reason and all this boring stuff in the way of our teen stories.

Am I the only one that found our Klingon character to be so antithetical to Klingonness that it ruined the whole episode for me? I know the episode was about Doc Joe but it felt like there was a huge piece missing from the episode centering on the character of the ambassador. Something more was needed in the story to justify Mbengas actions in my eyes.

Also he needs to take some martial arts classes cause I don't buy him as a deadly killing machine at ALL.

I think Dukat was done a great disservice. The scene of him losing his daughter is one of the greatest and most emotional scenes in Star Trek. Dukat could have gone out in this episode on a high note. Not that he was redeemed, but he could have been killed. Or he could have been taken to a Starfleet prison or mental institution. That way if they really wanted to revisit Dukat they could have, showing him as a broken man who just doesn't care anymore.
Instead we get this nonsense about him being evil all along, starting a cult, and being in league with the Kai and the Pagh Wraiths, and occasionally acting as if the last two years never happened.

Let me say that, overall, I thought this was a good but not great episode. But contrary to popular opinion, I think Pike is really the villain of this episode.

I'm really troubled about M'Benga killing the Ambassador and then lying about it to Pike. As a Starfleet officer, his behavior is at best conduct unbecoming an officer, at worst a cold blooded murder of a civilian. I don't think his trauma/PTSD adequately justifies his action.

As a coward without honor, it would have been better (but yes a trope) for Ra to commit suicide, thereby regaining his honor.

And Pike's 'Oh dear someone may want to look into this and that will delay me making my spag bol' is infuriating. His duty was to get the Ambassador safely to his destination and he failed miserably. The murder of a diplomat is generally a BFD, here it gets a sigh and a so sad, too bad.

My biggest gripe with this episode is Pike's insistence that those personally traumatized by Ra's actions attend dinner with him. Yes, let's have the victims break bread with their abusers, said no one who knows anything about PTSD/trauma ever.

If the franchise wanted to be true to the Federation principles, Pike would be be held as responsible as M'Benga and face some serious consequences. Or perhaps, like so often in the real world, the whole event would swept under the rug to avoid embarrassment. In the SNW franchise, it will be ignored unless it's needed to explain the M'Benga character leaving the series at some point.

One final point about difficulty with

Whilst I’ve enjoyed most of SNW, I really didn’t enjoy this one. Firstly I don’t find it easy to understand what M’Benga is saying and that’s more the tone of his voice than his accent. Secondly I found the Klingon Rah too warm and human. Probably the least Klingon like Klingon in the history of Trek. Despite being a coward bringing a message of peace, I find it hard to believe that his fundamental personality would have shifted to such an outlier of a Klingon personality.

The plot reminded me a reminded me a bit of Les Miserables (where the protagonist was a murderer turned good and still being pursued for him crime despite having had a complete change of heart, not exactly the same case for the coward Rah but the principle is the same).

Two plot holes were nagging at me:

1) Constant long distance bombardment was going on between the two armies was going on at a distance and yet somehow, although its never shown, somehow a souped-up M’Benga was able to cross over the the defence perimeter of the other side, break into HQ and take down the leaders of the central command.

2) M’Bengas degree of PTSD was so bad that it provoked such an extreme reaction in him that it resulted in ambiguous murder. Someone with such a degree of PTSD would more likely not be fit and functional to serve as a ships doctor both before and after the incident.

When I contrast M’Bengas to Unas candour about her identity as a genetically enhanced Illyrian and the principles that she stands for in the court case, I see a chasm in the two characters and what starfleet officers represent and I have very little respect for M’Bengas character as a result.

In summary, whilst I know that most reviewers here rated this one higher. I couldn’t get into the suspension of disbelief enough to enjoy it and I found its attempt to be a darker toned episode lacking.

The only reason I'm remotely buying Pike's reaction here is because DNA evidence of other Klingon's that Rah claimed to have killed were found on the knife. It would be really difficult for me to believe that Pike would figure out who actually killed those Klingons. Therefore, Pike has plausible deniability about what actually happened, because the evidence supports Rah brought that knife to Sickbay. The directing of the scene also shows M'Bengas opening the box and stepping away without touching the knife. If you factor in Rah facing shame from his cowardice being exposed, it isn't implausible that he saw the knife and lunged for it in a moment of desperation. I think M'Bengas created the scenario, and just let it play out. With that said, Pike should have relieved his Doctor from duty after that final scene. He clearly wasn't fit for his role.

@Hat

Pike's "plausible deniability" is my preferred interpretation as well. He suspects something is amiss but he has no way of putting the pieces together himself, and has no evidence by which to scrutinize M'Benga any further than he already has. As for the idea that Rah lunged for the knife to try to get the jump on M'Benga, yeah, that's not entirely implausible, just really unlikely. The direction clearly wants the audience to hold open the possibility for that or else they would have made things less ambiguous. However, based upon what we ARE shown, I don't find that idea very convincing.

Wow, in my absence I missed this gem from Booming, normally a voice of measured reason:

"I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level) and did have a look... it is almost like a case study in what not to do."

If you had any respectable association with a university, much less "Oppenheimer level", you would have experience in how to treat someone who is showing effort that is misguided, yet also obviously motivated. Slackerinc was off-base in his numbers game, but also obvious to any normal human being reading it was that he was having a fucking BLAST messing with the numbers. That doesn't render his conclusions any more correct or valid, but it does present an opportunity to demonstrate a bit of character.

Or in Booming's case, a glaring lack of it.

@Narissa
"I mostly do quantitative data analysis at a very, VERY elite university (Oppenheimer level) and did have a look... it is almost like a case study in what not to do."
Oy vey... ok German humor might be famously bad but I thought it was at least recognizable.

The problem with SlackerInc is that I know stuff he wrote on another forum. That strongly influences my behavior towards him.

Excellent episode.

Moral complexity & ambiguity is the soul of true drama.

I enjoyed this episode and its meditation on the horror of war--and its moral ambiguity. I came away thinking M'Benga killed Rah in cold blood, but the episode cleverly leaves that unclear by staging the fight behind frosted glass. One of the very few episodes this season with rewatch value.

Wow, I missed this one...

@Hat

"The only reason I'm remotely buying Pike's reaction here is because DNA evidence of other Klingon's that Rah claimed to have killed were found on the knife. It would be really difficult for me to believe that Pike would figure out who actually killed those Klingons. Therefore, Pike has plausible deniability about what actually happened, because the evidence supports Rah brought that knife to Sickbay. The directing of the scene also shows M'Bengas opening the box and stepping away without touching the knife. If you factor in Rah facing shame from his cowardice being exposed, it isn't implausible that he saw the knife and lunged for it in a moment of desperation."

Interesting. I hadn't thought of the DNA reveal in that light. I thought they showed that to prove to Pike that M'Benga was indeed the Butcher of J'Gal.

"I think M'Benga created the scenario, and just let it play out."

Well, he pleaded with him leave twice. He also asked Rah why he came to him... my cut is that Rah knew that M'Benga really knew what went on in that battle and he needed to take steps to ensure that his little secret didn't get out, especially when M'Benga revealed to him that HE was the Butcher of J'Gal. It all started at the dinner, when Rah - after learning Doc was at the battle - physically grabbed M'Benga's arm when he was leaving. Keeping his secret was very important to him.

"With that said, Pike should have relieved his Doctor from duty after that final scene. He clearly wasn't fit for his role."

Don't agree at all. You don't fire someone for acting in self-defense.

I thought this was a very powerful episode, and very well done.

The only thing I thought was kind of put in there for the plot to advance was getting the veterans of the Klingon war at the table with Rah. Putting Rah in contact with those involved really doesn't show or mean much of anything if nothing happens, but it's certainly a tinderbox waiting for a match.

And yet another Pike WTF...

PIKE: "if it got away from you somehow, you could talk to me.

I'd be on your side. We'd work it out."

We'd work it out? If M'Benga killed the ambassador with malice they'd "work it out"??? Really, exactly how are you going to do that Captain?

What I saw, through that tinted glass, was Rah grabbing M'Benga first and then the struggle began. It is not beyond belief, plausibility, or probability that Rah took action to keep his secret.

@Jammer,

"Key to the success of this story is Robert Wisdom, who commandingly but sympathetically plays Rah as a man of urgent sincerity, hoping to turn the page and atone for past sins that may not deserve to be paid down so easily. When the dinner goes sideways, he isn't offended, but rather invites the conversation in the hopes that it may offer some healing. It doesn't, but he is willing to put in the effort. Before M'Benga leaves, Rah invites him to a martial arts sparring session, in the interest of breaking the ice. Later, Rah and M'Benga "spar" in the gym (it's basically full contact) while Rah makes an offer of an olive branch. M'Benga flatly rejects it. These two are clearly on a collision course, although the full extent of that collision isn't made clear until the end."

Certainly in agreement with regard to Mr. Wisdom's contribution here. Very nicely done.

I'll differ from you though at the dinner table. Sure he invites the conversation; he needs to know. I immediately noticed a change in Rah when he learned that Chapel and M'Benga were at the final battle. I don't think he had an olive branch in his hand, I believe he HAD to figure out who knew what. By Rah’s own admission the truth would ruin him. There is no reason for a sparring session had no one revealed they were there. Also, I'm not certain, but I'm assuming that Rah isn't welcome anymore by the Klingons... how honorable is giving “the order” and then killing your generals for carrying out them out? I think he used his ex-position and his story along with his ability to act as the reformer so he wasn't hunted down and killed by the Klingons.

I don't know Jammer, I'd put this in the same paragraph as "Duet". Pretty damn powerful episode.

I'm at 3.5 stars. My only issues with this revolved around Pike. (which is happening way too much...)

I wasn't a fan of Rah's performance. The character as written was fine but I didn't really find the direction the actor took him in believable.

Viewing black-and-white Starfleet through a lens of seeing all the grey areas in between is always interesting to me and reminds me of “In the Pale Moonlight.” Babs acts his butt off in this one and his internal struggle is very believable. My only issue was that he is so soft-spoken and hoarse in many scenes, I had to watch with captions on because otherwise I had no clue what he was saying. Otherwise, it was a genuinely good episode about the military side of Starfleet that you rarely see outside of DS9, and the murky ending made it even better in my opinion. We don’t need to be spoon fed with extensive foreshadowing and clear-cut endings. I’ll give this a rare 4 stars for NüTrek.

Four stars. The best episode of the season, and probably of the series so far.

Still chatting and thinking about this episode.

I believe M'Benga premeditated the fight as is evident when he opens the knife box. But Rah, I think desired the final judgment from M'Benga, as Rah has lived with the cowardness of his lie and a Klighon's dishonor. Rah's work with Star Fleet, is again him running from his dishonor on J'Gal. He is living a lie in every aspect of his life since then, trying to gain false honor in the eyes of peace.

I think Rah might believe in the tense/raging moments before the fight after the real butcher secrets are revealed, that engaging M'Benga is a way to restore his lost honor. To face the real "butcher of J'Gal", allowing M'Benga to kill him, almost as if he had not fled on J'Gal all those years ago, and instead died with his officers with honor.

This one was weird, in that it made M'Benga into the bad guy, ultimately. There's ... just not much defense for killing somebody out of court in Starfleet, PTSD or not. Don't get me wrong, I get why M'Benga did it; it makes sense for his character. But that doesn't make it any better, really.

So the ending was the weakest part of the episode. Pike just ... shrugs, basically. An ambassador just got murdered aboard his ship and he's not even curious. This should have ended M'Benga's career, really - or have him temporarily suspended until the murder is figured out. Instead it seems that the murder will just be glossed over, Starfleet goes "Oh well, that happened ..." and that's that. Overall, it didn't feel very enlightening watching it. There's no punchline at the end here.

Strange that no one brought this up, even though it was my first reaction to the scene behind the frosted glass: it's not at all obvious that M'Benga did in fact kill Rah, in self-defense or otherwise. We don't see what's going on precisely, but we do hear them, and right until the very end, there is no true anger in M'Benga's voice, while Rah sounds like he's becoming increasingly frustrated.
My impression was that Rah actually killed himself, perhaps by running into the blade held by M'Benga. The ambassador seemed to have become somewhat obsessed with the doctor; his initial offer to him was mainly about generating good publicity, true, but there in the sickbay, when all was laid bare, he became stubbornly set on helping him heal, one way or the other. Perhaps it was a desperate bid to somehow validate himself before the true "Butcher of J'Gal", to prove that his defection, cowardly as it was in truth, still held value.
Those are my two cents, anyway.

I enjoyed the episode, but I wouldn’t call it “morally gray”. With the revelation at the end, the writers clearly want us to see Rah as “bad”, making it easier to stomach M’Benga’s decision to kill him. It would have been more interesting for his past and possible redemption to remain ambiguous.

Even before the revelation, he never seemed to really regret his role in the massacre. He said he wanted to atone and help heal the people he hurt (and he insisted on trying to “heal” M’Benga after many refusals), but he also seemed to think that becoming a Federation ambassador was enough to make up for all the deaths he caused, when it clearly isn’t. It would have been nice to hear him admit as much.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a problem with Star Trek characters – even Starfleet characters – committing immoral actions. What I DO have a problem with is the lack of consequences. I find it laughable that M’Benga gets away with murder so easily (and despite the frosted glass, it’s pretty clear to me it wasn’t self-defense, despite what Chapel and he later claim). Aren’t there security cameras in sickbay? Even if there was no evidence that it wasn’t self-defense, wouldn’t there at least be a trial? Why would it only be up to Pike (and not someone higher up, or at least more impartial) to decide whether or not to take the matter further?

Let it be said, though, that the cast continues to knock it out of the park.

Another interesting parallel to Ds9, this one. So we get to compare SNW and DS9 at its more silly and at its most dark within two episodes. Interesting.

So, my first observation is this : yes, somehow, the DS9 war episodes made me care more, even though they weren't as dark as this. I find that curious, because I always like when trek gets super dark.

I think in addition to the things that struck me in the comparison of the LD crossover with DS9s tribble legend (DS9 in its prime, trek in its prime, us viewers being younger and more impressionable), other factors might also be at play here :

For one, episodes like the siege happened much later in DS9s run. At a time when we were much more connected to the characters. Would I equally have cared I. E. about nog losing his leg in season 2? Hell no.

Plus, it's not only later seasons, but also each season had something like 24 episodes! So, by 90s trek standards as far as just the naked quantity of episodes in which to connect to the characters, SNW hasn't even finished its first season. That's crazy. I didn't care much about anyone at that point during DS9s initial run.

So, with that out of the way, i have to say this even louder than I otherwise would have :

The actors who play Mbenga and Chapel are absolutely excellent. Subtle, nuanced, tasteful, dynamic... Nowhere near the sometimes awfully one dimensional stuff Nutrek has often given us these past years. In general, the sheer fact that I do care at all after a total number of episodes that in 90s trek wouldn't even be a whole first season is a huge testament to the entire cast. The writing remains a bit hit and miss. Some goofy Nutrek tropes like every cast member having to have (and share) some tragic past trauma week after week after week and other things they hopelessly keep overdoing is still present in SNW - but here, it doesn't bother me as much. Cause the cast is great. Great chemistry on a LOT of diagonals between the different actors.

So yes, a very good episode.

Oh, and one more thing : SNW managed to make the klingons, which over the years have become something of a caricature of themselves, sufficiently antagonistic and serious again. Without any DSC type stunts like completely new look or whatever. In fact, they managed to do this surprisingly effortlessly.

Nice.

Loved the episode all throughout. I am just sad to see that the only episodes that get high praise are the ones this dark. It is a sign of times, when to prove to have substance, shows and movies must explore darkness and moral ambiguity or otherwise are considered inferior.

Who wrote this episode? Please, give this person a raise!

By far the best episode this season. *** 1/2

Last week's "crossover" (AKA: product placement), was just abysmal. May we never see it happen again. I was shocked at the turnaround in writing in this episode. Even Ortegas, as Jammer has stated, turned into an adult for awhile.

I agree with Jammer on his review. I did feel as if I was watching DS9 throughout the episode, which is compliment. I'll just add some of my own points.

-Pike has indeed become a parody of starship captain. He should be hosting show on the Food Network at this point. I yelled at the screen when Ortegas was speaking out at the dinner, and Una reprimanded her, but Pike seemed to once again lack shall we say, balls, and I'm not talking about spaghetti.

-Chapel has been well acted throughout the series, but they finally gave her something beyond teenage drama to chew on here, and it paid off. I've said this numerous times, the cast is great, the writing is often underwhelming. She's an excellent actress. Please give her more real material as present in this episode.

-Great guest actor as the Klingon. He did seem a bit docile, I would have liked him to be a tad more Klingon, a tad more desperate, but overall he had presence in all the scenes he was in. Yes he needs more martial arts training or a better stunt double. But he's also older now, and not everyone who is a high level athlete maintains that after retirement.

-What a ride for M'Benga on this show. He has been a Dr, a gentle Father who was at first saving his little girl, then losing her. Next he's a super soldier, and here a traumatized war veteran. I think he's rising to the top as the most interesting character on the show. I'm also impressed the actor can make all of this range seem believable. I was worried he would get lost without his daughter, but they seem to have found a way to keep him interesting.

-The production values / directing really elevated the premise. "Incoming transport, Incoming transport" inccesently blaring over and over, the level of carnage in the background of the planet. Well done.

-Yes it's too tidy in the end. Pike should be royally pissed this happened under his watch. But he's not. I would say because Nu-trek likes to make men weaker, which is sometimes true, but not here, because M'Benga and Rah are walking death machines. So I don't know what they are thinking with Pike. It would be a real shame for this show to having one of Trek's most promising captains in Season 1 become one of treks most dissapointing captains by the end of the show. Mount is charismatic and has range. He can't just agree all the time. He needs to have his own motivations, and should be answering to his own superiors for what happens under his watch. Missed opportunity here. M'Benga should have more consequences, but probably won't.

-Again, compared to last week, this is City on the Edge of Forever. Man I hope someone at paramount realizes this (but probably won't because product placement pays the bills). This reminds me of seeing Voyager make Threshold and then later Scorpion. Gotta keep the faith, trek has always been up and down.

Also, this could have been a prime 2 part episode. I hope the writing continues to be this good.