“What Is Starfleet?”

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.

Part of it was the shot composition and editing. This is the first time, ever, that a Star Trek episode has made me feel motion sick. I know that they already established Beto’s use of hovering drones, but no documentary would constantly zoom in and out of faces like that, or have them fill the entire screen except in key moments. Even if that’s the tech you have, it feels like a strict downgrade over 21st century cameras. Where were the mid-range shots?

Part of it was that a documentary on Starfleet, while intriguing, is not a good fit at this point in the Star Trek franchise. Most of us have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of Starfleet missions from an intimate perspective that Beto could never hope to achieve. We all know what Starfleet is, as viewers, even those of us who have only seen Strange New Worlds. So all the intrigue around the classified mission and what the Enterprise is actually doing completely falls flat. We don’t need to spend 40 minutes getting back to where we already knew we were.

Part of it is that Beto… just isn’t good at making documentaries? I do appreciate that this episode’s script feels like he filmed a lot more and then cut most of it away, but it felt like he was just fishing for the most controversial clips he could find from each crewmember, or even just provoking them to see what would happen. He wasn’t even really crafting a narrative until one basically ambushed him when Uhura spoke about his sister. There is absolutely no way Starfleet would have permitted M’Benga’s spec ops past to be effectively broadcast to the entire Federation. And it was actually disgusting when Beto told Uhura, on-camera, that her roommate had died to the Gorn, just so he had the footage. Why is this the guy they chose to make a documentary about the flagship for the centennial? There was nobody else?

And I’m sorry, because I don’t personally believe the Federation is an empire or a colonizer, but you can’t say that they’re not evil because they eat family dinners and paint and play instruments. Many very, very evil organizations have been full of people who do fun recreational things and say that the organization gave them structure or even saved their life. That can’t be the final message that Star Trek wants to communicate.

Uhura’s Wesley Crusher shirt was fun, though.

I liked it. It also made me sad.
That’s all I got.

In the real world, this kind of documentary would never have seen the light of day to the general public. I have seen documentaries about real naval vessels. They do show what life is like aboard their vessels; however, it is done professionally, following strict protocols on what is and what is not allowed. Beto would have been shown the door, with a polite but forceful thank you for coming and we don't need your services anymore speech.

Trivia note: This was one of the shortest episodes in SNW, with a run time of about 40 minutes.

A slightly self-reverent but altogether solid outing drama-wise, focusing as the episode title mentions on what Starfleet is all about by putting our intrepid crew through the paces on a mission with an emergent and alien space-voyaging creature that is being used by one of the factions of an interplanetary war as a weapon. The floating cameras of Beto Ortegas as well as declassified Starfleet footage provide the point of view, showing a journalist's take on the actors and their behavior in a meta sort of way, as the series is fond of doing.

The core ensemble did a splendid job of staying in character throughout. I liked how we got to see different facets and little historical tidbits of the main characters like Pike and Uhura that we usually don’t get to see. Even Ortegas gave us a believable take on her views of Starfleet and what being in Starfleet brought to her. The episode was mostly dead serious with no wisecracks and no messy romantic divergences.

There was (at least) one thing I had my doubts about. The question of Starfleet’s military might and whether they are truly explorers came up in the episode, and was paraphrased at the end. Pike made a beefy little threat at the end to one of the alien races that didn’t like Starfleet’s meddling, that “you don’t want to mess with Starfleet”. It’s rare to see a captain actually try and play that "ours is BIGGER!" power gambit. Kind of childish, I thought.

I also wasn’t sure why Starfleet was meddling in this war in the first place—it was apparently a war with millions of casualties, as prefaced in the beginning sequences. I don’t think Beto would have been given access to the ship like that, considering his penchant for disregard of personal space and classified conversation. Having a media presence on the ship is kind of getting annoying. Shades of ENT’s “Terra Prime”, but drawn out over several episodes…

And yes, like @TenK, I enjoyed Uhura’s fun shirt(s), and her Warp Factor Five shiny lip gloss indeed riveted my eyes on the screen ;-D

Intriguing concept – I was saying to myself only a couple of episodes ago that SNW should do more bottle episodes that minimised production costs, to get the most out of the season’s budget. Trek has a proud history of thought-provoking episodes that are little more than philosophical talking heads.

I already sense that this episode may polarise viewers depending on their stance on the (for me academic) debate about what Starfleet really ‘is’. I greatly appreciate that this episode demonstrates a fully-functioning chain of command and compliance with orders – from the lowest ranks to those above Pike’s head. This is probably the most mature episode of NuTrek in its portrayal of professional duties actually superseding feelings (but see Uhura and Beto below).

I liked the way the Jikaru recalls numerous similar creatures from early TNG and other Trek.

I enjoyed the to-camera interviews with each of the main crew, which summarised each of their characters rather well – La’an’s, Una’s and Pike’s segments were particularly interesting. (Quite amusing to see M’Benga lie outright – rather convincingly too – about his special forces background and everything else.)

Daring callback to the Cayuga’s destruction in ‘Hegemony Part I’ – notably because the Enterprise itself did not scan for survivors before using the Cayuga as a fiery frisbee. It was unfortunate to hear Uhura saying that her best friend died on the Cayuga doing what she loved – probably best for Uhura not to find out that she may have been indirectly complicit in her best friend’s death.

I’m finding Uhura to be underwhelming in this episode compared to the other main crew. There’s something about Gooding’s hesitant acting in this episode that draws me out of her scenes more than any other character. She seems unconvincing, off somehow (the uptalk doesn’t help) and just isn’t very good. The scenes between Beto and Uhura are excruciating and make no sense – they are simply a soap opera interlude to inject some feelings into the episode.

The brief mention of Ortegas’ hand (melted by acid in ‘Hegemony Part II’) also demonstrates an exceptional internal consistency for SNW. Ortegas was fine in this episode and it’s clear that the writers and producers have intentionally toned down her most obnoxious characteristics.

The use of security camera footage works particularly well as a dramatic device in some instances – for example when ‘Chapel’s’ head strikes the camera and knocks it out. But, again, we know that ‘Chapel’, Spock and Uhura survive to TOS, so the stakes are non-existent when they are injured on the shuttlecraft. Thankfully the episode doesn’t try to push this too hard.

Pike-Una scenes are always some of SNW’s strongest draws and this episode has several impressive moments. I could watch an entire episode of just them.

Wouldn’t be an episode of SNW without Pike’s kitchen. I suppose Batel isn’t in imminent danger of Gorning out? The camaraderie here is a little forced but nice to see, as is the scene with the Bolians and the birthday cake.

Solid, enjoyable and occasionally moving episode. Not quite as moving or as deep as it’s trying to be or thinks it is, but a valiant attempt at some Trekkian themes. No surprise that Kathryn Lyn wrote it.

I liked this one. Much like TNG's "Lower Decks" and VOY's "Good Shepherd", it's refreshing to be told a story from a point-of-view that isn't privy to all the higher-level command decisions. It was doubly interesting because it's told from a perspective completely outside Starfleet, as opposed to those legacy episodes, and makes SNW feel bigger than a show that's just about the Starship Enterprise.

How *do* Federation citizens view Starfleet? There's a political angle to Beto's documentary, and that felt believable. As Sisko memorably put it back in the day, when a Federation citizen looks out the window, they see paradise. No crime, no poverty, no war. And it's easy to be a saint in paradise. Of course some of them would look with suspicion on heavily armed ships heading out into the universe and taking actions that can affect entire civilisations!

The proof, however, is in the pud. We as viewers of Star Trek know that our crews are virtuous (give or take an M'Benga murdering a war criminal, or a Sisko deceiving a society into war...). But *Beto* doesn't know that going in, and presumably neither does his audience. The actions of Pike and his crew speak for themselves, and the talking head sections provide honest and at times confronting shading to them.

Commenter TenK says above that they don't think it's a very good documentary in part because Beto seemed to be provoking the crew for controversial reactions. I disagree. That's his damn job! Any good journalist worth their salt asks hard and unexpected questions and lets the audience decide for themselves if the answers are satisfactory. If we're to believe that this is a better, more enlightened version of humanity in the future, and that Starfleet represent the best and brightest, then they can stand having their feet held to the fire.

I will agree that the drone camera POV was at times excessive. But otherwise, technically speaking, I thought this episode was well done. I particularly appreciated getting the full 16:9 aspect ratio. I wish the whole series was presented in it...

The episode was sorely undermined by the documentary framing device: neither story, the war or the perspectives of the Ortegases, were sufficiently realised so as to be fully appreciated. Put another way, the documentary, in and of itself, with its evolving and jumbled narrative, is just not very good. The episode felt as though it was just ticking another genre box (e.g., the musical, the murder mystery, the documentary).

With that said, and to the episode's credit, the alien character design was intriguing, and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura was captivating.

Nevertheless, for me, this was one of the weakest outings in the series to date.

The episode was pretty short, and it really felt like there were 10 minutes missing. When Pike promised to keep the alien's kids safe I was imagining an ending to the episode where the crew goes to the planet and you have all those wonderful creatures flying around. It would have brought a sense of wonder to the documentary to underline that Starfleet sometimes gets its hands dirty but does it for the greater good. (in this case to keep the aliens safe) The way it actually turned out just made it a very somber documentary. I'm not sure if Starfleet would really approve such a documentary to be released.

I am so fed up of these gimmicky SNW episodes!!! Very disappointing after last week's strong episode.

I think I watched a better version of this in the second season episode of Babylon 5 titled 'and now for a word'. Yet again they've done a gimmick episode and done a rip off badly

I respected this episode a lot more than I enjoyed it. It opened very, very weak, but it closed quite well - something which I am sure was by design to show Beto's growth as a documentarian. Several levels to consider here, so we'll start at the bottom and work our way out.

The actual crisis within universe was a pretty classic, by-the-numbers Trek conundrum, very similar to a number of early TNG stories in particular. The ship interacts with what's first considered a dumb animal, and then realizes over the course of the episode it's a sentient being with its own wants and desires, and the initial orders were something that they not only cannot follow with a clean conscience, but that the original mission must be aborted. I liked that Starfleet (off camera) gave Pike the okay to shift the mission - it helped showcase that Beto's starting precept (that Starfleet was a military like any other) was in fact a flawed assertion. The episode managed to weave every regular cast member into the story pretty well as well. I liked they brought up Spock's "esper" abilities (one of the weird aspects of early TOS the later shows more or less forgot about), and I also liked that Uhura was given another shot at a "first contact" story. They went out looking for new life, and they found it. And the episode gives us our longest, best look at Ortegas - though it seems she's frankly not that deep of a character. TBH, she comes across as an average Jane on a ship of super-geniuses here.

The second layer here is the framing within Beto's documentary footage, and this is mixed, though I think it's on purpose. Beto is frankly an amateur, and it shows. The use of quick pans and weird angles for no particular reason are very jarring at the beginning of the episode, and get less so as he grows into his work. There is essentially zero musical accompaniment until about halfway through, when Beto apparently realizes he should start including a soundtrack. The start of the episode is very, very rough because it's all interview footage, where we're repeatedly told things, rather than shown them. But lots and lots of documentaries work this way, so I gave it a chance. I'm glad I did, because man, the story (and Beto as a filmmaker) grew.

The most "meta" aspect here is the character journey of Beto himself. He starts the story a cynic regarding both Starfleet and the Federation, for reasons that first appear unclear. More than once, I was left wondering why Starfleet would (freedom of information act or not) allow such an obvious hatchet job to go forward. But as he realizes that the system generally works - that it's responsive to real ethical concerns, and can pivot as new data comes in - his opinion changes, and he realizes how much of his initial framing was due to bias. In an odd way, he becomes the subject of the documentary, not the passive interviewer he intended.

There's a lot of brilliant stuff here, and the episode is great once it really gets rolling, with a conclusion that made me feel a feeling for sure. That said, we had to suffer through an incredibly rough (on purpose) first act to get there. In the end it would have been more enjoyable (albeit much more conventional) if we were just watching Beto make the documentary, rather than actually seeing the story through his personal camerawork.

I'm glad they took this risk. Hopefully, Trek is done with this for a few decades now.

This is the second episode this season to open in the 16:9 aspect ratio (the first was "A Space Adventure Hour" which really needed to be in 4:3 for the fictional 60's TV scenes). The surprising thing was that they stayed in 16:9 for the duration of the ep, presumably to help sell the "Documentary" feel.

As to the episode itself, it was enjoyable as a pure "bottle" ep.

What would have enhanced things somewhat was if we had been told when in the Star Trek timeline this Documentary was being presented. Right off the bat we are told that some of the presented footage had been recently declassified. So was this a year later? Twenty years later? A hundred years later? Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see a definitive reveal on that. My impression was that we were viewing a historic documentary at some museum honoring the early days of the Federation.

Anyway, I'll give it three stars. Two and a half for the premise and a half star for the presentation.

why?
There was a truly interesting story here and it was ruined by the documentary gimmick.
What this format offered? Absolutely nothing (well ok some more Ortegas info but apart from that nothing we did not already know).
With all these characters introductions it could even be the first episode of season one.

This episode exposes all of the NuTrek issues: tell tell tell tell and not trusting the showing. But how to trust something that is so weak? These writers either believe we are all idiots or they are just lame in their job. Probably both.

And even interesting questions like "what is really Starfleet" were self-cancelled.

Well I can answer you what Starfleet is in Nutrek: a frakking inconsistent mess thar changes shapes, codes, rules, purpose because of horrible writing.

Starfleet is a captain who sometimes (lmao) disobeys orders, but hey, he offers the best dinner parties.

In the meantime, Starfleet decided how a planet should treat its animals because Space Peta and do not mess with Starfleet when it tells you how to live your life, ok?
THAT should be an interesting debate between the crew but instead we got that juvenile documentary.
ARGH!

I can get behind this episode, despite its minor annoyances at times. It's thoroughly a much better outing than Discovery's "We Are Starfleet," which I am still suffering elevated levels of saccharine from.

It dialed down the sweetness and focused on the hand-wringing that enlisted folks often have about their missions and orders, which I find very believable and potent, as a storytelling device. It shines a light on who these people are, that I don't think previous episodes of SNW have done.

There's still a bit of sugary sweetness here, but it doesn't rise to the level of bouncing me out of the episode. I give it 3 stars.

Idk what any haters are smoking when it comes to this one. By far the most politically and thematically charged episode of all NuTrek and probably since DS9 went off the air. An EASY 4/4.

@Pike's Hair

I love sarcasm

This is a perceptive comment from @Dom on 'The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail' but it applies just as much to 'What Is Starfleet?':

'SNW, like much of modern Star Trek, is just a show "about Star Trek," as opposed to about something more meaningful [...] Far too much of modern Trek is recontextualizing or reinterpreting the fictional history of Star Trek in ways that aren't interesting or necessary.'

That is, SNW never lets its viewers forget that they're watching a television show called Star Trek. Forget immersion and suspension of disbelief – much of what happens in SNW relies on the person watching enjoying a meta awareness of what they are seeing. Because it is the constant reminder that you are watching Trek that makes NuTrek Trek, rather than any qualitative content.

On the plus side, no Pelia in this episode. Or NuScotty, for that matter.

@Bok R'Mor

exactly. What made Andor succeed is that it got inspiration from other sources aside form Star Wars

I hate this. It immediately lost my interest. Someone please flush Beto out of an airlock. We have an overstuffed main cast with scant original characters and they keep getting shoved aside for the OC of the week.

@MercerCreate

You did actually WATCH Andor s2 right?

Similarly to that show this episode was a scathing critique on “just following orders” military excuses in the face of genocide. The body counts shown at the beginning weren’t a coincidence. They intentionally are drawing comparisons to what’s happening in Palestine right now with the lopsided death tolls between Israel and Gaza. You could even draw comparisons to the Ukraine war, with the Federation here being the middle man in both scenarios.

But then the episode pulls its best trick on what separates the better future we hope for in Trek from our current real world issues.

Isn’t this what we want from Trek? For the episodes to SAY something via allegory?

What made Andor succeed was that is called genocide, genocide instead of beating around the bush about it like our real world politicians who enable it.

Oh dear. Here we go.

It's pretty much impossible for me to watch DS9 without seeing the Bajorans as the Palestinians these days, but I didn't feel the parallels with this one.

I do think that the questions posed at the beginning of the episode - "What separates a federation from an empire? What separates a starship from a warship?" - to be incredibly important, meaningful questions! I've been waiting for a Trek series to actually interrogate those questions about the Federation for years and been disappointed again and again as Discovery S1, Picard S1, etc. set those up and proceeded to never actually grapple with those questions. An "Andor of ST" would probably be about that exact theme - reckon with the militarized, superpowered Federation of the 25th century and whether or not it serves its ideals or its people.

Unfortunately this episode *really* doesn't follow through either. It redirects the political ire and challenge of those questions about whether Star Trek itself lives up to its ideals by reducing it down to a less challenging and more clear-cut "sentient being" plot. When the episode concludes by ducking away from making a political statement or challenging its characters' fundamental beliefs in any way and just goes "well Starfleet is great because the people were super nice and wholesome to me" it just reminded me of the overtly saccharine way late Discovery would constantly remind you of how positive and Star Trek it was.

It's just bizarre, the episode looks like it's gearing up to be an "In the Pale Moonlight" that comments on Palestine or Ukraine for the first 15 minutes and then it just kinda nervously laughs it off.

@Pike's Hair
Andor did a far better job with allegory than the new Trek producers ever could, bit my point was not about hamfisted allegories. I was responding to the notion that this 3pus9de... this entire show... is just so self aware as star trek.. this comment in particular:

SNW, like much of modern Star Trek, is just a show "about Star Trek," as opposed to about something more meaningful [...] Far too much of modern Trek is recontextualizing or reinterpreting the fictional history of Star Trek in ways that aren't interesting or necessary.'"


Sorry if I confused you

i can not understand the parallels between this episode and the situation in palestine. People obviously see what they want to see why not to see the experiment of lukani as the brutal invasion of hamas?

And please stop this talk about nuTrek that was the abram's movies perhaps even discovery SNW haw allready proved that IT IS STAR TREK NOT NUTREK

@kara whatever

All new Trek is NuTrek

The worst SNW episode and one of the shittiest ST episodes overall.

It's SciFi and full of technobabble that we suspend disbelief for but I cannot accept that the federation would choose Beto for this job. Some angry know-it-all teen with a drone camera who can barely film and edit a scene, much less form a cohesive narrative for his 'documentary'. A 12yo filming for tiktok can do better camerawork.

Don't understand the hate against this episode. I think it was very good. The documentary style allowed us to see things from a different perspective and explore the characters a bit more. The story was very interesting and in line with what I expect from Star Trek. Three and a half stars for me.

Another Gimmicky, frivolous episode. I want to see exploring new worlds and civilizations, not Spock switching minds with someone else, or a Trelane rep-off episode or this stupid Documentary crap. This is not Star Trek, it is an abomination.

I also did not get the parallels with our current world situation.
I didn't even cross my mind.
Maybe because the episode was too busy with this awful documentary gimmick.

Btw, I am a bit lost, what right had Starfleet or the Federation to interfere and help the sentient being? Is Starfleet supposed to go to "strange new worlds" and impose its civilization and its values?
I found horrible what happened to the creature, but what if Aliens came to Earth and forbid us to eat meat? or put criminals in jail? or I dunno getting married? or people having equal civil rights? or whatever the Aliens find it is against their values and beliefs?
I might mistaken but isn't this what the colonists have done to dozens of unfortunate countries?

I didn’t love it, and I didn’t hate it. The graphics for the jiraku were impressive, and I thought her inner conflict was fairly original. I believe the real point of the episode is the character growth for Beto, and I hope that makes him go away now. Pike was the most captainly he’s been in a long time, and it was a relief to see that the crew actually could follow orders without too much snark.

That said, I found the documentary framing annoying - so badly done, is Beto just putting this on his Youtube channel? - and agree that it’s unbelievable that Mbenga’s military record would be declassified at all. It did allow us to see more into Erica, which was long overdue.

However, as with the trial episode, the question at the heart of it has a preferred answer. In the trial episode, it was, “Is discrimination wrong?” In this one, it’s, “Is Starfleet good or bad?” This just strikes me as fan service. If the Federation were an empire, we’d be in the Mirror Universe, and may we never see that again. The issue could have been deepened considerably if we’d had some hint about why the Federation decided to assist this particular planet. Because the Fed may be good, but it’s not immune to realpolitik.

Also, as a horseperson, Pike’s description of training a horse to death was wildly anachronistic. We don’t even do that kind of “breaking” now, 250 years earlier. Have the horse get caught in a fence, or have it be a rescue that couldn’t be saved. I know, nobody else noticed, but it irked me.

Solid three stars for me. Like Jammer, I’m a Homicide fan, and I like this episode’s clever usw id a classic TV trope to give us a view of SNW — and Trek — from an outside perspective. That was one of my favorite aspects of TOS delving into gangsters, Rome, cowboys, etc., with an overall “space western” vibe.

Too bad this is coming at the end of the series; it might have been more satisfying to see this story early as a series premiere or early episode to set the tone for SNW.

I mostly like how the episode weaves a classic Trek of the week story — a peacekeeping mission to warring planets and an alien encounter where things turn out to not be what they seem, in a way that presents a challenge that’s intelligently confronted — into confessional scenes that let the characters speak for themselves. I mostly like the pacing and zip of those scenes.

The execution is fairly solid, with some exceptions. Ideally the documentary intrusions would have faded into the background a bit and let the puzzle take center stage, but they do feel intrusive at times, interrupting moments where I was trying to get deeper into the story. There are a few too many caption cards explaining personal backstories and what’s happening on screen at odd moments.

Finally, the Dr. M’Benga backstory is bizarre — is he some kind of former special forces commando? This strikes me as a hokey way of trying to make the character more interesting. The actor is already strong; just let me him be an ordinary guy without dumping this improbable commando background on him.

Overall this is the best “theme episode” of SNW, but it still has some issues. Kudos for trying to just deliver an entertaining show this week, without getting bogged down in artistic inconsistencies and shallow optics. The biggest problem, ultimately, is that this episode describes what SNW wants to be rather than what it is. Much like some late series Enterprise, it feels like an idealized and belated attempt to define a messy show that unfortunately sucked on nearly every level.

PS — the melodramatic Uhura stuff was the weakest link for me in the confessional scenes. Talk about maudlin. Same for the scenes with Beto Ortegas, including the one he shared with Uhura, dramatically inert and anticlimactic. Kinda wish they had just let the documentarian stay in the background; it was just one thing too many in an overstuffed script. Also I miss Nichelle Nichols and Zoe Saldana in the Uhura role; this is somehow the most wasted and unengaging version of the character I’ve ever seen.

The framing just rubbed me the wrong way. I kept wanting it to get out of the way already and just see what the characters are seeing.

I appreciated this episode in no small part because there's no TOS fan service. It's an SNW episode about SNW characters and an SNW story.

Another gimmick episode. It’s pointless for SNW to be telling us what Starfleet is given how much Trek has been produced. The episode tries to throw out probing questions about differences between the Federation and some alien empire, whether Starfleet is military or not, but these questions still remain open to interpretation. Umberto the filmmaker wants to learn but the viewer already knows way more than him.

The problem is that with SNW running an episode like this where characters tell Starfleet is great for this reason or that reason, the viewer just has to take what’s said by the crew as fact instead of actually showing in an episode why, for example La'an or whoever, found purpose etc. in Starfleet.

Maybe one interesting part was when Uhura turns the tables on Umberto — but we don’t get some kind of character growth from him, as far as I could tell. If he’s angry because of the choices Ortegas made that got her arm injured and he wants to make a hit piece on Starfleet, does he have a change of heart about Starfleet? I guess what he produced isn't a hit piece -- it's closer to propaganda.

Also, too much Ortegas here — such an annoying character with an unprofessional demeanour.

As for the Jikaru — something like "tin man" or the creature from “Encounter at Farpoint” — of course somebody on Pike’s ship would manage to communicate with it and Pike would disobey orders and let the creature go. Not much plot to this episode.

Wasn’t a fan of all the interviews cutting into the plot with the Lutani and the Jikaru creature — just jarring. The interviews didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know about the main cast. The pointed questions would just be dodged. And how was Umberto even allowed to film this thing?

By the way, really noticed Pike’s over-styled hair — ridiculous for a captain. And how massive are Uhura's personal quarters... Once again I find myself thinking I can’t take SNW seriously.

2 stars for “What Is Starfleet?” — this show doesn’t seem to have the intelligence to come up with some thoughtful Trek and is content to trot out gimmicks and pat themselves on the back. Everything works out perfectly, no difficult consequences. This episode posed some intriguing questions through Umberto but ultimately chickened out. The plot with the jikaru creature was too basic, so SNW wrapped it in this documentary about what Starfleet is. Another disappointment.

Every time I read a bunch of these review comments I see Comic Book Guy in my head.
“Worst. Episode. Ever.”

Not bad. I'm not usually a fan of the documentary style, but it didn't get in the way of the story too much, and it gave us some fresh POVs and personal touches from the crew. Yes, it's another gimmicky episode, but only in presentation rather than in substance. At its core, this is a classic Trek tale: one that's been done before, and frankly done better...but hey, this is Nu-Trek after all. What do you expect?

The central question is what separates the Federation from an empire with colonizing impulses. I half-expected the episode to veer into a "Starfleet has skeletons in its closet" direction, à la DS9. Since this is pre-TOS, that would even make sense, drawing parallels between Federation idealism and imperial reality. But unlike DS9, the show doesn't go all-in on "kill your utopian darlings" and I appreciate that -- even if there's still room for skepticism when "classified" topics come up.

Some viewers will read this through a Social Justice lens, seeing it as commentary on current geopolitical turmoil, and that's valid. For me, though, the true crux is Beto's arc: his shift from ignorant ideologue to team member. That framing plays as a cautionary tale about biased media sources -- whether Left or Right -- that start with deeply-held preconceptions and cherry-pick evidence to match.

I've also seen people point out how much Beto's camerawork sucks, and honestly I agree. My headcanon: Beto has zero journalistic credentials. He's just some guy with a camera and an axe to grind about Starfleet. He faked his expertise just to get close enough to "expose" them.

And then there's Spock: "The Lutani intend to use it in their rebuilding effORTS."
Heh. Nu-Spock actually talks like Nimoy's Spock. Maybe Nu-Kirk should take notes.

What happened to Pelia and Scotty this week?

@theBGT

“Btw, I am a bit lost, what right had Starfleet or the Federation to interfere and help the sentient being? Is Starfleet supposed to go to "strange new worlds" and impose its civilization and its values?”

General Order 20
Officers and personnel of Starfleet Command may employ whatever means necessary to prevent the possession, transportation, sale, or commercial exchange of sentient beings being held against their wishes within the boundaries of Federation space

Once Pike understood a sentient being was being held against its wishes within Federation space, he contacted StarFleet command who agreed the being should be let go.

A starship like the Enterprise has many purposes with going to strange new worlds being one of them. It’s a science vessel of exploration but also a heavily armed military vessel when necessary against hostile forces.

@ Mike

Aha!
".....within the boundaries of Federation space"

How the Federation space is defined? I mean what about planets who are not members of Federation?

p.s. where do you find these "orders"?

Man, this one is getting blistered on the interweb.

I'm with you Jammer, I enjoyed it.

While the angles the drones gave us were at times difficult to watch, I enjoyed the unique format.

This made me think of Pilot in Farscape.

I thought of "Heroes" from SG-1 too. I was afraid a main character was going to die like Dr. Fraiser did.

I'm going to watch this one again. I heard it's more enjoyable the second time.

Listening to reviews, they seem to be trying to relate this to the Israeli/Palestine conflict. I don't think it's meant to be that.

3 stars is about right for me.

Looks like this episode is not well regarded -- at least by those who bother to rate SNW episodes on IMDb (which hundreds / thousands of folks seem to do).

FWIW, it's rated roughly the same as the 2 weakest-rated IMDb episodes of the season "Wedding Bell Blues" and "A Space Adventure Hour".

For me, this episode is the 3rd-weakest of SNW S3 so far.

I appreciated that Erica was given a bit of realization in this episode. And I appreciated that Beto, after seeing Uhura's commitment to the mission (the only person whom he seemed willing to take cues from), was willing to reexamine his views. But these were both hit on the head with a hammer. The writing and direction just weren't there to show instead of tell.

I think that's indicative of SNW's systemic problem. The writing and direction of the entire Kurtzman stable just isn't there. It's all just mediocre. With a show like (forgive me, but it makes such a great touchstone for this sort of thing) Andor, you knew within 60 seconds, just from the direction, dialogue, and production values, that those people knew what they were doing. Nothing in that department stands out in this administration. Matalas managed it, but he doesn't appear to be coming back.

This show is hinged entirely on Anson Mount's furrowed eyebrows, and it gets more obvious with each passing episode.

I think the current regime must have marathon-watched "Community" after Seasons 1 and 2 and decided to go all-in with the Gimmick of the Week schtick. But what so well for that comedy ain't working so great for SNW.

In isolation, I'd give the Documentary Episode a B. So pretty good. But as one in a series of Gimmick of the Week, not so much. If we were getting 22 to 26 episodes a season like we got in the 20th Century, a few Gimmicks per season might not feel like overload. But with just 10, to have most of them be Gimmick of the Week feels like oversaturation.

I wish they'd focus on the meat and potatoes instead of the table setting.

@Yanks

Making everything about Israel/Palestine (and farming outrage that a given piece of media is on the wrong side) is the left-wing shtick du jour. Just ignore those idiots.

"What is Starfleet?" Apparently every distracting camera technique, drone zoom, and horrible editing choice possible.

Couldn't follow the story because of the distracting nature of the stylization. It put the person I was watching the TV show with to sleep.

Will likely never revisit this episode to find out what it was about.

TOY

Stargate SG-1 did a similar episode in Season 7.

Sure thing, Yanks. MAGA types never deal in false outrage. No sirree! They’re all about ‘truth’.

Sorry that was for ‘episode null.’

I didn't like it and this whole season is mediocre. Season 2 was far superior. It's like the show needs a gimmick every episode. Shame as the cast is great but the writing is poor to mediocre.

@Nick Sullivan

"Sure thing, Yanks. MAGA types never deal in false outrage. No sirree! They’re all about ‘truth’."

Someone piss in your Wheaties Nick?

I've watched 3 reviews of this episode, and each brought up Israel/Palestine or Russia/Ukraine.

How do "MAGA types" enter this conversation?

It was fine. I think SNW is actually a pretty hard pivot from woke. Here, a character with an axe to grind that uses the term “colonizer” ends up basically proven wrong and gently rebuked. This is easily the best trek since DS9

I'm a little surprised as I spent the whole episode on the edge of my seat, absolutely riveted, and then cried at the end. The documentary style didn't affect me at all--I got sucked in right away and I loved everyone's part of this. (Small caveat--Chapel's acting seemed off this episode, not sure why).

I really missed Pelia though, as I think this would have been a terrific opportunity to show her serious and wise side. I can imagine her saying something like "This reminds me of the battle of Actium when two largely equal forces suddenly experienced an imbalance and the result was slaughter." And then she could say something personal about a connection with some of the combatants or something.

Scotty as well--I would have loved to get some of his backstory.

I'd give this 4/4 for now. Upon rewatch, I may adjust down a wee bit as it takes time for episodes to be cemented in my mind as classic.

As far as the political allegory potential, it did occur to me that it could represent any far overwhelmed and oppressed people in history who stoop to atrocities in an attempt to balance the scale. If that sounds like Israel and Palestine, it's not surprising.

Wow...the Starfleet Ministry of Propaganda really went all-in on this one. The end-product "documentary" was so clearly a manufactured product intended to dissuade criticism of Star Fleet and its methods; a veritable hagiography.

If one were to look on the episode as supposedly portraying a genuine documentary, the editing and structure is terrible; seen as a piece of propaganda, however, the whole thing comes across as far more competently constructed. It's all assembled, complete with supposedly genuine challenges to the orthodoxy of Star Fleet at the beginning, all for it to end up with the filmmaker's come-to-Jesus moment where he's totally converted and ready to proselytize for the administration.

It dispels all credibility with how it presents Beto (a teenager with a supposed axe to grind) being given this ludicrously intrusive level of access, filming people without their consent (or knowledge), spying on clearly private conversations, badgering crew members with antagonistic questions, voyeuristically using classified records and the ship's internal cameras. If this were as presented, Beto's behaviour would have promptly resulted in severe restrictions on his access (and he'd be treated with, at the very least, suspicion and disdain by the crew) while making it, and then, later, his prosecution for a wide array of security violations. Despite occasional bits of nice scripting, it buggers reality to present the various crew members as spontaneously saying or doing the things we see on the film; suspension of disbelief can't overcome how staged this all seems (not helped by the editing and camera movement, which also doesn't come across as documentary). The fact that he's presented as some sort of muckraking journalist seeking the truth is intended to bolster the credentials of the final product, but ends up backfiring spectacularly given his pseudo-religious testimony to wrap up the "documentary" with enough evangelical fervor to consider any questioning of the official Starfleet self-love (to describe in the most appropriately masturbatory manor) as moot, at best, heresy at worst.

Want an example of a film that comes across as less blatantly propagandistic than this? "Triumph of the Will".

Also, ironically, for a puff piece on Starfleet intended to reassure us it's *not* an empire, it sure reinforces the dystopian nightmare of Starfleet itself: the level of surveillance and lack of privacy for those serving aboard the ship would be excruciating; every conversation in every environment constantly monitored.

Ultimately, it's this packaging of the story as a completely unconvincing "documentary" that undercuts what might have been a fairly decent (if not-exactly-new) Star Trek story. I suffered through a fair amount of Star Trek: Disco in which every episode climaxed with a rhapsodic speech from Michael Burnham about how wonderful Starfleet is. This was the same. In a meta sense this seems like it's propaganda aimed at all of us who (among other things) watched Michael Burnham repeatedly disobey orders and fail upwards for four or five years and wondered why the clearly [pseudo?-]military Starfleet had such a very lax command structure.

So...

...The Documentary Part of it is Sh#t. However, it lets us explore the characters better and Ortegas in particular got something to do; hang out with her brother. So now I've got what I wished for from my previous comments about her; this gives Ortegas _characterization_ for maybe the first time. I like her a lot more now that I "get" her this way. ...She seems more like a real character now.

...But the actual mission plot is rather interesting, and the special effects of the Jikaru are pretty freaking sweet, to be frank with you. I didn't care for the angle of "her bebes are on the planit, she sez don let em make them wepins ok" but never showing it. Excuse me you promised me jikaru bebes and then there were no jikaru bebes, bad star trek

So each plot of the episode, the Docudrama and the Space Weapon Butterfly Thing, have their ups and downs, and they both do contribute to the ongoing story in ways that I think are cool. But it's not gonna blow anybody's hat off, of course. It's a fluff piece through and through, but not a terrible one. Just "Well this is pretty good."

I don't have an issue at all with the episode's structure, but the contents inside doesn't sit well with me. It has that usual 'the system is not the problem, people are' viewpoint and that doesn't fit with the Star Trek Ethos IMO (I found the mention of some comments here referencing DS9, because I can't see Sisko or Kira endorsing that kind of perspective).

I don't think that the episode was specifically about the Middle East, since (like the new Superman film), there's a lot of parallels with Russia and Ukraine. But then Starfleet seems to be mostly siding with the more powerful and historically aggresive side, which is a bit... strange.

It was well acted though, and the music and effects were good.

*(I found the mention of some comments here referencing DS9 ironic, because

excellent comments @Phyllis Stein! Wish I had your way with words.

I'm surprised by how little fans seem to care about the ethical problems raised in this episode. Starfleet tortured a living creature by turning it into a weapon. They (including the Enterprise) were ready to hand the weaponized entity over to an alien race, to do god knows what with. It's only thanks to the intervention by Lutani peace(?) activists that the creature is freed. Otherwise the Enterprise crew would have delivered it to the Lutani military. With no other option, they help euthanize the thing.

No one in Starfleet is punished for this travesty. I thought Trekkies cared about that sort of thing.

@Earth Rider
"I'm surprised by how little fans seem to care about the ethical problems raised in this episode. "

Hey, at the end Pike organized another dinner party. He cooks well, so everything is fine. After all, "this is Starfleet", everyone in Enterprise does whatever (s)he wants ( save loved ones, murder enemies, help lovers) and at the end they celebrate like the buddy-buddies they are.

@Earth Rider

"Starfleet tortured a living creature by turning it into a weapon."

They did? I completely missed that.

It’s not entirely clear what Starfleet knew or didn’t know, but my read is that this was meant to be a straightforward escort/delivery mission. The Lutani secretly weaponized the Jikaru through morally dubious methods, while keeping those details hidden from Starfleet, who only had a strategic interest in the region. The Lutani requested the Enterprise’s help to transport and protect the Jikaru, which their own ships apparently couldn’t manage.

Starfleet either believed the “livestock” classification the Enterprise was given, or -- more likely -- they suspected it was some kind of weapon but didn’t know the unethical origins of the program. Once the truth came out, they sided with Pike’s assessment and withdrew their involvement.

And if Starfleet really had known everything we, the audience, learn by the end of the episode, I seriously doubt they would have been so quick to declassify the whole affair for release in a public documentary, albeit a crappy one.

Eh, this was just okay. I'm not a fan of the format, and I found Beto rather annoying. I was far more interested in the story of this creature and the role it plays in the war, so from that POV, I would have preferred a more straight-forward format that could have gone deeper into why Starfleet was involved in the first place. No need for "tricks"... I'll give it 2.5 stars.

@TJ:

Agreed. The most interesting aspect of this episode (the Jikaru and the war) is what the episode spends the least amount of focus on. Such a wasted opportunity.

Both Beto and the faux-deep meta 'analysis' of what Starfleet isn't are just irritating, as you say, with Beto coming across as both insufferable and incompetent. I can't stand the 'dogged citizen journalist' trope either, more generally – he has no discernible talent, yet Beto can make his way onto the flagship of the Federation for an all-access 'exposé' because his sister works there? And he promptly blunders through his work, breaching basic ethical guidelines ('Your best friend died on the Cayuga lol, how does that make you FEEL?', filming people in secret). It's too much.

As is usual with SNW, the main cast are the saving grace here. But I would have preferred that Beto hadn't been introduced to this series at all – like Pelia, all he does is steal precious screen time and bloat the roster.

@TheBgt:

The two scenes of Pike serving a banquet to his crew and the Bolians with the birthday cake are completely over the top, agreed. The messaging seems to be that there are no ethical hangovers on this ship because everyone and everything is super duper, all the time.

@Bryan

IIRC the Enterprise crew knew the Lutani had implanted neural dampeners in the creature. One of them (Uhura, I think) refered to the dampeners as a "shock collar," so they knew the creature was being controlled against its will, and that the method of control involved pain. I think it's fair to say Starfleet was fully culpable. They knew the Lutani were developing a super weapon of some kind (why did they go along with this in the first place??) and agreed to deploy the Enterprise to act as the lynchpin for the operation.

@Earth Rider

I still don’t think it’s fair to say Starfleet was fully culpable here. At the start, everyone was told this was "livestock." The neural dampener was assumed to be there to keep it calm, which still fits that cover story. Upon further analysis, Chapel later metaphorically compared it to a "shock collar" because it seemed to do more than just sedate it. Uhura clarified that it could induce a catatonic state -- a more aggressive form of sedation, which is highly suspicious but still not hard evidence of torture or sapience.

It’s only after the second analysis when they learn the Jakaru’s brain chemistry was altered to focus on violence, and that /this/ was what caused its suffering that Pike calls Command, and Starfleet agrees to withdraw. That timing matters.

So yes, Starfleet looks negligent for taking the Lutani at their word and agreeing to move a classified bio-asset they didn’t fully understand. But the story doesn’t show them knowingly complicit in deploying a tortured, sapient weapon. Once they had the full picture, they backed out.

I have to laugh at the comments saying this is pro-Starfleet propaganda. As if all you curmudgeons haven't been complaining for the past 8 years that NuTrek is "too dark and morally grey" and "doesn't feel like real Trek."

This wasn't an all-timer or anything but 2.5 or 3 out of 4 stars feels right.

@Gorn wbecause the last 8 years Star Trek isn't Star Trek despite how desperate they are trying to get us to swallow the pill that Disco and SNW segway perfectly into TOS and they are canon because they tell us it is!

I'm in agreement with the comments above that the main story is a solid classic Trek ethical dilemma (perhaps the best SNW has offered since the Omelas episode) dragged down by a potentially interesting but very flawed framing story.

Beto's footage is not only disorienting on an aesthetic level to the episode viewer, but is also ridiculously over the top shock "journalism" using secret recordings that I simply cannot believe Starfleet would permit, let alone endorse. Even the cynical take that it's meant to be counter-propaganda is dissonant with the Federation and Starfleet we know (Section 9, badmirals, and In the Pale Moonlight notwithstanding).

As it is, except for the corny ending, it'd be more believable that Beto was a frackin toaster or Changling infiltrator who smuggled the documentary out to destroy Starfleet's reputation.

*Section 31, not Section 9.

One moment in this episode exemplifies a lot of the problems with how NuTrek presents, discusses and solves its plots, always choosing the line of most convenience: Uhura pleading with Pike for permission to mind-meld with the Jikaru after Spock got shocked.

Pike to Uhura: 'Forget it. I can't lose another crew member.'
Uhura: 'But you won't be. I'm volunteering.'
Pike: '...'

Checkmate, captain! If a subordinate *volunteers* you simply have to accede to their request. It automatically and instantly over-rides the chain of command and all health and safety considerations. Them's the rules in NuTrek. Inverted chain of command where 'no' means 'of course, go ahead, I can't stop you'. Because feelings.

Why even have this exchange between Uhura and Pike? The writers wrote themselves into a corner, that's why. They wanted Uhura to be the Jikaru tamer – logical in one sense, she is the communications officer and linguist or whatever – but to give her that scene they wrote another scene where the Spock gets mind-melted and the shuttlecraft gets banged up. Which then necessitated *another* sop of a scene in which Uhura outwits the chain of command. All so she can have her dénouement.

Thanks, I needed a nap

For those mad at StarFleet for accepting this … I just assume it was like the deal with the Sona… some corrupt admirals knew about it but nobody else knew what really was going on .

If they took section 31 seriously ( Nutrek does not ) , it could have been a secret operation of thiers because they felt changing the course of this war was worth it .

SNW again and again shoows us trek from various viewpoints.
TenK started the commetns with "I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. "

I think it is a quite good statement. Bit I still think it was good.

There are a lot of comments regarding NuTrek and how bad it is.

Honestly Star Trek has imo never produced a single stream of good episodes. Most TOS are only viewable becaust they ara cult. But as a concept they made us to reflect, to laugh ....

SNWis defiently doing much more analysis and reflection. Is it to much to me? No, but I don't need more.

Keep it as it is.

The basic plot is pretty standard, nothing we haven't seen before. But the documentary format livened it up a bit, although Jammer has a point that we have seen this before as well.

All in all, the combination is just strong enough to merit three stars out of four.

Another wasted episode in a series that has so few per season... This and the dreadful "musical" episode. SNW is such a breath of fresh air in new trek, and then they piss in our mouths with these gimmick episodes. Who wanted this? Like another comment mentioned, we're hundreds of episodes into this series, what would a badly filmed and edited documentary episode provide for the viewer? Motion sickness and a headache. Just like the "musical" episode, I couldn't make it more than a third way through, so if they inserted any actual content that moves the story... I'll just have to piece things together in future eps. Though missing the awful musical has not resulted in any missing parts of the story so maybe they did the same here. Complete trash episode that belongs in the garbage not on the screen. Side note is that the little brother character is the worst in the series so far. He acts and speaks like a child, which makes the romance with Uhura really creepy. When he first flirted with her I was hoping she'd reject him and point out that he's a baby compared to her.

I've never been a fan of the documentary-within-a-show gimmick. It's been done to death, and it always seems to take me out of the story and remind me that this is fiction (I thought "Final Cut" was by far the worst episode of Battlestar Galactica, for example). The "documentarian tries to find the hidden scandal, but it turns out there isn't one" angle is particularly tired. Shouldn't Beto have at least *tried* to interview the people at Starfleet Command who actually made the decision to take sides in this war?

Framing device aside, this would have been a perfectly fine (if derivative) episode.

But again I'm reminded of something Abigail Nussbaum said at the end of Discovery's first season. I think it's still true today, unfortunately (and just replace "Federation" with "Starfleet" and it would apply to this episode):

"Like the reboot movies before it, Discovery seems to think that the most--perhaps the only--interesting question to ask within the Star Trek universe is "should we have a Federation?" Does it, for example, make a civilization weak to live in peace and prosperity? And what happens when such a society meets an existential threat? Does it give up its values and civil liberties in order to survive? But the thing is, this is literally the most boring, basic question one can ask about Star Trek. The real challenges posed by a society like the Federation aren't questions of if, but of how. How do you create a truly just, fair, equal society? How do you balance freedom of conscience and opinion with your core values of tolerance and peace? How do you prevent the exploitation of those who are weaker than you? How do you help people outside your society, and do you have the right to encourage them to be more like you?

It's been close to twenty years since any work with Star Trek in the title even tried to address these questions."