Submitted 1 day ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to startrek@startrek.website
Written by: Kathryn Lyn & Alan B. McElroy
Directed by: Sharon Lewis
Too much docudrama for my taste, I really enjoyed Uhura and how she sees trough Beto.
The ending was emotive, and that for me was the best part, people are in Starfleet, they have their reasons, but the main one is that the like the Federation and they fight to preserve it, even die if needed.
Bold choice to have an in universe documentary made by an in universe bad/unprofessional documentarian. It makes the episode feel bad.
Also feels like 10 or so minutes were redacted considering the short length.
“Documentarian with an agenda” is a real type of documentarian - maybe the majority.
His biggest sin was probably making a doc that was secretly about himself…
After being underwhelmed last week, I enjoyed this one a lot.
I appreciated Beto cutting straight to the unspoken conflict at the heart of this franchise - Star Trek is kind of colonialist/imperialist.
When they got to the conclusion, my initial reaction is that “the people are the difference” was sort of trite…but what else is there, really? These are people who are willing to put their morality first, even as they walk an uneasy line.
Annotations for 3x09 up at: startrek.website/post/27912143
SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 8 hours ago
I really did not enjoy this one.
The “documentary” that ends up being made feels like the worst kind of propaganda that tries to feign a sense of “there’s two sides to every argument”, all while clearly pushing in favour of the agenda the documentary initially tried to critique anyway. It felt at moments like a military recruitment advertisement. I would not choose to watch such a documentary in real life, and watching it within a star trek episode just feels like I’ve wasted my time.
The writing makes use of the idea of military censorship and a film that jump cuts around to not so cleverly hide the fact that the writers are missing a plot. We are presented with a people in conflict, who abuse a creature to create a weapon. We have no other information about the conflict, beyond “there’s mass casualties”. No explanation of why starfleet is involved beyond “starfleet is here to help”. No explanation why they chose to make that kind of weapon in particular. On the matter of the alien war we are left to fill the gaps ourselves entirely, and because our in-universe director is acting in the role of an unreliable narrator, we have no idea if any of what ended up in the film they ended up making can even be trusted. That FOIA disclaimer at the start could be just as real as those films that say “based on a true story” when they are anything but.
We did get some good character development, particularly with Ortegas finally being up front and open about what she’s been through recently. But not really enough for it to feel like it matters. Ditto Uhura and Spock. Furthermore, despite self-harm and suicide being a central theme of the episode, other than an incredibly brief argument with the alien scientists about whether thier victim should be allowed to commit suicide, it’s not really debated. The crew just accept that they need to do an assisted suicide, and that’s that. Fair enough, if that’s how human morals work centuries from now, but then it leads again to an episode without a useful plot. For contrast, multiple past star trek series have had their take on this topic and done a much better job.
After watching this I am left unsure what wider contribution this episode is meant to make to the series. For all the silliness of the comedy episodes, at least they were entertaining to watch and usually had at least one major plot development by the end. This one could have been cut from the season roster and nothing would have been lost.
Random assorted notes:
Looking forward to the next one, it can’t possibly be worse than this.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 hours ago
There’s a tonne of icky ambiguity to this one…which is honestly what I like about it, though I totally get why it’s not to everyone’s liking.