this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023

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Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x02 "Ad Astra Per Aspera" (startrek.website)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Logline

Commander Una Chin-Riley faces court-martial along with possible imprisonment and dishonorable dismissal from Starfleet, and her defense is in the hands of a lawyer who’s also a childhood friend with whom she had a terrible falling out.

Written by Dana Horgan

Directed by Valerie Weiss

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

A mediocre episode whose saving grace was the message. I get what they were going for and I agree with it, as an episode though... meh. It would have been nice to see the Federation fight back a little bit, just for drama purposes. The vibe I got was that even the prosecution was not 100% on board with the law but since it was a law they had to uphold it; imo it would have been more interesting to have a more passionate prosecution. Measure of a Man had Riker, Drumhead had Satie, both good opponents for the heroes. Who was the antagonist here? The bald Vulcan guy who spoke for 2 minutes?

Also the flashback made me feel like the director thinks I'm some sort of idiot who can't remember what happened a few minutes ago. What was the point of that?

I also feel like the episode squandered the opportunity to explore the theme of genetic engineering itself. Why is it so dangerous anyway? Would've been nice to hear that side of the argument.

As a sidenote, I don't like how bigoted the Federation appears to be; this whole ban on augments never sat right with me, not in DS9 and not now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The antagonist was pretty clearly the bald Vulcan guy. The prosecutor didn't think the law was just, but it was her job. Kind of like Riker being forced in Measure of a Man.

I think it was made clear in DS9 and reinforced here that the whole Federation POV was entirely because of the scars on earth of the Eugenics Wars. I feel like it's maybe analogous to the Patriot Act - passed because of a traumatic event, but now decades (or centuries on) kind of hard to justify for anyone, but getting rid of a law is hard.

And the entire point of the episode was the Federation is bigoted against augments, and no - there's no good reason for it. It's about as good as the argument that because Mao and Stalin were atheists, we should ban atheism - as if THAT's what made them horrible people. And there's nothing in the canon to imply that Khan and the other augment war lords were war lords and fighting the wars because they were augments.

I've said other places I think this hypocrisy of the Federation is actually pretty justified in earlier Trek, we may not like it - but it's not because of nuTrek IMHO. Of course, because Prequel, they also can't fix it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I enjoyed the episode but agree with most of your points, especially the flashbacks. If the events had happened earlier in the episode they might have been understandable but they had just happened! Spock's little joke was pretty out of character as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In the case of Spock I am hopeful we will see him transform into the man he is in TOS. My fear is that they will make the reason for this to be some sort of traumatic event that happens to him while I would prefer a more slow transformation.

Nevertheless, I still remain optimistic about this series' future.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I largely quite like SNW, but this episode had some extremely questionable eugenics apologia laced into the narrative.

I think the broadest problem with nu-trek (though it's strongly reined in in SNW) is the heavily maudlin over-scoring and the bathos-laden dialogue. When almost every exchange between two characters sounds "perfectly written" and is dripping in score, it's hard to take seriously.

If SNW employed like, 20% more restraint in that regard, it would sing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I was definitely missing those pregnant pauses that they had in Measure of a Man. I figure they had a lot of dialog to pack in there, but it did come off pretty "perfect".

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This episode was striking in that it showed the crew of the Enterprise being the best of the best Starfleet officers. Pike going to literally the brink of death to find his #1 the best lawyer in the galaxy, Uhura telling La'an off for making an illegal request, La'an trying to poke holes into weak removed in security, and Una stepping up to lay it all out on the table so her friends won't have to keep her secret and be in danger for doing so. Amazing. No wonder they're posted on the flagship.

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