Oooof

I am trying to bring order to my thoughts it’s hard. I keep rewriting and deleting. How can StarFleet claim to be so enlightened and evolved and yet be this bad with mental health?

It’s endemic because it’s not just this episode, it’s not SNW, it’s pretty much all Trek. I have no idea whether the writers are intending the really awful way that makes StarFleet look or if they are just that dense about it themselves. The hope and promise of Star Trek just does not apply when mental health is concerned.

Picard was fucking awful for this. I won’t go into that here and now but boy do I have a lot to say.

In terms of StarFleet playing out the issues of the day – yeah totally. It was politically convenient and it got them something they wanted to gloss over that dudes war crimes. I can also totally buy the directive of “play nice”. It’s politics and it’s not at all out of character for StarFleet but I hate it.

So I am coming at this from two angles really.

1) I wish StarFleet was better about this. Usually I find the whole politics, the “institution is flawed but our heroes believe in the ideal” to be a fascinating conflict. But it’s like StarFleet doesn’t even try to care. Realistic for how things are in the world now? Sure. But again I’m back to “isn’t there supposed to be hope?” and yes I am reacting to this emotionally as I have a lot of mental health struggles and the future is no better apparently.

2) forgetting what I wish about StarFleet and looking at it how it is.

For the second I am disappointed in Pike. Enterprise was kept out of the war so he didn’t serve but he has been in battle, he has his own trauma with the future vision of how his career ends. I get he believes in the ideal of StarFleet strongly, that he believes in peace, but he is not an idiot. He knows how respected he is. He knows how to not make it an order but know people will still do it.

Ortegas, M’Benga – all surprised by the sudden appearance of the Klingon. Yes the dude asked for a tour but they have communicators, he could have sent an ensign on ahead. It was very thoughtless not to warn them as they didn’t expect him to just appear on the bridge or sickbay.

He didn’t want the crew to appear to ignore the Klingon as he had to “smooth political feathers” but most of the crew didn’t serve. Would the Klingon even have noticed that he hadn’t met a handful out of the hundred or so on the enterprise?

If Pike wanted to make it be their choice then he should have approached it like that. Rather than the dinner order that wasn’t an order (but it was). I mean forgiveness is a gift to oneself sometimes. To let go of pain etc. So if Ortegas or Chapel or M’Benga had wanted to make peace within themselves, by meeting and making nice with the enemy to move on – that would be for them and their benefit and was their choice. Forcing them to be triggered to placate the ego of a war criminal and the political masters that want to keep him happy – like I said I think badly of Pike for doing that to his crew. Yes he didn’t fight in the war but he should have more empathy than that.

Quite how M’Benga as a doctor who joined starfleet to learn about alien diseases became a special ops assassin is a bit confusing. Perhaps he was assigned as team medic to a special ops unit? He cooked up the cocktail once in the field maybe to get his team out of a bad spot? Was forced to fight himself? And it sort of snowballed. Honestly though whatever logic made it happen, it happened, and some of it must be in his file. We saw Pike looking at it so does he not know? As the Captain even if was sealed he’d have clearance or not? It doesn’t sound like M’Benga ever reported his last behind enemy lines mission but his 99 kills before that should be logged.

I get screen time is limited but there was way too much here and not enough time. I suppose it’s the stuff missing scene fanfics are made from as we were missing a lot of reactions and interplay between the characters. There really wasn’t enough of a debate or discussion. There was more token objection to StarFleet adopted a ‘reformed’ enemy general as an ambassador but nothing that was properly explored. There wasn’t the screentime I guess.

The moral debate at the end of “who decides who gets redeemed and who gets punished” or “what is forgivable?” were good themes but they weren’t explored. It’s like this is the opening chapter, we see the story but haven’t dug into it.

Anyway meaty episode. Too meaty. There was enough here for half a season at least. Well acted. I’ve been a bit hard on Chapel this season as the thing with Spock isn’t my cup of tea but her character stuff was good (well bad but interesting and painful) this episode.

Ortegas once again got the short stick though 😦 I swear it’s like the writers don’t want them to shine. There really wasn’t time with all the M’Benga material, which is why I say this episode needed a lot more time. What was here was worth inclusion but there was so much more that is missing, and Ortegas is very unexplored generally.

Another thing (told you my thoughts are disorganised). Pike said something about the StarFleet party line being “peace” and Una quite rightly pointed out that everyone was on their own journey. Which was a very diplomatic way of saying that a conflict ending doesn’t mean peace. That much blood and death, isn’t like turning a tap on and off. There is going to be anger and a lot of mixed up emotions.

But all I could think of at the time was that “shoving it under a rug and pretending like it doesn’t exist” is basically the StarFleet party line when it comes to trauma. Again I could rant at length about Picard. Sometimes it feels like StarFleet expects it’s people to be robots with a “well that happened” and then just move on.

As an out of universe thing keeping everything very episodic – yeah they didn’t really carry any of the “must have been totally there” trauma on. But in universe it’s like they are all springs, shove all the trauma deep down and put a “StarFleet” face on it until one day they snap. And then ofc they will get discharged, still get no help, and fuck whatever happens to them after that. Chew them up and spit them out – more meat for the grinder. Realistic as hell but not the StarFleet “hope for the future” I wish it was.