Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.08
Jul. 28th, 2023 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAfter last week's Lower Deck crossover, this one feels like a crossover with Discovery's first season, and not just they actually use some Disco footage in the previouslies.
Okay, this one is arguably the darkest SNW episode so far, and as opposed to the Gorn/Alien episodes last season, it really worked for me, with the caveat that a lot also depends on future episode pay off to one particular issue. Also, for all that this made Chapel/Spock a thing, it's remarkable of how her best character scenes this year aren't Spock related but deal with her Klingon War PTSD and her literally battle hardened friendship with M'Benga. And since I was very dissatisfied with how last season resolved M'Benga's storyline with his daughter and gave him nothing else, I have to say this season really uses the actor much more, and M'Benga's war time horror of what he became is a powerful story that can't be resolved by a literal dea ex machina showing up. We even learn more about Erica Ortegas in a non-fly-the-ship context in this episode than we did in previous eps.
The flashbacks to Christine Chapel and Joseph M'Benga on J'gal during the Klingon War that they and Ortegas fought in, but most of the other Enterprise crew did not for reasons detailed in Star Trek: Discovery, their desperate efforts to save people there as well as their present day trauma triggered by the visit of not just any Klingon but the former Klingon general in charge of J'gal is superbly played by both actors. I also appreciated the way Spock is doing his best to supportive of Christine and help but can't, not because he's Vulcan or anything like that but because sometimes you need to give someone dealing with trauma the space they ask for, and while it's important that they know you're there should they want to talk it's equally important not to press the issue but leave it to them. As Chapel says, it's not about Spock, and I love the episode agrees. (Without, again, making this a failure of Spock's.)
Before I get to the big issue at the end the episode is building up to, some more details on the way there:
- Una telling Pike they need to do a short cut because of crew moral is Una being a great First Officer, which was good to see and include, because the show has the ongoing problem in my eyes that they're more tell than show with Number One being superb at her job or getting the kind of juicy character stuff to do which, say, La'an does.
- baring future revelations, I like that the episode didn't take the easy way out of letting Rah by a Klingon double agent or plot the Federation's demise as Ortegas suspects
- I could quibble about the likelihood of the Federation making a Klingon defector with Rah's supposed backstory an envoy, but given they put Voq/Ash in charge of Section 31 as of the end of s2 of Discovery barely a year after the war has ended, that ship has sailed
- Rah referencing a male Chancellor, though, put my back up: what happened to L'Rell?!?
- I very much suspect that Rah is another example of American media trying to deal with Operation Paperclip and the wholesale import of German scientists into the US, not to mention knowingly putting Nazi war criminals in charge outside of the US (Gehlen getting the first West German secret service being a case in point, but not the only one); the MCU did this via Hydra, which I always thought was making things easier for themselves because the Hydra guys are Evil Conspirators, and Werner von Braun et al weren't, they absolutely did exactly what they were brought into the US to do and finished their lives as model US citizens - after a past as war criminals working with slave labor - , which isn't redemption (as they never acknowledged what they did), and isn't Evil Conspiracy, it's the disturbing thing that also hung about the overhwelming majory of people of my grandparents' generation, that you can be part of an inhuman regime for twelve years in every sense and then go and live out your life without falling back on secret serial killing or evil conspiring in frightening normalcy.
Now, in terms of previous Treks, there were a couple of ways the story could go in terms of Rah. There's the Duet model (for most of the episode, it looks like the Cardassian is insincere and an unrepentant war criminal, and then it turns out he's a repentant war criminal playing an unrepentant one to make his fellow Cardassians face their guilt, and then when Kira has accepted this and he's found a measure of peace he's killed by another Bajoran not for either his actual crimes or the ones of the guy he portrays but because he's Cardassian) or the Waltz model (he's been evil all along! Really! And now wants to destroy everything so he can be killed off!). Instead, again baring fiuture revelations, the episode's reveal with Rah was that while he did committ the war crimes against humans previously establisihed, he did not kill his own men in order to defect and/or to stop said crimes as he claimed but used their M'Benga caused deaths to defect (presumably the fact he fled would have burned his bridges back on Kronos?); it isn't that he's up to anything negative in the present (though certainly his insistence to get M'Benga to forgive him or at least ally with him is unsympathetic characterisation), and as far as we know by the point the episode ends, his Federation diplomatic track record is valid. Again, that's much closer to the post 1945 lives of von Braun & Co. than the MCU Hydra scientists.
But of course the big emotional climax isn't the reveal that Rah didn't kill his men, and that M'Benga did, but what happens afterwards, when the camera deliberately pulls back and there are cuts ensuring we don't see what exactly happens but are informed by Christine Chapel in her testimony to Pike that Rah attacked M'Benga and M'Benga killed him in self defense, with M'Benga confirming to the dubious Pike the same story. Evidently we're not meant to believe this, given that the Klingon knife Rah gets killed with is one M'Benga had at hand, not Rah (which Pike can't know since it's the weapon responsible for the killings Rah falsely took credit for), and that Rah had no motive to physically attack M'Benga (though he certainly had no respect for M'Benga's space.)
But I don't think it was as easy as M'Benga killing Rah (the obvious conclusion) in pre-meditation or even by trigger, either, and not just because M'Benga is still on the Enterprise in Kirk's day, if demoted to serve under McCoy. I think if this were all, the episode wouldn't have gone to the trouble of NOT showing us Rah's actual death. Or to have most of the J'Gal flashbacks told through Chapel's pov, not M'Benga's. Or to emphasize that Chapel is as triggered by Rah's presence as M'Benga is.
So, here's my suspicion of a future reveal: it will turn out that M'Benga did prepare the knife but didn't actually kill Rah; that Christine entered, saw M'Benga and Rah in what looked like a physical confrontation, was triggered, grabbed the knife (which courtesy of M'Benga was lying out in the open) and killed Rah to protect her friend. Afterwards, M'Benga insisted on taking the fall as he had at the very least considered killing the man, and Christine, shaken, agreed but only if she got to testify that it was self defense.
Either way: it's an intense episode focused on the deep long term damage war leaves, even in an Utopian future. Now, if it's never referred to again and we're just left with "yes, M'Benga killed the guy, but that's it", or, even worse, "he killed the guy but that's good because that was an actual war criminal", some points will drop from my esteem, but I don't think that's going to be the case, and I'm really curious to where we go from here.
Okay, this one is arguably the darkest SNW episode so far, and as opposed to the Gorn/Alien episodes last season, it really worked for me, with the caveat that a lot also depends on future episode pay off to one particular issue. Also, for all that this made Chapel/Spock a thing, it's remarkable of how her best character scenes this year aren't Spock related but deal with her Klingon War PTSD and her literally battle hardened friendship with M'Benga. And since I was very dissatisfied with how last season resolved M'Benga's storyline with his daughter and gave him nothing else, I have to say this season really uses the actor much more, and M'Benga's war time horror of what he became is a powerful story that can't be resolved by a literal dea ex machina showing up. We even learn more about Erica Ortegas in a non-fly-the-ship context in this episode than we did in previous eps.
The flashbacks to Christine Chapel and Joseph M'Benga on J'gal during the Klingon War that they and Ortegas fought in, but most of the other Enterprise crew did not for reasons detailed in Star Trek: Discovery, their desperate efforts to save people there as well as their present day trauma triggered by the visit of not just any Klingon but the former Klingon general in charge of J'gal is superbly played by both actors. I also appreciated the way Spock is doing his best to supportive of Christine and help but can't, not because he's Vulcan or anything like that but because sometimes you need to give someone dealing with trauma the space they ask for, and while it's important that they know you're there should they want to talk it's equally important not to press the issue but leave it to them. As Chapel says, it's not about Spock, and I love the episode agrees. (Without, again, making this a failure of Spock's.)
Before I get to the big issue at the end the episode is building up to, some more details on the way there:
- Una telling Pike they need to do a short cut because of crew moral is Una being a great First Officer, which was good to see and include, because the show has the ongoing problem in my eyes that they're more tell than show with Number One being superb at her job or getting the kind of juicy character stuff to do which, say, La'an does.
- baring future revelations, I like that the episode didn't take the easy way out of letting Rah by a Klingon double agent or plot the Federation's demise as Ortegas suspects
- I could quibble about the likelihood of the Federation making a Klingon defector with Rah's supposed backstory an envoy, but given they put Voq/Ash in charge of Section 31 as of the end of s2 of Discovery barely a year after the war has ended, that ship has sailed
- Rah referencing a male Chancellor, though, put my back up: what happened to L'Rell?!?
- I very much suspect that Rah is another example of American media trying to deal with Operation Paperclip and the wholesale import of German scientists into the US, not to mention knowingly putting Nazi war criminals in charge outside of the US (Gehlen getting the first West German secret service being a case in point, but not the only one); the MCU did this via Hydra, which I always thought was making things easier for themselves because the Hydra guys are Evil Conspirators, and Werner von Braun et al weren't, they absolutely did exactly what they were brought into the US to do and finished their lives as model US citizens - after a past as war criminals working with slave labor - , which isn't redemption (as they never acknowledged what they did), and isn't Evil Conspiracy, it's the disturbing thing that also hung about the overhwelming majory of people of my grandparents' generation, that you can be part of an inhuman regime for twelve years in every sense and then go and live out your life without falling back on secret serial killing or evil conspiring in frightening normalcy.
Now, in terms of previous Treks, there were a couple of ways the story could go in terms of Rah. There's the Duet model (for most of the episode, it looks like the Cardassian is insincere and an unrepentant war criminal, and then it turns out he's a repentant war criminal playing an unrepentant one to make his fellow Cardassians face their guilt, and then when Kira has accepted this and he's found a measure of peace he's killed by another Bajoran not for either his actual crimes or the ones of the guy he portrays but because he's Cardassian) or the Waltz model (he's been evil all along! Really! And now wants to destroy everything so he can be killed off!). Instead, again baring fiuture revelations, the episode's reveal with Rah was that while he did committ the war crimes against humans previously establisihed, he did not kill his own men in order to defect and/or to stop said crimes as he claimed but used their M'Benga caused deaths to defect (presumably the fact he fled would have burned his bridges back on Kronos?); it isn't that he's up to anything negative in the present (though certainly his insistence to get M'Benga to forgive him or at least ally with him is unsympathetic characterisation), and as far as we know by the point the episode ends, his Federation diplomatic track record is valid. Again, that's much closer to the post 1945 lives of von Braun & Co. than the MCU Hydra scientists.
But of course the big emotional climax isn't the reveal that Rah didn't kill his men, and that M'Benga did, but what happens afterwards, when the camera deliberately pulls back and there are cuts ensuring we don't see what exactly happens but are informed by Christine Chapel in her testimony to Pike that Rah attacked M'Benga and M'Benga killed him in self defense, with M'Benga confirming to the dubious Pike the same story. Evidently we're not meant to believe this, given that the Klingon knife Rah gets killed with is one M'Benga had at hand, not Rah (which Pike can't know since it's the weapon responsible for the killings Rah falsely took credit for), and that Rah had no motive to physically attack M'Benga (though he certainly had no respect for M'Benga's space.)
But I don't think it was as easy as M'Benga killing Rah (the obvious conclusion) in pre-meditation or even by trigger, either, and not just because M'Benga is still on the Enterprise in Kirk's day, if demoted to serve under McCoy. I think if this were all, the episode wouldn't have gone to the trouble of NOT showing us Rah's actual death. Or to have most of the J'Gal flashbacks told through Chapel's pov, not M'Benga's. Or to emphasize that Chapel is as triggered by Rah's presence as M'Benga is.
So, here's my suspicion of a future reveal: it will turn out that M'Benga did prepare the knife but didn't actually kill Rah; that Christine entered, saw M'Benga and Rah in what looked like a physical confrontation, was triggered, grabbed the knife (which courtesy of M'Benga was lying out in the open) and killed Rah to protect her friend. Afterwards, M'Benga insisted on taking the fall as he had at the very least considered killing the man, and Christine, shaken, agreed but only if she got to testify that it was self defense.
Either way: it's an intense episode focused on the deep long term damage war leaves, even in an Utopian future. Now, if it's never referred to again and we're just left with "yes, M'Benga killed the guy, but that's it", or, even worse, "he killed the guy but that's good because that was an actual war criminal", some points will drop from my esteem, but I don't think that's going to be the case, and I'm really curious to where we go from here.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-29 08:42 pm (UTC)To be honest, it wasn't an episode I liked. It's better use of M'Benga and Chapel's war background than the first episode of the series. Though I thought it was implied at the time Chapel was familiar and had used his supersolder serum before, so maybe there really is more to come out because she didn't in this episode.
All that said it didn't really click with me; it's not what I'm here for. There seems to be remarkably little exploring of strange new worlds in this season of Strange New Worlds.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-30 09:49 am (UTC)In any case, to each their own: I thought it was a powerful episode, and it did work for me.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-30 11:38 pm (UTC)Una telling Pike they need to do a short cut because of crew moral is Una being a great First Officer, which was good to see and include, because the show has the ongoing problem in my eyes that they're more tell than show with Number One being superb at her job or getting the kind of juicy character stuff to do which, say, La'an does.
YES. Other than her trial episode, she gets very little to do! So it was nice for her to have this moment!
I am also very interested to see where this all goes...
no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 09:22 am (UTC)My M'Benga speculation is the other way around - they didn't have much plans beyond his daughter's fate going on, then saw what the actor could do and got inspired for s2.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-03 09:29 am (UTC)