I’m opening my review of the second episode of SNW season two with a comment about Deep Space Nine. First, let me say that DS9 is my favorite of all the Trek shows (though this show has been challenging it). But it did introduce two horrid concepts to Trek that left permanent scars on the franchise: the genetic engineering ban and Section 31.
One of the many great things about “Ad Astra per Aspera” is that it puts a great deal of salve on the first of those scars. (Let’s just hope the forthcoming Michelle Yeoh movie does the same for the latter…)
When Dr. Julian Bashir was revealed to be genetically enhanced in DS9’s “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” it was further established that elective genetic modification was illegal in the Federation, explained as trying to avoid another Khan Noonien Singh, to prevent the Eugenics Wars from happening again.
At the time, it probably seemed sensible, especially since twenty-fourth-century humans were being played by humans on the cusp on the twenty-first century, and this provided cover for why we didn’t see the kind of human body modification (for both medical and elective reasons) that will surely happen as technology improves over the next four hundred years.
But it flies in the face, not only of common sense (seriously, how many major, life-changing laws are on the books now that are based on stuff that happened in the 1600s?), but of the very notion of the Federation. The idea that the Federation would discriminate against, well, anyone is antithetical to what Trek is supposed to be about.
Making the decision to make use of the backstory established by the late great D.C. Fontana for Number One in the 1989 novel Vulcan’s Glory as a genetically enhanced Illyrian meant that SNW intended to address this issue head-on. There wasn’t a need to—there was no need to use Fontana’s background as a blueprint for Una Chin-Riley, as evidenced by that very choice of nomenclature, which did not come from Vulcan’s Glory.
I’m really glad they did it, though, because it resulted in one of Trek’s best episodes.
Most every Trek show has done at least one trial-type episode, whether it’s a full trial, a preliminary hearing, or some other kind of adversarial judicial process that takes up a major chunk of the episode. The original series had “Court Martial” and “The Menagerie,” TNG had “The Measure of a Man” and “The Drumhead,” DS9 had “Dax” and “Rules of Engagement,” Voyager had “Death Wish” and “Author, Author,” Enterprise had “Judgment,” Discovery had “Unification III,” Lower Decks had “Veritas.” (Picard never did one, and Prodigy hasn’t yet.)
Many—though not all—of the above are strong episodes, and indeed many would list “The Measure of a Man” as one of TNG’s best, if not one of Trek’s best. But right now, I gotta say that “Ad Astra per Aspera” blows them all out of the water.
It’s to the credit of the SNW production staff in general and to writer Dana Horgan in particular that nobody felt the need to graft a B-plot onto this. There’s more than enough story here for an hour, and even though it’s entirely people in a room talking to each other, it’s all incredibly compelling.
It also gives Rebecca Romijn a long-overdue spotlight. We get Number One’s full background, growing up on an Illyrian colony that was given provisional Federation membership as long as they stopped their genetic engineering. However, they didn’t. We see the hardships this forces upon them, as we open with a flashback to Chin-Riley’s youth, having broken her leg, and her parents unwilling to take her to a doctor lest they see her glowy healing ability (first seen in “Ghosts of Illyria”). Later, while testifying at her court martial, she explains that they had to seek out sympathetic doctors to treat them—a state of affairs that will ring with depressing familiarity to women seeking gynecological care before 1972 (and more recently in some states), and to LGBTQ+ folks seeking any kind of medical care during the worst of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.
Romijn beautifully sells Number One’s anguish, because it’s subtle. She’s hidden who she really is for so long that, when the pain does come out, it’s quiet. It’s a seeping wound, not a gushing one. This nicely retcons the portrayal of the character in “The Cage,” to wit, Pike saying she doesn’t count as a woman on the bridge because she’s subsumed her femininity so much to be almost robot-like, so she can succeed in a man’s world. (Yay, 1964.) Now we have a reason for it that doesn’t come out of a sexist patriarchal norm: she’s spent twenty-five years hiding who and what she is.
More to the point, she’s hidden what she went through: the discrimination, the taunts from the non-Illyrian kids, being forced to hide, and then later to assimilate and pretend to be something she isn’t.
And then she found Starfleet, and this was my favorite moment in the episode. Chin-Riley describes the first time she saw a Starfleet crew, which visited her homeworld when she was five or six: “They were all so different from one another. So many crewmembers from so many planets—it was beautiful.” With those two sentences, Number One magnificently expressed what viewers in 1966 saw when the original series aired: in a time of unrest, of wars both hot and cold, viewers got to see a united Earth, of people of different cultures and skin tones and beliefs all working together without comment, without it even being considered unusual. Romijn delivers her colloquy on what Starfleet means to her with a subdued intensity that is incredibly compelling.
As good as Romijn is, though, hers is the second-best performance in this episode, as truly the hour is utterly owned by Yetide Badaki as Neera Ketoul, the Illyrian civil-rights lawyer Pike went chasing after last week. Badaki—who was stellar as Bilquis in American Gods—completely takes over the episode. Which, frankly, is as it should be in a trial story. After all, the focus in this type of tale is on the ones making the case, as it were. Sometimes that’s a regular—Picard in “The Measure of a Man,” Burnham in “Unification III”—sometimes it’s a guest—Elisha Cook Jr.’s Sam Cogley in “Court Martial,” J.G. Hertzler and John Vickery’s Klingon lawyers in “Judgment”—but they’re central to the story.
Horgan’s script also gives Badaki some great material. It starts with Ketoul pointing out that, yes, genetic engineering is illegal. But once upon a time, slavery was legal, discrimination was legal, sexism was legal. (At this juncture, I feel the urge to point out that neither marital rape nor domestic violence were actually considered crimes in all fifty states until the mid-1990s.) Being legal doesn’t make something morally right.
Ketoul puts April on the stand. April sponsored Chin-Riley to Starfleet Academy, and she served under him on Enterprise. He speaks warmly of her, but when asked directly if he’d have still sponsored her knowing she was Illyrian, he says no, because it would violate regulations. Ketoul then pulls out three separate occasions when April, as Enterprise captain, violated the Prime Directive, in each case in order to save lives, because if nearly six decades of Star Trek have taught us nothing else, it’s that Starfleet captains will bend the rules to save lives. April awkwardly points out that captains have to make judgment calls. The tribunal, pointing out that April isn’t the one on trial, excuses him from the stand and strikes his testimony from the record.
This leads to an unpleasant conversation in Pike’s quarters, as April angrily tells Pike that Ketoul as defense attorney was his idea (well, his and Number One’s, but whatever), and April never got a chance to testify on the record about what a great officer Chin-Riley is.
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There are some nice bits where Spock, M’Benga, and La’an are called as character witnesses. Spock speaks to her leadership abilities, and how much he has learned from her. (He also mentions her penchant for Gilbert & Sullivan, a lovely callback to the Short Trek “Q & A.”) M’Benga speaks to her compassion and how she looks out for her people. La’an tells everyone about how Chin-Riley is directly responsible for saving La’an’s life and indirectly responsible for all the lives La’an herself has saved as a member of Starfleet security.
Pike is not one of those who takes the stand. As Captain Batel points out, if he’s on the stand, he has to testify that he knew his first officer was Illyrian for months and didn’t report it. (Batel is the prosecuting attorney, which makes nothing like sense, as she’s not an officer of the Judge Advocate General, she’s a starship captain. But I guess they wanted the familiar face of Melanie Scrofano and her relationship with Pike rather than a stranger, though it does feel like a callback to the Kirk-Areel Shaw relationship in “Court Martial”…)
Unfortunately, it comes out anyhow, as Batel’s boss in the JAG office, Vice Admiral Pasalk (played with spectacular snottiness by Graeme Somerville), takes over the questioning of Chin-Riley to get that information on the record.
However, Ketoul has two more cards to play. Her questioning of Chin-Riley includes, not just the awful details of her childhood, growing up being discriminated against for being Illyrian, but also how Starfleet provided her with a safe haven, a place where she wouldn’t be tormented, a place where she could thrive.
And then we get the bombshell—which I actually saw coming—which is that Chin-Riley herself is the one who revealed her heritage. She turned herself in. This tracks with what we’ve seen before, from her offering to resign in “Ghost of Illyria,” and her calm acceptance of arrest in “A Quality of Mercy.” She doesn’t want to hide anymore, and she doesn’t want to get anyone else in trouble for her choice.
Then Ketoul brings it all together by having Batel read the requirements for Starfleet to grant asylum: the person is fleeing persecution, seeks safety within Starfleet, and asks for asylum. Starfleet captains must use their judgment in granting asylum, and the request must be ultimately confirmed by a tribunal or designated authority.
Number One’s testimony made it clear that she fulfilled the three requirements, having asked for asylum by identifying herself to Pike in “Ghosts of Illyria,” with Pike using his discretion, just the same way April did in the examples she cited during the admiral’s testimony. All that’s left is for the tribunal to grant her that asylum.
It’s a legal split hair, a technicality, but I find myself reminded of a line from Star Trek Into Darkness spoken by Zachary Quinto’s iteration of Spock: “I am Vulcan, sir, we embrace technicality.”
And in the end, Chin-Riley is back to being Pike’s Number One, Ketoul is pleased that there’s at least one Starfleet crew who’s proud to be serving under an Illyrian, and everyone lives happily ever after. We don’t get the wholesale rescinding of the genetic engineering laws that we should have, because we know those laws are still on the books a century hence. Instead, we get nonsense justifications of the rationale behind the laws from the tribunal, and even from Ketoul herself. But it’s a step in the right direction, at least, and a legal precedent that could be used by, say, Discovery or some future Trek show to finally dump the law all together.
There are some other great moments in this episode. At one point, Spock and Pasalk are talking, and M’Benga and Ortegas are observing from across the room. Ortegas assumes from their outwardly calm demeanors that they’re “Vulcan bros,” but M’Benga assures her that the two of them can’t stand each other. When M’Benga was introduced in the original series’ “A Private Little War,” it was as someone who did his medical internship at a Vulcan hospital. He therefore is much better at reading Vulcan body language. Spock soon proves M’Benga right by apologizing for his “outburst,” and admitting that he finds Pasalk—a former colleague of his father’s—to be particularly annoying. Ortegas’ combination of shocked and amused is delightful.
And, to remind us who the star of the show is, Pike gets several very strong one-on-one conversations. It starts with his persistence in getting in to see Ketoul and convincing her to take Chin-Riley’s case. It continues with two different talks with Batel, one about Chin-Riley rejecting the plea deal Batel worked her ass off to get approved, and later with Batel explaining to Pike why he can’t take the stand. And then there’s the conversation with April, where the pissed-off admiral refuses the drink Pike offers and walks out on him. (Pike blithely pours April’s drink into his own and gulps it all down. It’s that kind of day…)
In a nice touch, we get some callbacks to the original series, including the same bell used by the tribunal, the dress uniforms that look similar to those from 57 years ago, and the glowy thing you put your hand on that will say if you’re lying or not.
Last time, I expressed annoyance that we had to wait yet another week for Number One’s trial, but having seen it, I approve of the decision. For all that it’s one of SNW’s best—indeed, I think it will go down as one of Trek’s best—it would’ve made for a bit too staid of a season premiere.
Finally, nice to see that SNW is continuing the Trek tradition of whipping out the Latin for episode titles. In this case, it’s also a nod to Enterprise, as “ad astra per aspera” was Earth Starfleet’s motto on that show, and Chin-Riley mentions learning that in history class. And next week, it’s that other Trek title standby, a Shakespeare quote, as it’s called “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” See y’all then…
Keith R.A. DeCandido will have a short story in the historic anthology Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry, celebrating a century of Weird Tales magazine, now available for preorder and being released in October from Blackstone Publishing. Keith’s story is called “Prezzo,” taking place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1930s, and about Italian immigrants, racial prejudice, and scary monsters. More info here.
Great courtroom episode. IMO, it’s no Measure of a Man or Drumhead, but it’s still very good. Plus, it was an excellent allegory for trans-rights and other human rights. It was a bit heavy-handed, but as a certain Ghost of Christmas Past (aka Carol Kane) said. “Sometimes you have to SMACK them in the face to get their attention.” I found Una’s backstory to be very poignant.
I was afraid Uhura was going to cave and give La’an the personal logs she wanted. I’m glad she didn’t. That would’ve been so wrong.
It is odd that Batel, a starship captain, is co-counsel for the JAG. We know Riker functioned as prosecutor but that’s because the Starbase didn’t have a staff yet. Perhaps it’s like jury duty and all captains, or at least those versed in interstellar law, can be called about to act as co-counsel for the JAG. I know she has a conflict of interest (you can see how conflicted she is) but Admiral Paslk seems prickly enough to deny her request to recuse herself.
Speaking of Paslk, I loved M’Benga reading their body language and noting that the two Vulcans were not having a pleasant conversation. I also loved Spock’s assumption that his “outburst” was noticeable. I don’t know if Ortegas’s imagining of their conversation was just meant to be funny or also to illustrate she might have some prejudices against Vulcans. She seemed rather confident that Spock and the admiral would be on the same side.
I did not like Neera going after April as a way to attack Starfleet. However, she did ultimately save Una by using the Federation’s own asylum law. . BTW, I found their history interesting. Neera was angry at Una not just because she joined an organization that was prejudice against their people but also that she continued to hide her heritage so she could “pass.”
Oh, if we ever wondered if April was a strict “by the book” type captain. Well, we got our answer today.
The Eugenic Wars (and WWIII) must’ve really left a mark if there is still so much prejudice after 150 years later (add another century when we get to DS9/Prodigy)
On a procedural note, I’m confused about how child-Una would have been instantly outed if she went to the wrong doctor but adult-Una presumably went through numerous Starfleet physicals without issue. Did she give herself additional genetic modifications as an adult in order to “pass”? If so, that should have come up in the trial or in a connection drawn to the Illyrian colony from season 1, but if not, then I don’t understand how she actually managed to successfully hide for this long.
I suspect everyone’s personal feelings on this episode are going to come down on what they hoped the outcome would be and how it got there. Me, I’m all for working to dismantle patently unjust laws and systems in my future utopias, instead of keeping them on the books just so they can align with some episodes taking place 100 years later but written during the Clinton administration.
But we’re not going to get that here. I’m surprised that many of Una’s fears from her monologue at the end of “Ghosts of Illyria” basically came true: she WAS only allowed to remain in Starfleet on a technicality because she was “one of the good ones” and not because anything had really meaningfully changed. In other words, she gets to retain her rights and stay out of prison largely because of the value she brings to society, which is completely counter to Star Trek’s ideals of inherent dignity for all people. And the fact that Starfleet granted asylum to a Federation citizen fleeing persecution on a Federation planet has to be one of the more quietly messed-up things the franchise has done in a while.
But the episode itself was very solid. For the first time in I don’t know how long, Trek actually does allegory, using the future to directly comment on our present, and threads the needle excellently. All the credit in the world goes to Rebecca Romijn and Yedite Badaki during Una’s time on the stand. That’s a scene that can stand against any other courtroom scene in all of Trek.
(And the costuming department continues to crush it week after week. The dress uniforms are a perfect high-definition adaptation of what was seen on TOS.)
Edit–I make a cute reference and mess it up! Carol Kane was the Ghost of Christmas PRESENT
@2/Ben–
My guess is some extra modifications were done so Una would pass Starfleet tests. It’s possible some diligent doctors, maybe Doctor Boyce, noted some discrepancies and kept quiet. But most probably just ignored things that just seemed “off”
Now THAT was Star Trek! A strong social allegory, excellent character work, and inspiration like whoa. I thought the revelation that Una turned HERSELF in was stunning, and the asylum gambit was clever.
And I’m glad the writer remembered that “A Private Little War” told us that Dr. M’Benga interned in a Vulcan ward, and so he knows Vulcans far better than most humans do. The cute little humorous scene caused by the difference between his and Ortegas’ understanding of Spock’s interaction with the other Vulcan was a nice break from all the tension.
Bigotry is a great evil, and Star Trek has been firmly anti-bigotry at least since Kirk’s, “Leave any bigotry in your quarters; there’s no room for it on the bridge” in “Balance of Terror.” Nice to see SNW continuing this proud tradition!
My problem with the Federation ban on HUMAN Genetic Engineering is that it flies in the face of TNG S2 EP7 “Unnatural Selection”. The Federation was either clueless to the research being done at Darwin Station or it was approved. How else can you explain away Starfleet resupply missions to the facility? The only other possibility would be for Darwin Station to be a Section 31 Black Ops facility with the facade of doing legitimate research. Even at that, IF the research being done with the Children was Illegal, why did Picard simply quarantine the planet? Wouldn’t something show up in the ship’s log.
Now consider the timing. Bashir would already have been through his genetic engineering when the events in Unnatural Selection happened (Bashir most likely would have been a Student at Starfleet Academy and we know from DS9 that he was engineered as a child). Unless Bashir’s percents were Section 31 operatives, it’s unlikely that they would have done something illegal (unethical is another story).
I tend to believe that the 24th century Federation prohibition on HUMAN Genetic Engineering was enacted AFTER the events of Unnatural Selection.
@6/Charles Rosenberg
But Bashir’s parents DID do something illegal. His father even says “we could go to jail” and later gives himself up to the JAG in exchange for Bashir staying in Starfleet. (which is weird. He was already in danger of going to jail. I don’t see why the JAG considered that a plea deal).
I tend to believe that the project in “Unnatural Selection” was approved, reluctantly, to see if the ban could be lessened. It’s failure told Starfleet Command that it shouldn’t be.
I’m not one of those “X is true Star Trek” people, but this is the flavor of earlier Trek that has been (largely) absent from modern Star Trek: Didactic storytelling which absolutely clubs you over the head with The Message Of The Week. Thankfully, it was incredibly effective at doing so, as you noted.
I do have quibbles, but they’re really issues related to Trek canon rather than anything this episode did. Sure, Earth had…issues (to put it mildly) during the Eugenics War, but how did they transplant this bias against the augmented everywhere else. And why the heck do Illyrians have to have genetic augmentation in childhood? Shouldn’t the “fixes” of their parents’ DNA have been enough? That said, the first is easily dealt with by what DS9 already established, and the latter…well, Trek always fucks up anything related to DNA and evolution, every single time.
Still, those are minor concerns in an episode that is multilayered in almost every scene and genuinely emotionally moving. As an hour of TV drama with a timeless message, it’s hard to beat this.
I thought that was good until about the halfway point, but the lawyer’s arguments increasingly made no sense. It sort of descended into the likes of “The Drumhead” and “Measure of a Man” after that point, two episodes I’ve never liked, where people are saying things dramatically and powerfully, but the actual content of what they’re saying is gibberish (remember Data being able to bend a metal bar and having an off-switch being described as a “devastating” case by the prosecution, even though it had absolutely nothing at all to do with the question being asked? and then Picard’s equally insubstantial counter-case suddenly having Maddox on the ropes?).
The asylum thing makes no sense to me – she’s already a Federation citizen (as far as I know?), but she’s just been granted asylum from the Federation by the Federation? And her status as a refugee (fleeing the Federation in order to join the Federation) means that the law about Illyrians in Starfleet no longer applies to her, and she’s immediately re-instated as a Commander? What?
The actor playing the lawyer was truly fantastic though, good enough to mask the fact that the case itself was mostly fluff and tangents.
I thought there was potentially a much more interesting story taking shape before it became a by-the-numbers “super-lawyer saves the day” courtroom thing. Una’s suggestion that her old friend was prepared to throw her under the bus for the sake of getting a soapbox to make her (justified) point and take a shot at Starfleet was fascinating, and suggested a very complicated and engaging story. The April part was fantastic in that regard; the lawyer almost deliberately sidelining her own case for the sake of publicly taking a crack at Starfleet.
When Neera told La’an that it couldn’t have been her personal log that outed Una (the logic here was a bit spurious, given that an illegal leak of the log and if the prosecution based their allegations on the log it would have to be turned over to the prosecution), I turned to my wife and said “Una turned herself in.” It was the only thing that made sense, but the execution of that reveal was handled very well.
As a practicing lawyer, I often struggle with courtroom episodes of any kind because I have a tendency to make objections to the TV; however, the story and character work were so strong here that I was able to set all that aside after a bit. I was surprised at everyone’s reaction to her questioning of April, because it seemed pretty clear to me why she was asking the questions she did. I was also very puzzled why Neera allowed Una to be bullied into incriminating Pike; the questions had no relevance to the crimes with which she was charged and an objection would have been sustained very quickly. At the end, I realized that she allowed the question because she needed to get Pike’s knowledge on the record to make the asylum claim happen. I presume that she was planning to call Pike himself to the stand before Pasalk in his zeal made that unnecessary (btw, was I the only one who thought that Pasalk had a subtle smile on his face it became clear what Neera’s strategy was?).
There’s no particular reason to believe that Batel isn’t a JAG officer, even if she’s also in command of a starship. Maybe her ship is a JAG Corps-assigned vessel. That didn’t bother me at all.
I loved Uhura’s consummate professionalism on display in her refusal to follow La’an’s order. They’re doing such a great job developing a beloved character who should’ve gotten this treatment decades ago.
I’m probably in the minority on this, but I think the Starfleet’s ban on genetic engineering does make sense in principle, given what Pike said last season about the Eugenics Wars leading into the nuclear holocaust that almost wiped out mankind in WWIII. But I think as presented it’s always been much too broad; it should only apply to those who intentionally augment themselves to gain an advantage, decided on a case-by-case basis as part of the standard Starfleet entrance process. Illyrians who grew up in a culture of modification for various good reasons should be mostly allowed, I would think.
Just a great episode.
I loved it. More of what I said from the very start – that this show is proper Star Trek. I don’t object to the variations on a theme that the other nu-Treks have done, there’s room for multiple interpretations. But SNW is the original done right, and shows (to me) why the format has been so enduring. And a courtroom drama in which civil rights are addressed, dealing with current day issues dressed up in sci-fi disguises (and not very deep disguises either) is pure Star Trek.
My only slight objection, to coin a phrase, is being told how awesome Una is, and that she’s the bestest Starfleet officer there ever was, instead of seeing any of that in action up to this point. It’s the same mistake they made with Hemmer last year, when they killed him off to elicit our emotional reaction, without having given him more than ten minutes of screen time in the show previously to build that investment.
@11 – YES! This episode might have hit harder if we actually saw Una do stuff. She was a criminally underused character in season 1. This episode might have been better off in season 4.
@9.
In regard to “The Measure of a Man,” Riker was attempting to depict Data as a thing that could bend steel and the like, therefore nothing more than a fancy thinking robot capable of performing tasks, so that it could be argued he was Starfleet property. Picard’s counterargument was that Data was just as sentient as Maddox or anyone else capable of the thought processes demonstrated before the court, i.e. more than a simple machine.
Riker’s focus was on the physical, Picard’s on the mental, that is the capability of thought and feeling and personal growth. The latter of which are all, of course, often ignored when it comes to the matter of sanctioned slavery.
The biggest problem with the gengineering ban is that Vulcans, Andorians, etc. are prohibited from doing something based upon the stupidity of pre-warp humanity. The only way it can make sense is if the Eugenics Wars are something that most civilizations go through at a certain point in their development, and 80% of Federation cultures have a taboo against it which the Vulcans are willing to go along with for the sake of stability.
@14 Why assume that the Vulcans are okay with elective genetic engineering?
This was brilliant. “The Measure of a Man” is no longer Star Trek‘s greatest courtroom drama. This was a fantastic story, painfully relevant in these dark times, but also a marvelous exploration of the Trek universe and the show’s characters. The trial was a great opportunity to explore the characters’ relationships to one another, their values, and so on.
It even felt as if the writers were more knowledgeable of how the law works than often seems to be the case in courtroom episodes, e.g. recognizing that it’s generally a bad idea for the defendant to take the witness stand (though it was inevitable that Una would anyway).
The story required painting the Federation in a more unflattering light than usual, but I can buy it since it’s the pre-TOS era, when humanity was still not quite as idealized — and of course we know this law is still on the books a century later, so this is just confronting openly what that means.
If there’s a notable flaw, it’s that there wasn’t enough explanation for what Pasalk was after here. It seemed like he was trying to use this to bring down Captain Pike, but why would he want to do that?
I absolutely love that Ensign Uhura stood her ground and refused to let a superior officer give her an illegal order. We see so many TV shows where the heroes “bend the rules” to get what they want and it’s all glossed over when they win. I love it that this episode didn’t go down that road, and I especially love it that it was Uhura, the most junior officer on the bridge, who took that stand and refused to compromise.
One thing I appreciated, as a writer who’s done the same thing more than once, is the way they referred to the existence of a whole series of Captain April adventures that happened offscreen. Too often, it seems like the main characters are the only people anything ever happens to; it enriches the universe to show that other crews are having adventures too. And it’s great to see Robert April, the first captain of the Enterprise but the one most overlooked by canon, getting his career fleshed out a bit more. I’m so glad that he’s become a recurring character, and though Adrian Holmes is about 15 years too young to play a guy who’s supposed to be in his mid-60s at this point, I think he’s doing an excellent job in the role.
@1/Mary: “I know she has a conflict of interest (you can see how conflicted she is) but Admiral Paslk seems prickly enough to deny her request to recuse herself.”
When I was researching military law so I could write Picard’s Stargazer court-martial in The Buried Age, I found that military trial officers don’t have the luxury to recuse themselves. If they’re ordered to prosecute someone close to them, that’s the duty they have to fulfill regardless of personal considerations, and refusing is dereliction of duty. An understanding commander might choose to excuse them, but if not, they’re obligated to do it.
@6/Charles: I think it was also in The Buried Age that I alluded to the Darwin Research Station and handwaved it as a trial balloon to relax the genetic engineering ban. No doubt the disaster that happened there resulted in the ban being restored in full.
@8/Karl: “And why the heck do Illyrians have to have genetic augmentation in childhood?”
They don’t. Ketoul said they were engineered before birth, which is how genetic engineering actually works, for the most part.
@9/Descent: “The asylum thing makes no sense to me – she’s already a Federation citizen (as far as I know?), but she’s just been granted asylum from the Federation by the Federation?”
That’s kind of the point, I think. It’s taking advantage of a loophole in the phrasing. The law assumes that asylum would only be requested by others, so it doesn’t overtly say she can’t ask Starfleet for asylum from the Federation. What Ketoul did was give the tribunal legal cover for making a choice based in conscience. And the way she did it forced them to confront the injustice within their own “ideal” society.
@13/Clark To keep it brief to avoid side-tracking the discussion (and because I could talk about “Measure of a Man” all day :P)
Riker’s entire prosecution made no sense for the reasons you say – he doesn’t bother to address the question of sentience at all. Data’s ability to bend a metal bar and be rendered unconscious aren’t in any way relevant to the question of whether or not he should be afforded legal rights and recognised as a lifeform.
Picard nonetheless describes Riker’s nonsense as being “devastating”, and the court is taken in by it, simply because the script wants Picard to be on the back-foot to raise the tension.
But then, Picard’s counter-case also doesn’t hold together. Mostly because he’s judging Data’s sentience by his ability to mimick humans. There’s no reason to do this in a universe where so much non-humanoid sentient life exists, but it’s the basis of Picard’s entire case. It also opens the door to questions about why holodeck characters – who often mimick humanity better than Data, and also demonstrate a clear capacity to learn and grow and display a sense of personhood (he’s already met Moriarty by this point) – shouldn’t be considered sentient. Ultimately, the only reason is that Picard wants to believe that Data is sentient, but doesn’t want to believe the same of holodeck characters (or the Enterprise computer, or most other inorganic entities that it’d be inconvenient to consider “alive”).
Then of course you have Picard making arguments like “Data can refer to himself as ‘I’ and ‘me'”, which large language models in the present can do (and many of them are obviously able to mimick humanity better than Data – they can use contractions and “understand” humour, for starters), and holodeck characters in-universe can do.
@15 – Spock would be evidence that they don’t have a problem with it. He would’t exist if genetic engineering was necessary to create a Human/Vulcan hybrid. However, we saw in Birthright that Klingons and Romulans could interbreed without assistance After all, it’s unlikely that a Romulan prison camp would have a state of the art genetic engineering lab.
so, do you need genetic engineering in order to create the various hybrids we’ve seen? And if you do, wouldn’t that violate the ban as defined n this episode?
@18 This episode didn’t really define the limits of that ban, but we know from DS9 that it was allowed to correct genetic defects. I assume that exception would apply to any problems with cross-species breeding, which seems to have not been a thing by the 23rd century anyway.
I just want to sit in awe and bask at what a beautiful episode this was. The courtroom, the dress uniforms, Anson Mount in his civvies (yowr!) and the absolute slayage that is Yetide Badaki and her character’s astonishing personal style.
@17.
Alright, well, it didn’t make sense to you, that’s fine. But as a dramatic presentation of that issue with those characters, who weren’t lawyers, doing their best to handle the issue, it worked for me.
@10/Chase: “I’m probably in the minority on this, but I think the Starfleet’s ban on genetic engineering does make sense in principle, given what Pike said last season about the Eugenics Wars leading into the nuclear holocaust that almost wiped out mankind in WWIII.”
That’s like banning the use of dynamite in construction because it can be used in bombs. Or banning medicinal opioids. What was that Ketoul said to La’an about how having potential doesn’t make her a monster? Any source of power can be used positively as well as negatively, and it’s stupid and self-defeating to outlaw the good a technology can do just because it can be abused to do harm as well.
The way to deal with the dangers in a technology is to regulate it, to manage its use responsibly, not to outlaw it. Outlawing it just drives it underground and makes it more dangerous, as we saw with the Jack Pack.
@19 – Crossbreeding between two unrelated species isn’t correcting a problem. It’s literally making a brand new organism that has never existed and could not come about naturally, at least in the real world. In Trek, we don’t know if it was necessary for Spock.
The colony that both Number One and Ketoul are from was a provisional Federation colony when Number One was a kid, but isn’t any more, as they failed to meet the criteria to make it permanent. So she isn’t requesting asylum from a Federation member, no.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yes, yes, yes! Excellent indeed. So much better than last week’s episode, and the best episode of SNW so far, and one of Star Trek’s best in general (although I wouldn’t say it’s better than “The Measure of a Man”).
This episode is not only timely for what’s going on in regard’s to women’s rights over their own bodies but also gender-affirming care being written as illegal in the legislatures of more and more states in the U.S.
So to answer KRAD’s earlier question about how much law from the 1600’s is still influential the answer is more than you think. One example is that the concept of intellectual property for example dates back to the 1623 Statute of Monopolies which was more or less directly copied in the constitution which enabled Congress to pass patent legislation (Article 1 section 8) which directly lead to the passage of the Patent Statute in 1790. Early American courts cited the jurisprudence of Colonial and British courts based upon the concept of common law which is still the bedrock of our legal system- that concept dates back to the 1620s. So the fact that there are still laws on the books based upon events from less than 300 years ago aren’t that implausible. After all you still have the right to deny soldiers to quarter in your home…
Back to the future, this was a beautiful episode and I agree I’m glad that there was no B Plot- it didn’t need one. In fact you could’ve made this episode longer without harming it IMO. I loved the complexity of emotions with La’an torn between her admiration and her disappointment, Uhura torn between her desire to help and her loyalty to duty. I agree with CLB that all too often we have seen rules get waived by the heroes (and it appears that is actually an allowable thing based upon Admiral April’s testimony) but Uhura didn’t do it. Instead all of the crew played within the rules.
The social allegory (a definite Star Trek tradition and a welcome one) was done with the perfect balance- it was neither too subtle nor too heavy handed. Overall it was a very well done episode.
It’s interesting to look at what the Federation decides is a no go in regards to membership. Permanent genetic engineering, obviously. DS9’s Accession stated that Bajor would not qualify if they reinstated the D’Jarra caste system. On the other hand, The Cloud Minders showed a system of City Dwellers ruling over the Troglytes, who, with very few exceptions, were banished from Stratos. Even the few permitted on Stratos were treated as second class citizens. Yet the topic never came up during the episode. Ardana was a Federation member yet Kirk & Spock didn’t mention that the system should be done away with.
The D’Jarra was a part of Bajoran history and culture yet would have prevented them from joining the Federation.
Which cultural practices would disqualify a planet from membership
@26/MikeKelm: But the centuries-old laws you cite are still on the books because there’s good reason for them to be. There are plenty of good reasons why genetic engineering should be legal, for beneficial medical purposes and to enable survival on colony worlds as the Illyrians use it, but the only reason it’s still outlawed is irrational fear of something that happened before anyone living in the present (Lanthanites aside) was born. Societies don’t work that way. Fear of innovations tends to last no more than a generation. Once the direct living memory of the Eugenics Wars faded, younger generations would start to question the absoluteness of the restriction and start pushing for a more open or balanced policy, something that allowed the positive aspects of genetic engineering while still safeguarding against abuse. It’s just hard to believe the Eugenics War generation’s fears would be passed on so completely to their descendants a dozen generations later that they haven’t amended the law even slightly.
While this was firmly in the didactic tradition of Trek, for me it wasn’t in the good part of that tradition. (The episode it recalled to me most was “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” rather than the courtroom dramas.) But clearly that’s a minority take.
I’m not super happy with the Federation actually being the direct bad guy effectively occupying and instituting apartheid on Illyria. The Feds are supposed to be, if not utopian, informed by the better angels of our nature. (Give or take the steady stream of bozos who reach flag rank, Academy professorship, ambassadorial status, or high office, anyway.) Not admitting them and allowing terrible things to happen as a result, sure. But recapitulating something that so obviously matches old evils feels unnecessary, even given that wrong turn in DS9.
@29/mschiffe: “I’m not super happy with the Federation actually being the direct bad guy effectively occupying and instituting apartheid on Illyria. The Feds are supposed to be, if not utopian, informed by the better angels of our nature.”
But improvement is always a continuing journey. For every prejudice that’s conquered, new ones emerge — look at the prejudices that androids and sentient holograms face in the 24th century. It’s worth exploring how the Federation confronts its imperfections and continues striving to improve. If anything, that’s something I wish Enterprise had done more of, embracing the opportunity to depict an earlier, less perfected humanity — although that’s something we did get to an extent in season 4, with the anti-alien prejudice in the wake of the Xindi attack.
One of those “better angels,” after all, is the ability to admit our imperfections. The people who are convinced they’re perfectly good are usually the worst people, because they never try to be better than they are. An ideal is not a destination you can reach and settle down in; it’s a direction you travel toward and try not to get steered away from.
“But recapitulating something that so obviously matches old evils feels unnecessary, even given that wrong turn in DS9.”
Given how those evils are resurging in the present day, it’s even more important for fiction to comment on them. That’s always been one of the things Star Trek did best.
The hardest thing to understand about the genetics laws for me is that Starfleet bans adults who were modified as kids. Una says she was modified by her parents because it was “their tradition” – and you can maybe see how the Federation, with their general fear of genetic modification, might find this to be outrageous, irresponsible, and a violation of a child’s bodily autonomy. But then surely the recipients of such childhood modification would be treated with sympathy; or at the very least, not outright banned from Starfleet with no good explanation.
If a different Illyrian had come forward and had said “my parents modified me as a child and I deeply resent what happened to me, I want to speak out about it”, would Starfleet react any differently, or still just say “nah get out of here and we’ll arrest you if you try to apply again”?
April defends it by saying the law is there to save lives but I can’t immediately see how, unless there are people who’ve been modified to have rocket launchers in their skulls which could go off at any moment or something. Una doesn’t have any modifications that we know of that could pose any kind of danger to the crew – in fact, the exact opposite happened.
I also wonder if there was a bit of a swipe at DS9 going on with the ending – the judges indicating that the laws may change one day, only for DS9 to display them not really changing over a century later. Admittedly I do like when SNW takes little shots at the previous series like that. Probably the best one was Pike’s “we won’t just let people die” S1E2 when moving to intercept the asteroid, the perfect response to episodes like “Pen Pals” and “Homeward”.
Much, much better than last week’s, and with the added bonus of the show’s usual tedious quirks being muted. Courtrooms and bureaucratic drama aren’t my favorite of Star Trek’s modes, but this was a good episode and perhaps the show’s strongest so far.
@31/Descent: “Admittedly I do like when SNW takes little shots at the previous series like that. Probably the best one was Pike’s “we won’t just let people die” S1E2 when moving to intercept the asteroid, the perfect response to episodes like “Pen Pals” and “Homeward”.”
The precedent for that comes from TOS, “For the World Is Hollow…”, when Kirk said, “The people of Yonada may be changed by the knowledge, but it’s better than exterminating them.” It’s always been clear that the 23rd-century version of the Prime Directive was less fanatical than TNG’s “Let them die rather than risk hurting them” version. SNW was just being consistent with that. Although you’re probably not wrong that it was a shot at those episodes. I used the aforementioned Kirk quote as the epigraph of a chapter in The Captain’s Oath where the young Captain Kirk bends the PD to save a species from extinction (depicting an event that Icheb referenced in Voyager: “Q2”).
A very good episode, probably the show’s best, and unfortunately relevant. As for the discussion about the ban on genetic modification, I am of two minds about it. On the one hand, in the real world I can foresee this technology going wrong in all kinds of ways, and it probably will lead to a time in the very near future when people of privilege will be able to give their children advantages that the rest of humanity cannot afford. I fear that this is something we’re going to be confronting as a society sooner rather than later. On the other hand, the show is supposed to be taking place in a post-capitalist future where augmentation should be available to everyone, and just because a technology can be abused doesn’t mean it should be banned outright.
@30 Of course Trek is going to comment on modern issues. Over its history it’s done it with different degrees of subtlety and stridency, and it sometimes uses the Federation and sometimes the planet of the week. In this case, making the Federation the villain that learns better (sort of), combined with the fairly bonk-over-the-head approach didn’t work for me. (And probably wouldn’t have, even if continuity hadn’t demanded that the Federation continue its policies largely unchanged.)
Clearly that’s not the case for most viewers here, and it’s at any rate far from unprecedented in the series’ history. I can’t say it’s a bad episode in the face of the consensus that says otherwise. But it’s the first SNW episode I didn’t enjoy overall.
Between that and last week (which was… fine, but didn’t strike me as matching the first season’s standard), I’m getting a little concerned about season two overall. One disadvantage of the short seasons is that there are fewer episodes available to offset a miss or two.
(Again for me– obviously anyone who found these two outings strong shouldn’t have similar worries.)
I do appreciate the use of April’s testimony (along with Pike’s actions last season) to further the efforts to reset TNG and Enterprise’s going overboard on what noninterference is about. “Let’s not blunder about in civilizations who can’t defend themselves when the consequences are unforeseeable and frequently tragic” is entirely defensible in addition to its obvious plot-driving purpose when introduced. (“Why can’t Kirk use the full resources of the Enterprise to solve this week’s problem before the first act break?”) Letting that mutate into “we must protect these people by letting them all die” is not, and it’s clear that this show’s creators feel pretty strongly about it.
@34/David Pirtle: “I can foresee this technology going wrong in all kinds of ways, and it probably will lead to a time in the very near future when people of privilege will be able to give their children advantages that the rest of humanity cannot afford.”
Science has been giving humans augmentations for centuries — eyeglasses, hearing aids, immunizations, replacement hip joints, Lasik eye surgery, all sorts of things that improve our physical health and capabilities from what they otherwise would be. When they were new, they may have been privileges for the elite, but they came to be covered by insurance and seen as part of basic health care. Even if they’re expensive, a lot of these things are so commonplace that it’s considered a basic necessity to get them.
I expect genetic therapies and enhancements to be introduced piecemeal enough that they’ll just incrementally come to be accepted along with all those other things, and they’ll become normalized so gradually that we won’t even notice. It’s not like there will be one magic serum that will turn people into Captain America. It’ll be small improvements, invented one at a time over decades, that individually aren’t dramatic enough that the rich would want to hoard them, but will cumulatively add up to the point that future humans are significantly enhanced relative to us, in the same way that we have so many advantages over our ancestors. (We take it for granted, but our vaccine-provided immunity to diseases that once killed millions is a superpower in its own right.) And any resistance to getting those enhancements would probably die out over time, since who would want their children to lag behind everyone else?
The main risk I see for genetic engineering is that an oppressive state might use it to enforce conformity, to treat the “wrong” skin color or sexual identity or neurodivergence as a genetic aberration that needs to be corrected before birth, in the same way that bigoted state governments today are trying to legislate trans people out of existence. But that’s a problem with the governments, not the technology. A power is only as good or evil as the intentions of its wielders. Though a more insidious risk is that people raised with unconscious prejudices might select genes that they assume are “better” without even thinking about it.
@37 – Should parents be permitted to have a child outfitted with a Visor, even at the cost of their normal vision? Let’s assume that such a procedure would be at the cost of losing their biological eyes with no chance of replacement. The children would grow up with a definite advantage over other children. Is it right, just because it’s available?
what about an artificial brain implant, similar to what Barial had? He was dying and it was to save his life but what if such a device could give someone perfect memory and faster thought?
How about getting together with a group of your friends and forming your own, little collective derived from Borg technology
Not a wasted line of dialogue, every single action contributed to the end action. In particular, the testimony of Adm. April, even though stricken from the record, was absolutely key in setting the framework of court for the use of personal discretion by Starship captains.
And for the complaints about sledgehammering it in? I think there’s some vast need of sledgehammers AND MORE in places like Texas, Florida, Mississippi and other places where anti-drag, anti trans, anti-women anti-onehellofalotofthings laws are being passed.
ETA: And Una’s description of her first meeting with a Star Fleet crew should be a quintessential Trek quote.
I do love when Star Trek does unsubtle so well.
If they do bring up genetic engineering again, I hope they make it clear that it’s more than just the Eugenic Wars that keeps the laws on the books. As has been said, it doesn’t make sense if there hasn’t been other attempts that ended poorly. Perhaps they could establish that the Illyrians may be the first culture the Federation has met that hasn’t had genetic engineering go wrong.
What I hope the show engages with again is the idea of popular resistance to the conditions of membership in the Federation. I don’t remember how often it comes up but I seem to remember being admitted to the Federation was a happily ever after sort of thing. Was the colony’s experience different because of the Illyrian’s culture or is it common for a society’s leaders to agree to conditions about which there isn’t a consensus?
Also, what on earth would the Federation do with a genetically modified 10-year-old who hadn’t, after all, done anything illegal?
@40/noblehunter: “If they do bring up genetic engineering again, I hope they make it clear that it’s more than just the Eugenic Wars that keeps the laws on the books.”
Yes. The Augment crisis in season 4 of Enterprise was more recent and should’ve been a factor in reinforcing the ban. In my Rise of the Federation novels, I suggested that part of the incentive for maintaining the ban is that the Klingons are still mad about the Augment infection that created the smooth-headed mutation, so any attempt by the UFP to engage in genetic engineering would be seen by the Klingons as an act of aggression and would provoke their retaliation. (I also alluded to this in one of my post-TMP novels as the reason why Starfleet classified the discovery of the Botany Bay and the presence of Khan’s people on Ceti Alpha V.)
“Perhaps they could establish that the Illyrians may be the first culture the Federation has met that hasn’t had genetic engineering go wrong.”
They can’t, because the ENT Augment arc established that Denobulans have used genetic engineering for centuries without major problems.
I guess I’m going to be the skunk at the garden party, but I thought S2E2 was terrible. Let me count the ways.
1) The writing was awful. There were a lot of speeches that came off as didactic, heavy-handed, and so painfully allegorical I winced.
2) The guest stars were awful. Yetide Badaki, who played defense lawyer Neera Ketoul was alternately wooden and pissed off, for no apparent reason. Melanie Scrofano, who played the prosecutor, brought no emotional resonance to her character. The panel of judges had stereotypical judge-like lines which they delivered just like every other TV drama judge. Perhaps it’s unfair to come down on the actors too hard because they were constrained by the dismal script, but it didn’t seem to me like they were even trying.
3) As has been pointed out above, the whole plot was absurd. Number One never asked for asylum of Pike or anyone else. And though I’m no expert on Federation courtroom procedure, I find it extremely weird that a court martial court would have the authority to extend asylum to anyone; asylum is a civil process, not a military/criminal one. Indeed, this may also be the fault of the writers, who wrote themselves into a corner and then had to come up with some pretext for finding Number One not guilty.
4) The direction was dull. Every now and then we see scenes of the unspeaking Enterprise crew watching the court martial proceedings on a video screen. Yawn.
I enjoyed much of Season One and hope that SNW finds that groove again soon.
I do think this episode destroyed any respect I had for Robert April. He says the law is there to prevent genocide and that he would have turned her down with an angry expression. He chooses his side and it’s against Una. That’s going to be awkward when he next sees Una. He chose his side and his side lost.
As a trial lawyer, I too had some issues with the prosecution’s conspicuous failure to object to lines of questioning that I thought went far afield of matters germane to the issue at hand. Even if not sustained, the objections should have been made for the record. But that’s a minor quibble because I know this is a dramatic presentation, and as such it was absolutely stunning.
As Krad noted, I loved the scene where Pike dumps the drink he poured for the admiral into his own glass, and I thought it was particularly bad form for the Admiral to refuse it given that all Pike had really done was to seek out an effective advocate for his first officer. He got his Admirak feelings hurt and he got petulant about it which I thought was fairly petty.
Striking a witness’s entire testimony from the record, like it never happened, is an extraordinary procedural decision, at least at that point in the proceedings. It was like the panel did not want to allow anything to be documented that cast Starfleet in a bad light. Heavy-handed and gross in my opinion.
As I said I do my share of courtroom work, and I have to say, Ketoul had an amazing courtroom presence. She had an affectation where she stood ramrod straight, a bit askance to the witness, with one of her arms bent at the elbow, palm up. Terribly formal, and extremely effective in my opinion, to convey the gravitas of the advocate. I may have to steal that one, although I’m sure I’ll probably look ridiculous attempting to duplicate it, lol.
I am nearly always disappointed when I see portrayals of trial lawyers in film and television, and I think the only one that surpasses Badaki’s astonishing portrayal of Ketoul here would have to be the late great Raul Julia as Harrison Ford’s lawyer in Presumed innocent.
I agree with the general consensus; that was an excellent episode. One thing that I’m surprised that no one has commented on, though, is the revelation that La’an, contrary to what was claimed in “Children of Illyria”, actually does retain some of Khan’s genetic enhancements.
@38/kkozoriz –
I mean, besides the element of performing unnecessary surgery on a minor, it’s not clear to me what’s supposed to be wrong with any of these things.
Christopher, if you think Lasik and hearing aids are readily available to all Americans, you don’t know the folks I know. I’ve never had insurance that covered either in all my 67 years.
That was great, I completely agree with the article, ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ is easily destined to be one of Star Trek’s all-time great episodes!
@46 – How is unnecessarily surgery on a minor different from unnecessary genetic modification on an embryo
@26 – I was thinking of “That whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of this Crown, shall join in communion with the Church of England, as by law established.” That’s the Act of Settlement 1701, which is still current UK law.
@47/nancymcc: “Christopher, if you think Lasik and hearing aids are readily available to all Americans, you don’t know the folks I know. I’ve never had insurance that covered either in all my 67 years.”
America’s lack of universal health care is an aberration in the civilized world. I was speaking of human progress as a whole.
Weirdly, no one has ever touched on the fact the Vulcan Paradox. I think INTO DARKNESS may be the only one that even hinted at. Which is that Spock is a superior physical, mental, and frigging PSYCHIC being but is happy to serve under James T. Kirk/Pike. Because it turns out superior abilities do NOT translate to superior ambition or callousness.
We never got the conversation between Khan and Spock we needed.
I’d like to see that be brought up in some future novel that humans and their fear of Augments is just ignored when dealing with other races.
@49/kkozoriz “How is unnecessarily surgery on a minor different from unnecessary genetic modification on an embryo(?)”
That begs another question–who decides what is and is not necessary and unnecessary? Seems to me that very debate is being stifled in American society right now by folks who are labeling those who ask that question “-phobic.”
I’m surprised nobody has anything to say about the line that went something along the lines of “Laws don’t reflect a society, they reflect the ideals that society strives for.” Speaking as someone who categorically rejects most of Critical Race Theory, and as someone who loves his country (I’m American) despite its flaws, I’m not ashamed to say I yelled “YES!” at the top of my lungs when she said that.
@52/C.T. Phipps – This is something that occurred to me in relation to Dal-R’El on Prodigy, because he’s not an augment in the traditional sense, but a splice of genetic material from about two dozen different species. If he counts as inadmissible under Starfleet’s genetics laws, why is Spock allowed in? We know from Enterprise that human and Vulcan DNA can’t combine without medical intercession; how come he’s not an augment?
@49 – I mean, I don’t want to get too much into it here, because it ties into some exceptionally thorny controversies that I’m sure our moderators would prefer that that we not hash out on the board, but my opinion is that a child is a person but an embryo is not. But, in any case, only one of your examples in comment #38 directly mentioned a child. Why shouldn’t I be able to get a group of my friends together for our own little hivemind if the mood strikes us?
What a really good, sadly relevant episode.
I do wish there’d been some indication of whether the senior Enterprise staff got to screen the proceedings because they were (to at least some extent) openly televised or because the crew had a vested interest and knowledge, at this point, of Una being Illyrian.
My other complaint is that Ketoul was clearly testifying during her cross-examination of April but, hey, it’s fictional Starfleet court so whatever.
@54
That may not even be a mistake either. A lot of prejudicial laws are built on nonsensical and contradictory ideology because, of course, they’re there to prop up the prejudice versus fit logical facts.
@54
They’re not the same thing though. Yes, Spock is a hybrid–a reproductive creation. Da’Rel was entirely created by splicing together 26 different DNA sequences. Da’Rel was created by scientists just to see if they could create something different.
@46 jamiebabb: Good point bringing up the question of Laan’s heritage. My interpretation of that opens up its own can of worms, which is that the Federation’s laws recognize a concept similar to the quarteron/octoroon/quintroon concept in racial discrimination. If Laan’s augmentations have been ‘diluted’ to a sufficient extent she’s accepted as a full citizen whereas her parents or grandparents would not have been. I think it could have been an interesting point in the episode but making the connection explicitly might have made the Federation look more villainous than the writers felt was appropriate.
“The end of history” is a phrase I’ve seen describing the point of view that a particular human culture holds itself to be the ultimate perfection that society could ever reach. I think Star Trek’s utopia is an element added to the show specifically to say that every modern or historical culture who felt theirs was the end of history was wrong. I agree with that but I also believe that there’s no such thing as a perfect society, just a better one.
There is an uncomfortable implication to the basic Trek formula: for the heroes to ‘solve’ a planet of the week. From a certain point of view, it’s the story of a powerful hegemony who believes themselves righteous measuring a much weaker and provincial people against their own superior ideology. There are endless examples in history and even today where that scenario plays out with horrific results.
I don’t think that implication undermines the core concept of the show or justifies a deconstruction of what the Federation represents. But I think the anti-Eugenics laws provide a great hook to tell the occasional story that remind us that even if you feel your society is righteous there is always a need for self-reflection and a willingness to change for the better.
And honestly, nine tenth’s of the time the prime directive comes up it’s for the heroes to violate it. The optics are better than the anti-Eugenics laws but the message is still that the Federation’s most well-intentioned laws are imperfect and poorly enforced. I think we’re just desensitized to violations of the prime directive.
(But yeah, Section 31 is just the worst at this point. It was a potentially good story seed but it’s been badly utilized to the detriment of the franchise.)
@57/Mary: “Da’Rel was created by scientists just to see if they could create something different.”
In which case, the law should penalize the scientists, not Dal. That’s what’s really unjust about the law — how can you hold a child to blame for the actions of their progenitors before they were born?
I wonder if it was just coincidence or by design that this episode aired the same week as Juneteenth.
My opinion of the episode seems to be in the minority but I thought it was fairly mediocre. Some powerful performances brought low by nonsensical plotting and setup. I don’t think the writers understood what genetic modification means?
@61/Jeff: “I don’t think the writers understood what genetic modification means?”
Why would you think that? They made it clear that Illyrians’ genetic modifications are germline, performed before birth, which is how it would actually work in most cases. It’s the rest of Trek that usually gets it wrong by showing gene modifications shapeshifting people in a matter of moments (although the SNW premiere episode had a bit of technobabble to handwave how that happens).
@54 – For me, it comes down to a matter of informed consent. An embryo cannot understand nor give consent. Same with a very young child.
If an adult wants to replace their eyes with a visor or create a private collective, they should be able to.
There’s a difference in helping a child understand their gender, which may be different than their biological gender, and making the choice without involving them. If a couple discovers that their child will be a boy and they wanted a girl, is it ethical to use genetic engineering in the womb to change them?
The Illyrians are imposing their genetic wishes on someone who has no say in the matter.
Speaking of Prodigy, it’s been cancelled.
“Star Trek: Prodigy was renewed for season two in November 2021 and was a key push by franchise captain Alex Kurtzman to introduce the property to a younger generation. The series will complete postproduction on season two of Prodigy and producers CBS Studios will shop both seasons to a new buyer.”
‘Star Trek: Prodigy,’ Canceled and Being Removed From Paramount+
Looks like Prodigy isn’t going to get the chance to do a courtroom episode.
I thought this episode was great; well in the tradition of Trek Courtroom dramas.
A couple of people have criticized the courtroom protocols, striking testimony, Ketoul monologuing (sp?) while questioning witnesses, and so forth. Similar criticisms were made regarding Measure of a Man, Drum Head and Court Marshall. We should remember, that these are Federation courts; they are not US or Western European courts. Their rules are likely an amalgam of rules from different cultures; at the very least those from Terran, Vulcan, Andorian, Alpha Centarian, and Tellerite traditions. They should be different.
We’ve also seen Klingon and Cardassian courts at work as well. While, as shown, those courts have “unfortunate” processes and intents, they could, with a more benevolent philosophy, work in a democratic society.
I was disturbed by the testimony that a ten year old boy was arrested in Una’s neighborhood because he had been genetically modified. I got the impression, though I might have missed dialogue which addressed it, that the boy was still imprisoned more than 25 years later.
So I do agree this was a fantastic episode. It managed to bring up most of the arguments that were hashed out in last week’s comments in a fairly compelling way. I do still have a couple of niggling points about it. One is the previously mentioned actions of Pasalk basically going after Pike. It works for plot reasons to allow Ketoul to make her case, but outside of Pasalk secretly working with Ketoul, we don’t get any good reason for why he pursued that line of questioning in the first place.
Second is the issue that despite the episode doing such a great job of bringing to light the arguments against the discriminatory nature of the genetic enhancements ban, none of said arguments are made by any of the Starfleet personnel (Una excepted). They got Ketoul in part because, as Una literally said in the episode, how can she trust a Starfleet lawyer who is working for the very people who are prosecuting her? Spock, La’an, and M’Benga spoke about Una in glowing terms, but never challenged the ban itself. April outright admitted he would have refused to sponsor Una had he known she was genetically enhanced. Pike is the only character that even got close when he was trying to convince Ketoul to take the case, but even at that, it was about raising Ketoul’s profile to help her in other cases, not making the case himself that the ban was a problem. Starfleet and the Federation really do not come out of this looking very good at all.
Third is the resolution itself. It was kind of expected given the canon, but it remains unsatisfying. Basically, after raising the arguments against the ban in the episode, the resolution just sidesteps the issue entirely to get Una back on the Enterprise using some very tortured logic. As someone above said, she gets a pass as, “one of the good ones”, while nothing else changes.
And that tortured logic also bothers me. Was there ever actually an asylum claim made? Just admitting she was an Illyrian is not the same as requesting asylum as a result of that status. I’m no expert on asylum by any means, but I suspect that some kind of formal request has to be made to acknowledge the claim and its acceptance before the tribunal can determine its validity. I do find it significant that nobody actually poses the question to Una, who was still on the stand when Ketoul was making her convoluted claim, if she had actually asked Pike for asylum, or if he agreed to it. Granted such a claim would have ruined the premise for the episode, which given it was a great episode, I’m willing to forgive, but it does nag at me.
I did really like the reaction to Una’s refusal of the offered deal (one which, it is important to note, would have also satisfied the asylum requirements, allowing her to remain a free Federation citizen, since asylum doesn’t presuppose service in Starfleet). The whole, “Oh, you don’t like the deal we’re offering you? Well then we’ll make an example out of you by going for the maximum punishment we can get!” rings very true to how things are done in the real world.
@68/northman: “Third is the resolution itself. It was kind of expected given the canon, but it remains unsatisfying. Basically, after raising the arguments against the ban in the episode, the resolution just sidesteps the issue entirely to get Una back on the Enterprise using some very tortured logic. As someone above said, she gets a pass as, “one of the good ones”, while nothing else changes.”
Progress is often unsatisfying because it happens in small, incremental steps. For instance, in “The Measure of a Man,” Louvois declined to issue a clear ruling on Data’s personhood, just rejecting Maddox’s attempt to have him defined as property and leaving Data’s legal status unchanged. In both that case and this, the outcome is not a definitive step forward but merely a return to the status quo. Which is why the Doctor had to fight for his own rights separately in “Author, Author,” and even his victory there was just an incremental advance that stopped short of defining him as a person. (And right now, it’s damned weird in retrospect to think that “Author, Author” made us root for expanding the definition of “author” to include A.I.s regardless of sentience.)
So the outcome here is in keeping with both Trek precedent and real-world precedent, and more credible than the issue being solved entirely by the very first case that challenged the law.
Count me as a big fan of this one. I enjoyed the shout out to the “Q&A” Short Treks episode and how later events have recontextualized the discussion of keeping one’s “freaky” covered up. I also liked the little character moments like Ortegas and M’Benga observing Spock and Pasalk talking.
My one quibble with the episode is that I’d have rather spent a little more time with Una reacclimating to the Enterprise and a little less time with Neeta speechifying and the crew applauding in the transporter room
Third is the resolution itself. It was kind of expected given the canon, but it remains unsatisfying. Basically, after raising the arguments against the ban in the episode, the resolution just sidesteps the issue entirely to get Una back on the Enterprise using some very tortured logic. As someone above said, she gets a pass as, “one of the good ones”, while nothing else changes.
As a member of a marginalized class, it would have driven me into a blind fury if this DIDN’T happen. That’s what happened in the past and every single step forward for marginalized groups have been fought for in blood and effort against a recalcitrant mainstream. The Federation may be better people, but they’re still people…and the sidestepping and pass-giving is what people DO; anything else would ring falsely and would erase the price paid by the trailblazers.
By the way, one thing that surprised me was how long ago Pike said he’d met Una. I kind of got the impression from “The Cage” that they hadn’t known each other that long. But of course, SNW has greatly reinterpreted Pike & Una’s relationship from the Unresolved Sexual Tension approach in “The Cage.”
The franchise could easily have quietly let the issue of the Federation’s rules against augments drop, but surprisingly (to me) Prodigy and SNW are going out of their way to show how ridiculous they are. I guess it’s useful when you want to engage in social commentary or otherwise provoke emotional reactions to have laws discriminating against people for reasons that are obviously unfair. Great points raised above about Dal-R’El, who unlike Una isn’t even know to have any exceptional abilities.
While SNW is not backing away from the augment stuff, it’s nice to see them actively attacking the ridiculous lengths that TNG took the Prime Directive to, including the list of times Pike had violated the Prime Directive to keep a whole planet from being wiped out.
@67: Note that Una says that the name of the boy who was arrested was Ivan Ketoul; while it’s not explicitly stated, the implication is that he was a family member or relative of Neera, which may add a personal element to her feelings toward the Federation. I don’t believe that there is any indication as to what happened to him afterward.
I got mad at Pasalk, I cried like a baby at the resolution starting from Una talking about the first Starfleet officers she ever saw through Pike’s hug. That went to eleven. That episode was so good I gotta have Baron Zemo explain it, “It’s a masterpiece, James. Complete. Comprehensive. It captures the Illyrian experience.“
Yetide Badaki killed it. The resentment, the don’t give a F*ck attitude as she executed her plan, the set up, then the rapprochement. As an outsider she actually approached Starfleet and the Federation as if they were an antagonistic force. and treated them with some hostility. No Federation or Starfleet lawyer would’ve gone after April like that. The strategy was smooth too, she would’ve smoked a Stratagema master. She set up that even Starfleet’s finest bend or break the rules for the greater good, established the Illyrian’s cause as a just one, Una’s cause as a greater good, then brought it all together to exonerate Una based on Starfleet’s own rules and practices. She even cleaned up calling Admiral April out on the carpet by reframing his actions as genuinely heroic and in the best tradition of Starfleet practices. Far from indicting him, she was setting him up to be the shining example that Starfleet needed to follow. I also loved the empathy and salve that she offered to La’an, her advocacy for augmented people isn’t restricted to just Ilyrians, but to anyone who suffers persecution for augmentations.
No, Una didn’t actually request asylum, but she fulfilled every single benchmark for asylum that Starfleet set forth. Una is not a Federation citizen. That is established by the very fact that April had to sponsor her, remember Sisko and Nog. Only non-Federation citizens require a Captain to sponsor them. It is immaterial that the ones persecuting her happens to be the Federation as she is seeking Asylum from Starfleet, not the Federation, though Spock’s remark that Starfleet would be punishing itself is particularly incisive. (I appreciate that Starfleet and the Federation are so cleanly treated as separate entities here.) But buy seeking out Starfleet so she could actually be safe, she sought asylum even if she didn’t ask for it.
I think Pasalk recognized that he fell for the okie doke and respected it. He made the crux of his cross the idea that Neera had laid out a case based on emotion and sympathy for Commander Chin-Riley’s situation in a vain attempt to ignore the facts of the case which were a breach of the regulation. Instead he fell for the set up and she had used all the emotional testimony to lay out the facts of the case were fulfillment of a different Starfleet regulation. Pasalk and Pike I think both realized it at the same time when she asked Batel to cite the asylum regulation. I don’t know if he smiled, but his demeanor did relax when he realized that her case was based in hard law. Must’ve been a while since someone got him on a technicality. Pike on the other hand I think was in awe.
I also love that part of how M’Benga is contrasted against Bones is that M’Benga perfectly understands Vulcans and can read them. I was thinking that Spock and Pasalk were going to come over and bust Ortegas for her impression with that Vulcan hearing. Or M’Benga was gonna say, “You know they can hear you right.” But Spock saying he can’t stand Pasalk is curious. We know Sarek had a lot of destractors who didn’t want his son or daughter to go to the Vulcan Science Academy, but it’s curious that there was a Vulcan in Starfleet who also didn’t get along with Sarek and rubbed Spock the wrong way.
I loved it, cover to cover.
I know that someone else has probably pointed these out but two other little touches that I especially liked were:
1) the white wafer looking data card that was fed into a slot to read off the charges (and a voice that sounded very similar to Majel Barrett’s USS Enterprise main computer voice from the original series reading the charges),
and 2) it was quick but I believe the painting in the back of the Enterprise conference room where Pike and his other officers were watching the trial from was one of the NX-01 Enterprise. Has it been shown more clearly in a previous episode and I just can’t recall it?
@69&71 – Being unsatisfied isn’t the same as saying it is unrealistic. But it is still unsatisfying, even in the context of the other such cases in Star Trek. The ruling in “The Measure of a Man” said Data wasn’t Starfleet’s property, which was what Maddox was claiming, and in “Author, Author”, the ruling granted The Doctor his rights as an artist, which again was the issue being decided upon. They may have avoided making any sweeping changes to the definition of sentient life, but they did set a new precedent for the specific cases in front of them. Androids of Data’s calibre have freedom of choice, and AIs of The Doctor’s have the same rights as creators of their work as other artists. Incremental compared to full recognition as sentients, but still significant steps that other such AIs could then build upon.
This episode was about the ban on bioengineering or genetic enhancements. They granted Una asylum. What precedent was set? If you can pass for long enough and are in Starfleet and manage to come out to your Captain before being outed generally they can pretend an asylum request was made and accepted without evidence? And that might get you off on any other charges if the tribunal goes along with it? Is this anything other Illyrians as a class can make use of?
And another part of why the granting of asylum is not particularly satisfying is that at no point in the entire proceedings was Una’s status as a Federation citizen ever threatened. She already effectively had asylum and the threat was entirely around her position in Starfleet. That distinction was just ignored as well.
@64 – Damn! I rather enjoyed that show and was looking forward to its second season.
@77/northman: “Incremental compared to full recognition as sentients, but still significant steps that other such AIs could then build upon.”
I don’t agree that “The Measure of a Man”‘s verdict was a significant step forward. Before the episode, Data was already considered a sentient being; according to the TNG writers’ bible, at least, that ruling was made when he first applied to Starfleet Academy. Maddox was trying to reverse that ruling, and Louvois refused to do so. Thus, there was no change to Data’s legal status.
“Is this anything other Illyrians as a class can make use of?”
Maybe not in a straightforward sense, but making it a question of asylum establishes that the ban is a form of oppression, and that has value in the fight for hearts and minds. (That fight still hasn’t been won for humans in the 24th century, but maybe Illyrians have made some progress by then.)
“She already effectively had asylum and the threat was entirely around her position in Starfleet.”
What’s wrong with that? Starfleet was what she wanted most of all. Fighting for the right to belong to a given organization is a valid focus for a civil-rights story. People of color, women, and LGBTQ people have had to fight for the right to serve in the police or the military. Just being a citizen doesn’t mean you aren’t discriminated against.
@77 Unsatisfying, yes. LOTS of those in the struggles of marginalized communities. Welcome to a peak at our world.
I’m more confused by Captain Pike admitting to being a horrible bigot.
Was he?
This element never came up before.
I’ve seen a lot of people criticize the episode because it had to allow the laws against genetic engineering to remain in place because it’s still illegal in the 24th century. While this is true from a Doylist perspective, it’s also an accurate legal depiction. It’s made clear that this is not just a Starfleet regulation, but Federation law. A Starfleet court would not have the authority to abrogate that law, no matter how wrong they think it is.
Way better than episode one. A solid 10.
However, I found the “illegal order” conversation at odds with how they so casually stole the Enterprise last week.
Did I hear Spock, La’an and M’Benga introduced as “expert character witnesses”? That’s a contradiction, like saying “impulse warp drive” or “Starfleet civilian.”
Glad people generally loved it. I was a bit more meh but as a lawyer was very impressed to see how the Asylum Maneuver came into being. Well played.
Another home run episode of SNW. At first I didn’t buy into the whole idea that genetic engineering was illegal and there was discrimination because the Federation is supposed to be past that, but this episode sold me on the concept.
A great court drama, it felt like The Drumhead but this was much better.
I am really loving the episodic format of the show. An entire story wrapped up in 1 hour, rather than stretched out across 10 episodes with padding and mystery boxes. (I guess technically the story for this was teased in the season 1 finale and the season 2 opening) And I’m also loving how they use the ensemble cast.
This is exactly the kind of Star Trek show I’ve been waiting years for. Episodic, character based, small stakes, ensemble cast, multiple genres. With the cancelling of Prodigy and the bursting of the streaming bubble I really REALLY REALLY hope that SNW can live long and prosper for many years to come.
Also, another thing I enjoyed was: No member berries and no fan service in this one. Well maybe the unifroms they wore and the glowing light thing were the closest thing to member berries.
But there were some great subtle but meaningfull callbacks, like M’Benga reading Vulcan body language and Spock mentioning Number One’s love of Gilbert and Sullivan. And the mention of Khan worked within the confines of the episode. That is how you should do references. It enriches the story without being pandering and taking you out of the story by making you go “Oh, I remember that!”
The second season of Prodigy will still presumably be aired somewhere; just not on Paramount+.
This seems like an idiotic decision when you’re trying to build a cohesive continuity for a fictional universe, and it seems particularly self-destructive when you’re billing yourself to subscribers as “the home of Star Trek,” but what do I know about short term quarterly gains?
Maybe it will still air on CTV Sci-Fi channel in Canada?
I forgot to mention earlier that while I’m always happy when the answer to a problem can be found in a book, and I don’t mind Ketoul having Batel read the relevant section aloud from that magnificent tome as a dramatic flourish, I thought it odd that she had to request said tome from La’an. Starfleet’s bylaws and regulations aren’t in the ship’s computer?
@85/Tim Kaiser: “Also, another thing I enjoyed was: No member berries and no fan service in this one. Well maybe the unifroms they wore and the glowing light thing were the closest thing to member berries.”
The term “member berry” still confuses me, but I deduce from context that it means a continuity reference, probably related to the word “remember.” In any case, there were more “Court Martial” allusions in the courtroom scenes, like the way the panel members were introduced, the judge’s bell, and the way a data cartridge was inserted into the computer to recite the charges.
@87/Arben: “I thought it odd that she had to request said tome from La’an. Starfleet’s bylaws and regulations aren’t in the ship’s computer?”
Maybe she studied law under Samuel T. Cogley and inherited his distaste for computers.
And I was certain that they were going to drag Una’s predicament for a good portion of the season. I’m relieved to be proven wrong. They couldn’t keep a pivotal character played by an actor on the level of Rebecca Romijn on the sidelines for that long.
And to top it off, we get SNW’s own “Measure of a Man”. A tour de force combining some of the best moral debates and top notch performances across the cast. Not even a week old, and already a contender for being one of Trek’s best. Easily a highlight of the current Kurtzman era. And it helps to bring back Una into active service while also doing a convincing excuse as to why the Federation will still abide by the same draconian laws regarding genetic prohibition 100 years down the line, forcing the Bashir family to help Julian by breaking those same laws.
And the best part is Una on the stand as she makes the best argument as to why she deserves to be on active duty. Starfleet is about diversity, first and foremost. This is a fundamental aspect of Trek that the current era of shows portrays better than anyone, whether it’s gender, race or genetics. One hell of a debut teleplay for Trek newcomer Dana Horgan (though unlike Snodgrass, she’s staffed on other shows prior to Trek).
And the episode finds room for other clever little moments. M’Benga’s accurate description of Spock’s ‘heated argument’ with Pasalk was the highlight. I adore Peck’s face as he apologizes for the ‘incident’ afterwards.
And speaking of Pasalk, I haven’t wanted to punch a Vulcan in the face like this in any other incarnation of Trek. Forget the likes of Satelk (“First Duty”), Solok (“Holosuite”) or Soval (all of ENT). Whether Pasalk was being a real despicable POS or just acting like one in order to entice Una to do that testimony, Graeme Somerville deserves praise for crafting such a memorable Vulcan character.
One other thing I forgot to mention. Una’s testimony and the way Romijn played it reminded a LOT of Mystique in the Bryan Singer X-Men films. Some of her best moments on those movies are when Mystique openly voices her desire to be treated for what she truly is rather than trying to hide her mutation – the scene with Nightcrawler being the biggest contender.
And lastly, a bit of a rant, partly Trek related. What an idiotic decision to ax Prodigy from the streaming service. I’d have a lot less issue with this if these streaming outlets had the moral decency to, you know, divulge their viewing numbers. As it is, we don’t even know what kind of ratings Prodigy had (and I imagine production-wise this show cost less than something like Discovery).
Seriously, if I were one of the Prodigy writers, I’d be pissed, as I’m sure they rightfully are. This is a dick move, plain and simple. It allows the streamer to avoid paying taxes and it keeps the writers from getting valuable residuals that allows them to pay their bills.
Yeah, they’re going to try and shop season 2 for some other outlet. But who knows whether that will pay off? Meanwhile, people who put in hours. A slap in the face of the Hagemans, the writers and every hard-working animator that put in the hours for this. This is why the guild is on strike. And I hope that strike lasts indefinitely. I for one am sick of self-centered CEOs who claim poverty for their productions, but take in hefty bonuses of their own. These people and any investors who are okay with this situation deserve to rot pennyless.
<sigh> That’s a load off. Rant over.
@88 Because Ketoul was planning to use the volume as a prop at the hearing? Trial lawyers (good ones, at least) are good performers as well as lawyers….
@89/Eduardo: “And I was certain that they were going to drag Una’s predicament for a good portion of the season. I’m relieved to be proven wrong. They couldn’t keep a pivotal character played by an actor on the level of Rebecca Romijn on the sidelines for that long.”
I’d been afraid that they were getting rid of Una in order to move in James Kirk as Pike’s new first officer, contradicting “The Menagerie”‘s statement that they only met once.
“It allows the streamer to avoid paying taxes and it keeps the writers from getting valuable residuals that allows them to pay their bills.”
For live-action shows, that’s true, but animation writers are with a different union and I read somewhere that they don’t get residuals, though I don’t know how accurate that is.
I also read that it’s good if a studio sells a show to a different broadcaster rather than streaming it in-house, because then the creators do get a cut of the profits from the sale. It used to be normal for the studio and the broadcaster to be different companies, and studios walling in everything on their self-owned streamers is an aberration that doesn’t seem to be working very well.
Just watched Strange New Worlds “Ad Astra Per Aspera”. Wonderful, stirring, all that. But I have a question.
Earth still has trauma over The Eugenics Wars. I get that. But the Federation is hundreds of planets. Why is Earth’s particular trauma over Eugenics part of Federation law? Why should Vulcan or any other planet care that Earth is terrified of another Khan? A friend told me that I was conflating Starfleet regulations with Federation law. I’m not certain. What do you all think?
@94/mariesdaughter: You might just as well ask why the Federation celebrates Zefram Cochrane as the “inventor” of warp drive when Vulcans, Andorians, and other UFP members had warp drive centuries before Earth did. Or why nearly all Starfleet ships are named for people or places from Earth when there are so many other planets. Trek is written by humans who tend to write the Federation as very human-centric.
As for your friend’s comment, I don’t see why the distinction should matter, since the Federation and Starfleet are both supposed to be inclusive multispecies bodies.
While it was very closely related to and supported the A-story of the trial itself, I feel like Pike dealing with the fallout of allowing Una to stay on the Enterprise after learning about her heritage served as a shallow B-story. Between his recruiting Neera, his conversations with Batel and April, and his anguish over not being able to take the stand, it was a pretty strong episode for him considering he never stepped foot inside the courtroom.
And La’an dealing with the guilt of thinking she’d inadvertently exposed Una with her personal log was even sort of a C-story as well. Especially considering the continuing minor plot line of her being a relative (descendant?) of Khan.
I’m glad someone finally pointed out that a Starfleet tribunal likely wouldn’t have the authority to overturn Federation law. It’s not like this was being argued before the Federation’s version of the Supreme Court.
@76/David Young – I also loved that the disk Pike handed to Neera in her office that contained Una’s case file was a modern version of the old computer disks they used on TOS.
@96/Christopher Valin: “the old computer disks they used on TOS.”
In TOS, they called them microtapes, or just tapes. Commercial floppy disks were still a few years away when TOS was made, and it was still common to store computer data on magnetic tapes.
In modern TOS novels, we tend to call them data cartridges.
No, Una didn’t actually request asylum, but she fulfilled every single benchmark for asylum that Starfleet set forth. Una is not a Federation citizen.
That doesn’t make the resolution make any more sense because she wasn’t asking for asylum from Illyria or whatever. She was asking the Federation for asylum from the Federation.
That is as nonsensical as a gay person being persecuted by, say, Uganda, applying to Uganda for asylum because of their persecution by Uganda.
I enjoyed the episode, but I don’t see as the ne plus ultra Trek episode that others do.
Courtroom episodes like this tend to be the literary version of the “strapped chicken test” — an old military term for what a contractor does to make sure a weapon will hit the target. The writer arbitrarily defines both the details of the law in question and the background of the character so that suitable rhetorical flourishes can be applied.
Though, in the end, it’s not even clear that Ketoul’s claims prevailed with the tribunal as much as Vice Admiral Pasalk’s suggestion that Pike should also be court-martialed, and the hint that everyone who helped cover up Chin-Riley’s background was corruptly violating their Starfleet oaths. Since the real code violation here involves not just being an Illyrian, but an officer foreswearing her oath to uphold the regulations of Starfleet. To me, they sidestepped the far more interesting issues raised in April’s testimony about *how far* Starfleet will allow you to bend regulations, since he also clearly violated his oath by violating the Prime Directive.
@98/quantummechanic: The nonsense is the whole point. Ketoul was using Starfleet’s laws to point out the hypocritical contradiction in Starfleet’s laws and the Federation’s ideals. She was forcing them to confront that their ban on Augments goes against all their high principles of inclusion and fairness and protection of the vulnerable. She shamed them into making a choice that was more about morality than law, taking advantage of a loophole in the language of the asylum law to give them an out so they wouldn’t have to enforce the unjust Augment ban, at least in this case where it was so clearly unfair.
@93 “I’d been afraid that they were getting rid of Una in order to move in James Kirk as Pike’s new first officer, contradicting “The Menagerie”‘s statement that they only met once.”
Oh, I have a feeling that they are still going to contradict that one sometime soon (as we see James Kirk again in the trailer for the second season).
@101/David: Yeah, we know Kirk will be around, but so far it looks like they might be avoiding putting him and Pike in the same place. It was an alternate future Kirk last season, and it looks like he’ll be interacting mostly or entirely with La’an in this week’s episode.
I certainly agree there’s a good chance they may have him interact with Pike, but we can’t rule out the possibility that they intend to avoid it. Although they’ve already contradicted other things like Spock never melding with a human until “Dagger of the Mind” and not having a command until “The Galileo Seven” (neither of which made sense in light of “The Menagerie” later revealing that he’d been serving on the Enterprise for over 13 years).
You’re presumably referring to Francis Fukuyama’s work, in which case you’re completely wrong. He has a Hegelian view of history as being the clash of different ideologies; his view was that, after the Cold War, there was going to be relatively little challenge to liberal democracy, and that history had “ended” in the sense that only democratic countries would be considered legitimate in the political science sense of the term. He did not predict (and indeed expressly acknowledged, if I’m remembering correctly) that wars and conflict would continue to exist over issues such as resources.
Predictably, the nuances didn’t percolate down from Stanford to popular discourse.
That is the correct approach. The ban is promulgated by the legislature (presumably the Federation Council), not the courts. Its compatibility with the Federation Charter and various planetary constitutions has presumably previously been considered, and upheld, by the courts.
Even if that were not the case and the court really were considering the constitutionality of the ban to begin with, it would not be up to various non-expert witnesses, and character witnesses at that, to offer opinions on the ban. Non-expert witnesses are not allowed to offer opinions. Expert witnesses can offer opinions, but only as to narrow questions (e.g., an economist testifying as to price distortions in a monopoly case); they do not offer legal conclusions. To do that, you need either to be representing one of the parties or to file an amicus curiae brief.
(I’ll add the very important caveat that this case was being tried under the Starfleet equivalent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not civilian criminal procedure. I just don’t have any expertise on UCMJ to say how that would change the above analysis. And of course Federation and Starfleet law will differ in some respects from US law as practiced today.)
I am very glad the writers eschewed this route. Courts are not meant to make policy. In general, within the context of a television drama, the episode got much of legal procedure right.
This is a minor point, but didn’t Chakotay (who is a Federation citizen) say that a “Captain Sulu” sponsored him (leading to much debate as to whether he meant Hikaru, Demora, etc.)?
@105 – Not the point I was making. The argument against the ban is moral, not legal. It is unjustified due to the discriminatory nature (as well as just being idiotic on its face, but that’s another argument). None of the Starfleet/Federation people in this episode argued against its morality. Some even tried to defend it by claiming it was to prevent a greater evil. The result is that the supposedly enlightened Federation and Starfleet personnel come off looking far less enlightened than advertised.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but somewhat disappointing if you want to look upon the Federation as a beacon of hope for the future.
I must be the only person in 2020s America that likes the fact that the Federation has a ban on genetic engineering. This is for a few different reasons: (1) it helps to clearly define Star Trek generically as a more humanist rather than trans-humanist show about humans more or less like us, and (2) it’s also more or less correct ethically.
Now before I’m dismissed as uneducated or a bigot, my viewpoint on this comes precisely from having a PhD and also being the son of one of the most influential international human rights legal experts precisely on children’s rights and reproductive issues, who is deeply involved with the UN, the Hague, and similar bodies in helping to produce contemporary regulations on these issues. I’m actually always amazed how ignorant Americans are of the degree to which there is presently a massive global legal and moral controversy over the ART and commercial surrogacy industries and accompanying eugenic technologies and systems, one in which practically the entire world, including the UN and the Hague and all international law, is on one side, and the USA and Russia more or less alone on the other in allowing unrestricted commercial use of reproductive technologies and commercial surrogacy.
Naturally, the problem isn’t precisely genetic or reproductive technology as such–but it absolutely is specific technological procedures that are ethically unjustifiable because they necessarily violate codified human rights and in practice lead to human commodification and trafficking and eugenic practices. ART technologies *already* are used overwhelmingly with genetic selection for traits people like: and these traits *already* have strong racial and eugenic and effects, with traits like height, blond hair, blue eyes, etc, heavily selected for and disadvantaged and disabled groups more or less eliminated. There are *already* entire industries that run roughshod over established human rights around autonomy, origins, etc in service of producing designer children for profit.
As portrayed in DS9 originally, the Federation doesn’t ban genetic technology in toto, but specifically and solely voluntary consumer genetic modification that isn’t justified by medical and therapeutic ends. In so doing it acknowledges that in practice uses of such technology apart from the constraints of medical and therapeutic wellbeing would necessarily be focused on selecting for and producing children who have advantages in existing competitive systems and possess subjectively desirable traits like height, intelligence, speed, strength, appearance,etc, in the process denigrating and disadvantaging and eventually eliminating children that fall short by these standards. This is simply common sense, and is more than borne out with all our legal experience of technologies and cultural practices like this. The struggle of Bashir in this episode over his parent’s disdain for him and desire for a “better” son is already quite common among children born and “selected for” by ART.
All this makes this episode extremely frustrating for me, in that it clearly shows no interest in the *actual* issues around genetic engineering, but instead simply uses the concept as a stand-in for contemporary issues that have nothing to do with it at all. Which leads to a real problem inasmuch as the writers aren’t apparently interested in or even aware of contemporary debates around technology and law, but apparently only interested in entirely different issues around issues of unchosen identity and prejudice. This makes the episode at certain points almost comically bizarre in the disconnect between the apparent and actual content onscreen.
All that being said, I do actually like this episode overall. As an episode about the complexity of law and its application, prejudice towards individuals due to their background, and a character drama around issues of choice, loyalty, “passing,” challenging systems, etc, the episode largely works very well. Strange New Worlds is very much coming into its own this season.
I also appreciate that the episode does let the Federation ban keep going and establish that good people like Robert April support it. It doesn’t do much to justify *why* it exists besides vague gestures to the Eugenics Wars: which in TOS were precisely *about* a humanistic perspective on the extremely intense contemporary debates over Eugenics, positing that such efforts to improve and select for desirable cultural and economic and political traits like intelligence and ambition if successful would very quickly lead to bad things. Here, as elsewhere, TOS reflected the more humanistic and less purely techno-utopian perspective of ’50s and ’60s sci-fi, which emerged out of a generally more educated generation of writers with more actual experience of technological change and its consequences. TOS’ concept of the Eugenics Wars, which was really much more “informed” relative to its actual topic, really isn’t dealt with at all here, though, even though it’s frequently invoked. In general, the episode seems awfully dedicated to preventing anyone from ever actually making any argument contrary to its narrative.
The episode does, though, acknowledge that the Federation as a whole and good people within it support that law, while at the same time recognizing the complexity of enforcement involved in any such regulation (complexity that’s very much involved in contemporary efforts to deal with the results of monstrously immoral uses of reproductive technology in the 3rd world, Russia, Ukraine, and the US). Clearly, the ban against voluntary non-medically genetic engineered people serving in Starfleet is not a matter of principle, but merely a deterrent to make the practice less desirable–and like most such deterrent laws, it should be and often is dispensed with for individual cases. In practice, such dispensations do not undermine, but actually buttress and reinforce the overall legal regime. And oddly enough, despite the episode’s grandstanding, that is more or less where we end up here.
I would even say that in principle, the idea of an entire culture that uses genetic engineering, but in extremely culturally specific and culturally regulated and restricted ways, is very interesting, and does pose an interesting philosophical challenge to the ban. Federation laws around genetic engineering sanction a small number of specified and morally-positive ends but try to avoid unrestricted and immoral uses–and the Illyrians, seemingly, are a culture that similarly appears to restrict the uses of genetic engineering (not focusing on height, appearance, or super-strength), but with a differently sanctioned focus on “adaptation” to extreme environments.
Seeing those two concepts and ethical systems clash would be very interesting, and would pose the question of whether an exception might be warranted to the law on a cultural, rather than merely individual, level. One can imagine the episode ending in such a way with a rapproachment where Illyrians are given a limited exception for adaptive, culturally-specific modifications. Unfortunately, though, the episode doesn’t really get into that very much, both because it’s more interested in using the Illyrians as a vaguestand-in for all disadvantaged groups in history, and because it does want to portray the Federation ban as unreasonably strict.
Of course, another basic problem is the typical Star Trek “fun with DNA,” which establishes a kind of magical, problem-free genetic engineering that will never actually exist in the real world–where genetic engineering will always come with enormous practical drawbacks and at real ethical costs. But that’s a fairly minor issue.
@108: You are not the only one who appreciates the Federation’s ban on eugenics. It has been disturbing–downright infuriating, even–to see so many people advocate for eugenics using basically the same arguments used the first time around. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, because the techno-utopianism that has infected liberal spaces has been very bad about thinking through the consequences of adopting new technologies, to the point of engaging in apologia for a technology that some people are already trying to use to eliminate autistic people. If you want to talk about relevance to contemporary society, this is the reality of liberal eugenics.
I have been unable to afford Paramount+, and so have been unable to watch the second season. But from the episode summaries I have read here and elsewhere, and from the truly tone-deaf discourse I’ve seen from Star Trek communities, I’m grateful I have not. The notion of conflating trans rights and eugenics is obscene.
One you didn’t mention, but DS9 did: Genetic modification–actual genetic modification–cannot be performed easily on adult organisms, and will have a high failure rate especially when working with complicated traits (like intelligence, or strength, or agility) and as the technology is maturing. The path towards the Übermensch is paved with the bodies of dead or mutilated children. Animal testing would be morally complicated enough, but for traits that are polygenetic it’s going to be very hard to avoid testing on human beings. For intelligence (and it’s what most liberal eugenicists are obsessed with), it would be impossible.
I liked this on the whole (and agree with @100/ChristopherLBennett that the defense didn’t win through offering a stronger legal case, but through making a moral argument and offering the Federation a face-saving way out), but there’s one thing I find odd:
This episode makes a point of telling us that the defense can’t put Pike on the stand because he’d be asked when he’d learned that Una was genetically enhanced. It also makes a point of reminding us that La’an knew about it just as long as Pike did. And yet the defense has no qualms about putting her on the stand, and she seems to have no qualms about lying through her teeth under oath. (And multiple people know she’s done so, and have no apparent reaction.) This is pretty weird for a Starfleet officer?
(This may apply to M’Benga and Spock as well? I don’t remember whether they got that piece of information.)
@108 – Thank you for the very thoughtful and thought provoking analysis.
The idea of designer children, in particular, raises all sorts of red flags. Who’s going to decide what augmentations are allowed? Would it extend, as seen recently in China, to determining the gender of the child? Boys were more desirable than girls so many people chose to abort in order to have a boy under the one child program. If you’re using genetic engineering to have the child you want, isn’t ensuring that they’re XY as opposed to XX? If it’s discovered that being transgender has a genetic component, what happens when parents want to remove that part of the genetics?
Look what people have accomplished with selective breeding with dogs, for example. How much will we change humanity if you can pick and choose your child’s DNA? Would there be sufficient resources available to allow everyone that wants genetically altered children to have them? Who decides who wins the lottery
@108 – Thank you for the very thoughtful and thought provoking analysis.
The idea of designer children, in particular, raises all sorts of red flags. Who’s going to decide what augmentations are allowed? Would it extend, as seen recently in China, to determining the gender of the child? Boys were more desirable than girls so many people chose to abort in order to have a boy under the one child program. If you’re using genetic engineering to have the child you want, isn’t ensuring that they’re XY as opposed to XX? If it’s discovered that being transgender has a genetic component, what happens when parents want to remove that part of the genetics?
Look what people have accomplished with selective breeding with dogs, for example. How much will we change humanity if you can pick and choose your child’s DNA? Would there be sufficient resources available to allow everyone that wants genetically altered children to have them? Who decides who wins the lottery
For all that we will likely never see them again, I was disappointed that neither of Una’s parents showed any visible evidence of being the Chin part of Chin-Riley. While I’m well aware that Romijn herself is of Nordic stock and the dark hair comes from a decision in the ’60’s I was hoping that the decision to name Number One, Una “Chin-Riley” wasn’t just someone faffing about. Alas.