Strange New Worlds Season 3 directly addresses the biggest contradiction of Star Trek

Security alert! This article contains spoilers For season 3, episode 7 of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”.

When the creator of “Star Trek” Gene Roddenberry first exposed his vision for his seminal science fiction series, he wanted him to take place in the future where the earth had become a really utopian society. In fact, he first had a rule “without conflict” which made episodes of Star Trek “” particularly difficult under his watch. Starfleet, the branch of exploration and peacekeeping of the United Planets Federation, is supposed to be impeccable with impeccable moral standards which are clearly in line with the commitment of the land towards an egalitarian pacifist society. Unfortunately, everyone in the vast expanses of space does not want to follow the rules that Starfleet, which can make diplomacy a little complicated.

Despite many benefits and stories in the franchise, Starfleet is sometimes only time under a real examination, and it is a kind of shame. Gradually accepting that Starfleet is the good at any time, with the exception of the occasional doubtful admiral, is simply not really in line with the overall ethics of “Star Trek” even if it made Roddenberry warm and blurred. It is when we see the cracks of Starfleet and how individual officers face these moral contradictions that we can see a real heroism.

In the episode “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” What is Starfleet ?, “Young Documentarian Humberto” Beto “Ortegas (Mynor Lüken) is on board the company both boring his sister Erica (Melissa Navia) and by doing a documentary on Starfleet when the crew is charged with a very unusual transport mission of their order. Beto’s cameras watching each of their movements and his survey questions contesting their intentions, the company’s crew is forced to find himself face to face with one of the greatest contradictions of the franchise.

In “What is Starfleet?” The company is responsible for helping to transport an extraterrestrial from its native planet on Tychus-B to a Lutani-7, a world of non-feet at war. The stranger is the size of a spacecraft and must be pulled with a tractor beam, but when he begins to rebel against his bindings, the crew begins to really wonder why they move the creature. Beto probe for each turn, discovering that not only are the Lutani are the aggressors of war, but the creature that the company is supposed to move has been transformed into a living weapon. It may be just me, but I am almost sure that the delivery (living!) Weapons of mass destruction to war criminals could make Starfleet the bad guys here. (It is also a bit on the nose when it comes to American military allegories, but I get lost.)

It takes a lot of Beto survey and a lot of suffering from the creature before some crew members keep following orders blindly and starting to do the right thing. Although the characters who seemed to be morally honest have quite disappointing moments when they simply closed all the questions with “It is classified”, others are clearly modified and will be more potentially critical to Starfleet in the future. Since the characters inherited like Kirk (Paul Wesley) will absolutely challenge Starfleet in the future, that is good.

Finally, Beto concludes that the real value of Starfleet is not Starfleet itself, but the individual people who make up the organization. Of course, Starfleet may have helped them perfect their skills and get incredible experiences, but in return, they make Starfleet brilliant. Without the officers ready to challenge orders and the status quo, Starfleet cannot survive and really represent the ideals he claims to represent.

The episode is turned by a false-documentary in a mixture of surveillance cameras, sequences of drones and Beto interviews made with the crew in the same vein as one of the biggest episodes “M * a * s” of all time, and it does not work entirely as a format. “Strange New Worlds” played so much with genres and formats that he became a little disorienting, and “What is Starfleet?” is only the last example. Despite the format, Beto survey questions and journalistic voice are important. Journalists are sometimes nasty in the real world to be buzzkills or shoot heroes by calling their faults, but it is essential to hold powerful entities responsible, whatever our personal prejudices. Beto’s documentary is probably becoming a little softer on Starfleet than if his sister was not the enterprise crack driver, but he calls into question the motivations of Starfleet and potential corruptibility. Starfleet is essentially the military arm of the federation, for the better and the worst, which means dirtying hands.

Another series “Star Trek” which sometimes disputed the infallibility of Starfleet and questioned its military status was “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) was not afraid to use subversive methods to gain the top in the war and even questioned Starfleet himself, but his son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton), was a journalist who had had real Starfleet reviews. Jake pushed Starfleet’s rules and regulations and questioned his father’s motivations, giving the public the chance to do so too. Although Beto and Jake are simply young, imperfect journalists do their best to keep a massive responsible organization, they recall why good journalism counts.