Star Trek : Strange New Worlds

Strange New Worlds 2x02 - "Ad Astra Per Aspera"

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

Anson Mount. Obviously :)
Pretty much all the cast, regulars and guests, in fact.
A story with no weapons being fired, no punches being thrown in anger, just a conflict between what is the letter of a law and what is right. How very Trekian.
Courtroom shows have long been a staple of Trek, nice to see this one done halfway well.

The Bad

If I'm gonna be picky...clichés and sappiness were definitely the order of the day at times. Sometimes it made sense, such as with the court testimonies of La'an Noonien Singh :rolleyes:, Spock and M'Benga. Other times...eennnnhhhh. For example, that scene with Neera counselling La'an made me want to throw things. The clapping in the transporter room as well.
Disappointingly minimal amount of Jess Bush's Chapel this week :(

The Kurtzman

La'an Noonien Singh :rolleyes:
Ortegas' antagonism regarding Vulcans while watching Spock and the Vulcan prosecutor in her first scene came right out of nowhere. Really hope that they do something to grow her character this season, because just alternating between 'snarky' and 'racist' doesn't cut it.

The Uncategorised

Just one of seventeen Trek episodes with a Latin title. Meaning "to the stars through hardship", as name-dropped in Una's testimony. Appropriate, both as a pre-Federation Earth Starfleet motto and as the episode title. The later Starfleet motto became "ex astris, scientia" - "from the stars, knowledge".
 
Looks like Captain Pike is a Jet Set Willy 2 fan. Who knew? :D

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Interesting episode:

Bit woke - hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Ortegas - still don't like this character.

Interesting that the nearly the whole thing was one set.

Not the best episode, but enjoyable, and, you can hide age with botox etc, but can't hide it with the hands, oooof:

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ivrytwr3 said:
Interesting episode:

Bit woke - hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Ortegas - still don't like this character.

Interesting that the nearly the whole thing was one set.

Not the best episode, but enjoyable, and, you can hide age with botox etc, but can't hide it with the hands, oooof:

diOTUaK.png
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Woke? This is the perfect example of a proper old school Trek story. TOS, TNG, Voyager and pretty much every other Trek series has always done Court room stories really well.
So I don't see how it was 'woke' classic Trek at its core. So you never need lots of sets or visual effects. The story does the talking.
 
As i said, i enjoyed the episode and it did go back to traditional Trek - dealing with race, segregation, even similarities to Nazis and how they separated race - this episode also brought in gender identification, so tackling new and current topics.

What i was saying was, we see this in too many other shows and the media, i hope this doesn't become a platform for wokeness - that's all :)
 
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By contrast if we were to use woke then The Orville was woke in basically every episode and many like that more than Trek lol.

Orville is of course excellent and accompanies Trek almost 1:1.
 
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So, did the Vulcan prosecutor Pasalk know that Una was going to win her case?

I mean, c'mon. How is he, of all people, not going to be familiar with Starfleet Code 8514? There's a look he gives when Neera asks Batel to read out the relevant passage which suggests, to me, that he knew all along that this was the logical play. His prosecution of the case was full-throated, but again that would only be logical - he's a prosecutor, he can't simply not do his job, and knowing that the law in this case actually favoured Una to a degree meant that he was free to do so without truly risking anything. It handily absolves Pike of covering for her - he used his discretionary powers as captain under 8514 to grant her asylum, this court case merely confirms that. And it means that Starfleet can point out to anyone disgruntled at the verdict that a genuine attempt to prosecute the case was made.

I think that makes sense, anyway.
 
JRS said:
So, did the Vulcan prosecutor Pasalk know that Una was going to win her case?

I mean, c'mon. How is he, of all people, not going to be familiar with Starfleet Code 8514? There's a look he gives when Neera asks Batel to read out the relevant passage which suggests, to me, that he knew all along that this was the logical play. His prosecution of the case was full-throated, but again that would only be logical - he's a prosecutor, he can't simply not do his job, and knowing that the law in this case actually favoured Una to a degree meant that he was free to do so without truly risking anything. It handily absolves Pike of covering for her - he used his discretionary powers as captain under 8514 to grant her asylum, this court case merely confirms that. And it means that Starfleet can point out to anyone disgruntled at the verdict that a genuine attempt to prosecute the case was made.

I think that makes sense, anyway.
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This is exactly what I was thinking.

It feels like there was a little bit of context cut from the discussion between him and Spock, or at least something that should have implied there may have been some respectful cooperation outside of their distaste for one another during that conversation.
 
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Agree with other comments about it being woke.. racism and discrimination comparisons were cringe, the insinuation of institutional racism / discrimination and a feisty black women defending.. Sad that they did it this way, but it's no surprise. She was inspired by diversity..... Of course.

Not an awful episode, but could have been much better without the political nonsense.
 
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