Star Trek Strange New Worlds 2.08 "Under the Cloak of War" REVIEW
Added 2023-07-27 13:01:02 +0000 UTCDoctor M'Benga finally gets an episode... and its full of TRAUMA! KLINGON TRAUMA!
Comments
Loved it. *Spoilers* As for the ending, I think there's a malevolent read being given to M'Benga by folks. 1) Dak'rah was the guy giving the order to massacre the kids. His lie about killing his officers was to cover up that fact. 2) M'Benga just told him that *M'Benga Knows* he was lying. That he knows Dak'Rah didn't have some come to Come to Kahless moment realizing that killing kids was too far. In fact he was the guy *doing* the genocide-ing. Put those together and I find it hard to believe M'Benga just murdered this guy in cold blood. Equally as likely the guy tried to kill M'Benga -OR- un-alived himself (M'Benga yells "don't!"). People seem to take Dak'Rah's kindly old man with a cane act at face value. But just because he used his defector status to keep himself out of trouble doesn't erase the genocide stuff (or the lengths he might go to keep the life/respect he had). I also find it odd people jump right to M'Benga lying when it was *purposefully* left up to interpretation.
Carlos Teel
2023-08-02 19:33:19 +0000 UTCI have major gripes with this episode that I’ve articulated elsewhere. I think it’s a good hour of television but not a good episode of Star Trek.
DP_Dwarf
2023-07-30 13:13:20 +0000 UTCIn this episode I lost all respect for M’Benga as a character, and Babs Olusanmokun as an actor. Quite something from a Star Trek devotee of, some, 40 years
frogsmore
2023-07-29 14:07:19 +0000 UTCI think this is an awful episode… one of the worst Star Treks I’ve seen. The whole episode is labored and feels super heavy handed throughout: “Why are we here?” “You know why… the captain needs us.” Um? Pike clearly stated he didn’t, actually, right up-front. He was simply grateful for support. But it wasn’t forthcoming. M’Benga and Chapel whispering and flouncing in the background of the dinner would have been totally obvious and embarrassing in a small dinner party. Thanks for your help dudes :/ And the exchange: “Like someone squeezed my heart with their fingers” “Someone did.” Oh dear! And “I prefer saving lives to taking them.” Wow… what a guy! So that explains how he went from butcher to CMO. But by far the worst thing, in my opinion, is the underlying perpetuation of War Myth pervading the episode, which practically comes from the mouth of M’Benga. Despite his preference, noted above, I find it difficult to reconcile a Star Fleet CMO who says things like “But if we don’t fight, we don’t win.” Ghandhi clearly got that bit wrong. And it was so obvious… so obvious :/ It continues: “I just wish we could stop this, without all this dying.” “We have to fight, so the people we love can have a chance to live in peace.” You have got to be kidding. This episode is shameful in my opinion. But apparently: “That’s Star Fleet”
frogsmore
2023-07-29 12:40:05 +0000 UTCThis was such a powerful episode, Babs Olusanmokun and Peter Wisdom (Dak'Rah) gave such great performances which carry the majority of the episode. Ortega being prejudiced against the Klingons and other species the Federation fought with is interesting and I wonder if it would lead to clashes with Kirk when he takes command which could explain why she doesn't stay on the crew in TOS. The flashback scenes to the war were deeply moving and Jess Bush likewise does an amazing job carrying a good part of the episode. The ending definitely reminded me of In the Pale Moonlight. I look forward to seeing the plot threads of Chapel and M'Benga's trauma as well as Ortega's prejudice get explores further.
Noah Stackhouse
2023-07-28 06:42:39 +0000 UTCWe agree with your take on the drugs (what were they called? Something like Protocol 12?) We might even go further than you and wonder why they felt the need to have a heroic progressive hero (M’Benga) use drugs (a continuing tactic in the real world and in fictional worlds of fascists — even TNG covered this in “Encounter at Farpoint”). Without the drug the character might be similar to the historic highly moral heroic figure Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor during WWII who decided that it was so important to eliminate Hitler that he would endanger his own eternal soul to participate in an assassination attempt. He paid for his choice by imprisonment and being hung by the Gestapo. But by including the drug the creators tainted M’Benga’s morals to the point he is morally quite compromised and to our point of view, this makes the whole story much less compelling. This starts to head us back into the morally questionable (“un-Federation-like”) stuff we got with Section 31, Lorca in Discovery (even though it eventually became clear that it was Mirror Lorca, not Prime Lorca) and at many points in DS-9. HOWEVER, there is one big plot reason we can see for the drugs that we didn’t hear you cover: without the drug a normal human wouldn’t have the strength to have much hope of overcoming a normal Klingon — after all, like Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons on average are quite a bit stronger than humans. Maybe twice as strong. https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/physical-strength-levels-of-trek-species.137604/ So the plot of one human being having any hope of breaking into a command center and killing the commander, let alone surviving would be quite implausible without some kind of equalizer, like the drugs.
Libre Spirits Collective
2023-07-27 19:47:43 +0000 UTCMy husband and I work 2nd shift so we don't get to see the episodes till the weekend. I love this show! And Dr M'Benga is a favorite of mine so I'm looking forward to seeing this.
Carolyn Johnson
2023-07-27 14:09:43 +0000 UTCI was just telling a friend about this episode and I made the DS9 comparison too. I was thinking it's more like The Siege of AR-558 and It's Only a Paper Moon, just... far darker.
Luna
2023-07-27 13:31:33 +0000 UTC
