Star Trek SNW Reviews H

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Under The Cloak Of War” Episode Eight, Season Two. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is in at least one way perhaps the best anti-war episode of all ST. It is also a little difficult to follow closely to figure out if there is any significant REVELATION that addresses the question- is Federation Ambassador Dak’Rah something more sinister than the Federation knows? I’m going to focus on that part first. Partly because it is the more difficult part and I have a habit of often doing the difficult stuff first, and partly because it’s implied here and there that he is not the great man of diplomacy people think he is.

You should read the episode “summary” I link to above, but it is REALLY long and many readers might want something shorter, so here is a summary of the stuff about Dak’Rah.

One battle of the Klingon War became even uglier at one point when the Klingon commander (on the planet focused on) ordered that anyone without a Klingon uniform should be killed. That commander was Dak'Rah BEFORE his apparent transformation, but it’s not clear to the audience and unknown to a lot of people in StarFleet. The story is that the future diplomat fought in hand-to-hand combat with 2 or 3 of his subordinates to stop the slaughter of civilians. We learn that M’Benga was actually the one who fought the Klingon subordinates while Dak'Rah escaped. Although it’s still not totally clear to me, I believe this fact is the main revelation to StarFleet- not that the original order was given by Dak’Rah.

The former Klingon commander, apparently around the time that the war ends, goes through some kind of transformation politically/philosophically and defects to the Federation where he becomes a popular and inspirational ambassador. The timeline is not super clear because he was probably a Federation Ambassador no more than 2-4 years before the events in this episode, but I guess he got a lot done. There’s some suggestion that there’s something shady about how much distance he has (or ostensibly has) put between his past during the war and his new work with the Federation- that he has moved on and forgiven himself too much and unreasonably expects people like M’Benga to also forgive him and treat him as a friend. I initially was kind of inclined to think that M’Benga and Chappel and Ortegas were being too hard on Dak’Rah, that he had made a legitimate and total transformation, and maybe it wasn’t on an unrealistic timeline and he had apparently done a lot of really good work for the Federation. 

If someone believes that a relatively or very rapid total transformation like that is just totally unrealistic, think about the true story movie “The Best of Enemies” in which, over a small number of months, a very active, immersed Klan leader becomes anti-Klan and pro-integration, and then goes to work for the AFL-CIO (America’s labor movement and at the very least a sort of anti-racist force).

Anti-War Stuff

The other part of this is not obscured at all. It is a very anti-war episode up there with Deep Space Nine episodes “… Nor The Battle To The Strong” and “The Siege Of AR-558.” In general there’s a lot about war from the perspective of a StarFleet field hospital. You get the impression that among the hospital staff there’s a lot of casualties and/or a lot of turn-over in general (possibly from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder if not from actual weapons). Probably the main thing worth mentioning is that, although it’s not explained how this works (it’s long before StarFleet in the last three seasons of Discovery where they have individual transporters you carry with you like a communicator) apparently the wounded arrive at the hospital by transporter and that means that once in a while or often there’s a repetitive computer-voiced announcement of “incoming transport-incoming transport” which basically means, at least usually, that a lot of wounded are going to arrive. There’s something about the repetitive nature and the electronic voice of the announcement that caused me some kind of anxiety (although I’ve never been in a war I have some imagination of how upsetting it must be and since my mom’s death I have become a bit hyper-emotional). It kind of reminds me of how on the 1970s TV show MASH the sound of approaching helicopters would alert the staff that wounded would be there in seconds. But it’s even more powerful.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews G

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Lost In Translation” Episode Six, Season Two. See this for a plot summary.

My Environmental Record

There isn’t much here. The idea is that in that small part of space some kind of living, sentient race (which apparently can’t be seen with the naked eye or any StarFleet technology) has become attached to a substance that becomes starship fuel and the alien race is being killed by that industrial process. Crew members are getting contacted by this race who cannot communicate with us as we do and are trying to stop the collection and exploitation of the substance.

I think it’s an environmental issue. And the thing is, I’m not that familiar with environmental issues. I mean, I AM a tree-hugger- in fact, I start making out with the tree!  :  ) Just kidding. 

To be serious, I AM a bit weak on environmental issues. I think it might be partly that I never completed High School chemistry (I have almost no idea what “parts per million” means and no idea what’s a high number for that and what’s a low number). In Jr. High and High School I probably got a no better average grade for science classes than a B- or C+. In college I DID take a course about physics and the environment and I got a C- and in “Environmental Geology” I got a C. I wasn’t a great student in general (for a lot of reasons, some of which can’t be held against me) but I think I deserve a little credit for trying to be a good environmentalist- which is the main reason I took those two courses. I also spent, around 1998, a total of about 4 years working an average of about 25 hours a week at a company in Boulder called Jade Mountain (it sold environmentally-friendly tech like energy efficient light bulbs, solar panels, etc.). I did practically zero sales work that involved answering technical questions from customers, and 90% of what I did was data-entry, shipping, copying, mailing, filing. But, I accepted a relatively low wage compared to what I would have gotten at an entry-level job at Dairy Queen (no one at JM got paid what they should have but were there at least partly for the environmentalism) and made an okay/almost good contribution (a vague measurement of how valuable I was to the operation (not very) and how infrequently I screwed up (overall extremely infrequently), etc., etc.)

In the last 30 years I have a fairly good record as an environmentalist. I probably recycle about 75-95% of what I can recycle (I have been told, twice, “when in doubt, throw it out,” and I probably have thrown away some recycling). I have been using energy-efficient lighting about 1/3-3/4 of that time. I am not half as good as I should be when it comes to not driving a car. I sign a lot of the environmental petitions I hear about and have gone to some marches and protests, etc. and done a little bit of “light lifting” organizing on environmental issues. In the 18 years-archive of this blog there are a total of 14 posts labelled “environmental.”

I almost forgot, I took a class called “Race, Class and Pollution,” and failed it- a few small flaws in me as a student and a few small problems in my life chipped away at the B I probably should have gotten and I failed it.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews OO

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Prima Nocta” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.

Racism Towards Inter-Racial Couples

One of the rape survivors is in a interracial relationship. I include a note about that sort of thing when doing these reviews because I got the (flawed) impression about 30 years ago that hostility to such couples was sort of the more-widely-acceptable form, and/or pinnacle, of white supremacy (although White hostility towards mixed-race couples IS more common and more intense than the more basic facet of white supremacy (see the next paragraph), the more basic facet is still a massive problem). Another reason I mention it is that I think there is some much smaller degree of hostility towards such couples from some small minority of people of color. As I have explained here, although I understand that calling it racism is inaccurate and unhelpful and I understand that it’s a TINY problem which White people shouldn’t worry about, I believe it does exist. I would say something sort of similar about interracial relationships where both people are non-white- I imagine the frequency that such relationships are treated with hostility by people of color is incredibly low, but it's still noteworthy since they can be described as “multicultural” in a very positive way.

As far as the hate from white supremacist bigots in connection to the first kind of interracial relationship, I WAS open-minded about 1-3 years ago that maybe it’s declining and I should ignore it (part of that math is the fact that the show is set in NY City and there are plenty of minor characters and extras that are people of color, and I already had a policy about this show where I did not high-light everything anti-racist, because of course there are plenty of minor characters who are people of color). But racism has resurged in the last 10-17 years and I believe that white supremacists ARE much more hostile to mixed-race couples than they are to people of color in general (I’ve attached greater value than I used to to a letter the Southern Poverty Law Center published after they received it from a Jewish man in state prison in America and one thing he focused on was the Nazi skinhead-enforced rules about fraternization between different races in prison).

“Fractured” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

First, there’s a fair amount of vague talk about widespread hostility towards the police in NYC, which is probably a continuation of the ramped-up anti-racism that the show started expressing (not necessarily vaguely) in Season 22 about a year after the 2020 Black Lives Matter-aligned protests.

At the risk of asking for trouble, I have typed and might soon publish an essay about incels (“Involuntary Celibates” which refers to misogynistic men who complain about not getting laid) and a major theme of this episode. It will be published as it’s own post, probably in mid-March. 

“Cornered” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

In some ways it’s not political but in some ways it is. A minor character that the Assistant DA for SVU had become close to is killed by criminals robbing a bodega and this is I think fairly significant because the character has a first and last name (Ali Imran) that is Arabic and also Muslim. The ADA is so upset that in the next episode (“First Light”) he has a graphic flashback to when his friend is killed. As I have said elsewhere about something kind of similar involving a handful of episodes of Star Trek TV shows, I believe this kind of thing can (at least) chip away at anti-Muslim bigotry in this country.

“Deductible” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Capitalism and Women’s Sexuality

This episode is basically about something that I don’t think comes up very often in the show. I may have failed to comment on this sort of thing 1-2 times that I should have but didn’t because I thought it was what I have decided to call “pretty basic feminism” (I have no intention of mentioning everything feminist on the show, that content would clutter my posts and surprise no one, so it has to be a pretty significant and/or extraordinary manifestation of sexism). I know I commented on this episode’s topic very briefly with one episode that was a bit different but very similar (“Hell’s Kitchen” in Season 20).

At the risk of greatly exaggerating how intellectual I am, I think it is the kind of thing that can set off Marxist Women Studies scholars. It’s about an insurance business where the boss manipulates female employees into using their sexuality to confirm new clients. He uses his power as a capitalist to exploit not just the labor but also the sexuality of female employees in order to maximize profit. It’s not clear to what degree if at all his male employees are aware of this and/or to what degree if at all they cooperate (we learn that one of his earlier female victims is now COO and helps him- it’s not clear how many of his female employees are not being exploited sexually). The imminently-signing new client featured in this episode seems slightly decent. After being misled by the woman’s boss, he, without permission, tries to give her oral sex and it’s slightly possible he may have gone further without permission if she hadn’t gotten away from him and locked herself in the bathroom till he left. But there are some statements indicating he was far from fully okay with what the boss did. I say that because it seems like, if the show SVU has the pulse of the population, maybe a surprisingly large majority of the male population is against that sort of thing.

What is “that sort of thing?” It’s bad enough that you have exploitation of labor in general with capitalism and then what I believe is called “super-exploitation” of female workers in a non-sexual way. I am, to a large but not blind degree a pro-porn feminist and I believe that sex-work should largely be seen as just another kind of labor. If a woman FULLY consents to let her body be exploited, I’m not going to complain if I get to see pictures of her naked. But basically forcing a woman to put her sexuality to work for the company (a company that has nothing to do with sex and where her official job description says nothing about sex) as a whole and/or her male boss is sickening. Sexuality is something that is usually very personal, private and sacred (unless this protected status is waived BY THE PERSON INVOLVED in a fair and mutually beneficial and respectful agreement (I’ll be honest I can’t think of how to make a comprehensive and legalistic yet general and concise statement about this and I believe it is a little complicated, but what the defendant in this episode does is a GREAT example of what powerful men should NOT use their power for)). 

And it might not hurt if I say something here that I have wanted to say in recent years. At the risk of patting myself on the back too much for being a good feminist, when I think of non-trafficked pornography I am horrified by the possibility that some women do it with little or no enjoyment simply for desperate financial reasons and I think the possibility of that scenario is damning of the fact that women in our society get paid less, are often saddled with ALL the child-rearing expenses, etc. etc.