Military, we’ve established this before, and I don’t just mean in Lower Decks. Directed by Sharon Lewis, who sadly is best known for reality TV peddled as documentarian stuff: Restaurant Makeover, World’s Worst Mom, Property Brothers, TVO Kids show It’s My Party! and other miserable drivel, with a shift post-Pandemic to TV drama, like Law & Order, Chicago Med, and Murdoch Mysteries. Writing is split between Lower Decks’ Kathryn Lyn, and sadly, I get to report that Discovery’s Alan B McElroy makes the move to Strange New Worlds. McElroy is best known for writing Halloween 4, a series so dead by that point Nick Castle quit the role a decade prior.

Vastly different from everything that’s been before it in Strange New Worlds, I want to like the fact that we’re seeing the whole episode through the lens of Umberto Ortegas’ documentary that he’s been filming. Every shot is a shallow focus interview, a bit of security footage, a floating camera sweeping across the actor, and, if I can say it, some decent ship porn. However, I have to ask if it truly is his documentary of Starfleet, or if it is just a gimmick of the latest adventure, focused around hush-hush orders from higher-ups: The Enterprise is ordered to transport something into the warzone of the Lutani and the Kasar.

A bit more Michael Moore than Louis Theroux, there is an early hint of “is this group’s intentions what they say it is, or are they far more sinister than they seem?” Yeah, that’s what everyone wants from the one bit of sci-fi that isn’t deeply depressing, hellish, post-apocalyptic, and tells you to give up on trying to fight for a good and just world; we clearly want the good guys in this situation to be the colonizing villains. As an idea, it isn’t terrible, but in execution, it is much like the focus during interviews, quite shallow at getting to the true picture.

The general feeling from the first moment of this episode to the last is that Beto isn’t making this documentary to showcase what Starfleet is actually like, but rather to push an opinion he has. Though the title is posed as a question, he as a filmmaker (in-universe, of course), is making a statement, a point he wants to prove – see any “documentary” about so-called controversial topics such as vaccines, 9/11, JFK, and any other conspiracy theory-laden dreck. Being polite about it, he’s setting up the whole thing to be combative, and I don’t just mean he has a bias; it comes across as if he’s got an actual grudge.

So the hush-hush orders come from on high about transporting a creature on a far-off planet into what is actively a warzone between two combative groups staking claim to a piece of space. I’m not even going to say it because you’re already thinking it. With the stand-in for the UN Peacekeeping force here transporting the creature, it all goes a bit wrong when a ship strays a little too close to the giant, luminescent blue squid-dragonfly thing that happens to rip the thing to pieces like I do with cake. Cue Beto getting what he wanted, and Starfleet doing something deemed questionable.

We even get the Captain of the ship that got too close to the medbay just in time for her to flatline, like the career of anyone speaking out about war crimes. W Bush got away with it, but I guess when you call yourself out, it’s fine. I won’t say it is a major spoiler (it’s rather obvious) that the creature isn’t what it is said to be, and the episode becomes a question of what the ship does in this situation, what to do diplomatically, and several other already answered questions in the Star Trek lore. So my question is, what was the point?

I do love how committed the whole episode is to the shift in style, giving us a completely different look at how the show is shot. However, that’s about it in terms of the positives I can give an otherwise poorly done episode from top to tail. Looking at it beyond that difference in style, it feels like not just an idea we’ve seen hundreds of times before, but one done poorly in comparison. The idea, the elevator pitch of “What Is Starfleet?” is an episode that puts forth the concept that Starfleet is an organization, but is it colonial and fully militaristic, or is it what they say, and are they explorers seeking out new life?

I hope you liked that question because that’s about as much as you’ll get answered watching the episode. Though the style of direction shifts to one of a documentary, the questions posed by Beto, the overall ideas of the documentary, the everything that the episode does between that question and its final moment is completely irrelevant to all of that. This is a slight spoiler, but one that’s obvious from his first question, Beto intends to ask why his sister is with Starfleet, why she isn’t home with the family, why this, and why that? It isn’t “What Is Starfleet?”, it is “Why Can’t I Have My Big Sister?”

This is why I said “sadly I get to report” then noted the Discovery writer that has moved over to Strange New Worlds, it is a Discovery-ification of the show. One that I think, especially with the ticking clock element of the limited number of episodes left of Strange New Worlds, doesn’t serve to improve the quality of the show overall. In fact, we could look at the facts of the episode and draw a couple of conclusions here as well. Episode 1 is 45-ish minutes, episode 2 is 48-ish, episode 3 is about the same, episode 4 is back to 45, 5 is around 50, and episode 6 is 46 minutes.

“What Is Starfleet?” is 37-38 minutes without credits. Something has been cut (take guesses), and what we’re left with is big emotions, little actual philosophical stakes despite the framing, and not a whole lot of people being adults when they need to be. I get it, Beto is meant to be the baby brother, but he’s been okay’d for a Starfleet documentary that plainly tries to attack Starfleet and then switches suddenly to show it as amazing. He’s a child being childish when it is important to be an adult – my main problem with Discovery. That and playing simply on big emotions rather than any logic.

So, Starfleet is ordering the Enterprise to move this sentient creature into an active warzone, we’re on the side of those who have been disproportionately killed, and on the whim of an errant ship, the creature flutters its wings for the infinity stones to crack the ship in two. I would like to say I could give more detail than that; however, that’s as much as we get about the conflict. Again, something has been cut for this suddenly shorter episode; we can guess which bits. I could say more about the creature, but not only is it a spoiler, it isn’t going to be much more pleasant.

The idea of a documentary episode isn’t a terrible one. Jake had a few episodes where he was becoming a journalist on Terok Nor. The idea of biological weapons or using beings as weapons has been done; there is an episode called “The Slaver Weapon,” and the Dikironium Cloud Creature is from TOS. Speaking of Terok Nor, “The Wounded” is an episode about a crew disillusioned by Starfleet’s more diplomatic side, actively attacking a small race of simple tailors called the Cardassians. If we include what is presumably cut, “A Taste of Armageddon” is another example of the ideas done well.

On their own, these ideas can be done well for a time and sometimes become timeless. However, when the episode is ham-fisted into somehow working as an allegory for war, purpose, and what it is for one to ostensibly have their own agency, yet cuts several minutes for straying too close to the sun, it collapses like a flan in a cupboard. Yes, to borrow that Suzy Eddie Izzard line once again this season.

I said at the end of “Wedding Bell Blues” that, “I like it for what it is, not for what it isn’t.” What “What Is Starfleet?” purports to be is an episode posing the question in the title, but it almost immediately drops that question as soon as it is asked. What is Starfleet? Starfleet is an organization (a system) built up from a collection of planets, colonies, outposts, and ships made up of tens to hundreds of races collectively working together to explore further and protect those within that organization.

In short, Starfleet is a scientific-military organization that spans multiple quadrants of the galaxy over the next two to three hundred years, with the aim to explore, meet new life, and discover what else is out there. Are there parts that will be militaristic and aggressive? Yes, just look at the UN and how large it is. Now think of that as 150+ member states spread across hundreds and possibly thousands of planets or colonies, boxed in by the Klingon and Romulan Empires on one side, and on the other, the Cardassian Union and Bajoran space. It’s a mess, that’s what it is.

I’ve put more thought and passion into those two paragraphs than this episode put into 37 minutes. Shut up, I know I didn’t mention the Breen, the Ferengi Alliance, the Tholian Assembly, and of course the Gorn Hegemony. So no, I don’t like it for what it is, and I might hate it for what it isn’t, because at the end of the day, “What Is Starfleet?” had potential to say or do something. For an episode that explores the concept of journalism and the work of documentarians, however, it ultimately suggests that it is all propaganda by the end. It is toothless, it is pointless, and it fails to see what Star Trek is.

Ultimately, “What Is Starfleet?” might as well be Pike sitting in a chair jangling keys in your face. Visually, it is stunning in several regards. However, once you peel back that look and simply read the script, look at the actions and reactions of characters, what everyone is doing, and how they go about it, that’s when it falls apart. It is the kids in a trench coat thing – it looks appropriate at first glance, but quickly falls into a pile of three kids on each other’s shoulders. Moreover, don’t think Kathryn Lyn isn’t getting tarred with this brush, but McElroy’s previous work in the franchise is indicative of what this episode was, Discovery.

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SNW “What Is Starfleet?”

3.5

Score

3.5/10

Pros

• Visually, brilliant.

Cons

• What Is The Point?
• Beto is not a documentarian.
• The creature's entire plot is terribly trite.