Star Trek

What I find fascinating about this episode, is that it illustrates how cultural misunderstanding is a huge driver for continued tensions between the Empire and Federation.

The Federation and humans especially try to be pacifists and explorers and are ashamed of their ability to be fearsome warriors. Ashamed of the barbarity they are capable of. The Klingons misunderstand this, and think the federation are either weak or duplicitous. That the federation is pretending to be peace loving so they can stab the Empire in the back, or wants to avoid war because it is weak.

Meanwhile, humans think diplomacy is always the answer. When dealing with Klingons, being honest about humanity and the federation's capacity towards violence would go a long way to easing tensions. If the doctor was known as the butcher of J'Gal, this would have helped the federation seem more like a worthy opponent and therefore potential ally. Instead he allows a Klingon to take the credit, and the federation ends up being represented by the worst kind of Klingon, a coward who ran from battle. What the doctor did was arguably very honourable in Klingon eyes. He killed a coward, who killed children, but ran when faced with a real warrior.

It's also politically relevant today, where pacifism is seen as a weakness, while others underestimate how strength and the threat of violence often prevents wars or the fact that sometimes extreme violence ends wars and potentially prevents further suffering.

I don’t understand, what’s hard to like about ortegas? She’s exactly what I’d expect a hotshot pilot to be like.

The last 3 episodes have been freaking superb. A lot of what has appealed to me could be called fanservice, but I can live with that. For the token hottie, Christine's character probably rivals Jadzia's in terms of development. The Spock/Chapel romcom was something I didn't know I needed. The Lower Decks crossover was sublime. And this PTSD episode is one of several examples of taking a character we met in S1, may not have been initially very invested in, and deepening the connection and interest in them.

I don't know about best.

But the highest praise I could give it is that it reminded me of In the Pale Moonlight.

Also, Bunny was awesome.

M'Benga: I can live with it

Notreadingthatnotreadingthatnotreadingthat because I haven't seen it yet (woe is me). I'm just here to express my amusement about how lately every week we seem to get "the best Star Trek ever" ;D

Edit: Seen it now and daaaang.

I disagree a lot. I think the idea was very good and it has good chunks, but overall it was even below average for SNW due to not so good writing. I felt the same about the first episode of the season. I feel it hid to much information just to be able to give a twist in the end, at the expense of the first part of the episode, which I think it dragged too much.

I feel the writers are trying very hard to show SNW can have a very wide range of themes but I dont think they are delivering that well when it comes to war.

This episode knocked it out of the park. In a season that's been a wee bit hit and miss IMHO (compared to S1), seeing such depth and pathos in a story which could have been handled in a heavy-handed way otherwise, well it's very satisfying.