I just don’t get it. What is the freaking problem of those directors, trying to rewrite federation into some kind of dystopian tech fascism?
I was annoyed by the first Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams, with those police cops. I was alienated by those anti-android resentments in Picard. I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode, because the main protagonist was sent to some kind of labor prison for disobedience, where prisoners regularly die. I didn’t think it could get any worse but just watching the first 10 minutes of Starfleet Academy makes me want to bury the whole franchise [edit: and stopped watching]. Some drumhead court-martial, lifelong prison sentence, violently separating a mother from her child and some goons beating up a prisoner. How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?
Star Trek is supposed to be the ONE fiction with a positive, utopian view on mankind and the future. I totally get the attraction of dystopian settings but for that I can read some Warhammer 40k novels. This really makes me furious.
Fortunately there is still Strange New Worlds.
Please spoiler me, when this bullshit in Starfleet Academy gets turned around in some twist, because otherwise I will just ignore the show.
The people in the image aren’t even members of the Federation… they’re Torathan, it’s explicitly stated, by Chancellor Ake, that the Federation has an agreement with them that would allow Mir to be released to their custody.
The Burn did a lot of crazy things to the Federation, and one of the lessons explicitly stated in the next episodes is that the Academy is back to teach these cadets how to be better. There was some backsliding during the Burn and everyone is trying to get better again.
The Pirate (Nus Braka) given the sentence was a pirate who was killing Starfleet officers. The mother (Anisha Mir) was sentenced to time in a rehab colony with visitation rights. Rehabilitation implying the sentence is not a life long sentence. Both of them were, ultimately, involved with the death of an officer. It wasn’t a “Drumhead” type trial, there was no witch hunting the innocent here: Two people involved with a theft that ended with the death of a Starfleet officer were tried and convicted of crimes; one of them is known to be a member of a dangerous criminal organization.
Picard once left Tim Russ’s character poisoned to die in a Baryon sweep for stealing Trilithium Resin. Star Trek was never super perfect when dramatic effect is involved.
This right here. The only way you can end up with OP’s opinion after watching the first episode is when you don’t pay attention at all.
Honestly, all of the new bucket of frequently parroted opinions only make sense if you don’t pay attention. I saw one recently calling SFA “edgy teenage drama with bullying”. “Edgy” is the furthest thing from what SFA is. It’s the biggest let’s-work-together-and-support-our-friends piece of media I might have ever seen. It’s comfort food.
I have to assume these people go straight from the ragebait youtubers to reddit/lemmy comments without ever stopping to watch the show.
EDIT: omg there’s literally someone in this thread calling it “dark and edgy”.
Quite on point. Since I stopped watching after those 10 minutes.
Do you not understand how dramatic storytelling works? Did you stop reading To Kill a Mockingbird because it’s racist to have an innocent black man accused of murder?
Cold take: Mum Mir did not commit any crime and could not rightfully be sentenced to any kind of rehabilitation.
It is implied that her biggest crime was being given stolen food. But that goes back to Star Trek often being less than perfect when it comes to driving dramatic effect.
Didn’t she get charged with felony murder. Which I also thought was not following what I thought starfleet stood for, but I wasn’t aware of the burn at the time I watched the episode, and I think they’ve done ok explaining the dark time starfleet didn’t live up to their ideals and why the captain quit.
Yeah, that was the first time (of several, so far) when I thought “Ah, it’s gonna be that kind of show. Good to know.” 🤪
That’s not a crime. She didn’t even know.
I should have clarified that my first sentence in that comment is a concession.
Being given stolen food is not a crime, that is correct. It is only relevant if she was either directing the person to kill the officer to steal the food on her behalf, or was actively participating in the raid where the aforementioned killing of the officer occurred.
I still maintain that Star Trek is often less than perfect when it comes to driving dramatic effect. For instance: Sisko could probably have not made a planet full of people uninhabitable just to make a point. Sometimes the writers make shitty things happen to drive the story.
Picard didn’t leave him to die, he expected the ringleader to let him go back for the dude but she didn’t. The point of the scene was to show that she was an asshole not that Picard was heartless.
I was talking about the sentence for Nus Braka. Maybe I’m just a crazy communist but in my depiction of a better world society knows better ways to deal with criminals then to just lock them up.
I don’t know what your perspective on fair trials is, but a single judge rushing into the chambers, asking the felon 2 questions and immediately declaring the sentence. No attorneys, no hearing. That’s some North Korean shit.
They only say it was a Penal Colony. Maybe they marooned him on Ceti Alpha V… or put him next to Tom Paris or Kassidy Yates in a Penal Colony with an ankle monitor. The Vulcans might have put him in Ankesthan K’til with T’Pring’s prisoners. Who knows.
First, Court Martials are held to a different standard than civilian courts. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it is a fact. Second, your take is implying that we saw the whole trial and not just the sentencing. I guess when Anisha Mir claims “You said you would help me!” to Chancellor/Captain Ake (who then explains that getting the sentenced reduced was helping), we’re all just supposed to guess she hallucinated something and not that there was more to the trial than what we saw?
Drumhead was about hunting specters that aren’t there. It was about reducing everyone’s freedoms because of nebulous claims of national security. This isn’t what we see here. There were no false claims of injustice, there was a tangible crime that had been committed.
Unfortunately, Earth was still independent at that time, so New Zealand is out of the question.
Bring us…Space New Zealand!
It was pretty obvious from the first 5 minutes that this was not a short trial, and that what we see is not the full trial but the final veredict hearing. There’s even mention of the captain vying to lower the mother’s sentence.
There’s a difference between a trial and a sentencing.