One of the dumbest lines of dialogue ever uttered on a Star Trek TV show—and in a lot of ways, one of the most damaging to the franchise—was put in the mouth of Jean-Luc Picard in the second-season TNG episode “Peak Performance.” He said, “Starfleet is not a military organization, its purpose is exploration.”
Those words are utter fucking nonsense, and are borne of Gene Roddenberry’s tendency late in life to believe his own bullshit—and also, apparently, forgetting that “military” and “militaristic” are two different words that mean different things.
First of all, the dichotomy Picard implies in that line of dialogue doesn’t exist: being a military and having your purpose be exploration aren’t mutually exclusive. Secondly, of course Starfleet is a military organization. It has a rank structure. It has rules and regulations that must be obeyed. Those rules are enforced via courts-martial that are independent of the civilian legal system. Roddenberry served in the military (he was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps during World War II), so you’d think he’d have remembered that.
This philosophy in general and that line in particular has been the source of a great number of arguments and a great deal of confusion about what Starfleet is supposed to be. It’s also led to silly things like Archer’s crew on Enterprise saying they need a military presence on board when going into the Expanse, even though they are a military.
The latest episode of SNW tackles this head-on with the aptly titled “What is Starfleet?” It’s done in the form of the documentary that Beto Ortegas was given permission to film in “Wedding Bell Blues,” and which we’ve seen him recording in “Through the Lens of Time.”
And it is absolutely fantastic, a brilliant episode of Star Trek.
The entire episode is Beto’s documentary, with interviews with the crew intercut with footage both from Beto’s free-floating cameras and security footage from the Enterprise computer, with captions explaining that they’ve been declassified for this documentary.
It opens with the titular question, and pointing out one other issue with the whole military thing: Starfleet ships have enough armament on board to lay waste to a planet, plus they’re incredibly heavily stocked with hand weapons. The capability for violence is huge on a starship, and Beto starts off questioning that. What’s the difference between a starship and a warship?
The mission that’s at the heart of the documentary involves the Enterprise assisting the Lutani, who are in the midst of a conflict, and Starfleet is to provide aid. Part of that aid is to escort a life-form called a Jikaru that is listed as “livestock” to the Lutani homeplanet. Over the course of the mission it becomes clear that the Jikaru isn’t livestock, it’s sentient, and has been enslaved.
Watching this conflict play out is a joy, and having it be through the documentary just makes it more fascinating. It’s a trope that Trek has revisited plenty of times, indeed is one of the franchise’s signature moves: an alien being that they think is one thing turns out to be something else, and they have to adjust their assumptions and their actions.
And yes, Starfleet is a military organization (sorry, Jean-Luc), and that means they have to commit violent acts in the name of keeping the peace. It also means they sometimes have to kill—and sometimes be killed. And, as is mentioned plenty of times on this mission that grows ever-more distasteful as it goes on, it means they have to follow the orders of their superiors.
But it doesn’t mean they can’t be compassionate and understanding. As the episode goes on, Spock and Uhura find ways to communicate with the Jikaru, and they eventually realize, not only that she has been enslaved, but that she is sentient and wants to commit suicide. (Her initial attacks on Enterprise were in the hopes that the Starfleet vessel would kill her in retaliation.) The focus shifts from escorting the Jikaru to a war zone to helping her die with dignity and stopping the Lutani from exploiting the other Jikaru.
Along the way we get some lovely character insights, mostly through the interviews. Spock discusses the prejudice he encountered as a halfbreed on Vulcan (as also seen in the animated series’ “Yesteryear,” the 2009 Star Trek, and Discovery’s “Brother” and “Light and Shadow”), and says that Starfleet allows him to explore his human half in a way he would not be permitted to on Vulcan. Uhura discusses the loss of her immediate family (as first revealed in “Children of the Comet”), and also is told that one of her Academy friends died on the Cayuga back in “Hegemony.” La’an talks about how important it is for her to protect people. M’Benga makes it clear that he very much wants to bury his past (as established primarily in “Under the Cloak of War”) and has no interest in discussing it.
Pike and Number One are much more mature in their interviews, with Pike solemnly telling the story of having to put down an injured horse as a boy, and Number One very calmly discusses the realities of having to follow orders.
The biggest character revelation, though, is about the documentarian. Talking to Beto, Uhura realizes that a big reason for this documentary is Beto working out his anger at Starfleet for what was done to his sister in the “Hegemony” two-parter. Erica Ortegas nearly died, and Beto is furious at Starfleet for letting that happen to her, and furious at his sister for staying in Starfleet after it happened.
Tellingly, the interviews with Ortegas are the only ones that aren’t structured and settled. Everyone else is interviewed while sitting calmly and talking into the camera. Ortegas, though, is in her quarters tinkering, constantly moving around, and also constantly giving her brother shit. She’s unwilling to sit still for an interview—or for Beto’s issues.
That’s one of many excellent touches by director Sharon Lewis, who did a superlative job here. The documentary feel is expertly captured, but she also makes use of that feel to do some excellent visual work. In particular I love the use of closeups (the security footage from the different consoles, which give extreme looks at the faces of the crew), but also of distance. One of the most effective shots is of Pike and Number One speaking with Starfleet Command. The camera is very far away, so the captain and first officer are extremely small, reflecting how small they feel in the face of this mission, which keeps getting more insane. We also can’t hear what Starfleet Command is saying, a nice touch that shows the Enterprise’s isolation.
This is a brilliant episode of Star Trek, a fantastic hour of television, and one that reinforces the Trek ethos of compassion over violence, of understanding over blindly following orders. And it reminds us that a military organization doesn’t have to be brutal or unthinking or cruel.
A strong episode, and it creates an interesting sort of dialogue with Gene Roddenberry’s pretense in the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization’s foreword that he was a 23rd-century producer who’d made an “inaccurately larger-than-life” dramatization of the Enterprise‘s missions, and promised that this new dramatization would be more accurate because Admiral Kirk had approval over its contents. It reminds me of the couple of “news special” episodes that M*A*S*H did with journalist Clete Roberts playing himself (minus a couple of decades), back before the term “found footage” had even been coined. Although there have been more than a few other “documentary” episodes in other shows over the decades.
I was particularly impressed with Celia Rose Gooding’s acting, and the interview format let us get a really good up-close look at the nuances of her peformance. (Plus she’s beautiful, which is also nice.)
I find it amusing that Beto’s full name is Umberto Ortegas, because Umberto Ortega (played by Patrick McKenna) was the recurring Geraldo Rivera-parody talk show host in the 1994 RoboCop: The Series, which I’m currently rewatching (and which, like SNW, was filmed in Toronto).
I also thought it was a cute touch that the “console camera” angle on Spock had an obstruction along the left side, like the shots in TOS where you could see the edge of his station in the shot even though his console was supposed to be flush with the adjacent one, because they usually removed the wall sections next to Spock’s so they could put the cameras there.
Growing up watching MASH I remember those episodes and thought back to them. I did have a little recoil that Umberto seemed a little more investigative reporter than documentarian especially when talking to M’Benga but it was partially covered by the realization he had an axe to grind. Still it’s impressive that after 946 episodes of TV or whatever they’re up to they still find new ways of shooting it.
I think I need to watch it a couple more times but I did appreciate that they didn’t bonk the viewer on the head by saying “we try to save lives!!!!!” but by showing it.
Lastly I loved the sun with a take on the TOS theme playing- it was a nice end to the episode.
That was just the usual SNW main title theme (Jeff Russo’s variation on the Alexander Courage theme), since they didn’t play it at the beginning of the episode.
My head canon about Picard’s attitude about Starfleet is that he came up through the ranks during an era of peace with the Klingons and Romulan isolation, which allowed him to see himself primarily as an explorer and a diplomat rather than a soldier and Starfleet as an exploratory organization rather than a military one. Certainly, Picard saw combat, but things like the Ferengi attack on the Stargazer seemed like isolated incidents and the Cardassian wars were considered “border conflicts”, which is a far cry from the kind of existential threat that the Klingons and the Romulans present. Indeed, it’s possible that the coming of the Borg was the first time in the entirety of Picard’s career where Starfleet felt the need to shift it’s focus away from exploration and adopt a more military posture. Anyway, I agree that it was a stupid line of dialogue, and that’s just my silly head canon to explain it away.
Or that Starfleet has fleets that are more exploratory than others. Picard spent most of his career pre-enterprise on board the stargazer than in academia (thanks Chris Bennett for the Buried Age!) so his career was as an explorer. The ships that patrolled the cardassian border and fought the Cardassians might think that they’re soldiers.
Thanks for referencing how I rationalized the Cardassian war thing in The Buried Age. I borrowed from Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League/Terran Empire universe, where he pointed out that an interstellar nation with hundreds of member planets would be far, far too large to be a single monolithic civilization, because no one person or group could interact directly with every other part of it within a human lifetime. So I figured the Federation must be large enough to work the same way — you could have a border conflict with Cardassia that would be perceived as a major war by the inhabitants of border planets and the Starfleet division defending them, but it would have no significant impact on the Federation as a whole (kind of like how the United States was waging war in Afghanistan for two decades but it had no significant impact on daily life in the US). By the same token, even Starfleet would have grown so large by the 24th century that it could have distinct exploratory and combat divisions that basically operated in separate realms with little overlap.
” Starfleet would have grown so large by the 24th century ”
One thing I’ve wondered about off and on was just how large the Academy would have to be to supply all the needed officers. Or how many academies they would need.
Right — there really should be many Academy facilities by now, not just the one in San Francisco.
Somewhere ( I forget exactly where now) someone claimed it was obvious Starfleet wasn’t a military organisation because no-one saluted. I felt obliged to point out that we’d never seen a Starfleet uniform that included a hat by default, and that in many (most even? I think US forces are unusual in this respect) militaries if you’re not wearing headgear you don’t salute.
If I remember, the US Army and Air Force salute when not wearing hats; the USN and USMC ( and likely the USCG) do not.
I get the impression this documentary is less WHY WE FIGHT and more like Netflix true crime verging on permission to let Umberto do his podcast. Which is to say he’s not nearly as important as some posters think he is.
More like Why We Don’t Fight, I guess. Or Why We Fight When We Have To but Usually Look for Another Way.
Working definitions of what defines a miliary force in the 20th and 21st century are not always so cut and dried, so the 23rd century should probably be given even more leeway.
“…of course Starfleet is a military organization. It has a rank structure. It has rules and regulations that must be obeyed. Those rules are enforced via courts-martial that are independent of the civilian legal system. ”
The US Merchant Marine:
“…one other issue with the whole military thing: Starfleet ships have enough armament on board to lay waste to a planet, plus they’re incredibly heavily stocked with hand weapons.”
US Merchant Marine ships may have armed security details on board in high risk areas (e.g., pirate activity), but crew don’t normally carry weapons due to 21st century legal liability concerns. I can imagine that 23rd century space exploration has the potential to be even more dangerous than the Strait of Hormuz, or the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
But, as you say (and from my own personal experience), military organizations can and do carry out scientific exploration and research. In fact it is in their and the country’s best interests that they do!
Yes, and militaries have been known to perform diplomatic missions too, and engineering projects, and medical relief missions, and basically everything that Starfleet is shown to do. And there are militaries that are forbidden to engage in aggression, like the Japan Self-Defense Force. (There’s a ’90s Gamera movie where it’s a plot point that the JSDF can’t open fire on Gamera unless it attacks them first.)
In the US the Public Health Service is a uniformed service (the Surgeon General is an actual General), and NOAA has a uniformed service with officers and enlisted personnel.
I grew up during the original show’s run and subsequent explosion in syndication. While I was in junior high, my mom (bless her) let me go to one of those Gene Roddenberry lectures at the local community college where I witnessed first-hand his historical revisonism of the show. Even to a 12-year-old the whole “Starfleet isn’t like a space navy, it’s more like a space coast guard” argument was obvious bullshit spun by a middle-aged man trying to look cool to the kids.
All he had to do was admit that television is a sausage factory and that the premise evolved (somewhat) over its production during an era of especially rapid social changes. More importantly, while he was at it, he could have given proper credit to Gene Coon, who actually came up with the ideas of the Federation and the Prime Directive as well as most of the more progressive overtones of the show’s later first season and early second season episodes. Gene Roddenberry, being Gene Roddenberry, just lied out of his ass.
The root of the problem, though, have always been the fans who can’t separate TV from reality, especially with a show they grew up with and now can’t develop an adult perspective on. Fandom is nothing if not people spending way too much time doing the most awkward of mental gymnatics to count angels on the head of a pin and split a hair down to the last atom.
It’s just TV, people. Instead of trying to “head canon” it into some kind of escapist utopian fantasy, maybe just laugh and get out of the house more….
The world also has services like the USCG, Gendarmes, Carabinieri, etc which are combine a primary law enforcement role with subsidiary military one.
Just when I start thinking there aren’t that many ways left that Star Trek can still surprise me, and then this one drops.
The funny thing is, it was pretty clear the show was going to do a Beto Ortegas documentary episode for several weeks now. And when it starts, it almost feels like we’re getting some sort of pseudo-political piece designed as fake news to delude the viewers into thinking Starfleet is this fascist organization that has no business being out there in space – which also plays into the more isolationist side of 23rd century humanity we’ve seen before in Trek, namely in characters like Tormolen from “The Naked Time” or Paxton’s Terra Prime movement on Enterprise, born out of the Xindi attack.
But instead we get a pretty satisfying resolution to the whole Ortegas family storyline. And one that reinforces Trek’s core values marrying them to the makeshift family Pike’s built on the Enterprise. And it manages to feel different from the warm family Burnham’s built on Discovery, or any of the other crews and shows.
It wasn’t enough that the episode was already built on a strong foundation laid out by Lyn and McElroy, but then Lewis brought it to a whole new level with the camera choices, to the point of even breaking from the usual 2.35:1 format that’s been the standard for TV live-action Trek since Discovery season 2. Naturally, the security cam footage would be framed in a more industrial standard rather than an artistic one. And the closeups really bring out the uncomfortable personal space aspect of the characters, where you see them grappling with each answer.
And we another previously unseen race (as far as I know), and a wonderful Trekkian story of how far is Starfleet is willing to go along with a mission that betrays their biggest moral standing: every living thing has the right to exist (as Riker put it on TNG’s “Skin of Evil”). It wasn’t quite clear in the throwaway dialogue whether the Lutani helped them against the Klingons or rather armed the Klingons themselves against them in the war during Discovery S1. Whatever the case, it was a classic moral dilemma that couldn’t have had any other resolution than Pike reversing course and antagonizing them for the other Jikaru’s sake. And the final shot of the mother heading into the sun was both heartbreaking and hauntingly beautiful all at once (Melumad really made that sequence shine as well).
Just a wonderful, immensely satisfying hour of Trek, 60 years from the day that original pilot was shot.
Wow, quite the endorsement for an episode that I found far from “perfect.” It was boring and hard to look at. The story of the captured alien got really short shrift (except for some beautiful images).
You are completely ignoring criticisms — ones I assign some validity to — that I’m seeing on other review sites.
How about this one: the title should really be “what is a documentary?” This ain’t it, or if it is, it’s a really bad one. It changes its thesis 180 in mid-stream and, more importantly, ignores the ethics honored by good documentarians.
More significantly, how about the objections of many disabled people? They often point out that us saying, “oh they want to die, let’s help them,” should be preceded by a long hard look at whether what’s really needed is to improve their situation. M’benga makes these abrupt statements about her condition and her wishes — I think he’s a good doctor, but if that’s all the info that command gets, their decisions suck.
And what about the duration? Shortest ever episode by a long distance. I’m tempted to join the people who believe that this episode was heavily edited and cut — given that it was written (and I think shot) before the writers’ strike, and lots has happened in world politics since then. It’s awfully easy to see that the war setting has parallels to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian civilians (and don’t claim that’s not what’s happening; check out Israeli government recent statements about the aims).
“Classified” seems to entirely replace “prime directive” in what has been shown in August 2025. I guess it’s a good episode if you want your beloved legacy characters to be aligned with all the WWII German underlings who were “just following orders.”
Just for fun, I liked the comment I saw somewhere that the alien designs echo Western imagery for angels and devils.
I think that by editing the documentary to show him changing his mind, Beto was owning up to his mistake and making it part of the narrative.
Sometimes a journalist admitting they’re wrong is part of the story. When the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone, Walter Cronkite didn’t believe it and set out to examine the Kennedy assassination himself, expecting to find a conspiracy. Instead, he convinced himself that the Warren Commission had been right all along and he’d been wrong. And admitting that made his conclusion far more trustworthy than if he’d just convinced himself his pre-existing belief had been correct.
You make an excellent point about disability and quality of life, but I think they did acknowledge in the episode that the modification was too extreme to be reversed or ameliorated. And there was the added factor that the Lutani wouldn’t have let them take the time to rehabilitate the creature they were determined to use as a weapon of war. The Jikari didn’t want to be forced to kill, and there wasn’t time to find another option.
I just didn’t understand why Enterprise had to “lure” the creature to the sun if it wanted to die. They didn’t have to do anything to make it fly into the sun once they got there. It just did. Why didn’t it do that right off the bat if it wanted to die?
The Jikari didn’t have free will. It was programmed to attack perceived enemies. It had enough awareness to want to resist that programming and to ask for help, but it couldn’t overcome the compulsion on its own. It was compelled to stay focused on the Lutani ship, the last thing it had identified as an enemy, and it couldn’t break free of that imperative until the Enterprise fired on it and made itself a target, so that it would chase the Enterprise toward the sun.
I would imagine that once it reached the sun, the sheer size and radiation of the star made it register as a primary threat to the Jikari’s combat programming, enable it to lock onto the sun and wade into a battle it knew it would lose.
I found myself thinking about 2 B5 episodes And Now For A Word (season 2) and The Illusion of Truth (season 4). The first covers a reasonably unbiased reporter doing a story on B5 and the second is the government controlled media doing a hatchet job on B5 after Clark’s coup. (Minbari War Syndrome …)
100% agree. Loved how quick they went from calling Jikaru “livestock” to “the weapon” and the slow but steady recognition she’s far from either. Same for how Beto’s perspective shifted. A lot of great character moments, and like Christopher Bennett, I was truly impressed with Celia Rose Gooding in this one like in the scene when Uhura figures out what he’s really doing.
Probably one of the best, if not the best, documentary episodes I’ve seen in SF. Love B5’s. SG1’s has the gut punch, to say the least. But this… This was something special. Can’t say it better than you did. It truly does “reinforces the Trek ethos of compassion over violence, of understanding over blindly following orders. And it reminds us that a military organization doesn’t have to be brutal or unthinking or cruel.”
has star trek previously dealt with a ‘right’ to suicide?
there’s a lot going on in this episode, much of it fantastic (imo), but that seems like the most monumental
“has star trek previously dealt with a ‘right’ to suicide?”
Oh, yes — quite memorably in TNG: “Half a Life.” Also in TNG: “Ethics” and DS9: “Sons of Mogh.”
This was mostly an excellent, powerful episode, but a couple of things majorly nagged at me.
(a) I can’t believe that was the whole documentary even though it seemed to be presented as such. Only 40 minutes? While I understand that the ratio of raw footage shot to what’s used can be massive, ’Beto was seen filming a lot of stuff that could’ve been relevant to the finished product earlier in the season. My head-canon is that it’s one in a collection of What Is Starfleet? films commissioned, and it’s still a bit of a hash.
(2) Even if the Jikaru presented as far less diaphanous than it does to my admittedly biased human perception, I would’ve been taken aback by it being able to achieve escape velocity. I get that it was large and powerful enough to keep pace with a starship flying on the solar wind or whatever, but seeing it just rise up from its planet threw me.
The Jikaru gave off no evident reaction mass to generate thrust, so implicitly it was able to maneuver by harnessing either gravitational or (more plausibly) magnetic fields, allowing it to levitate into space. It was an engineered creature, after all, so it may have been given that ability by the engineers.
I noticed that, during the episode’s denouement, while most of the crew was watching the Jikaru fly into the sun with a concerned, studious look, Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura was the only one with actual, perceivable (by me) sadness on her face. Maybe that’s why the episode brought a tear to my eye, too.
The only thing I found disquieting about the episode was the cinematography. I found those close up camera angles off-putting, regardless of the intent.
Yay, proper star trek again. :) lovely. I wish we got to know more about these Jikaru guys besides assisting one of them in her suicide (which would take you to jail in many countries today – it felt especially strong considering a recent struggle of a Hungarian guy with ALS for his right to die on his own terms – see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07npl5gyrno )…
So overall, a strong episode on multiple levels, even though the idea feels VERY similar to Encounter at Farpoint, the story and the execution are a few magnitudes better here. :)
PS: both railway or the catholic church had/has a strong hierarchical rank structure, rules and regulations that must be obeyed. And those rules are enforced via ways independent of the civilian legal system. Yet, they are not military. I think the biggest question: are you fighting wars with weapons? That’s why Starfleet is military, not because of the other reasons listed.
No — there are military organizations that are primarily peacekeeping, protection, and self-defense forces, as discussed above. They are armed forces, but that’s not the same as fighting wars.
fair enough, so it is even harder to distinguish. :)
Something I haven’t seen addressed anywhere, but they definitely swapped the Lutani and Kasar in that intro card right?
The entire episode acts as though the Enterprise is helping the aggressive side in the war not the side that has already had a horrifying nine million killed.
-The crew is uneasy right from the start that they’re helping the Lutani
-A Lutani scientist feeling strongly enough to try to stop the weapon
-The Lutani make no mention of their people dying when appealing to Pike
-There’s no Kasar ships anywhere
-The Jikaru talks about already being used as a weapon but that doesn’t fit with the tiny comparative casualties
-After the Jikaru dies, everyone acts like things are good and solved instead of destroying a weapon (however horrific) that might have stopped millions from being slaughtered
Having actually rewound to check that I had the sides right watching this episode was baffling. It wasn’t until afterwards I realized they must have swapped things after filming (or who knows, maybe the person writing the title cards swapped them accidently and nobody noticed)