Logline
Commander Una Chin-Riley faces court-martial along with possible imprisonment and dishonorable dismissal from Starfleet, and her defense is in the hands of a lawyer who’s also a childhood friend with whom she had a terrible falling out.
Written by Dana Horgan
Directed by Valerie Weiss
Loved it. Star Trek has always been handwavy with legal rules in favour of a compelling debate and this was no exception.
As a Canadian, I instantly started thinking about the metaphor in terms of laws the Canadian government had against indigenous people practicing or teaching their cultural practices.
On the other hand, as a gay man, I was thinking about when homosexuality was considered a criminal practice and how sometimes gay men will stay in the closet to avoid discrimination.
One of the things that’s most interesting to me is how many minorities groups Una’s experience maps to in some rhyming way.
I’ve heard a number of people interpret it about themselves, which is really good, the allegory was understandable while still being a cohesive story.
I thought trans people were a good fit for the metaphor, given the body alterations that can be involved.
I think how the genetic augmentation ban was portrayed in Una’s case in particular - a military court martial - was similar to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, so LGBTQ+ groups do seem to fit better than, say, race or sex. Even with DADT no longer in force, there’s topical parallels, like you suggest, with trans people. But there was an emphasis on the Illyrians’ genetic augmentation being “their custom”, so you can apply religious or cultural prejudice equally as the allegory.
Every show is handwavy about legal rules, not just Trek! Trek at least has the benefit of usually being a military court for a fictional military organization.
When the Federation gets a little handwavy with legal rules, just remember that this is a civilization which went through a “kill all the lawyers” phase
I was going to say “I don’t think there was a debate here really, unlike say in Measure of a Man”. But that’s not actually true, I just find the Federation argument so specious and hypocritical compared to many other Federation points that I honestly don’t see their POV.
I’m… not gonna lie, I get the Federation’s argument. Genetic engineering is a dangerous thing to start doing to sapient species, and it can lead to a resurgence of eugenics and other stuff like that.
The only real issue with their stance is that they discriminate against people who’ve been genetically augmented, instead of simply trying to prevent stuff from happening in the first place.