Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 7 Review — What Is Starfleet?

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers for season 3 episode 7.

Part of the joy of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that it takes risks, both in terms of the stories it tells and the formats it chooses to tell them in. Most of the time, those risks pay off. After all, the show has done murder mysteries, musicals, courtroom dramas, and animated crossovers with ease. But sometimes, its dedication to trying new things can take the series to strange places. Such is the case with “What Is Starfleet?,” an episode that’s also sort of a version of the documentary that Ortegas’s younger brother Beto has been making over the course of the season. It’s all very meta, but in a way that comes off feeling annoying as often as it does entertaining. 

The concept of the hour is certainly fun enough. The forced distance (physical and otherwise) of documentary-style episodes can offer valuable insight into characters we love by simply making us appreciate the story from a different perspective than we’re used to. “What Is Starfleet?” has some of those moments, but it’s more than a bit hamstrung by the fact that the person telling the story has a clear agenda in doing so. Beto has been filming various missions and crew meetings for several episodes now, ostensibly as part of this project. At worst, he’s been annoying (see also: Pretty much everything that happens in “Through the Lens of Time”). But we’ve not seen any hint that what he’s trying to make is actually a hit piece, a scathing takedown meant to somehow expose Starfleet, to punish the institution out of some misplaced anger over his sister’s injury/near death experience back in the season premiere.

This doesn’t make a ton of sense. While it’s technically been several months since the events on the Gorn ship, this is the sort of long con operation that requires a lot of dedication and planning. (And forms and permits.) In the end, Beto just seems resentful and mad that a job she loves has taken his sister away from him, which 1.) isn’t Starfleet’s fault, and 2.) is just serious loser behavior. He’s seen how much she loves and is willing to sacrifice for this job, and somehow still resents her for it? Gross. Perhaps had we seen the pair share more than what…three scenes this season, this sibling tension might have landed better. Or, perhaps, if Beto’s final product looked like it had anything to do with the adventures we’ve actually watched him be part of. 

“What Is Starfleet?” takes a fairly basic adventure and spices it up by telling it through the lens of Beto’s documentary, complete with declassification labels, space FOIA requests, and official-sounding voice-overs. But the actual story is pretty straightforward. The Enterprise crew is sent on a humanitarian mission to help mitigate a conflict between two sister planets: Lutani VIII and Kasar.

Lutani VIII attacked Kaysar in an attempt to lay claim to its resources, and as a result, millions have died, primarily on the Lutani side. Pike and company are meant to pick up some “livestock” and transport it to help with the Lutani rebuilding efforts. Which turns out to be a rather hilarious term when the creature they’ve been sent to fetch is enormous, glowing, and can shoot radiation at a level capable of destroying small ships. (The show refers to it as a space dragon, but truly it looks like nothing so much as Intergalactic Mothra.) Anyway, the space dragon’s radiation powers are so vast, it’s pretty much a coin flip over whether Lutani will use it to help feed its people, or to attack its neighboring enemies and prolong the fighting and death.

For some reason, Beto’s convinced this humanitarian mission is actually some sort of secret plan for conquest or the first step to the Federation colonizing Lutani VIII, Kasar, or both. There’s not really a stated reason for this, other than Beto simply wants to believe it, deftly splicing in some ominous quotes and snippets from calls with the Starfleet higher-ups to help frame a particular predetermined narrative. But to the shock of everyone, the creature itself has a request: It wants to die. The space dragon, which seems rather ancient, is tired of living a life of captivity in which its nature can be used as a weapon whenever someone else chooses. It’s bleak and very bittersweet, but ultimately, the crew decides that it has to honor this sentient being’s wishes. They help the creature fly into a nearby star, and all—even Beto—looks suitably emotional afterward.

As far as the documentary we’re meant to be watching goes, it doesn’t help that Beto’s skills as a filmmaker are pretty much on par with Jughead from Riverdale’s writing acumen. He’s awful. Half his shots are done in uncomfortably extreme close-up, as though he’s wondering what it might be like if he managed to get a camera directly up someone’s nostril, or Dunder-Mifflin-style spying around corners on conversations he’s not meant to be part of.  But the real problem is that there’s no real tension here. It’s not clear if anyone (either in the world of the show or among those watching at home) cares about Beto’s opinion of Starfleet, and, more importantly, we already know he’s wrong. 

There’s pretty much no crew that’s as dedicated to doing no harm as Captain Pike’s is, or to doing the right thing even when all the rules and regulations are against them. Beto’s seen that. Multiple times! The idea that these people, who collectively make decisions as a team and have family dinners in the captain’s quarters on the regular, are somehow also secret war criminals who delight in oppression and conquest is laughable. There’s probably a worthwhile conversation to be had about the Federation and the concept of empire, or how Starfleet chooses to interact with various alien groups. But the idea that the Enterprise is somehow going to get exposed as a secretly monstrous place to serve just…it doesn’t work. There’s no reason to believe it would. Which makes the “lesson” Beto has to learn feel…pointless? Even if it is a genuinely heart-reading sort of story.

Of course, Pike and the crew are going to help he seemingly ancient space dragon that wants nothing but to be at peace after a lifetime in enforced servitude. Of course, the Enterprise is going to help protect their homeworld and their offspring from the various species who seek to use their abilities as a weapon for their own ends. And of course, the care and genuine kindness of the crew shines throughout, in their determination to help a creature that’s being so openly abused. Beto is an idiot.

That he ultimately changes things up, choosing to end his former “expose” on a note that radiates a sort of twee hopefulness, isn’t surprising. Of course, just as we all expected, it’s the people who make Starfleet what it is, the family each crew makes together, and the lengths they’re all willing to go to in the name of doing the right thing. That’s not the film Beto started off making, of course, but we’ll just ignore the wild tonal shift in the middle of it towards more explicit friendship is magic vibes, I guess. Maybe next week we can find out about some of this season’s dangling plot threads?

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with a finale on Sept. 11.