This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x02 Ad Astra Per Aspera.
Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.
It really helps writing legal drama to be able to write laws. Boy howdy, that sure makes it easy to win a case.
I enjoyed this episode very much. Genuinely. I liked most of the writing, I liked the message, I liked the A and B plot and how they connected. I liked thinking about how absolutely exasperated Federation brass must be all the time with all the illegal shit their captains are all constantly pulling. I really enjoyed the new character. All of it put a smile on my face.
But I also think it has a serious lack of vision for the judicial system of the Federation, which is a recurring theme. Episodes like The Drumhead manage to get around it by having the trial be a pop-up affair on the ship. That implies there is something irregular going on in the process, even if they don’t quite justify it. It at least helps me suspend some disbelief.
It would’ve been nicer if they’d built on this case in the background over a few episodes/longer timeline, with trials and appeals going on, if just for painting an image of a Federation that fundamentally has due process and rule of law. It could’ve been a nice recurring continuity, that there are characters getting deposed and subpoenas being sent out throughout a bunch of other drama. That this case was won a legal technicality… it should’ve been an issue for a higher-level appeals court. Contradictory laws and deciding how to apply the Articles of the Federation to resolve the issue and all that.
It is also actually insane that Captain Batel was not recused from that case.
Are we to believe that hundreds of years into the future, trials do not have a discovery process before a trial? That matters of fact, like who reported her or whether the captain was aware, wouldn’t be known until testimony on the stand? It makes my eye twitch, that kind of legal drama cliche still appears in modern TV shows. This could’ve been a great opportunity to not just flesh out the history of banning genetic modification, but also to flesh out the legal systems. Maybe offer up explanations for how the federation can always seem to have such overtly-contradictory laws and ideals, and why their ball-of-mud legal framework ended up that way.
It is also actually insane that Captain Batel was not recused from that case.
It’s not even the first time they’ve had clear conflicts of interest in a trial for dramatic effect. In The Measure of a Man, a judge who happened to be Picard’s former lover press-ganged Data’s friend and colleague Riker into representing Maddox’s case against Data - multiple conflicts that surely should not have been permitted!
