| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Director(s) | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02 | Ad Astra Per Aspera | Dana Horgan | Valerie Weiss | 2023-06-22 |
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So a courtroom drama, no sci-fi concepts, no high concept, no scientific advisors needed. SNW's complete lack of actual accomplished sci-fi writers should be able to knock this one out of the park. The result: mid. The true fan of Kurtzman era Trek will no doubt view this episode as a tour de force (those fans tend towards having very low standards). However this was a big snore for me. There was never any tension as to whether Una's lawyer was going to win. Thus the episode mostly acted as an excuse for the writers to wax philosophical on civil rights. More than that it continues the nuTrek tradition of painting Starfleet and The Federation as the bad guys whenever possible.
The Federation is supposed to be this utopia of evolved humans and aliens living in peace and prosperity, so of course the writers paint the Federation planet Una hails from as having the dystopian element of racism against the genetically modified human offshoot species the Illyrians. The planet is said to have so much racial strife over this that they self segregate into two different societies. The facepalm over this in any way being the type of world Federation policies would create is palpable.
The big reveal at the end is that Una is the one who turned herself in. An obvious retcon of her arrest at the end of last season where she says to Pike: "I've known this might happen for years." If she had JUST reported herself for having illegal genetic modifications and then a team showed up to arrested her then that line from last season makes no sense on top of being weirdly cryptic. But then this isn't shocking since the second most used writing tool producers from Bad Robot and Secret Hideout employ (after the mystery box) is the retcon. Few things make Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman jerk each other off more furiously than reframing an old plot point with some new, poorly thought-out contrivance.
All in all though this was simply a mid-tier episode that leaned a bit on the boring side. I'd rank it far below even the worst episode of excellent show 'Star Trek Prodigy' which Paramount+ just, of course, cancelled. The proof that we live in the worst timeline continues to pile up.