¶ Episode 39: War stories (SNW 2×08 Under the Cloak of War)
Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio. It is I, Rob.
And it is I, Kevin, ducking phaser fire as I uh, come in the door here. It has been quite a, a change of tone this week in uh, Strange New Worlds. Wouldn't you agree Rob?
¶ SNW 2×08 Under the Cloak of War
Very much so. We this week are looking at season two, episode eight of Strange New Worlds, Under the Cloak of War. And as, to be expected by the title, it is a Dark and Broody episode, the like we haven't really seen. We've had some like intense sort of like alien esque episodes in season one and some heart wrenching episodes with the loss of some crew members like Hemmer. But this one really goes for it.
And as a fan of Deep Space Nine, I was very much sitting back going, ah, this is a land I am very common with. And come embrace the darkness and the melancholy and, and the darker places of human nature right here.
Indeed we'll be talking about uh, some of our favorite war stories in Star Trek later in the episode, but this episode here first of all, I predicted it wrong. When we were speaking last week, I said I was predicting Romulans, and I was thrown by the word cloak in the title. I guessed wrong. It turns out it was Klingons. Should have known. I was gonna say, this episode feels to me like a blend of two kinds of war stories that we often get in Star Trek.
We have the actual like, firefight story that we don't see that often in part because it requires quite a visual effects budget to pull off a convincing, like in the trenches war story in Star Trek. But the other one that we have is the Cold War story or the forces in political opposition to each other, and what are people's real motivations and post-traumatic stress war story that we get sometimes. And we got the blend of both of them here in one episode.
So in a way, I feel like we got two war story episodes in one here.
It's still very much a case of, it's what is said as opposed to what is shown, to really keep that the horror that you have in your mind is so much worse than what you see in some ways. And it is very much a case of the legacy of serving, and also big things about redemption and can you be forgiven for actions of the past and which actions are unforgivable and which actions are stuff that can be dealt with.
And there's big issues of the clear line between those who served in the Klingon War and those who didn't.
Thematically, I know this episode is completely up your alley. As soon as, like 10 minutes into this, I was like, this is a Deep Space Nine episode. Rob's gonna love this. But beyond the thematics did you enjoy this episode from an execution standpoint?
For me, what I really liked about it, and it's something I touched on a couple of episodes ago, is that this episode really showed to, showed and we'll talk about it a bit later on in detail when we get to it, about this crew is, we can't be certain of where this crew will be.
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
why these people will ultimately be moving on to wherever they move on to. That part is a mystery of where they end up, but there is a reason why this crew is not gonna be on the Enterprise for decades to come. There is some, there's some really troubling issues. I, I loved it. I loved it. It's not an easy watch at all. It's under the banner of war, so you can do that easy exploration of oh it's Deep Space Nine, but it explores something that we haven't seen.
Not only is it from the war point of view, but it's from the, in many ways, it's like a MASH episode without the comedy,
Yeah.
How do we heal? How do we heal people? How do we protect people? How do we, do all this type of stuff within the battlefield? And how that they turned that futuristic technology into such an everyday process was a incredible achievement. So like it, the injured soldier who needed extra supplies and so they couldn't do anything, so he was put in the buffer pattern like M'Benga used for his daughter. And then that horrifying decision of that pattern having to be deleted to save multiple more.
Those decisions, which you look at from a scientific point of view is fantastical, but how they brought it back down to this mundane, realistic human choice was horrifying and and really powerful. Yeah I loved what it explored and how it pushed the boundaries of how we deal with trauma, how we deal with conflict, how we deal with war, and the results of it afterwards. And like just all the cast knocked it outta the park, particularly the cast who needed to play those veterans of the affair.
Yeah.
How about you?
I enjoyed it. I think it is a bit over twisty, I think, and part of that is out of necessity. Like, the magic trick they achieve that M'Benga's damage is the mirror image of the Klingon Rah's damage of like Rah is secretly ashamed for fleeing and not engaging in combat, whereas M'Benga is secretly ashamed for the mission behind enemy lines that he did on that green juice, and that they are neither of them telling the truth about their war experience as a result.
And that those like two opposing magnetic poles like are inevitably pulled together to disastrous effect at the end. Like the, that big picture is a very kind of deft and elegant thing that they've pulled off this episode, but in service of that, there's a fair bit of I would say plot machinations to set that situation up. And not all of it happens seamlessly.
At the very end, when M'Benga says, I was the butcher of J'Gal, and the Klingon says, and you didn't say anything all this time, why didn't you say anything all this time? I don't think that question is answered in this episode that uh, M'Benga kind of knew he was lying all this time and never pointed it out. The big question in the entire episode from the very beginning is, is he lying? Is he being straight with us or can we trust him?
And the whole time M'Benga knew he was lying but didn't say anything, and it's not really clear why, unless his plan all along is to murder in sickbay with his own knife.
Well, That's, yeah.
I, I don't get it.
And that was the thing that I was alluding to, but let you know, let's bring it out there. It does end with the death of the ambassador and the way that it is particularly shot, so it is not done clearly and there's been a lot of online talk about it. Oh, the online talk about, it is seen through frosted glass. It is seen from Chapel's, so you see Chapel's reaction to it. So we know Chapel has a clear view, but we do not. And when we come back, we see the knife within Rah.
People have been going, why was this done? Why was this choice done? I think that it hasn't, this is a thread that hasn't been answered yet, and this is a thread we will come back to.
So you think something happened behind the glass that we're not allowed to
I think so. I don't think it's clear cut. For it to be shot that way, and to focus so much on how Chapel saw it, to have the reaction shot of Chapel. So
To me it's symbolic of the fog of war, of like the stuff that we do in the heat of the
I, Hmm,
It's, it's almost, you can't look right at it. And only someone who was there would understand. Only Chapel who was there would be able to see it, and understand it. Even us as the audience, we need to be protected from it because you can't understand it unless you were there.
So I feel like that's what they were doing is it was a symbolic visual choice, and if you really wanted to believe that the Klingon did something to deserve his own death, or to start the fight in that moment, you could imagine he did, and that is what Pike is doing as well, is like Pike and the rest of the crew in order to trust M'Benga, are behind that glass with us, and it's up to us to decide what we believe happened behind the glass.
Now, I believe what happened behind the glass is M'Benga snapped and turned around and stabbed the Klingon with the knife, and that's it. But uh, yeah, if that were widely known or accepted, M'Benga's career in Starfleet would be over.
Yeah, it definitely doesn't have a clear cut, uh, pardon the pun, ending, but you'll be able to tell me this 'cause I'm aware that M'Benga has appeared in the original series, but only
He's a guest star in two episodes of the original series, and he is second in command of sickbay to McCoy. So he's McCoy's first officer in sickbay, which raises an interesting question, why does, why is M'Benga Chief Medical Officer now, but not later on the same ship? Does he get demoted? Does something come to light about his past? Uh, like I think, yeah, that is where this is leading potentially.
It'll be interesting how they, you know, how do you believably say, oh, you were caught murdering a Klingon, so you accept one level of demotion and we're gonna hire a new boss for you. I don't know if we're gonna see that. There's also another chief medical officer to come before McCoy. From Where No Man Has Gone Before, which is the second pilot for the original series, with Captain Kirk for the first time, McCoy is not yet in the show there. And we have Chief Medical Officer Piper, I believe.
And we don't know when he will be joining the crew of the Enterprise, but uh, even before McCoy, there's Piper yet to,
Okay, so there's McCoy, then Piper, M'Benga and
Yeah, if you're going backwards.
Yes. Going, yeah, going backwards. Sorry. Yeah. And then old sea dog from The Cage episodes. I can't remember
Uh, Boyce.
Yeah. Him and Pike talking about, ah, how about you get yourself a plantation and sell Orion slave girls. Alright. Okay.
As you do.
As you do. The performances were top-notch here. Babs was incredible, really emoting this unhinged level of trauma for M'Benga and just the moments of tension,
When he lets loose, it is so satisfying. I want more of
Yes. But also that buildup of tension like uh, him, Chapel and Ortegas not coping well at all within the dinner party. And Pike spotting that as well, going how about you go check on and that moment where Rah grabs,
Oh my God. I was like, don't do it. Let him go. You want to what with him? You want to fight with him? That's a terrible idea!
Wanna wrestle? That is the worst idea in the history of the universe.
There was not a single moment of levity unless I missed it. Like, so much of Strange New Worlds this season has been light and jokey and fun, and it was like they borrowed all of that from this episode so there was nothing left. This one was played completely straight and stern and morose.
Yeah, I mean we've had, we've obviously, we've had moments of drama with Una's trial and La'an's struggle with her emotions, with with her time travel events. But there has been that sense of that lighter tone. And it's, I think that comes from the episodic nature of Strange New Worlds. But this is, it's gone dark and it's not dark faux alien send up. This is, real human emotion. Great to see Clint Howard back in Star Trek for a, you know,
Yeah, I have to go rewatch his appearance in the drug den in Discovery and see if there's some possibility that it could be the same character. 'cause I would love that if, he was so broken by his experience on J'Gal that he went and smoked drugs in, in the Orion slave camp in Discovery.
I was quite surprised because they did show a little clip of Discovery, but we didn't see any Discovery era Klingons.
No.
But the flashes, they were very traditional. And of course, the ambassador was fully the traditional Klingon a
Yeah I think we are invited to look past that as fans. Like, human beings who live on Earth in present day look many different ways and come in many different shades of
What are you saying,
And so Klingons could be a many multifaceted race. And sometimes we see the ones in Discovery and sometimes we see the ones that we got here today. But also it seems clear that every Star Trek show has its own production team, and therefore its own visual language and visual lens through which it portrays the Star Trek universe.
And whether it is due to fan response or the tastes of the creators making the show one way or the other, it seems they have dialed it back just a little bit towards closer to TNG, movie era visual language for Klingons. Uh, and certainly for that ambassador, it mirrored to me the ambassadors that we saw in the Star Trek movies of that stately Klingon with the powdered complexion. And uh, it was very enjoyable for that reason.
I tell you what, he's no Chancellor Gorkon, that's for sure.
Yeah, no, not at all.
I mean, I think the greatest achievement of Under the Cloak of War this week was no one gets out scot-free. There is just so much mud or gray on everybody, from those who served, those who didn't serve, the lies that people told, the prejudice that's held onto, the discussions of how much is too much to seek forgiveness or redemption, how much red do you have in your ledger, as it were.
And everyone is colored by that from, Pike, the diplomat who didn't serve, and how his conversations with M'Benga go about, it's the privilege of not living through my life and knowing what this is, to the lies that the ambassador says to make him more appealing to the Federation to help with this process, and the lies that M'Benga says to cover up the truth of, of that final confrontation. It's, it's a masterful achievement where I'm at the end going, I don't feel comfortable with any of this.
And that's how you should feel when it comes to big issues.
And I think you're right that there is more to come in that storyline, like it seemed significant to me that M'Benga, as is leaving the camp, gives a vial of Protocol 12 to Chapel. He like puts it on the case and it's, it's sitting there on the lid of the case as he leaves and he says, if you need to get out, this will help you fight. We learn what happens when The Ghost, as he is called, M'Benga, is in action with Protocol 12.
But given her actions in the very first episode of this season, The Broken Circle, I think we have yet to see the story of Chapel, what pushed her to take Protocol 12 and, become, used to it or experienced with it as a tool of war. Because it, it seems implied in that first episode of the season that that's not her first time kicking Klingon butts in the corridor either.
Exactly. And speaking of the beautiful, multifaceted, diverse cultures of all worlds, we had yet another different looking andorian. So I think we've had about three different types of andorian in Strange New Worlds. So this one looked more, yeah, like more stretched and elongated and refined facial expressions, so
I enjoyed that character because when you first see him in the camp, you're like, oh, he's bad news. I'm like, oh, he is Section 31 or something. Or he is a spy. And I realized it was just my prejudice against Andorians talking, because he definitely was a soldier willing to do whatever it takes, but we saw so many others of those in this episode. That he would end up dead on a stretcher just like, everyone else, um, was shocking.
¶ War stories
So speaking of shocking, and speaking of the effects of war, that led us down the path of a broader discussion of Star Trek. And of course what we can look at is warfare and how it is dealt with within the Star Trek universe.
I've got something from TNG, if you wanna start there.
Awesome. You know where my base will be set!
Yeah I picked a DS9 as well, but I'll be interested to see if we picked the same one because there, there are so many war stories in Deep Space Nine, and so many kinds of war stories.
¶ TNG 3×15 Yesterday's Enterprise
But before we go there, I'll just talk briefly about The Next Generation, season three, episode 15, Yesterday's Enterprise. We've talked about this episode before in another topic, but one of the things that, that we get to see that is very rare, here, is a glimpse of the Federation at war. And certainly way back here in The Next Generation era, that is not something that we get to see really at all.
And it's when the Enterprise C comes through the spatial rift and changes history because it is no longer in its own time to respond to the distress call of the Klingon outpost. As a result, time is changed and the Federation is now at war with the Klingons. And Guinan is the only person who knows something has changed, and that is the
her convincing Picard to send the Enterprise C back in time to die in order to avert a war. But while the Enterprise C is here with us, we get to see a version of the Enterprise, a version of Starfleet that is at war. And it is expressed subtly in many different ways, not least of which is Picard recording, not a captain's log, stardate such and such. He, he records his log starting with military log, combat date. And yeah, just slightly different uniforms. The bridge is much darker.
And paradoxically, Ten Forward is much brighter. It's like the place where you go for recreation is now almost a hospital. It is lit that brightly. Whereas the bridge has got that, those combat dark lighting going on. And, uh, yeah, it's just fun. Once they figure out that the Enterprise C has to go back in time, they're all ready to do it.
Rachel Garrett is like heroically about to lead her crew back in time, and they get attacked out of nowhere by a Klingon scout ship that decloaks and Rachel Garrett is killed in the firefight. But we get to see a few moments of the bridge crew of the Enterprise D at war in a firefight, and it's a cool shade of an alternate version of these people and this universe that we get to dive very deeply into in Deep Space Nine.
But way back here in season three of TNG, it was just a taste of what could be if we had a Star Trek TV series set during a war.
Yeah.
So let's go to Deep Space Nine. What did you pick?
¶ DS9 6×19 In The Pale Moonlight
We've already talked about In The Pale Moonlight in much detail before,
And it is very much a cold war story. Like there's not any actual kinda trading of fire. That is like, how can we do spycraft in order to avoid a war?
And that's like how far you are willing to go. And what sacrifices to your soul are you willing to give up for the
And that is very relevant to this episode of Strange New Worlds with M'Benga talking about not wanting to go home changed.
Yeah, exactly.
¶ DS9 7×08 The Siege of AR-558
But the one that really, and it's another one we've already talked about before, but it's such a powerful episode in just how bleak it is, and there's no real happiness. It just, holding the line until, rescue comes The Siege of AR-558.
I watched that this afternoon as uh, also my selection.
I'm amazed it can be still so cheerful and smiling. Yeah. Season seven, episode eight. We have talked about it a little bit before in the past. Basically the Federation are held up at this like just outpost of nowhere.
Yeah, it's a captured Dominion communications hub. And like they're holding onto it and they know they need to hold onto it because the Dominion are fighting really hard to get it back. But also it's this piece of machinery that they haven't figured out how to use yet. And so there's that, that feeling of futility of meat in the grinder of, we have to hold the line, we have to die. But is this thing even worth it?
Yes. And it's a case of nothing's coming. Nobody's coming. They're not expecting a victory. You're not expecting the heroic push forward to drive them back. Just keep it. Just keep it. And whoever has to die has to die, but as long as this area is kept. And so we're introduced to, these other characters who sadly become disposable, we have the wonderful Bill Mumy arrive.
Were you ever a fan of Babylon 5, Rob?
I never saw any Babylon 5. I've been told over and over again to watch it. So my Bill Mumy experiences from Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, and his return to the Twilight Zone.
But now with the animated Babylon 5 coming, I'm very much getting that spark of wanting to get into it, especially 'cause there's so many glorious, it's all part of nerd legend now, how Michael J. Straczynski had everything planned, and then when the show was canceled, he kind of resolved those issues, but then he was given another season so he had to start fresh again. But this whole, that glorious single architect vision of of a show is very much what Babylon 5 is about.
And very much a proto Deep Space Nine as well, the idea of a station on the fringes of everything, where many species, some of them sworn enemies to each other, will meet and congregate, around a planet shrouded in mystery, where the commander of the station has a pseudo religious connection to the local planet. Like all of that is part of Babylon 5. It's one of those shows that if you watched it when it came out, or shortly after it came out, it's magical legend to you now.
I have tried to go back and watch it in recent years and it, much as it pains me to say, it really doesn't hold up. Like it is very much a product of its time. And so I could not get through the first couple of episodes with my partner on board. I wanted to show it, show her the whole story, but it's just, it's not good enough to capture a modern eye, I am afraid. So I would love to see a full remake of Babylon 5 someday, and I think that's what a lot of fans would like to see.
And Bill Mumy was instrumental in the part of the ensemble on that show, of course.
That's right. He was an ambassador's right hand man and like often doing the uh, things ambassadors couldn't say directly to each other, but through their functionaries, he was one of those functionaries. Yeah.
Yeah, so here we have the moment that sort of like changes Nog for the rest of the show. He's injured. He loses his leg. We have, Quark is there.
Against all reason, Quark is there like that.
Yes. Yeah.
That is the thing that is like when you watch this show the second time you're like, hang on, they're taking Quark along because the Grand Negus is sending him on a fact finding mission to the front lines.
That does not seem very believable at all, but it is worth it for the, that last moment where Quark is like defending Nog, who is lying on his medical bed in convalescence and Quark, he can hear the Jem'Hadar coming and at the last minute he like spins and drops to the floor and shoots the Jem'Hadar in the chest. And you, even Quark is not immune to being changed by this war. That moment is worth it. But boy, is it weird for Quark to be in this episode up until that point.
Very much so. So yeah, it's a very bleak episode. It's a very depressing episode. We see Bill Mumy cut down by Jem'Hadar forces. Ezri Dax is horrified by all this. And of course, Sisko is in the middle of it all, looking at this situation of despair, but they hold the line until morning and you're going, what have we achieved? What have we done? What is, what have we lost and for what point?
Interesting to see our crew painted as the people who have it easy in this war. Like when they visit those soldiers and they said they were 150 defending that outpost when they got there, and they've been there five months and there's 47 them left. And there's very much this attitude of, you get to beam outta here and go back to your nice cushy space station. We have to stay here and hold this.
So when Sisko makes the decision that he's staying, even though the Defiant is under attack and they have to leave orbit, and he's like joining the fight, it is a very heroic moment for our crew. But also it's interesting to see them as the ones who had it easy.
Yeah. Yeah, very much and to see what that effect has on that ideal of Federation. It's always great when that's brought into light. There can be an argument about, how Gene saw the utopian future and how that can be challenged and whether that's against the original vision. But it's always, the strength of a pure hopeful philosophy is only as good as how it faces adversity.
You can say all that you want about how good and pure and hopeful you are, but unless you're really tested, you can't really judge how strong that conviction is.
Yeah. The uh, the contrast between this week's episode of Strange New Worlds and The Siege of AR-558 is also just very visible in the budget, and like what they can create visually to represent a war. I've seen some fan remarks that AR wall, or the volume, or whatever you wanna call it, that allowed them to place that medical camp on the surface of an asteroid with phaser, fire flying overhead and occasional explosions, it didn't make a whole lot of sense that is where a medical camp would be.
Like, bury it underground, at least give yourself a, a roof over your head to hide the Klingons. Yeah. Whereas in, in The Siege, they are on that generic, rocky cavern set that we've seen so many times.
Yeah.
And the actual spectacle of the war is very constrained, no doubt due to production constraints of the show at the time. But there's one Jem'Hadar ship that gets silently blown up at the start just to show that they were facing some resistance on their way to the base, or to the outpost. And then from there it is pretty much all off screen. There's six Jem'Hadar that walk down a hallway towards us a couple of times.
They're holograms the first time they come down and it's a ruse in order to draw the fire and see what the defenses are like. And then the real Jem'Hadar come down. But there's still only about six or seven of them. And, and that's, that's pretty much it. There's a lot of fighting in silhouette with sparks going off in the background and that's pretty much it. Uh, but the emotion is there and and it resonates nevertheless.
So that's the other thing is as, as grand as of a spectacle as we got to see of the Klingon Federation War in Strange New Worlds, the story was just as strong in Deep Space Nine without all of that expense.
Yeah, it's if you've got a good script, good actors and good production crew, you can make anything shine. And sometimes you know, more money doesn't necessarily mean, you know, better.
There was one scene in this episode that I was watching especially closely in light of Strange New Worlds, and that was Bashir's role in this episode. What does the doctor do? And certainly the doctor is patching up Nog and reassuring him that he'll get a synthetic leg, although maybe his nerves are a little too damaged in order to activate it.
But there's this scene where as the Jem'Hadar are bearing down, Bashir has nothing left to do except join the fight, and he walks to the barricades with a phaser rifle and he does something that I've never seen anyone do with a phaser rifle before. He pulls the front off of it, and he blows in it in order to like clean it and puts it back together. And he does a few other things and he basically like field strips, a phaser rifle in front of the soldiers.
And one of the soldiers goes, I can see you've done that before. And Bashir says, too many times. It's funny, I joined Starfleet to save lives. And I thought, yep, the doctor at war, that's a thing that we're definitely getting to see this week as well.
Definitely. And with M'Benga they push the whole darkness of sort of like, you know, he was a killer and this is his way of saving his soul is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I always refer back to different franchises, but I will refer to MASH again. There was great episodes of MASH when they'd have to like Hawkeye, and that would have to
Oh, when, when Hawkeye took those drugs and went behind enemy lines and killed all the generals. I loved that episode.
And the and the Korean Generals had holograms to distract them to find how much gun warfare. Um, But there's an episode where Hawker had to go closer to the front. And so they were complaining all the time about how their MASH unit was, and then they get closer to the front line and they're like that MASH unit is getting shot at and explosions and like they have less supplies, they have less protection.
And so it is that case of, like with the Deep Space Nine crew coming in, going, this is the real frontline and this is the, know, so yeah.
All right. Well, there you go. A couple of war stories.
I am in thorough need of a of a sonic shower just to
Uh, how about a musical episode? How will that do Rob?
I think that may wash out any type of uh, darkness that's still within. That will clear my soul. How about you, Kevin?
It's just what the doctor ordered. Because I'm still in Canada on holiday as we record this, I'll say my parents and I watched these two episodes back to back together, and as we finished the war story and I said to my parents, are you ready for the next one? And they went, Whoah, it better not be like that one.
Little did they know.