Daystrom Institute

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’s of note that of Kirk’s two appearances in SNW so far, they have both been alternate timelines versions

I noticed this too and really want this to be a recurring gag in the show. I want every appearance of Kirk in SNW to be an alternate timeline version or Section 31 double or android or candle ghost until the very last episode in the series, when the "real" Kirk turns up to take over the Enterprise from Pike.

I'm half-kidding but also half-not. Modern (by which I mean Kurtzman-era) Trek bringing back legacy character after legacy character in ostensibly new shows is the trope I'm least impressed by. So the least SNW could do with Kirk is subvert it in a fun way.

Sera’s explanation that this was “supposed to happen in 1992” and time itself is pushing back against attempts to change it, events reinserting themselves, now provides an explicit mechanism as to why the chronology of the Eugenics Wars has changed.

The real-world reason of course is that they wanted a scene where L'An meets young Khan but also wanted to set the episode today; likely to save money, but also because having characters travel back to the "here and now" instead of 30 years ago is more relatable for the audience. Which is why "Tomorrow is Yesterday" was set in 1969, The Voyage Home was set in 1984 and "Future's End" was set in 1994.

But the explanation offered in this episode also explains why the Eugenics Wars weren't evident in "Future's End".

I think it would behoove the series to revisit this issue in the future, and maybe shed some more light on why the eugenics laws exist, and why they're implemented in the way that they are.

As it stands, they haven't done much more than gesture toward the Eugenics Wars and said, "we don't want that to happen again." That's pretty much the bare minimum of what they should do - past franchise instalments have suggested that (human) genetic augmentation tends to produce unstable megalomaniacs (as Spock crudely put it, "Superior ability breeds superior ambition"). It would be nice to know whether this is still a likely side effect.

I'd also like to see more examination of what other Federation worlds have to say about this. Have other species had their own Eugenics Wars? Have any of their societies flirted with Gattaca-style hellscapes?

Overall, I keep coming around to this idea that the series is presenting regulations on eugenics as a bad thing, and I think they need to shade in some of those grey areas.