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Matt and Sean talk about propaganda, how to spot it, and whether it’s a good storytelling technique, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 3, Episode 7, “What is Starfleet?”
Matt and Sean talk about propaganda, how to spot it, and whether it’s a good storytelling technique, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 3, Episode 7, “What is Starfleet?”
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell: In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about how to tell your story while telling your story. Air quotes. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're taking a look at every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We started way back in Enterprise and we've been moving forward ever since. And then we stopped and went backward. And what do I mean by that? Well, we were partway through the second season of the original series when this newest season, Season three of Strange New Worlds, dropped. So we put the original series on pause. We've moved backward to cover season three of Strange New Worlds and then we'll move back into the original series when this season is completed. So today we're talking about the newest episode just released on August 21, 2025, from strange new Worlds. What is Starfleet? This is the 27th episode overall, the seventh of the third season. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror, write some stuff for kids. With me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you on this balmy, possibly stormy August weekend?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing really well and I gotta say, I texted you yesterday, Sean, I saw Weapons finally. Yes, that movie.
Sean Ferrell: And, oh, boy.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, that, that's a. That movie was Ride. That was a really fun ride and it went places I did not expect. It gets. It gets wacky in the best way possible.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, it does. Yes, it does. And shortly after recording this episode, Matt and I are going to record an episode of out of Time, which is our spin off program. And we'll probably talk about Weapons in that. But I will say this, Matt, if you haven't seen Barbarian yet, I'm going.
Matt Ferrell: To see it now. I want to watch it.
Sean Ferrell: Same director. Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts about all those things. So if anybody's interested, out of Time, our spin up program. Become a subscriber. Before we get into our comments about this newest episode, we always like to revisit what you've had to say about our previous episodes. So, Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: Okay, there was a lot of comments on the last episode, the Sehlat who Ate Its Own Tail episode. You and I really liked that episode a lot. And usually in our comments when we talk about like, oh, we liked the episode or we kind of liked it, the comments are usually on the Spectrum of like, I hated it to. I liked it. Kind of a spectrum. This one was interesting. Kind of slid to the side, you know what I mean? So it was like even the worst person that didn't the worst comment on the episode still liked it. So it was like this was broadly liked. And so one of the comments I just want to kind of highlight was this episode of Strange New Worlds was perfect for the era we're in for so many reasons. Story about the best and brightest losing their way and the importance of empathy in our leaders. This is what great sci fi has always been a mirror of exploring the issues of the modern world and the storytelling of such a formative moment in Kirk's journey and. And how he relates to all these people who we know to be important members of his crew in the future and our past. Timey wimey and all that. And this was a real highlight for this season and the series overall. And as a Whovian, I can neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have startled my fiance with my excited reaction to seeing that zoomed in image of the TARDIS online.
Sean Ferrell: That's wonderful.
Matt Ferrell: But that was kind of the sentiment. All the comments were like, wow, this was great. Sci fi was most of the comments. And it was great to see that we weren't alone, Sean, in that feeling.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, that's lovely.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Then we have Mark Loveless with the wrong answers only for today's episode.
Sean Ferrell: Here we go.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: Put on my helmet.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. What is Starfleet? A video of a very young Montgomery Scott begins making the rounds on the Enterprise when it goes viral on Star Tube. It seems that in his pre Academy days, Scott had appeared on Space Jeopardy and had answered a question wrong about Starfleet by blurting out Starfleet, only to have the contestant next to him answer correctly with what is Starfleet?
Matt Ferrell: This caused Scott to get flustered and go on to lose the episode. But it was his brokenhearted sad face at getting that answer wrong that became a meme on startube Space Book and Space TikTok. The teasing is so bad, pike had to step in and put a stop to it. Side note, on the podcast Trek in Time, Sean and Matt deem this to be the worst episode of season three. I like that we are now part of this alternate universe.
Sean Ferrell: The mirror universe is our universe mirrored, not the Star Trek universe. That's lovely.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you, Mark, for that. That noise you hear, those lights you see, that's not me getting excited about talking about this episode. That's the Read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the description provided by the robots that live within Google. Take it away, Matt.
Matt Ferrell: Okay. In Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 7, what is Starfleet? The Enterprise escorts a giant sentient creature called a Jikaru to a war torn non Federation Planet Lutani 7. The mystic conflict with its sister world Kasar. Told in a unique in universe documentary style by journalist Beto Ortega, the episode explores the difficult ethical dilemma of using the Jikaru, which was weaponized by the Lutani, ultimately leading to Uhura's successful communication with the creature and a poignant sacrifice.
Sean Ferrell: This episode, the seventh of this season, was directed by Sharon Lewis. It is written by Katherine Lynn and Alan McElroy and it released on the Paramount streaming app on August 21, 2025. It stars Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babzalos Mokun, Rebecca Romain, Martin Quinn and guest stars Minor Minor Lukin as Beta Ortegas, Sean Majumder and Steffi. And please people, be patient with me as I sound my way through this last name. Stephie D. Dominicantonio.
Matt Ferrell: You did better than I would.
Sean Ferrell: It is a very long last name, but it is spelled exactly like I believe it is pronounced. So Sharon Lewis, the director of this episode is. It's an interesting figure. She used to be on the Canadian program playing Drake's mom. It was the high school drama. I can't remember the name of it now, but she has a long acting history as well as being a director and a writer and. And she has a deeper background as a political science major in college. And I couldn't help but wonder how much of that leaked into the storytelling of this episode. As always, we like to dive into what was the world like way back when this episode aired? Well, this episode aired on October 21, 2025. So we're not talking about then, we're talking about now. We're talking about now. Now. That's right. The number one song at the time of recording of this podcast. Why, Matt, I don't need to tell you this. It's back to Friends by Somber. Take it away, Matt. Lovely as always. Fun fact about number one songs in the current era. Matt, you know what's different about these number one songs than used to be?
Matt Ferrell: What?
Sean Ferrell: Well, the number one songs in it used to be that they would be new songs.
Matt Ferrell: Right?
Sean Ferrell: This song originally dropped in 2024 when we're measuring number one songs. Now, when you're talking about number one songs in streaming, it's whatever happens to be catching a wave for whatever reason. So don't ask me why. Back to Friends by Somber is the number one song right now, but it has earned since being released over 676 million listens. So wow, we're living in an interesting era. And in theaters right now, the number one films, Weapons at Number one and the Tomato, the Tomometer. That's how you say it. The Tomometer at Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 94% fresh. Following up with that is Superman in the number two spot with 83%. And the new film Nobody 2 with 77%. I was a big fan of the first Nobody with where you end up with the John Wick style. Oh, he's just an average guy. But then he goes on a killing spree because he's actually a secret agent. I had a lot of fun with it. And among streaming programs, the number one streaming program right now is is FX and Hulu's Alien Earth Season 1.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Which I haven't yet dipped into, but I look forward to dropping in on. Also in the top streaming programs, two Amazon programs, one Butterfly Season one, which is a Daniel Dae Kim vehicle in which he plays a former special agent who is beset upon by assassins in South Korea. And in a weird tie, like for the same kind of context, The Assassin Season 1, also on Amazon prime, which is the story of a woman who's reuniting with her son and dealing with the fact that she is also a former special agent. And in the news, well, this is the era we're living in. Can't escape the name and the headlines. Corporate America's newest activist investor, Donald Trump, is discussing ways for the American government to invest in corporations in the name of state managed capitalism, which I thought used to be called socialism. How funny is that?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: On now to our discussion about this episode. I find myself in an interesting position, Matt. We had a good run there for a while. Two solid weeks of yeah, I like this, huh? Do you want to start or shall I? And I say all of that. I want our listeners to be very, very clear on one very specific point. Matt and I do not talk about these shows before we record this podcast. We do not send each other a text saying, hey, what'd you think about this? Have you watched it yet? Blah, blah, blah. We don't do that. And it's not because we had to like pinky swear that we would not do that. We didn't look each other in the eye and say, yeah, let's not do that. We Just did. Never do that.
Matt Ferrell: Just don't. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: So do you want to start or do you want me to start?
Matt Ferrell: I'll go. Okay. Okay. I was a little concerned of if we were going to be on the same page with this or not. And it just. From your tone, it sounds like we might be. I don't think this is the worst episode that this show has made this season. I don't.
Sean Ferrell: Agreed. Agreed.
Matt Ferrell: But the thing. Okay, let me start with the good stuff. I liked the sci fi stuff that they did in this. I love that it was a large creature that was this weapon that they had were turning on their enemy because they were desperate. And I thought the sci fi aspect of a. It's a creature that can fly in space, like, super cool. Like all this kind of stuff. I'm like, on board loving every aspect of the sci fi ness of it and the ethics and the drama that they're trying to tease out of. Is what they're doing moral? Should they even be doing this in the first place? Should they be helping these people on the planet or they should be helping this creature? It's like there's so much at play that I thought was so good. And then they decided to make this a fake documentary and make the entire show told as if we were watching the documentary. It destroyed it the entire time. I was like, please don't do this for the entire episode. This is gonna completely undercut everything. This is not how you have to do this. Yeah, I get that. They're paying off on why he was on the ship. So he's been there for weeks filming stuff, and it was. It's like, okay, we need to see what he's been doing there. Okay. So we're going to see it. You didn't have to make this the vehicle for how to tell the story about what's happening to make it impactful. It actually undercuts it, makes it weaker, and it's a worse story. I don't know why they thought this was the way to do it. And it felt like this is where the. The show is interesting because the showrunners and the writers, it feels like every week they're coming at it from like, what genre do we want to kind of emulate? What are our favorite ways of things that we've seen? And we can tell a Star Trek story in that style. Almost like andor. You know how like andor season one was just like, here's a bank heist and here's this other thing. Right.
It feels the length of this show is taking inspiration from genres they love and they're trying to emulate them. And it feels like for this one, somebody was like, we love this fake documentary thing. And like, they wanted to do this. And it was like, somebody should have like slapped him on the back of the wrist and be like, stop it, stop, stop. You know what I mean? Like, it's like there's. It was. It's really hard to pull this style off in a way that works. And there are movies that have done it successfully. Think about Blair Witch, like found footage. It feels very organic. It stretches believability at times, but it still kind of works.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: This one just doesn't work. It's a really hard genre to pull off well. And I don't know why they thought that this was necessary to do at all. It just completely destroyed it for me.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, you and I are landing in exactly the same place and you're being kinder to it than I am. Because I. I see what you're saying when you say, like, oh. They were like, oh, let's make a documentary a fake documentary style episode. And I agree with you. Like, that's hard to pull off. It has to be very carefully constructed in order to work properly. Because they didn't properly construct it. What they ended up making was an untrained influencer.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: Story.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: There I happened to stumble upon the vultures review of this episode in which their headline was, this documentarian is terrible at his job.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: And that for me was like the. That. Yep. It was simultaneously showing the behind the scenes stuff. I like the idea that you're showing us behind the scenes when if it was a normal episode, those just would have been scenes.
Matt Ferrell: Correct.
Sean Ferrell: Shooting from behind a girder as Captain pike is talking to Starfleet and we don't get to hear Starfleet's responses isn't intriguing. It's frustrating because if this was any other episode, we would hear what Starfleet was saying. It is treating us simultaneously as talking down to the audience, talking at the audience and reminding the audience, don't forget you're watching a TV show all the same time. It's a triple threat. I couldn't believe how out of sync with this program I was. I didn't find it intriguing. And I kept going, why would they do this? Why would they do this? The hard sci Fi stuff worked for me in the same way that it worked for you. And I found myself thinking like, okay, we need better explanations as to why the Federation is leaning into supporting either side of this conflict. What the conflict is about why these two non Federation planets are so important. Didn't give us any sense of context in those ways. Like if you're not going to do that, okay, but don't keep interrupting. They basically, it felt like they inverted the story where what normally happens within Star Trek is you end up with the bigger story, very often being informed by the local story. Like you get the big story arc and here's an individual story that's feeding information to it that makes it resonate as a personal thing. They tried to make this do the opposite. They tried to make this the personal story by telling us at the very end that the entire point of this documentary and the position that Beto comes at it from is his worry about his sister. And like we don't know this character enough for this to work is my big takeaway.
And I go back to something you and I have talked about in the past few weeks as we've watched these episodes and say again and again, these shortened seasons, 10 episodes, are you really going to devote 10% of your season to this thing? And it feels like in this case it was another instance of them miscalculating how much they could do with a given character. When we don't have an investment beyond him other than as the flirty, apparently comic relief love interest for Uhura, suddenly he comes at this with this dark anti Starfleet, Is this a military operation up to nefarious? No good. His sister is in Starfleet and this is his angle. Like it didn't. It felt like it came out of nowhere. And if this instead had been a documentary that was presented as him trying to document his sister's recovery after traumatic, traumatic events and this thing with the space whale was happening in the background, it might have worked better, it might have felt more connected because to do it as a. What is Starfleet to start with? A Freedom of Information act disclaimer to start with all the things that are in place to say this is an official documentary about Starfleet. And then he just tells a story that looks like, as I mentioned before, it feels like an influencer walking into a place where they don't belong, trying to get a rise out of people. And it's just so off in all these different ways. And it never, at no point did I feel like I was sitting there saying, oh, this isn't how the characters would respond. This isn't genuinely Star Trek. It just felt like bad tv. It didn't feel like it landed as a good concept for a story to the point where I thought you mentioned Blair Witch.
If this had just been a completely found footage documentary experiment where it was told from the perspective of, like, something happened where this footage was lost and then it's presented as, here's the footage that explains what happened during some sort of climax, form of danger. Like he's in a shuttlecraft and the craft goes down. And this footage was lost as a result of that. That kind of story within Star Trek. I feel like this current Trek could have told that story better, but I think they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to make the documentary, but they didn't want anybody to die to make it work. So it became this kind of personal story that was sandwiched in. In a way that didn't feel genuine. And my last thought about the documentary is I feel like it shortchanged Ortegas as well. Because it's supposed to be. Oh, it did supposed to be saying, like, oh, she's reaching a conclusion to her traumatic storyline around nearly dying because of the Gorn. But it didn't feel like it actually was present on the screen in a way that made it feel real. And then we're supposed to come out of the end of this with like, oh, he's coming to terms with her trauma and she's coming to terms with her trauma. And I'm like, how. When.
Like, none of it felt like it carried any of that water.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. So this is my problem with how this show is being run a little bit, because they had enough foresight for bringing this character in, but they clearly didn't have guidelines on what is he there for. And that needs to be represented in every episode he's in. Because they never built up that he's resentful of Starfleet, that he's worried about his sister and actually doesn't want her in Starfleet anymore. They never laid any groundwork. He was there like Troy's mother. Like, he's the comic relief. He's there for the love interest. And then suddenly it's like, no, he's actually here because he hates Starfleet, wants his sister get out of it. It's like, well, thanks for telling me for the past two or three episodes that that's what he's there for. All they had to do was in all the filming scenes, they could have been dropping those scenes, the seeds, as he's, like, filming them in the meeting room in the previous episodes where he may ask a question that is really pointed, and they're like, whoa, dude, no, no. Like, they could have been Laying the groundwork when he's alone with his sister, they could have conversations where he's like, I really don't want you here. You know, I took this job because I wanted to. You. You've been refusing to take my calls, and I really wanted to talk to you about this stuff. You know, like, they could have set it up so that then when this episode happens, it makes sense. And then on top of that, you don't make it a documentary that we're watching. You still make it a typical episode. And this is the B plot of him filming this current thing happening. And he's asking more pointed questions at most, at the worst moments, and he gets caught, like, squirreling cameras away, trying to get gotcha journalism, and he's getting called out on it.
It's like, you could have done all this stuff in a typical storytelling way, and it would have worked. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you knew that he was going to be in these episodes, and you planned for that, but you didn't give him a clear evolutionary journey. And it was like he just became this. Whatever you wanted him to be at the moment in time you were making the episode. And that completely shortchanges the character. It shortchanges Ortegas. And it really hurts this episode. It's maddening when you can see how good of an episode they can make with last week. And then you end up with this one where it's like, whoa, you guys, man. It's like you don't seem to be able to focus and hit a consistent level every single week. It's just, wow, this episode just miss. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And it feels like it was really trying to reach for something. There's a. On a small scale, one of the things that stood out as a problem for me was you get the most character movement in this one. When Uhura realizes that he's been recording her.
Sean Ferrell: And asking questions and doing things that have emotionally hurt her. But then at the end of the episode, she clearly forgives him by just having, like, a kind of sweet, loving conversation. I'm like, that. Like, why does she forgive him in that moment? Like, you had emotional traction there that felt like character growth and then just threw it away because it was nicer to close with a happy scene as opposed to a sad or angry scene. And I felt like that's not great. And the other part of it that I think is where this episode is wearing its heart on its sleeve is there's this tidbit I found in my research on IMDb and it was that in the scene where Una is being recorded for the documentary. And she says, someone once said that space is dark and cold and full of death. Our job is to bring light, bring warmth, and bring life. She is paraphrasing William Shatner's description of the emotions he felt after his 2021 flight aboard Blue Origin that took him into space. In media interviews immediately after his return, Shatner said that when the capsule entered orbit, he saw the Earth from space for the first time. He described it as the most profound experience I can imagine. But in his autobiography, Boldly Go Reflections on a Life of Awe and. And Wonder. His description of what it felt like when he turned and looked out into space was quite different from what it felt like looking at Earth. He wrote, when I looked in the opposite direction into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold. All I saw was death. A cold, dark, black emptiness, deep enveloping, all encompassing. Everything I had thought was wrong, everything I expected to see was wrong. I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of the connection I had been looking for between all living things.
That being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below me filled me with overwhelming sadness. That is a very profound statement and it is a profound attempt by the showrunners to create an episode in which Una says, some people think that, but our job is to bring light, to bring warmth and bring life. That's a very powerful artistic reach. This isn't how you get that. It feels like they both over and underwrote this episode. And I found myself scratching my head as to why it just felt like. You mentioned it's not the worst episode of the season. And I agreed with you, and I Still agree with you.
Sean Ferrell: I think instinctively, because the sci fi story here, the sadness, it's really sadness of this space whale creature that it knows it needs to die because it's no longer got anything close to its normal life ahead of it, that it's mourning for its children, that there's this desire for it to end suffering and not be a part of adding to suffering. I found all of that very compelling. And it had a space sci fi weirdness to it that felt very at home in Star Trek and maybe even overdue in this series. The idea of them finding this kind of space whale creature reminded me of the episode of Next Generation, where they find the space creature that's looking for a pilot because it's lonely. Yeah, it's a living ship and it's harkening back to like some of the tones of Farscape, that series, which had a living ship and the beautiful relationship between the crew and the ship itself and how it was kind of mother to them all that, for me, pulls this one up a bit, but it still makes the rest of it makes for a really hard watch. And I don't know if I'll return to this one soon. I know I'll return to last week's the Sehlat who Ate Its Tail is a episode I will return to, but this one, I don't know if I'm interested in dipping back into it when I feel like it's just Beto Ortegas trying to be a bad documentarian.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I agree with you. I don't know if I'll revisit this, but it's also the strengths to me of the shortchanged plot, like the war between the planets and the space whale thing and all that kind of stuff. I enjoyed that so much. I can forgive the crappy documentary. It doesn't mean I want to go back and rewatch this five more times. It was just I can forgive it. It's problems where there are previous episodes that it's hard to forgive.
Sean Ferrell: So, viewers, what did you think about this one? Jump into the comments. We look forward to hearing from you. And don't forget Wrong answers Only next week we'll be talking about four and a half Vulcans. Oh boy. I can only imagine where that's going to end up. Anyway, jump into the comments. Let us know what you thought about this one. Do you agree with us that the documentary structure just doesn't help? Or did this one? Did you find something in it that really worked for you? We look forward to all opinions on this. And don't forget your comments. Liking subscribing, sharing with your friends. All very easy ways for you to support this podcast. And if you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. Click the Become a Supporter button. Not only do you get to throw coins at our heads, but you also get to be signed up automatically for out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program, such as the movie Weapons, which which we'll probably be talking about in the next episode of out of Time, which we'll be recording shortly. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.