“What Is Starfleet”?!? Come on, Secret Hideout; let Bartlet be Barlet

If you’re still reading these “Geez, it’s hard to keep coming up with a way to say that modern ST is just fine and it’s a headscratcher why all the produced episodes are so just… regular entertainment,” I appreciate it. It’s just so odd to me that this jewel of a show, a proven IP of decades with toys and action figures and blueprints and an incredible world we have all been a part of for all of our natural lives… just lays there. Can you remember a hook of a plot of any episode of SNW from its run so far? I mean, the one where Hemmer dies was great, but I couldn’t tell you what episode that one was in. Carl the Guardian of Forever only sticks in my mind because I clocked that they waited until Susan Ellison died to try that one and then it was really kind of one of those “25% different” things that made it easy to ignore. And, even then, writing it out, that was a Disco episode, wasn’t it? Anyway. Captain Letterkenney’s interminable G’ohrn challenges aren’t really cool science fiction and only serve to make Pike a rubbery standee instead of a man of action. I mean, I hope they just make her half-lizard with prosthetics and do some real balls-out SF with some consequences but narrative bravery hasn’t really been a feature of the Secret Hideout tenure so far.

On paper, this latest episode, “What Is Starfleet?,” should be a winner. Hey, here’s a BTS look at our main characters using the conceit of a documentary filmed in-universe by an outside character. When my kid and I heard about this, we had a great conversation of all the episodes I could think of over the years with this buy-in: The nuBSG, of course, and Babylon 5, but the ones we ended up talking most about were the M*A*S*H episode “The Interview” and the ER live episode that had a PBS film crew document their night. So of course CBS/Paramount is aware of these historic eps and made an effort to really pull out all the stops.

I mean, I enjoyed it; it was entertaining, couple of neat flourishes. The ending was hamstrung a bit in the poor-title sort of way, because as soon as the title card flashes “What is Starfleet?” any decent ST fan thinks “He commands not just a spaceship, Proconsul, but a starship. A very special vessel and crew” and an indecent ST fan like me or John Price or probably you reading this thinks, “Starfleet isn’t the ray guns and green girls; it’s the friends we met along the way” and we didn’t need an entire episode for that, you know, no matter how pleasant a theme to underline it is. It seems hard to believe that Secret Hideout doesn’t already know this and if they do why they think burning an entire episode on this flourish with such an obvious point is just like a Las Vegas magician making an easy trick look hard.

Just like that West Wing episode where some opposition research is leaked and things are just, y’know, fine, and not world class until the administration learns to just let Bartlet be Bartlet because that’s what the voters signed up for it’s incumbent upon these Star Trek guys to stop trying so hard to make ST not your grandfather’s Oldsmobile or “relevant” or whatever their shaky faith in the concept is that is making them pull their punches? Quit that. The answer is right in front of you.

Let Star Trek be Star Trek.