210. Selling Starfleet (SNW 3.07)

It's documentary time! Anika and Liz look straight into the camera and share their feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "What Is Starfleet?", including... We have complicated feelings about this episode! It interrogates the documentary as a form of propaganda, but also interrogates the Federation in bad faith?  SNW is not equipped to deal with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia through allegory Liz would like to apologise to the Spanish speaking population of Earth for her pronunciation of "Beto" This is an episode about journalism that doesn't want the audience to ask too many questions Anika appreciates the messiness of this story Did we not? Have a whole Prime Directive? About not getting involved in foreign wars?  SNW has a lot of the same problems as Voyager We did not need a self-harm story from Spock, anymore than we needed an animal harm story from Pike It's not enough that now everyone joins Starfleet because of trauma, but now everyone is alone and friendless until they are assigned to the hero ship It's so unfair? How people keep bringing up that murder M'Benga did? It's actually really triggering for him?  Anika explains how Starfleet is like the spirit of Norway