Strange New Worlds season 2 - SPOILERS

[Mort]

No, not for a military court, and again, the entire legal doctrine only exists in US courts and is surrounded by a multitude of exceptions even then. Also I noted, it strongly promotes unjust outcomes in favour of limiting the power of the state - hardly appropriate to the "Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism" of the Federation - it's basically a far-out libertarian doctrine that might be appropriate for the Klingons or Andorians or someone - EDIT or especially the Ferengi - it's one of the most Ferengi legal approaches possible!

I didn't say it was good (I actually said it wasn't) only that, if it was true that Asylum trumped the charges they were filing (I'm still not sure how super secret Asylum would even work but that's the episode), then it should have been presented directly. Not as "surprise - she asked for Asylum - we win..." (Which, wow, sounds even worse as I type it out).

In fact, the presented court system was so bad it was played for laughs (Oona pointing out that her counsel worked for the prosecution - I mean seriously). Highlighted by the fact - at the end, the "legal" argument didn't really work. The court was just so taken in by Oona's (and to a lesser extent her attorney's) awesomeness that they just decided to grant her an exception.

Anyway, hope the writers got that out of their system because the episodes, other than this one, have been great.

 

[Arilyn]

Huh. I liked it just fine. Very Star Trek courtroom drama. I mean the Federation does very little that's like us.

I mean these are the folks that will give Data a rank and position on a flagship, then decide he's just property that can be reprogrammed...

 

[Mallus]

Ahem, would now be a good time to remind people the courtroom drama at the center of “Measure of the Man” — ie one of Trek’s best episodes — doesn’t make any sense, either?

(and it totally doesn’t matter)

 

[Ryujin]

Ahem, would now be a good time to remind people the courtroom drama at the center of “Measure of the Man” — ie one of Trek’s best episodes — doesn’t make any sense, either?

(and it totally doesn’t matter)

Then there's "The Menagerie"; the two part episode of TOS that is based on the original pilot (Roddenberry had to make up the money they spent on it, after all). Spock's court martial is decided by transmissions from a planet that communication with is the only remaining death penalty on the books and is judged by his captain, a guy in a wheelchair who communicates through beep beep-beep, and an illusion.

 

[Arilyn]

Star Trek is character driven. The transporters, replicators, economy, exact replicas of Earth, except for this one thing, and on and on make no sense. But at its best, Star Trek stories can be golden. Strange New Worlds is the best Trek we've had in a long time. I'm appreciating it and hoping it lasts!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I didn't say it was good (I actually said it wasn't) only that, if it was true that Asylum trumped the charges they were filing (I'm still not sure how super secret Asylum would even work but that's the episode), then it should have been presented directly. Not as "surprise - she asked for Asylum - we win..." (Which, wow, sounds even worse as I type it out).

Asylum is just entirely irrelevant to everything that's being claimed except arguably sedition. It's treated as a magic spell.

I mean the Federation does very little that's like us.

The problem is the court acts weirdly like a child's understanding of the 21st century US (specifically - not any other country) civilian criminal court system. It doesn't act at all like a military court - which is what they claim it is - nor does it act at all like a court of a utopian society. The final decision doesn't even make sense in the context they've established, either - what's being discussed is irrelevant to most of the charges.

Ahem, would now be a good time to remind people the courtroom drama at the center of “Measure of the Man” — ie one of Trek’s best episodes — doesn’t make any sense, either?

Actually, it does make a fair bit of sense, you're misremembering. I just checked Memory Alpha to see that I wasn't.

The situation Measure of a Man is of a fact-finding inquiry to work out what the law is, not a criminal trial (or even really a civil one), and as such is naturally more informal in nature. Nor does it pretend to be anything else. It's a bit irregular that Picard is put in charge of arguing the idea that Data is a sentient, free-willed being, but given this is, again, a fact-finding inquiry/legal hearing, not entirely out-of-line. It's actually closest to arbitration, I'd say. The judge-person particularly acts like a legal arbitrator. The only thing that's really whack and just for the sake of drama is putting Riker to argue the other side, but again the judge-person is clearly running this like their own little party, and arbitrators can, on occasion be that eccentric, it's workable.

Certainly as someone who is involved with and relatively familiar with the law, Measure of Man isn't particularly obnoxious, because it's not masquerading as a criminal court or the like, and it's solved by a valid rational argument, not by Legal Magic (TM). This was purely the latter, where an entirely irrelevant law magically causes the judges to wave their fairy wands and dismiss all charges.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Star Trek is character driven. The transporters, replicators, economy, exact replicas of Earth, except for this one thing, and on and on make no sense. But at its best, Star Trek stories can be golden. Strange New Worlds is the best Trek we've had in a long time. I'm appreciating it and hoping it lasts!

That's all true, but it in no way excuses any of this, because none of it was necessary.

Do you get what I'm saying? You can write a legal drama episode without resorting to the levels of brain-damaging legal stupidity that they did here. There's no reason to make it this dumb unless the writer is literally so ignorant of the law and courts that they think it's not dumb. They could easily have written the asylum law, for example, so that it DID apply, rather than writing a completely irrelevant law.

It's one of the worst traits of a lot of '90s and '00s sci-fi shows, including the very worst seasons of Star Trek, to take a subject that doesn't need to be examined in detail, and go into it in detail, but make that detail completely and utterly moronic.

You see it occasionally in SF novels too - one good example being a lovely novel where the author totally unnecessarily stops the plot for like two pages of exposition on how the power supply of the main android character works, explaining that it's totally not a perpetual motion machine, except she has 100% perfectly described a perpetual motion machine, because she went into too much detail on the science, and revealed she didn't understand physics well enough. The rest of the novel is fine, but that bit is the equivalent of saying how good you are at math and then handing the audience a math exam where you've scored an E, and got most of the answers wrong.

 

[MarkB]

That's all true, but it in no way excuses any of this, because none of it was necessary.

Do you get what I'm saying? You can write a legal drama episode without resorting to the levels of brain-damaging legal stupidity that they did here. There's no reason to make it this dumb unless the writer is literally so ignorant of the law and courts that they think it's not dumb. They could easily have written the asylum law, for example, so that it DID apply, rather than writing a completely irrelevant law.

No, they couldn't, because of existing canon. We know that the laws against genetic engineering remain in place and enforced right into the 24th century, so the only way that they can thoroughly resolve this case while leaving those laws largely unchallenged is to find either a technicality or a very specific exception that can resolve this one case without setting a wider precedent - and a technicality wouldn't have been dramatically satisfying.

It's one of the worst traits of a lot of '90s and '00s sci-fi shows, including the very worst seasons of Star Trek, to take a subject that doesn't need to be examined in detail, and go into it in detail, but make that detail completely and utterly moronic.

You see it occasionally in SF novels too - one good example being a lovely novel where the author totally unnecessarily stops the plot for like two pages of exposition on how the power supply of the main android character works, explaining that it's totally not a perpetual motion machine, except she has 100% perfectly described a perpetual motion machine, because she went into too much detail on the science, and revealed she didn't understand physics well enough. The rest of the novel is fine, but that bit is the equivalent of saying how good you are at math and then handing the audience a math exam where you've scored an E, and got most of the answers wrong.

It's not just sci-fi, it's each and every drama series that looks closely at any technical subject and then plays it for drama regardless of the actual technicalities. It grates horrendously on anyone with specialised knowledge of the subject without bothering most other viewers in the slightest.

This isn't a legal drama series, and they're not trying to teach anyone how any real-world legal system actually works. Cut them a break and let them get their stirring speeches and dramatic victory while airing some very valid representations of the nature of socially-enforced prejudice.

 

[Ryujin]

No, they couldn't, because of existing canon. We know that the laws against genetic engineering remain in place and enforced right into the 24th century, so the only way that they can thoroughly resolve this case while leaving those laws largely unchallenged is to find either a technicality or a very specific exception that can resolve this one case without setting a wider precedent - and a technicality wouldn't have been dramatically satisfying.

It's not just sci-fi, it's each and every drama series that looks closely at any technical subject and then plays it for drama regardless of the actual technicalities. It grates horrendously on anyone with specialised knowledge of the subject without bothering most other viewers in the slightest.

This isn't a legal drama series, and they're not trying to teach anyone how any real-world legal system actually works. Cut them a break and let them get their stirring speeches and dramatic victory while airing some very valid representations of the nature of socially-enforced prejudice.

I's pretty much real world anything, when compared to fictional logic. I've worked in IT for almost 40 years now. I've taken 8 motorcycle racing schools and 2 advanced street riding schools, shot motorcycle racing for more than 20 years, and got my own license in 1984. The magnitude of eye roll when I see most computer stuff and motorcycle stuff on TV almost gives me whiplash. Makes it pretty tough to suspend disbelief.

 

[billd91]

I's pretty much real world anything, when compared to fictional logic. I've worked in It for almost 40 years now. I've taken 8 motorcycle racing schools and 2 advanced street riding schools, shot motorcycle racing for more than 20 years, and got my own license in 1984. The magnitude of eye roll when I see most computer stuff and motorcycle stuff on TV almost gives me whiplash. Makes it pretty tough to suspend disbelief.

It's pretty much like that for just about anybody actually in a profession or with significant expertise portrayed in the media whether television or movies or on stage. A show would have to take really great pains to portray things realistically and then nobody would probably watch it.