Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 3 Viewing (Spoilers)

[Ryujin]

I think this was a case of conspiracy theory (M'Benga has let folks suffer/die in sickbay on orders from Starfleet, and/or there have been casualties in sickbay that Starfleet does not want you to know about) inadvertently stumbling over a truth (but for a different reason). I did not think that Beto had any knowledge or even suspicion about M'Benga and Dak'Rah.

Yeah, he was more just fishing for secrets, to support his theories.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, he was more just fishing for secrets, to support his theories.

I think it was a bit too on-the-nose (not in a good Alien: Earth way either) as was the Ollie North stuff but I guess I can accept that as an explanation.

 

[Stalker0]

Making Umberto look deeply unethical and like he has no code of conduct. A lot of the shots he uses are ones that aren't appropriate for an actual documentary, they're from like undercover journalism. But he's not undercover. He has huge access, so stuff where he's hiding the camera from them and sneaking around? That's actually not okay. You can't have it both ways. You can capture stuff where you're not hiding but they're not paying attention to you - documentarians do that all the time, but he's hiding the camera at times, and that is not cricket, and I think whoever wrote this just doesn't understand what a documentarian does, and conflates them with the worst kind of tabloid/yellow journalist.

Or....maybe documentaries don't work 200 years from now like they do today?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Or....maybe documentaries don't work 200 years from now like they do today?

That doesn't really work as a defence or apologia if that's the idea, let alone a gotcha.

This looks like a documentary.

Just one done by someone who is totally untrained as a documentarian, has little-to-no idea how to make a documentary beyond "GET A LOT OF FOOTAGE!" (i.e. has read about documentaries or really closely watched ones made by others, nor looked into how they were made), has no real ethics, standards, or similar.

And no, I don't believe that in the Federation, of all places, moral and ethical standards will somehow have been abandoned!

I will say this for poor Umberto, given he works alone, unless he just asked the computer to do it for him (which I cannot rule out), he must have worked insanely hard scrubbing through thousands of hours of "laptop cam" (i.e. the bridge consoles) and and security cam footage to make his documentary. He's bloody lucky Star Fleet let him have that.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm curious why, after his "heel realization", Umberto decided not to re-edit the earlier parts of his documentary. He'd have looked a lot better by excising his conspiracy theories and bias from the finished work.

Instead it makes all these wild accusations and lets Starfleet defend themselves from them. I suppose it makes sense in our current era where if he didn't try to ask the hard questions, people would accuse him of being a Starfleet shill, but is there seriously enough anti-Starfleet sentiment at this point in time that anyone would even make those kinds of accusations?

The truth is, we know Starfleet gets up to some shady stuff. Officers (even Admirals!) go rogue, aliens try to infiltrate, there's secret black projects, Section 31, eventually a Department of Temporal Investigations, forced resettlements, covert espionage and wetwork, etc. etc.. And it's actually kind of standard for series' regulars to violate regulations and orders from time to time.

The overall message we're supposed to take away is that these people aren't perfect, but are trying to uphold higher ideals. I guess. Except, I thought the message was supposed to be that things are different in the future, and we don't marginalize minorities based on fear and prejudice, engage in proxy wars against our enemies, and are "more enlightened"?

Sure, Trek is at it's best when it holds up a mirror to our own times, but it feels like we're being told one thing about this ideal utopian future and then shown the cracks on a fairly regular basis.

 

[Umbran]

Who the hell told him about the missing logs from sick bay?

He's been hanging around with two of the most chatty people on the ship. Even if they didn't tell him directly, there can easily be a moment when the public stories and the records he does have access to imply a gap.

 

[Morrus]

That doesn't really work as a defence or apologia if that's the idea, let alone a gotcha.

This looks like a documentary.

Just one done by someone who is totally untrained as a documentarian, has little-to-no idea how to make a documentary beyond "GET A LOT OF FOOTAGE!" (i.e. has read about documentaries or really closely watched ones made by others, nor looked into how they were made), has no real ethics, standards, or similar.

And no, I don't believe that in the Federation, of all places, moral and ethical standards will somehow have been abandoned!

I will say this for poor Umberto, given he works alone, unless he just asked the computer to do it for him (which I cannot rule out), he must have worked insanely hard scrubbing through thousands of hours of "laptop cam" (i.e. the bridge consoles) and and security cam footage to make his documentary. He's bloody lucky Star Fleet let him have that.

Yeah, I have to agree. That was barely worthy of the Daily Mail let alone an in depth documentary with… wait, HOW did a kid with no idea what a documentary is get super secret access to classified stuff? Did they try to hire an Attenborough and he called in sick so they were left with the work experience guy?

 

[Umbran]

I will say this for poor Umberto, given he works alone, unless he just asked the computer to do it for him (which I cannot rule out), he must have worked insanely hard scrubbing through thousands of hours of "laptop cam" (i.e. the bridge consoles) and and security cam footage to make his documentary.

Why? He likely knows the stardates of all the major events he might want to reference, and can cull down to the times just around those. "Computer, show me camera 3 stardate xxyyzz.aa to xxyyzz.bb".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why? He likely knows the stardates of all the major events he might want to reference, and can cull down to the times just around those. "Computer, show me camera 3 stardate xxyyzz.aa to xxyyzz.bb".

Oh sure but we got dozens of different angles and to actually get the footage he did would have meant watching an enormous amount and correctly editing it. I am being Watsonian here of course. Editing (especially editing down from huge amounts of footage) is damn hard work that takes real focus and that would have been much harder work than anything else he did, literally. The kid has no future as a documentarian, but he could be a good editor for an actual documentarian!

 

[Umbran]

Editing (especially editing down from huge amounts of footage) is damn hard work that takes real focus ...

And he has computing power beyond our imaginings at his disposal. That means tools to automate all that work.