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