Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
Star Trek has done a lot of great courtroom episodes over the years on the various series, and this was right up there with the best of them.
I was worried that it would suffer from David E. Kelley syndrome, where the court case just serves as a forum for the writers to espouse their opinions. But while there are clear allegorical parallels that can be drawn to the current fraught debates over asylum laws and gender-affirming care for transgender people, what the episode was driving at was something more fundamental: The Federation is presented as a utopian society, and sees itself as a utopian society. And yet a strict application of the letter of the law would result in an outcome that is antithetical to many of those utopian ideals.
Batel's boss wanted to make the case a narrow one: to him, it was a simple matter of applying the clear language of the statute in accordance with how that statute has been commonly understood and applied in previous precedent. Una's lawyer wanted to make it about a much broader clash between the unfeeling letter of the law and the broader principles and ideals that the law was meant to uphold. To do that, she first made it clear to the panel of judges that the case against Una Chin-Riley was indeed counter to the Federation's principles and ideals. And then, once she had convinced them of that, she found a loophole that would allow them an out without having to undermine the Federation's entire legal framework surrounding genetic modification.
The writers had to thread that same needle, too; we know from DS9 that the strict laws regarding genetic enhancements are still on the books well into the 24th century. So they had to find a way to get Una back on the Enterprise without upsetting the larger apple cart.
One thing I really appreciated about this episode is the portrayal of the law as a specialized legal discipline. Starfleet is a quasi-military armada, and so it makes sense that Una's trial would take the form of a court-martial. Starfleet apparently doesn't require juries for courts-martial, or Una has waived her right to one. But it's still an adversarial proceeding with both the panel of judges and both sides consisting of trained legal professionals.
While it wasn't explicitly established as such in the first season, it seems clear that Captain Batel has a legal background and that the USS Cayuga is deployed for missions on behalf of Starfleet's Judge Advocate General Corps.
Too often in Star Trek, the captain ends up serving as defense attorney, or another senior officer on the ship. Even though it usually works out in the end, that always seemed to me to be a gross disservice to the defendant. I particularly liked when Una pointed out the conflict of interest inherent in her assigned defense counsel serving under Captain Batel's command, when Batel is serving as prosecutor.
And I also appreciated the episode's exploration of the conflicting priorities that can result from high-profile court cases. The NAACP famously took on cases that would challenges laws it found unjust, sometimes even strategically baiting arrests for laws that it wanted to challenge. In the decades since, many other groups with their own objectives and ideologies have used similar tactics. The upside if you're the defendant is that you get world-class lawyers representing you that you would never be able to afford normally. But the downside is that those lawyers might be more interested in scoring points for their agenda than securing the best possible outcome for their client.
Una knew that her old friend had only taken her case reluctantly, after Pike's personal intervention, because it provided a high-profile platform for her to challenge the Federation's hypocrisies when it came to the Illyrians. She had good reason to believe that her lawyer cared more about exposing those hypocrisies than she did about getting Una acquitted. But that would have been a violation of her ethical obligations, and she was a good enough lawyer that she could kill two birds with one stone.
Lots of good human stuff, too. That Pike would go to the lengths that he went speaks volumes about who he is as a person, as a commanding officer, and as a friend. One my favorite scenes was between Robert April and Christopher Pike in Pike's quarters. April is pissed because he feels like Una's lawyer engaged in character assassination against him, and he knows that Pike went to great lengths to recruit her for Una's defense. Pike understands April's anger and sense of betrayal, but he's unapologetic about securing the best possible defense for his first officer, even if that means his mentor has to take it on the chin a little in the process.
The payoff with Lian was good, too, as Una's lawyer helps her reframe her perspective on being Khan's descendant. I think this is the first time the show confirmed that she had inherited certain superhuman traits from her distant Augment ancestor. While she is clearly not an outright übermensch like Khan and the other OG Augments, or even Una herself, it does explain her extraordinary proficiency in a number of areas that helped her excel over her unenhanced peers.
If Spock can't stand him, then you know he's got to be pretty darn obnoxious. And it's another example of a Vulcan whose emotions aren't as suppressed as they might like everyone to believe. While it's true that Vulcans will be more impervious to the logical fallacies that can result from emotional appeals, it clear that he was motivated by ego rather than the law. He wanted to convict Una, because that was his objective. Whether that was the just outcome or not was, for him, immaterial.
She was terrific in this episode. Batel was put in a very difficult spot, with her professional obligations diametrically opposed to her personal allegiances. She tried her damnedest to get Una off light, and then when Una shot down the plea deal she did her best to keep Pike from being collateral damage. I don't know that all of her choices were the right ones; certainly there's an argument to be made that she compromised both her professional obligations and her personal allegiances over the course of this episode. But I don't know that I would have been able to navigate that situation any better had I been in her shoes. What was clear to me is the empathy that she felt toward Una. And that she believes the prosecution's role is to secure a just outcome, not simply a victory for the sake of a victory.
