I thought the show clearly had the perspective that filmmaker's negative view of Starfleet was proven wrong upon further investigation & that Starfleet ultimately wasn't doing anything wrong intentionally it ultimately did do the right thing w/the space creatures once their intelligence was known
Unfortunately, that's impossible. As the guy from trekyards says, we wouldn't be seeing this documentary if that was the case. Also Beto never refutes it. Why would one example of one group of people doing the right thing refute all his claims? Or you could just say it was sloppily written...
Gotta disagree w/you here. The Lutani stated by Ortegas in the documentary as having been attacked by another species who are attempting to steal their resources & who have killed millions of Lutani whereas they have suffered few casualties.
The Federation was prepared to help the Lutani, but not interfere militarily. Once it was discovered that the space creatures were sentient, however, Starfleet ceases help the Lutani w/this particular project & places the moon that is home of the space creatures under its protection
To my mind, if we make an analogue, the Lutani are the Ukrainians & the Kasar are the Russians. It is very good that the US & most European nations are supporting Ukraine w/military aid. It is understandable we are not militarily intervening directly.
However, if we discovered Ukraine used slave labor in its production of military hardware--which it isn't doing in the real world!--this should lead to the US & the European Union ceasing to be fully supportive of Ukraine until it stopped such activity (even though Ukraine merits support).
If you don't think the episode is successful at demonstrating the fundamental goodness of the Federation & Starfleet despite the intial skepticism of Ortegas' brother, that's fine. I think it's a competent episode of this genre rather than a masterpiece like Babylon 5's 'And Now for a Word.'
Yes, that's my only point. That the documentary is irrelevant. The inner core of the episode as you describe it is fine - almost, anyway. It's like Caretaker, Devil in the dark, Encounter at Far point, Equinox.
Here are the reservations: 1) the crew are a obeying orders they have suspicion are illegal. 2) Starfleet is bringing in a animal that might be tortured 3) Pike does not stop the mission when you hera tells him that she can communicate with the animal.
*Uhura
See, I don't think it's irrelevant. Freedom of speech & the fact that people don't have perfect information means that people can suspect gov't of having bad policy even if the policy is formed w/good intentions & turns out to be flawed only because of lack of perfect information.
I think you wrote a better episode than what is actually shown. Beto made a bunch of claims without evidence. Then he witnessed the core episode. He initially may have been skeptical but why would he make up his mind without all the information? So that wouldn't make sense.
There's two separate things going on. One is his initial claims. The other is his investigation of the current core episode. But he did not know the facts. His initial claims are not ever refuted.
Ortegas lacked perfect information as well which is why his documentary starts off skeptical before becoming less so. I really like the idea of this episode & I think its competent enough w/out being great--I say 7/10 for this reason (the episodes you mention I would ultimately rate as 8 or 9).
(Save for Encounter at Far Point which I think I like less than this SNW episode, though Far Point is still better than Discovery's pilot which I genuinely dislike).
I'd rate the episode as a 7/10 & the B5 episode a 10/10. I think it's a useful episode in pointing out in a near utopia, trying to make the right foreign policy decision when you don't have perfect knowledge can mean you sometimes have to change policy when you get knew info.
I appreciation the attempt to experiment w/style here while ultimately affirming the important of goodness & respect for then rights of sentient creatures. Not a masterpiece episode, but it worked for me. If it didn't work for you, I get it though.