cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/792370
I think Under the Cloak of War has broken into my top 10 episodes of all time.
Seeing Chapel and M’Benga’s struggle with having the Klingon responsible for one of the most traumatic moments in their life aboard the ship was tough to watch.
The performances from Jess Bush and Babs Olusanmokun were absolutely perfect in conveying their deep hatred for man they are being told by Starfleet is now an ally.
I wasn’t a fan of M’Benga but after today he, along with Chapel are possibly my favourite characters on the show. I still can’t got on board with Ortegas though, sorry.
SNW is an anomaly in that it started as a spinoff to a show that was already contentious within fandom. Unlike previous iterations that began while another show was still on the air, SNW benefited from comparison to the already existing show. Fans were hungry for something different.
It helped that Discovery was such garbage, and the Pike/Enterprise plotline showed us what could have been instead of what was. SNW was the show we wanted when all we had was Discovery. And now it’s great to see that they seem to have recovered that lost magic.
Credit is definitely owed to Discovery for giving us this iteration of Pike, Una, and Spock. Flawed and uneven as that show is, they did hit this one out of the park.
Very true. Whatever we can say about Discovery, they did give this one to us.