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4thofelevenIn which Ursula Le Guin probably deserves a story credit.
Let's not make any bones about this; this is Star Trek goes to Omelas. Which, on its own, I have no objections to. It's a little concerning that twenty-first century Star Trek is looking to science fiction from fifty years ago for inspiration, rather than something a little more modern – but hey, at least we're getting something that at least post-dates the original series instead of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And I'm not going to object if Strange New Worlds just becomes a series of Le Guin inspired adaptations.
No, the problem isn't the source of inspiration but the truly terrible choices made in how to adapt it. The first baffling choice is that rather than actually engage with and discuss Omelas, the episode instead decides to keep that as a last moment twist. And this causes most of the episode's problems. The first is that it's a blatantly obvious twist; I think most of the audience, on hearing a seemingly utopian society start talking about how a child is destined to embody 'service and sacrifice' will have immediately realised “Oh, right, it's Omelas.”
And then the episode has to tie itself in knots to try and conceal a twist that everyone's already guessed anyway – nobody on the Enterprise shows any curiosity about what 'ascension' actually involves, we have multiple people who are willing to die for their cause but not, apparently, to explain any of it – with Pike apparently happily convinced that the ascension is purely a symbolic ritual even as the bodycount keeps rising of people unwilling to let it go ahead. Making matters worse, due to their lack of curiosity, Pike and the Enterprise crew end up complicit in the situation, twice 'saving' the child to ensure he meets his appointed fate. I don't think we've seen a captain screw things up this badly since Enterprise, and at least Archer was meant to be in over his head most of the time.
The second problem, of course, is that in the original story, it's not meant to be a secret twist. Rather, the whole point of the story is that everyone knows how and why Omelas functions; the question is what a person does once they learn about it. Bafflingly, the script tries to keep that aspect, with Alora claiming moral superiority because at least her people acknowledge the sacrifice of their victim... after spending the entire episode carefully not telling Pike or anyone else about the real situation.
So you've got an Omelas story in which nobody actually has to make a decision about what to do about Omelas. And that's a real shame, because this could have been a much better story if they'd just revealed Omelas at the start and let the crew struggle how to handle it. The child is apparently genuinely necessary to maintain the Majalis colony; do they let the rebels take him to freedom, dooming millions more? That's a hell of a trolley problem to consider!
Or, in a better story, make it about M'Benga instead of Pike. The Majalis have technology that could cure his daughter; is he willing to take that information, knowing what the price of it was? Is he willing to sacrifice another child to save his own? That could have been a great episode, but instead, he's kept safely separated from the main story, and at the end, received the medical data he wanted anyway. He gets to walk away from Omelas and still benefit from their utopia; congratulations on completely undermining the story you're adapting.
I'm trying to be less negative about Strange New Worlds, but this was a really poorly written episode, that not only fails to add anything to the story its so clearly inspired by, but actually manages to miss most of what made that story memorable. It's an absolute creative failure. The kid playing the First Servant was a good actor, and so was Alora, and it's just a shame they were wasted on this tripe.
Let's not make any bones about this; this is Star Trek goes to Omelas. Which, on its own, I have no objections to. It's a little concerning that twenty-first century Star Trek is looking to science fiction from fifty years ago for inspiration, rather than something a little more modern – but hey, at least we're getting something that at least post-dates the original series instead of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And I'm not going to object if Strange New Worlds just becomes a series of Le Guin inspired adaptations.
No, the problem isn't the source of inspiration but the truly terrible choices made in how to adapt it. The first baffling choice is that rather than actually engage with and discuss Omelas, the episode instead decides to keep that as a last moment twist. And this causes most of the episode's problems. The first is that it's a blatantly obvious twist; I think most of the audience, on hearing a seemingly utopian society start talking about how a child is destined to embody 'service and sacrifice' will have immediately realised “Oh, right, it's Omelas.”
And then the episode has to tie itself in knots to try and conceal a twist that everyone's already guessed anyway – nobody on the Enterprise shows any curiosity about what 'ascension' actually involves, we have multiple people who are willing to die for their cause but not, apparently, to explain any of it – with Pike apparently happily convinced that the ascension is purely a symbolic ritual even as the bodycount keeps rising of people unwilling to let it go ahead. Making matters worse, due to their lack of curiosity, Pike and the Enterprise crew end up complicit in the situation, twice 'saving' the child to ensure he meets his appointed fate. I don't think we've seen a captain screw things up this badly since Enterprise, and at least Archer was meant to be in over his head most of the time.
The second problem, of course, is that in the original story, it's not meant to be a secret twist. Rather, the whole point of the story is that everyone knows how and why Omelas functions; the question is what a person does once they learn about it. Bafflingly, the script tries to keep that aspect, with Alora claiming moral superiority because at least her people acknowledge the sacrifice of their victim... after spending the entire episode carefully not telling Pike or anyone else about the real situation.
So you've got an Omelas story in which nobody actually has to make a decision about what to do about Omelas. And that's a real shame, because this could have been a much better story if they'd just revealed Omelas at the start and let the crew struggle how to handle it. The child is apparently genuinely necessary to maintain the Majalis colony; do they let the rebels take him to freedom, dooming millions more? That's a hell of a trolley problem to consider!
Or, in a better story, make it about M'Benga instead of Pike. The Majalis have technology that could cure his daughter; is he willing to take that information, knowing what the price of it was? Is he willing to sacrifice another child to save his own? That could have been a great episode, but instead, he's kept safely separated from the main story, and at the end, received the medical data he wanted anyway. He gets to walk away from Omelas and still benefit from their utopia; congratulations on completely undermining the story you're adapting.
I'm trying to be less negative about Strange New Worlds, but this was a really poorly written episode, that not only fails to add anything to the story its so clearly inspired by, but actually manages to miss most of what made that story memorable. It's an absolute creative failure. The kid playing the First Servant was a good actor, and so was Alora, and it's just a shame they were wasted on this tripe.
no subject
on 2022-07-01 12:01 am (UTC)It sounds like this episode makes a really, really good case for the following writing rule: any time you're considering a twist ending, ask, "What would happen if I revealed this a quarter of the way through and then showed the fallout?" Maybe the twist at the ending is the best way after all, but I'm guessing that more than half the time, it's more interesting to reveal it earlier and then dig into the drama that follows.