The Enterprise has arrived at the Prospero system, where the three inhabited planets have been in conflict for years. However, an ambassador managed to negotiate a cease-fire, and now must be ferried to Starbase 12. The ambassador is the most unlikely thing: Rah, a Klingon who has had a change of heart and now advocates for peace. Enterprise was deliberately kept out of the Klingon War of 2256-7 (DSC: "Project Daedalus"), so Pike, Number One and Spock have no particular problem with the situation... but it's 2259, and there are new crewmembers on the ship, including veterans Ortegas, M'Benga and Chapel. All three are clearly uncomfortable with the presence of Rah, formerly known as General Dak'Rah, "The Butcher of J'Gal," who slaughtered innocent civilians — and even his own men — to cover his retreat before defecting to the Federation.
In a Captain's Log, M'Benga reports on Biobed 2, which has been on the fritz ever since the Gorn attack at Finibus III ("Memento Mori").
The episode is interspersed with flashbacks to the Klingon War. On what is implied to be her first assignment, Nurse Christine Chapel is landed at a Federation field hospital on the moon of J'gal and, despite being new, is immediately assigned as Head Nurse. There she meets Joseph M'Benga, MD, who like any field medic has developed new tricks for getting the job done: the hospital lacks an internal organ regenerator, so when Ens. Alvarado arrives needing treatment, M'Benga stores him as a Human Popsicle in the transporter's pattern buffer — allowing them to not only save more people, but beam in more people who need saving. As the episode progresses, it becomes clear that M'Benga's "Combat Medic" tendencies lean way more towards "Combat" than were previously implied: a Starfleet black ops leader approaches him, claiming he needs the best... and naturally sought out M'Benga, who holds the record for confirmed hand-to-hand kills. The black-ops guy also wants some "Protocol 12" — the green Super Serum from the top of the season — but M'Benga protests he isn't making it anymore; it turns out that pumping oneself with adrenaline and painkillers is not good in the long run. Nonetheless, the black op proceeds: a Decapitation Strike against Gen. Dak'Rah, with as many willing Starfleet bodies as possible thrown at the nearby colony of Athos as a distraction. When the casualties from that attack come back, M'Benga realizes he can't stay an Actual Pacifist any longer.
In the present, tensions are high. Number One presents a course change to Pike which will shave half a day off their trip, as crew morale is in the toilet. Chapel keeps having flashbacks to the war — the camp being shelled, people screaming in pain as they die, M'Benga deleting Alvarado from the pattern buffer because they can save more people if they do, keeping a man alive by physically pumping his heart with her hands only to watch him join the diversionary attack on Athos Colony and come home in a box — which Spock cannot comfort her through; she begs for a break, and he complies. Meanwhile, Rah asks M'Benga (played by Babs Olusanmokun, Real Life black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) to join him in full-contact sparring in mok'bara, Klingon judo. As they fight, Rah asks M'Benga to join him as an assistant, pointing out that the alliance between a human (fighter turned) doctor and Klingon (general turned) peacemaker could be very influential. But M'Benga, still feeling the pains of J'gal, simply asks which of Dak'Rah's subordinates — General Gra'val, Commander Kiff, and Captain Ruh'lis — fought the hardest when he, Dak'Rah, turned on them and got his epithet of "Butcher of J'gal." Rah claims it was Kiff; Kiff nearly won, but Rah needed to fight for what was right, to fight against wholesale butchery.
Back on the moon of J'gal, Chapel catches M'Benga with a d'k tahg dagger on his belt and realizes he plans to pick up where the Black Ops team — all dead now — left off. He gives her a vial of Protocol 12 and tells her to save herself if needed. In the present, M'Benga is looking at that very d'k tahg dagger in Sickbay when Rah comes in, begging for a second chance. M'Benga points out that Rah did indeed give the order to slaughter anyone who wasn't a Klingon soldier, and Rah admits he did, claiming to be The Atoner for those actions. (That said, he has never — not once, in the whole episode — expressed that any of his actions were wrong.) M'Benga then reveals that Rah was lying: Ruh'lis, not Kiff, was the one who put up the best fight. Gen. Dak'Rah was assailed by a One-Man Army named Joseph M'Benga, and his three lieutenants Held The Line while Dak'Rah fled like a Dirty Coward. And M'Benga has had to live with the knowledge that he is the Butcher of J'gal. He lambasts Rah for sanctifying himself using the blood on M'Benga's hands, for wearing M'Benga's crimes as a badge of honor. Rah protests that the Federation, that the galaxy, needs symbols and hope. Chapel comes in to see the two scuffling on the other side of the frosted glass that partitions M'Benga's office from the rest of Sickbay. By the time she's made it over, Rah is on the floor, the d'k tahg dagger in his heart.
Chapel presents the evidence to Pike and Number One: the d'k tahg must have belonged to the Butcher of J'gal because it still has blood on it from Gra'val, Kiff and Ruh'lis. She claims Rah must have hit first and that M'Benga acted in self-defense, and that "it just goes to show, no one ever really knows what goes on in anyone's heart." Pike then visits M'Benga in Sickbay and tells him that, if there's anything M'Benga wants to mention, Chris will be on his side. But M'Benga decides to keep his secrets to himself: "[Y]ou haven't lived my life. You have the privilege of believing in what's best in people. Me? I happen to know there are some things in this world that don't deserve forgiveness."
"Chief Medical Officer's Log, stardate 1877.5. Biobed two is working again. At least for now. But I know it's only a matter of time before it shuts down again. Some things break in a way that can never be repaired. Only managed."
Tropes:
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Spock and Dak'Rah compare The Art of War with its Klingon equivalent, mL'parmaq Qoj (meaning something along the lines of "love of making war").
- Ambadassador: Dak'Rah was a general during the war and is an expert in mok'bara.
- Ambiguous Innocence: While it's clear that M'Benga did kill Dak'Rah, the fact that neither he nor Chapel had any lost love for the Klingon, plus the fact that the fight between the two men was deliberately obscured, make it murky whether or not they lied about what really happened and covered it up, or Dak'Rah did in fact start the fight, and M'Benga was forced to defend himself.
- Ambiguous Situation: The fight between M'Benga and Dak'Rah is obscured by a frosted glass wall, only showing rough outlines of the two, and it's left deliberately ambiguous as to who attacked whom. M'Benga's claim that the Klingon started the fight and that he killed him in self-defense is corroborated by Chapel, the only witness, though as she and M'Benga have been friends for years and she hated Dak'Rah as much as he did, it follows that she would be willing to lie for him. Director Jeff Bird confirmed
the fight was intentionally shot to be ambiguous. - Asshole Victim: Dak'Rah is killed by M'Benga, but no one on the Enterprise sheds any tears for his demise when it's learned of the actions he committed.
- The Atoner: Dak'Rah wants to atone for his warrior past by promoting peace for The Federation. While he leans towards being genuine in his motives, Dak'Rah is somewhat of a Manipulative Bastard for trying to buddy up with some of the victims of his atrocities like Ortegas and M'Benga, hoping their forgiveness will legitimize his efforts. Neither of them are having any of it.
- Becoming the Mask: At first, Dak'Rah's claim to want peace was just a lie that would allow him to defect to the Federation for his own safety. Eventually he came to truly believe it.
- Beware the Nice Ones: M'Benga was the true Butcher of J'Gal.
- Beyond Redemption: This is how M'Benga sees Dak'Rah. Not just because the Klingon ambassador speaks almost chiefly in empty platitudes about healing wounds and learning to accept the pain of what happened in the past without actually apologizing for any of his own actions, but because M'Benga knows what Dak'Rah really did at J'Gal. The Klingon paints a picture of having been a general who couldn't control the brutality of overzealous subordinates who ordered the deaths of innocent civilians, and killed those monstrous men out of disgust for their dishonorable actions. The truth is that Dak'Rah personally ordered and committed the atrocities at J'Gal and then fled like a Dirty Coward when the Starfleet soldiers were close to victory, while it was M'Benga who killed the general's subordinates while pursuing him. Dak'Rah then took the credit for their deaths to successfully defect to the Federation by appearing noble and principled, and then built on that lie in order to become an ambassador for peace.
- Brick Joke: A particularly dark example. When treating Ensign Inman's injuries, Chapel ends up having to pump his heart with her bare hands. Later, when Inman is awake and recovering, he comments that he feels as though somebody squeezed his heart with their fingers. M'Benga informs him that someone quite literally did.
- The Butcher: Dak'Rah is known as "The Butcher of J'gal" for killing his own officers. By the end of the episode, M'Benga reveals that he is the true butcher, having killed the officers in an attempt to hunt Dak'Rah down.
- Call-Back:
- Ortegas quotes the Klingon battle cry "tlhIngan maH! taHjaj!" which was frequently used in Star Trek: Discovery.
- M'Benga notes in his log that one of his biobeds has been malfunctioning since the Battle of Finibus III.
- The Super Serum that M'Benga used when fighting the Broken Circle is called "Protocol 12". It also turns out that using it too much is very bad in the long term, being essentially a cocktail of adrenaline and painkillers.
- Call-Forward:
- Spock attempts to have the food synthesizer produce raktajino, the Klingon coffee-like beverage frequently enjoyed by the DS9 crew. He manages to produce one cup that's cold and one that's so hot it causes a Klingon to drop it in pain, but he's sure they can work out the inconsistencies in the coding.
- The flashbacks in this episode show where M'Benga developed the technique of storing a patient's body in a transporter buffer until medical treatment is available, which he would later use on his daughter.
- The Enterprise senior staff have a rather awkward dinner with a prominent Klingon political figure, as some of the crew expresses disgust at the sentiment of peace with an enemy who committed such great atrocities. In 34 years, Spock and Uhura will have another one with the senior staff of the Enterprise-A during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, with the exact same sentiments expressed. Fortunately, that one'll turn out better in the long run.
- During the Klingon War, M'Benga is told that the people who live on Earth's moon actually call it "The Moon" instead of Luna, the same way Jake Sisko will be 120 years later during another war.
- Mok'Bara, Klingon Judo, was an art Worf practised and taught to others on the Enterprise-D.
- Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: Whenever wounded are inbound, an automated "Incoming Transport" announcement sounds across the camp, which the medical staff treat like a starship crew would a Red Alert.
- Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Played with. Chapel is uncomfortable with Dak'Rah's boasting about peace, so Spock shifts the conversation to a comparison between The Art of War and its Klingon equivalent. This only sidelines the awkwardness temporarily before Ortegas shifts it back to the Klingon-Federation war.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Klingon dagger in M'Benga's possession, which still has traces of DNA from the Klingon officers Dak'Rah took credit for killing, makes it seem as if it was Dak'Rah who drew the knife on M'Benga, rather than M'Benga having kept it as a Tragic Keepsake of sorts.
- Cloning Body Parts: When she is assigned to J'gal, Chapel is told that they don't have an organ regenerator on hand, severely limiting their ability to treat serious injuries on the frontlines.
- Concepts Are Cheap: Played for Drama. Dak'Rah talks the talk about the importance of peace between the Federation and the Empire and, as M'Benga remarks, he might even mean it. But M'Benga also knows the Ambassador's talk of healing and the horrors of war is empty and self-serving in the face of what actually happened on J'Gal. Was Dak'Rah genuinely repentant about his atrocities there? Maybe, but not enough to tell the truth, and he's quite clearly unfamiliar with what it really means to be changed by war.
- Confronting Your Impostor: M'Benga reveals that he knows Rah didn't kill his own officers to stop the bloodshed, because M'Benga himself did.
- Continuity Nod: The Federation/Klingon War depicted in the first season of Discovery originated because the Klingons felt that the inclusiveness of the Federation was an attack against their very culture, and rallied around the idea that they would not dilute Klingon values. Ortegas mentioned that "Remain Klingon" was heard over the comms constantly, such that knowing nothing else of their language she knew that phrase
- Continuity Snarl:
- The Klingons in the flashback to J'Gal have full heads of hair despite all Klingons being completely bald during the war. This was even lampshaded in Season two of Discovery with Burnham noting that the Klingons were "growing their hair out again" since the war had ended.
- In regards to uniforms, possibly - While it's noted in the second season of Discovery that Enterprise has "the new uniforms", it seems unlikely that Starfleet would introduce new uniforms in the middle of a war. During the flashbacks to J'Gal, M'Benga, Chapel and the other medical staff are all wearing a SNW era Starfleet delta with the sciences logo, rather than the silver delta with a black medical cross symbol, as seen in Discovery at the time the war was raging.
- Cultural Rebel: Dak'Rah is unusually gentle in demeanor compared to other Klingons, and introduced as having defected to the Federation during the Klingon War. He even openly denounces the Proud Warrior Race attitudes of Klingons to where he refers to them as entirely separate from himself. This in fact contributes to the conflict of the episode, he is so affable it runs against his known history as a brutal warlord.
- The Cynic: Downplayed with M'Benga. He is normally a Nice Guy, but his experiences with the war had left him with the belief that not everyone deserves a chance at redemption, especially in Dak'Rah's case.
- Decoy Backstory: Dak'Rah claims to have had a Heel Realization during the bloody battle for the moon of J'Gal during the Great Offscreen War, killing several of his own officers to stop them from massacring everyone who wasn't a Klingon soldier and then defecting. Dr. M'Benga ultimately reveals he knows damn well Rah didn't kill his officers, because M'Benga himself did: Rah gave the order for the massacre and then fled when M'Benga snuck into his base camp to assassinate him.
- Dirty Coward: What Dak'Rah really was at J'gal. He ordered the execution of anyone who wasn't a Klingon warrior, and then fled instead of fighting to the death like a "true Klingon" when the tide turned against him.
- Don't Call Me "Sir": Dak'Rah doesn't seem to want Pike calling him "Ambassador Dak'Rah, son of Ra'Ul"; just "Rah".
- Doomed by Canon:
- Dak'Rah's diplomatic overtures are ultimately doomed to fail, as the Federation-Klingon Cold War will continue into TOS (and briefly reignite before a third party intervenes) and an actual, lasting peace won't be achieved until the Khitomer Conference 30 years from now (and even with that, tensions would remain high until after the Battle of Narendra III). The drama and tension instead lie in how and why they fail.
- It's pretty clear Rah's career is going to meet a pretty bad end, as otherwise having a well-respected Klingon who joined the Federation would've provided a rather big precedent for Worf over in TNG and he'd not have encountered the kind of pushback he often did.
- Engineered Heroics: Dak'Rah did not know who really killed his officers at the time he fled J'Gal, but he was all too willing to take the credit for it to appear to have taken a moral stand against wanton brutality and ingratiate himself with the Federation, even though it meant he'd be disliked by his fellow Klingons. The alternative was to be despised for being a Dirty Coward who ran from a glorious death in battle, which is a far worse reputation for a Klingon.
- Exact Words:
- M'Benga specifically claims that Dak'Rah "started the fight", and to the extent that Dak'Rah was the one being pushy about mending fences, even superficially, this is entirely true. What M'Benga does not say is that Dak'Rah drew the knife, or even was the one to pick it up. Pike seems to suspect that M'Benga is hiding something, even trying to nudge him into admitting it, but in the end isn't willing to challenge his friend's account.
- At the inquiry, Chapel says of the knife that killed Dak'Rah, "It belonged to the Butcher of J'Gal, right?" without specifying exactly who that is.
- Fan Disservice: M'Benga Shirtless Scene in the sonic shower. It's hard to appreciate him being ripped as hell while he's on the verge of losing his mind from PTSD.
- Fantastic Racism: There is a lot of hate and mistrust with the Klingons lingering since the events of the Federation-Klingon War. M'Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas are disgusted with Dak'Rah's mere presence given his reputation as the Butcher of J'Gal, with the latter two particularly distrusting of the entire species. Pike, Spock, and Una avert this since they weren't in the war, and thus not present to the Klingon atrocities, though they are understanding of the traumas despite it being highly unprofessional.
- Food as Bribe: A variation. While Ortegas doesn't want to attend the diplomatic dinner, she does so less because Pike's ordered the senior staff's attendance... and more because she just can't pass up the captain's jambalaya.
- Foreshadowing: During their sparring match, M'Benga asks Dak'Rah which of his three subordinates fought the hardest. The answer would be meaningless to M'Benga unless he is much more familiar with the situation than he lets on. He also throws out a subtle barb when he tells Dak'Rah that he makes moving on from the horrors of J'Gal look easy — knowing full well that the Klingon has been lying about his role in the battle this whole time.
- Gone Horribly Right: M'Benga gives a pep talk to a wounded soldier, helping renew his dedication to the service. It's enough for him to go back into battle and get killed. M'Benga clearly blames himself.
- Hell Is That Noise: When the camp gets hit by a flood of wounded, the "Incoming Transport" alert begins going off non-stop.
- Hidden Depths: Nurse Chapel, in The Original Series, was a one-note All Love Is Unrequited punch line. Absolutely nothing indicated that she's a fucking veteran.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: M'Benga leaves the table to get a drink. Christine joins in.Chapel: Better make that two.
M'Benga: Mine's a double.
Chapel: Even better. - Irony:
- Ambassador Dak'Rah is called "The Butcher of J'Gal" by Klingons because he killed three fellow generals and great house members before defecting. In truth, he never actually killed those Klingons, but he did order the wholesale slaughter of civilians (regardless of species) and fled when the Federation turned the tide, making the moniker far more appropriate.
- On Discovery, T'Kuvma unleashed a war because he believed that Starfleet was trying to subvert Klingon culture under the false guise of peace. Now that the war's over and his people have established a (very fragile) peace, it's Starfleet who thinks that the Klingons are putting up a false flag of peace to try and destroy their way of life with another war.
- Locked Out of the Loop: A variation. Star Trek: Discovery had established that the Enterprise was kept out of the war, and so Pike, Una, and Spock didn't participate in the Federation-Klingon conflict. As a result, they don't have the same kind of PTSD baggage that Ortegas, Chapel, and M'Benga have towards the Klingons. Downplayed, however, in that Pike and Una can empathize with that baggage (Una wants to get Rah off the ship as soon as possible because his presence is tanking morale), and even Spock, with his limited experience, does his best to help Chapel in the small ways he can.
- Mixed Metaphor: Commander Martinez mashes "A watched pot never boils" with "The squeaky wheel gets the oil" to create "A watched pot never gets the oil".
- Mood Whiplash: The time-travel hijinks of the previous episode are followed by one of the franchise's darkest and heaviest episodes, one that wouldn't be out of place in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Dak'Rah claims not to like that his people are a Proud Warrior Race, to the point that he refers to Klingons as "they" instead of "we". How much of this is a smokescreen or a genuine feeling is left up in the air, given his past actions.
- The Needs of the Many: In order to carry out a Teleportation Rescue for Starfleet troops, Chapel has to engineer a bypass to get one of the damaged transporters operational, which will require purging the pattern buffer. She and M'Benga previously stored a wounded Starfleet officer in the buffer because he was too injured to treat without a full surgical suite. When she hesitates, M'Benga deletes his pattern for her. It's battlefield triage: he couldn't be saved, when others could be.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: An Implied case with M'Benga. While his killing of Dak'Rah was not entirely unjustified, given the atrocities the Klingon committed, such a killing of a prominent Klingon Ambassador—even one who openly defected to the Federation—is indicated as being the reason that tensions with the Klingon Empire continue to remain so openly hostile for the next 33 years until the signing of the Khitomer Accords. Furthermore, openly exposing Dak'Rah's past as having ordered such a horrid massacre likely made Starfleet officers even more unwilling to trust Klingon peace attempts, furthering prejudices to the point that a literal conspiracy would be formed to try and stop any treaty.
- A lesser example is when M'Benga gives a wounded trooper a pep talk to pull him out of a Heroic BSoD. It works so well that the young soldier volunteers to return to the battle and promptly gets killed.
- Not Proven: It's implied that Pike's skeptical of M'Benga's account of the fight and that Dak'Rah was killed in "self-defense", but with the ambiguity, M'Benga sticking to his story, and Chapel corroborating said account, Pike can't prove anything and has to drop it.
- Power at a Price: Even though Protocol 12 boosts the user's combat abilities, Starfleet has prohibited its use because of its negative side effects.
- Previously on…: The recap reel includes the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which has the weird effect of showing DISCO-style Klingons before the appearance of Dak'Rah, who represents the SNW return to TNG-style Klingons.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Una isn't happy that Ortegas is being so openly disdainful of Dak'Rah and the Klingon Empire, but she enforces no disciplinary action against her because she understands that Ortegas's time in the war wasn't easy. When an opportunity comes to get Dak'Rah off the ship early, she persuades Pike to take it because she knows how badly the ambassador's presence is affecting crew morale.
- Pike knows that M'Benga isn't telling the whole truth about what happened between him and Dak'Rah, but doesn't reprimand or guilt-trip him, instead offering to help work things out. When M'Benga refuses, Pike accepts it and allows him to deal with things his own way.
- Refusal of the Call: Starfleet black ops try to recruit M'Benga because his reputation as a soldier precedes him. At the very least, they'd appreciate having access to "Protocol 12", since he still has the formula. M'Benga denies both requests, though the brutality of the final assault drives him to personally take out the Klingon leadership to end the battle.
- Right Behind Me: Ortegas goes on about how Dak'Rah is known as the "Butcher of J'gal" just as he and Pike enter the bridge behind her. Luckily, he doesn't take offense.
- Rousing Speech: M'Benga gives a despairing Inman a speech on why they're fighting.Inman: What are we doing here, Doc?
M'Benga: Why did you join Starfleet, Ensign?
Inman: To explore. Learn. I don't know... none of the stuff that I've been doing lately.
M'Benga: I joined to find new ways of healing people. With Starfleet, you learn how the rest of the universe treats its maladies. And this war, it's a disease eating at the heart of the Federation. If we let the Klingons conquer every colony in the sector, they won't stop. They won't go back to Qo'noS. All of us have to remember what we love most about back home. We fight for them. We fight hoping it doesn't change us. Hoping...we don't come home different. But if we don't fight, we don't win. The disease takes over. And none of us have a home to go back to.
Inman: I just wish we could stop this without all this dying.
M'Benga: We have to fight so the people we love can have a chance to live in peace. That's Starfleet. - Shell-Shocked Veteran: The episode develops the lingering trauma that M'Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas all still carry from the Klingon War in the 2250s, as depicted in the first season of Discovery. Some of them handle it decidedly better than others.
- Shout-Out: The Mobile Combat Surgical Unit shown in the flashbacks to J'Gal is very similar to the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital depicted in M*A*S*H complete with a Malaproper CMO in Buck Martinez, a la Henry Blake.
- Shown Their Work: Open heart massage, which Nurse Chapel performs on a wounded Starfleet serviceman in one of the flashbacks, is a very real emergency medicine technique that works pretty much exactly as depicted. It's a substitute for CPR used for cardiac arrests during chest surgery wherein a medical professional manually pumps a stopped heart to keep blood flowing and hopefully restart it.
- Spiritual Antithesis:
- To "The Conscience Of The King", which dealt with a main Trek character on the Enterprise dealing with a figure from a traumatic moment in his past. Unlike Kodos, who committed a massacre and insists he would have been vindicated for his crimes despite the obvious feelings of guilt he has, Dak'Rah won't apologize for his actions despite claiming to be trying to make up for them, and was really a Dirty Coward who ran and lied to Starfleet that he killed his own men in disgust. M'Benga and Chapel, like Kirk and Lieutenant Riley, are deeply troubled by the presence of the one responsible for their traumas, but their acts of vengeance are left ambiguous as to whether or not they killed him deliberately and lied about who started the fight, whereas Kirk's own desires for justice and vengeance were clouded enough, but never acted upon since he had to stop Riley from killing Kodos.
- It's also one to "In The Pale Moonlight", where a Starfleet Officer is forced to content with committing morally dubious actions in wartime, except M'Benga has to contend with the war coming back to haunt him years after the conflict, whereas Sisko committed his sins in the middle of one.
- And to "Duet", which also features an officer who was involved in a war confronting a former enemy known as "the Butcher", exposing that this person is living a lie, pushing them into admitting their cowardice, and ending with them being killed. Except that Marritza posed as a war criminal because he was disgusted by his cowardice in not standing up against the true Butcher of Gallitep and thinks he deserves to be hated and that Cardassia needs to own up to its crimes, and the episode ends with Kira saddened and horrified by his death (at the hands of a random Bajoran), while Dak'Rah blamed his war crimes on others and hid his cowardice in escaping afterwards in order to be seen as a good man, and the episode ends with M'Benga stating he's not sorry the man's dead (by M'Benga's own hands).
- Stealing the Credit: Dak'Rah is known to his fellow Klingons as the "Butcher of J'Gal" for supposedly killing three of his officers in disgust at the atrocities they had committed, which he cites as the reason why he chose to defect to the Federation. In reality, it was M'Benga who killed the officers while jacked up on Protocol 12, and they were defending their commanding officer from him as he fled like a coward. M'Benga never took credit out of shame over what happened, and Rah never corrected the record because the truth looked even worse for him. M'Benga angrily accuses the Klingon of turning him into a monster.M'Benga: I looked for you. And now here you are, using the blood on my hands to make yourself a saint.
- Suicide Mission: The frontal assault on the Klingon position is doomed to fail, a distraction to slip in a team for a Decapitation Strike. Inman being part of the operation, and subsequently dying in it, is what gets M'Benga to personally go after Dak'Rah.
- There Are No Therapists: Though not stated outright, M'Benga's severe PTSD implies that he never received proper therapy.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: In the flashback of M'Benga killing the three Klingon officers, his eyes have the classic "dead on the inside" glaze.
- Trauma Button: The mere sight of Ambassador Dak'Rah triggers flashbacks in Chapel and M'Benga.
- Underestimating Badassery: Dak'Rah was willing to order the massacre of civilians at J'Gal. As soon as he saw just how capable of fighting back the Federation was, he fled and defected.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: In perhaps the darkest Trek episode since "In The Pale Moonlight", the episode takes a look at the horrors of the Federation-Klingon War from the perspective of those fighting to save lives, how it affected them psychologically, and what happens when the horrors of their past come back to haunt them. There's virtually no levity to be seen, and what few lighthearted moments exist are often in the shadow of otherwise uncomfortable moments.
- War Crime Subverts Heroism: The ugly secret that Dak'Rah wants to keep from being discovered is that he didn't turn against his own people for any noble reason at J'Gal, he did it merely to save his own skin at the time. He didn't really kill his own officers, and not only did he not feel disgust at the killing of innocent civilians, he actually ordered his troops to do it and took part in it himself. He took credit for M'Benga's killing of his men while he escaped, and then tried to use that lie to defect to the Federation and work as an ambassador to foster peace. Five years later, he tries to cozy up to M'Benga to gain his forgiveness and support without making any real effort to acknowledge or atone for his real crimes. M'Benga kills him for it.
- War Is Hell: In a similar fashion to "The Siege of AR-558", this episode provides direct glimpses into the true horror of the Federation-Klingon War on the ground level.
- Wham Episode: This is easily the darkest episode of Strange New Worlds since Hemmer's death in "All Those Who Wander", and comes immediately on the heels of the Fish out of Temporal Water screwball comedy "Those Old Scientists". In particular, it takes the kindly M'Benga and shows exactly what skeletons he has in his closet.
- Wham Line:M'Benga: I am the Butcher of J'Gal.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Dak'Rah would be executed for treason if he returned to the Klingon Empire after he took credit for killing his subordinates at J'gal. If the truth were discovered that he actually fled like a Dirty Coward, he'd be executed for dereliction of duty and cowardice which is an arguably even worse outcome for him. This is why he embraces his new role as an ambassador so that he has the Federation's protection and diplomatic immunity, ensuring he never has to face Klingon justice.
