YMMV / Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E2 "Ad Astra Per Aspera"

• Anvilicious: In the finest tradition of Star Trek. The episode takes the Federation's No Transhumanism Allowed laws, established since "Space Seed", and calls them what they are: institutionalized prejudice, likening them directly to Jim Crow and apartheid, which are driven home by the fact that Neera Ketoul's actor Yetide Badaki is black. Also, Una hiding the truth from Starfleet and being threatened with discharge after being outed is a not-very-subtle analogy for LGBTQ+ service members currently, who, less than fifteen years after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was abolished, are facing renewed backlash in many quarters against not only being in the military but existing openly at all. Interestingly, it also makes a point that while Una's acquittal is a step in the right direction, it is only a step: these kinds of fights aren't short or easy.
• Broken Aesop: The episode can't decide whether it's an allegory for prejudice against circumstances of birth (race, sexual identity, etc) or of culture (religion, ethnicity, etc). Both groups are brought up as examples of bigotry in Earth's past that are overcome, yet neither really applies to Una's situation.
  • The issue at hand is that Una lied to Starfleet about being a member of the Illyrian species. But the episode also states that Illyrians were given provisional Federation membership upon the condition that they cease genetic modifications, and many Illyrians did comply. The reason Una has genetic modifications is that her family gave them to her after her birth. So the problem is not really "being Illyrian", and if Una were unaugmented, there's no reason Starfleet would oppose her as a law-abiding member of the Federation.
  • There's also the parallel of the suffering of refugee migrants. However, suffering like Una faced only seems to exist in Federation society (there's nothing to suggest that she wouldn't have lived a happy life in Illyrian society). Thus Una is not really a migrant and the reason that she is seeking asylum within the Federation is that… she suffered by living within the Federation.
  • The entire premise of treating No Transhumanism Allowed laws as institutionalized bigotry came pre-broken. In the entire history of the franchise there was only one positive example of an augmented human. Other than Dr. Bashir, all augmented humans were Smug Supers, the best of whom were a group of anti-social, emotionally stunted asylum patients, and the worst were genocidal megalomaniacs. The episode successfully showed the problems with the way the Federation applied the laws to Illyrians, but didn't come close to showing that outlawing genetic augmentation in the first place was wrong.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: While we know that the anti-Augments laws will not change anytime soon, five episodes later, we find out that Neera's fight for Una will have long-lasting consequences for Starfleet as a whole, inspiring generations of cadets.
• Les Yay: The episode seems to lightly imply that Neera and Una may have been more than just friends, between their acrimonious split (ostensibly due to Neera's brother's death and Una leaving to attend Starfleet Academy) and the fact during their goodbye at the end of the episode, the camera lingers on their held hands for longer than you'd expect with a strictly platonic duo. It doesn't hurt that actor Yetide Badaki is openly bisexual.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • We learn that there are Illyrians who, unlike Una's family, agreed to the Federation's conditions of not doing any future modifications. On the other end of the spectrum, there are Illyrians who chose to self-isolate into the "Illyrian half" of the city away from the Federation. We also learn that there are Illyrians who are unable to "pass" as an unaugmented individual. And yet none of this is brought up after it is first mentioned and Illyrians are treated as a monolith of augmented individuals.
  • We never get to see Pike being brought up to speed with the last few eventful days. (Especially since Pike assured Spock that Enterprise wouldn't have to leave the Starbase, and look how that went.)
    "Welcome back, Captain. While you were away, we got our security officer back and even recruited a new chief engineer who is actually a Lanthanite! Plus, Spock stole the Enterprise, stopped some bad guys from igniting another war with the Klingons, and negotiated a truce with them while drinking blood wine! Anyway, how was your trip?"

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