2 Ups And 7 Downs From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.7 — What Is Starfleet?

3. DOWN — Clichés: A Classification

Are you sure there wasn't a subtitle to your documentary, Beto? What Is Starfleet? or, How Many Times Can They (Mostly Pike) Say, "That's Classified"? At least the endless 'pleading the fifth,' or just 'no comment,' was better than Doctor M'Benga's "I cannot recall. I cannot recall." So, you can't recall, to be clear, if you ever scrubbed the sickbay surveillance logs? That's not suspicious AT ALL!

So wrapped up in its in-universe conceit, the episode seemed to forget that its real audience wasn't in the 23rd century. For the viewer at home, what was actually declassified "in the spirit of transparency" (another tired phrase) was barely enough to fit on the back of a postage stamp, and hardly sufficient to pique the interest. The rest of "that's classified," we already knew.

Further down on the list of clichés is the literal framing device on every piece of footage not taken by Beto's own camera. How else are we supposed to know that this is "BRIDGE. HELM" otherwise?