#sfa tag

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so

i'd joke they're the same picture but nahla thought it was appropriate to nuzzle the kid who just lost his mom and helen at least didn't do that much so

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can't sleep so i'm gonna ramble about how idk how i feel about the way sam's storyline went.

on one hand, it does feel distinctly non-human/sci-fi to give her a thousand years of development off-screen. it probably means Something to the doctor fans who watched his whole backstory in earlier treks as well to see him get to raise this new version of her. i like that she now just so naturally calls him her dad because... he is! he is this version of sam's dad.

i just don't know what to make of reconciling this sam with the old sam.

you could make some argument about how trauma changes people and in her case it is just more literal that she has become someone new. she is embarrassed of the person she used to be and very disconnected from that. i think they're trying to show some core characteristics of hers that persist regardless of her memories--which could be a fun exploration of how much of us are our memories or our personality etc--but i don't know if i'm really picking up on what i'm supposed to be since they did it so late into the season.

i suppose a thousand years for her is really just the equivalent of 17 years lol, so it's not like she was consciously away for our version of 1000 years... but she literally restarted entirely and lived 17-ish years totally cut off from all her friends, barely feeling any attachment to them as this new person. it kinda feels like how much i hate certain memory loss tropes that happen too late in the story, or when shows yeet a character away for a while and when they come back they just are so different and disconnected in a way that does not feel nice or can be resolved when, at least for those shows, it becomes antithetical to the themes of found family and group development.

there is maybe something to be said of the memories of her friends and her old self serving as some kind of foundation for who she has become. i don't FEEL that that's what they were implying. i don't know how much she could consciously have been aware or connected to any of that as essentially a baby.

i think a lot of it is just stuff i need to wait for season 2 to see .-. that's what i'm soooort of forgetting i guess--that we do have another season with her to develop more of this forward. i just hope they do address either the exploration of core personality traits/identity and/or the possibility of the old sam's memories being foundational to how the new sam became herself. otherwise idk. just feels like an odd jump in both her development and her relationship with the doctor guy... like it's unearned, at least in that respect. idk how else they could have done this sort of thing if they were set on the glitch being because she never developed childhood resilience, lol, but maybe even just the doctor literally giving her the data of his memories as a padding of sorts would have been a good way to keep her as sam but give her new aspects and give them more of an innate bond???????????? maybe by having him raise her and manually infuse her with his traits it kind of ends up having a similar effectttt idkkkkk.

ugh. idk. just such a wild storytelling choice.

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something about the show opening with caleb escaping because of his mom and nahla not being able to find him, versus the finale where he escapes to go find his mom and nahla is able to find him and help them both

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this is making me insane

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ok i have some political thoughts now

i think it's like. i don't have a grasp on the star trek Lore TM of decades and decades of media. but i do think there are things at various points in time that starfleet should be criticized for? it makes sense that nus was so mad at them then and it makes sense that anisha still hates them now. it makes sense to take that hatred 16 years into the future, but it doesn't make as much sense to act on that hatred thinking it's going to actually accomplish anything positive when starfleet at this point seems to be doing more good than anything. so it feels cheap that nus's whole vengeance arc is built on a lie, built on an idea he misconstrued as a child about starfleet bombing his planet. it means we can't criticize the starfleet of Now.

i do think nus is less concerned with vengeance and more concerned with the stability and thrill of power and the ability to keep himself out of jail. and he gets that by discrediting starfleet and thriving within the criminal circuit that formed in the years that the federation was so absent., and that still continues to grow because the federation is in a period of rebuilding that can only extend out so far and that only so many planets would want to join. it makes sense for there to be this totally opposing incidental criminal empire thriving against the federation that would see the federation as its enemy. even if they don't have jurisdiction in popular areas, introducing the idea to these non-federation people that there is a better life with starfleet/the federation is a major disruptor to why crime happens at all.

sure, lots of these people themselves ARE criminals the federation isn't going to forgive and, if you assume that everyone in the federation is NOW being provided for unconditionally, that is the biggest reason someone would want to stay far away from them. and that is a complicated issue to navigate. clearly they still have pretty fucked up jail and rehabilitation programs FOR people who commit crimes--would those be forgiven? do you always have to worry about being imprisoned because you did crimes to survive a decade ago in a totally different world? if you killed someone in self defense when you were trying to steal food? there should realistically be a lot of people who don't want to be on the federation's radar but don't have anywhere else to go beyond continuing living in these outer territories.

i guess all that just isn't Enough to then push a huge climactic conflict of a bomb wall around federation territory the same way it is when nus comes out with this story of history being rewritten, about starfleet destroying all except 8 people in his colony in retaliation. That makes starfleet sound monstrous. That makes them sound dangerous, as does the idea that they may be developing weapons--that was also then debunked as a positive energy source actually. so starfleet didn't bomb innocent civilians and starfleet isn't developing weapons of mass destruction, so if you are going to try and establish power over them you need to have a REALLY really good reason stemming from a mix of vengeance and freedom. could you argue that to track down criminals, starfleet goes to inhuman lengths? could you argue that you wanna keep doing crimes but starfleet won't let you? but why are you doing crimes and what kinda crimes are you doing that wouldn't be resolved with universal basic income or whatever? so you need a Good Reason and that Reason can only be Good Enough if it's actually a Lie because if it isn't a Lie then uh oh we have to acknowledge starfleet as bad guys and we can't do that for a show literally named Starfleet Academy.

i am also unsure about if the federation does provide for planets under it that need the help. i imagine that is the benefit of an alliance, but... if you're a criminal like caleb, it's jail or starfleet if you're lucky to even have some lady obsessed with you enough to offer it. caleb isn't afforded the possibility of being provided for, and i know his case is particularly complicated because of where he was arrested and the politics around it all i guess. but his speech about how the academy gave him community and empowerment and so on... it doesn't land for me as well as it should because he shouldn't have had to join the academy to avoid a brutal prison sentence and to actually know if he'd get a next meal. his case is complicated, he is not the best person to study for this, i knowwww. and in an ideal world where general citizens DON'T have to join starfleet for survival, in an ideal world where starfleet ISN'T pushing rehabilitation programs that separate families, then this makes sense. starfleet wouldn't be like the military in our world that preys on people who have nowhere else to go in a system that makes you feel like you have no other choice by design. i don't think that is the case here, or at least i don't think that's the future this version of starfleet is trying to build up for those actually allied with it. it seems like starfleet is more of a last ditch effort for people NOT in allied territories like jay-denn i think, which feels better because then it's not the federation's doing exactly pushing him toward it. the same somewhat goes for caleb due to the intricacies of his criminal record.

idK again i do not know anything about most of the other treks lmfao and i also forgot to watch sfa for a couple months so my memory is not great.

my point is just that nus braka could only justify such an attack on starfleet through something that wasn't even real, and without that, there wouldn't have been a "valid" reason to actually stand against them or criticize them. and that just feels weird. why not instead focus on criminals who want to be pardoned or something? or worlds that had a really tense relationship with the federation in the past? or if starfleet is doing enough? with the way this show presents starfleet i don't think there is room to actually give it in its current form enough faults to justify the big drama they wanted for the finale and i think they could've done better, basically. give ppl reparations or something instead of having nahla say she'll kill herself over her guilt for the zillionth time.

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anyway the nahla and anisha stuff was Crazy . absolutely Fuckin gCrazy

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hey remember we have canon lesbians! here are the canon lesbians we insinuated were canon that one time and only ever referenced the relationship of once more in the whole 10 episodes! we're so good at lesbian representation look!

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i don't think i can wrap my mind around the politics of this show as a whole and if any of it makes any actual sense, but the little moments that make it up are each so emotionally charged i am on the floor