After last week’s lighthearted crossover episode, the Star Trek pendulum swings back with the heaviest episode Strange New Worlds has produced to date (even counting that terrifying Gorn Babies episode that ended in Hemmer’s death). In some ways, it’s been a long time coming. As fun an episode as “The Broken Circle†— the season-two premiere — is, it’s laced with allusions to M’Benga and Chapel’s time serving together in the Klingon War, particularly their stint on J’Gal. After injecting themselves with an unknown substance — we learn the name in this episode — we witnessed them going into a berserker rage with an assurance that suggested they’d been there before. The Chapel we know is almost unfailingly upbeat, and M’Benga radiates kindness and concern. But it’s been clear for a while that they’ve seen and done some things they’d rather forget.
With this episode, it all comes rushing back thanks to what Pike calls “a special visitor.†Pike clearly sees his visit as a positive. After all, Ambassador Dak’Rah (Robert Wisdom) — “Rah†for short — is responsible for spreading peace throughout the galaxy, most recently in the Prospero system. That Dak’Rah is a Klingon complicates matters, however, in spite of the ease with which he seems to charm Pike. As Pike points out, most of the Enterprise crew has no direct experience of the war. But those who do view Klingons, particularly this Klingon, in a different light.
That extends to the bridge, where Rah interrupts Ortegas debating the pros and cons of a Klingon peace ambassador with Uhura (who’s firmly pro-Rah) as their guest joins them on the bridge. Ever the diplomat, Rah pretends not to have heard and tries to win Ortegas over. He even downplays his pain when Spock’s attempt to produce a raktajino burns his hand. That brings him to Sick Bay, where the barely contained fury on M’Benga’s usually placid face instantly expresses the divide between who Rah presents himself as and who M’Benga still believes him to be.
But who is Rah? Is he a true Federation convert, or is that a convenient front? We learn he’s lied about at least part of his defection story, but does that mean he’s dishonest through and through? And, even so, does this matter when balanced against his good deeds? “Under the Cloak of War†never really answers the question. Instead, it stays in a moral gray area up to a series of final scenes that blur what really happens and who’s telling the truth while forcing us to look at Chapel and M’Benga differently. What happens here is undoubtedly going to haunt future episodes.
What drives M’Benga’s (maybe) murderous rage? The episode provides a clear answer to that question via its flashbacks to the Klingon War and M’Benga and Chapel’s time on the Moon of J’Gal, where they meet and form the supportive partnership we’ve witnessed over the course of the show. That meeting takes place, the onscreen text tells us, “a few years ago†and in the midst of wartime chaos shortly after Chapel deploys what’s essentially a Starfleet MASH unit in the middle of a combat zone. Once on the ground, she’s greeted by Commander “Everyone Calls Me Buck†Martinez (Clint Howard), the unit’s chief medical officer and a man fond of malapropisms like, “Apparently, a watched pot doesn’t get the oil.†That’s in reference to the lack of an internal-organ regenerator, a sign of what Buck calls Tent City’s meager supplies that will have dire repercussions later on.
After Buck informs Chapel she’ll be serving as head nurse, he points her toward M’Benga and lets her find her own way as the wounded start arriving via transport. While performing triage, Chapel gets another indication of just how bad things are when she has to decide what to do with a badly wounded soldier in obvious need of an internal-organ regenerator. M’Benga informs her they need to clear the pad but presents a temporary solution to the problem by storing the soldier’s pattern in the transport’s buffer. (Shades of what he’ll later do with his daughter.) It’s a dubious makeshift solution, but at least it’s something. A bit later, we see the partnership gel as they desperately try to save a patient whose heart has stopped while landing on what amounts to a team motto: “We got this.â€
Back in the present, Pike pays M’Benga a visit under the pretense of borrowing some Deltan parsley, which is apparently delicious in small measures but deadly in excess. M’Benga sees through the excuse and even seems to take it in stride when Pike tells him that he has orders for Klingon War veterans to make Rah feel welcome. To that end, he’s hosting a dinner for their guest (complete with jambalaya) and would like M’Benga and Chapel to attend. He doesn’t order them to, but it’s clearly important.
This is a dubious directive and one it seems unlikely Pike would try to institute without orders, as fond as he is of hosting his crew for dinner. Just how misguided it is quickly becomes apparent over the course of the meal. “There’s a chance General … Ambassador Rah has genuinely reformed,†M’Benga tells Ortegas before they head in. “Sometimes you pretend something long enough it becomes the truth.†They agree to put on “the Starfleet face†and get through it. But it’s not that easy. While Rah amuses the others with anecdotes about his adventures in diplomacy, Chapel struggles to hide her discomfort. She doesn’t even want to talk to Spock about it.
Spock decides to distract Rah with a comparison between Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Klingon thoughts on the subject, which creates an opening for Chapel and M’Benga to drift away, cueing another flashback, one in which an Andorian agent tries to recruit M’Benga, who has a previously unmentioned background in black ops, for a mission to take out a particularly horrible Klingon leader: Rah.
Back at the dinner, the illusion of politeness breaks down after Rah brings up J’Gal. “My ideals shifted,†he says, part of a pattern of disparaging Klingon ways he’s been engaging in since boarding the Enterprise. Ortegas isn’t buying it. Recalling the Klingon battle cry of “Remain Klingon†after Rah attempts to toast to J’Gal, she leaves, followed by Chapel, then, after Pike notices his distress, M’Benga, but not before Rah extends the offer to engage in some Klingon martial arts.
If he knew M’Benga’s background, he undoubtedly would have reconsidered. It’s a tense session, one in which Rah proposes an alliance because of the powerful statement it sends. In turn, M’Benga asks if Rah really killed his own men to escape and defect. But he already knows the answer.
His time on J’Gal pushed him over the edge. After having to purge the pattern of the badly wounded soldier from the transporter buffer and watching the soldier he and Chapel saved head off to war, then return a corpse and the death of the Orion agent, M’Benga decides to take on Rah himself. Rah earned the name “The Butcher of J’Gal†for taking out his own men, but it was M’Benga who did the killing and would have killed Rah, too, if he had the chance.
When Rah and M’Benga meet again in Sick Bay, M’Benga can’t hide his true feelings. Rah keeps up his plea for M’Benga to join his peace initiative, even after M’Benga confronts him with the fact that he ordered the worst atrocities of J’Gal himself. “I’ve been doing the best I can to make up for my transgressions,†he says before M’Benga reveals himself as the true Butcher of J’Gal. Then the conversation takes a turn for the worse. M’Benga opens a case containing the weapon he used to kill the Klingons under Rah’s command. Rah keeps up his plea for peace. They struggle. Rah is stabbed and killed.
But what exactly happened remains obscured, both to us and Chapel, who witnesses the incident behind a wall of opaque class and then testifies that Rah was the aggressor and grabbed the knife, forcing M’Benga to defend himself. She can’t know this for sure. But she testifies to it anyway. Whether she knows the truth, or even wants to, remains unclear. Pike’s shocked but seems to buy the story because DNA evidence confirms the knife as the property of the Butcher of J’Gal, which is true. But Pike’s assigning that title to the wrong person.
Pike’s no dummy. Talking to M’Benga, he says, “I like to think that if you did instigate the fight with Rah, if it got away from you somehow, you could talk to me. I’d be on your side. I’d work it out.†But, M’Benga insists, he didn’t instigate the fight, and Pike has to take him at his word. Nonetheless, M’Benga throws out a hypothetical. What if he did murder Rah, but Rah was a really awful person? Would that matter? Pike, a Boy Scout to the end, can’t sign on to this hypothetical. “You haven’t lived my life,†M’Benga tells him. “You have the privilege of believing in what’s best in people.†When M’Benga tells Pike he’s glad Rah is dead, all his Captain can do is nod and walk away.
So did M’Benga start the fight? We don’t know for sure, which is by design, but little evidence points to Rah snapping and turning combative. Whether he was faking his love for peace or a true believer, he didn’t waver from his message at any point in the episode. (And even if he was faking, that doesn’t take away what he accomplished as an ambassador.) But it’s still hard not to see M’Benga’s side. He lived through the unthinkable, and here was the person most directly responsible for the worst of what he witnessed and experienced. Posing ethical questions is something Star Trek does frequently, but it rarely leaves them this unresolved, much less raises the possibility that a major and extremely sympathetic character might have crossed a line from which he can never return. The damaged, blinking biobed that M’Benga sees as a metaphor for his own broken state suggests this episode might end, but it’s not really over.
Hit It!
• It’s probably best not to get too hung up on chronology, but when did the events on J’Gal take place? It’s a “few years ago,†yet Pike and M’Benga affirm they’ve known each other for a long, long time. Also, M’Benga and Chapel appear to be roughly the same age now as during the Klingon War. Will we get answers? Does it matter?
• “Protocol 12†is the name of the performance-enhancing drug taken by M’Benga and Chapel. What’s more, we learn that M’Benga is its creator, it has deleterious health effects, and it’s not Starfleet-approved.
• The relentless repetition of “incoming transfer†does as much to establish the oppressiveness of work at the MASH unit as the blood and explosions.
• Clint Howard has a long history with Star Trek. He’s guested on Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery. But his most famous appearance remains his work as Balok, the childish antagonist in the original series episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.†It’s a Trek debut for the great character actor Robert Wisdom, most recently seen on Barry.
• “I am having difficulty watching you experience such obvious distress†is a sweet sentiment coming from Spock. But here, he also learns there are some problems no partner, no matter how caring, can fix.
• This episode is written by Davy Perez, previously responsible for season one’s “Memento Mori†(as a co-writer) and “All Who Wander†(the aforementioned Gorn Babies episode) and this season’s “Among the Lotus Eaters†(also as a co-writer). Those are all intense hours of television, suggesting his name in the credits means viewers best steel themselves. Jeff W. Byrd, an in-demand TV director and producer, directs.