What Is Starfleet?

I'm not sure why there is often a compulsion to create documentary-style episodes on fiction shows, but they always fall flat. This is no different. The questions asked by the interviewer are so juvenile and offensive that it's hard to tell if it's a consequence of bad writing, or intentional to display his ignorance. The questions the crew put up with wouldn't have been tolerated in any reality. The amount of stuff that was "declassified" that would not have been was silly. I would've rated it higher if the premise had been a documentary that Starfleet refused to release.

The moral ambiguity that was the main theme with the episode was this episode's redeeming quality.

Leave it to the writers of Strange New Worlds to come up with a pretty decent premise for an episode but then proceed to screw it all up. The episode has an Encounter At Farpoint feel to it, but unfortunately the story kept getting interrupted with this documentary style episode. Ortega's brother is such a pointless character, which made the episode kind of pointless. You never really feel for the creature as the story is constantly interrupted. Just 3 episodes left in season 3. What else can the writers screw up?

OMG, what kind of maudlin horse manure are they peddling? For goodness sake, can we get some actual science fiction instead of these low-rent psychological explorations? Yeah, there are moral and ethical implications to what the Federation does, but anytime your takeaway involves saving misunderstood sea creatures, or whatever the hell that thing was, you're pandering to the most simple-minded sentiments of overly sensitive middle-schoolers. How about hiring some actual writers instead of these clueless hacks?

This really could have been an excellent story. But the concept/format allowed it to go to waste. It's as simple as that. Now that there are only 10 episodes per season it seems to me, there isn't time for all these gimmicks. We need good rock solid stories straightforwardly told (which this could easily have been) please.

The writers and directors have to stop doing these "special" episodes. Once every few season... maybe.

Trying to be different, as a common occurrence, distracts from the stories.

Just give me straight up story telling; lose the gimmicks.

Ps. Please tell the director that there are visuals other than close-ups. Ie. Medium shots, wide shots.