#anyway guys next season m'benga GETS A HAPPY STORY

[ssaalexblake]

Under the Cloak of War has awakened a fascination in me over how Pike’s naivety and idealism was the result of a deliberate decision on the command of starfleet. Admiral Cornwell tells us so in Discovery. They kept him away from this horror on purpose, because he IS starfleet and they did not want to lose that. 

Somebody in the leadership of starfleet knew that when this war ended, they’d Need somebody in a position of influence who was in no way affected by it and could do the hard things that somebody who had been in the thick of it could not (and they were serious about that not being the job of who was involved. We’re given three characters who were involved in the war and All of them find this hellish, triggering and infuriating, and they are never asked to see the light by the narrative. There is no this side/that side about it for them. They are allowed and supported in their reactions in that they are not censured for it). 

Starfleet command knew what it would do to most of their officers and deliberately engineered a situation for somebody to do the hard jobs afterwards. Those people are Pike, and Una, and Spock, and Most of the people stationed on the enterprise.  

I don’t really know where i’m going with this, but it is gripping me. The inherent knowledge of the brass that the idealism of starfleet cannot survive in the conditions of the war, and possible a tacit acknowledgement that maybe starfleet principles Are a little naive but that they like them that way, thank you very much. 

And it’s even more fascinating that after this whole clusterfuck, Pike suddenly realises that he has been naive all this time. He didn’t know. Una knew, she was running damage control the whole episode because of his naivety even if she was very subtle and respectful about it. Pike wasn’t really confronted with just How badly this had affected everybody until his conversation with M’Benga at the end. And it speaks to the respect they have for each other they they understand why they differ in perspective and can be opposite in this without it being an issue considering how much of a contentious subject it is. 

I do genuinely think this is fascinating. Because starfleet are right, they needed somebody like Pike and he had to, realistically, be the one to do jobs like this in the hard days after the war. But deliberately keeping him naive caused him to seriously misjudge not only his own officers who had been involved, but Also Dak’Rah and it led to serious Serious consequences and one more casualty of said war he missed. 

There was no winning for anybody in this situation. I think this episode was Pike realising that.