And even it’s nakedly racist (“A contract, is a contract, is a contract-- but only between Ferengi”) and misogynistic (“Females and finances don’t mix.”)

What does that say about capitalism?

Or, keeping up SNW’s traditions of reviving projects from early in Star Trek’s history, we could finally get M’benga leading a medical frigate in the vein of the Hopeship pitch.

Another key takeaway from this that I hadn’t considered before:

Augments aren’t just banned from Starfleet. They can’t become doctors either. Speaking as a Jew my people know firsthand that one of the best ways to create an underclass is to restrict the occupations available to them. Are augments systematically kept out of skilled professions, denied the chance to better themselves and their fellow sapients? Very disturbing possiblity.

It’s important to remember that Earth has an outsize influence on the Federation. The capital is, and always has been, there, and will continue to be until such time as it secedes entirely from the Federation after the Burn. The Academy is there. Starfleet is headquartered there, and grew out of United Earth’s space service. Most of Starfleet is human, most Federation colonies are human. Azetbur was mistaken to call itself a “Homo sapiens-only club” but the fact is that from the beginning, as the only planet with friendly relations with Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime, as the very reason the Federation exists… Earth found itself with a power dynamic that highly favored it.

As such, I don’t think it’s too surprising that a specifically Earthican problem could weigh heavily on the Federation, even as it grew larger and more cosmopolitan.

In essence, Discovery followed the same arc as the Star Wars sequel trilogy. They swung for the fences on doing something wild and asking difficult questions that the franchise had taken for granted; and even if the answer they arrived at was affirming, there were too many loud nerds that couldn’t look past either the flaws that genuinely existed or their own shallow prejudices. Those nerds were loud enough and long enough that the studio walked it back to try to appease them and ended up with something much less interesting, which both alienated defenders of the early direction and could never appease the bad eggs whose criticisms weren’t in good faith, leaving something that only a few appreciated.