“Under the Cloak of War” continues Star Trek tradition of exploring war trauma

“Under the Cloak of War” is a new story about old questions of war.

Star Trek fans seem divided over season two, episode eight of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Under the Cloak of War.” The episode revisits Dr. M’Benga’s experiences during the Klingon War (depicted in season one of Star Trek: Discovery). Both M’Benga and Nurse Chapel served on the Federation colony world of J’Gal, where then-Klingon General, now-Federation Ambassador Dak’Rah committed brutal acts of war, including killing the colony’s children. In response, M’Benga carried out a covert mission to kill the Klingon command on J’Gal. He killed the three Klingons for whose deaths Dak’Rah later took credit as “proof” of his new loyalty to Starfleet.

At the end of “Under the Cloak of War,” M’Benga and Dak’Rah (now going simply as Rah because “formal Klingon names are a mouthful”) fight in the Enterprise’s sickbay. Rah’s presence has been retraumatizing M’Benga (and other Enterprise crew members) throughout the episode. And though we don’t clearly see every moment of the fight—we watch it from Chapel’s perspective, through a semitransparent partition—the episode’s heavy insinuation if not outright assertion is that M’Benga kills Rah.

Captain Pike seems to suspect this truth, though he acknowledges a tribunal will likely clear M’Benga. After all, the d’k tahg knife with which Rah was killed, and which M’Benga possessed, still carries the DNA of the three Klingons Rah supposedly killed on J’Gal. In any event, M’Benga expresses no sorrow for Rah’s death. “I happen to know there are some things in this world that don’t deserve forgiveness . . . . I didn’t start the fight. But I’m glad he’s dead.”

Online, some fans, such as Admiral Funnest Frontier (@DecksLower), are voicing full support for M’Benga.

Others, such as La Girafe (@Lyrical_Girafe), are raising important and nuanced concerns about the episode’s ramifications:

“Under the Cloak of War” isn’t Star Trek’s first foray into war-related trauma

I’m still processing my feelings about “Under the Cloak of War.” I generally want Star Trek to show us striving to be our best possible selves. (It’s for this reason I usually find Section 31 stories so distressing—in the future, we still won’t have learned how to build a society without resorting to chicanery and skullduggery?) I might have preferred an ending in which M’Benga and Pike fully agree that “everyone deserves a second chance,” or one in which Rah faced the due process of Federation law.

On the other hand, one way Star Trek remains relevant is demanding we scrutinize the position from which we make our moral choices. M’Benga’s assertion that he doesn’t have Pike’s “privilege of believing in what’s best in people” is powerful testimony I can’t quickly dismiss. An ending in which Rah lived and M’Benga came to terms with his past might risk making too little of the trauma the episode so devastatingly depicts. I don’t sanction murder, but I also don’t want to blithely condemn the doctor for “failing to live up to Starfleet’s ideals.”

“Under the Cloak of War” is only the most recent time Star Trek has raised thorny questions about dealing with the trauma of war. As I watched it, I remembered many episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, for instance—especially “The Siege of AR-558” and “In the Pale Moonlight,” both episodes that showed the horrors of war and the moral quandaries facing those who fight it.

But so much of Deep Space Nine dealt with war, I’ve focused here on episodes from three other Star Trek series that also explore how, and to what extent, survivors can process warfare trauma.

“I Never Wanted the Blood on My Hands to Stain You”: “The Conscience of the King” (The Original Series, Season 1, Episode 13)

At first glance, the original series’ “Shakespeare episode” may seem very different from “Under the Cloak of War.” It’s arguably better remembered as the second of Bruce Hyde’s two memorable appearances as Lt. Kevin Riley, or as the first episode in which Nichelle Nichols as Uhura sang “Beyond Antares.”

But at its core, “The Conscience of the King” is an episode about processing trauma—if not, strictly speaking, the trauma of war, then war-adjacent trauma. When food supply ships failed to reach the Federation colony on Tarsus IV, Kodos, its governor, “seized full power and declared emergency martial law.”

Like General Dak’Rah, Kodos targeted civilian colonists—executing 4,000 of his own, including the families of Kevin Riley and, perhaps, of a young James Kirk. (Unless Kirk was on Tarsus IV by himself; his time on Tarsus IV has received no canonical mention since this episode.)  As Rah became known as “the Butcher of J’Gal,” Kodos became known to history as “Kodos the Executioner.” And, like Rah, Kodos tried to reinvent himself in peace time—not as a Federation ambassador, but as thespian Anton Karidian.

Also like Dak’Rah, Kodos escaped punishment for his crimes. He was presumed dead, though his corpse was never positively identified. Riley wanted to kill Kodos, as M’Benga apparently killed Rah. Though Kirk prevents Riley from doing so, Kodos still dies. He steps in front of a phaser blast his daughter Lenore intended for Kirk. Lenore had set herself the task of “saving” her father by killing all the survivors from Tarsus IV who might identify him.

“I never wanted the blood on my hands to stain you,” Kodos tells Lenore. But, as both “The Conscience of the King” and “Under the Cloak of War” illustrate, those who commit bloody deeds in war or warlike conditions can very rarely control how far that blood will flow, and which lives it will ultimately destroy.

“It’s Not You I Hate, Cardassian…”: “The Wounded” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 12)

“The Wounded” is the episode that introduced the Cardassians into the Star Trek mythos. We’d never heard of this aggressive galactic power before we discovered the Federation had been at war with them, and was now struggling to hammer out peace treaties. In many ways, the situation between the Federation and the Cardassian Empire in “The Wounded,” then, is like the situation between the Federation and the Klingon Empire in “Under the Cloak of War.” Both sides are trying to forge a way forward after a brutal and bloody war.

And some who fought the war are having more success moving on than others. The presence of Cardassians aboard the Enterprise-D upsets and unsettles Miles O’Brien as much as Ambassador Dak’Rah’s presence aboard Captain Pike’s Enterprise upsets and unsettles Lieutenant Ortegas, though arguably not as much as it upsets either Nurse Chapel or Dr. M’Benga. O’Brien, after all, does not kill any of the Cardassian visitors.

But he certainly has strong feelings about and strong words for them. In one of the episode’s most memorable scenes (which you can watch in the video above), O’Brien remembers killing a Cardassian during the war. “When I was a kid,” he says, “I’d worry about swatting a mosquito. It’s not you I hate, Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you.”

The scene resonates with M’Benga and Rah’s exchange over an awkward dinner in Pike’s quarters. When Rah asserts the atrocities on J’Gal changed him for the better, M’Benga cooly responds, “J’Gal changed a lot of us.”

Because it usually tells tales set in peacetime, it’s rare for Star Trek to foreground the ways in which war can change people for the worse. “The Wounded” was one of the first times The Next Generation did so, and remains one of the best in the franchise.

“…I Knew Exactly What I Had Become”: “Jetrel” (Star Trek: Voyager, Season 1, Episode 15)

“Jetrel” is one of the strongest episode of Voyager’s first season, thanks in large part to stellar performances from Ethan Phillips as Neelix and guest star James Sloyan as Dr. Ma’bor Jetrel, the Haakonian scientist who developed the Metreon Cascade, a devastating weapon of mass destruction the Haakonians deployed in their war against the Talaxians.

Like Rah, Jetrel is trying to redeem himself and atone for sins he committed during war. He has devised a way, he thinks, to bring back victims of the Cascade using transporter technology. He tells Captain Janeway his motive: “I wanted the world to know I’m not a monster. My theories can be used to heal, as well as to destroy.”

If Jetrel reminds you of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” who is currently at the center of much cultural conversation, he should. As author and Star Trek podcaster Duncan Barrett wrote for StarTrek.com in 2020, the episode draws deliberate parallels between the real and the fictional scientists, and their respective breakthroughs. Barrett notes that Jetrel’s reaction to seeing the Cascade explode—“.. . . . I knew at that moment exactly what I had become”—is an overt reference to Oppenheimer’s quotation of the Bhagavad Gita to describe his thoughts when the atomic bomb was tested: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

Just before he dies of the radiation disease the Cascade caused, Jetrel receives the forgiveness he has been seeking throughout the episode from Neelix. But although Neelix does not kill Jetrel as M’Benga kills Rah, he makes it clear how “the Cascade was a punishment for all of us, for our hatred, our brutality.” The trauma of war spares no one.

Humanity still has a long way to go before we reach the prosperous and generally peaceful future Star Trek depicts. With episodes like “Under the Cloak of War” taking its place alongside earlier episodes about war, the franchise will continue asking viewers to tackle the tough questions that could bring us closer to that future.