Ask Not

The third episode in the newest crop of Short Treks was "Ask Not," a character study of a fresh-faced young Starfleet officer thrust into a high stakes interaction with one of our heroes.

When her starbase comes under attack, Cadet Sidhu finds herself with an unexpected assignment: keeping guard over Captain Pike, who has been arrested on charges of mutiny. As Tholians pummel the starbase, Pike works to convince Sidhu that she must release him. The young cadet finds herself in a pressure cooker situation that tests her sense of duty.

It turns out that this whole scenario is cooked up to test Sidhu's readiness to become a member of the Enterprise crew. It's a development I feel you kinda-sorta see coming before it's actually revealed... but later than you would if the story actually played fair with the audience.

A great deal about what we see just doesn't make sense. The script, by Kalinda Vasquez, tries to hang a lantern on it by mentioning some of the issues -- yet it doesn't really provide answers to help you reconcile them. How many cadets applying for the Enterprise are undergoing tests that Pike is personally taking part in? It doesn't seem like the best use of his time. Did they give Sidhu a working phaser?

Those questions are actually asked (but not answered) in the episode. But let me add these: Sidhu is nearly injured in an explosion and knocked unconscious at the start of this story. So, are they really injuring people for the sake of a training scenario? How is this all accomplished in this pre-holodeck era? Do they go into Sidhu's work space on the starbase before her shift and rig it with explosives and room shakers and stuff?

Yes, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief here. I also wasn't crazy about the desired outcome of the test. The question being posed to Cadet Sidhu is whether context matters, or you're supposed to follow orders no matter the situation. It turns out that Pike is looking for someone who will ignore context, set aside all evidence and arguments, and follow the chain of command. So I guess this is one of those reminders we get from time to time that Starfleet is a military organization, despite the relaxed structure we see every week. I understand the military generally works this way. But I still find it hard to stand up and cheer for a protagonist who is "just following orders."

I don't think that's the primary message the writer was trying to send here, though. That's because, notably, this is a scenario of power imbalance in which gender plays a major role. This isn't a #MeToo story in the text, but the subtext is very much that of a man used to getting his way trying to dominate a woman into giving him what he wants. That she stands up to him and is rewarded is the message I suspect they were going for.

And as essentially a "two-hander scene," the episode is pretty good. Amrit Kaur as Cadet Sidhu manages to hold the screen with Anson Mount as Pike. The two have a great back-and-forth that really covers a lot of ground in what's actually just a few minutes. (This is a very short Short Trek.) Pike tries pleading and ordering, appeals to ambition and emotion and more, and Sidhu parries it all. Get past the implausibility of the scenario, and it certainly does turn out to test a lot.

Still, it's just not my favorite overall. It's another installment making the case for a regular "Captain Pike's Enterprise" series (yep, he's charismatic; let's see more of him), but beyond that, I'd say it's just a B-.