3) “Ad Astra per Aspera” – Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
There may be a little bit of a recency bias at work here, and as we said in our recap, the episode is largely limited in what it can do about its core allegory—the rights of genetically augmented peoples within the Federation in the wake of the Eugenics Wars—due to Strange New Worlds’ place in the Trek timeline. But that doesn’t stop it from smartly evolving this classic Star Trek episode style by not having Starfleet turn on its own heroes, or force its way into another world’s legal system, but having an alien being—in this case the Illyrian civil rights advocate Neera (a star turn by Yetide Badaki)—come to the defense of Commander Una, herself an Illyrian, against the Federation’s laws banning genetic modifcation.
