Part of the joy of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that it takes risks, both in terms of the stories it tells and the formats it chooses to tell them in. Most of the time, those risks pay off. After all, the show has done murder mysteries, musicals, courtroom dramas, and animated crossovers with ease. But sometimes, its dedication to trying new things can take the series to strange places. Such is the case with “What Is Starfleet?,” an episode that’s also sort of a version of the documentary that Ortegas’s younger brother Beto has been making over the course of the season. It’s all very meta, but in a way that comes off feeling annoying as often as it does entertaining.

The concept of the hour is certainly fun enough. The forced distance (physical and otherwise) of documentary-style

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