Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 episode "Under The Cloak Of War." Read at your own risk!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds delivered what might be the most grim episode yet in modern Trek with "Under The Cloak Of War." The Season 2 episode centered on Babs Olusanmokun's M'Benga and Nurse Chapel's time during the Klingon war and coping with that when a former Klingon war criminal-turned-Starfleet ambassador named Rah visits the ship. CinemaBlend had a chance to speak to director Jeff Byrd about the wild ending, and got some answers about it and the alternate scenes that were filmed.
The episode revealed that Rah's famed story about executing his own men after being ashamed by their atrocities and defecting to Starfleet was a lie. M'Benga knew this, as he was part of the strike team responsible for taking Rah out and killing the Klingons while Rah fled for his life. M'Benga was angry at Rah for benefitting from the reputation as the "Butcher of J'Gal," while he suffered with the pain of knowing the Klingon got away with many of his atrocious acts due to the story. Rah, rattled that M'Benga would expose his story and his cowardice, approached him while M'Benga was holding a knife.
Chapel walked in as the two men were seen behind frosted glass fighting. Rah ended up dead, and while Chapel says M'Benga acted in self-defense, we know from the perspective shown that she's unclear what happened. I asked director Jeff Byrd if it was the intention to leave the incident open to interpretation and learned a lot about what I'm sure will become a much-debated scene in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. He said:
That is true. We're not supposed to know, but we're supposed to put ourselves into that moment of what we would have done behind that frosted glass. I will tell you this. We did shoot different versions of that ending. There was a version that I did where we actually saw the fight and the killer. We did it on purpose. We wanted to make sure we had different versions just to see how it would feel for us emotionally. To see the fight, to see the killing. Have Chapel witness the killing, and on purpose lie about it as we’ve seen it.
It's interesting to hear that there were multiple versions of the fight scene that played out, especially given the version that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds went with. As Jeff Byrd confirmed in our interview, the audience is not supposed to know whether M'Benga killed Rah, acted in self-defense, or it was an accident.
By settling on an ambiguous ending, Star Trek might've created its biggest moral quandary episode since Voyager's "Tuvix." Jeff Byrd shared with me that he prefers the ending that was settled on the best, mainly because of how it challenges the viewer at home watching with their Paramount+ subscription:
I love that version the best, the version that’s out. I love the version where we don’t really know and we have to insert ourselves in there emotionally. What would you have done? You know, because we will say, 'Oh, you know, I would have done this, or I would have done that.' And this episode allows us to really go, ‘Oh, what were we doing back there,’ or, ‘I would’ve killed him if he attacked me.’ So that was on purpose.
Regardless of where viewers stand on what happened in "Under The Cloak Of War," the incident could ultimately come back to haunt Dr. M'Benga in future episodes. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has yet to answer why M'Benga is the Chief Medical Officer on Pike's Enterprise, but will be a doctor working under Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy as CMO once Kirk takes over. Could M'Benga's incident with Rah result in him stepping down from his position?
That's a question likely saved for an episode in the distant future. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' next Season 2 episode is "Subspace Rhapsody," which will be the franchise's first musical episode. After that, we're on to the Season 2 finale, which will likely bring the Gorn back into the story after the tease of them at the end of Season 2's premiere. I can't imagine M'Benga's story will be revisited in either of those, but it's entirely possible, given Una's surprise arrest at the end of Season 1 despite all that was going on.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes of Season 2 on Thursdays over at Paramount+. Season 2 is almost over, but fortunately, there are still upcoming Trek shows on the calendar to look forward to.
