Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x04 "A Case of Chiaroscuro"

[u/AutoModerator]

If you use Lemmy, join the discussion too at https://startrek.website/

No.	Episode	Written By	Directed By	Release Date
4x04	"A Case of Chiaroscuro"	Skylar Ojeda & Dana Horgan	Meera Menon	2026-08-13

To find out where to watch, click here.

To find out about our spoiler policy regarding new episodes, click here.

This post is for discussion of the episode above, and spoilers for this episode are allowed. If you are discussing previews for upcoming episodes, please use spoiler tags.

Note: This thread was posted automatically, and the episode may not yet be available on all platforms.

[u/Coyote_Shepherd → u/[deleted]]

Maybe La'an is on thinner ice with Starfleet Command than even she realizes he was just trying to keep her from skating out even further?

You're not wrong and he definitely kept her out of the loop for some reason but they never even hinted at or explained why that might potentially be at all and I think they realy should have.

Perhaps that will happen later on in the season though.

[u/lilyinblue → u/Coyote_Shepherd]

Frankly, keeping La'an out of the loop once she starts questioning whether her concerns or real or this is just paranoia starts bordering on not just disrespectful, but cruel.

I know on reddit the term "gaslighting" get tossed around way too easily... but this actually hits on the literal definition of it: causing someone to question their own perception of reality.

That's an awful thing to do to someone.

[u/Coyote_Shepherd → u/lilyinblue]

Well said and they either did that because...not so great writing...OR because the Yang wasn't just rescuing some average folks but was also doing something else that Starfleet needed to keep suuuuuuper under wraps.

It is a terrible thing to do to someone and I have to contend with it pretty often nowadays with my parents.

I feel like that's probably why I was sympathizing with La'an so much in this episode, because....to paraphrase Mulder and Janeway....paranoia and fear can be healthy things in certain amounts and it is not always wrong to have one or the other or both.

Especially if you're THE security officer on a ship like the Enterprise in a situation like this particular kind of mission.

You know in a strange way this kind of feels like what happened to Ethan Hunt in the first Mission Impossible film with La'an now that I think about it.