SNW s1e6 "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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I love episodes with no neat resolution, like DS9's In The Pale Moonlight or TNG's Journey's End. But episodes like that are about the struggle with the unresolvable problem. We watch the show's respective captains grapple with and debate the problem for the whole episode.
This episode is mostly a mystery about what the situation with the planet might be. It poses it's dilemma at the end and then immediately throws up its hands.
And honestly, my recollection is that the "unresolvability" is less than there's no conceivable way this society could carry on without child torture, and more that the prime directive means this is all outside of Federation jurisdiction. Which feels more like moral abdication than a real ethical dilemma.
I think there's lots of reasons Le Guin's story works for me when this doesn't, but a big one is that there's no heroic "captain" figure. It's about making the reader face their own complicity in unethical societal structures. I don't feel pushed to do that with SNW because I'm busy yelling at Pike about what he should do, not looking inward.
this is like the core of federation society haha. they wouldn't be able to live with themselves if they couldn't handwave things away with the prime directive.