S01.E03: Ghost of Illyria

[paulvdb]

Quote

Una must confront a secret she's been hiding when a contagion ravages the ship, incapacitating the rest of the crew.

Premiere date: May 19, 2022

[paigow]

The disease Pike needs to worry about is the Picard Flu... More episodes like this one will  be fatal... Why is Chapel immune?? Everybody knows about Khan... except Kirk...  

[paigow]

The Bashir family must have retrieved all deleted personal logs from the Enterprise.... HR screening never changed in 100 years

[cambridgeguy]

Now that we know what's up with Number One and M'Benga, that just leaves Chapel and Ortega for the big secret/tragic backstory reveal. 

I can't remember exactly when it was invented but at some point Trek doctors could just put someone in stasis until later.  I guess at this point it's impossible, so into the transporter buffer it is.  Good thing M'Benga wasn't on board when the ship was wrecked back in Discovery's S2 finale.

[paigow]

2 minutes ago, cambridgeguy said:

I can't remember exactly when it was invented but at some point Trek doctors could just put someone in stasis until later.  

Like O.G. Khan in 1990 ???

[thuganomics85]

Ah, the old classic "mysterious disease is taking out the crew" storyline.  This time it's one that makes them attracted to light so everyone truly acts like "moths to a flame."  Only in this case it could easily lead to the ship getting destroyed.  Yeah, that's problematic to say the least!

Glad to see Una be the main focus for this one.  So, the big reveal is that she is actually Illyrian this entire time, which can be a bit troublesome since the Federation isn't quite down with them joining Starfleet at the moment.  Not surprised that Pike is going to back her though, because you can't be a true Star Trek captain until you rebel against the establishment!

M'Benga keeping his dying daughter in status inside a transporter is just one of the many reasons where I would kind of be terrified of those things in real life.  I guess by the future they consider it to be no more dangerous in driving a car, but the general idea of just taking you apart molecule by molecule and putting you back together is always going to feel dicy to me.  But I'm guessing that's something I won't have to worry about anytime soon!

La'an really is a descendent of Khan, I see.  I wonder if he'll be popping up at some point?

They explained why Uhura never got infected, but I wonder how Chapel managed to avoid it: especially since she was the one treated all of the patients.

I'm choosing to believe Spock knowingly butchered that "human phrase", just to annoy Pike.

[Stardancer Supreme]

1 hour ago, thuganomics85 said:

Ah, the old classic "mysterious disease is taking out the crew" storyline.  This time it's one that makes them attracted to light so everyone truly acts like "moths to a flame."  Only in this case it could easily lead to the ship getting destroyed.  Yeah, that's problematic to say the least!

Glad to see Una be the main focus for this one.  So, the big reveal is that she is actually Illyrian this entire time, which can be a bit troublesome since the Federation isn't quite down with them joining Starfleet at the moment.  Not surprised that Pike is going to back her though, because you can't be a true Star Trek captain until you rebel against the establishment!

M'Benga keeping his dying daughter in status inside a transporter is just one of the many reasons where I would kind of be terrified of those things in real life.  I guess by the future they consider it to be no more dangerous in driving a car, but the general idea of just taking you apart molecule by molecule and putting you back together is always going to feel dicy to me.  But I'm guessing that's something I won't have to worry about anytime soon!

La'an really is a descendent of Khan, I see.  I wonder if he'll be popping up at some point?

They explained why Uhura never got infected, but I wonder how Chapel managed to avoid it: especially since she was the one treated all of the patients.

I'm choosing to believe Spock knowingly butchered that "human phrase", just to annoy Pike.

So I assumed that Una was possessed by something as opposed to the virus burning itself out of her system. I finally got a clue that she wasn't just another human by picking Hemmer up like he weighed nothing. I guess Aenarians are especially heavy?

I was wondering if Una's genetic material could have saved M'Benga's daughter.  And to think that Hemmer has sussed out the reason how the virus was spreading on the ship but had to walk away from the snarling doctor.

I'm pretty sure that Chapel was hit by the virus, but La'an knocked her out to get to the warp core. 

One thing about this crew is how scarily brilliant they are.  Hemmer transported a piece of the planet's core onto the ship to bask in! 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Stardancer Supreme

[marinw]

I love those landing party jackets! On TOS and TNG they never wore jackets, I read somewhere that those uniforms were made of some material that can adapt to different environments.

Una has a nice vioce.

Why didn't La'an change her last name?

Storing your daughter in the pattern buffer is problematic for all kinds of reasons.

Edited May 20, 2022 by marinw

[MissLucas]

I really enjoyed that. It actually made me think about what happened and what points the writing was trying to make instead of going into snark mode as soon as the credits started rolling.

When Una just walked away from the initial infection I wondered if some creepy entity had made her a host since she was the XO of the ship. Did not see the true reason she had not turned light-addicted coming, well played show.

Una has great quarters and I could not help thinking that the design and decor was a light nod to the sixties. As was her hair-style. And Uhura's sleeping alcove looked really cozy.

I enjoyed Hemmer's sarcasm: 'I can sense that expression'. Rebecca Romijn was also great in that scene - well she was great throughout the whole episode. I loved her in 'The Librarians' and I'm glad she's back on my screen on a regular basis. I also thought Hemmer would be the one to be immune, another good twist.

Girl in the buffer was heartbreaking - I do hope she gets out by the end of the season. I like La'an and Una's friendship even though it was put to the test in this episode. 

Una musing at the end if Pike would defend her even if she wasn't a hero or a good one was rather poignant. I guess we haven't seen the end of her plot. Star Fleet won't be happy. I also remembered Bashir getting into trouble for what his parents did. So whatever happens to Una won't change Star Fleet's policy in the long run.

I honestly lost track of Khan, when the Eugenic Wars took place and how much people still know about them. I'll just go ahead and trust the show to come up with a version of events that makes sense for this iteration of Star Trek.

 

[paigow]

51 minutes ago, marinw said:

Why didn't La'an change her last name?

It would end up like this...

 

[marinw]

Damm Ion storms! Not even the Borg can withstand them, IIRC.

Edited May 20, 2022 by marinw

[salaydouk]

Okay I liked the episode... and my first thought ran to this episode is this show's "The Naked Time"/"The Naked Now".

That said...hmm... 

• Una is an Illyrian... okay so please tell me how Starfleet and specifically Starfleet Medical doesn't know well before this? As stated in this episode she enlisted in Starfleet, which would explain why La'an calls her Chief, she would have to have a medical physical and it would have been discovered that she was an Illyrian.  Starfleet would have assume she had some amount of genetic manipulation done and rejected her.  If she did not enlist and went to the Academy, then lets forget about the requirements for someone from a non-Federation world to get into the Academy as outlined in DS9 for Nog and that she passed herself off as human, again she would still have to have a medical physical and it would again registered her as an Illyrian.  And as such, with assumed genetic manipulation, been flat out rejected for admission to the Academy... 
  • So if she managed to fool Starfleet Medical all those years... wow! 
  • And man this episode is giving me "Gattaca"  Valid and Invalid vibes! 
• Now after watching this episode and reminded of the Federation ban on genetic manipulation... wouldn't that rule have applied to what Nurse Chapel did to the Pike/Spock/La'an in the pilot episode -temporary genetic manipulation is still genetic manipulation, no? How was that research allowed?

Also it is very difficult to achieve the rank of full Commander if you started out as enlisted and you held every enlisted rank. (Since La'an is calling Una "Chief", it means she held at least 7 out of 9(using US Navy as a reference) of them before going through any special process to earn a commission and become an officer.)  It can be/has been done, but it is very very rare and the individual is usually exceptional.  So by having Una go from Enlisted to Officer, this is creating possibly even more interesting backstories for the character that I don't know if the show even realizes it is doing...

Edited May 20, 2022 by salaydouk

[Starchild]

5 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

La'an really is a descendent of Khan, I see.  I wonder if he'll be popping up at some point?

Since Kirk is the one who woke him from his centuries' long stasis, that would be quite the departure. They could do it, but it's a much more significant deviation from canon than most other changes we've seen so far.

But since they have an "augment" storyline with Una, I can't think of another reason to have a Khan descendant on board, so I guess we'll see.

[Frozendiva]

I enjoyed the ep.

I thought the virus and the lockdowns and such reminded me of early Covid days when very little was known about it.

So #1 is Illyrian? If Starfleet did have a rule against genetic modification, how did she get in and rise up in the ranks to be second in command of the flagship? I did like Rebecca Romijn in both Ugly Betty and The Librarians and she did quite well this ep. Her conflict at the end about wanting to turn in her commission and how things may have worked out if she wasn't a 'hero'/one of the 'good' guys. Of course Pike would stand up for the underdog. I admired her putting Hemmer over her shoulder like a bag of flour and carrying him to Sick Bay. He also had a good scene about beaming up the planet core for light and warmth. I also liked the leather jackets.

Felt bad that the Doctor is storing his sick daughter in the transporter buffer. Surely someone can create a better solution. Maybe one of the planets they visit may have a cure.

So the security person is related to Khan. Wonder how that will progress and if the Enterprise encounters the ghost ship Botany Bay at some point.

I was hoping that one of the tubes in the planet's library would house a bottle or two of wine.

[HerkyJerky]

Somewhere Fred and the rest of the Angel gang are turning in their graves...😎

[millennium]

7 hours ago, salaydouk said:

my first thought ran to this episode is this show's "The Naked Time"/"The Naked Now".

Same.  I thought The Naked Time Light Lite.

Not to nitpick, but when the Talosians did a scan of Number One back on Talos IV to determine her fertility prospects, they would have called her out for being an Illyrian and not a human female.

[millennium]

19 hours ago, paigow said:

The Bashir family must have retrieved all deleted personal logs from the Enterprise.... HR screening never changed in 100 years

[millennium]

14 hours ago, Starchild said:

But since they have an "augment" storyline with Una

How long before Brent Spiner shows up as a Soong?

[MissLucas]

11 minutes ago, millennium said:

How long before Brent Spiner shows up as a Soong?

Arrgh! No!

For me the show has earned some trust by now. I'm sure they will address how Una managed to stay under the radar. And as long as they are not going to massacre continuity like certain other shows I'm okay with some stuff that can be handwaved without getting carpal tunnel syndrome.

[sugarbaker design]

16 hours ago, salaydouk said:

Una is an Illyrian... okay so please tell me how Starfleet and specifically Starfleet Medical doesn't know well before this?

It was mentioned the Illyrians loved their genetic modification.

 

14 hours ago, Frozendiva said:

Felt bad that the Doctor is storing his sick daughter in the transporter buffer. Surely someone can create a better solution. Maybe one of the planets they visit may have a cure.

There should be a pool with posters picking out the episode this sad story blooms.

[salaydouk]

Just now, sugarbaker design said:

It was mentioned the Illyrians loved their genetic modification.

So is your line of thinking that the Illyrians have modified themselves to the point that they genetically pass as human?  If so interesting thought, I can roll with that...  

But just to poke on that idea, then how would M'Benga known how her immune system would response to a virus, ie burn it out. That would imply there is still a way to scan an Illyrian to tell the difference?!?!  

But to return to your point, Una seemed to submit to M'Benga's medical once over and let him draw blood too easily and without protest.  So that would imply your idea is spot on... must ruminate.  

[sugarbaker design]

6 minutes ago, salaydouk said:

So is your line of thinking that the Illyrians have modified themselves to the point that they genetically pass as human?  If so interesting thought, I can roll with that...  

It's a possibility.

[paigow]

7 hours ago, sugarbaker design said:

It was mentioned the Illyrians loved their genetic modification.

 

There should be a pool with posters picking out the episode this sad story blooms.

The cure is already on board.. blood from Number One blended with Noonien-Singh blood... 

[salaydouk]

10 minutes ago, paigow said:

The cure is already on board.. blood from Number One blended with Noonien-Singh blood... 

I thought it was...

• La'an was close enough to Una when they both had Radiation Poisoning and
• Una's body fought of the radiation poisoning it registered the "light disease" as well fought that too.
• And so La'an had "sympathy" immune reaction( chimeric antibodies) and they used her blood's antibodies to create the antidote. Nothing came from Una as she destroys her antibodies once the infection is killed off. 
• Which to me was a lot of mumbo jumbo handwaving not real way to get a cure to end the episode in under 5 mins. 

[rtms77]

On 5/19/2022 at 9:29 PM, Frozendiva said:

So #1 is Illyrian? If Starfleet did have a rule against genetic modification, how did she get in and rise up in the ranks to be second in command of the flagship? I did like Rebecca Romijn in both Ugly Betty and The Librarians and she did quite well this ep. Her conflict at the end about wanting to turn in her commission and how things may have worked out if she wasn't a 'hero'/one of the 'good' guys. Of course Pike would stand up for the underdog. I admired her putting Hemmer over her shoulder like a bag of flour and carrying him to Sick Bay. He also had a good scene about beaming up the planet core for light and warmth. I also liked the leather jackets.

Well she passed MBega’s blood test and he was none the wiser. I’m thinking her genetic manipulation had something to do with humans so as to pass medical tests at least. Something like that has to be it because your write , any medical test/examination would have revealed who she was instantly.

11 hours ago, salaydouk said:

So is your line of thinking that the Illyrians have modified themselves to the point that they genetically pass as human?  If so interesting thought, I can roll with that...  

But just to poke on that idea, then how would M'Benga known how her immune system would response to a virus, ie burn it out. That would imply there is still a way to scan an Illyrian to tell the difference?!?!  

But to return to your point, Una seemed to submit to M'Benga's medical once over and let him draw blood too easily and without protest.  So that would imply your idea is spot on... must ruminate.  

Just mentioned the same thing, she was modified to pass for human and their tests when she decided to join.

[CarpeFelis]

Okay, not sure I understand this: so Dr. M’Benga can keep his daughter in the transporter buffer but has to materialize her periodically. So why couldn’t he materialize her while the medical transporter was being updated and then put her back when it was done? Of course then there’d be no plot.

And did the medical transporter not being updated somehow affect the other transporters? Because the ensign who was first to show symptoms had come through the regular transporter with the rest of the away team, not the medical transporter. So unless the medical transporter affected the others, the infection should have been filtered out in the first place. But again, then there’d be no plot. Damn my engineer brain for bugging me with this stuff.

(BTW, why didn’t anyone in the cast or crew point out that M’Benga was pronouncing “aberrant” with the accent on the wrong syllable?)

12 hours ago, millennium said:

How long before Brent Spiner shows up as a Soong?

Argh. His character in Picard was annoying enough…

[MissLucas]

The explanation for the cure was iffy:

Quote

La'An tried to jump into the warp core while the containment field was down. As I was stopping her, she got a bad dose of radiation, and so did I. Apparently, my body cured both of us before I reengaged the field.

La'An is not an Illyrian.

Her proximity to the commander created chimeric antibodies in her system. I was able to synthesize them into a cure before they set.

If I understand that correctly La'An's immune system copied Una's antibodies (chimeric would imply that they were mixed with her own immune response)? Why? Is she also augmented and nobody noticed? Or are chimeric antibodies a result of radiation poisoning? Or are they triggered by an augmented immune system like Una's? And if so could that response not be used for plenty of other diseases? Like say whatever Girl in Buffer suffers from?

 

[cambridgeguy]

17 minutes ago, MissLucas said:

Why? Is she also augmented and nobody noticed?

Given the stigma that existed around augmentation and her last name (why on earth did the entire line of the Noonien Singhs decide to keep both names for centuries?) I think Starfleet would have done a very detailed analysis of her DNA.  No way she slips under the radar like Una was able to.

And they didn't really say why M'Benga had to keep his daughter a secret.  Would Starfleet really say tough luck, let her die?  If anything it would be safer to keep her on Earth or at the very least a starbase rather than on a ship that is often engaged in battles and other risky situations that could damage the transporter.

[KeithJ]

5 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

And did the medical transporter not being updated somehow affect the other transporters? Because the ensign who was first to show symptoms had come through the regular transporter with the rest of the away team, not the medical transporter. So unless the medical transporter affected the others, the infection should have been filtered out in the first place. But again, then there’d be no plot. Damn my engineer brain for bugging me with this stuff.

This was my first thought.  The away team didn’t use the medical transporter.  Why would it not being updated affect the transports from the main transporter?

[paigow]

6 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

And they didn't really say why M'Benga had to keep his daughter a secret.

Pre-TNG Regulations did not allow children / civilian spouses of crew members to live permanently on active Starships. Crew members could marry each other and remain on board [TOS!Kirk officiated a shipboard wedding - unfortunately, the bride became a widow soon afterwards]  Not judging this policy, just describing canon.

Edited May 21, 2022 by paigow

[aemom]

Actually, I think that the problem might be that he is basically blocking the medical transporter with his daughter.

In theory, people die of certain diseases every day. There are likely rules about storing people in transporter buffers hoping that one day a cure will be found for whatever ails them.

[paigow]

Too bad Dr. McCoy hated transporters... he would have saved his father...

 

38 minutes ago, aemom said:

There are likely rules about storing people in transporter buffers hoping that one day a cure will be found for whatever ails them.

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by paigow

[LittleIggy]

I really like Hemmer!

[marinw]

51 minutes ago, LittleIggy said:

I really like Hemmer!

He brings the Snark

[Affogato]

2 hours ago, aemom said:

Actually, I think that the problem might be that he is basically blocking the medical transporter with his daughter.

In theory, people die of certain diseases every day. There are likely rules about storing people in transporter buffers hoping that one day a cure will be found for whatever ails them.

Transporters are immortality machines of sorts. I am always amazed more people don't break the rules. none of the people who die on away missions need to stay dead.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Affogato

[Joimiaroxeu]

"Whatever tweaks your freak."

So is Una supposed to be super strong or is Hemmer a small guy? She threw him over her shoulder like he was a beach towel.

Una had a pretty high security clearance due to her rank. How would her modification issues not have been discovered during the background check for that clearance? I guess at some point the clearance level increases must have become automatic to go with her climbs in rank.

I love how this show tries to leave the audience feeling good and hopeful. Not like they were just put through a needlessly emotional wringer (looking at you, DISCO), or they just lost 100 IQ points because the plot is so labyrinthine (take a bow, PICARD).

SNW is still reigning as my favorite ST series.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Joimiaroxeu

[MissLucas]

13 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

So is Una supposed to be super strong or is Hemmer a small guy? She threw him over her shoulder like he was a beach towel.

I think the implication is that if needs  be she has super strength. That scene was carefully edited, Hemmer goes down and Una runs towards him, then a column/pylon blocks the view for a moment and when the camera returns 'Una' has her back to the camera and lifts Hemmer. You can see her face in profile for a brief moment and I'd say that's not Rebecca Romijn but a stunt woman with the necessary core strength. Next scene Una walks with 'Hemmer' (aka a dummy) slung over her shoulder but we only see his legs.  She's not carrying him in a fireman's lift and she seems to have no problems carrying his weight. And the whole scene is shot like a variation of the hero walk. Nurse Chapel also comments on Una carrying him seemingly with little effort when they arrive in medbay.  I don't think they went through all that effort without a good reason - i.e. Una's augmentation is going beyond a super immune system and apparently the ability to fool Federation med scans.

And there was also something weird going on with her pupil when she's studying those files on Illyrian genetic modifications related to disease control. It dilated while she was reading but that could be a natural response to finding what she was looking for I guess.

[Chicago Redshirt]

14 hours ago, KeithJ said:

This was my first thought.  The away team didn’t use the medical transporter.  Why would it not being updated affect the transports from the main transporter?

The explanation as I understood it was that normally the backup to the backup to the biofilter is associated with the medical transporter and would have screened out a contagion, but because M'Benga has the medical transporter on a near-continuous cycle, it took the redundant backup to the main transporter system out of the equation. Which normally wouldn't matter, but this time it did.

15 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Given the stigma that existed around augmentation and her last name (why on earth did the entire line of the Noonien Singhs decide to keep both names for centuries?) I think Starfleet would have done a very detailed analysis of her DNA.  No way she slips under the radar like Una was able to.

And they didn't really say why M'Benga had to keep his daughter a secret.  Would Starfleet really say tough luck, let her die?  If anything it would be safer to keep her on Earth or at the very least a starbase rather than on a ship that is often engaged in battles and other risky situations that could damage the transporter.

I tend to think that Starfleet isn't heartless enough to say "Let her die." It is, however, heartless enough to say "Have her stay on Earth/a starbase" and that would mean to be with her, M'Benga would have to give up his life on the Enterprise or leave his daughter to be tended to by others. He presumably is trying to have his cake and eat it too with his solution. 

On 5/19/2022 at 5:49 PM, marinw said:

I love those landing party jackets! On TOS and TNG they never wore jackets, I read somewhere that those uniforms were made of some material that can adapt to different environments.

Una has a nice vioce.

Why didn't La'an change her last name?

Storing your daughter in the pattern buffer is problematic for all kinds of reasons.

Picard in S5's Darmok and I think some other episodes had a jacket. I want to say some of the ENT crew wore jackets too.

In the real world, there are still people who have kept the last name Hitler, which is presumably at least as bad as Noonien-Singh would be in the Trek universe.

[salaydouk]

19 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Picard in S5's Darmok and I think some other episodes had a jacket. I want to say some of the ENT crew wore jackets too.

The Picard jacket that you are referring to is what became Picard's "second uniform."  It appeared to be a red body/black shoulder suede jacket that he wore over a blue-gray body/black shouldered shirt. I believe its first appearance was Darmok, but it was worn several times from that point on even while he was aboard the Enterprise.  To the best of my knowledge, Picard has been the only person to ever appear with this uniform style so it gave rise to the idea that it was Picard's "second captain's" uniform ala Kirk's green wrap around tunic.  So it really wasn't an Away Team jacket.  From a prop department stand point it might have started out that way, but it didn't end up that way. 

The Away Team jackets seen in this episode, are more equivalent to the jackets seen in TOS "The Cage"/"The Menagerie"  or on ST ENT. 

Edited May 22, 2022 by salaydouk

[Colorado David]

On 5/21/2022 at 1:14 PM, LittleIggy said:

I really like Hemmer!

Me too, he adds a "bad" side attitude that I think balances out everyone else well.  Good smart snark writing is always enjoyable, when everyone else is being so nice and polite.

Ignore the medical scans of number one - Star Fleet doesn't check your family tree and history??? Surely it would have come up there, unless they've a got a whale of a coverup going on. Maybe they don't tho, I'm not sure anyone else knows about La'an being related to Khan other than Number One now.

Super strength I could see as an immediate body response in time of need for Number One, the same way we normal humans get pumped with adrenaline in emergency situations. So no problems with her shlepping Hemmer around (tho man the dummy definitely looked way to light and dummy like, I actually giggled seeing his skinny legs over her shoulder.)

 

[salaydouk]

29 minutes ago, Colorado David said:

Ignore the medical scans of number one - Star Fleet doesn't check your family tree and history??? Surely it would have come up there, unless they've a got a whale of a coverup going on. Maybe they don't tho, I'm not sure anyone else knows about La'an being related to Khan other than Number One now.

The medical scans is where you can be looking - even if Una was modified to pass as human there should be something there to find. You might have to really look but it would be there. 

Regarding your point about checking family tree or history  - good point but no they wouldn't necessary check.  If she enlisted in Starfleet then basically she would have signed a contract to be "in" for some number of years and then had a medical physical and perhaps a psychological one.  If she passed both, bam she is in Starfleet and off to boot camp she goes.  If she applied for Starfleet Academy, this would be akin to applying to university aside from the needed medical physical and psychological tests.  If she was accepted and graduated she would be in Starfleet.  Starfleet isn't going to care who her parents/family/history are in either case - militaries don't care one whit where you come from so long as you can shoot your weapon and kill your enemy. (Sorry I know that is pretty blunt but that is the reality.) When Starfleet would care to know her background would be if she was to be given Security Clearance - then those checks for family/friends/personal history would start and that is when questions would start to be asked.  Since Una is a full Commander and the ship's XO, she would definitely have Security Clearance and a pretty high one at that - so how could she have passed them and not been discovered has to lead to there being a big backstory they will unspool on us later.

 

Edited May 22, 2022 by salaydouk

[Colorado David]

eh I'd check family histories - I don't need some secret enemy infiltrating my ranks by pulling off fooling a simple DNA/med scan. But then I am probably overly cautious. And for a baseline, don't you need to know what planet someone came from? Or word of mouth now has replaced common sense?

[salaydouk]

8 minutes ago, Colorado David said:

eh I'd check family histories - I don't need some secret enemy infiltrating my ranks by pulling off fooling a simple DNA/med scan. But then I am probably overly cautious. And for a baseline, don't you need to know what planet someone came from? Or word of mouth now has replaced common sense?

Well she looks human right?  So if she said she was human why would anyone assume she wasn't from Earth or one her colonies? 

If this was a matter of secret enemy attempting to infiltrate, you better believe the enemy would have created a full backstopped cover story for the person doing the infiltrating. So if anyone checked, it would have all comeback clean. 

Security Clearance is the only point where the military would really care to confirm anything - because that is when you start to have access to material that if placed in enemy hands could cause trouble.  Before that you don't know a darn thing aside from what was your most recent order/assigned task.  And about all you can do is kill your immediate co-workers or blow up something outside of a security zone on base - so you kill a few hundred servicemen/woman the upper brass does not care it is peanuts to them.   And returning to your case of an infiltrator, you can bet the ranch, that his/her task is acquire sensitive information over a long duration and to never be caught - so killing your immediate co-workers, unless your protecting your cover, is a no-no  and the same goes for blowing something up on base.   

[Llywela]

Remember that in TNG there was a whole episode centred around a court case involving an officer who was found to be half-Romulan. He made it through the admissions process and well into his career before anyone found out, and that was about a hundred years later than this. So if he could slip through the net in a later time period, no reason why Una shouldn't have also done so here.

[MissLucas]

As much as I would like to pretend it never happened: DISCO also had a Klingon carved into a human (or hybrid) who passed med scans. 

[Colorado David]

so...a few cases where apparently this only med scanning people protocol failed the system. hmm....

[paigow]

TOS!McCoy verified a Klingon infiltrator / saboteur with his tiny salt shaker scanner [after a Tribble warning]... no elaborate Starfleet Medical testing required...

[Chicago Redshirt]

15 hours ago, salaydouk said:

Well she looks human right?  So if she said she was human why would anyone assume she wasn't from Earth or one her colonies? 

Presumably, Una would have submitted to numerous physicals over the years that would be detailed enough/involved enough tests to tell that she wasn't a garden-variety human. Assuming for discussion's sake that she is at least 10 years into Starfleet to have gotten to the rank of commander, that is probably 10 annual physicals, physicals while she was in the Academy, plus physicals after certain away missions. This presumably is not her first time where there was a pandemic that she was strangely immune from.

To a certain extent, she could maybe hack the results to show herself as garden-variety human. Or maybe her bio-engineering is so sophisticated that she can fake seeming garden-variety when she is conscious of being scanned. 

[Llywela]

3 hours ago, Colorado David said:

so...a few cases where apparently this only med scanning people protocol failed the system. hmm....

I mean, in PIC we saw two full-blooded Romulans successfully infiltrate Starfleet Security for years and years without being detected, engineering a terrorist attack on a major Earth settlement and successfully de-commissioning and sealing the record of a starship after ordering the murders of two civilians by holding an entire crew to ransom. And let's not get started on all the Badmirals over the years.

Starfleet security ain't all that and never has been. In fact, Starfleet security is always just as good as the Plot needs it to be! So failing to spot Una as Illyrian is in fact pretty much par for the Starfleet course!

Edited May 23, 2022 by Llywela

[Colorado David]

true. and i am overly cautious as i said, i mean applying for a job NOW they want your entire background. now years in the future, and we are suddenly just trusting based on med-scans and verbal history? criminals in the system suddenly are on the honor system? there's a giant data base of honesty that everyone is compared to? I think not. i'm getting smacks of TNG "everyone is good and given benefit of the doubt" vibes. but in reality nefarious people exist. thus I am overly investigative in who gets in and is trusted. i mean i'm not handing the keys to the photon torpedoes to any joe shmuck who says I'm human, passes my scans, is able to get honor roll in the academy and get the weapons officer position. I want details on who this person is and can they be trusted.  friggin Q could pass all those flags.

to learn from mistakes: Khan in said movie. "we are one big happy family..." then boom went the dynamite. all because he just behaved correctly and APPEARED non threatening. maybe being a bit thorough isn't such a bad thing.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Colorado David
adding Khan part.