With heavy hearts, Anika and Liz discuss “Four and a Half Vulcans”, the worst episode of Star Trek‘s streaming era, and possibly one of the top five worst episodes of Star Trek ever.
So that’s fun.
- Liz keeps returning to the question, “Is this worse than ‘Code of Honor’?”
- “I understand that this is meant to be funny.”
- Genetics and hair don’t work like that
- “I felt disrespected as a viewer.”
- The whole “feminist career women can’t cook, amiright?” trope was tired when they did it with Janeway in the ’90s and it’s more tired with Chapel and Batel now
- Anika: the only person on the whole internet watching “Amok Time” for the Spock/Chapel
- Comedy mind control rape (for the second time in a season)
- Uhura this season generally has whatever personality is required for the plot, but using her for TERF propaganda about groomers is unforgivable
- Romula’an is almost a good storyline, provided you don’t know anything about genetics, Romulans or how “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow” went
- Why is Marie’s professional future wrapped up in a plot from I Love Lucy?
- Pike uses Marie’s chronic condition to try to sabotage her career, because apparently their relationship is now a horror story from r/BestofRedditorUpdates
- You have to be really incompetent to come up with a dance-off that we hate this much!
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Liz: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today, we are discussing the latest from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Four and a Half Vulcans”, which is possibly the worst episode of the streaming era.
Anika: Yep.
Liz: Okay, podcast done. Good, good.
Anika: Do we want to list the ways? I mean, it’s … yeah. So our first impression from four months ago was, ooh, I don’t know about that. And it went downhill from there.
Liz: Yeah. I started checking the line to see how much episode was left during the teaser. This was a 54-minute episode and it felt much, much longer.
Anika: And, okay, so it felt way too long, but also we didn’t spend enough time with any of them for it to be a good story. So it was both too short and too long at the same time.
Liz: Maybe a two and a half Vulcans would have worked, but yeah, this was just a deeply unpleasant episode. We expected from the clip that came out months ago that there would be a lot of weird biological determinism, and I guess I should have expected the transphobia from that. But then there was the transphobia and the sexism, and the ableism, and … okay, we’re recording a day later than I planned, which gave me extra time to think about it. So now I have a question. Is this episode worse than “Code of Honor”?
Anika: I mean, that’s a really high bar because “Code of Honor” is sort of known as the worst episode.
Liz: Yes, and “Code of Honor” has a very specific anti-Black racism, and I definitely don’t want to overlook that, especially because Black people are real and Vulcans are not.
Anika: Are not, yes. I think that where I come down on it is, it feels like “Code of Honor” is almost deliberately harmful. And this seems like they, once again, they do not know what they are saying. If they do know what they are saying, I can’t support them.
Liz: It does make me think of that interview Terry Matalas did promoting season three of Star Trek: Picard, when he talks about how Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton had to tell him that “Code of Honor” was racist.
Anika: I would like to have what he’s having.
Liz: I know, I know.
Anika: I would like to not feel the way I do about the world all the time these days. And I don’t understand how the people involved with it thought it wasn’t racist to begin with, but I definitely don’t understand how someone looking back on it 20 years later doesn’t understand.
Liz: Right. And I will say Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn almost quit Star Trek doing the third episode of TNG because “Code of Honor” was that bad. And so my conclusion after thinking about it is that “Code of Honor” is worse, but “Four and a Half Vulcans” is on that spectrum.
I would put it in the top 10 worst episodes of Star Trek, with stuff like the one where Scotty murders an exotic dancer, or the one where Seven of Nine learns an important lesson about false rape allegations. It has about as good an understanding of genetic science as “Threshold”, but “Threshold” is fun and all the lizard sex is consensual, and no one’s being mind controlled.
Anika: They actually are very explicit about that. They have a whole conversation about it. They make it very clear. And right, the science is nonsense in both episodes, but I would rather watch “Threshold” any day. This, I watched this twice and I hated every minute. It’s … okay, that’s not true. There are two things I liked in the episode. We’ll get to them eventually, but I feel like they were accidental because, okay.
So I want to say, straight up from the top, I understand that this is supposed to be funny. I understand that this is written to be a farce at kind of Spock’s expense, which seems bad to begin with, but that’s what was going on. It was supposed to be, ha ha ha, Vulcans are … like, I say Vulcans are the worst all the time, right? So ha ha ha, Vulcans are the worst. Kind of like \ Enterprise, you know, look at all the bad things Vulcans do.
Liz: Oh, I was going to say everything about Vulcans in this episode, it’s like the writers learned entirely about Vulcans from season one of Enterprise and that baseball episode of Deep Space Nine.
Anika: Right. So the reason it’s a farce is because every single thing is superficial. And the problem with that is, they don’t also don’t understand farces or superficiality or how to make a show because they try to make you care in certain moments. There are certain moments where they take itself very seriously and then it goes immediately to another string of jokes. And it’s just, yes, that’s not how it works. That’s not the point. And I just, I don’t know what they, I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t know why anyone thought this was a good idea.
Liz: No, we’ve discussed before how comedy is the hardest type of writing to do. And farce is the hardest type of comedy. And so far, Strange New Worlds hasn’t been good at any other category of comedy. So why would they go immediately to the most extreme difficulty level? And as you say, it’s inconsistent and superficial and nasty. And it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because it’s so unpleasant.
Anika: Every joke is mean. Every single thing that happens here is either just mean-spirited or like an actual crime. I’m really upset about everything that happens with Uhura. I will never forgive them.
Liz: You don’t think it’s in character for Uhura to be mind-raping her boyfriend?
Anika: No. I don’t. I actually think that it’s anti Uhura. I want to give Celia an apology basket or something. I’m so sorry that this happened to you.
Liz: I want to give Celia an apology basket and I want to send flowers to Nichelle Nichols’ grave.
Anika: Exactly. I was like, and I also need to give an apology basket to Nichelle Nichols and frankly, even to Zoe Saldana.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: This is such a big, messy episode and we have a lot to unpack. Let’s just go neatly through the wonderful notes that you created, and then I messed up with my additions.
Anika: Mine is at least 33 percent caps lock rage. So I don’t know if you messed them up.
Liz: Well, I added more caps lock rage, so your percentage is now out of date. So, note one, genetics don’t work that way.
Anika: Yeah. Let’s just get out of the way. The science was nonsense in “Charades”, but I forgave it because they created aliens to do it. You know, they were like, what if non-corporeal aliens existed who could do this? And I was like, sure, I will accept that, because it’s space and it’s Star Trek and it’s sci-fi and it’s fantasy and who cares? This was a bridge too far.
Liz: I mean, it really is the “what if going very, very fast made you evolve into a lizard” of modern Trek.
Anika: It fully is.
Liz: “Threshold” has become a beloved anti-masterpiece and has really been reclaimed by fans, but I don’t think this has the core of the pure whole hearted core of “Threshold” that will make people embrace it one day.
Anika: And “Genesis” too, “Genesis” also has nonsense science, but is fun, has moments of true clarity. And this is, I mean, you know, I guess ask me in 10 years, but I honestly loved “Threshold” from the beginning because it was absurd, but I love Janeway and I love Paris and I love lizards. And Robert Duncan McNeill does almost his best acting ever in that episode.
Liz: And that’s another thing this episode doesn’t have. We have some good performances. I was initially not sold on Jess Bush, but she persuaded me. Celia and Christina Chong, all amazing. Anson Mount, not very good. It turns out that not just anyone can play a Vulcan.
Anika: Yeah. Yeah.
Liz: Which brings me to a note that I added to your list. Genetics don’t work that way, neither does hair. I don’t know much about genetic science, but I have hair.
Anika: Clearly, clearly, that’s the thing, is that when we did it again in “Charades”, which … this is a scene, so.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Strange New Worlds show runners heard that “Charades” was my favorite episode of Strange New Worlds and decided to disavow me of that opinion immediately. Because this is the second episode that directly relates to it and was like, no, Anika, actually you hate that episode.
But anyway, in “Charades”, Spock as human was silly, and it went too far sometimes. But he is half human and so erasing the Vulcan-ness of him and it resulting in his hair being softer, sort of makes sense on some levels, even if it’s just he’s not combing it in the same way or whatever. This was idiotic. All of a sudden, Anson Mount’s hair is a square. I can’t even describe it. And that’s absurd. And again, it’s supposed to be funny.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. It’s meant to be a cartoon. And the thing is, the genre of animation has these tropes for a reason. And part of the reason is you can’t get away with that stuff in live action.
Anika: Right. And also, none of them look good either.
Liz: I thought Uhura looked amazing. And I actually think that Celia has her own hair stylist. I think she has a Black hair specialist this season.
Anika: Which is good.
Liz: Yes, absolutely. But she is also the only one of these Vulcans who doesn’t suddenly have incredibly greasy hair.
Anika: They’re greasy! It’s so weird. And it’s just no. No, and La’an, no. Just no. Just no and a hundred times no.
Liz: Where did Chapel’s fringe go? Where did her bangs go?
Anika: That’s such a good point.
Liz: I kept coming back to these questions.
Anika: Yeah, it’s sort of like, okay. You can even almost explain, it’s stupid, but it’s like, okay, it’s just more sculpted or whatever. It’s still the same, but it’s more sculpted. But you’re right, she literally loses… It’s also a different length. Nothing about Christine makes sense. Nothing.
Liz: I kept obsessing over this because it was easier than paying attention to the dialogue, which was terrible.
Anika: Yeah, which was terrible. So I didn’t even write down – I guess the next bullet point is the mission. So I guess this is related to the mission. But the fact that they go and they immediately complete their mission in three minutes, that is also bad. I hate it, actually.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: It’s offensive to me personally.
Liz: I felt disrespected as a viewer.
Anika: I felt disrespected as someone whose job is to be efficient. I was just like, no. They can see if this episode is that Vulcans are, A, the best at getting things done and B, the worst at being people.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And why would that be a thing? Why would either of those things be a thing?
Liz: Look, I have no idea. It didn’t hold together in a way that I found deeply upsetting. There was no internal logic to it. And then you get to the transphobia and the scene where the human crew, and they are all human except for Pelia. I keep coming back to this. They’re like, well, if they really do want to stay Vulcan, I guess we’ll respect their choice. The way your bigoted coworker says, “Oh, well, I guess I’ll use his, I mean her, I mean his pronouns.”
Anika: Right.
Liz: I don’t think that was intentional. I don’t think anything about this episode was intentional. I don’t think the writing is that sophisticated, but.
Anika: I’m beginning to think nothing about this series is intentional. That’s where I’m landing at this point.
Liz: I actually have a theory about season three, and it’s that the writing for it probably started around the time Paramount started to put itself up for sale in earnest. And so there was maybe pressure to create a season that’s fun and brightly colored and gimmicky and something that will appeal to shareholders without challenging them. And that’s why this season is the way it is.
But Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek so that he could tell reasonably liberal progressive-ish stories in a time of much, much greater censorship and much narrower cultural values than we have now. And he actually, he assembled a team that did a really good job. The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writers, they’re no Gene Coon, they’re no DC Fontana. Actually, I need to go and put flowers on DC Fontana’s grave as well. I think she deserves this.
Anika: So many flowers that we’re going to have to pass out to get over this.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So the Pelia thing was another bit just for humor. But I don’t know why anyone would believe that it would work on her because she was in fact not human. And so why would a serum that was created for humans affect her? I’m just like, this is Medicine 101. I really don’t understand anything that went on here. So yeah, I don’t have anything more to say about that. Just no one should have believed it.
Liz: It’s the kind of comedy that depends on everyone being really stupid.
Anika: Exactly. And M’Benga isn’t. Christine definitely isn’t. No, no, no. Absolutely not. I refuse to believe any of this.
Liz: All the whole half Vulcan stuff is incredibly mean-spirited. I don’t understand why Vulcans, why we’re meant to think that they’re genetically racist. That’s not how genes or racism works.
Anika: Right. When they introduced the Vulcan extremists, way back when, that makes sense. There are human extremists.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: That are out here ruining everything all the time. And so of course, they’re going to be Vulcan extremists. But that is a cultural thing. That is a communication thing. It’s an education thing. It’s a sociological thing. It is potentially a psychological thing with screens and propaganda and cults. But it is not a genetic thing. It is not a scientific thing. It is not a neurological thing. I can’t express this more clearly than that’s not how this works.
And so the idea that these people who work with Spock, La’an is dating Spock. Christine used to date Spock. These are his closest friends. And they immediately start insulting him for no reason. He’s done nothing. It’s disgusting.
Liz: It’s really ugly. It’s not fun to watch. And honestly, at a time when racist extremists are feeling empowered, I also think it sends a really bad message about how racism works.
Anika: And Spock never fights back. He spends this entire episode taking it.
Liz: No.
Anika: I hate it. No one defends him. I’m just like, I was breaking out in hives. You brought up the transphobia and the transgender aspects to it. And again, they were not intentional. But in this day and age, with everything that is going on, with transgender people losing rights every day, across multiple countries and societies and cultures, you can’t toe the line at all. You need to be blatantly anti-transphobia. And this episode is like, “I don’t know…”
Liz: “I think the transphobes have valid concerns about women in sport and rapid onset Vulcan dysphoria.”
Anika: And they’re basically, I mean, I guess in that scenario, Spock is non-binary or just a regular queer, you know, like a cis queer. And so they’re getting away with this like actual hate speech, but they’re getting away with it because it’s couched with, you know, we’re making reasonable accommodations for your half Vulcan-ness, because at least you’re not a whole human.
Liz: What if the real bullies are the transgender police?
Anika: I just, I just, okay. Justice for Spock.
Liz: Justice for Spock. Justice for everyone who had to be involved in this. But, yeah.
Anika: But it really hurt me that no one stood up for Spock.
Liz: And it would have been interesting and maybe almost funny if, say, Erica had been the one to tell the Vulcans off for being racist. That doesn’t excuse her own actions, but it would be an interesting character beat.
Anika: Right.
Liz: But also, I don’t want to give notes on this episode. I don’t want to find ways to punch it up. I just want to punch it in the face.
Anika: I want this episode to be deleted. That’s what I want. I would like this to not happen. I would like it to be decanonized.
Liz: Yes. Yes. The other theory I have about Strange New Worlds, actually, and this episode is really confirming it, is that it came out at Star Trek Las Vegas the other weekend, that it was originally cancelled with the end of season four, and was just going to get a two-hour streaming movie to wrap everything up. And Rebecca Romijn said that Akiva Goldsman had to beg for six episodes to get a mini season. And I kind of feel like maybe someone at Paramount watched season four and went, oh, they have not course corrected from season three. Maybe we just need to pull the plug.
Anika: Yeah. I don’t want to be pro Paramount, but maybe.
Liz: No, no. I am certainly not attributing any artistic values to Paramount executives. I just think that they understand that there is a point of diminishing returns, and maybe Strange New Worlds should have been canceled sooner.
Anika: Because there are people who work for Paramount, the top people, who do care about Star Trek. And so it’s, yeah, I just, I haven’t seen the final two episodes of this season, and I obviously haven’t seen any of season four. So I, you know, I can’t say for certain that they don’t course correct. But…
Liz: No, no, I am making an assumption.
Anika: This season has been a disappointment in many ways, in terms of … it’s not like this was ever my favorite, but I was really, I felt like it was catering to me in some ways and being a very enjoyable show. It was, you know, maybe this isn’t the most meaningful, but I’m having fun watching it and I care about these characters and they’re doing interesting things with them, but it’s like they’ve gone out of their way to make everything I liked about it a flaw in some way.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. I was never as on board with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as you, but it had good episodes and it had episodes that I thought came close to being great. I still think that “Under the Cloak of War” is a great episode. We’re not even reaching the mid-level standard of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”. There’s no “Those Old Scientists” here. There’s not even a “Charades”. They’re still trying to do “Charades” and they’re failing.
Anika: They’re so failing. They don’t understand what was good about “Charades” at all.
Liz: No. There are so many tropes thrown at this episode, many of which fandom loves, mind control, fake dating, a dinner scene. It’s like biting into a delicious, fresh ripe strawberry and then in the middle, it’s just rotten.
Anika: Yes. I think it’s the same thing where they don’t understand why people like those things.
Liz: Yeah. Oh my God.
Anika: It almost feels, again, like the mean-spiritedness, like they are saying, oh, you like fake dating? Well, what if we did fake dating this way? Ha ha ha. Do you still like fake dating? Do you? Ha ha. It feels like this, we’re going to give you what you want by making fun of it.
Liz: I mean, that’s kind of how I feel about how Beverly/Picard went in season three, where I have been invested in this relationship for most of my life, since I was nine years old. And the way it becomes canon is just like, hey, look, it’s that fic you wrote when you were 12, but not as good.
Anika: Yes. Yes.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Legitimately, I have been shipping Spock and Una since the short where they got stuck in an elevator, which is also a trope.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And so it’s like the people behind Strange New Worlds, they know what TV Tropes is. And they understand fanfic. And these are people who grew up at the same time we did. And they understand fandom. It’s a thing. And yet they’re like, I don’t know. It’s like they’re making a point, “Yeah, okay, fandom, but we’re doing the real things and the real things are this. We’re going to show you why the things that you like are bad by doing them poorly. And it’s like you’re ruining your own show by doing that. Why would you do that? I “don’t understand.
Liz: It kind of makes me think about ChatGPT and LLMs and image generators. And I’m not saying that Strange New Worlds is written by ChatGPT. Although I have said that in the past. But it’s that thing where it’s like, you like creating? Well, here’s a machine that’s created a shittier version of the stuff that you could make. Aren’t you happy? Why aren’t you delighted? Stop rejecting the machine.
Anika: Well, again, I’m going to bring up, because I’m still not over it. And that episode aired this week. But the episode where Kirk says that he wasn’t sad about people until he found out they were… He wasn’t sad about the 7,000 dead until he found out they were human. And my son’s absolute outrage that Captain Kirk, someone he barely knows, would never say that.
And people are out here trying to convince me that it’s a good character beat, that it says something about Captain Kirk. And I’m sitting here going, absolutely not. I am sorry, the Kirk I know would not say that.
Liz: Did I not predict the fandom would love this episode?
Anika: You did. I’m mad about it. I’m not gonna … that’s an old episode. We’re not gonna talk about it now, but people don’t understand what flaws are. Anyway, let’s talk about how being turned Vulcan turns everybody into the absolute worst version of themselves.
Liz: Yes. I kind of liked the Chapel version. She’s an overachieving jerk, but she has always had that professional obsession in her. And I kind of like that a lot of this season is about Chapel leaning into that and going, I have a boyfriend and a career, but actually just now my career is the priority and that’s okay.
It’s undercut by the final scene because ladies with jobs can’t cook, am I right? Am I right? But I, yeah. The whole feminist career lady can’t cook trope has been annoying me since it was done with Janeway in the 1990s. And your note that it made you want to throw plomeek soup is absolutely accurate.
Anika: Women with careers can’t cook, but Pike can.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And it’s just like, no, I reject that. And also in “Amok Time”, Spock throws the soup, not because it’s bad, but because he is experiencing pon farr. He’s not rejecting her soup because it’s gross. It legitimately feels like they’re spending this entire season trying to convince me that I am wrong about Spock and Chapel and I shouldn’t care about them at all. That is how I feel.
Because I have said from the beginning that Strange New Worlds makes me look at them in The Original Series in a different light, and add all of this context to it that wasn’t there. That they definitely weren’t trying to add in the 60s when they were doing this. And yet, Strange New Worlds was making it into something that was layered and had new ones and had all this history and that scene in particular which is really painful. That whole episode, “Amok Time” is a very interesting episode for Spock and Chapel because it really, if you just watch it in the original series without any context in Strange New Worlds, it’s pretty clear that he struggles.
Liz: I just want to say, are you the only person on the Internet who watches “Amok Time” for the Spock/Chapel?
Anika: I mean, yes, definitely. 100%. But look, I accept it and I acknowledge it and I admit it, so I feel like I should get an award.
Liz: Oh yeah, your self-awareness is very inspiring.
Anika: But I’m just saying that they made that stuff that was kind of, as you said, blatantly a Kirk and Spock episode. And I accept that, but Strange New Worlds was like, what if Chapel matters to Spock at all? He wasn’t just humoring her, but actually had feelings for her, whatever you want to call them. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It doesn’t have to be anything other than, I care about this person because she’s a person and she’s valid and her feelings are valid.
And now Strange New Worlds is trying to be like, nah. Everything that you get, like this scene where she makes plomeek soup and she makes it poorly, it’s like they’re trying, like I said earlier that they were trying to destroy “Charades”, they were trying to say, no, you don’t like that, actually. And now they’re gonna say, no, you don’t like the work that we did to make this a better relationship in TOS, you don’t like that either, Anika, you were wrong. And again, why? Why would you do that? What is the purpose?
Liz: What fascinates me is that at the premiere, Akiva Goldsman was saying that this season was designed to make you hate Christine. And so far I’m like, I don’t understand, Christine has literally done nothing wrong here. And yet I see people, and they’re all men, going off about what an awful person Christine is. And I don’t understand why, except that I do think that Goldsman is appealing to some subtle misogyny that I don’t understand. It’s like a dog whistle that my female ears don’t hear.
Anika: Right. And it’s really, I just, obviously she also needs an apology basket.
Liz: Yes. And then we get to the fun brain rape of Uhura and Beto. First of all, why is Beto here? He doesn’t deserve to date Uhura after how he treated her in the documentary. But girl, please love yourself more.
Anika: Yup.
Liz: This is the second episode of the season where we’ve had comedy mind control in a relationship context.
Anika: Okay. So again, I just want to say straight up at the beginning, I reject this entire plot line. This is fully against anything that Uhura would ever do.
Liz: I still don’t buy this whole thing where Uhura is great at her job, but bad at interpersonal communication in the rest of her life. Oh, she’s never had friends. Oh, she’s bad at dating. Because I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Star Trek, but Uhura is amazing with people. It’s like her whole thing.
Anika: I know, she makes friends everywhere.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: People trust her intrinsically.
Liz: She sees a salt vampire disguised as a handsome Black man, and she’s instantly flirting with him. She is, from the beginning, so confident and empathetic, that I simply do not buy that she is this socially awkward wallflower. And the idea of a communications officer who’s not good at interpersonal communication is interesting, but that should be a new character.
Anika: Right. Because she has 60 years of history.
Liz: Yes. And in fact, I would argue that that character is what’s her face from Star Trek: Enterprise, whose name I am totally blanking on because… Hoshi Sato. Oh my god, I’m so dumb. I would argue that character is Hoshi.
Anika: Yeah. Right. She already exists. They already are doing this.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So again, I reject it fully, but looking at it from the, again, the transgender aspect or even just queer relationships, the idea that Uhura, having transitioned, would then manipulate someone into transitioning is like, that is propaganda, that is straight up, her propaganda is straight up Republican right wing propaganda and I reject it with every cell in my body.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I, no, no. So yeah.
Liz: The nicest thing I can say about this subplot is that she does not literally have sex with Beto. I assume, because this show would tell us, because it doesn’t leave anything to the imagination.
Anika: Okay. But she might, okay. So the reason that I can’t accept Star Trek 6 as the best Star Trek movie is because of two things. It is how it disrespects Uhura and also Chekov, but in, in terms of this episode, Uhura, and because of the mind rape. And I’m just like, no, that’s a no. That’s a hard no for me. Frankly, Erica has the mildest reaction possible to this. If I was Erica, I would be calling up Star Trek SVU and being like, you got to get here right now and save my brother.
Liz: I mean, at this point, you have to ask, is Erica right to be racist against Vulcans?
Anika: Yes, because frankly, Erica is on the side of good over here. It is disgusting to me. And she’s like, you don’t understand my brother and you also don’t understand me. I am, I am, she also gets an apology basket and I just, I just want to, I want to, oh my God, Beto, this poor kid. I can’t.
If he was making What Is Starfleet now, I would be fully on board with him being like, Oh, actually Starfleet’s terrible because I was mind-raped by my girlfriend for no reason because she became a Vulcan. And so it was actually against her will as well as against my will. And I can’t, there’s so many layers of wrong that I just want to scream.
Liz: I also don’t like the optics of the dark-skinned Black one becoming a predator.
Anika: Oh my God. Every single part about this storyline is horrible and a huge failure to understand the context of what you are doing. They’re also Latinx. And so there’s so many racial … it’s so bad, it’s so bad.
Liz: It’s also “my brother was bullied into transitioning because he’s a people pleaser.” Jesus Christ.
Anika: Oh my God. I can’t, that’s what I’m saying is like, they turned Uhura into a groomer. I can’t, I can’t.
Liz: It’s horrible. And I know that this is just subtext, but the subtext is important. And I kind of feel like this episode was maybe ghost written by J.K. Rowling.
Anika: Because everyone is acting as if their names were a description of their racial identity.
Liz: Yes. And also, I remember in the later Harry Potter books, that the kids are just using Imperio like it’s no big deal and it’s even played for laughs. And that’s kind of how it feels here that you are doing literally an unforgivable thing. And it doesn’t matter because you’re the quote unquote good guys. Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. Again, how is no one other than Erica who, again, mainly just tells her off and then leaves. And I understand that, what is she supposed to do? There’s nothing she can do about any of this. But also the fact that there are no consequences for anyone at the end of this is really painful to me. They should at the least have some kind of debriefing and restorative justice discussion of, and apologize. Frankly, apologize. The stupid soup scene is the only thing we get. And it is played for laughs that Christine is actually bad at doing her restorative justice.
Liz: I mean, it’s not like the judge advocate general is going to do anything about it because this episode tells us he’s bigoted against non-Vulcans because all Vulcans are jerks.
Anika: You’re so right, that’s so … I’m in, I’m in actual pain now.
Liz: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s healthy for me to be this angry this early in the morning. Let’s talk about Romula’an, which is almost a good storyline.
Anika: Almost. So, okay. So, I hate the reasons for La’an being a Romulan. I hate them.
Liz: Oh, you mean that she just has evil in her genes?
Anika: Yeah. I say, okay, for multiple reasons. First of all, we have discussed this, that’s not a thing. Second of all, the fact that they are basically saying that Romulans are just straight up born evil, is not a thing and offensive to me personally. And then, that La’an, because she is augmented human, is therefore slotted into, you don’t get to be a Vulcan, you have to be a Romulan. I, there are no words for what I feel about that.
Liz: It’s a whole thing and I hate it.
Anika: It’s a whole thing and I hate it. What they do with it is interesting.
Liz: I enjoyed all the stuff with Kirk and Scotty and how at no point does it occur to them to get a grown up.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: I mean, admittedly, Pike knows and apparently doesn’t care. So, even Vulcan Pike is bad at his job.
Anika: Oh my God, Vulcan Pike is terrible at his job because he institutes 27-minute shift changes or whatever and then calls it a day. Now I can just go on with my life doing whatever the hell I want. But anyway, the Kirk and Scotty parts of this episode were probably some of the best.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So, like, Kirk and Scotty are bros who are becoming friends who are going to have this long-term relationship where they inherently trust each other.
Liz: Yeah, I love that. Honestly, Kirk and Scotty has been a highlight of the whole season.
Anika: Yeah, honestly. I mean, okay, so, Kirk shouldn’t be in this episode. I will just say straight up, there is the weakest possible explanation for why Kirk is even there. And the fact that his brother is not even on board is just like, we didn’t have time to include Sam in this, so he’s just not here. And it’s just absurd. It’s just nonsense. Fine. Whatever.
Liz: I would not normally be calling for more Sam, but I thought it was also odd that he wasn’t in “Through the Lens of Time”, which is a whole episode where maybe a xenoanthropologist might have come in handy. And at this point, I’m wondering if the actor had a conflicting gig.
Anika: I mean, not that Sam’s ever been good at his job either, but whatever. But yeah, so Kirk is in this episode and his stuff with Scotty is great. His stuff with La’an is not awful, but I don’t understand it.
Liz: I feel like, and we discussed this during the week, but I feel like the show wants to think that they’re platonic buds, they’re BFFs. But as with the Pike/Marie relationship, possibly at some point going from a casual relationship to a committed one, they haven’t done the work.
Anika: No.
Liz: In the teaser where Pike is like, did I cheat on you in a dream? I don’t know, Chris, did you cheat on her in season one with a cult leader? Right.
Anika: Yeah. So, so…
Liz: Ladies be irrational!
Anika: We’ll get to Pike and Marie. But in terms of Kirk and La’an, in the Sehlat episode, you know, they had a moment. And I’m not crazy because it was also mentioned by the Greatest Generation or the Greatest Trek podcast.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And I’ve seen it online, as well, as people talking about it. “Oh, is this a love triangle now?” So I’m not crazy. There was a moment. They were looking at each other. And then in this episode, he beams on board and he immediately asks, “Where’s La’an?” I get where you’re coming from, that they are bros. And I do agree that Kirk sort of acts like they’re bros the entire episode, but I’m not sure that they’ve had a conversation in between what happened in the musical episode and when she beamed on board and they locked eyes and then she immediately beamed away.
And now they meet up in the bar and she’s a Romulan for no reason. I have legitimately no idea. It could be two months. It could be two years that have gone by between the musical episode and this episode. I have absolutely no idea. However, I have seen zero conversations.
Liz: No, I’m going to say, timeline wise, it’s three to six months. Because we know that Enterprise was in for repairs for three months between “Hegemony, Part Two” and “Wedding Bell Blues”. And then however many, you know, some nebulous amount of time has passed in between.
Anika: It could literally be two days or two weeks or two months or two years. They will not explain it ever.
Liz: I mean, we’re coming back to my question from the other week. Has Carol had the baby and broken up with Jim yet?
Anika: Yeah, I know. Because he is definitely acting like he does not care. That doesn’t matter. That is just a thing that happened in his life and he has gotten over. Or maybe he wants to talk to La’an without it because maybe she’s the only person on the Enterprise who knows. That would be awesome. I would love to see that scene. I don’t have a problem with them being bros. I don’t have a problem.
Liz: No, I just want to see the groundwork.
Anika: I want to see them literally talk to each other at all. Instead of with Scotty at a bar and she’s Romulan. And then they spent the entire episode trying to stop her from being to Romulan and destroying everything and starting an actual war.
Liz: Because she is genetically evil.
Anika: What? What? No. So I don’t understand their relationship and I don’t like that she’s a Romulan for poor reasons.
Liz: The other thing is the bit where Pike and La’an say Romulans at the same time is slightly amusing. The rest of the dialogue in that scene was embarrassing. But the thing is in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, and I went back and double checked yesterday afternoon, she never sees a Romulan face. She only sees Sarah in human disguise. She doesn’t know about the Romulan Vulcan connection.
Anika: I applaud you for going to check.
Liz: I mean, you grow up a Voyager fan, and one thing you learn is to notice and then find a way to hand wave these stupid inconsistencies, but I don’t want to hand wave it. Like, I love Voyager. I’ll do the work for Voyager. Strange New Worlds has not earned that energy from me. They can’t even competently call back to their own episodes.
Anika: Yeah, that was one of the moments that I really enjoyed. I thought it was funny. And I’m like, obviously, this is never going to come back, because why would anything ever come back in Strange New Worlds in a good way? But I would like it if they had an actual conversation about it instead of silliness. But okay, so you’re saying she doesn’t even know about Romulans, and I believe you, but if she does know about Romulans, then she would recognize that she was a Romulan.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And this would play out differently. So yeah, no.
Liz: Yeah. And then we get to Pike and he’s the same, but worse.
Anika: Right? Somehow worse. So I just have to say very clearly that the opening monologue where he does space the final prince here is supposed to be a Vulcan voice, is the most cringe worthy thing to ever happen in Star Trek. It hurts my soul.
Liz: Oh my god. So much of this episode is like watching a complete amateur doing an unrehearsed stand up comedy routine. And that bit in particular was a low point for my second hand embarrassment.
Anika: Yes. Right. It hurt. I was just like, I don’t want to feel bad for Anson Mount, but I feel bad for Anson Mount because this is horrible. And no one should have. Yeah. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened.
Liz: No. No. If this was the best cut, they should have just dropped the joke.
Anika: Yes. Yes.
Liz: Okay. Yes. So can I talk about Marie’s subplot here as well? Because that’s more interesting to me than Pike. Pike, bad at his job, ridiculous hair, the end.
I don’t understand why Marie’s professional future is bound up in this weird rom-com slash 1950s “the boss is coming to dinner and I need to convince him that I deserve a promotion” plot.
Anika: Thank you for saying that because it’s literally the plot of the first episode of WandaVision.
Liz: That’s exactly what I thought of.
Anika: As you suggested, it takes place in the 50s. It’s in black and white television.
Liz: I’m pretty sure that it was done multiple times on I Love Lucy, because it’s that kind of plot. That is not how jobs work in the 2020s.
Anika: I mean, so…
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You’ve been complaining that Marie is in the girlfriend box the entire season, and it was never more clear than this episode, where, as you say, her entire plot depended on her boyfriend making a good impression.
Liz: Because she can’t cook, because she’s a career lady.
Anika: Which every single thing about that is wrong and horrible. And she deserves so much better than whatever the Vulcan’s name is, and then Starfleet. She should sue Starfleet at this point.
Liz: Oh my god. When the dinner devolves into Pike and Spock just bullying her, I was like, this is unacceptable. Once again, jobs don’t work like this anymore, and neither do relationships.
And then, we just go into Pike trying to sabotage her with this whole ableist, “my girlfriend has a chronic illness and therefore is not fit to work, and actually, I think she should just live in my quarters forever.”
Anika: Yikes. I mean, he was like, I’m gonna take you out of the girlfriend box and put you into the trad wife box.
Liz: Yeah. I talked back in episode 3 about Pike showing red flags, and in episode 1, come to think of it, but these flags are just getting redder and redder. There’s a whole Communist Party parade happening down there. Who thought this was good?
Anika: It’s… What? And then the fact that she stands up to the Vulcan and then gets the job…
Liz: Yeah. Yeah…
Anika: . is also a trope in rom-coms. That’s not how that works either.
Liz: And she doesn’t just stand up to him. She throws a tantrum. It was embarrassing.
Anika: Right.
Liz: You know, I’m here for Marie. I’m ride or die. She absolutely earned that tantrum, but that’s a tantrum. Yeah.
Anika: Right. And so it’s like, no, no. I can’t live in this world where the things, everything about everything that everyone does in this episode is so painful to me because it’s like a bizarre world version of everything good and pure.
Liz: I want to be happy that she’s going to get a promotion to Vice Admiral and be put in charge of the Judge Advocate General’s office, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to die in the next two episodes. She is a dead captain walking.
Anika: She’s a dead captain walking. La’an is 1000% going to be timey-wimey to out of existence. Good for her because this existence doesn’t deserve her, frankly.
Liz: Frankly, if Erica doesn’t come out and then die in the same episode, I will be genuinely shocked.
Anika: It is, okay, all I want is Marie getting her job, I was like, literally cancel the show and give me that show right now. I don’t need to see the next season. I don’t need to see the final two seasons. All I want is the Star Trek JAG show led by Marie Batel. I would trade the entire series of Strange New Worlds for that.
Liz: I wouldn’t even necessarily trade it for anything, just, if Paramount wants to put it in the vault and delete it for tax purposes, that’s fine by me. And nothing of value is lost.
Anika: I’m so mad. I’ve been wanting Star Trek JAG forever, since season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So, yeah. It’s, again, it feels like they’re dangling something that I want in front of me and they are going to rip it away in the most violent and disgusting way possible. That’s my assumption.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I feel like we’ve covered a lot of the shipping news already, but let’s talk about Spock, La’an and how this episode ends. When they got together, we were like, Spock’s going to make it weird and overstep her boundaries right away, and now we find that he’s already putting his socks in her drawers. Bro. Yeah, bro. I understand that this show does not understand consent, but come on. You don’t put your socks in someone else’s…
Anika: Is the time watch from “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow” still in her drawers as well? These are the things that I want to know. Just saying.
Liz: What a great question. What a wonderful question that this show may never answer, and if they do, it’ll probably be in a way that’s inconsistent.
Anika: Legitimately, I think Spock would put his socks right on top of that watch.
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: Not even knowing what it was, but having vague, bad vibes about it. Bad heterosexual vibes. Because he’s not putting it over it because it has to do with Kirk, and he cares. No. He just needs to keep on to himself. But stepping back a minute to the climax of the episode and the dance-off, which, yes, how can you utilize the dance-off and make me hate it? I don’t understand. I am the person who thinks that everything should be resolved to the dance-off. The movie Silver Linings Playbook, which has a lot of problems, but it ends in a dance and that makes me so happy every time I watch it.
And also, in contrast to this episode and all of Strange New Worlds, the Bradley Cooper character spends the entire movie trying to make Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s dream happen. So, yeah, there are plenty of bad things and red flags and craziness in that movie, but at the end of the day, the male lead in a romantic dramedy is fulfilling the dream of the female lead. And I think that more things should do that.
Liz: Men are allowed to support their female partners? That sounds fake. I did not like the dance-off. In principle, I also love a dance-off. That bit at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy where it looks like they’re going to go into a dance-off? Love it. Amazing. And Lee Pace is like, “what?” Perfection. But because it begins with, I must physically fight my girlfriend to return her to her senses, that is another problematic trope that is not redeemed through context.
Anika: And it has the music cue of, I honestly couldn’t tell, and I literally went to YouTube and listened to both to try to decide, but it is either the “Amok Time” music or the Romulan theme. I think it is actually like, we listened to both of these and we wrote something that is in between them, which sounds like it’s a good idea, but in reality is a horrible idea.
Because as stated earlier in this episode and everywhere online for 59 years, “Amok Time” is a Kirk and Spock episode about how much they love each other. And so spending any amount of time making the Spock and La’an relationship mimic it in even the tiniest way is bad. And then, it’s again just really super horribly offensive, the idea that La’an became a Romulan because she’s an augmented human and both of those are inherently evil and I just want to die. I can’t quit any of this.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: You know, I say I hear that I want to fight this episode to the death and that was very true. But then I read the beginning of that sentence and remembered that Chapel says that they belong together because they’re both broken.
Liz: And that’s funny because I don’t think of Christine as a person who’s not broken.
Anika: Right? Or who would say she wasn’t broken? She went 1,000% would say she’s broken. That’s like her personality. That’s her thing.
Liz: Yeah, she’s the first to agree. And the thing is about, I really like that Christine is still socializing with Spock in company with her boyfriend. Where is La’an?
Anika: Yes!
Liz: Ladies be catfighting.
Anika: Ladies be catfighting. They’re not a la… Fully, where does La’an… She ends up with Una in there. You described it as… Was it Sex and the Starship? Oh my god. Yes. This stupid episode begins and ends with Sex and the Starship. Fully, absolutely correct description of that. That’s another thing that I just want to fight. I’m so mad. They remembered that Una and La’an have a relationship in order for them to gossip about their relationships?
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. Do you know how much work it takes for me to not enjoy Patton Oswalt? I love Patton Oswalt. This is… Okay, first of all, these people, these writers, misunderstand Vulcans to the point where they think Vulcans really can’t lie.
Anika: Yeah. That’s not a thing.
Liz: How misguided, how short-sighted, how incompetent are these people?
Anika: Yeah. Everything about Doug, I hated. Sorry.
Liz: In principle, I kind of find slightly amusing the idea that Uhura has this ex with whom she has such intense chemistry that she completely loses her mind and becomes a different person. But every woman in this show becomes a completely different person when she’s in a relationship. That’s just how this show works. And the fake dating is just cringe.
Anika: It’s the worst written fake dating I’ve ever encountered.
Liz: I mean, the thing is, the purpose of fake dating as a concept is that they’re pretending to date and then they’ll fall in love.
Anika: Exactly. So it’s like, y’all, I don’t think you understand what this trope is meant to do. What happens is they fake date and then Spock and Doug have a conversation about how silly Una is and decide to solve the problem because they’re the manly men who can do it.
Liz: Women do be irrational.
Anika: Literally sends her to her quarters so he can have a conversation with Doug that will solve the problem and then that’s actually what happens.
Liz: I mean, speaking of your 1950s sitcom tropes.
Anika: I just, I just. Okay. So yeah. So, so I wanted, I even, I have here that they were trying for Morticia and Gomez Adams vibes with Una and Doug, because there is this sort of like, we have this physical connection and we can’t be normal.
Liz: And it’s funny cause he’s short and she’s tall.
Anika: Exactly. It’s funny because she’s tall and stunning and beautiful and he’s short and funny and weird. And it didn’t work. I did not believe their chemistry. No offense to Rebecca Romijn or Patton Oswalt. It could entirely be me going, what is this? And why is it happening? But it did not sell me on their chemistry at all. And I spent the entire time wanting it to be someone else.
Liz: Yeah. I just wanted to excuse myself from the narrative so I could stop watching.
Anika: Yeah. And also, the entire concept of Doug, Star Trek has been promoting Sarek and to an extent T’Pol as Vulcans who care too much about humans, and have this thing where they have to be punished for liking humans too much. And then Doug is out here, and Doug’s parents I guess were hippie Vulcans who named all their kids human names or something.
And he has a straight up human fetish. Una is his kink. That’s just all I got out of it. He is not attracted to Una for her being Una. He’s attracted to her because she’s like the epitome of humanness for him. And I hate everything about it.
Liz: Anika, Anika, Una’s not even a human. Did they forget again? Do you think they forgot?
Anika: Oh my god! You’re so right! What do you, what the hell? This is so stupid. This is so stupid.
And then I have here at the end that, you know, given that Marie was given an actual career and so is definitely going to die. And it was like character assassination for everybody in the episode. So sorry, you’re going to be fighting your evil genes for the rest of your life. And Uhura is so bad at human interaction that she accidentally mind rapes her boyfriend when she gets the ability to do a mind meld. Oops, sorry.
And so I was just like, this series is not going to end with Una getting her own command. This series is going to end with Una leaving Starfleet to live out her happy, trad wife life with Doug, the human fetishist. And again, I want to throw myself into the sun.
Liz: I understand that you’re making up a guy to be mad at, but I’m so mad at him. I hate this.
Anika: I’m just like, why? Why is it like this? Why is it like this?
Liz: I have one single good thing to say about this episode. Almost by accident, it’s a story about how people can be irrational and bigoted and predatory and almost get away with it because they pass it off as logic. And I do think there’s a lesson in that for our current era. I just don’t think this episode is good and no one should watch it.
Anika: So the conceit again, is that if they go into the interior of their soul and talk to them, that they remember that they’re human, and they were human all along, which again is super transphobic. In every possible way.
Liz: Yes, and then they de-transition.
Anika: Oh my god. But it’s also just not good storytelling.
Liz: No, this happens off screen for most of them.
Anika: Right! Except for Spock and La’an having the third choreographed tango of the season.
Liz: I never thought I could get bored of a tango. You know, I’m kind of mad that we did not get a sexy tango between Pike and Spock. I think I would have enjoyed that.
Anika: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s one of those things where it’s like, what even happened? So they go into Uhura’s brain and they’re like, Uhura, you are trying to turn, not even your boyfriend, like your best friend’s little brother who you might have a crush on. You’re trying to change him into the type of person that you’ve become. Do you really want to be doing that? Like, what? What?
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: They go in and talk to Christine and say, give back all your ability to do everything that you’ve always wanted to do because you care about humanity and, yes, she would do that. But also what a horrible scene that would be. And I want to see that more.
Liz: I know. I know. I know. God, it’s just disappointing all around. And now I’m coming to a new conclusion with regard to the “Code of Honor” question. I don’t think this is worse than “Code of Honor”, but I do think it is “Code of Honor” for trans people.
Anika: Yeah. I felt many bad ways about everything else was happening. And I once again was sitting here going, am I too close to this? Do I care too much about this? Is this too personal to me or is it real? And I don’t want to be having that conversation, like that internal monologue and dialogue with myself. In a Star Trek episode.
Liz: No, no. And obviously I’m eager to see what the trans fandom makes of it. And they might have a completely different take. As we speak, Jessie Gender has been suspended from Bluesky for wishing harm on J.K. Rowling. I can’t tell you how much harm I wish upon J. K. Rowling every day. I want her to have the life she wants for trans people.
Anika: Yeah, exactly. J. K. Rowling has wished so much harm on so many innocent children that she cannot be saved. I don’t believe in irredeemable monsters, but she’s truly trying to convince me that that’s not true.
Liz: I mean, like Gul Dukat, she has opportunities to change and she doesn’t take them.
Anika: And she keeps stopping to do it.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. My point is trans critics and trans fans might have a different take and I will bow to their opinions, but my feeling as a cis lady, and I am the cisest lady you will ever meet, is that this is super transphobic and separately sexist and ableist and racist. And it’s bad.
Anika: You should get a medal for being against everyone.
Liz: Congratulations. You’re the most bigoted episode of Star Trek.
Anika: All right, what a great moment to end on.
Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media, credits for our theme music and some transcripts of our episodes.
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Join us in a week when we will be discussing the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, “Terrarium”.