Anika and Liz get sucked into a wormhole and trapped on a moon orbiting a gas giant, which is actually pretty standard when you’re adults with jobs trying to organise a board game night. We’re discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3, episode 9, “Terrarium”, an episode which comes so close to being good before it snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
- “We’re going to give you the stories you’ve been asking for since season 1, and then we’re gonna end it with a twist that makes it all totally meaningless! Hurray!”
- Good news, Akiva Goldsman finally watched “Arena”! Next question, did he, um, understand it?
- Anika has notes on Metron experiment design
- The AUDACITY of SNW criticising the Gorn for ableism
- This was an opportunity to let Uhura become a more complex and flawed character, but unfortunately Pike is bad at his job (and so are the writers)
- Is La’an actually psychologically fit for starship duty?
- Why are we making fun of Spock’s weight? Why is this whole season so dedicated to bullying Spock?
- Endangering 4,000 people including children: that’s the Christopher Pike way
- But seriously, why does Uhura have sole responsibility for this problem? Why is Pike setting her up to fail?
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Anika: 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, “Terrarium”.
Liz: So I feel like this episode is 50 minutes of absolutely outstanding Star Trek, but it’s a 56 minute episode and unfortunately, it ends poorly.
Anika: Very poorly.
Liz: I was so on board with this episode. My notes went from, ‘is this good?’ to, ‘oh my gosh, this is good!’ And then I was annoyed when Uhura fudged the numbers, but then I thought, this is the opportunity I have to fix that thing I’ve been complaining about, where she always does and says the right thing, and she’s just a really uncomplicated, tokenistic character. No, there’s no consequences.
Anika: Why would there be consequences?
Liz: Strange New Worlds is just snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Anika: They’re really good at it, actually. That’s what I’ve got at it this season, is they have… The concept is solid. The execution is bad.
Liz: Woeful. And I don’t understand why they’ve lost the basic competence of Season 1 and 2. I was talking about it with my flatmate, she hasn’t watched any of this season, but she was like, “There were good things in Season 1 and 2, and you talked about them, but this year it just seems like you’re not finding any redeeming qualities.” I had to say most of the performances are good, Jess Bush is amazing and deserves better, but that’s about it.
Anika: It’s really strange and it seems that we’re not alone in this. I would say that I’ve seen a lot of other voices that are speaking up and saying, I don’t think this is the best season. Even the polite people are like, I don’t know, and then there’s actually loud critics. But it’s also getting the best ratings it’s ever gotten. And I don’t know what to say about that.
Liz: Ratings are never a reflection of quality. Yellowstone gets good ratings. And this kind of feels like, what if Taylor Sheridan was making a Star Trek?
Anika: I guess it’s August and nothing else is on.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, not much.
Anika: Some people are like, well, there’s new Star Trek. We’ll watch that. That’s my only explanation.
Liz: It boggles the mind, but we record this a few days after “What is Starfleet?” dropped for the general audience. And I have to say, it was very gratifying to me that even people who have generally been positive about this season, looked at that episode and went, “Oh, I don’t know.” Then you have much more analytical and critical and thoughtful viewers like Jesse Gender going, “Oh noooooo.”
Anika: I will say that yes, absolutely, this episode, even with the terrible twist at the end, was a phenomenally better episode than “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans”. And I would say my favorite of the season in terms of enjoying watching it.
Liz: Same.
Anika: It gave us many things that we have been begging them for, namely a spotlight on both Erica Ortegas and Melissa Navia. And this was a really hard episode to pull off. And she did.
Liz: Right, right. This is a one woman show for a lot of it. It’s just Melissa Navia on set with what I presume is a stunt double, or possibly a puppet. Either way, she has carried so much of this season and she carried this episode and it was amazing.
Anika: I’m really, really sad. I’m really sad about the whole thing.
Liz: It’s just so funny how the episode cuts off just as the rescue team materializes.
Anika: And then they all lived happily ever after.
Liz: And then we never find out what happens next. I assume that Erica and her Gorn girlfriend materialize in the transporter room and everyone’s like, “Oh my god, this changes everything we thought we knew about the Gorn!” Then Erica’s like, “And we’re dating now.” And Marie is like, “As a part-Gorn and a starship captain, I think I’m qualified to perform your wedding.”
Anika: It’s beautiful. And then it’s beautiful. It ends on an absolute high note. We never need to see any more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ever again.
Liz: There’s a short scene where Una has a stern talk with Uhura about making bad choices for what she thinks are good reasons. And Uhura learns an important lesson. And grows as a person. And then we’re done. Yeah.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: What a great episode of Star Trek. What a great episode of Star Trek.
Anika: Yay. No. No, that’s not what happens. No. This episode is set up to be many things that we have been asking for, for more than even just this season. In terms of Erica and Uhura. And then, none of that happened. Literally, the way that this episode ends makes the entire episode pointless. Nothing matters. Nothing.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Nothing matters for Uhura. Nothing matters for Erica. I’m sure nothing matters for Pike, Una, La’an or Spock. And no one else was in it.
Liz: No.
Anika: And, you know, my Gorn Gamer Goddess doesn’t even get a name. So, RIP, Nameless Gorn Gamer Goddess.
Liz: A role model for Gamer Girls everywhere. For disabled Gamer Girls.
Anika: And can I just say, obviously, I love that Erica has the little carved game piece that she pretended to eat as a keepsake forever in her quarters. But also, once again, this episode ends the same way as “Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow”. And I think they should stop doing that. Is it bad enough that they are redoing TOS and TNG and the rest of Star Trek? They really have to stop redoing themselves.
Liz: It’s giving Season 7 of Star Trek: Voyager, where they kept telling the same story and using the same tropes over and over again. And every single time, it was like, “Oh my god, this unprecedented event that happened two weeks ago was happening!” I just don’t think that that’s something you want when you’re in the third season and you’re not even up to 30 episodes yet. Why is this so tired?
And the basic premise of this episode is not new. It’s “Arena”. It’s “The Enemy”. We have a little bit of “Darmok” and a little bit of “Errand of Mercy”. And yes, I feel like Akiva Goldsman is like dancing into the room going, “Hey guys, I finally watched ‘Arena’!” And then, Padme face, and you understood “Arena”? No, no, no, he didn’t understand “Arena”.
Anika: He just decided that he… Okay, so I’ve said this when the announcements for the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds were first made and La’an Noonien-Singh was announced. And I said, there’s this weird thing in Hollywood these days where they take an enemy, a villain, and they make a girl version. And there’s girl Boba Fett and there’s girl Loki. And so now there’s girl Khan who is La’an.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And that was over three years ago now. And I can’t believe that showrunners are out here thinking that it’s new and incredible to remake “Arena” with girls. I just want to sit them down and be like, no, that’s not revolutionary. You told no new story.
It could have been a new story. It could have been, as we said, and then they brought their Gorn home or something. Something is different. But no, it’s literally exactly the same story, except worse because La’an shows up and kills the Gorn.
Liz: Right. Because “Arena” ends with Kirk having the Gorn under his power and choosing to show mercy. And then the Metron turns up and he’s like, oh, wow, you guys are so much more advanced than we thought, but we’re just going to send you both back to your ships and have fun with your space thing. T
he whole thing is that the Enterprise has chased the Gorn ship into Metron space. And the Metrons are like, guys, we really can’t have lower races doing violence in our space. So we’re just going to drop the two of you captains on a planet and you can deal with it yourselves. This version is like, it’s a Q story. It’s yet another. It’s the trope of yet another advanced alien doing a test.
Anika: Superintelligence has nothing better to do in their lives than set up little experiments to learn more about human reactions. Humans are lab rats and nothing else. And I just want to say as someone who works in science with lab rats, that’s not why we study them. We don’t actually care about what the rats are doing. We’re doing things to the rats and then studying them for a reason.
And I guess that’s what they’re doing in this episode, because they’re like, we’re going to set up this stupid thing where there’s a sad Gorn and a lost human and see what happens. But they’re not learning anything about humans or war. No one learns anything. The Metrons obviously don’t learn anything because they set it up and do it again in three years, so they didn’t learn anything.
Liz: Are you saying this is a badly designed experiment?
Anika: And also, I just, I can’t. And yes, you are correct that it’s TOS fault that they’re angel-coded. However, I hate that they’re angel-coded, especially in this particular season and series, which is just kind of weirdly Christian.
Liz: Yes, and I don’t love that the new modern Metron seems to be non-binary, in that they speak with male and female voices, and their appearance is kind of androgynous, because this is not a show with a great history of queer representation. And I think that using non-binary people for, you know, monstrous aliens who do experiments on humans, is probably bad, in that context.
I really wanted to like this episode, it was mostly so good. I just don’t understand. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this season is so nihilistic, and it’s always had that streak, but it’s just turned up to 11 this season, and I don’t understand why, and I don’t understand who thinks this makes good Star Trek in particular.
Anika: Yes, so in terms of discussing “What is Starfleet?”, I’ve been having some actually really good conversations online about it, and a number of people have said that they just want a good story, and in these particular conversations, the belief is that “What is Starfleet?” wasn’t even that. It wasn’t entertaining enough for them. It wasn’t a good story. It was a confused story, which is true, and they didn’t understand why it was in the format it was.
Now, I kind of love the format, but on an entirely meta level, that has nothing to do with the actual episode. I think it’s a bad episode of Star Trek and an interesting idea for Starfleet propaganda. But I understand that impulse of just wanting to be entertained and inspired and whatever.
But I even hold my stupid crime procedurals and medical traumas to a higher standard than that. I call them terrible, and I talk about how they could be better and how they’re doing this interesting thing, but then this other thing happens. And that’s my whole thing. My whole thing is picking apart things that are already not trying to be Star Trek. This is trying to be Star Trek and completely failing.
Liz: Yes. And I don’t need every episode to have a lesson. I don’t want Captain Pike to sit down and explain what we’ve learned. I write fiction for kids and I hate when there’s some sort of moralistic finger wagging tone.
But at the same time, even when I’m writing my silly space opera, I am on some level thinking, what are the ethics of this universe? What is the morality that I’m modeling? And what is the subtext that I’m using? And how much control do I have over that?
Because I don’t want people to go looking at my story going, oh wow, she really loves space empires and approves of their existence. And that’s not really hard. It should be easier if you’re writing for adults, but I genuinely think there is no ethos or ethical basis behind Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I don’t even think there’s an intellectual curiosity.
Anika: Right, they really are just telling stories that have already been told, not in a new and interesting way. I love The Force Awakens, because it’s telling the same story as A New Hope, but in a different way with different people who are also the same people. And it’s kind of amazing. I love that, because the differences make it this, the differences that are also the same are what make it magical. But Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has none of that magic.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Erica is great in this episode. And she is not doing a Kirk. Erica and her Gorn girlfriend are not Kirk and the Gorn in “Arena”. It’s a very different version of that story, but the episode doesn’t care. They are not interested in that at all.
Liz: No. And on every level, this is an Erica Ortegas story. So why does it get this bullshit ending?
Anika: Which doesn’t even make sense, because, okay, so we can talk about the ableist Gorn and how offensive it is in this particular series, but also just generally in television and Star Trek and sci-fi in specific, which can be super ableist.
But if Erica’s storyline in this season made any sense at all, if there was an actual coherent through line of, Erica is also injured and has to deal with stuff, and the belief that she’s broken, or even if in “What is Starfleet?”, and she explained why she’s in Starfleet, and it had anything to do with brokenness, they sort of wave at that idea, but it’s not this.
It’s not that her family was broken. It’s just, I needed control over my life, which is, is also, her breadcrumbs are there. It could be a good story if they just spent a little more time on trying to make it make sense. But since they didn’t, I have to sit here and go, okay, in the first episode this happened, in the second episode this happened, in the documentary episode this happened, and now she’s on the Gorn planet, and I have to sit there and make it up in my mind as to why she has this poignant, impassioned speech about how they’re not broken and how that actually matters to Erica as a character at all, and then it doesn’t work anyway. So what was the point?
Liz: Yeah. I think the point of making the Gorn disabled and making the Gorn ableist is so that when La’an kills our gamer Gorn girlfriend, we can go, oh, well, it’s not like she could have gone home anyway.
Anika: Right. I agree with you. I think that it is a cheap trick because they wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn’t get out of because they still have to be enemies when we get to “Arena”. And so this couldn’t have any effect on anything at all, ever. Which is like, that is not why you make prequels, people.
Liz: No.
Anika: They don’t understand prequels at all.
Liz: No, no. It’s so frustrating because I like prequels and I think that if you do it intelligently, they can function like an historical drama. And the thing is, about the way the Gorn is written out, it’s the same thing that happened with the Klingon woman in “Shuttle to Kenfori”, where she sacrifices her life and it’s kind of like, and I said this, it’s not like she could have gone home anyway. Right.
Anika: So it has nothing to do. Those characters were created to be sacrificial lambs for our characters. And yet our characters are not changed. Obviously, yes. I think that hopefully Erica has learned a lesson about how the Gorn are not just straight up evil and maybe all aliens are not just straight up evil and she will be a nicer person going forward potentially.
But, I mean, I don’t actually expect that to happen because it’s not like anything happened to M’Benga. Because of anything that happened to him, he is the same person. He’s stuck in the same stupid storyline. They are not allowed to change. And why? It’s really, really strange. It’s because they are afraid to change the universe. If the universe can’t change, they also can’t change these characters. It’s like, why did you make this show if you don’t want to play with how you can change within the constraints of the timeline?
Liz: And Ortegas is a new character. We can do literally anything we want with her. I understand they’re somewhat constrained with M’Benga because we know he’s still in Starfleet, if not the Chief Medical Officer in a few years. Erica could do anything or be anything. And it’s just like, no, I think we need to make sure that Commander Kirk gets his character development.
And also with the Gorn, it just struck me that this is another disabled character dying to teach an able-bodied person an important lesson.
Anika: It’s so depressing.
Liz: Justice for Hemmer.
Anika: Because she… Okay. So the middle part of this episode, where they’re playing games and agree and disagreeing and communicating in these weird little funny ways and becoming friends or girlfriends if I have my way, is beautiful. It’s so pure. It’s just like, look at this. This is what Star Trek should be. This is what entertainment should be.
Liz: Honestly, I am okay with Modern Trek revisiting old plots like “The Enemy” and going, okay, now what if we do the same thing but with women? Because I love “The Enemy”. It’s a great episode. It’s the one where Geordi is trapped on a planet with a Romulan and they actually talk about Geordi’s disability and the ableism of Romulan society and the fact that a disabled child would not be allowed to grow up to be an adult. And that’s really thoughtful and, really, it has an ethos. And it doesn’t end with Worf beaming down and shooting Geordi’s Romulan friend and then Q turning up to tell him that it was all experiment.
Anika: I’m so mad. I’m, okay. Okay, yeah. So this episode, not only does it just waste all of the beautiful and amazing development that it gives Erica, it harms Uhura. And yes, maybe she could have become complicated, but of course not on Pike’s Enterprise because Pike is the worst captain in the history of captaining. He is such a bad leader. I can’t even handle how bad he is.
And, cherry on the top is that La’an has learned nothing in the three episodes this season that have been about maybe talk to people before shooting them.
Liz: Huge if true.
Anika: Cool. Great. I love that they are using La’an’s childhood trauma to force Erica out of her, like she was healing and now she’s back into the trauma zone because her friend was gunned down in front of her by her other friend. And she literally says, I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with that either. I hate it.
Liz: I mean, how would you? Because it’s cheap. It’s a cheap use of trauma as a concept to lock Erica in this box, which – Erica already had trauma. She went through the Klingon War and has some level of PTSD from that. We didn’t need this additional Gorn trauma.
I guess if this was a better show, I would say that what they should have done was have her suffer some permanent injury to her hand in the season premiere, so that she needs a prosthetic, so that she’s spending this season getting used to being a disabled person.
Then she meets this Gorn and she’s like, no, actually, we’re not broken. I’ve had all these feelings about my new reality, and now I can safely say that this is who I am and this is how I live now. And then her Gorn girlfriend doesn’t die. Obviously, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would never have done this storyline because it would involve not killing off a disabled character.
Anika: Oh my god. Yes, exactly. If Erica had a storyline that was related instead of vaguely in the same quadrant as what she’s talking about in this episode, it would be significantly better.
And if La’an was not used as a plot point basically this entire season, they’re pretending she has a character arc, but she doesn’t. She’s also learning nothing and just like whatever episode, whatever the episode needs her to do and be, it’s like, okay, she’ll be that now. And so somebody needed to shoot the Gorn and she is the obvious choice. But it’s not even weighty. We don’t get her being upset about anything. We get nothing.
Liz: No. And the thing is, La’an is meant to be super intelligent and to have these powerful reflexes. So she should be able to go, Oh, the Gorn and Erica were hiding in the same place. Clearly they are allies. I might pull my phaser, but I’m not going to shoot.
Anika: You would think.
Liz: And so once again, La’an’s brain cells have been destroyed.
Anika: Because again, they needed her to be the traumatized little girl who is going to shoot the Gorn, any Gorn that she sees because she hates all Gorn and they upset her so much.
And so you know what? She shouldn’t be in Starfleet right now, if that is true. If she can’t stop herself from shooting whatever Gorn she sees, she should not be allowed to be the chief of security. Sorry, that’s my opinion.
Liz: Maybe we shouldn’t give massively traumatized people weapons.
Anika: Last week, she was literally trying to start a war with multiple alien empires.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Maybe she should be in therapy instead of on the away team.
Liz: Girl, are you okay? She needs to have a soft clothes vacation like Marie Batel, and they can just sit around and talk about stuff and do separate Zoom therapy. It’ll be great.
Oh my god, oh my god. What if Marie gets her JAG show and then La’an leaves the Enterprise, not to be wiped out of history, but to become like Marie’s investigator?
Anika: It’ll be excellent. Get her away from the front lines.
Liz: It’s not gonna happen because I still think Marie is dead.
Anika: Okay, everything about La’an screams, you should not be in a starship. You should be doing something else.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Because all that has happened to her out in space has been horrible. And if she joined Starfleet, because they give her purpose and they keep her instincts from taking over or whatever she said in “What is Starfleet?”, then absolutely, she liked being an investigator. She was having fun. Remember when she had fun briefly in that one episode?
Liz: Yeah, yeah. That glorious episode was a terrible ending. Yes. Weird how Strange New Worlds keeps doing that.
Anika: La’an should be set free from this horrible existence. Well, I want to know how she feels about the fact that she killed the nice Gorn. Does she even know?
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Because she was frozen by the stupid Angel. And I don’t understand what they’re allowed to remember and not remember. It’s very unclear to me.
Liz: Yeah, because the Angel was like, oh, you’re not going to remember this. We’re probably going to readjust your memories of the Gorn to, wow, little deus ex machina. But also then Erica and Uhura are having a conversation about it.
Anika: I don’t understand. Yeah, that’s what I mean. I don’t understand what was real and what wasn’t real. If you were Erica Ortegas, of all people, the idea that her mind has been altered by a super intelligence, that is horrific, actually.
Liz: Yes, because not only does she have this fear of aliens, her low-key xenophobia and her reaction to having her memory lost last season, but I don’t know if you remember, but Uhura literally rewrote her brother’s brain a week ago.
Anika: This series, I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know, I don’t. Do they read each other’s scripts?
Liz: No.
Anika: The order of this season makes no sense to me. The tonal shifts are so bad that I fully can’t.
Liz: Yeah, it’s-
Anika: I can’t do it. Imagine if I was bingeing this. I would lose my mind.
Liz: It would be rough, yeah.
Anika: And I understand that they’re doing new things with genre and they’re playing around and they’re- but it’s like they’re not actually using the different genres to say anything about the story or the characters or anything. It’s literally all just, let’s do this now. And it’s so haphazard.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: There’s no coherence. I was so nice to this show for two seasons. I feel like I’ve been betrayed and I’m not even a fan. I don’t understand.
Liz: I feel like part of the role of a showrunner at the Akiva Goldsman or Michelle Paradise level is to exercise a level of editorial control over everyone’s scripts so that you have consistency, and for some reason Akiva Goldsman doesn’t seem to do that and he has particularly checked out this season.
Your note here is that Una has a new personality every week. Nyota is also rotating personalities on a regular basis.
Anika: So is La’an.
Liz: So is La’an. So is Pike.
Anika: Everyone. Everyone is a completely even Spock. And if you like, I feel like if any character in Star Trek should have a consistent personality, it’s Spock. And even Spock is stuck in weird, just absolutely I don’t understand why anything is happening to you. And also he’s constantly picked on. This entire season is about Spock being picked on for no reason. He’s being bullied for no reason. These are his friends.
Liz: It’s like they’ve taken the Spock-McCoy relationship, but now everyone thinks they’re McCoy.
Anika: It makes no sense to me.
Liz: Why are we making fun of Spock’s weight? What, at work or anywhere?
Anika: I mean, that was just straight up are they trying to say that is also a form of ableism and just, you know, discrimination in general. And it’s just, what are you saying? What is the point of any of this? Does Spock, in addition to having self-harmed when he was a child, also has an eating disorder because of horrible humans? Is that what we are trying to say here?
I was pulled completely out of the scene. And I really thought about it. I was like, okay, because they’re laughing in the corridor, ha ha ha, did you see how Spock looked? And so, the idea was that we have to establish that Erica and Uhura are friends, because otherwise, Uhura being really upset about Erica being missing the entire episode and being willing to lie and cheat and steal in order to get her back and blow off 4,000 people, including children, which is frankly, the Pike way at this point is because we have to make sure that you understand that she’s super close with Erica.
And the way that they’re going to show that she’s super close to Erica, even though they’ve been friends the entire time and literally last week, they had a big fight over how she wasn’t acting like herself and her friend and she missed her. But in order to establish that they’re besties, they have to make fun of Spock and it has to be about his weight. Who wrote this?
Liz: It just had this really odd mean girl energy. And Erica can be spiky, but Nyota is never a mean girl. And as you say, Nyota and Erica have been friends basically since episode one. This is that Star Trek: Voyager thing of every episode has to be understood by someone who is watching Star Trek for the very first time.
Anika: Oh God, if this was the first episode of Star Trek you ever- I don’t think it’s more Star Trek. And that- and it’s great Star Trek for most of it. And yet I don’t think that this would make you want to watch it.
Liz: Absolutely not. And it does so much that I’ve been so keen for. A lot of this season, I’ve been like, these people are supposed to be scientists, and they’re supposed to be explorers, and they’re acting like an average person’s idea of how an intelligent person acts.
But in this episode, Erica is actually smart. She is super capable. She’s adaptable. I don’t know that the talking to herself conceit was really necessary because it was pretty obvious most of the time what she was doing. But it’s fine. We’re writing for people who watch TV with their phone in their hands. At this point, I think Erica might be the smartest person on the Enterprise.
Anika: Oh my god. She was amazing. And it was so cute when she was so proud of herself. I was like, thank you for giving Erica and showing her to be this super capable. Because you know what?
This episode, once again, for the fifth time, wanted us to really know that Pike and Erica have the same job. They were both super pilots. Pike was a really, really good pilot. I don’t know if you know this about him, but he was an amazing pilot and he’s the best pilot. And the only person who’s a better pilot than him is Erica Ortegas, sometimes.
Liz: I did not know that.
Anika: Anyway.
Liz: Do you think it’s possible that Erica Ortegas flies the ship?
Anika: Potentially. I don’t know. Only when Pike’s not available. But this episode proved that… Remember how we were saying in the Kirk episode that Pike was randomly playing with wires? And it was like, why though? Why is Pike playing with wires? And I said, if he had one line where it explains that he once crash landed and had to do this for himself, and that’s why he knows how to do it, then I would be more forgiving of him. But since they didn’t have that line, I hate him.
Once again, this episode was like, Erica can do it. Erica can do everything all by herself. And she’s adorable about it. And she makes a cute Gorn friend. And she figures out a way to talk to the Gorn on her own.
Liz: Yeah. No one has ever done that.
Anika: No one has ever done that. And that’s what I want her to be talking to Uhura about. I don’t want her to be sad about her friends fighting. I want her to talk to Uhura about how she was able to communicate with the Gorn. And it was because of her friendship with Uhura. There are so many better options here.
Liz: It’s honestly impressive how inept and nihilistic this is. And I do think it’s going to be popular with the fans because, like “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail”, it’s shaped like Star Trek up until the end. At least this time someone is going, uh, 4,000 lives and they include children. Oh my god.
Anika: Poor Una.
Liz: About that?
Anika: There’s my other thing. Poor Una, who I maintain is a different person in every single episode. I have no idea who she is actually supposed to be, because she has yet to have something where the most Una episode we have ever gotten is obviously “Ad Astra Per Aspera”, where in theory, we got a good idea of who Una is, but not really, because that was Una’s origin story.
It’s not who she is in Starfleet now, and she is literally a different person every time we see her. She is sometimes really stupid. She is sometimes defaults to whatever Pike wants without even arguing, and then other times she is trying to take over the ship on her own. And in this one, she was absolutely the voice of reason. Obviously I wanted them to save Erica, but definitely the correct course was to go give the vaccines to the 4,000 people, including children.
Liz: Also, there were third options. I kept waiting for Jim Kirk to pop out of nowhere because he’s on the Enterprise for some reason, to go, “Hey, this looks like a no-win scenario. Did you know I don’t believe in those?” And then he packs up a shuttle with the vaccines, soups up the engines, send it out to meet the Constellation.
Anika: Right? The entire time I was like, don’t you have more shuttles? Couldn’t another starship come help out? Isn’t there anyone as they’re like, I just … couldn’t the Constellation come a little bit closer to us? It’s space. It’s space and you have warp speed. It’s so stupid. These are fake emergencies.
Liz: Right, right. And I understand this is fiction and everything is fake, but why are you so bad at dealing with a fake emergency that your writers invented to give you a problem?
Anika: It’s ;ole every time the Enterprise was the only available ship within the quadrant and it’s like no, you’re not. That’s not possible. This is stupid.
Liz: And look, I completely sympathize with the problem where you’ve written your characters into a situation and now you have to figure out the way to get out of it and creating the situation was easy, but the solution is hard. Totally get that. Do it all the time. It’s just sometimes the answer is very obvious.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Go talk to a rubber duck until you figure it out. Go talk to your cat.
Anika: And can I just say that, and again, in my ongoing evidence of why Pike is the worst captain to ever exist is that he again, once again, puts the responsibility of what we’re going to do in this terrible situation on Uhura, who was a cadet two years ago.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It is insane that Uhura is, first of all, apparently the only person working on it, with an assist from Spock midway through. Spock also is randomly doing whatever anyone ever needs him to do.
Liz: I mean, that has always been Spock’s role.
Anika: But it’s also stupid. There are engineers.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Aren’t there? Aren’t there other people on this ship? There has to be a more experienced communications officer, to be honest. But even if there are multiple engineers.
Liz: Yeah. I was like, where is Pelia? Where is our man Scotty? Martin Quinn doesn’t seem to be in this episode at all, and that feels like a real loss because he and Uhura have such a good vibe. It could be that flip side of the incident in the holodeck episode where he screws up and she covers for him.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And they could have swapped that role. As you say, why does Uhura have this responsibility? And then when she does screw up and she comes forward and admits it, Pike’s like, I would have done the same thing anyway. That 60 percent thing was just a totally arbitrary number that I made up and isn’t important.
Anika: I know. Basically, he’s saying, I manipulated you into lying. It’s okay. No problems.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And again, if it had gone poorly, if they had not found Erica, it would be entirely her fault.
Liz: Oh, 100 percent.
Anika: I hate everything about it. And the fact that he said that, that whole, I absolve you of, you know, you don’t have to apologize because I basically lied to you. Sorry. He says that on the bridge, but also under his breath. So it is both official and completely unofficial at the same time. Could be over hers, but probably wasn’t. And it’s just like, what is she supposed to learn from that?
Liz: Right. How is she supposed to grow as an officer?
Anika: It felt like he was saying, I give you permission to lie whenever the hell you want. And it’s fine. That’s what happened.
Liz: It’s not great. It’s not great.
Anika: I hate him. I have gone from, I’m not interested in Pike as a character. He’s fine, but whatever. To, I hate him. I hate very few people, characters.
Liz: I’ve had this boss and it was bad. It was bad as a working experience. It was bad for me professionally. It is not a situation I would wish on anyone. And I really hate seeing this mediocre man being held up as this great leader.
Anika: I almost had a party when I saw that some people were saying, I think Pike was out of character in “What is Starfleet?”. And then other people were like, yeah, it’s really weird how he’s being written these days. And I was like, thank God I’m not alone in thinking that he’s actually horrible and we should no longer think of him as, and multiple people were saying he was better in Star Trek: Discovery.
And I was just like, oh my gosh, I’m going to have literally, I’m going to have a toast to random people on the internet for catching up to what I’ve been saying because I no longer feel like it’s a me problem.
Liz: It’s a good feeling.
Anika: Which is great, which is something that I’ve really have been desperate to feel in regards to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But also, if you are losing those people, what are you doing?
Liz: No, no, that’s it. And I’ve seen so many people, and particularly women and marginalized people, going like, actually I’m done with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds this season. And it’s like, yes, it’s getting good ratings now, but it feels like the tide is turning. And I really do think that season four is going to be on par or worse in terms of quality. And that’s why it was canceled. I’m very, very cynical about it at this point. And I don’t think you’re going to tell me that I’m being too cynical.
Anika: No, I have seen nothing. There’s one more episode of this season that I haven’t seen because I was like, we’re going to talk about this one. I was actually shocked that this was not part one of two. I was expected the last two episodes to have something to do with each other, but whatever is fine. They don’t know what they’re doing. So they’re completely incapable of telling a coherent story. So it’s fine.
Liz: With our screeners, there’s no thumbnail for either episode. So yeah, I also assumed that they were going to be a two-parter and something big was going to happen. At this point, after all of this time setting up Marie’s death, I’m starting to wonder if she’s actually going to survive the season. Just because this is a show that would waste all that foreshadowing.
Anika: Something is going to happen. I don’t know what this season is about. This season seems to be about nothing, as far as I can tell.
Liz: No, it’s really empty. And we were talking about how Una is a different person. And I do think there is a way that there’s something hollow inside her because she spent her entire adult life pretending to be something she’s not. That’s a really interesting way to look at it. But then you look at the hollowness of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds itself, and it kind of has the same problem. It’s pretending to be a Star Trek and doesn’t really understand what that means.
Anika: And Akiva Goldsman, he wanted this show. This was the show that he wanted to make. He started with Star Trek: Discovery. He put them in season two with the sole purpose of being like, and now we have this show. And whatever, fine, great. Good for you. I’m glad you got what you wanted. But to quote Winona Kirk, he’s the dog that caught the car and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Liz: No, no. If Alex Kurtzman gets my number and rings up and says, Liz, I’ve listened to your podcast. You have some good ideas. I want you to make a ten-episode season of Star Trek, I could pull something together reasonably fast, and then I would have to go to sensitivity readers and people with lived experience in various areas. But I could give you an outline. I don’t feel like Akiva Goldsman ever had an outline beyond, it’s Star Trek!
Anika: It’s Star Trek! In terms of sensitivity readers, they clearly have none on this show. They clearly had none on the podcast.
Liz: Oh, no, no.
Anika: It’s, they don’t believe in those.
Liz: No.
Anika: They hired people for Star Trek: Prodigy because the Star Trek: Prodigy people care, but they’re a whole different company, basically, because they were Nickelodeon and then they were Netflix.
Liz: I also think that animation writing has a different culture.
Anika: And also, writing for kids.
Liz: But also Star Trek: Discovery worked closely with GLAAD and consulted with Ian Alexander on the depiction of Grey as a trans person and stuff like that. Whereas I think Akiva Goldsman has the confidence of a mediocre white man, parentheses, derogatory.
Anika: And there are so many things that I’m just, I just sit at home and I go, someone should have stopped you. If you had asked me, and I know, and I keep pitching myself as like, I’m the social scientist that you should hire Star Trek. But I’m still the social scientist that you should hire Star Trek.
Because things could be fixed too, you could have this episode and not make the Gorn ableist. It’s possible. And it’s just like, so you brought up the enemy and the conversation that Geordi and the Romulan have. And that’s what I’m talking about. Every single Klingons are ableist, the Romulans are ableist, the Gorn are ableist, they’re all-
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah.
Anika: They all are. Even the Q are Ableist.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And so it’s like this weird, if you’re a vaguely antagonistic to the Federation, you’re automatically bbleist. That’s like what they’re saying. But also it’s not like they’re better in Starfleet. Starfleet is marginally better, I guess. They do care about Geordi.
Liz: But I think this is a thing in a lot of science fiction, where we sort of farm out the negative aspects of our society to aliens. And DS9 is one of the few examples where they turn it back on ourselves and have the Ferengi go, you guys enslaved your own species? That is messed up. We would never.
Anika: Yeah. And DS9 is, I have come to believe is actually fringe Star Trek, even though everyone I know is their favorite. But I guess that says something about my bubble.
Liz: Yes. I mean, I think Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has aged really well. I have to say I’m really in the mood to rewatch every single episode, having read Nana Visitor’s book. And when I finish my Star Trek: Voyager rewatch for my blog, I’m going to do that. I’m not going to blog it because I don’t think I’m as passionate about it, but I am eager to re-visit it.
But DS9 got away with so much because it wasn’t under the eye of Rick Berman. And it feels like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds might be the Star Trek: Voyager, in that it’s the flashy one getting a lot of attention from the streamers and the studio and all of that. While maybe hypothetically Star Trek: Starfleet Academy goes further under the radar and does more interesting things, we hope.
I actually think that what all franchise series, movies, TV, whatever, what they all need is an editor to look over every single script and go – not just inconsistencies in terms of storytelling and canon, but to highlight things where there’s a bit of a subtext and they say, you should get in contact with this person or that person to talk to them about their experience. You should consider the implications of this, stuff like that.
The problem is, then you’re really in the hands of what if that person is also a dipshit. Have you ever watched the Sixth Doctor era of Doctor Who with Colin Baker?
Anika: No, I mean, no.
Liz: It’s certainly an era, but it’s very brightly colored and it’s very, “We’re fun!” but also it’s super violent and militaristic and deeply, deeply nihilistic. And this basically comes down to the storytelling preferences of the story editor at the time, Eric Saward. And I do think that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the Colin Baker era of Star Trek.
Anika: Yeah, it’s just, it hurts me. And in terms of the ableism, just like sci-fi, like I said this earlier, sci-fi in general is just very ableistic. They’re very like in a perfect utopian future society, no one would have disabilities. And it’s like, yeah, so no, that’s actually bad, guys. Think about it. Think about it just for a few minutes, that’s bad.
Liz: It’s sort of the, in the perfect utopian society, there’ll be no religion.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Okay, so we’ve done a genocide?
Anika: So what are you saying exactly? So yeah, it’s one of those things where you just need people on the outside. I mean, that’s, I don’t know. I just have a lot of feelings about the eradication of marginalization in science fiction.
Liz: Yes, that’s, yeah.
Anika: And I don’t like it.
Liz: No.
Anika: When that bleeds over. So this, it was unnecessary. They could have been more clever and not have.
Liz: I mean, that’s the, that’s the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds mantra.
Anika: The reason that they, they got, they just, they could have been more clever and they were not.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And it was at the expense of Erica’s emotional stability, of La’an’s entire character and Uhura’s, like, what is Uhura supposed to learn from this episode? And what are we supposed to learn about Uhura from this episode? Please tell me.
Liz: I mean, we learned that Uhura will go to a fairly extreme length to save her friends. You know, my favorite kind of character trait is something that’s both a strength and a weakness, and this could have been that. But because there’s no consequences, everything works out fine and she doesn’t even get a stern talking to. It’s pointless.
Anika: Una literally gave that exact stern talking to Scotty three or four episodes ago, so…
Liz: And Erica. Erica did the same thing.
Anika: Yes! So why? It’s just really, especially in this episode where Una was playing a very specific character as like the voice of reason and pragmatism on the ship.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I guess they were like, oh, it’s already too long, but it doesn’t actually matter. Last week’s episode was 40 minutes, or this week’s episode was 40 minutes, and this week’s 56, and it doesn’t matter. It could have been 58 minutes, so that Una could have that scene that would be good for both characters.
Liz: And it really does feel like they want Nyota to be up on a pedestal, but they don’t want her to face any meaningful consequences when she does make a bad choice because they think that might make them look racist.
Anika: And she was so young in this episode. This episode, I felt like, girl, she is so young. She’s a baby. And so she shouldn’t have, again, she should not have had any of the responsibility that she had in this episode because she’s a baby. But she was acting like she didn’t, she was not making good choices because she was an adolescent. And it doesn’t matter. None of that matters because Pike, I guess, never grew up himself.
Liz: He does have a certain Peter Pan-ish quality. Again, hashtag derogatory.
Anika: I’m just-
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’m just-
Liz: It just, it feels like Uhura is set up to fail.
Anika: Yes. Yes. Uhura is absolutely set up to fail. And the fact that she doesn’t fail is solely because of, again, deus ex machina and throwing La’an under the bus.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to do shipping news? Obviously, I am all about Erica and her Gorn wife.
Anika: There is a universe where none of this bad stuff happened, and they live out their lives. They bring peace to the, they broker a peace treaty between their two races, and then they seal it with a marriage and raise adorable Gorn babies.
Liz: They can adopt Marie’s Gorn babies.
Anika: They were so cute. They were so cute. The Gorn was adorable.
Liz: I’m not even into human/alien ships, particularly when the alien is this non-human. But I was into it.
Anika: They were so-
Liz: That puppet really had it going on.
Anika: Cute. The little agree, disagree. I was like, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m mad about it.
Liz: When they have their wedding vows, they can just say, instead of I do, “Agree.”
Anika: It’s just- And she was a gamer. She won it, chess. But Erica won her Gorn game. I was so into that. And you said, it’s a silly constraint and conceit for Erica to be talking to herself. And you know how Wall-E, that first, I don’t know, 20 to 30 minutes is silence?
Liz: Because- Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It could have been that. And then they would have this adorable Gorn sequence where Erica is very chat- I like that Erica is chattery. But everything about this, everything about what happened on the planet was wonderful and adorable. And the fact that at the end, Erica knew that there were people watching, that the stupid angels were there, and she was screaming at them and she was yelling.
She said, you know, not you to La’an, because La’an was like, I’m so sorry that I murdered your girlfriend. All of that was so good. And the fact that it’s ruined by this ending, where it doesn’t matter. That’s my issue. Even if the Gorn had died, that would have been sad and horrible and I wouldn’t like it. But if they could all know about it, and they could all have a discussion about it, or like this somehow started the conversation about, hey, maybe the Gorn aren’t just inherently evil, that would have been something. But it literally is like nothing that happened mattered. It’s just set up for the Kirk story later on.
Liz: Right. Imagine if the Gorn had lived and joined Starfleet and become like the other pilot of the Enterprise. And then she and Erica host D&D nights.
Anika: There is such a beautiful better universe for both of those characters who so deserve better.
Liz: Yeah. I’m also like, this week it was episode three of Alien: Earth and the first xenomorph has already been killed. And I’m like, but I loved her. She was a single mom. This is so problematic.
Anika: I’m afraid of watching Alien: Earth.
Liz: I’ve watched a lot of it with my eyes closed. But I like it. And I think it’s doing much more interesting things than Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Let’s talk about Erica or Uhura because there was a moment when they were hugging where I was like, is this all because Uhura has a crush on Erica? And then I remembered that Uhura was literally mind raping Erica’s brother a week ago.
Anika: I’m so weird. I’m never gonna get over that. The character assassination of Uhura is a blight on this series. Honestly, I think that this episode is stronger with the understanding that Uhura and Erica are good friends.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But…
Liz: And we didn’t need to have that spelled out for us by having them gang up on Spock.
Anika: No, because we already know they have been friends. They’re like… But you could have cut that whole part. I’m gonna say something nice about Spock and La’an. I ship that I don’t ship. But what if Spock and La’an talk about how La’an killed the Gorn and how that was bad?
Liz: Oh, yeah, that would be nice. What if La’an got to be a real character again?
Anika: What if La’an got to talk to Uhura about how she killed the Gorn and how that was bad?
Liz: No, they’re only allowed to talk about boys.
Anika: Okay, and then, so Pike and Uhura… Remember I said at the beginning of this season where I was like, are there any Pike and Uhura shippers left? I have found them. I have found Pike and Uhura shippers. And so I want to give them a shout out and say that there was one moment when she was ribbing him about his desire to be in the pilot seat and how he thinks of himself as the best pilot all the time. And I was like, this right here, this two second interaction, I could ship you guys. That was good. More of that.
Liz: I’m not gonna, because.
Anika: No, because he’s a horrible person who absolutely no one should be saddled with. I’m so sorry. I have crossed over into the dark side of anti-Pike-ness.
Liz: Join me in Hatersville.
Anika: But I can’t handle him anymore. But that moment, and that moment was genuine. That moment, I was like, look at these two people who know each other and have a relationship. If only they were present for the entire rest of the season.
Liz: Who are these characters? Where did they come from? I like them.
Anika: Exactly. It’s so sad to me.
Liz: Yeah. I do think that a lot of people love Strange New Worlds the way I love Voyager, which is to say that its flaws and cracks are places where you can get in and do some of the work. And that is fun. I just, I use that energy for other things now.
Anika: Yeah. Right.
Liz: And also, like I said, this is giving Season 7 of Voyager, and I didn’t even like Season 7 when it aired.
Anika: Watching Strange New Worlds did not inspire me to want to be a part of the… Like I said, I wrote a blog post about how stuck in my life I feel sometimes, and how I would like to sell my soul to a demon to get a position in a writer’s room. And I didn’t say that I wanted a position in a writer’s room of Star Trek, even though I totally do. I said I wanted a position in the writer’s room of the Laws and Orders.
Liz: Oh yeah, I mean, either franchise would be so lucky to have you, but.
Anika: But that’s, because this is turning me off of wanting to play in the universe, and that’s the saddest, the worst thing I can say about it.
Liz: I will say that when Alex Kurtzman rings me up and says, Liz, I want you to make a Star Trek, you will absolutely be in my writer’s room.
Anika: Thank you, I appreciate it. And also, just let me read the scripts and give you notes.
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously. Dear God. I’m not making a move without my beta readers. This is where I’m at. Most of my writing energy right now is going into original stuff, and I don’t really feel bad about that, and I feel like this podcast is a really good outlet for my fannish feelings, and we get to talk about the stuff we like and the stuff we didn’t, and fix what didn’t work and all of that. I love doing this podcast.
Anika: I agree.
Liz: But I would also love it more if the Star Trek we were talking about was better.
Anika: Well, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is coming.
Liz: And I’m excited, but cautiously excited.
Anika: I mean, it has an amazing cast.
Liz: It does, and I’m really, I’m really enthusiastic for the new young people and the new old people, and I guess the legacy characters as well. Okay, Holly Hunter, call me.
Anika: I love you.
Liz: 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 transcripts of our episodes.
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And join us next week when we’ll be discussing the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale, “New Life and New Civilizations”. Maybe we’ll like it.