Noted Doctor Who podcasters Anika and Liz settle in to watch a very bad Steven Moffat pastiche.
Yes, it’s time for the season 3 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and spoilers, turning into a statue might be preferable to this.
- It turns out Marie’s whole arc has been about becoming tradwife statuary
- The weird Christian subtext of the season intensifies, not in a good way
- The racial dynamics of this episode are very, very bad
- Do we need to dismantle the carceral state for the Vezda?
- No more backstory for M’Benga, please, we have enough dog whistle racism
- Kirk, Spock, barroom mind melds, queerbaiting and the weirdness with La’an
- You almost have to respect the effort that went into dismantling Marie as a character before fridging her
- Speaking of dismantling characters: remember when we didn’t hate La’an? When she was, in fact, one of our faves?
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 third season finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “New Life and New Civilizations”.
And you know, it’s always been like a precept, it’s an idea that we always come back to on this podcast: didn’t Katrina Cornwell have an amazing death? It was so well-written and necessary and a great culmination of an arc? And quick, really quick.
Anika: Amazing that we have done a 180 on this based on this one terrible episode of Doctor Who.
Liz: Oh my god. It really reminded me of a bad Steven Moffat episode. If someone who hates Moffat and thinks he’s a misogynist and can’t write, wrote a script and was like, this is what a Steven Moffat episode looks like. It would be this.
Anika: Right. It’s not even a Steven Moffat episode. It’s a AI interpretation of angry Steven Moffat fans episode.
Liz: Yeah. The whole thing with Marie turning into a statue, which we’ll unpack. Oh boy, will we unpack. But it made me think of “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, the two parter that introduces River Song, and how everyone was really angry that her story ends with her entering the false reality and having this fantasy life where she’s looking after children.
Anika: Anyway, I don’t know why I thought that. That doesn’t make any sense.
Liz: No. I can’t believe Marie Batel has been Temu River Song this whole time.
Anika: We should have known, actually. At the end, it was like, you know what? This is the culmination of the arc that she was having the entire time, and the whole time we were saying, why doesn’t she get to do anything? That was part of it. Yeah. It turns out.
Liz: Oh, my God. So it’s just a bad arc. Okay.
Last year, I met Melanie Scrofano at a convention. She came to Oz Comic Con, and I did a little postcard that says, save Marie, and had her face, and I had some printed and I got her to sign it. And she looked at it, and for a moment, she had an expression that I couldn’t read. And she was, you know, super polite. She was like, “Haha, no spoilers. You’ll just have to watch and see!” And it was really great. She was lovely. And now I look back and I understand that her expression when she looked at my silly little postcard was, yikes.
Anika: Was this is going to be one disappointed fan?
Liz: I really think it was, “Oh no, I’m someone’s favorite character.”
Anika: Oh no. Oh no. Right? It’s so, it’s so sad. I’m so sad.
Liz: She was never a particularly rich or interesting character, but there were seeds in there of a character that I could have made interesting. And yeah, I think those seeds may have been there by mistake.
Anika: So this episode posits that Marie Batel was accidentally genetically engineered to save the universe from evolutionarily genetically engineered evil. That entire sentence is not science. Start with that.
Liz: You know, I think we knew from “Charades” and “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” that this series doesn’t understand genetics. And I remember one episode did credit Professor Mohamed Noor of Duke University as the biological and genetic science consultant. He was not credited for this, just in case you’re wondering. I really feel like he should be added to our list of people who deserve apology baskets for this season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Anika: Our very long list of people who deserve apology baskets. So I have to start with this. Yes, based on previous episodes, they don’t understand genetics. But this episode, they went even further and decided to misunderstand epigenetics, which is a field new enough that really no one understands, even epigeneticists.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: But it is very clear to me that someone on the writing team read one scientific article about epigenetics and generational trauma, misunderstood all of it, and decided to write this episode.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And as someone who works with people who write articles on epigenetics, it hurts my soul.
Liz: Yes. I understand. I completely understand. I think it’s alarming that we have this era with the rise of eugenics as a concept again, as something people take seriously. And we have a Star Trek that so badly misunderstands eugenics and genetics and genetic science in general. I think that’s actually a little bit dangerous. But at the same time, this episode also has ley lines. So how seriously do we take it as a work of science fiction?
Anika: Yes, right. This episode is full on let’s blend life science with magic and take both very seriously.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But misunderstand them at a pretty significant level.
Liz: And I do remember, when I got into Doctor Who fandom, it was a real struggle to get my mindset out of the Star Trek mode where science is somewhat grounded in reality or at least internally consistent, and move into the Doctor Who space of, we’ll just throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks. Magic, science, history, everything.
And I really don’t think that the Doctor Who approach works for Star Trek. I actually don’t think they’re compatible universes. And if I wanted to watch really mediocre Doctor Who, true, I would simply go and watch the Russell T. Davies second era.
Anika: I was going to say. I feel like we have access to mediocre Doctor Who very easily.
Liz: Oh my gosh, there’s no shortage. I say with love.
Anika: And also, I’m just going to throw out there because I’ve been getting the vibes the whole season and kind of the whole series, but I ignored them because I thought it was a me thing, but there is a weird Christian thing going on in this series.
Liz: One hundred percent.
Anika: They don’t, I don’t think they mean it to be there, but it is very there. I don’t think they meant to name Marie ‘Marie’ and have that be meaningful, but it happened. And the fact that she’s Christopher Pike’s girlfriend.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So she is the maternal woman who has to give up her life, and he is the soldier for Christ. That’s a lot.
Liz: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of ways to read Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, for example. You can interpret the Bajorans as allegories for Jewish people or Catholics. You know, lots and lots of readings, and they’re all supported to some extent in reality. I cannot imagine making a non-Christian reading of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds work.
Anika: Even though they are bringing in all of this magic, that’s also Christian. It’s this-
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: This, we stole all the pagan rituals version of Christianity.
Liz: Honestly, the whole ‘powerful evil from prehistory’ is how a lot of Christians and theologians have thought about paganism and the pre-Christian religious world. So it’s like, remember back in season one of this episode, I said Pike was accidentally giving Christo-fascist vibes? Yes.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Haven’t changed my mind.
Anika: It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And then we have poor Ensign Gamble who-
Liz: Oh my God.
Anika: You know, credit to that actor for making this role his own and doing something with it and getting that paycheck and his name out there and his face out there. He deserves many good things to happen, but I hate everything that happens with regards to Ensign Gamble, the optics of the entire thing is so bad.
Liz: You don’t think it’s good to have a beautiful, maternal, glowing white woman fighting against an evil black man?
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Weird.
Anika: Weird, right? I mean, he’s literally the face and body of immortal, evolutionary evil. That’s what this episode and story are saying. That’s horrific. A young black man.
Liz: A young black man who has also become disabled in the line of work, because remember, his eyes got blown out.
Anika: So this is where the epigenetics come in. They claim that everyone’s evilness or whoever these aliens are from far ago, I can’t even. So Marie was genetically engineered accidentally when she was infected by the Gorn, and then they used Illyrian blood and also the orchid from the weird planet to make her super special. So it was like a science experiment gone awry, I guess.
Liz: I guess.
Anika: But Ensign Gamble was taken over by the dark evil of the world that changes your genetic makeup. So again, this is science that isn’t even agreed upon yet, but the idea is that trauma can fundamentally change your gene expression, not your genes, but the way that your genes work with your body.
Liz: I don’t know much about epigenetics, but I believe a lot of the research has been on the descendants of Holocaust survivors.
Anika: Correct.
Liz: I have certainly seen epigenetics as a science used in antisemitic ways. And so I think we’re once again in really dodgy territory.
Anika: Yes. It’s another episode of how many different identities can we offend?
Liz: They’re piling up. They’re really piling up. And what bugs me, what bugs me is that we learn the Gorn fear these aliens or they, you know, they fear the scavengers or whatever in “Through the Lens of Time”. And this is ancient evil from before the dawn of time and blah, blah, blah.
We don’t learn anything about, what do Illyrians grow up fearing? Where is the scene where Batel is having some kind of weirdly specific nightmare and Una’s going, oh shit, that’s the monster that my parents said would eat me if I didn’t do my homework.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: We don’t learn anything new about Illyrians or Una because the show doesn’t really care about Una’s identity.
Anika: No, not at all. The Illyrians barely have an identity. They’re just a placeholder for, again, how many different identities can we offend? I feel like the entire Illyrian side of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds exists solely so they can say, no, we’re not doing eugenics. We’re against eugenics. See? We hate the Illyrians. That’s as far as I can tell, that’s their only purpose.
Liz: They don’t even seem to hate eugenics that much, because they do an awful lot of genetic manipulation in the short term and all of that. And I just, once again, I am asking Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to stop and think about what it’s doing before it puts an episode out. Is that too much to ask? Absolutely.
Anika: Clearly. Yeah.
Liz: Having said all this, Marie going, “I’m feeling kind of stagnant in my career and I don’t know what I’m going to do, but becoming a statue sounds really great.” That’s actually a mood. I would also like to become a statue. Millennial inspiration.
Anika: So what happened? She comes back to the ship at the beginning of this episode because she left to go talk to Vice Admiral Pasalk about her new potential career in the law. And I guess she was away for one week and she comes back and she’s like, nah, I’ve decided that’s not for me.
What happens over on Earth? How horrible was Vice Admiral Pasalk to turn her off of this? She was begging them to let her do something two weeks ago. And setting up a whole stupid dinner party to try to convince Vice Admiral Pasalk to give her a job.
And she got a better job and then decided it’s not for her. And you know, that happens, it’s fine. But there was no explanation. It was just Marie being, I’ve decided I’m sad.
Liz: Well, you know, ladies do change their minds.
Anika: I guess so. I mean, I’m sorry. Again, with the pacing and the choices in how to present all of these stories that don’t actually build to anything. This one, allegedly, there are four other episodes that definitely contribute to this episode, but I wouldn’t call them building. Again, it’s more like they throw in an ingredient into the science experiment that Marie becomes in the end, and that’s it.
Liz: To take it back to Doctor Who, it does feel like the first series of the new series in 2005, when they were doing their first approach at an arc type of storytelling and we just had the Bad Wolf clues scattered around the background of scenes even.
But the thing is, Bad Wolf ended up coming together and more or less making sense. And this didn’t. This felt like a pre-Buffy attempt at building an arc. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but we’re well and truly post-Buffy.
Anika: The scene where Christine discovers the genetic connections between Marie and the statue that they encountered back in the tomb in the first Doctor Who episode of the season. So that scene, legitimately, Christine is just muttering to herself under her breath saying, I didn’t check this because why would I check this? And it’s like, yes, Christine, why would you check that? It doesn’t make sense. It is not actually a connection. It’s just an accident. And they admit that. So this entire thing, it’s not the bad wolf coming together because there was a purpose to all of that.
Liz: Right.
Anika: This posits again, that she was accidentally created, but also it’s her destiny at the same time.
Liz: So the thing about Star Trek is that it’s always positioned itself as a series about intelligent people making choices and choosing to pursue knowledge. Star Trek can be a lot of things. Sometimes those things fall over. Sometimes they’re very successful. But that has generally been what Star Trek aims to be. I don’t get that with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Belatedly going, oh hey, turns out I scanned this statue for a genetic code, which is a completely normal and reasonable thing to do. They’re just sort of stumbling into the plot.
Anika: Right.
Liz: Much like how this episode opens with M’Benga learning that Ensign Gamble has reassembled himself and beamed himself across the galaxy via ley line, and at the same time, Christine realizes that What’s His Face’s transponder has gone off.
Anika: Korby. I like that he’s What’s His Face. Because, I mean, you know, how at the beginning of the season, I was like, they’re making Korby too nice, and I don’t like it. No longer have that problem.
Liz: No, no. At this point, I feel like the only thing he has going for him is that it’s a long distance relationship. And so Christine is safe from his nonsense most of the time.
Anika: Yes, it is, goodness me, everything about Korby is bad. But it’s also completely innocuous compared to everything else that happens.
Liz: Right, right. Compared with some of the men in this show, Korby is A plus boyfriend material.
Anika: Seriously.
Liz: Obviously, it is not possible for Christine to be single, because as we all know, ladies want to get married.
Anika: That’s all they want. Ladies just want to be married. Sorry, cat.
[Anika’s cat is meowing in the background.]
Liz: Look, she’s screaming and she’s correct. Can we just talk about the eye gouging? I didn’t need the eye gouging.
Anika: No one needed that.
Liz: I’ve seen people describe Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as the series you can watch with your kids again, because there’s no swearing and the sex is largely off screen. There’s eye gouging. At this point, I think I’m sufficiently desensitized to finally watch Event Horizon.
Anika: I mean, that scene, an entire crowd of people. So again, Ensign Gamble’s reanimated corpse.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: A young black man who is disabled. And he’s also wearing a mask that frankly looks like what Data wears in “Masks”, which is just another layer of-
Liz: Star Trek‘s…
Anika: What is this?
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But he gets all his cult followers on this random planet that’s pre-warp, so there’s nothing anyone can do about any of this, and convinces them to all gouge their eyes out at once as part of this ritual or whatever, to prepare them for taking on a whole bunch of more evil identities because he’s gonna set them free, like something out of Ghostbusters 2.
But I’m sorry, the whole thing is so bad, but his whole plan is he’s going to release all of the other evil souls and he needs a bunch of bodies for them to take over. So he goes to a pre-warp planet and gets a bunch of random people to gouge out their eyes for him.
Liz: I realize that this is a bit of a villain doing villainous things complaint, but it’s very well known that lots and lots and lots of people in the world have issues and are deeply squicked by eye trauma and that’s kind of a well you go to with caution and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has just dived in headfirst. Did they not notice the reaction when Icheb died in season one of Star Trek: Picard? Because I feel like doing that en masse is maybe worse.
Anika: It is. I mean, I don’t have that issue and I was like, ehh. But I would, admittedly was more upset about the whole cult part of it and the way that he sneered. And yes, of course, he’s a villain. He is, according to this episode, just straight up dark evil juice. But I don’t like it.
Liz: No, no. And I guess he does need to do something evil to prove that he is evil because otherwise, I’m not completely certain I see the evidence. Yeah, he killed some security officers on the Enterprise and that’s bad. And I guess he’s possessed Ensign Gamble. But how much of that is the survival instinct? Do we need to destroy the carceral state for the Vezda?
Anika: My understanding is that these evil beings have been imprisoned for millennia or something. So they’re upset about that.
Liz: Where is the rehabilitation?
Anika: If they’re going to treat all of these evil is real and good is real and it feels like it’s not good to lock up evil for millennia. That seems like an also evil thing to be doing.
Liz: I mean, after the first thousand years, you start thinking, wouldn’t it be kinder to just yeet them all into the sun?
Anika: Like the Jakiru?
Liz: I mean, there it was a mercy killing.
Anika: Okay, let’s talk about when the Away team comes to the planet and it’s all kinds of bad.
Liz: My note was these costumes feel a bit racist because I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it had a vibe of, do you remember the Alias two-parter in season two, where Sydney and her mom and dad go undercover in India and end up wearing saris and traditional Indian dress because they’re undercover?
Anika: Yes.
Liz: And it’s like, you’re a bunch of white people just wearing costumes. This had that vibe.
Anika: Yes. Right.
Liz: And then we get to the whole thing with M’Benga and all my poor M’Benga. I just want to cuddle him and tell him that it’ll get better.
Anika: I want M’Benga to be like, since we can no longer free Marie, it’s time to free Joseph, which I just realized is another biblical name. But free Joseph, because he, why don’t you talk about the issues with him knowing Swahili is his first language?
Liz: Swahili.
Anika: Same as Uhura.
Liz: Yeah. Because Uhura is like, oh, this plaque is in Swahili, that’s my native tongue. This has been true to it for Uhura since the very beginning. Uhura comes from the Swahili word “uhuru”, meaning freedom. I probably mispronounced it because sometimes I hear the noises that come out of my mouth, and I’m like, oh, I am so Australian.
Anyway, and then M’Benga says, “Oh, it’s also my native tongue.” Here is the thing. Babs Olusanmokun is from Nigeria, and he speaks with a very pronounced Nigerian accent. There are 30 languages spoken in Nigeria, and none of them are Swahili. Because Swahili is a language of East Africa, it’s spoken in Kenya and a couple of countries around that. Nigeria is on the other end of the continent. Nigeria is in West Africa.
Anika: It seems like this is a really easy mistake to not make. It feels like you could just not have it be in Swahili, and not have the, do they need to give Uhuru something to do? Is that why that happened? Because- I don’t know, but- She could have said, that looks like an Earth language, or even an African language. And that would have been fine.
Liz: Maybe Joseph could have said, “Oh yes, I learned Swahili. It’s one of several African languages that I speak.”
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Because-
Anika: That’d be good too.
Liz: Gene Roddenberry had this idea that both Uhuru and Geordi were from the United States of Africa. And so it was kind of revolutionary when Sisko was specifically African-American because Gene had some issues around there. You’re going to be shocked to hear it. And so maybe they’re trying to say that both Uhuru and M’Benga are from the United States of Africa and Swahili has become the dominant language. But why do we need a dominant language? Yeah.
Anika: Why do we need a dominant language?
Liz: We can just have multi- It’s like if Picard said, “Ah yes, as a Frenchman, Polish is my native tongue.”
Anika: That’s the thing, is that it makes it, it just seems like there’s this weird, you just gave an explanation for it all, but I didn’t know any of the United States of Africa stuff. So that, I feel like that is not mainstream knowledge. And-
Liz: No, no.
Anika: You know how they say that it makes the universe too small? That makes the planet too small. It’s unnecessary for these things to happen. And again, it feels like a really easy solution by changing one or two lines to something else.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But then we get to the part that made me crazy. Yes. Which was that I guess Joseph killed somebody when he was 12 in self-defense, which I mean, okay. So suddenly it was the first time I ever took a life. And I was like, they need to stop. I know that we are big fans of give people more back story, but I’ve met the limit of back story for Joseph and M’Benga because all of it is so completely just dog whistle racism all the way down.
Liz: And I was thinking that about his four or five marriages too. This black man can’t commit. This black man grew up as a violent black child.
Anika: I just, I was like, oh my gosh. Now, you know, and I’m sure that they’re like, oh, well, but that’s how all spies are made. You know, spies are always have violent childhoods and that’s what make them good spies, which is also already a bad thing.
That’s not a great story trope to be parading around all the time because it excuses both violent childhoods and being a spy in a way that just seems like I love those stories that I like to pretend I’m a spy and yet there is this inherent violence to it. They even decided that James Bond’s had a terrible childhood and it’s like no one needed that. No, I love that movie. It’s probably my favorite James Bond movie.
But I don’t like James Bond because he’s boring because he just doesn’t have it, you know? I understand why it’s a good story, but it’s also dangerous. And when you put it on Joseph, who has all of this baggage already, that everybody’s already out here calling him a war criminal and a murderer and the worst person and how he doesn’t belong in Starfleet.
Liz: Don’t forget, child abuser.
Anika: Yeah. And to say that, again, this is something that’s intrinsic to him, that he had a traumatic childhood and he reacted in a certain way and it changed him. And now he’s good at that. When he’s a doctor! The whole thing is just so offensive to that character.
And then it’s just fully the violence of the colony or whatever that they mentioned. And that’s just a racist dog whistle for cities that are quote unquote overrun with crime. And that’s why we need to send the National Guard in to watch all of the National Monuments, even though crime has been going down for 20 years straight and these crimes aren’t happening. And they’re certainly not crimes that require the military.
Liz: No, no, and it’s also the way people talk and write about Nigeria where, yes, there is great poverty and there is violent crime, but there’s also great luxury and a thriving middle class.
Anika: Right.
Liz: It’s like there’s this fear of depicting Joseph as a successful and intellectual thriving middle class black man from Africa.
Anika: Right. And they basically are describing him as either victim or perpetrator in gang violence. I, you know, he’s a little black thug and I just, can’t. Everything about him is horrible.
Liz: Especially because the trope that he most conforms to is the gentleman soldier, the gentleman spy who is intellectual and cultured and gentle and also can kill you with a little finger, but doesn’t want to because he doesn’t like violence for its own sake. They don’t understand their own character.
Anika: Right. And then he just, you know, says it to the crew. Yeah. And Una is like, that’s horrible. She gets really upset. So it’s clear that she didn’t know. And I guess Pike is supposed to be his best friend on the ship. And so maybe he knew, but Pike is not his best friend. He doesn’t treat him like a good friend or anything. I just, I feel sad. I feel like we just spent 20 minutes talking out this two sentence scene, but it really upset me.
Liz: Well, I think it was a scene worth unpacking.
Anika: He goes in because he knows that Gamble is for whatever reason imprinted on him and he asked to go help and he does not help. And he just gets knocked out. And then he’s out for the rest of the episode and doesn’t do anything.
Liz: I mean, I think this is part of the problem with making a character so powerful as a soldier, that if he had been able to do anything, it would have been a much shorter episode and Marie wouldn’t be a statue.
All through this season, I felt like the tail is wagging the dog. And this was one of those particular moments where characters are behaving in a particular way because the story requires it, not because it’s true to the characters and it’s not even true to the story as it’s being told. They had an outline and they’re following it regardless of where the story has organically taken itself.
Anika: Yes. Yes. Which generally tends not to go well.
Liz: No, no. And I do think that it’s a real challenge for any writer, whether you’re professional or writing fan fiction, to find a way to thread the needle between what the story wants to be and what you want the story to be. But they just haven’t had the time to do that work this season and it really, really shows.
Okay. Anyway, let’s talk about Kirk and Spock and the queer baiting of it all.
Anika: I mean, they’re so proud of themselves for this whole thing.
Liz: Oh my God.
Anika: They are patting themselves in the back for what an amazing Kirk and Spock scene they wrote for the season finale of this series. They are so proud and Why Don’t You Love It is going to be the answer for all of this. But here’s why I don’t love it.
Liz: Please.
Anika: Starting with, first of all, obviously, it’s Kirk the only person… Couldn’t someone on the ship have done this? I guess they needed another ship, but getting Kirk into every episode is nonsense. And the fact that he’s the only one on the Farragut that they ever talked to.
Liz: It does feel like the Farragut is just Kirk.
Anika: We don’t get to see the captain again. We don’t get to talk to, oh, the Farragut’s pilot. It’s just, I don’t understand. He even says, don’t you have a great pilot? It’s just so nonsense. But then they decide to have this conversation with him in the bar.
Liz: I’m so confused.
Anika: Why? Isn’t this a mission? Isn’t this part of their job?
Liz: Is there not a conference room? Could they not be having this conversation around the table in Pike’s Ready Room, the space where these meetings are held? Why are you drinking alcohol in the middle of the workday when there’s a crisis? Seems irresponsible to me.
Anika: Is the bar the only place where you can get food? I am so confused because they’re literally drinking.
Liz: No. Okay, this has been bugging me all season and going back to the last season when the bar set was built, but they consume so much alcohol on this show. They’re always having cocktails or drinking whiskey or scotch or something.
And it’s weird that I’m the one complaining about this because after COVID, I’m almost the only member of my social circle who still drinks alcohol, but I don’t drink that much alcohol.
Anika: No.
Liz: And this is the pre-Synthohol era.
Anika: This is, we are literally discussing the mission, telling you what your job is going to be, and then Spock leans over the table to start the melt. What? Yeah. So that was just a lot of, I don’t understand anything that’s happening. And then we have the actual scene.
I will say that when I was watching this and I was texting you, and I said, I see where this is going. Kirk and Spock are going to have to fly the ship mentally together. I’ll tell, I’ll let you know if I’m right. And then a minute later, I was like, well, I’m already right. It’s already happening because it just immediately happens. So I guess they are using the two ships flying in synchronization to build up enough energy to blow open the shield that fake Ensign Gamble put up around his temple so that Pike and Marie can go in there and battle him to win the universe or whatever.
Liz: Yeah, it’s not even video game logic. It’s just silly.
Anika: And they have to be exactly in sync, so they have to mind-meld to do this, and it’s Kirk for reasons. There’s a split screen. There’s ships.
Liz: Oh my god.
Anika: It is a comic book level of action scene, or like anime from the 80s.
Liz: By the time we got to that, I was like, maybe this isn’t queer baiting, maybe this is actual subtext. But then we get to the bit at the very end where they’re in the bar and La’an joins them, and there’s a look and it’s like, oh, they both want to fuck La’an. That’s the connection. It was a real no homo moment. And it was so off-putting. It was so gross. I don’t like these men.
Anika: The La’an of it all, the free La’an.
Liz: Oh my god.
Anika: When we get to shipping news, we can go about everything that’s wrong with La’an.
Liz: But the damage done to her character this year has been astonishing. But we’ll get there. Let’s talk about Marie and the Nexus. Because I have a lot to say.
Anika: I have to applaud that somehow, Marie dies and also gets the Bix ending. That’s clever. Amazing.
Liz: They put her in a fridge, but they still give her a husband and children. You almost have to admire it. It’s this whole season and really since episode one of the series, I’ve been wanting to know more about Marie, and I’ve wanted to know what’s her inner life, what are her aspirations, what are her goals? Oh, it’s cottage core tradwifing. Cool. Like all starship captains, she gets to retire to a house in the country with a farm.
Anika: It’s really weird.
Liz: It’s just not her house, it’s her boyfriend’s house.
Anika: She probably isn’t allowed to have her own bank account. It was that level of… And this is partly because of the way that Pike’s house works, and also sort of the way that they have decided that cooking is Pike’s main character trait, so that there is a giant kitchen in his quarters, and so people are always at the kitchen, and there’s a giant kitchen in his cabin.
And so this entire stupid sequence takes place in the kitchen. At one point, they’re sitting on a couch by the fire, but the kitchen is still in the background. They’re still haven’t gone anywhere. They’re just in the kitchen for the entire sequence, which is just straight up saying that what Marie really wants is a simpler life in the kitchen, where her manly man is doing all the heavy lifting.
Liz: We never see her captaining a starship. We never see her in court. These things could have been inserted without creating new sets or new costumes. It could have been done very easily. But instead, it’s purely domestic, and it’s a really old-fashioned kind of domesticity.
It really reminds me of the novels that Jeri Taylor wrote about Janeway and the Star Trek: Voyager characters with their backstories, where every single character has a stay-at-home mom, and dad goes out to do Starfleet stuff and be manly, and mom stays at home and sits in the kitchen to be sad without her husband. Kirsten Beyer picked that up too. I remember reading some of her Star Trek: Voyager novels, and that’s how Admiral Paris’ wife spends her time. It was outdated in the 90s, and it’s anachronistic now.
The sole nod to Marie continuing to have a career is the joke about there being two Captains Pike or two Captains Batel, because a man would never take his wife’s name. What a joke.
Anika: This sequence on top of her earlier quandary over how she just doesn’t feel fulfilled in her career anymore. Again, the story that is being told to us is she wants this simpler life of family and food and warmth and living on the farm. And she doesn’t need anything else to fulfill her. And that’s why it’s okay for her to become a statue because she got her happy ending. And all of that is just so weird and just backwards. It feels like I’m being gaslit that it wants me to believe that that’s all I want to.
Liz: No, no, it really feels retrograde.
Anika: Like Trad Wife influencers, you know? They’re telling you, right? I’m selling this ideal to you because you’re feeling burnt out because the world is so crazy. You should be like me and give it all up for the kitchen and the kids and the farm.
Liz: It’s really insidious and yes, this is something that Star Trek has been doing with its captains for all time. You know, Kirk gets his cabin in the woods, Picard gets his vineyard, Janeway gets her family farm in Indiana, Michael gets her wilderness retreat. But you know, Michael is still an admiral. Michael is still putting on her uniform and beaming out too. This feels like the antithesis of the Star Trek: Discovery epilogue.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And that’s in part because Marie has never been allowed to be a fully-fledged character. And frankly, very few women in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are allowed to be multidimensional. I think Christine is the only one. And we’re meant to hate her.
Anika: We’re supposed to be mad at her for caring about her career.
Liz: I suppose La’an is multidimensional. It’s just that some of her dimensions suck.
Anika: La’an has too many dimensions because they don’t know what to do with her. And so she’s just whatever they need in the moment.
Liz: Honestly, this is true for a lot of the male characters as well. I don’t think Pike is a particularly consistent or deep character, but it really, really shows up with the women because they’re all put in the same box of femininity.
Anika: I mean, I’m sure we’re supposed to say, we’re supposed to feel that this is her choice, that this is Marie’s happy ending and it can be whatever she wants it to be and she can have it all.
I wrote down here that she says that the thought of losing Pike gave her the power to open up the fabric of space and time and reset everything so they could live happily ever after. He didn’t have to sacrifice his life and become disabled and give everything up because that still happened and the cadets lived and it was all okay and he didn’t have to do it and she’s like, well, I fixed it for you and obviously this is a fantasy so that’s part of it.
But it’s just, if the fantasy is fantastic enough that it can rewrite the fabric of space and time to reset everything to save his life, it can give her anything. She could have had this fantasy of him living in her quarters on the flagship of the fleet or being president of the Federation and he’s the first gentleman. Why does it have to be exactly the same as it is only not even on a ship?
Liz: No, that’s the thing. And they have a child and her fantasy is her daughter becoming a child bride to Admiral April’s son, which, why are Marie’s fantasies from the 1950s?
Anika: They’re the line. So they make the Julia and Eli, I think, Elijah, yes, Julia and Eli come to ask Marie’s permission to get married. That, you know, to be very clear, Pike already gave his permission. So let’s just make sure that the man knows first. Just want to say that.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: They don’t approach her until he’s already given his permission. And she says, I know it’s old-fashioned. And I just I wanted to fling my laptop into the sun because they’re laughing at me. That’s how I feel. They know it’s old-fashioned, but it’s still the way it should be. This is the way it should be. Yes. This is the conservative Christian weirdness that I’m talking about.
Liz: Yeah. No, it’s so retrograde and regressive and other unpleasant things starting with R. And then we get to the ableism of it, because we find out finally that Marie does know about Chris’s future. And they have had that important conversation off screen. So many important conversations happen off screen in this show. And the apparent assumption is that if your spouse is a Starfleet officer and they’re seriously injured and disabled on a mission, then you as the wife are responsible for looking after them and being their carer.
I’m sorry, but this is the utopian future of the 23rd century. There’s no VA with limited resources. Starfleet should just be able to offer 24-hour care so that the spouse of an injured officer doesn’t have to do that. Again, it’s really Twentieth Century Thinking.
Then, of course, Pike doesn’t get injured because it’s Marie’s fantasy and blah, blah, blah. That’s fine. Whatever. But like you say in your notes, Pike gets his fantasy life on Talos, where I assume he asks Vina to look like Marie because obviously. Marie gets her fantasy life as a statue, I guess. I guess. Gamble is disabled on the job. He turns into a puppet for evil and gets in prison for more millennia.
Anika: Yeah. Is any of Gamble in there? Because if so, it is really, really bad that he is imprisoned forever with an prison full of just evil.
Liz: Yeah. Also, for years now, I have been arguing against the interpretation of Marie as a cop. A prosecutor is not a cop. Now, she’s a prison warden and that’s worse.
Anika: We have somehow crossed over into… But she’s so happy about it. It was her destiny. It was her destiny to become a prison warden. And…
Liz: Yeah. Statue.
Anika: No.
Liz: No. She doesn’t even get the luxury of becoming a Weeping Angel. She’s not a cool statue. She’s an abstract statue.
Anika: She’s an abstract statue that looks 3D printed. And…
Liz: Oh, my God.
Anika: I mean, how did we get here? How did the terror that she was going to birth a Gorn at the end of last season somehow lead to… And now, she’s an abstract statue made of space and good. That is a prison warden for absolute evil.
Liz: And also a tradwife.
Anika: And also a tradwife.
Liz: Who says women can’t have it all?
Anika: I’m blown away. I’m blown away at how many levels of nope are involved in what happened to Marie Batel. Which brings us back to, wow, Katrina Cornwell had an amazing death.
Liz: Oh my god, such a good death.
So I’ve prepared a ranking of stupidest and most offensive deaths of regular or recurring characters in Star Trek. Number one is of course, Jadzia Dax. Thank you for reminding me that she existed. Number two is Marie Batel. Number three is Icheb. And I was kind of on the fence about whether Icheb is worse than Marie because of the shockiness of the eye thing. But that was over fast. We had a full 15 minutes of Marie doing the trad wife fantasy. And I was like, no, no.
Anika: With the soft focus and the music and the whole, it was reminiscent of the way too long Data and Picard death scene at the end of Star Trek: Picard season one. That was also completely unnecessary and meaningless because none of it actually affected anything. And this felt like the less poignant version of that somehow.
Liz: Yes, yes. Back to my list, number four is a tie between Trip Tucker and Katrina Cornwell. Basically because it’s the same death.
Anika: It’s the same death.
Liz: And number five is Tasha Yar, but with an asterisk because she got a do-over. And then number six is Sito Jaxa.
Anika: Very good.
Liz: Bonus in my top five because I feel like I was cheating by including Tasha.
Anika: I approve. I approve that list.
Liz: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Shipping news. I wish this would make me happier.
Anika: So we’re going to start with Scotty and Uhura, who are not a couple, who did not flirt at all during this episode. However, he did get to be the latest victim of the fun hazing of coming to Pike’s captain dinner in his uniform.
Liz: Why is this a thing?
Anika: Which had the added bonus of being, let’s make fun of Scotty’s culture. Yeah, yeah.
Liz: I just, I remember that moment in, I think it was episode one or episode two and thinking, I don’t know if I feel like I like this show. And I think I’ve reached a landing. But Scotty does look great in his formal uniform, so well done here.
Anika: Scotty looks great. Everybody laughed at him. I disapprove.
Liz: Honestly, Scotty has been the absolute high point of this season. And I think it’s because he rarely gets directly involved in plots as a protagonist. He’s just on the sidelines helping other people out. And that’s great. He’s so happy to be here. I’m happy to have him here. More of that, please don’t make him a major character or give him more tragic backstory. No more backstory.
Anika: No more backstory. I don’t believe him. That’s why I’m landing. Okay, so then we get to the Spock/La’an vs. Spock/Chapel, and hey, let’s throw in Kirk and La’an just for funsies in this whole mess, which okay. So back down on the planet in the terrible Aways team scene, Una and M’Benga pretend to be drunk, a drunk couple.
Liz: Which is great.
Anika: More of that. Distract the guards so that La’an can Vulcan nerve pinch them both. And then she and Christine snipe about Vulcan nerve pinching and dating Spock for no reason, to the point where they’re told to shut up by, I forget who, but someone.
Liz: Probably Una, because that would be her job, and I assume sometimes she does her job.
I did not read Christine as sniping. I thought she was being sincere in congratulating La’an, because Christine seems to be extremely ride or die for Spock/La’an. And so La’an just jumps on her and is really unpleasant.
Anika: La’an is just mean. So Christine, I think you’re right. She’s like, oh wow, that is cool that you were able to learn it, because it comes out in this two second conversation that Christine wanted to learn it, which makes sense.
Liz: And couldn’t get the hang of it.
Anika: And couldn’t get the hang of it. Also, it does make sense that La’an, we’d be better at it, because she is the security officer.
Liz: Right. Also, she has her evil genes. Mustn’t forget.
Anika: But Christine does have that one line that was a little iffy, where she’s like, oh, that’s what you guys are doing. When I’m like, I don’t think we need to discuss at all what you guys are doing behind doors.
Liz: No, no, that was inappropriate. Yeah, yeah.
Anika: That one’s unnecessary. I came out of it going, wow, I hate everyone. You have put me off all of these relationships. Good job. Love it. Love that you’re retroactively making me angry at Spock and Chapel, and then La’an is just legitimately, again, she’s barely in this episode. This is her main thing that she does in the episode, and she’s a completely different person from every time we see her, she’s a completely different person.
Liz: But many of those people are unpleasant.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: It’s wild to me how La’an was my favorite character in season 2, and I was so excited for more of her. Then season 3, it’s the stuff with Spock, which I can’t really get behind, and being mean to Christine, and killing Erica’s Gorn girlfriend. It’s like, who is this character and why is she so awful all the time?
Then, oh my god, I saw the stupidest Bluesky post, and this isn’t really La’an’s fault, but I saw someone saying La’an is much better for Spock than Christine, because La’an understands that he doesn’t want commitment.
Anika: Are they watching the show?
Liz: No, I don’t think they are.
Anika: No, I don’t think they are.
Liz: This comes back to the sexism of it, right, and the way a show gets the fandom that it deserves, in that Christine says multiple times what she wants, what her values are, what she needs out of a relationship, and no one listens.
Anika: No one listens, with the words. From the first, when she’s talking with Erica, before she’s having any conversations with Spock, when she’s talking with Erica about what she says, it is painful.
Liz: It’s the first thing we learn about her outside of her job. And I remember in season one of Star Trek: Discovery, there’s this ongoing thing where Michael tells Lorca who she is and what her values are. And it just goes in one ear and out the other, and he keeps trying to put her into this little mirror Michael shaped box.
And I remember all my friends were so impressed because that’s such a common experience for women, right? We say what we want and men don’t listen. And then we just have the fandom doing it to Christine. And it’s wild to watch and none of this is La’an’s fault. She is a fictional character. I completely blame the writers and the patriarchy.
Anika: They legitimately, they’re moving the little pieces around. They’re like, well, we need someone to do something. And so we’re going to put La’an here for no reason. Yes. Not because it makes sense for her to be doing that, just because we’re going to have it there.
Liz: When I used to play Barbies with my best friend, she had many Barbies and several Ken dolls. And obviously, the best of the Ken dolls was the Luke Perry one, because this was the era of the 90210 Barbie-sized dolls.
And any time one of her Barbies started dating the Luke Perry Ken doll, another Barbie would become the bitch. And it didn’t matter what that character had been in the storyline before. We just knew that that was the rule of how you tell this sort of story. And once again, I feel like the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writers have not evolved beyond my understanding of storytelling when I was 11.
Anika: Right. And then to add Kirk into the mix, I guess this is the episode where Kirk figures out that they’re a thing, which just means that they have had no conversations. Even though he’s always on the ship, apparently they’re not talking. So, so fine, whatever.
And the vibes I got were like, there’s two ways you could read it. A is, are you looking for a third? Or B is, good job, La’an, you’re now officially my bro. And, you know, we’re gonna do grow things together. And, congratulations on bagging Spock. Which is, neither of these are good. Or anything that I want to be watching.
Liz: No, I read it as, are you looking for a third? But in that way where the two guys are high-fiving each other over the woman’s head. Not in a fun, sex-positive, healthy, polyamory way.
Anika: I think it’s either that. That’s my A version. And then B, I think, is actually, are you looking for a third? But it’s Kirk and La’an high-fiving about Spock. Those are the two ways that I see it.
Liz: I think that’s the healthier.
Anika: Either her bestie, you know, and, hey, let’s get some together. Because that way he gets her too, you know? It’s all things golden for Kirk over there. Or that he’s, that he’s, because I think he’s just closer to her. So I read it as a wink, wink, nudge, nudge with La’an instead of with Spock. But it’s still, it’s bad. It’s still just, I don’t want any of that happening because Kirk shouldn’t be fetishizing Spock either. That’s not good, so.
Liz: However you read it, it just feels like La’an is there so that Kirk and Spock don’t seem too gay.
Anika: Right, right.
Liz: I’m going down your list. Chapel/Korby, no. Pike/Batel, no. We’ve covered Julia Pike and Elijah April. I don’t understand why Marie wants her daughter to become a child bride, but okay.
Anika: Yeah, I just want to agree with you that she does look like she’s 12 years old. I feel like they had to rewrite the script to make sure that they added a note about her starting her job, so that we are aware that she’s post-college. Otherwise, it would be like, why is this happening? Eli doesn’t look super old either. It’s just very…
Liz: Oh no, no.
Anika: And when you think about how Wesley applied to Starfleet Academy in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation when he was 14, it feels kind of, yeah, it’s a whole thing.
Liz: Yeah. No, it has a strong, “We went off to Brigham Young University and in our second year of college, we got married and now I’m going to drop out of college and start having kids while my husband finishes his degree” vibe.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Yeah. Anyway, Marie, I have questions. I have so many questions.
Anika: I would also like to ask why Una and M’Benga haven’t run away together because, yes, clearly, they did this whole pretend to be a drunk couple bit previously on Rigel. And I think that they should just go back to that. I think they should just at the next port, resign, go to Rigel and just continue, be gay, do crimes, not gay. But just do that, just go.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Be happy.
Liz: They can sit in the sun and become functional alcoholics who have a great time, and it will be fantastic. And no one will be racist to M’Benga, and Una can have a consistent personality for more than a day.
Anika: They deserve so much better than this ship and this show.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And then Una and Pike, which again, and I think that at this point, I was just so angry about the whole thing that I could no longer view anything through an unbiased lens. But at the end, when Una is cheering up Pike because his girlfriend turns into a statue.
Liz: Drinking again.
Anika: All of their interactions felt very, don’t worry, you still have a attractive brunette in the command chain to hang out with you as much as you need. It really felt like, let’s just slot in this one for that one, it’ll be fine.
Liz: Oh, related, we know Pike loves a backup girlfriend, but I am very certain that he will start hallucinating Melissa George’s Vina in season four, because we need to start pivoting to his next girlfriend.
Anika: They were definitely setting up, you know, and then Pike got over it already at the end of the episode. And yes, you have to move on with your life when you lose someone, but I don’t know why Marie went on leave for however long this season was, because she was injured. Can’t he go on a bereavement leave for two weeks? Could we do that?
Liz: I mean, he took three months off between season two of Star Trek: Discovery and season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to grow his sadness beard and ride horses. He can take some time now.
And the other thing, just to circle back to my eye about Marie’s fate, is that her condition, her accidental genetic engineering, has been framed as a chronic illness. So, of course, she had to die. Of course, she had to turn into a statue because people with disabilities are as good as dead in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Anika: And they can only be inspirational.
Liz: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. What if Pike gets the scan of the statue and 3D prints a little miniature so he has something to remember him?
Anika: It can go on.
Liz: Like a Funko Pop?
Anika: It can be in his quarters alongside Erica’s game piece and La’an’s watch.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: Let’s just be littering the ship with mementos of dead significant others. I’m sorry. Why? Why is it like this?
Liz: Because this show is bad. It was mediocre with good moments in season one and two and season three is just bad.
Anika: 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. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Bluescry all at antimatterpod, and on Mastodon at antimatterpod@tenforward.social.
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Liz: Yeah, yeah, probably. Chances are.