Remember 2017? Taylor Swift released Reputation. Kendall Jenner fixed racism with a Pepsi ad. And Star Trek returned to the small screen with the launch of Discovery.
Anika and Liz go back in time to revisit the series which led us to become friends and launch a podcast … and we are excited! We’re starting with “The Vulcan Hello” and “The Battle at the Binary Stars”, in which Michael Burnham has a very bad day.
- “I am one of the first 500 people to sign up for CBS All Access. Which is a dubious claim.”
- These episodes are not bad, but they are a terrible introduction to the series, both in terms of its ongoing tone and themes, and in terms of making people want to see more
- “Can I just say? T’Kuvma could get it.”
- We are not opposed to subtitles, but the specific “Klingon” font used by CBS All Access was straight up hard to read
- Does the premiere ask too much of the audience? Both in terms of asking them to empathise with complex characters they’ve just met, and also in having basic media literacy?
- (Michael Burnham Did Not Start The War.)
- Saru’s relentless negativity makes him a difficult character to like
- Returning to our roots as The Sarek Podcast
- The Klingons are MAGA, but they’re also very Brexit-era Britain
- We are once again criticising the Federation’s carceral state
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 beginning our run of episodes covering season one of Star Trek: Discovery with the two-part premiere, “The Vulcan Hello”, and “Battle at the Binary Stars”. I am excited!
Anika: Oh, me too. I was actually a little nervous about it.
Liz: Same!
Anika: Until I watched the episodes. And then I was like, oh, I have plenty to say about this. I am very ready. I wanted to start with just that this podcast wouldn’t exist without Star Trek: Discovery. We wouldn’t know each other without Star Trek: Discovery. It’s actually momentous for us to be going back to the beginning of Discovery and the beginning of quote unquote modern Trek.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It’s very exciting and we really need to give that some space before we get started.
Liz: I should say you did not know me, but I was aware of you before Discovery started because your photo caps and your various posts would get reblogged onto my Tumblr dash. And then finally you started putting out these really excellent Discovery posts and I was like, okay, okay, this Pixiedane person, I do need to follow her.
Anika: I got so excited with Discovery.
Liz: Yeah, we both became obsessed with Admiral Cornwell. And you created a Discord for Admiral Cornwell fans and we started chatting most days. And it’s still an active Discord, I should say, though we rarely have new Kat material to post. But there are half a dozen regulars and they’re some of my best friends.
Anika: We talk about everything now. Not even just Star Trek, but our regular lives. So it really feels like this community that was created because of our real feelings for a middle-aged Starfleet admiral that was very much a B to C character. She was not in any way impactful, except to us.
Liz: Except to us.
Anika: Stepping back into 2017, which seems like a lifetime ago, it was a completely different era. But it was also the beginning of the terrible times. I’m not alone in saying this, okay? I just want to say, I don’t think that anyone would argue with the fact that 2016 to now is a different time period than what came before then. And Star Trek: Discovery was sort of announced at the same time as all of these things were changing and happening. And Star Trek as a whole, Modern Trek, what I mean by that is, it’s the post-Enterprise phase. So there was, like, Golden Trek, which is now 60 years old. And then there was, I guess, Silver Trek, which was the 90s.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And then Modern Trek is now basically ending, where I would say, again, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that with the announced endings of both Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy, we can say that Modern Trek is now on its way out. Nothing has been announced to replace anything.
Liz: No, which is ominous.
Anika: And even if something is announced, I think it will be different and changed and a different era. It’s really interesting to go back to the beginning of that era, which is now almost 10 years ago. And yet it really shaped a lot of not just Trek now, but there’s a lot of stuff that happens in the last 10 years in terms of entertainment and media. You know, the strikes happened, the pandemic happened. So many different things happened in between then and now that really affected the way that entertainment is made. Star Trek: Discovery was basically one of the selling points for CBS All Access, which is now Paramount+.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So the streaming era, it seems like it’s been around forever, but it really – Paramount+ was one of the early ones after the Netflixes, you know?
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And again, it was CBS All Access then. I am famously, at least in my mind, one of the first, like, 500 people to sign up for CBS All Access, which is a dubious claim. Like, I don’t know if I should be touting that. It sounds like I was a mark. However, I was really excited. I was so excited about CBS All Access that I actually wrote for a blog that no longer exists. I was like, while we’re waiting for Star Trek: Discovery to premiere, if you want to know what to watch on CBS All Access, I matched up the shows that were available with those.
Liz: That’s so sweet.
Anika: I was out there promoting CBS All Access for free with nothing in return, and for no particular reason other than that I was just really excited for Star Trek: Discovery.
Liz: I think that’s really sweet, and your enthusiasm was infectious. I know a lot of people who had been Trekkies who decided to give Discovery a go because you were pushing it and they knew that you’re enthusiastic and you shared their taste.
And for me, Discovery premiered on Netflix and it was such a wonderful opportunity for so many people I knew who had been aware of Star Trek and curious to give it a go, to come into it for the first time and see what this Star Trek business is all about.
Anika: And I think that that gets forgotten. I think that that has been overshadowed with how controversial all of Star Trek and especially Discovery has been since then. But it really was a starting point for people. And I think that we should celebrate that instead of memory holding it.
Liz: I knew that it was going to be memory-holed at the time, because I would go to fandom news sites like file770.com, and the only reviews they were rounding up were haters. And I was like, but there are so many people on Tumblr, and Dreamwidth, and Live Journal, and just in blog spaces, but feminist blog spaces who are very enthusiastic and positive about this series. And they just were not getting the attention that haters were getting.
Anika: Not to stereotype, but women and marginalized voices, and people of color, and anybody who was outside of the stereotypical Star Trek fan. And I don’t even mean the Silver Era. I mean people from the TOS era, the idea of a nerd in the basement, even though that was wrong then. That was fake at the time. But that’s still – the people that William Shatner yelled at, are what you think of as Star Trek fans. And those were the haters, were the people who are being rounded up, and all of the voices that were excited. And even voices that were excited, but also critical, were being removed and erased and ignored.
Liz: And the professional reviewers, I remember, were nearly all men. And the only woman recapping Discovery professionally turned out to be a trans man. And I do think that, obviously, to have a trans critic at all is amazing, but his whole perspective was, where is Kirk? Where is my Kirk? So, yeah. It felt like Discovery was never given a chance to be perceived in its own right. And in a way, that’s sort of a problem with the show itself, because we have Sarek and the shadow of Spock and all of that. We’ll get into that.
Anika: But yes, I was going to say they didn’t do themselves any favors by using the previous series the way that they did. They made choices that made it harder for them.
Liz: Yes. Yeah.
Anika: So, like, I’m really excited to do this series on Season 1 of Discovery because I still sort of point to Season 1 of Discovery as really well done, but also I have a lot of problems with it. Like, when I think about it, it’s like, oh, but also this happened, and also this happened. And so I’m like-
Liz: It’s very messy.
Anika: Yeah, it’s very messy. And so I’m really excited to go back in there and look at it with a critical eye.
Liz: Yes. And to be able to remember what I thought at the time, but also put it in the context of 10 years and a full series later, that’s going to be really exciting.
And can I just say that we have the opening scene with T’Kuvma and the monologue and the Klingon subtitles and all of that. But what I remember of Discovery‘s opening is not watching the first scene with Michael and Philippa on the desert planet. But I remember it hit Paramount+ or CBS All Access as it was. And within minutes, men I followed on Twitter were talking about how shit it was and basically settling in to dunk on it. Because one bad opening scene meant that it was going to be bad and no one else would get the chance to enjoy it fresh. They were going to spoil it for everyone.
And I’m still friends with some of those men and I still like them a lot. But I also kind of side-eye them and I don’t trust them not to be a dick if they decide that something is bad.
Anika: I remember the desert scene being released early, as a teaser. Like, that was the first footage of – am I crazy? Or did that happen?
Liz: I know we definitely got photos from it, but I think only part of the scene was released as a teaser and not many people watched it. Certainly, it wasn’t getting the same attention from casual viewers who don’t care about spoiling it for other people, I’m going to say.
Anika: I mean, and I will say that the first two, these first two episodes that were doing this episode, they were on CBS, on actual CBS. These two episodes were broadcast and then it was sort of like, if you want to continue, go here. And I think that this is one of the things when I say that was a disservice. Because these two episodes do not represent the series.
Liz: They’re a prologue.
Anika: And so it was really a bad idea. It was a bad idea to have these two and like, and the way that it ends is such a downer. If I wasn’t already invested, I don’t know why I would go pay someone to watch the rest. I was just like, no, that was bad. It’s almost a meme at this point that Paramount is bad at marketing. But that was bad choices. They were bad. That was wrong. That was the wrong thing to do. At the very least, they should have shown the third episode.
Liz: Yes. The third episode is also bad, but it has a completely different tone and doesn’t end on such a terrible note. Because, oh my gosh!
Anika: It sets up the rest of the season.
Liz: Yeah. I have to admit that last week, when we decided we were going to record over Easter, I was like, oh, I don’t actually want to watch the first two episodes again. They’re really not fun.
Anika: They’re really not. Okay. So if you were someone who watched these, quote unquote, for free, on broadcast CBS, and then became a Discovery hater who just said that Discovery is grim dark and it’s anti-Star Trek, like, I can sort of understand you. It’s not true to the series in any way.
Liz: Not even true to season one.
Anika: No, not even true to season one. But I get it, if these are the only two episodes that you’ve seen. And there are people who did not choose to subscribe to CBS.
Like, when I subscribed to CBS All Access, it was actually after I had already stopped paying for cable. And the reason I had, this is so me of me, but I had purchased the first half of the sixth season of The Good Wife on Prime, on Amazon Prime, because I wanted to be able to see The Good Wife, the sixth season of The Good Wife. But I did not want to pay for cable anymore. Or, you know, any version of television. I just wanted to pay for streaming. But this is why I was so excited and why I was literally one of the first 500 people to sign up for CBS All Access, is because it was going to give me all of Star Trek, but also The Good Wife.
Liz: Yes. And in fact, Discovery‘s first season was delayed, and so The Good Fight wound up being the flagship program at launch.
Anika: The big one. Exactly. And I know CBS is considered the old fogies, the senior citizen, the boomer, are the people who watch CBS, and I am not that, but I really like The Good Wife and The Good Fight. And so it’s funny to me that, yes, it is 60 Minutes and a billion cop series, and that is very true. There’s so many. There’s so much propaganda. Absolutely true, and military propaganda and all that stuff. But it is also where Star Trek is, and it is also where things that you would not describe as conservative.
Liz: It’s very funny that Paramount+ has become the streaming service of Yellowstone and the Taylor Sheridan cinematic universe when it did launch with The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery.
Anika: So weird, right?
Liz: I mean… Yeah. But I think The Good Wife is relevant to this conversation because the whole reason I started watching it was because you had told me that it represented the transition between old CBS of episodic copaganda and streaming television. And I think you are right. It’s in that family with stuff like the The West Wing and ER of network television, with the quality of writing that we later came to associate with quote unquote Prestige TV.
Anika: Right. Yes.
Liz: And you know what doesn’t have the quality of writing that we associate with Prestige TV? The premiere of Star Trek: Discovery.
Anika: And of course we all know that there were a lot of behind-the-scenes concerns.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I will say there was some infighting, I guess. The first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery are sort of under a dark cloud, much like the first two seasons of The Next Generation.
Liz: Exactly like that.
Anika: And I think that it is related. I think it is in fact the same. There was stuff going on, and sometimes you can see it on screen.
Liz: Yes. And I also just think that this first run of the early episodes of the season where Bryan Fuller was heavily involved, really show his background as a horror writer and a writer of very dark horror and sort of grim dark stuff, and also a writer who had problems writing women and writing women of color. Because the whole reason I stopped watching Hannibal was because I didn’t like how the women were treated in that show. And that series absolutely had a problem with killing off women of color. And I think Bryan Fuller is a talented writer, but I am so glad that he walked away from Star Trek.
Anika: Yeah, I think that Discovery really came into its own when it went to the future, and became a different show.
Liz: Yes, but I also think that I personally started enjoying it around episode five, which is when Fuller’s influence really fell off. So, that’s “Choose Your Pain”, and it’s just several sluggish episodes to get there.
Anika: Oh, yeah, I can’t wait to get… Again, I’m so excited to do season one, because there are parts of the season one that I absolutely love, and that I think are that the rest of Modern Trek wouldn’t exist without. So, we’re going to get there. But, this one… Okay, so, like, I really like the Klingons, and the whole Klingon non-… Like, I’m into the Klingon nonsense that happens in this episode and throughout the first season.
Liz: Same!
Anika: But I also understand why people were like, what is happening? Why are there full scenes of Klingon subtitles, and they really don’t resemble Worf and Gowron and Martok and etc.
Liz: Yeah, and I like the Klingon design, but I really don’t think it comes into its own until season two, when they get their hair back. And I do think that there are some things that Discovery changed for the sake of changing, and maybe overestimated the willingness of Star Trek fans to try new things.
Anika: Right, because, so when the Klingons were reintroduced in the movies in Search for Spock, they looked completely different from the Klingons in the original series.
Liz: And we saw this the first time in that makeup in The Motion Picture, and people lost their goddamn minds.
Anika: Yeah, exactly, people lost their minds, and then it became normal. It became what Klingons look like, right? I think they were trying to do the same thing, where they’re like, we can do more with modern makeup and modern prosthetics and modern effects. We can do something interesting. We can put our spin on it. But they were so foreign. And because it was set as like, if this, if they looked like this and it was five hundred years after TOS., no one would care.
Liz: I disagree, because people are still upset about a female Jem’Hadar.
Anika: Well, I just think that it was a combination of things. And like, I don’t want this to look like TOS at all. I never want it to look like TOS. I think that’s a silly idea. I think that people should just get over it because we can do so much more now and we should. Star Trek should look futuristic. It shouldn’t look like something that was made 60 years ago.
Liz: No, I agree.
Anika: Why would we want that? But I do get why people were like, I put it on and it starts in Klingon with that super, super close up, his very dark skin and his no hair and his big lips. And I was like, okay, I sort of understand.
Liz: And I’m going to say that the design of T’Kuvma is not not racist.
Anika: It’s kind of attractive. Got to say, T’Kuvma could get it.
Liz: Oh yeah.
Anika: Could I just say T’Kuvma could get it? Because also, it was … like, you know what? That’s how.
Liz: Interesting. Very interesting.
I have never had a problem with the subtitles. Like, I watch subtitled stuff. It’s not really something that I have any issue with. However, I watched this for the first time on Netflix, where the Klingon dialogue was subtitled with sort of your standard easy to read sans serif font that is used for subtitles everywhere. And I did not realize that the CBS All Access version had this weird Klingon-y serif font that’s actually hard to read.
Anika: It’s a Klingon font. Yeah, yeah. It’s the anglicized Klingon font. It is, in fact, I understand that choice artistically. It was a bad choice.
Liz: Yeah. Like, what?
Anika: Just for actual understanding of what’s going on.
Liz: Just at an accessibility level, I am totally in favor of subtitles, but they need to be readable. I am so sorry about all the time I spent making fun of Americans who are scared of subtitles. You guys should embrace the sub, but also it needs to be accessible. Yeah. I mean, this is sort of Paramount+ starting as it means to go on with bad accessibility.
Anika: They’re really bad at accessibility.
Liz: So bad.
Anika: Yeah. Can I just say when you turn on closed captions on Paramount+, they’re tiny. They’re so small. It’s like, what are you doing? The whole point of this is to be like, I just, I don’t understand it. I don’t know.
Liz: They’re making bad choices.
Anika: And especially for Star Trek, at least the new ones, they’re filmed in widescreen. So you can put it on the black bar. You can not even cover the picture with it, and make it big and it wouldn’t interfere with anything. So I really don’t understand the choice at all. But that’s just a me thing.
Liz: No, I absolutely don’t think it’s just a you thing. I think accessibility is an afterthought to Paramount+ and always has been.
Anika: Anyway, so I understand why the Klingons are unrecognizable, and also I don’t think that, especially if you were a 90s Trek fan, I don’t think you even knew that there was this whole big Klingon War thing that happened.
Liz: No, this was new to Star Trek. This was completely new canon.
Anika: So, I feel like the Klingon War was referenced in one line in TOS or the movies or something. And it was like, yeah, that was a thing. And for some reason, some people, cough cough Bryan Fuller, became obsessed with that. Let’s figure out what that is. And again, it sort of works for 2017.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I could sort of get why someone might come to this storyline in 2017. However, it is also surprising, I guess. If you are someone who came in with The Next Generation, this Star Trek is not that Star Trek.
Liz: And that, in my opinion, is a good thing, but I do understand why people would sort of be like, ah … I always found that a bit strange, to be honest, because The Next Generation in Season 4 tells us that the Federation has just finished a massive devastating war with the Cardassians that we technically lost. And so we don’t see a war. It is kind of a whole Star Trek thing.
Anika: And I mean, I guess surprise at war, but legitimately, I don’t think anyone who is only a TNG fan and not a DS9 fan knows about the war. At most, they know that Picard was captured by Cardassians that one time.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I just I don’t think that it’s a part of that.
Liz: I think it says something about our society that people go, what kind of massive epic story could a Star Trek tell across a whole season? And the answer is war.
Anika: War, yeah. Well, but again, it feels very 2017. Because, as I have said many times, anything made after September 11th is a reflection of September 11th. Because America got stuck there for a legitimately long time. And so it feels in that realm.
Liz: And I also just think that it’s sort of a space opera thing where, what do you do with these clashing space empires? Obviously, they’re going to go to war. What else would they do?
Anika: Get married?
Liz: I mean, obviously, that’s how it ends up for the Klingons and the Federation, but we’re not there yet.
Anika: All right. So, let’s get into the episode.
Liz: Yes. So, we open with this very, very rough scene on the desert planet where Philippa and Michael are really having a lot of, ‘as you know, Bob’ dialogue. And conceptually, I love that we meet them for the first time as they’re saving a race while following the laws of the prime directive. But I just wish someone had gone over that scene with a red pen and rewritten it a bit.
Quite often when I’m starting a new project, I deliberately write a really, really bad opening scene because I want to ease myself into it and give myself permission to fail. But the idea is that then I’m going to go back and fix it before anyone else reads it. And I feel like they skipped that step.
But then we get to the second scene of the Shenzhou and that’s amazing. And suddenly Michael and Philippa are both completely fully fledged characters. They just hit the ground running after that rough opening. And it feels like we’ve dropped in on season seven of a Star Trek.
Anika: Yeah. And I think that that is actually one of the problems.
Liz: Oh, you think, you think we needed more time to get to know people?
Anika: I do. This episode does not feel like a pilot as much as a pilot for a spinoff within a series, you know what I mean, like a backdoor pilot. This episode feels like a backdoor pilot instead of an actual pilot. It sort of expects us to know who these people are and what’s going on and what their relationships are.
And I agree with you. I think that Philippa and Michael are very fully formed. And I think that even their relationship is very fully formed by the time where they’re in conflict and everything goes down poorly. I do feel that tension and I understand why it’s so monumental. But I also think that this show really, it depends on us to feel that. And I think that’s a lot to put on a new show and to actors who rise to the occasion. But it’s a lot to put on them to be like, you have to play this as if you’ve already done seven seasons of the show, because they say the flashback is seven years ago. So, it literally is.
Liz: Yeah, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Anika: Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s on purpose. We’re coming at the end of a series and we’re going to move forward into a new series. But the reality is that we have no actual context for any of this.
Liz: I like that it asks the audience to bring their imagination and make that leap because as a Voyager fan, that’s how I watch Star Trek. However, I think it wildly overestimated the willingness of Star Trek audiences to participate in the story and receive it in good faith.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: I respect the risk, but yeah, Star Trek audiences are stupid.
Anika: When we get to the end, we can talk about how everyone hates Michael because of the way that this was presented, and it expected more of the audience than it got, I think.
Liz: Yeah. I also think that Saru is a really difficult character in this first episode, more in “The Vulcan Hello” than “Battle at the Binary Stars”. But his whole deal is that he doesn’t like being in space, he wants to go home, he doesn’t want to explore. And it’s like, so why did you join Starfleet? And he talks about his biological imperative and all of that, and we get some exposition about what the Kelpiens’ deal is.
It’s effective at setting up a sort of sibling relationship between him and Michael, but it doesn’t make him a fun character to watch. To the point where I am deeply suspicious of anyone who comes out of these episodes saying Saru is their favorite character, because it feels like they’ve just chosen the nearest white man to glom onto. Because this is not a fun character to spend time with.
Anika: I want to thank you 10 years later for validating my feelings. When I went through the entire first season, and I feel bad admitting this, but kind of the entire series of Discovery, Saru was not my favorite character. I legitimately disliked him, actively disliked him through most of the first season and into part of the second season.
Liz: No, no, same.
Anika: Eventually, he became a character I understand. And Doug Jones is actually such a sweetheart, and just the fact of him made me feel bad for disliking Saru. But I really actively disliked Saru from the beginning. And I got to the point where I could tolerate him and like parts of what he did. But he’s never going to be my favorite character, and he’s never going to be a favorite character for me. I just, and I felt alone in that. I felt like he was everyone’s favorite character, and that there was something really wrong with me because I didn’t like him.
Liz: No, I also felt that way.
Anika: And I was angry at him on Michael’s behalf. And they were like, Michael’s clearly in the wrong at all times. And I was like, okay, but I’m still on her side. Even if I have to be in the wrong to be on her side, I’m still going to be on her side because I’m so angry about this thing. No, there are certain things that I have not got an offer that happen in the next episode. So get ready for that, guys.
Liz: No, it took me a really long time to get attached to Saru. And it mostly happened in season two, after the Vahar’ai and when he stops being such a scared little guy. And yeah, I just didn’t enjoy watching him as a character because his whole deal was shutting Michael down and being like, I don’t want to explore. I don’t want to learn new things or see new places. And it’s like, why are you in a Star Trek, my guy?
Anika: I mean, yeah. So like, especially because there’s that episode where we see him meet with Georgiou and like, leave his planet behind. And it’s a short Trek, I think.
Liz: Yes. Yes, it is.
Anika: So like, we have an answer to why he joined Starfleet because he was always a dreamer and it was his only opportunity. And I do sort of see like, you take that leap and it’s sort of like an international student who goes to America or Australia to get a Ph.D.
Liz: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: And then they’re really sad, like, they miss their home. And like, of course they do. I understand it on that level. But yeah, you said it’s not enjoyable to watch. That’s the reality is that – and also, just, OK. So a lot of my friends like Saru, because they think that he’s like representation of anxiety. And that’s great for them. And that’s a valid interpretation. And I have nothing against any of it.
But for me, as someone who has struggled with anxiety, he does not represent me in any way. Now, Michael’s scene in prison, in the prison, where she has her, like, tete-a-tete with Sarek, and then she stands up in the prison. Like, that’s my representation of anxiety. It’s fair, again, for people to find that in Saru, and I’m happy for them. But it does not describe me in any way. And actually, actively, like, I’m against it.
Liz: No, no, Saru represents the sort of anxiety that I try to fight. Because if I give into that, and I let myself just be, you know, a delicate flower, then nothing gets done, and I just spend my life feeding my anxiety instead of addressing it.
Anika: And in these two episodes, again, it’s episode three where I really can’t stand him, but in these two episodes, and you said sibling, and I absolutely, they are 100% written to be bickering siblings. The whole point is that Philippa is the quote unquote mom type character, and they are siblings who are trying to get her attention and fighting for her affection. And it’s obvious. It’s obvious that that’s what they were going for, but that is not what comes across. They come across as barely colleagues, but actually bitter rivals who straight up hate each other. They don’t agree with each other at all ever.
It’s interesting because I know, having seen the whole series, they are the best of friends by the end of it. They come to have this really amazing relationship, but it is not in this episode.
Liz: No, it is not.
Anika: They hate each other. They actively are against what the other person is saying. Before they get to the actual conflict, early on in “The Vulcan Hello”, they are in conflict, arguing, and his first scene, Saru is, again, really not served by this because in his first scene, he fails to do his job.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Michael has to do it for him. It’s like, why does this happen? Why does that scene happen? Why does that scene happen?
Because, of course, people are going to be angry. The people who say, Michael is always right and no one else can ever be right. It’s like, this is the scene that they’re pointing to. And it’s the third scene in the series. So they stop watching after this. And so they don’t have a leg to stand on. But also, it’s actually on screen. So I can’t be angry about it.
Liz: And like, this is a note that I give as a beta reader a lot, especially for original stuff. Because if you have a character who’s always negative, who never offers any positive feedback, who is always snarky or sarcastic, they’re not fun to read. In your head, they’re really cool. But to watch or read that character, it’s just kind of like, this guy is really hard work.
Anika: Yeah. No, no.
Liz: Like, I love a sarcastic character. I love a character who is going against the grain, but they need to offer something positive early on so that you know that there’s more to their personality than just being that guy.
Anika: Right. So Saru, I mean, he was a work in progress. And like you said, he has a whole arc where he becomes, he literally goes through like, I don’t know, let’s call it late onset puberty and becomes a different character. It’s almost like it’s on purpose, but I also am not sure that they didn’t write the late onset puberty after the fact to try to fix it. Like, I can’t tell.
Liz: That would genuinely not surprise me. And I don’t mean that in a snarky way. I think that it’s good to look at a character and go, what is not working about this guy and how do we fix it?
Anika: Right. And it’s not even new to Star Trek, the idea of the prey character. We’ve had that before.
Liz: It’s new in terms of having a regular. And I think it’s a really interesting idea. But I just think the execution here in this non-piloty pilot was not there.
Anika: No. Yeah. The execution was not there because, again, we’re dropped into the middle of it. So, we don’t really get introduced to him on his own terms. We get introduced to him as a foil for Michael.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And that does not serve either of them, as it turns out.
Liz: No, no. I think that having a Star Trek with an outright protagonist is a really good idea. I love that they did it and I love that it’s Michael. But one, you’re asking fandom to accept something new, and fandom is not that smart or adventurous. And you still need to consider, like, every character thinks they’re the hero of their own story. And Saru doesn’t get a hero moment.
Anika: No, he does not get a hero moment. He’s legitimately just mostly wrong and annoying.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. He’s better in the “Battle at the Binary Stars”, we don’t learn anything new about him, we just get to see him being more competent at his job. And that’s in part because Michael has taken off the board. So, you know.
Anika: Yes, exactly. And like, that’s interesting. That’s interesting in terms of their relationship. It goes back to that sibling – when he’s not in her shadow, he can come into his own. But when this is our first impression of these characters, my first impression was Saru was, I don’t like him and I want him to leave.
Liz: No, no, same. It’s rough. And then the only other ongoing character that we meet. Okay, we meet various of our Klingon friends and we’ll get to those. But in terms of the Shenzhou crew is Detmer whose role is to be there.
Anika: She’s got two lines. But she’s in the rest of the series and people love her. She has such a following. And, you know, part of it is that she is injured and she gets the weird tech. It’s interesting. But they don’t even try to develop her as anything more than, you know, a placeholder until season four. And it’s just, I don’t know, people are weird about Detmer. They are obsessed with making her more of a thing than she actually is.
Liz: I honestly think that it’s because on the bridge of the Shenzhou and then later on Discovery, she is the only white woman.
Anika: And I’m like, she’s memorable, I guess.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Maybe because of that.
Liz: I am so bad at faces that I remember watching these first episodes and then I went to bed and I opened Wikipedia, as I always do, and I opened the Star Trek: Discovery page and looked up the cast. And I was flipping between the Mary Wiseman Wikipedia page and whatever picture of Detmer I had going, are they the same character? Are they the same person?
Anika: I mean, they have the same hair color.
Liz: So look, I don’t want to be racist, but all redheads look the same to me.
Anika: That’s really funny.
But yeah, and again, I understand the thinking, where they’re like, we want there to be someone in these first two episodes that have nothing to do with the actual series, that other than Michael and Saru, who are the main characters, because they’re the, you know, eventual captain and first officer. I understand the thinking where they’re like, we want there to be some continuity. So we want to introduce someone here, but it’s just a background character. And she’s always going to be a background character. And isn’t that cool?
It’s very Star Wars of them. You know, it’s like Boba Fett, we’re going to make a big deal of this non character. Like, I get it, but it doesn’t serve the story, because by introducing her and not having, like, Tilly be the person who was in this background scene and then becomes a real character, they just hold off all of their actual main cast until the rest of the season. And there’s only so many episodes, and these episodes just are very disconnected from the rest of the series. And part of that is the fact that only Michael and Saru are in these episodes. That’s it. That’s it for the main cast.
Liz: I actually really like that about them, though. I like that instead of having a very piloty pilot, like “Caretaker” and “Emissary” and “Encounter at Farpoint”, and introducing the characters one by one and giving them all a little scene where they tell us what their deal is, we just go in deep on Michael and then Saru is there. And then we have a couple of background characters.
And also, Philippa’s ghost looms very large over the rest of the series. But I like this choice. But again, like, was it a good choice? I think that if this was not a Star Trek and had a more open minded and imaginative fandom, it would be a great choice. And unfortunately, the biggest problem with the Discovery pilot, which absolutely has major problems, is that it keeps overestimating Star Trek fans.
Anika: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s a realist- I mean, yes, it overestimates Star Trek fans. But I think it overestimates television viewers. Like, I agree with you that it’s an interesting choice. I don’t think that, particularly on mainstream, lik,e non-HBO level of television. You can’t do this. You can’t do this and expect people to follow along with it. That’s not how it works.
Like, yeah, you’re right. I talk about it all the time. Pilots where everybody introduces themselves, it’s stupid and boring and nonsense, but it’s also how it works. That’s how television works, is how we expect it to be. And so having something that is different from that and not explaining it, not providing any sort of on-ramp to it, doesn’t work.
Again, this would be an excellent backdoor pilot. And then you have the first episode of the actual series where you go around, and you say what each person does, and you have these little things. And yes, it is clunky and stupid and weird, and it’s not how actual people talk, but you need that. And in this case, and we’ll get into it again in episode three, where we meet the rest of our group. And that’s, like, the actual pilot of the whole thing. And that also has this pilot-y problem. So the pilot problems continue.
But I just think that these two episodes do not represent the series that they’re selling and they failed to set up the story for the fans and the audience. And I think that all of Discovery‘s problems can be written back to that decision.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to agree with you because I want to, you know, hold viewers to a higher standard. But yeah.
Anika: The rules exist for a reason.
Liz: No, no, you’re correct.
Anika: You’re right that breaking the rules is interesting. But unless you have the cachet to break the rules, it’s hard to do successfully. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. And also, I have a reasonably high level of television literacy, and I watch a lot of genres, and I watch a lot of television from a lot of countries, and I know what I’m doing when I watch TV. And I think one thing we learned about Star Trek fandom in particular in terms of the reaction to Discovery is that a lot of Trekkies have never watched anything but 1990s episodic television, and don’t know how to interpret any other television.
To me, that’s a real shame, but also my parents were the type of people who are like, you need to stop reading Sweet Valley and have to read two classics for every Sweet Valley book. Like, they bullied me into becoming literate, and then make fun of me for reading classics for pleasure as an adult, but that’s by the by. And television is not actually homework, and I think that a higher degree of television literacy is good for people, but I can’t assign homework.
Anika: Right. Right. I also think that media literacy is down.
Liz: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Anika: We’ve covered that a lot, and that is a problem, and that we shouldn’t give into it just because people have given up. But there’s sort of a middle ground. There’s nuance in these conversations. Yeah. Yeah. Where I land.
Liz: Yeah. I think also at this point, Paramount+ was trying to do prestige television HBO style.
Anika: Oh, for sure. For sure. But they did not have the cachet. They just didn’t. Even HBO. HBO is now known as the birthplace of prestige television or whatever. But when HBO first existed, it was like the porn station.
Liz: Right.
Anika: Right. It was not HBO in big letters and glowing accolades for the first few years. It had to gain that as well. And so, yes, Paramount+ came out of the gate trying to grasp that ring. And I, again, I actually approve of the big swings. Like, I think it’s good for society, as much as anything in television can be, to do these big swings. I don’t fault them, I just think that it’s understandable why people didn’t fall in line.
Liz: Yeah. The other thing is that HBO makes good television or made good television because they invested a lot of time and a lot of money into getting it right. You know, they produce a bad Game of Thrones pilot, they will go back and make another pilot.
Anika: And they did.
Liz: And that’s sort of the hallmark of HBO. And so, like, when the Succession showrunner asked for extra time for the writer’s room to get everything right, he got it. Paramount was trying to do the same level of quality with no time and no investment.
Anika: They were trying to make prestige television at broadcast television like schedules.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And you just can’t do that. And I think that’s why we have stuff like the terrible dialogue in the opening scene, that there’s just no time. They’re too busy shedding showrunners like it’s going out of fashion, and there’s no opportunity to rewrite stuff and polish. Anyway.
Anika: I want to talk about the choice to make Michael Burnham’s Spock’s sister and Sarek’s daughter. I want to deep dive into that. We are, after all, The Sarek Podcast.
Liz: I’m so happy that we get to be The Sarek Podcast again. I like that choice in terms of reclaiming the idea of the Mary Sue, and I feel like there was a brief period where with Michael and Soji, Star Trek was very interested in that, and then men didn’t like it, so it got dropped. Yeah. But the thing is, there is no need in this story for Michael to be Sarek’s adoptive daughter.
Anika: No, I think you’ve said before that it could have worked just as well with any Vulcan family, and it might have worked better with any Vulcan family as opposed to Sarek. I will say.
Liz: I definitely think they would have been less baggage.
Anika: I love the relationship between Michael and Sarek. I think it makes Sarek a better character and a better person.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: To have this relationship. And as someone who wants to like Sarek.
Liz: I mean, I love Sarek. I’m just under no illusions about whether or not he’s a good dad. Yeah. Or, yeah, good person.
Anika: Like, he’s a super complicated and interesting person that I, I don’t know if you are watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters at all, but Sarek reminds me of Hiroshi, who is the dad, who literally had two complete separate families because he couldn’t decide between the two. He’s like the worst possible dad. And then he abandons them both for a year, but it wasn’t his fault. He was like an accidental abandonment for a year.
But anyway, Sarek reminds me of that, where Sarek is making what he thinks are the best choices for everyone involved and they’re not in any way because he’s just delusional. And it’s like, but I just, you know, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care or doesn’t love everybody.
And yeah, I know we’re not supposed to use the word love for Sarek, but he definitely loves everybody and Michael most of all. And first of all, like I really love James Frain’s version of Sarek and I think that he nails it right from the start.
Like, legitimately, James Frain is so good at being Sarek right from the start. He is so good in these episodes. His line delivery is amazing. He goes from deadpan, from straight Vulcan logic to deadpan, to like slightly humorous, to I actually love you, but I can’t tell you I love you without any, like he just moves very smoothly through them all. I have to shout him out as like he nailed it. He did really good.
But he could have been any Vulcan. And as you say, there would have been less baggage if it was a random Vulcan. Although the flip side of that is if he was any random Vulcan, all of us would be saying, well, what does this mean for how Spock was treated or how like there would have been a bunch of, he’s not acting very Vulcan like if that happened.
So I would like to pitch, what if they were T’Pring’s parents, T’Pring’s parents and not the T’Pring’s parents that we see in Strange New Worlds, but like what if it was someone that we knew of, but like, you know, I just think that it could have got a different way where it wasn’t specifically related to Spock, but it was sort of in the realm of … I just think that that could have bring in, because obviously until we met them in Strange New Worlds, T’Pring’s parents were like, they were people who agreed to let their daughter be bonded to a half human.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Like theoretically that is weird and interesting and cool. And I just think that if they had adopted Michael, that would have been a reason for it. And I would have, like, I don’t know. That’s my idea of how to fix it.
Liz: And there’s still the potential for a childhood connection between Spock and Michael, but also more.
Anika: What if, like, Spock and Michael had a better bond than Spock and T’Pring?
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Just saying. I don’t know. It’s one of those things where it just sort of randomly occurred to me. I was like, if this wasn’t Sarek and Amanda, who could it have been that would have made sense with TOS? And that’s what I came up with. And I love James Frain as Sarek. Yes.
Liz: And I love Mia Kirschner as Amanda. So, no complaints.
Anika: I love it. But yeah. But also, like, in terms of Michael and Sarek, she is fully Sarek’s daughter.
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: Like, I know that we eventually get to have her meet her, or not, like, reconnect with her mom and have sort of, like, you know, we have Michael’s three moms at all times. And that’s interesting for Michael. But I do think that she was clearly raised by Sarek. Their bond is more important than all of the other familial bonds that she has, at least at this point, certainly. And it is important. It’s an interesting and important part of Michael to have been raised by Sarek.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: And I like it.
Liz: And it’s interesting to think about, like, is she so Vulcan-esque because that was what Sarek wanted her, or is that what she chose to please Sarek?
Anika: Yeah, I do think it is what she chose to please Sarek, based on the scene with the, like, the education scene and…
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And, like, she says in their tete-a-tete, which is ridiculous, their stupid, like, space non-tete-a-tete, whatever non-sense. That is so silly. But it’s a lovely conversation. And he says, like, he cuts her down and is like, I didn’t come here to boost your confidence. That’s very emotional, human of you. What are you thinking? And she looks chagrined. But then he’s like, logically, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need me to boost your confidence because you are a confident, awesome, amazing woman, obviously. Like, I just think that the way that he parents Michael, like, he knows how to parent Michael more than he knows how to parents Spock. Yes.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Like, he is afraid to parent Spock almost in a way that he is completely capable of parenting Michael. And part of that is because she is more like him and Spock is more like Amanda. That’s just true. I’m sorry. That’s just the reality of the situation is Spock is his mother’s daughter. And Sarek doesn’t know what to do with that. Yeah, he loves them both. But he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Liz: And I think that’s a very normal family dynamic.
Anika: Absolutely.
Liz: And a very normal and routine source of mild dysfunction. But because this is Spock and Sarek, they can’t leave it at mild dysfunction. They have to go decades without speaking to one another because what else would they do?
Anika: Because they are the most overdramatic Vulcans of all time. Yeah.
Liz: So let’s talk about the Klingons. And I didn’t realize how early in the piece Cole and all that turned up. Or how unprominent Laurel would be. Like, obviously, we have the important stuff, the Vogue, but.
Anika: I forgot that, and I’m not going to remember her name, but there is another, the other female Klingon with the jewels in her face.
Liz: D’Ness.
Anika: That she, yes. And she shows up in episodes five again. But I did not realize she was even in this episode. I had forgotten.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: I had forgotten that she was like that. Because I remember her fully in episode five, but I did not even recall that she wasn’t just an envoy. She’s actually one of the heads of households.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: I spent a little too much time just being like, oh, wow, she’s in this. And like, I missed part of the scene and I had to rewind because I was so focused on her that I missed that Cole was talking. Sorry. But yeah, I mean, so I obviously remembered T’Kuvma and I remembered Vogue. And L’Rell was in it. But yeah, she did not play a big part. She does not get her big parts until later.
Liz: It’s interesting how much thought clearly went into these scenes in terms of setting up the Klingon characters that we were going to see later and the dynamic between the houses. And I think this is where the real work of the pilot went in, which is an interesting choice.
Anika: Yeah. So I describe it here as Shakespearean, which also was described as Shakespearean. I describe it as Game of Thrones, which I think is clear. And in describing as Game of Thrones, I have to also describe it as War of the Roses. And then I looked at those as I was writing it down and I was like, oh, so British. I was like, yeah, interesting. Interesting that there are very, and that does make sense in terms of the British Empire. I can see, obviously Star Trek doesn’t necessarily want me to see the Klingon Empire as the British Empire. However, I think it’s accurate.
Liz: I think it’s true. It’s interesting, because this was the first time that the Klingons were meant to represent America and remain Klingon as make America great again. But you think about them in terms of a post-Brexit British Empire striving to Exactly. reclaim what it sees as the greatness to which it was entitled. It’s an interesting and valid reading.
Anika: And it was, okay, so it was 2016, because it was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. I was on a panel at Mission New York, the convention for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. And I went out to dinner with my good friends and their good friends, one of which was a British national. And it was Brexit times. So he was asked, you know, what was your position on Brexit? And he shocked all of us by saying that he approved. We were like, but we’re Star Trek fans. Like, what are you talking about? What do you mean you’re a pro-Brexit person? But yeah, he was, it was very revealing. And that was literally the only person, actual British person that I spoke to about Brexit while it was happening. And he legitimately sounded exactly like T’Kuvma. Like, I am not joking. Yes, Make America Great Again, but also Make America Great Again came out of that. It all happened at the same time.
Liz: It was the same thing, yeah.
Anika: And America is very much a British colony. I know that we’re like, ha ha ha, we kicked him out. I’m sorry.
Liz: No, no, you have that. As a citizen of a fellow British colony, I totally see it.
Anika: Exactly. So it’s like America is an extension of the British Empire in a way.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It’s like, you know, absolutely, of course, it’s Make America Great Again and keep Klingons Klingons. However, it is also Brexit. And it is also just all the way back to the 1400s and the War of the Roses. Like, it’s just that’s what’s happening here.
Liz: I think that if nothing else comes out of our Run of Discovery episodes, this could be the smartest thing ever said on this podcast.
Anika: I’m just saying, I was watching those scenes again, and I feel like they washed over me the first time, that I was so impressed almost with these Shakespearean aspects of it, that I didn’t necessarily think of the political aspects. However, Shakespeare is super political, and Game of Thrones is super political, and I was just like, wow, you know what this actually is? And so I came to this whole British Empire nonsense, but I think it’s true.
Liz: No, I think it’s an argument that stands up, and I’m very impressed by it.
Anika: But I do love seeing Klingons. I love all of them. Discovery Klingons are the best. I was invited, in fact, onto two separate podcast episodes to talk about, specifically, L’Rell, but all of the Discovery Klingons, and how much I love them, and how important I’ve considered them to Star Trek. Because, as you say, I was online, I was on Tumblr, being very vocally pro, specifically L’Rell, and Discovery in general. And I stand by that. I think Discovery is great, and I think Discovery Season 1 is great. Like, sorry, that’s just true.
Liz: No, no, I love it for its big swings and its failures, and where it does something that I think that I absolutely disagree with. I just want to shake it and go, why aren’t you better? Because you have so much potential. Why did you not edit this dialogue a little? You could have been perfect.
Anika: Again, we are Voyager fans.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So we come into it with a, this is amazing. And also it could be so much better.
Liz: And also I just love that it really tried something new and it tried to push the boundaries of what Star Trek could be. And what happens to a utopian society when a devastating war happens, is a really interesting question and one that I keep coming back to. Like with the cancellation of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, I’m kind of trying to bundle up all of my Star Trek feelings and put them into something original. And that’s the first idea that comes to mind. And I was kind of dismissive earlier about like, yeah, that’s just the story that everyone comes to. And what does that say about us? But I’m doing it too, I think it’s a story worth exploring. And I think Discovery did it in interesting and compelling ways.
Anika: So it’s one of those things where the principles of creating, you know, story telling, the number one thing is there has to be a conflict, right? Like, that’s sort of the foundation of story telling, is there has to be a conflict. And war is a very obvious conflict and a rich conflict. And so I get it.
Liz: Yes. I am not remotely interested in the space battles. The explosions of fun to watch, but what stays with me out of this premiere is how Georgiou and Admiral Anderson both completely lose their opportunity to stop the war because they don’t understand what’s at stake. Jadzia would say they’re not meeting the Klingons on their own terms. They’re going, oh, hi, we’re human, we’re the Federation, we come in peace. And they have never examined Klingon society enough to realize what a threat that is to them.
Anika: Right. And it’s amazing that Jadzia still has to say it so far in the future, that we never actually reconcile with that. And I think it’s true, because if you watch Deep Space Nine, it’s like, okay, so we’re all at war, so it’s sort of acceptable for the Klingons to be quote unquote good at war. Yeah, so we’re like, yay, there are allies and it’s good. But even then, it’s seen as a necessary evil. It’s not acceptable, like, I appreciate your culture. It’s like, oh, I’m glad that you’re on our side because you’re good at this.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, and that’s so dismissive.
Anika: It’s so dismissive. And I just, okay, so Anderson is the worst.
Liz: Oh my God.
Anika: He has such a punchable face, and I don’t feel bad about him dying at all. I mean, like, obviously, he’s not a real person, so I can say that, but.
Liz: We’ll know.
Anika: But here, there’s nothing redeemable about that particular character. Georgiou, there is more nuance. We get to see her with other people that we like and know, and it’s important to know that. But both of them have that, and I wrote this down. So the way that I do, I watch the show and then I watch it the second time and take notes and make the outline.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And because I’ve seen this one before, I started the outline before I even watched it, and I put up the outline and then I watched it, and then I watch it the second time and filled in the outline. And I wrote in under the bullet point ‘Captain Philippa Georgiou’, I wrote in ‘t0o certain in her principles’, and then, in parentheses, ‘(Jedi-esque)’, because I’m me.
And then in the second episode, Michael literally says, you’re too certain in your principles. And I was like, wow. At that point, I was like, oh, good writing, because it was exactly the same reaction that I had. And that means that the story that was being told was the story I was supposed to be paying attention to. I felt so good about it. I felt so good at that point.
And that’s when we get to the end. And it’s very, very clear to me that throughout from the inception of ‘there are Klingons here’. And so her whole Vulcan Hello, her whole ‘I’m gonna go talk to Sarek and I’m gonna come out and I’m gonna have a plan. And it’s gonna be to convince them to show force in order to show that we’re equals,’ right? And like, you know, play their game basically. That’s what Jadzia does eventually, right?
Liz: Play their game.
Anika: And then Georgiou, she completely dismisses it because it goes fully against her own belief system. Her principles are Starfleet doesn’t fire first. We can’t do that. And it’s the wrong response. And it’s depressing because Michael is a cultural anthropologist. We learned that in the first scene. So the fact that her expertise is not being relied upon and being completely dismissed because it goes against George’s instincts and her own personal value system. And of course, that’s really hard, to go against your own personal value system.
Liz: Absolutely.
Anika: But she didn’t even listen. She just completely is like, no, you’re wrong. And she literally says you hit your head. So that’s why you’re talking like this.
Liz: When I did our rankings of Star Trek captains for TikTok that made everyone really angry, I said that Pike had Joe Biden vibes because he’s sort of lightly progressive, but doesn’t really push the envelope and he says the right things, but what does he do?
And then I went back and added for George that she had Obama era vibes. And by that, I mean that she is a good leader, but she doesn’t quite have the imagination to shake up the system, and she hasn’t properly prepared the succession planning. You know, Obama was a decent president, but he didn’t do anything to break up the American gerontocracy. Then you have problems with the older generation of Democrats actively barring the way for younger generations to take their place. And I feel like, in a way, that’s what Georgiou has done to Michael and Saru. She hasn’t properly prepared them, and she hasn’t taken them seriously when they give advice that she doesn’t like.
Anika: Yeah, what I got out of when you wrote that down, ‘Obama era vibes’, is that – so the Obama era was very – his entire campaign was based on hope, right? Hope for the future. A new beginning, moving forward, progressing, right? But it was not actually progressive. The optics were progressive, and to be very clear, it’s important that Obama was a Black president.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: The optics are important, and just that is historic. There should be an exclamation point on it. But they then just went, ‘we did that, and so we don’t have to do anything else.’ Everyone was fighting against him. I don’t hold it against Obama personally as a person, but that whole era, it was very much more aesthetically hopeful and progressive than actually hopeful and progressive.
And Georgiou had this has the same problem where she’s like, I believe in this, and I believe in it so fully that I think that making a decision that is better for the moment is not worth it, because that would be morally bad or whatever. Like, the optics would be bad, therefore I shouldn’t do it. And again, I understand it on a personal level. I get why she does that. But the reality of the situation is that it was wrong. It was not taking into account the fact that – and on Earth and in America, it’s a completely different situation where we’re at least all human, or at least all – Obama was in charge of all America. He wasn’t in charge of like space and Klingons. Like, he didn’t have to talk to Klingons. Klingons are completely different people who have nothing in common with us.
And so the idea that Georgiou was completely blind and Anderson even more so. She was at least willing to listen to Michael. She was dismissive of it, but she understood where Michael was coming from. Anderson was just absolutely not, I don’t even see you as a person. He legitimately dismissed her. His words were something like, “I think you with your history, I can’t believe that you’re making this…”
And we don’t even fully know her. Like, eventually, Sarek says something like, your parents were killed by Klingons or whatever. But do we even know it at the point when he pulls that out? So really it comes off as like, because you’re black, you would believe against this?
Liz: That is how I read it.
Anika: And whatever he’s saying is bad.
Liz: Yeah. I feel like the Admiralty definitely didn’t send their best guy. And the bit where T’Kuvma yeets his ship into the Europa is actually my favorite, like, action point of the episode, because it’s iconic, it’s devastating, it’s very funny and he deserved it.
Anika: It’s like, oh, that guy sucked so good.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. So my take on the Obama-era vibes are that they were very focused on identity, optics, and aesthetics instead of any actual change, like, the concept of change. We’re going to promote that, but we’re not actually going to do it.
And again, I don’t hold Obama responsible for everything, but I, and I don’t, I don’t hold Georgiou responsible for everything either. Like, she is a part of a system. She was under Anderson. She was raised to believe in the star of the ideals. And the fact that she decides that the reason that Michael’s doing it is because she was raised Vulcan, that is concerning to me.
Liz: Also pretty racist, TBH.
Anika: Yeah, right? It’s like, okay, that’s not good.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like this, I think-
Anika: And it makes her a more interesting character.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: Like, I like how it makes her, but I don’t know that, again, I’m not sure that people understand that.
Liz: No, no, because there’s this whole thing where we’re told a few episodes later that Georgiou is considered one of the all-time great captains and no one asks any more questions. Like, therefore she is good at her job. Pike and Georgiou are the best captains, therefore, we are not going to ask any more questions.
Anika: Yeah. And remember how, like, this is in season two, so we’re not even going to discuss it this season because we’ve already discussed it. Remember how, like, they were like, Enterprise was sent away so they wouldn’t have to be a part of the war because the war was, like, too terrible, like, they were too good for the war, they were too moral for the war, we had to send our best people away. Remember that whole thing?
Liz: I would never forget that thing.
Anika: I feel like it’s related. I feel like the instinct to send the best of the Federation away from the war is related to Georgiou being unable to accept that Michael’s plan is correct.
Liz: Yes. Which is not to say that the mind meld and the mutiny were the appropriate approaches, and I do think that life in prison is a really heavy-handed response. But Michael absolutely did not start the war. T’Kuvma was going to start a war regardless. And it is like I am blaming Georgiou and Anderson, but really they didn’t know any better either.
Anika: Yeah. It is definitely the Klingons. Yeah. Who started the war. That they put themselves into the situation. They were definitely the aggressors.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Anika: But they played Starfleet.
Liz: Oh, they played Starfleet like a fiddle.
Anika: T’Kuvma was when he was like, you know, everybody get ready for her to say the lie. And then she said, we come in peace. Like, that was very well directed by T’Kuvma.
Liz: Yes. He knows what he’s about.
Anika: Yes. So obviously the Klingons start the war. It is in no way Michael’s fault. Yes. Okay. So she did mutiny, she did assault an officer. She should be punished for that. She should have lost her commission. That’s my take. My take is she should have taken Starfleet the end. She should not be in prison. She should certainly not be in prison for life. I mean, as we all know, I’m a prison abolitionist, but I’m sorry. There is no way that this was a capital offense. Yeah, I guess they didn’t kill her, but they literally took her life away. It wasn’t even, like, 25 to life. It was imprisonment for life at the end.
Liz: Yeah, I have a lot of questions, frankly.
Anika: Okay. And this is where we go back to, I think that the showrunners made some poor choices. Because the way that scene is played, Starfleet is clearly, in my opinion, the aggressor and the villain. They’re literally in shadow.
Liz: Yes. It looks like a star chamber.
Anika: We don’t get to see who those people are. It’s ridiculous to say that they have the moral high grounds in any way. They are obviously not presented as correct. However, everyone, not everyone, the people who maybe didn’t want to like the show to begin with and the people who were looking for a Star Trek that they recognized, those two groups of people, really held this against Michael for the rest of the series. The concept of Michael was ruined for them at that point because she went against Starfleet and Starfleet punished her. Therefore, we should accept Starfleet’s punishment for her.
Even though that’s completely ridiculous in terms of all of Star Trek, literally every captain has gone against Starfleet and was supposed to be on their side. But it is presented in a way where we’re supposed to be on their side. I think that it is here too, but the trappings, like the way that that trial happens, and the fact that Michael herself says, I’m at fault.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: She’s been conditioned and she’s been beaten down and she thinks, from her perspective, Georgiou died because I made a decision. It’s all about Michael. Michael’s speech is all about Michael, but I think that some people read it as all about the plot.
Liz: I mean, this is, again, that media literacy problem.
Anika: Right. It’s so blatantly obvious to me that we are supposed to believe that Michael was correct and that she went about it the wrong way, and that was the error, and so that means that she wasn’t ready to be captained because she made an error in judgment of how to do it, not because she made an error in judgment of what she was judging.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: But I guess it wasn’t obvious enough, even though, again, they don’t have faces. How could you think you’re supposed to be on their side?
Liz: I mean, that’s the other thing. I’m sorry. There came a point later in season one where the AV Club reviewer, Zack Handlen, was clearly not paying attention to what would happen on screen. I don’t know how you can deal with that type of problem. You can’t write for people who aren’t paying attention. I mean, apparently you can in that season five, Stranger Things way, but you can’t write good television for people who simply refuse to pay attention.
Anika: Right. Because if you’re writing to people who don’t pay attention, then you’re not writing to the story. Yeah. You know? I want them to write to the story and trust us that we’ll get it. I know that’s a crazy thing to say this day and age, but The Pitt is doing it, so.
Liz: Yeah, but The Pitt also has a famously stupid fandom.
Anika: I mean, I think that all fandoms are like, it’s just people are less. It’s not … I’m not going to say stupid. People are less attentive. And again, there’s so much more. There’s so much more that we’re supposed to be paying attention to, and so it’s hard. But I’m sad. I’m sad.
I think I still have the Tumblr post where I took a picture of the end of this season with those three people. And I posted on Tumblr and I was like, I don’t trust these guys. Like, I was like, guys, Starfleet isn’t supposed to be SEELE from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Like, what is going on? These guys are bad guys. I was like, I’m on Michael’s side, obviously. And even then, I got some haters that were like, it was an artistic choice to put them in shadow. And it wasn’t meaningful. It was just like dramatic effect. And I was like, dramatic effect to make you look evil. Like, what are you talking about?
Liz: We see one of those admirals again later in the season. She’s giving Admiral Cornwell approval for the bombing of Qo’noS. Like, I don’t think she’s a good guy.
Anika: Exactly. They are clearly not good guys.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And Michael is proclaiming guilt because she feels guilty, not because she is guilty.
Liz: Oh my god. These people are… Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s move on to shipping news or else I will explode.
Anika: So, obviously the first one out of this is Michael and Philippa. And I feel like they are still pretty high up there in terms of Discovery ships. I think that they are one of the iconic Discovery ships is Michael and Philippa.
Liz: Yes, I don’t ship it myself because the very next episode. No, the very next episode, it’s made explicitly maternal, and I’m like, no, thank you.
Anika: Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And again, I super shipped Janeway and Seven, and I don’t anymore.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: I got to a certain age and I was like, oh. Yeah, this is no longer appealing. It’s actually super embarrassing. I have been looking in my, I’ve been looking back at my fandom for many years, and I looked at some of the things that I was super into in my teens and early twenties, and I was like, oh, okay. That was maybe not what I should have been into.
Again, I’m not going to judge me anywhere that I’m going to judge other people who like these things because it is all fiction and it’s fine. Get your id out, whatever. It’s okay. You can do it. Like what you like, it’s fine. It doesn’t say anything bad against you. But also, I think I had some unresolved issues. That now, post-40, I have sort of resolved some of those issues and I realize that I shouldn’t be shipping that.
Liz: You can judge me for this ship. I walked out of these two episodes shipping Michael and Sarek.
Anika: No. I am a little disturbed. I’m a little disturbed.
Liz: The thing is, in these early episodes, he refers to her as a ward and she doesn’t refer to him as a father. So I was like, oh, maybe this is kind of like that Victorian thing where, you know, a guy has a ward and then they fall in love and get married later. It’s kind of Icky, but I’m into it. And no, that is not where the show was going.
Anika: Did you read Daddy Long Legs?
Liz: At an impressionable age? I sure did. Yes.
Anika: Because that was a ward situation and I really was into it. So I understand. In that context, I get it. I get it. I have strong feelings about siblings who have strong feelings. I’m not going to go so far as to say that I ship incest, but I have strong feelings about siblings who have strong feelings.
Liz: Yeah, that makes sense.
Anika: I, however, my biggest squick is parents and children.
Liz: Oh, that is totally reasonable.
Anika: I can’t do. I cannot. So the concept of Michael and Sarek, and it’s like you said, that’s why Michael and Philippa is like, oh, actually no. And Michael and Sarek is like a completely, because it is explicitly like he adopts her as a child and is like, this is my new daughter, here’s my son, enjoy yourselves. And so it’s a hard no from me. But again, like whatever.
Liz: We know that now.
Anika: They’re fake people.
Liz: By the time we got to “Lethe”, I was like, no, I’ve misread the situation. But in that first two hours…
Anika: So again, and this is specifically James Frain’s version of Sarek. Super sexy.
Liz: Oh, oh my God. Why is he so sexy?
Anika: I wrote down here, Philippa and Sarek, they exchanged two lines, but they’re old friends and that was all I needed. That was legit all I needed.
Liz: I was like, I am going to say, Mark Lenard Sarek can absolutely get it, but he’s not a petty little bitch like James Frain Sarek.
Anika: Exactly. Exactly. Like, Mark Lenard, he has a gravitas.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Which he should. He’s the older version of Sarek, right? He’s, you know, it’s fine. Mark Lenard has a gravitas that James Frain, James Frain uses that gravitas to like, I don’t know, he’s a sexual being. Like, I’m sorry. Like, get ready for my cat and Sarek feels because they are extreme.
Liz: I just think, apologies to Spock, but his dad fucks.
Anika: His dad fucks hard. Like, I’m just super into Sarek as a sexual being. And I am not even going to apologize for it. I think that it’s acceptable.
Liz: I think it’s what Amanda would want.
Anika: I think it’s what Amanda would want. The ship that I come out of these particular episodes there is Philippa and Sarek. But these two episodes are not shipping. There’s not a lot of shipping going on in these episodes.
In my opinion – again, people who are shipping Philippa and Michael, and I get it, they’re first officer and captain. That’s sort of a thing. They have absolutely have a connection. Philippa, both of them are very – like, she’s super upset about how she feels betrayed by Michael, and Michael is obviously clearly super disturbed by the fact that Philippa doesn’t understand why she did what she did, and then she feels completely responsible for her dying. There’s a whole thing going on. But I think even at this point, even though it is not explicit or clear in these episodes, I think I was going for mentor and mentee, and I just didn’t see the shipping part of it.
Liz: No, I think that’s very fair. The only time I really shipped it was in the beginning when they first meeting, and just the vibe is very Janeway and Seven. Possibly self-consciously so. But yeah.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: And again, that’s something I used to ship and don’t anymore.
Anika: Right. So. Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media credits for our theme music and some transcripts of our episodes. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Tik Tok, Instagram, and Bluesky, all at Antimatter Pod and at Mastodon at antimatterpod@tenforward.social. If you like us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you consume your podcasts. The more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us and also tell your friends.
Join us in two weeks when we will be discussing the next episode of Discovery Season 1, “Context Is for Kings”, named Gabriel Lorca.
Liz: It’s Lorca time, baby!
Anika: I am very ready for Jason Isaacs.
Liz: Oh, I am not going to be normal and I’m okay with that.
Anika: Exactly, it’s gonna be very abnormal. It’s gonna be great. I love it.