Anika and Liz continue their tour of Discovery‘s first season with “Context Is For Kings”, an episode which introduces a whole lot of new regulars and dares to ask: is it possible to like Saru less? It’s time to go down the rabbit hole as we discuss:
- You are not gonna believe this, but Michael Burnham is the protagonist of Star Trek: Discovery. I know. Huge if true.
- But Gabriel Lorca thinks he’s the main character of multiple universes.
- Ellen Landry: one of the all-time worst people to wear a Starfleet uniform, and we are fascinated by her.
- Lorca absolutely practised his introduction to Michael in the mirror, possibly while flexing, because he’s a monster, but he’s also a giant dork
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Anika: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today, we are discussing Star Trek: Discovery season one, episode three, “Context Is for Kings,” named Lorca.
Liz: This is the real pilot. This is where we meet most of our regulars, we meet the USS Discovery, and sort of set the template for the series, but also it’s a misdirect, because this isn’t really reflective of the series or even the season either.
Anika: Right. It’s just misdirects all the way down.
Liz: Which is fitting for this season. Maybe I’m being too harsh on it.
Anika: No, yeah. I think it’s on purpose. I do think that there was a plan for this season, and I continue to think that those first few episodes are not actually a part of the show, and should have rethought things. But that’s just my opinion. I think, storytelling wise, this episode, literally the Discovery — the name of the show — doesn’t show up until this episode. And I think that it suffers because of that. I also think that if Michael Burnham was introduced as a prisoner, who was the first mutineer of Starfleet, instead of us seeing it, and then it was revealed as the episode or, honestly, as the season went on, that would have been a better choice.
Liz: I think definitely people would have been more sympathetic to her.
Anika: Yes, if we meet her at the bottom, she only has up to go, right? And she would still be the first mutineer of Starfleet, and everything that happens in this episode could happen exactly the same way, but we wouldn’t be on the side of the people who are shunning her.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Not that I am, but it’s the way that it’s set up. We’re supposed to be on Saru’s side, and I look forward to the moment when I become on Saru’s side. But it has not happened yet.
Liz: He is still, in fact, the worst. There’s a common piece of writing advice that you should think about whether you’re starting your story too early, and I think Discovery started its story too early.
Anika: It absolutely did. I think the series as a whole, and potentially modern Star Trek, was harmed by that decision. Honestly, modern Star Trek has been successful. We have what? Five series. So it was a quote unquote experiment that went well. I am not saying that this decision doomed them in any way. And I also think that Discovery is, on the whole, a good series that we should celebrate. I’m just saying that they set themselves up poorly.
Liz: Agreed, agreed.
Anika: I agree. And some of the most vocal — they would still be vocal and anti. So it probably wouldn’t affect them in any way.
Liz: But I was going to say there are people out there who say that Caleb Mir doesn’t belong in Starfleet and he’s not even — his criminality is entirely caused by Starfleet. So yeah. We are not necessarily dealing with a reasonable viewer base or even good people. But definitely, in terms of setting up their story, Discovery made it hard for themselves.
Anika: I’m revisiting properties from 20 and 10 years ago for a project. And lots of stuff has happened. Just saying. This is one of the properties from 10 years ago. So, yeah, lots of stuff has happened.
Liz: Yeah. It’s a whole thing.
Anika: But yeah, so just before we move off of the “this is the real pilot” discussion, I just want to say that legitimately it feels like those first two episodes were in a separate series. This was a spinoff of… and it’s really sort of weird. It’s a weird feeling of being in a spinoff of a series that never existed. And it’s just this series that is off.
Liz: I am still surprised that the comics and all of that, and the novels didn’t go all in on Shenzhou era stories. We had one novel that wasn’t very good and was immediately decanonized by season two of Discovery. And yeah, there is such a potential for rich storytelling there. That is, I would say, completely unexplored except by Michael/Georgiou shippers.
Anika: Right. Yeah, it’s just really strange. It’s really strange, because all of the Shenzhou stuff — and we’re going to get into this when she comes back — but all of the Shenzhou stuff, there’s just a really strange sort of manufactured feeling for it, and I don’t want that. I wish that Prime Georgiou was a real person, that I knew and understood.
Liz: I mean, I think part of the problem is that we spend so little time with Prime Georgiou and there’s no beta media or anything. It’s really all we have is a couple of episodes and what we can extrapolate from what we see of Mirror Georgiou.
Liz: And we’ll get to this, it’s the same for Lorca, in terms of who is Prime Lorca.
Anika: Yeah. So it’s a flaw. It’s not a failing, it’s a flaw.
Liz: But it’s an interesting problem to have, but a frustrating problem to deal with.
Anika: Yeah. I think that’s the perfect way of putting it. Yes. So we are finally introduced to the actual main cast, mostly.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And I just want to point out that Michael is and always has been and always will be the protagonist of this series, regardless of what anyone wants to think about it.
Liz: Huge if true, Anika. Big call.
Anika: I’m just saying that people try so hard to say that she shouldn’t be the main character, and it wouldn’t be this show if she wasn’t the main character, and I don’t understand why people want it to be something it’s not.
Liz: I think people really struggle with the concept of the protagonist. I guess I’m feeling very jaundiced about fandom as a whole right now, and everyone’s talking about the lack of media literacy that the Pitt fandom demonstrates, but it’s really a much wider problem.
Anika: It was absolutely a much wider problem. But in terms of — if we’re going to say — so we’re in 2026, we’re at the tail end of The Pitt Season 2, and I just said that Michael Burnham is the protagonist of Discovery. I would like to introduce everyone to the fact that Michael Rabinowitz is the protagonist of The Pitt, and his story is supposed to be central.
Liz: This is crazy talk. I don’t understand what you mean. I have never encountered this concept before.
Anika: You know, and it’s building off of, John Carter was the protagonist of ER, and once he left, they struggled.
Liz: I’m in season 14 of ER, and yes.
Anika: I love Luca and Abby, and they tried, but it didn’t work because it wasn’t the same show. And this show, it can lose Lorca, it can lose Georgiou, it can lose Ash, it can lose anyone really.
Liz: Saru and Tilly.
Anika: And be the same show. Yeah, Tilly leaves. I need people to understand that there’s a point of view character and it matters.
Liz: Yes. Yes. It’s frustrating and I think a little disingenuous that people are still having trouble with this concept. At this point, are you being obtuse deliberately? Is it racism? Because a protagonist is not a radical new concept in Western media.
Anika: No, it’s literally the foundation. Have you ever heard of the Hero’s Journey? I don’t even believe in the Hero’s Journey and yet.
Liz: Michael’s story doesn’t conform to the Hero’s Journey in interesting ways. Which maybe is another point of confusion. If Michael was a special young white man, maybe people would be less confused by the concept. And as evidence for my theory working, I wish to introduce you to 2009’s Star Trek.
Anika: Thank you. Yes. And I say that as someone who loves it. My favourite version of Jim Kirk.
Liz: Yeah. So Michael winds up aboard Discovery and the scenes with the civilian criminals, I’m like, whatever. Again, I have problems with the Federation carceral state. Shout out to Elias Toufexis, who will play Lak in season five. He is one of those guys.
Anika: Really?
Liz: Yeah. Well, he was under pretty heavy makeup in season five.
Anika: Yes, he was. Yes, he was. He was unrecognizable, but that’s great. I’m glad for him. Good job. Yeah. He got a real role. But yeah, those people don’t matter. And in terms of the Federation carceral state, yeah, I’m sorry. My utopia doesn’t go there.
Liz: Yeah, my utopia shouldn’t be using prisoners for mining. It’s bad enough a hundred years later when they’re using defunct emergency holograms to mine dilithium.
Anyway, but Lorca engineers this situation where Michael ends up on Discovery. And I’m sure that he didn’t deliberately set out to put the prison shuttle in danger and have to rescue her and have a dead pilot. But I also don’t think he really minds.
Anika: I don’t think he cares. I don’t think Lorca does anything necessarily deliberately. I think that he has the concept of a plan and goes from there.
Liz: No, I think that’s fair. Later, after the reveal, he talks a lot about destiny and fortune and all of that. And I think, yeah, but he’s an opportunist. He believes in destiny in the sense that he thinks he’s the special little guy who’s the main character. And also, he sees opportunities and takes advantage of them. He sets up opportunities and doesn’t really worry too much about the collateral damage.
Anika: Yeah. And I mean, that is a through line throughout. When we get to the whales, we’ll have a whole conversation about it.
Liz: But I think what’s interesting about Lorca is that I was about to say, I don’t know about you, but I actually do know about you because this is how we became friends. I was totally taken in by Lorca. I was like, oh, this is a very troubled man with a lot of trauma. I think he needs someone who can fix him. So I fell for the trick, hook, line, and sinker. I’m not proud, but I’m going to own it.
Anika: I am proud, actually, because it means that I was invested in the story. And I wrote a whole essay about this. When — we’re skipping so far ahead — but when Michael saves Georgiou after Georgiou kills Lorca, I wrote a whole essay about the fact that Georgiou was getting what I described at that point as the Seska arc I always wanted. And I thought the entire time that Lorca was getting the Seska arc I always wanted, from beginning, through evil reveal to end. I thought that it was going to be Lorca who was going to get the Atonement Arc. And instead, Evil Georgiou did.
And I was so happy. I was so celebratory. And I’m proud of that essay. And I’m proud of the fact that I got a comment from someone who was like, you were so all in on Lorca and then you wrote this. And I just want you to know that that’s incredible to me. Most people can’t give up the idea of what they had and the idea of what they thought the story was. And I was like, no, this is why I loved season one of Star Trek: Discovery, because they tricked me. That means that it was a good story.
Liz: And usually, you don’t like it when the narrative is playing a game with you. But it was so effective, because they really set out all the clues right there in the open from the beginning. But because we’re Jason Isaacs fans, and because we’ve been trained by media to expect a certain type of story about troubled white men…
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: To bring it back to The Pitt, and this is not going to drop until a couple of weeks after The Pitt finale. But I feel like Pitt viewers want Robbie to be Lorca. It’s almost the opposite has happened.
Anika: Right. I appreciate stories that tell you what’s happening, and that you guess ahead of time. That’s what I mean when I say I don’t like when they’re playing games with you. It feels like modern storytelling is all about trying to trick the audience, and that sets up twists that are twists for being twisty, instead of twists that build the narrative or serve the narrative.
Whereas this twist does serve the narrative, because, again, the actual story is about Michael, and Michael has to save Georgiou because she couldn’t save her Georgiou. That’s the whole point of everything. And that’s such a compelling story, and the fact that then Georgiou gets to go on the Atonement Arc that I always wanted for, not only Seska, but also for Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo, and everybody. It’s the Jaime Lannister Atonement Arc, you know? I’m so on board for that storyline that I don’t even necessarily care who it is.
I was excited for Gabriel Lorca getting it because I was excited for the arc, not because I loved Lorca so much. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t love Lorca so much because I do love Jason Isaacs. And I was wanting his villainous self to be a tease. You know, that we were supposed to… I was tricked because I expected him to be not a villain in order to beat the expectations, but they were actually leading into the expectations. And I just think that’s clever.
Liz: Yeah. And the thing is, Lorca, he’s introduced as sort of a 21st century media anti-hero, rather than an out and out villain.
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: And he’s kind of a dork. He introduces himself to Michael with this whole, “I like to think it makes me look mysterious” thing. This man is charming and sinister, but he’s also a dork and that’s very appealing.
Anika: Exactly. He is playing a part. There are just so many layers. It’s actually such a real… I love how — and that’s why again, when he gets to be a full-on villain, and he becomes cartoonishly evil at that point. And it’s like he was holding this back all the time. But when you actually look back at these scenes it’s like, oh, that cartoonish villain was there. He was just playing it in a different way. And that’s exciting.
Liz: Really playing with our expectations as viewers, and our expectations as people who are familiar with Jason Isaacs’ oeuvre, which — for reasons I have chosen to never really examine very closely, but he plays a lot of men who are weirdly obsessed with intelligent young women. And I’m not mad about that because I had a crush on him at an inappropriately young age.
Anika: So this whole thing of typecasting — I have this whole rant about typecasting because it’s sort of like, you are punishing people for being good at their job, but I don’t think that’s right. And typecasting is just as much about the audience as it is about the actor, maybe even more so about the audience than it is about the actor. Because the reason that they are cast is because they can assume that the audience is going to make certain assumptions about that character based on the actor, and that makes storytelling easier.
So I just think that if someone is good at playing a certain type of character, that’s not a failing on their part, it means that they’re good at it. And we should celebrate that, not say, oh, you get stuck. And of course, with Jason Isaacs, he has played heroes. And so it’s like, even when he’s — Lucius Malfoy — I hate Harry Potter now and everything, but Lucius Malfoy is the best. The entire Malfoy family is the only reason I even care about Harry Potter at all. And I know I’m so weird.
Liz: You’re not the only one.
Anika: But it’s because he’s a horrible, horrible person. And yet I am still rooting for him and invested in him and interested in him and attracted to him. And it’s just like, because there is just something there because I care. And I don’t think — because famously, my first experience with the Harry Potter oeuvre was the second Harry Potter movie. I saw that movie before I read any of the books or saw the first movie. I saw the second movie. And he is the best part. So I only care about Harry Potter at all because of Lucius Malfoy.
And Jason Isaacs knows — if you’ve ever read any of his interviews about that character, he’s like, this is a horrible person. He is one of the worst people I’ve ever played. And yet I had to play him as though he believed it. You know, you said he thought he’s the hero of the story. And I just think that that is so powerful. And so what he brings to Lorca is that same attention to: I am playing this person as the underdog and we are watching his story of gaining power.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. It’s funny that Chamber of Secrets was your first encounter with Harry Potter, because I was already a Harry Potter fan and I met my very best friend in the world, who I talk to every day, because she started a Harry Potter fan club in our city. And a week or so after we met for the first time, she got an invitation to go to the premiere of Chamber of Secrets, and Jason Isaacs was there because he was filming Peter Pan. And she was the first adult Harry Potter cosplayer that he had ever met. And her crush on Jason Isaacs was extremely formative to our early friendship.
Anika: I love it. I love it. Well, yeah, I’m just saying.
Liz: And I’m mad at JK Rowling for many things, but one of them is her bigotry tainting these lovely memories of something that I once cared about and then moved on from.
Anika: Absolutely. It’s one of the worst things. You do not know how much of my life was devoted to Harry Potter at a certain point.
Liz: I’ve spoken to you about other media, so I actually have a sense.
Anika: You have a feeling? You’re like, no, I know exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway.
Liz: You, as the mother of a trans son, that’s extra—
Anika: It’s horrible.
Liz: And speaking of villains who think they’re the hero.
Anika: So true. Who think they’re the underdog, who think that they’re — yeah, ugh.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And, you know, I’m just going to say, can I be very clear? I don’t want JK Rowling’s Atonement Arc. I want her to disappear.
Liz: I would like her to learn better and by learning better, donate a very large sum of money to a trans rights organisation and then go away.
Anika: And then shut up. And then shut up forever.
Liz: Yeah. But this is not a Harry Potter podcast.
Anika: No, sorry. You mentioned Peter Pan. I love his Captain Hook. That is my Captain Hook.
Liz: Such a great role.
Anika: Jason Isaacs has been in many, many things, but I do have a strong association between him and Lucius Malfoy. So I do think it is actually related.
Liz: He’s also played a lot of non-villainous, but sort of troubled and tortured characters. That’s what I thought they were going for with Lorca. I was like, this guy is clearly not okay. But I thought this was going to be a modern take on the TOS story of the captain who has lost his mind and his crew have to mutiny to stop him.
Anika: Great. I think we were set up to think that because Michael is introduced as a mutineer. Yeah. It all makes sense. Again, I think that is good storytelling. I think that this particular season of Discovery is some of the best planned storytelling in Modern Trek.
Liz: No, I completely agree because for all the changes in showrunner and structure and tone that it goes through, it’s very consistent in Michael and Lorca and Georgiou’s story. It feels like they never deviated from the original plan and it’s coherent. We don’t even meet Lorca at first, and the first Discovery crew member we encounter is Landry. Who is the worst.
Anika: Who is the worst! She’s so funny. I’m just going to say up top that Discovery didn’t know what it was doing with its casting, because it has a real “let’s kill off all the people of colour” issue. That’s a real thing that is very real, and it has a real heroes versus villains problem in how people are portrayed. Landry is literally never a hero. There are two versions of Landry, and both of them are terrible.
Liz: In the mid-season break, there was a lot of speculation already that Lorca was from the Mirror Universe. And I thought we were going to encounter Prime Lorca and Prime Landry and find out that Landry had been…
Anika: Yeah, it was also from… Yeah, because the Landry that we encounter in Prime, it’s like, wait, what? She’s really like this? Yeah. To the point where my friend and I made up this whole… We had a crazy alternate universe where Mirror Universe Landry loved flowers and was very sweet and not at all like either the Prime Landry or the Mirror Landry that we encounter, because it didn’t make sense. If she’s a real mirror, right, she’s supposed to be nice. Yeah. And she is not. So I missed that. I missed my alternate universe Landry, because she was great.
Liz: She was great.
Anika: But yeah, she’s again with the whole… She takes advantage of the fact that they are prisoners. Yeah. And treats them as less than human. And you know, I think they actually are all human. So I can say “less than human.” And that’s just itchy to me on a primal level almost. I just dislike her immediately. There’s no redeeming that, you know?
Liz: And my feeling is that we’re introduced to Landry first, so then we meet Lorca a couple of scenes later and we’re like, oh, this guy is a little sinister, but Landry is the problem on this ship. And then it’s only in the final scene that you realize that Landry is working intimately, shall we say, with Lorca.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Yes. I do think it’s funny that I don’t think at any point the show tells us that they’re sleeping together, and yet everyone understands that they’re sleeping together.
Anika: Everyone. Everyone just automatically assumes. I mean, that is just a given. That’s not even an option for it not to be happening.
So, I was going to say, as we’re going through all of the characters, I actually really like that none of these characters are the shining paragon of Starfleet royalty. You know, none of these people would fit in on the Enterprise. Literally no one in Discovery would be considered the best and brightest, which is, I think, part of why I dislike Discovery Season 2 so much — they’re like, they think that that’s a problem. And I’m sitting here going, no, that is a bonus. That is what we want. We want these people to have those flaws — every single character in this show is a little bit off. And that is great.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That’s what I love about it.
Liz: Because I was doing weekly blog posts at this point for Season 1 of Discovery, from this episode I started a “who is the biggest jerk?” — or it was a Discovery Jerk Watch thing? Because you have Tilly who’s introduced as sort of this cute geek, but then she has that mean girl moment where she doesn’t want to work next to Michael. And Stamets is just the worst and Saru is the worst.
It’s actually funny how quickly the jerk meter had to fall off because they settled into who these characters are. But they’re not good people when they’re introduced. And the impression that I think we’re meant to get is that Landry herself and Landry’s leadership is the reason why. That she is the cause of the rot.
Anika: Interesting.
Liz: And it does get better after she dies. And so we’re meant to keep thinking that right up until we realise that—
Anika: That it’s Lorca.
Liz: Yeah. And that Lorca himself has already done this to Landry. Did you ever play Star Trek Online?
Anika: No. Sorry.
Liz: I only played it very briefly because I wasn’t really into it, but it had a storyline set on the Buran, and it’s Lorca and Landry before the switch. And Landry’s this happy little officer, she’s having a hard time with the war, but she’s planning a wedding to her girlfriend and she’s just a good officer. And then Lorca changes and the Buran is lost and her girlfriend is killed. And yeah, she becomes the Landry of the series. And so she is Lorca’s first victim in this universe.
Anika: I had no idea — thank you for telling me that because now I have a whole rich… that’s incredible to me. That’s incredible to me. I’m so happy.
Liz: I’m certain you can go and watch the cut scenes on YouTube.
Anika: Absolutely.
Liz: There is a big fandom for that game.
Anika: I had this whole thing with Mirror Landry and it was before we met her in canon. I was sad that my headcanons were… and I didn’t rage out and scream at the creators or whatever because that was just my headcanon and I understood that. But I was really sad at the idea that I didn’t get to keep my version of Mirror Landry. And so I’m excited to learn that it sounds like Prime Landry was my version of Mirror Landry. And so that makes me happy. Thank you for validating my, you know, 10-year-old headcanons about a side character on Discovery.
Liz: You’re so welcome.
Anika: I’m legitimately thrilled.
Anika: But yeah, so what’s really interesting is that you said that none of these people come across as good people when they’re introduced. And I think that’s true. Again, everybody has these flaws — the flaws define them for us instead of their good points. And none of them are such a flaw that I can’t get past it. They’re all almost good flaws. But I’ve already made clear that I just can’t stand Saru and I can’t stand Saru for most of this season.
Liz: Season. Yeah, no, it’s rough.
Anika: And I love Tilly, but she has a lot of issues. She’s not — I love Tilly. I’m just gonna say. I love Tilly, but I love that she’s flawed. I love that she is not — she wants to be Kirk in 2009’s Star Trek, but she’s not written that way.
Liz: And she’s aware of it.
Anika: And she’s aware of it. Yeah, exactly. Then that’s great. And Stamets, he’s another one who I legitimately didn’t like for most of the season. I was like, why do people like this guy? I didn’t dislike him, I just didn’t understand why people liked him. There’s a difference there. There’s a nuance, you know what I mean?
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And so I think he’s a great character, but I did not like him.
Liz: The problem I had with Stamets is that he’s literally introduced belittling a Black woman and doubting her credentials. After Admiral Anderson in episode one and his exchange with Michael, that I cannot read as anything other than modern 21st century racism, it was just really hard to ask. It’s a big ask to go, hey, go and like this guy now.
Anika: Right, right. But I almost think — I don’t even almost — I legitimately think that it’s on purpose.
Liz: I agree, but I don’t know if —
Anika: Go ahead.
Liz: Oh, I was going to say, do you think that they wanted him to come across as racist or just abrasive?
Anika: Yeah, you’re right. They definitely didn’t want him to come across as racist. They wanted him to come across as abrasive and prickly and belittling. I do think they wanted him to come across as belittling and dismissive, but you’re right that they didn’t understand the racial connotations, which is, again, with the whole Landry thing — they didn’t understand the racial connotations of making her the villain.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And there are racial connotations. They thought that if they made the main character a Black woman, that they had already checked off all the racial dynamics, and it was like, it’s fine, look, we did this, so we don’t have to worry about any of the rest of it.
And in fact, they had to worry about the rest of it, and it was a problem with Georgiou, it was a problem with Landry, it was a problem with the fact that Stamets and Lorca are white men and the fact that Tilly is a white woman. All of that matters. Yeah, I don’t think they wanted it to or realised it did.
Liz: No, I think that’s a fair reading, and it’s interesting that this is the era when Discovery had a mostly white writers’ room. I think Bo Yeon Kim, who is Korean, was the only person of colour in the writers’ room for season one, and it shows.
Anika: Right, and I think also the whole Detmer thing…
Liz: Yes, yeah.
Anika: It is important, we have to talk about Detmer, because fandom loves Detmer, and I think that it’s because she’s — it’s not even a Star Trek thing, although it’s kind of a Star Trek thing, because fandom loves Uhura, fandom loves Sulu, and they weren’t main characters in TOS the way that we would describe main characters now.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And so it’s interesting — of course, I think Uhura is fully a better character than McCoy. Apologies to McCoy fans, but.
Liz: Yeah, I’m gonna fight you on that, but I do think she is a very good — she’s a great character and we deserved more of her, but I love McCoy, man.
Anika: Okay, fine, but in my opinion.
Liz: She’s absolutely a better character than Chekov.
Anika: Yes, but Chekov is — anyway, the point is that they wrote Detmer to be this interesting side character. She’s the Aurra Sing. Or to go into a different franchise, she’s the Boba Fett, you know? We are interested in her, but we’re not supposed to be focused on her. We’re just supposed to be interested in her. We’re just supposed to have our headcanons and think about her in these many ways.
I mean, you can be the biggest Kayla Detmer fan in the whole world, but we’re not supposed to think that she’s important to the story. And yet people think she’s important to the story. And I think it’s because she is a white woman who has been there from the beginning, and they’re like, shouldn’t she be the character? She was harmed the most, right? She has visible scars, and we should be caring about her. And it’s like, okay, but no, that’s not the story we’re being told. Those are the racial dynamics that they weren’t noticing.
Liz: I think it’s similar with Airiam, which is another white woman. And we spent season one being unreasonably obsessed with Katrina Cornwell, but I don’t think we ever mistook her for a main character. Half the appeal was that she was a side character and she wasn’t always there, and there was this space for us to get in and bring our own interpolations.
Anika: Right. I am, again, famously known for loving side characters who don’t matter to the plot. And I think that fandom, and specifically women’s fandom, are known for that.
The Boba Fett and Aurra Sing comparison is because there’s this story where George Lucas told the — I’m pretty sure she was a model and not even an actress — who played Aurra Sing in The Phantom Menace. It’s literally 0.5 seconds of screen time in The Phantom Menace. And he said, I’m going to make you a star. Because he understood that those random side characters who are interesting, who catch your attention, who are eye-catching — those are the people that fans are going to make into this big, huge thing. And I think that Kayla Detmer was supposed to be one of those. But what happened is people wanted her to be more than that. They wanted her to be the Sulu of the movies as opposed to the Sulu of the series.
Liz: Oh, that’s a really good way of putting it. I don’t think she’s a bad character. I think she’s a perfectly cromulent side character. But the insistence in the early seasons that she should be the main character really turned me off her.
Anika: Contaminates everything. As we were saying with The Pitt, all of these things, come down to people’s expectations. There’s a sense of fan entitlement that I feel didn’t exist when I was first in fandom. There was an understanding that what I was doing in my fan works and in my discussions and on message boards and with my headcanons was different from what was happening in the actual story. They were related, but it wasn’t supposed to be validated.
And now there’s this sense that — I’ll use The Pitt again — there’s this we want our version of events to be true. And it’s like, it doesn’t even make sense for that version of events to exist in the reality where an entire season is just one day. The series is firmly not built for that. It doesn’t make sense. And I think that Discovery, certainly in the first season, it has a very clear idea of what it is.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And everything is filmed before they started showing it. And so it was like, it wasn’t going to move. The fan reaction wasn’t going to move the needle. So you can’t have your cake. That’s not what the story is.
Liz: It’s also interesting that Discovery was conceived as an anthology show and that the idea was that we wouldn’t be following these characters beyond one season. So with season two, they kind of did pivot to accommodate the whims and demands of the fandom. And I think very much to the series’ detriment.
Anika: Yes. Once again, my least favourite season in all of Modern Trek is Discovery season two. That season makes me angry.
So there wasn’t a huge amount of plot in this episode. This episode is very much about introducing us to the characters and the situation.
Liz: And the ship.
Anika: The entire plot was — yeah, and the ship, which I think is related to the place. You know, Star Trek is a place and it was introducing us to that. The only plot was, there was another ship that had the mushroom warp drive or whatever — the spore drive. And then the ship that had the spore drive, it destroyed them. Because we don’t even really know what the spore drive is. It’s just a creepy thing happens to another ship. And it was destroyed and it was horrible. And we got to go on a away team to the creepy, scary, haunted ship. And that was really the only plot that happened in this episode.
Liz: It’s interesting to me that we’re three episodes in and this is already basically a bottle episode.
Anika: Yeah, right? It’s really weird. The series is very strange. The season is very strange in terms of pacing and setting.
Liz: Oh, you know we’re going to talk about pacing in the coming weeks.
Anika: So there was a lot of horror in the creepy, scary other ship.
Liz: This is why I say that even though Bryan Fuller is not credited as a writer on this episode, I feel like they’re still following his outline and the ideas that he developed. Because this is very Bryan Fuller type horror.
Anika: And it’s interesting because it’s setting us up to be afraid of this spore drive, you know? To think that there’s something dangerous. And not just dangerous, but horrific. Something where it’s doing something against, you know, proper existence or whatever.
Liz: I wonder if this is another reason that a lot of Trekkies have struggled with Discovery, that we get this cool new technology but it’s introduced as threatening rather than exciting.
Anika: Right, exactly, exactly. I honestly do think that the fact that it is set up as something that is more dangerous than useful, that has literally murdered an entire ship, is a problem. I can certainly see that the showrunners were like, we’re gonna create something that’s nuclear power, that, you know, has all these positives, but when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong, right?
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: I understand what they’re doing. And even with that analogy, nuclear power is still very controversial.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting how Discovery herself is set up as a scary place. This is not a ship that’s meant to feel like a home, it’s a ship that’s threatening and sinister, and Discovery herself is the mystery of this episode that Michael has to solve.
Anika: It’s called Black Alert. That’s scary! Sorry, that’s scary, that’s terrifying, and they don’t explain it. When the prisoners are being walked through the corridor and they see the black combat gear, just literally the first things that we see on this ship are the scary elements, and the elements that don’t make sense are the elements that are sort of anti-Starfleet.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That was a choice. And I think that it is related to the Lorca of it all, and it is related to the war of it all. All of these things are happening at once, and they all contribute to it. And so it’s on purpose, and it’s interesting, and it sets up this dangerous and scary feeling — we’re going into the series feeling like we have to figure out what is going on, and what is real, and what is good, and what is positive versus what is negative. And even Stamets’ whole attitude about how he’s angry that his science is being used for war is another element of that.
And so it’s all very interesting, and it feels very intentional to me. And I think we are supposed to think about it, and we’re supposed to have these competing feelings, but it expects the audience to come along for the ride. And I appreciate that. But I think that maybe some people weren’t ready to get on board.
Liz: I think that puts it really well, because one of the things about this season is that yes, Lorca is the cause of the problems on Discovery, and he is the reason that it’s such a scary feeling place. But also, Lorca has successfully passed himself off as a Starfleet captain from the Prime Universe, and even his oldest friend didn’t suspect a thing.
And the whole premise of Discovery is that everyone has the capacity for great and terrible deeds, and it’s the choices that we make every day, and it’s the little choices as well as the big ones. And that coherence is one of the reasons that I love this season. But as you say, it asks the audience to come along for the ride and invest and bring their own intellect.
Anika: You know, I talk about this all the time where I really want modern television to trust the audience more than they do.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: And this is a good example of them trusting the audience. And I appreciate it. Again, there is a reason that I point to this season as so powerful and successful for me. And I think that part of that is that they’re like, we are going to assume that you do have media literacy and come along with us on this trip, but that also sets you up for certain pitfalls.
Liz: Yeah. Discovery Season 1 is in many ways a masterclass in why it’s a mistake to trust the audience.
Anika: Yes, exactly. Which brings us to Alice in Wonderland.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Alice in Wonderland is a hugely rich text. That most people know from various Disney versions. Or the concept of Alice in Wonderland — the White Rabbit, going down the rabbit hole, crazy wackadoo things happening — that is different from the actual rich text. And even the rich text is controversial in some ways.
But the reason I love Discovery, the reason I love Michael, is because of her association with Alice in Wonderland, which is very much written for me. My first online handle back in the early internet was Imaginary Alice.
Liz: That is really nice. That’s just a good username.
Anika: I firmly have always identified with the concept of Alice in Wonderland. Those are very, very important to me as someone who is interested in mental health, as someone who is interested in stories and how stories are told and the different ways stories can be told in order to get different feelings and understandings of them. And the way that we craft our own stories of our own lives and how we present ourselves to each other versus how we appear on paper or how we appear if someone that we know was going to describe us versus someone that we don’t know is going to describe us.
All of these identity questions are very, very important to me. And it is all very related to Alice in Wonderland and what that means as a story. Alice in Wonderland as a storytelling device is foundational to the Anika myth. And so the fact that it is also foundational to Amanda, Spock and Michael is hugely important to me. And it started in this episode where she quotes Alice in Wonderland when she’s on the creepy, scary ship. And then she gifts Tilly her book.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: And it’s very, very meaningful. That concept of Amanda giving it to Michael, giving it to Tilly is so powerful to me. It tells me so much about each of those characters and their relationships and how we’re meant to read them.
Liz: And now I want you to think about the fact that Tilly goes on to be a teacher and uses text to help her students see through problems and work through issues.
Anika: Literal storytelling. At the end of the day, that’s what Alice in Wonderland is about. If you break it down to its component pieces and the bones of what it is as a thing, then it is about telling your own story and having agency within your own story.
And that is what Tilly teaches to the cadets, in both the Discovery episode where she takes the cadets on the ice walk and the Academy episode where she brings in Thornton Wilder. Both of those episodes are actually about taking control of your own story. And it’s just so powerful to me. I will always and forever associate Michael Burnham with Alice in Wonderland. And I think that’s why she could murder someone and fry their fingers. I would be okay with it.
Anika: I just will always give her a pass for things, because I understand her on this cellular level.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so funny that you have this connection to Alice in Wonderland, because my best friend, the same one who met Jason Isaacs shortly after she met me, is obsessed with Alice in Wonderland, and her thing is, she collects editions of the book. Not first editions, not valuable editions, just she sees an edition.
Anika: Yes, and she gets it. We are kindred spirits, clearly, because I did a project on it, and I specifically went to secondhand stores to find as many different versions of Alice as I could to include in my video project. It’s on YouTube, you can watch it. I included Discovery and Michael in this episode, quoting Alice in Wonderland as important to the mythos of the story. Because that’s how powerful it was to me. I feel like I could write a whole thesis on the five seasons of Discovery and how they are the Alice story.
Liz: I mean, that’s the thing. This is not a thread that was dropped. Occasionally, if Star Trek references a piece of media or a classic, you get the vibe that someone just looked up a list of great books and went with that. But Alice is really integral to Michael’s story and to the whole…
Anika: Right.
Liz: If this is Michael in Wonderland, then soon we’ll have Michael Through the Looking Glass.
Anika: Exactly. I love that. Again, it was a breadcrumb for the back half of the season where we go into the universe.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: It was always there. It was always meant to get there. Again, this is just a very smartly told story. Even if I don’t always agree with the choices, I appreciate why they made them. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. This is not a great script. This is one of the weakest scripts of the season. I would not look at Craig Sweeney, whose only Star Trek script was this, which he didn’t even get a full credit on — he co-wrote it — and go, yes, that is the guy to write the Star Trek: Section 31 movie. Nope.
Anika: The dialogue in Lorca’s introduction is stuff that only Jason Isaacs could make sound good.
Liz: And we know that because Anson Mount shared his audition for the role of Lorca, which had a longer version of that dialogue and was terrible. And I don’t think that Anson Mount is as good an actor as Jason Isaacs, but I also don’t think the dialogue did him any favours.
Anika: No, no, no. It did not. The two important Lorca scenes — his introduction and then his scene at the end with Michael — those scenes are from a completely different script from the whole rest of the episode.
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: Oh, yeah. And who are potentially the season and series. Those two scenes don’t make sense with everything else that is happening. And the only way they work is if the character of Lorca is putting on a show for Michael. This is the only way those scenes make sense at all. No one speaks that way ever.
Liz: Even before the reveal and even before we knew that Lorca had a relationship with Michael in the Mirror Universe, I was very certain that he had been planning what he would say to her for a long time.
Anika: He legitimately rehearsed in a mirror.
Liz: Oh, 100 percent. Then he did finger guns at himself.
Anika: He memorised every single thing he said before he said it. It is nonsense. No one but Jason Isaacs could pull it off.
Liz: It is extremely ‘this is dialogue that was written for the auditions and we’ll fix it when we’re actually filming.’
Anika: They didn’t.
Liz: No, they didn’t.
Anika: But it adds that layer of unreality to it, which is a very Wonderland thing. It fits the storytelling. It fits the fact that he is not who he appears to be.
Liz: Yeah. The thing about Lorca is his interactions with Michael are so respectful on one level. She gets out of the spore chamber and he steps back, so he’s not in her personal space. Iconic feminist, respecting boundaries king. Don’t ask any questions.
But also, he’s so condescending. He’s telling her about herself. I think one of the reasons that Discovery resonated with a lot of my female friends was that I think we’ve all had the experience of a man coming in and telling us that he knows better, not just about a situation, but about ourselves and our values, and what’s important to us. That’s another way that this series really works for me, is that it understands that female experience.
Anika: Yes. And so you start second guessing yourself because you’re like, wait, I feel one way about this, but I also understand this part of this. And so it plays on your feelings. It plays on your instincts, and then it tricks you into thinking that your instincts are wrong.
Liz: Yes. Yes. And that’s—
Anika: Which is incredible.
Liz: That’s the story it tells about Michael’s relationship with Lorca, but that’s also what it does to the audience with Lorca. He’s literally introduced in shadow, the way the Star Chamber admirals were last week. And yet by the end of the episode, I was like, I can’t wait till he’s fixed.
Anika: It’s incredible. It’s good storytelling. It’s good storytelling.
Liz: It’s using our own biases as viewers against us in a way that I admire. And I think this is not a Pittcast, but I actually think that The Pitt does this a lot too in how it presents its patients and how — one of the reasons its audience struggles with it is that it asks us to look beyond the obvious in terms of how its patients and doctors are presented as well. You know, Robbie is not just a great doctor who is troubled, he is actively suicidal and bullying his subordinates.
Liz: Oh man, I really need Noah Wyle to be in a Star Trek, but also I really need Noah Wyle and Jason Isaacs to do a project together.
Anika: Please, amazing options.
Liz: They don’t have to kiss, but I wouldn’t be mad if they kissed.
Anika: I wouldn’t be mad about it. I wouldn’t be opposed, but also it’s fine. They could even be brothers.
Liz: Oh yeah, I could see that. Sort of craggy middle-aged Jewish brothers. I’m into it, it’s hot.
Anika: Oh my God. Okay, now I’m imagining a whole other amazing series that’s…
Liz: If there are any media corporations that are still not purchased by evil billionaires and interested in making great television, call us. We don’t know how to make great television, but we’ll figure it out.
Anika: We have some amazing ideas for you. That will legitimately be popular solely for the casting.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And then we’ll just, as a backup, do a good story.
Anika: Do we have anything else to say?
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: I mean, our shipping news. We have to talk about our shipping news.
Liz: Shipping news!
Lorca and Michael. For a lot of the season, I and a lot of my friends were like, we’re not meant to be shipping Lorca and Michael, but I’m really into it because they have such an interesting vibe. And then it comes out that Lorca at least was very much shipping himself with Michael. And I was like, yes, validation. Honestly, I still have not recovered from that.
Anika: I shipped them so hard. I’ll be honest. Again, I had these people who said they were afraid to go to my Tumblr after the reveal because they thought that I would be angry or that I would be twisting it so that it was okay and my ships were still real or whatever. I don’t know. And instead, I was like, this is awesome. And that’s why I am proud that I was tricked because it’s like, I had this amazing redemption with these random people that I don’t know.
Liz: We were tricked, but we responded appropriately.
Anika: I passed the test. It’s a gold star for me. But anyway, I was hugely into it, and even to the point where when it was clear that Lorca was definitely from the Mirror Universe — which I agree with you happened sort of in the hiatus — when we had time to go back and look at everything, at that point I had this whole Hades and Persephone thing. I was fully on board with and obsessed with and thought it was totally true. And I am one of those people that definitely does believe in the version of Hades and Persephone where she makes the choice to stay because their relationship is more nuanced and it’s a dark romance instead of an abduction and rape fantasy.
I am excited to be going back to my roots, my Discovery roots, where definitely once we meet Kat, Kat and Lorca was my main thing, but I was into Michael and Lorca and I was supposed to be. And again, I actually appreciate that I was supposed to be and I’m not angry about it.
Lorca and Landry, as we have discussed, that was just a thing that happened. Like that was real. There are interviews with both Rekha and Jason who say that they were playing it as that they were lovers. So to me, canon.
Liz: I have no other interpretation of their interactions basically in their one scene together here.
Anika: And then the only other one that I think is really clear in this episode is, I think that Michael and Tilly, they have this sort of dark meet-cute. And I like it. And I don’t… I’ve… I understand Michael/Tilly and I support Michael/Tilly and I’ve even written some Michael/Tilly. It is not one of my main Discovery ships. It is not something that I actively ship.
Liz: Oh yeah, it’s a good ship, but I don’t ship it. Yeah, yeah. No.
And then Stamets and Strahl. I knew that Stamets was going to be the first canonical gay character in Star Trek. I think a lot of people assumed that they were a couple and that we had just killed off a gay character. And that’s definitely a problem that Discovery is going to have. But I don’t know if I really ship it. I don’t really… I’m not really engaged with Stamets at this point in the series.
Anika: Yeah, I’m definitely not engaged with Stamets, but it definitely came across as not just my good friend, but my ex. My ex that I’m still friends with. You know, my ex that I had an amicable break-up with. And so we hang out. That’s how that felt to me.
Liz: My ex that I have an ongoing project with, but we’re not really together. And honestly, probably a big part of their continuing to get on after the break-up was because Hugh is good at managing Paul. But we haven’t met Hugh yet. This is going to be a surprise for the near future.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Well, we’ll get to that. But it was just sort of like, it almost felt like it was trying to soft launch “Stamets is Gay” for people who didn’t get it from the casting. No, that’s how it felt to me. Yeah.
Liz: Because they do speak on very intimate terms, not in a shady way like Lorca and Landry, but there’s an ease between them that we don’t see between Stamets and other people.
Anika: Right. Exactly. He clearly — he’s like, I actually like this person I’m talking to, whereas everyone else Stamets talks to is like, I put up with you.
Liz: Yeah, no, that’s it. That’s why he’s not a fun character to hang out with at first. Because then his reaction to Strahl’s death is kind of underplayed, which is rough, but also there was a lot of body horror, so I can see why they chose not to linger in that moment.
Anika: I also think that is actually true to Stamets’ character. He is someone who underreacts.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that’s important, because his reaction on losing Hugh is going to be so key to everything.
Anika: We need to be primed for all of this, yes.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t think Paul is a bad character, I just had trouble liking him at first, and I know he’s meant to be someone who’s difficult to get along with, but I don’t know how much the specific racist vibes were intentional.
Anika: Yes. And I also think that it’s one of those things where if Stamets was a woman, he would be the most hated character in Star Trek.
Liz: Oh yeah, it would be Pulaski squared.
Anika: Yes, exactly. And so it’s just his white male privilege really is on display.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And again, that’s not Anthony Rapp’s fault, that’s not Paul Stamets’ fault, that’s just—
Liz: No, and Anthony Rapp seems a delightful human being.
Anika: Absolutely.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. So really it’s a testament to his acting skills that Stamets is so dislikable in this first scene.
That’s this episode. I’m happy to wrap up here.
Actually, no, there is one other thing. I had remembered Tilly’s Mean Girl Shenanigans, but I did not forget that it was in public. The offence was in private, but the apology was in public, and that tells us a lot about her.
Anika: Yes, absolutely.
Liz: Yeah, okay, now I’m done.
Anika: Okay, good, go for it.
Liz: Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com including links to our social media, credits for our theme music, and transcripts of our episodes. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky, all at Antimatter Pod, and on Mastodon at antimatterpod@10forward.social.
If you like us, leave a review wherever you consume your podcasts, or tell your friends. Join us next week when we’ll be discussing the next episode of Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry,” where a lot of important things happen, but one is that a new admiral is introduced, and we’re going to be cool about it.
Anika: It’s going to be totally cool. It’s going to be great, guys.
Liz: So cool.
Anika: Everything’s going to be awesome. Yeah. All right.