Anika and Liz are petsitting a tardigrade while we discuss the fourth episode of Star Trek: Discovery‘s first season, “The Butcher’s Knife Care’s Not For The Lamb’s Cry”. This episode introduces Admiral Cornwell, and we are gonna be so cool about that. You wouldn’t believe how cool and chill we are.
- This is decidedly not one of Discovery‘s stronger scripts
- “Lorca is so clearly flagged as evil,” we said back in 2017, “that there absolutely has to be more to it than that.” Anyway…
- Michael’s skills and flaws are all on full display here
- “I also do not respect Saru.”
- Okay, but why is Saru the first officer? He frankly does not seem up to the job. Is Lorca keeping him around as a snack?
- “Let’s talk about Elon Musk.”
- Discovery Stop Killing Off Women Of Colour Challenge
- Michael and L’Rell: parallels (parall’rells)
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’re discussing Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, Episode 4, “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry.” I love a wanky title, but honestly, I think this is my least favourite episode of the season.
Anika: Ooh, I’m excited to get into it.
Liz: Yeah, I don’t think it’s bad. It just has a lot of things that I did not love.
Anika: That’s fair, okay. I can think of at least three that are real problems — yes, that’s a good word for it. Okay, so just as a recap, because we are doing these not when people have just watched it.
Liz: Although obviously everyone should be watching along with us.
Anika: Obviously. This is the fourth episode of Season 1 in which there is a mining colony under attack by Klingons, and the Discovery has to spore jump to save them and the only problem is that they don’t know how to spore jump yet.
Liz: But fortunately, this innocent animal they picked up along the way can help.
Anika: Meanwhile, Michael has been tasked with — I don’t even know really what the… figure out how to use the monster that allegedly killed off the other crew. I guess “weaponize the monster that killed off the other crew” is the plan.
Liz: Exactly the word.
Anika: Use it in war. And so you will be shocked to learn that these two plots converge.
Liz: Yeah, you’re not gonna believe it.
I want to start with how much I love the opening scene, which looks like a space nebula anomaly, whatever, but is actually the replicator creating Michael’s uniform. And this jumps out at me because when I watched it on Netflix, our connection was really janky and I couldn’t see properly what was happening on screen. So now whenever I watch this episode — and I think this is only the second or third time — I always pay attention to that bit to appreciate it properly.
Anika: Oh, that’s sweet. I didn’t notice. I’m sure it’s amazing. But I remember her replicating her uniform. I don’t remember it looking like a nebula. I’m sure it’s beautiful. And I probably just wasn’t paying attention.
Liz: Maybe it looked like a nebula to me because Netflix was so pixely. And so it’s more interesting to me than it actually was. Because also I was still in that “oh, we have brand new Star Trek” mode. And I think we bought a new TV. We bought a new, better TV so that we could appreciate the new Star Trek properly. That’s fair. So I was like, I need to catch every minute.
Anika: It is certainly true that Discovery is a huge step up in terms of pretty Star Trek. Really right from the start, right out the gate, they used their budget and it shows.
Liz: And I love the set design and the detail that Discovery, for example, has much smaller, narrower windows than any of the Enterprises. You do get the feeling that this is 10 years earlier, the technology is still developing. Just little things really jumped out at me when I was watching season one for the first time and I really appreciated them.
Anika: I find all the Klingon stuff, especially the broken bits and the energy — are stunningly beautiful. Yeah, I think you should keep your ship broken because it’s pretty that way. So that’s where I noticed.
Liz: As we record, a lot of props from Discovery have gone up for auction, including a lot of season one stuff. So if you need Lorca’s eye doodad, it’s up for sale.
But I particularly appreciated getting to zoom in and have a look at the props for Klingon items and costumes and just the level of detail that goes into those designs is amazing.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: But we are not a really design focused podcast. We are more plot people. We’re more writing people. And that is kind of a weak point in this episode.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: I think this is the last episode that really features Bryan Fuller’s influence. And you get that in stuff like, oh, the Klingons ate Georgiou’s body. And oh, we’ve just killed off another woman of colour.
Anika: As horrifically as possible.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. And I mean, we were making fun of how the two allegedly divergent plots come together. It is very A plus B equals C in this episode. It’s funny, because all my notes here are how Lorca is so blatantly evil throughout the entire episode. And I’m like, wow, we were really tricked because it was too obvious. It was too obvious that he was blatantly evil.
Liz: I remember watching and saying, this has to be a misdirect because it cannot possibly be this obvious.
Anika: In fact, everything about this episode is just very obvious. That’s just how it is. And it’s funny looking back.
Liz: Yeah, they tried.
Anika: Now I completely cannot tell if everything that happens in this episode is actually just straightforward storytelling. And we were supposed to pick up on all of the… everything that happens in Lorca’s man cave is breadcrumbs. Or if they were in fact trying to up the camp and the over-the-top and the arch of it all in order to, as you say, misdirect. I literally can’t tell.
Anika: Neither option is good.
Liz: Looking back with the full context of Lorca’s story, it feels like they stopped trusting the audience, but they started out trusting us. And so we were like, obviously, you’re doing something else. We were talking offline about viewers of The Pitt, trying to treat it like a mystery box show. And Discovery was very much conceived as a mystery box show, which, for example, meant that we watched season two incorrectly because we thought that it was continuing as it had begun for some reason. Why would we assume that? But also, there’s just so much happening.
And yeah, this is — I don’t think this is a bad episode, and I think that it does a lot of important stuff for the story. It’s the first example of Discovery using a serialized format to tell a classic Star Trek story, in this case a “maybe it’s bad if we exploit animals” story. But it’s not executed well enough to pull it off.
Anika: Again, I don’t have any real beef with this episode other than the three things that we will discuss, which we’ve started discussing. But it’s a first season episode. It’s an early first season episode. It did not come out of the barn running, and that’s fine.
Liz: It’s certainly not my favourite episode, even though it introduces my favourite character, and that’s fine. They can’t all be winners. And I definitely also think that this is an episode that made a lot of people who had come in with an open mind go, oh yeah, no, this is just violence and grimdark and unintentional racism and I don’t like it. And I completely understand.
Anika: It’s rough. That’s not going to get better. Just a warning. We don’t get out of it super quickly.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: So, well, let’s talk about Lorca’s red flags. That were so red, we decided that they were not.
Liz: Michael comes on duty and she enters the bridge and he’s running attack drills — a perfectly reasonable thing for a captain to be doing in this position — and it’s a great scene, but he’s not a chill, cool captain.
Anika: No.
Liz: And he’s kind of an asshole.
Anika: He berates them all. Yeah.
Liz: And I don’t think this is necessarily a red flag and a sign we missed that Lorca is secretly evil. I think that, for example, Rayner would be running drills in a similar way. But then Lorca takes Michael down and he introduces her to his man cave and she does not outright say what the fuck, but you can see it in her face.
Anika: Which takes a lot of willpower on her part, I must say.
Anika: As it should for all of us.
Liz: Yeah, that Vulcan self-control is really powerful, but he’s like, we collected the alien creature that killed the Klingons and may have destroyed the Glenn, and you need to figure out how to weaponize it.
And I’ve got to say, I don’t know that this is a job that I would give to Michael Burnham if I had looked at her service record, but it is sort of within her skill set in terms of xenoanthropology — it involves being able to look at alien cultures but also alien creatures and figure out what their deal is. I don’t look at someone who was raised on Vulcan and go, oh yeah, they’re okay with experimenting on animals.
Anika: With 20/20 hindsight, he just sees her as an extension of his Michael, and his Michael would totally do this.
Liz: Oh yeah.
Anika: From Lorca’s point of view, he’s rewarding her with this amazing — he’s trusting her with the most important thing, creating a new weapon for him to use in the war against the Klingons. And he assumes that she hates the Klingons. Hey, she tried to start the war, right? Remember? And her family was murdered by Klingons. So it sort of makes sense on paper, from Lorca’s point of view, that this is a good idea. Michael immediately decides not to do that.
Liz: I also think from Lorca’s point of view, it’s a way of testing to see how much she’s his Michael.
Anika: Mm, yes.
Liz: Because you absolutely do not want to ask Mirror Universe Michael to petsit.
Anika: She might eat it!
Liz: Exactly, exactly.
Anika: But she legitimately immediately decides to not do that and then starts recruiting the rest of the crew to join her in not doing that.
Liz: You kind of start to see how she’s a mutineer.
Anika: Yes. It’s like she’s actually good at it. She’s like, well, this is my one skill now.
Liz: Okay.
Anika: Okay. Okay. It’s not actually her one skill. It’s her one… it’s her calling, right?
Liz: So yeah, it’s her calling. I can also, because again, this is an early first season episode and they’re still figuring out what they’re doing with these characters. I also think that — as you said — this misrepresents the show as grim, dark and horrific. And I also think it misrepresents Michael as the best. Because it is in fact true that Michael solves everything in this episode.
Liz: And gets everybody on her side.
Anika: So from my perspective, it’s because she’s the main character and she’s the captain, that’s the whole point. She’s actually good at being a leader and she’s learning the leadership skills that she needs to be a good captain right now. That’s what’s happening.
Liz: Yes. And also she needs a win.
Anika: And she’s also using her xenoanthropology skills. She uses her knowledge of Saru and Saru’s physiology to test the animal. And he’s very put out by that. But she’s using the tools she has. And going to people Tilly, who are sort of in awe of her. And meeting Stamets with a scientific explanation. She’s just smart about people. And she’s using those things that she learns about people.
And I would say that’s the most Vulcan thing about her. That’s where her Vulcan upbringing is very obvious to me. It’s interesting because she’s actually using her human emotional intelligence, but then she uses her Vulcan understanding of how to go about it.
Liz: Yeah, which can be very cold blooded, to use a Dr. McCoyism, but her interaction with Saru where she’s manipulating him really doesn’t reflect well on her as a person. It’s super smart, but it’s also a dick move. I’m not a Saru defender and I’m tired of them having the same conversation over and over again, but he is entitled to be mad about that.
Anika: Yes. I think what I’m saying is that she’s clearly not un-flawed. She has actual flaws and she has an arc, and the arc is learning to be captain. I think that both of those things are visible in this episode, but can be misread by people as Michael is perfect and the centre of the universe and solving all of the problems.
Liz: Which is funny because I also think that her scene with Saru introduces a really necessary flaw that she needed as a character, which is that she is manipulative and she is cold blooded in her approach to other people and she doesn’t respect Saru.
Anika: Sorry. I also do not respect Saru and I used to apologize for it, but I’ve decided not to anymore. This crew needs a better first officer because of how Lorca is.
Liz: And because of how Landry is, and it seems like in a lot of ways, Landry is the real first officer in terms of being the captain’s confidant and the person who executes his wishes, and Saru is just there … I mean, honestly, I think Lorca keeps him around in case he needs a snack.
Anika: Yeah, literally. I do not know. I guess we can assume that Starfleet put this crew together for reasons. But I would love to know what those reasons are.
Liz: Oh, I think it’s very easy. I think Lorca got as many Shenzhou people as possible, people who would be known to Michael, to keep Michael—
Anika: Because he knew he was going to snatch Michael. Is that what you’re saying?
Liz: Yeah, I think that was his long-con plan. So he got those people. He needs Stamets, much as he doesn’t get on with him. And Culber and Stamets are a package deal. And then other than that, he’s gone for really young people who don’t have a lot of experience. The crew skews much younger than other starships. And also people Airiam, who have been through great trauma and are vulnerable to manipulation.
Anika: So you’re saying Lorca got a blank slate and got to choose all of these people.
Liz: I think he almost says as much to Cornwell in “Choose Your Pain.”
Anika: Okay. That’s been plausible. It’s sort of like, again, we don’t know who Prime Lorca is, so we don’t know how trusted he was with Starfleet. And I can imagine that he was a great captain. He’s not on the list. Okay, that’s next week. But it’s very convenient.
Liz: Yes. And I think this is the convenience of it is why I have this theory about why the crew is the way it is and why Lorca put these people together.
Anika: It’s just — Saru is just so not ready for this. He’s just so mismatched with the entire thing. And it doesn’t work. Maybe Starfleet thought they had to put a warmonger in charge of the scientific ship because… nope, I don’t have anything. I tried. I tried to make it make sense. This is the same Starfleet that shipped the Enterprise, the flagship, off on a scientific mission somewhere else. None of this makes sense, none of it.
Liz: It’s like they made a conscious decision that having lost the Shenzhou, they weren’t going to send their best.
Anika: Exactly. Yes, that’s how it feels.
Liz: However, because I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of Lorca and trying to figure out why Starfleet gave him the Discovery, my feeling was that he is one of those captains who is a perfectly good captain in peacetime, but he sees his job as protecting and supporting the scientific and diplomatic mission of Starfleet. But he’s also a history nerd, he is a good strategist, and at a time when this crisis arises, this is when he shines. And so in the early days of the war, Prime Lorca demonstrates his skills as a strategist. And that puts him in a position to be a reasonable candidate for the Discovery.
Because I feel like Discovery was probably rushed into service as the war began, instead of being a purely scientific ship. It’s got this spore drive, it’s got this experimental stuff, but it needs a captain who understands combat. And that’s what Starfleet thinks Lorca is.
Anika: Okay. Certainly he’s acting like it. If he wasn’t before, he is now.
Liz: When he tells Michael, “I study war,” what I took that to mean is he’s the 23rd century equivalent of those guys who read nothing but books about World War II.
Anika: Yes. And you know, Genghis Khan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Conquerors.
Liz: Yeah. I think that because all Starfleet officers have some sort of academic background, and I have always figured that Prime Lorca’s was history, specifically military history and the theory of strategy and also xenobiology, which is why no one finds it especially weird that he has this cave full of body parts and animals and a Gorn skeleton. And weapons.
Anika: Yeah. It is the most mancave to ever mancave.
Liz: It is honestly over the top.
Anika: It’s just an ode to toxic masculinity.
Liz: Oh my god. And again, it is so over the top and so ridiculous that I was completely convinced that it was either some kind of psychotic break brought on by post-traumatic stress or misdirection. And I thought this was the crew’s perspective on the sort of TOS story where the captain goes mad and declares that he’s a god. And instead of Kirk coming in to talk him down, it’s the crew saving themselves and saving their captain.
Anika: And yet, let’s talk about Elon Musk.
Liz: Okay. Because people get really mad about this line and they’re like, this line is why Discovery was never good.
And first of all, it was not in the script. It was an ad lib by Jason Isaacs. And he’s joked about how he did it because he wanted to get a free Tesla and didn’t even get a free Tesla.
But I also want to flag that Elon Musk was perceived very differently in 2017. He was widely considered a progressive and innovative leader and thinker, and a guy who was probably an asshole, but had the potential to do a lot of good in the world. And it really wasn’t until a few years later that he was heavily radicalized by COVID. But he was not a public enemy the way he is now.
I was very skeptical of him, because I knew that leftists had a lot of problems with the union busting and the racial dynamics in his factories, but they were considered outliers.
Anika: Right. So, counterpoint. I didn’t know that about the ad lib, and now I’m even more angry about it. But, so, this is my issue. When you are creating near future science fiction, yes, don’t use people who are alive. Because they can still screw it all up. And it took about four years for Elon Musk to do that. So, yeah, no, it’s just bad.
I don’t blame Jason Isaacs in any way. And also I wish he got a Tesla, although then he would have to, you know, sell it or something. But anyway, I don’t blame Jason Isaacs for doing it. I fully and with prejudice blame the editors for keeping it.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would have had to go through an approval process. And it’s like naming an award after a human. You’re just opening yourself up to learn something about that person that makes you not want to memorialize them in that way.
Anika: Exactly. It’s just bad form. And I mean, I get that Star Trek is supposed to be in the real world. And so it’s harder for them to ignore the real world. And so they want to use real world examples to, you know, drive it home that this is our Earth. But Zefram Cochrane is never going to screw us over, because he doesn’t exist. And so we will never learn something horrible about how Zefram Cochrane treated his ex-wife or something. There’s nothing bad that’s going to come out about people that you make up.
Liz: Zefram Cochrane was absolutely a terrible husband. I just know that by looking at him.
Anika: He had at least three wives.
Liz: Oh, so many.
Anika: But we can say that and we can laugh about it because they’re all fake people. So it doesn’t really matter that he was an abusive asshole.
Liz: Yeah. And the Wright brothers, I feel like their reputation is secure. And if there’s anything horrible about them, it’s not—
Anika: And also, at this point, I feel like they’ve been dead long enough that even if something horrible came out, even if something horrible comes out in 500 years, their reputation for what they did is secure. And so we can point to, this is a thing that they did that was good, regardless of…
We can’t do that with Elon Musk. There is nothing you can point to and say, well, he did this thing that was good.
Liz: No.
Anika: He’s just making things up.
Liz: He didn’t even invent the Tesla.
Anika: Exactly. That’s not an argument. It’s just, use Leonardo da Vinci. No.
Liz: Bad.
Anika: Bad. I will hold it as a black mark against the series forever.
Liz: No, I think that’s fair because also it wasn’t just an ad lib, but SpaceX was actively courting the Discovery writers, and they were invited to do tours of the SpaceX facilities. Before Elon Musk was a professional New Trek hater, he was really embedding himself in that group. And so it’s kind of funny that then he goes on to become a hater, but yeah, they were not unbiased, and they were being courted by SpaceX, not NASA or JPL or whatever.
Anika: Right. Yeah. Okay. I just had to get that out.
Liz: No, that’s fair. And the other big problem with this episode is killing off Landry.
Anika: Yes. Landry was never an actual person. She just was whatever the plot needed, and was used to prop up who Lorca is, and be antagonistic against Michael for no particular reason.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: She’s there to be a professional asshole.
Anika: And she does nothing ever. She names the Tardigrade a horrible name. That’s the only thing she did the entire two episodes. And then she died horrifically, entirely of her own doing. She poked the bear, and the bear ate her. That’s what happened.
And it’s treated by even Lorca, who’s the one person that has shown any interest in Landry as a person. And again, she’s his most loyal servant. Even on the bridge, she was trying to be like, we’ll do better next time. And he just is very dismissive. He looks sad for a minute, looking at her dead body. And we didn’t need that either. I didn’t need to see all of her horrible scrapes.
And the Discovery writers, I remember this vividly, they were so proud of themselves for casting Rekha Sharma in that role, because they were like, it was an entirely colorblind, genderblind casting. It could have been anyone, but we chose her. And it was just like, wow.
Liz: I just feel like if they had cast a man, we wouldn’t have gotten the weird psychosexual dynamic between Landry and Lorca. It’s very telling.
And I remember, I think it was on Women at Warp, Rekha Sharma talked about how the reaction to Landry’s death made her appreciate how often she played characters who died violently and that this was something that was really affecting her and her career and the way people perceived her and the way fans perceived her. And it changed her approach to her work. Because it’s not just a Discovery problem, it’s Yellowjackets, it’s Battlestar Galactica. Rekha Sharma always dies.
Anika: Yes. And she barely ever gets to be something beforehand.
Liz: No, no. I’ve seen her in so many things and I barely know if she’s a good actor because she rarely gets to play a three-dimensional person.
Anika: Exactly. She’s always just a prop. And it’s offensive.
Liz: Specifically, she’s nearly always a prop to white characters. And obviously, these are problems that go beyond Discovery, but I feel like this was very 2010s, this whole “we’re colorblind casting. Oops, we’ve stepped into a great big problem” happening over and over and over.
Anika: Throughout this season, this is one they just keep hitting. That mine.
Liz: And it wasn’t just Star Trek. It was a lot of media at the time. But yeah, it was an avoidable problem.
Anika: Right. You did it to yourselves.
So yes, and then you mentioned that you saw Bryan Fuller’s influence in this, in the visceral nature of her death. And then also in the absolutely offhand comment that the Klingons ate Georgiou, but then also descriptive. And that too is just — that’s horrible. You already killed her and now you ate her. It was already a bridge too far. And now you have catapulted the bridge to another planet. And it matters that it was Michelle Yeoh. It matters.
Liz: Yeah. These early episodes had a real problem with objectifying women of colour. It’s a level of horror that was unnecessary.
Anika: Yes. And I do think — “Choose Your Pain” next week, which we’ll discuss next week. I’m really looking forward to it because that’s the episode where I went, oh, they figured out what they’re doing. Lorca is starting to make sense. All of this stuff is coming together. And part of that is, there are all these torture scenes and there’s the whole thing with Ash Tyler, but it’s less visceral.
Anika: Right.
Liz: I have remembered loving “Choose Your Pain.” That was the episode that really got me on board with everything.
Anika: Same.
Liz: I’m super looking forward to it. And yes, absolutely, it’s where I started constructing the Lorca backstory. Because this episode, again, I don’t remember exactly. I don’t remember if I had the same feelings about it when I saw it the first time and was trying to figure it out and didn’t know the future. But I do know that I didn’t care about Lorca until “Choose Your Pain.” And so I do feel like I was confused. And I was like, this is way too evil. I don’t understand why he’s so evil.
Until — and I will say, I think that actually was the big hero moment at the end of this episode, where he is directing when the jump happens in order to blow up the Klingons. That was the moment where I was like, oh, okay, Jason Isaacs, I see where you’re going with this and I’m willing to get on board. I remember being more interested in Lorca from that moment on and then “Choose Your Pain” secured it.
And also that’s the moment I remembered from this episode. I knew that the Tardigrade was involved, I knew that, but that’s setup plot. The whole Tardigrade thing is just another plot point, you know?
Anika: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just not the story. But Lorca gets a win and gets to be a big damn hero is what I remembered strongly from this episode.
Liz: Yeah. I feel like this episode ends with him saving people, and then the next episode makes him vulnerable and tells us about his past. It’s at that point that I’m like, okay, okay, everything up till now has been bad writing. They just needed to work through that to understand the character, and it turns out it was all foreshadowing. But if you can’t tell the difference between foreshadowing and bad writing, yes, that’s a problem.
Anika: That’s also bad writing, as I think of you at the end of that sentence. But you brought up Ash Tyler, so let’s talk about the Klingons.
Liz: Yes. The Klingon scenes are actually my favourite in this episode because they are so good.
Anika: The Klingon stuff is amazing. But I already said that their set design was where I was gaga over everything that was happening over there. Their costumes were amazing. The lighting is incredible on all of those characters. It makes them distinctly alien in a way that Worf never was. Beautiful. It’s really, really incredible work on production design for everything Klingon.
Because it’s in Klingon and you have to read along, and literally everyone does because Klingon is not a real language. So even the people who speak Klingon probably wouldn’t be able to follow this because they made up new things for Discovery, you know? You’re required to watch every scene. You have to actually pay attention to everything that’s happening. It was definitely my favourite part of the episode, and I was fully invested in their Shakespearean drama that they were having over there in Klingon land.
It was better than the pilot. I felt way more connected to these characters. The scenes were much smaller and way more intimate. So I think that that’s natural. But I was just really — I mean, Voq and L’Rell were just amazing and I love them.
Liz: I don’t know about you, but I enjoy the Klingon politics episodes of TNG, but I always find them a little bloodless, which is ironic because they’re Klingons, but it’s all about Worf and his family stuff and all of that. Whereas this, we have the interplay between Voq and Kol and L’Rell, and it’s the Klingon politics and all of this high level stuff. But it’s also Voq and L’Rell as these two young, marginalized, radicalized people who are falling in love.
Anika: Yes, it’s incredible.
Liz: Yeah. I think that’s what makes the difference. If Worf’s discommendation plotline had come with a romance built in, that would have been better.
Anika: There’s so many interesting politics at play because there’s the caste politics and there’s the gender politics. And there’s just the many houses. And L’Rell is so incredible in her little speech about how she was of T’Kuvma’s line, but on her mother’s side, she was another house and that that mattered. She is a child of both of them. And it should always be that way. It shouldn’t just be “son of.” And I was just like, L’Rell, I love you. They’re horrible people who do terrible things throughout this season, but I love them. And I’m on board with their story. And obviously in these scenes, we’re rooting for them because they are the underdogs and clearly they’re protagonists.
And I just — I loved L’Rell. That was one of the things I came out of Discovery season one with — really loving L’Rell. And my son loved L’Rell. We had this whole thing where we were actively wanting to speak with Mary Chieffo. She was so good and we loved her so much. And so I was looking forward to learning why, because I didn’t really remember. I think part of that is because season two was, season two, and part of that was fans told me I shouldn’t like her. Fandom told me I shouldn’t like her. They wrote feminist essays about why I shouldn’t like L’Rell. And I didn’t have an argument on hand. It was just vibes.
Anika: So, but in this episode, which is the first one where she really gets to do anything. I mean, I knew that she was Lady Macbeth, but she is so Lady Macbeth. And I love everything about that.
Liz: And her arc over the two seasons is so good.
Anika: It is. It’s so good.
Liz: It’s a real shame that Strange New Worlds hasn’t done anything with L’Rell, but I don’t see how they could do anything but ruin a really excellent character who has a great story.
Anika: Right. And again, these are things — I knew exactly what she wore, and yet when I was paying attention with a really critical eye and thinking about Alice in Wonderland and how I went on and on about it last week. Yes. She is straight up — they’re all dressed like chess pieces, but it’s most obvious with L’Rell.
Liz: Oh my god, that is so correct.
Anika: But she is so dressed like a chess piece, and she’s all in white, and white moves first, and Alice is a handmaiden for the White Queen, and it’s all related. I’m sitting here going, oh, L’Rell and Michael’s stories are supposed to be parallel, and we’re supposed to be paying attention to this, and they’re gonna come together in the end, just like the two plots of this episode came together in the end, and it’s on purpose, and they knew what they were doing. And I just got really excited.
Liz: That is so smart, because they’re both characters of two worlds, but also they both advance, and they both grow through their connection with Admiral Cornwell, who really only interacts with Lorca through the first half of the season. But then in the second half, you know, Michael has saved her life. She has this trust in Michael, to the point where she lets Michael talk her out of the blow-up-Qo’noS plan.
I have not read Alice in Wonderland for many, many years. Which queen is Cornwell?
Anika: So, there are three queens in Alice in Wonderland, unless you count Alice, which obviously I do, but because it’s important that in chess, if a pawn advances all the way across the board, they can become any other piece. And usually you choose queen because queen has the most moves. So Alice crosses the board and becomes a queen.
But there’s the Queen of Hearts — who I’m sure everyone knows: “Off with their head.” There’s the White Queen who is sort of absent-minded and forgets things. But she’s also the one who says that you can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And there’s the Red Queen who is sort of the Queen of Hearts lite. And in most productions, they’ll actually combine them so that there’s only two queens. The Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen are similar enough to do that.
I would say that actually, Cornwell is the White Knight who Alice meets. And he’s kind of a Don Quixote figure. He has that sort of energy, but he is the person who represents how order can be good. Yeah, especially if you break it, you know what I mean? He’s of England, you know, and he’s like, you can have more power if you follow the rules, except for the times you need to break them. He’s that kind of… And I would say that that’s who Cornwell is.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, does this make Mirror Georgiou the Queen of Hearts? Because she is decidedly “off with their heads” type of person at her introduction.
Anika: Yes, absolutely.
Liz: Love this, love this for us.
Anika: Heads will roll. And again, in most — at least modern retellings of the Alice story — all villains are not villains in modern fairy tale retellings. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Liz: Look, I’m very much here for a redemption arc for the Queen of Hearts. And I’m very much here for L’Rell as the White Queen and as Lady Macbeth, and her arc as someone who thinks she does not deserve or need direct power and who comes to rule an empire. And as someone who loses someone she loves in part because of her own crimes against him, but also because of a genuine misunderstanding. That’s just a really compelling story to me.
And I think we’ll get into the consent stuff with L’Rell and Ash later. And I think that they definitely bit off more than they could chew in terms of the story that they were trying to tell. But also it’s a really interesting one.
Anika: Right. And in this episode, they’re just super cute. They have Romeo and Juliet vibes at the same time as their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth vibes, and I’m into it. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And also I love the line, I wrote it down here, where she says, “standing behind you, I’m free to move.” Because that is so fully a chess queen thing to say. And so she knows that she’s a pawn right now, but she is going to be queen. She’s like, I am making all the right moves to get across the board and get my crown, and then I will put you in power because I’ve chosen you as my king, you know? That’s what’s going on there and I’m super into it.
Liz: It’s totally great. I love L’Rell, I love her arc, I love Mary Chieffo. But I also want to shout out — God, what’s his name? You know, the guy.
Anika: Shazad, Shazad Latif.
Liz: Yeah, I kept going to say Javid Iqbal, but that’s the — because I feel like because there was a whole mystery, they created a—
Anika: A fake person to—
Liz: A false —
Anika: He’s in the credits.
Liz: That they created a mystery box in the credits. So I feel like because of that, the strength of his performance as Voq has been overlooked. Obviously, he’s under heavy makeup, but Karim Diané has talked a lot about the work he put in to create Jay-Den’s voice. And I want to shout out the work that Shazad Latif obviously did to create Voq’s voice, which is in some ways even harder because it’s that sort of strangled tone that they were using with Klingons at this time. And it must have been really hard work. And he does not sound like himself at all. It’s remarkable.
Anika: Because he is a pawn too, even though he was the chosen one. This whole episode is about how he doesn’t have the charisma or wherewithal, the presence to go up against Kol. And that Kol can just very easily railroad through the two of them because he has a more Klingon presence.
Liz: Yeah. God bless Kenneth Mitchell. He did such a great job in every role in Discovery and it’s such a tragedy that he died so young.
Anika: And his voice is a part of it. His voice is elevated Shakespearean types of things, but also very soft and very tentative. The delivery is very, very well done. They’re so young. They’re playing so… This is what I mean when I say they come across as Romeo and Juliet as well. And Romeo and Juliet are 14 years old and they’re not — they’re in their 20s — but they come across so young. And I think that that’s very right for what’s happening.
Liz: It’s almost a Hunger Games type YA of the 2010s. These young people have to save the empire scenario, which is great. And I think a lot of people miss that. And I overlooked it for a while because of the heavy Klingon makeup and speaking in a fake language. And yeah, it’s rough because they did great work. And I think they deserve more recognition for it.
Also, as with the pilot episode, the writing of these scenes is so much better than the writing of the stuff on Discovery. Just in terms of, because the dialogue doesn’t have to be realistic.
Anika: Right. They can have that Shakespearean lilt in the writing as well. It can be literature because they don’t have to say it. So it doesn’t matter if no one speaks that way, quote unquote, because the point is the translation. This is what’s happening and it can be poetic because it’s a translation. And it doesn’t matter, they don’t have to deliver poetic lines. They can just say whatever.
And then also — the way I write things is over and over and over. You know, I write an outline and then I write the dialogue or a few sentence fragments of what’s happening. And then I go back and make it into a real paragraph. And then I go back and add punctuation, and then I go, you know, and so you’re just going over and over and over it. That’s just my writing process, everybody. I’m not saying that’s the way you should write or the way anyone should write. I’m just saying this is what I do.
And so when I watch something this and I see a distinct difference in the way that the humans are speaking and the way that the Klingons are said to be speaking in the dialogue, I think to myself, they could have gone over this another few times in the editing in order to add the subtitles and we would never know. So they had an extra chance to make that dialogue even better.
Liz: Oh my god, that is so true.
Anika: I just think that’s why those scenes pop more, is because they were — they had to have more crafting to make them to begin with. And then they had a few extra shots at the end.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. So what I’m hearing is that it’s possible to write without punctuation, which is very alarming to me, and I’m fascinated to know how it works, because that’s not how my brain works, but also all media should be in fake made-up languages.
Anika: Something that, yes.
Liz: That is the lesson I’m taking from this.
Anika: Okay, I will take it. Now I’m going to write a little “how to write like Anika” handbook.
Liz: Do it, do it, do it.
Anika: So we’ve come to the point where we need to talk about Admiral Katrina Cornwell.
Liz: It’s such a low-key introduction for a character that I’m about to be obsessed with for a very long time. It’s literally just a scene and all I took from it when I first watched it was, I’m so glad that we’re past the age of female characters in Star Trek having torturous updos, and this character has a very simple hairstyle. Also, I was mostly trying to figure out what Lorca was eating.
Anika: Certainly, we don’t get anything actually about her or them in this episode. There’s briefly at the very, very beginning when she says “we were eating” and he says sorry about the impropriety or whatever, there is a sense of familiarity in that moment to me. And because of that, I was paying more attention to her.
But also, I completely agree with you that it was really because I was like, oh, wow, look at this middle-aged woman in charge. I’m excited, tell me more. And it was also like, is she going to be a bad admiral? There’s things that could happen with her. And it was almost like if this was the only scene that she had, I could make up a whole world about her. But it’s really next episode where it all came into fruition for me.
Liz: It’s “Choose Your Pain,” where she becomes a character in the way that Landry was not. Which again, has a racial dynamic.
Anika: Yes, it does. But yeah, so I look forward to our continued discussions.
Liz: We’re going to be very normal.
Anika: Admiral Kat — we’re going to be totally normal about it. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait until the penultimate episode. But no, I promise to stop jumping ahead. I will stop jumping ahead. I will simply look forward to next week.
Liz: Yes. I’ve got to say, I think we’re meant to eventually decide that Lorca was eating some weird possibly cannibalistic alternate universe meal. But actually, I think he was eating Klingon food in a whole “know your enemy, I’m a guy with too many books about World War II” way.
Anika: Yes. It definitely felt like Klingon food to me because — I mean, I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at it, but the way he was sort of slurping. It seemed like udon noodles type stuff.
Liz: And there was a claw situation. There was a claw happening.
Anika: So I agree with you that it feels more like Klingon stuff. It could easily be — the replicator isn’t going to just pop out gagh. So, as you say, he did his historic deep dive into what his enemy eats, and he tried to make the closest equivalent to get the idea of it. But it really was just udon noodles.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking.
And then the only other thing I have to say about this episode is the scene where he starts playing the distress call. So everyone has to listen to these people being terrified and traumatized. It’s one of those things where I was like, this character is so cartoonish that obviously there’s something going on other than “he is a villain.” But also I think that Mirror Lorca learned about trauma bonding and was like, okay, I’ve got to traumatize my crew. Got it.
Anika: Cool. Great.
Liz: Onto it.
Anika: Yeah. I mean, because you know how we learn in the Star Trek: Section 31 movie that in the Empire, they choose the Emperor through the Hunger Games?
Liz: Yes. Which is a cool and normal system of government.
Anika: That’s what it felt like to me. Because I think there’s even a scene in The Hunger Games where they have those birds that can mimic human voices and so they are torturing people outside the games in order to get them screaming. They use that to torture the people in the games. That’s what it reminds me of. It was like he learned to weaponize trauma.
Liz: Oh my God. That puts it so well.
Anika: And it was rough. The crew, they were traumatized. It was horrible.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. But also that brought them together and then they get the high of saving all those people and they’re like, oh, Lorca really knows what he’s doing. He is building loyalty. He has collected a crew of very young and/or vulnerable people and he’s weaponizing them.
Anika: And they have that one scene after the Discovery pops away and they have the little kid, he’s like, who saved us? And so they’re also priming the audience, because that was straight out of a disaster film or an Avengers film nonsense. And the crew wasn’t there and Lorca didn’t orchestrate it. That was the writers using Lorca tactics on us.
Liz: I mean, they worked. In another week, I am going to be so down with Lorca.
Anika: The whole episode. This is the writers using Lorca tactics on us.
Liz: Oops.
Anika: So.
Liz: It turns out I am not immune to propaganda.
Anika: Time for Shipping News.
Liz: Lorca and Kat had a conversation. Very important to me, not really a big deal.
Lorca and Michael: he shows her his man cave, which is obviously very personal for a man. And she is not overwhelmed with delight, I’m gonna say.
Anika: No. When they’re walking alone together through the dark corridor to his man cave. That is very cinematic and pretty, but also horrifying. I would not want to walk down a dark corridor with Lorca.
Liz: No. Jason Isaacs, yes. Lorca, no thank you, sir, respectfully.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Voq and L’Rell, I love them. I was going to call them endgame. They’re very much not, but they’re so good. Love these crazy kids, want them to work it out.
Anika: I actually really enjoy thinking about how they can do Federation-Klingon politics together throughout their lives and into their old age. They die not seeing any actual unification of the two cultures, but they know that they are taking the steps to eventually make it happen.
Liz: I honestly have this headcanon that they both live to see the Khitomer Accords. I once tried to draw the two of them — he’s an elderly admiral in the Monster Maroons, and she’s an elderly retired Klingon, because she single-handedly invents the concept of retirement. Watching from a balcony as the Khitomer Accords are signed. And that is not the kind of art I do. It was bad, but that’s where my heart is.
Anika: I know, that’s beautiful. I love it.
Liz: I just want them to see that the seeds that they planted came to fruition but also in the exact way that T’Kuvma didn’t want. Because, respectfully, when Kat says that T’Kuvma is a fool, she’s not wrong.
Anika: Very true, very true. The reason that you can imagine them at the Khitomer Accords is because they understand that in order for the Klingon Empire to survive, they need to actually be friends with their neighbours. And stop fighting amongst themselves. At the very least, stop killing each other. And hopefully, eventually, stop killing everybody. And that is an idea that doesn’t come into mainstream Klingon life until Deep Space Nine. So…
Liz: Yeah, but the seeds are planted. And the Klingons do learn to co-exist with the Federation without compromising their inherent Klingon culture, to the point where a thousand years later, the Federation still doesn’t completely understand Klingon culture and is still making the same mistakes over and over again.
Liz: But not fatally.
Anika: No. Yes.
Liz: The misunderstandings don’t have a body count.
Anika: Right. And that’s progress.
Liz: Incremental but powerful progress. I’m looking at the next point on the list. Do you ship Michael/Landry?
Anika: No, I don’t ship Michael/Landry. I think I’ve mentioned already that I ship Landry and Tilly, but only in the Mirror Universe.
Liz: I went through a whole Landry/Tilly phase, and it was good.
Anika: But yeah, if I was going to ship this Landry with anyone, I mean, it would be Lorca, but it would be Tilly. But if Landry had survived this episode, and there was a sort of mutual respect thing that happened over the next few episodes, they could totally be enemies to lovers.
Liz: Yeah, I don’t hate that at all.
Anika: The concept is there. If Landry were a person, and if she survived, and if… It’s Michael — to this point, she spent so much time, sometimes the most time, with Tilly, but after that is Landry. That’s actually true. And so it’s sort of like, I feel like there was a possibility, and so in some universe, in some parallel universe, I could imagine it happening.
My cat, on the other hand, disagrees.
Liz: Disagrees.
Anika: She’s yowling over there saying, no.
Liz: I respect both positions. And then Stamets and Culber — this is the introduction of Dr. Culber, and I did not know that they were a couple. I thought this was going to be a — not an enemies to lovers thing, but a spiky flirtation that culminates in a romance.
Anika: Right. Han Solo and Princess Leia.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t cross my mind for a minute that they were already a couple.
Anika: It is not clear at all here that they are already a couple. I feel like I did know that they were, and so I guess I saw them as a bickering married couple. But I’ve never been a super Culber/Stamets shipper. They’re not — I don’t love that ship. I’m happy that the relationship exists, and I’m happy for the people who hardcore ship it. I was just never super excited. It doesn’t lack any of the things that I’m interested in in relationships.
Liz: No, no. There’s a particular vibe that really speaks to me and they don’t have it, but they’re a good relationship, and they’re an important relationship. And I do want to know why Culber puts up with Stamets, because he’s such a dick, until next week when he’s going to give himself a new personality and not a minute too soon.
Liz: Maybe the sex is really good.
Anika: We learn in a later episode about their backstory and their beginnings. And I remember liking that and seeing it and understanding from that point where it came from. So I don’t spoil anything for those imaginary people that haven’t seen it yet and are watching right now. But at the end of the day, I think that they are a very loving couple that I enjoy watching, but I don’t write fic about them. I don’t get excited about them. I don’t think about them.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. If there is fic where they’re on a double date with Lura and Jett, I would read that. But more because the vibe of the four of them together would be really fun and not because I’m really engaged with Stamets or Culber as characters.
Anika: Right. I did. I wrote a fic of them where they were setting Tilly up with — I don’t remember who — but it was Tilly-focused, and Stamets and Culber were her matchmaking uncles.
Liz: I love that.
Anika: That’s the level of shipping that I do with them.
Liz: Yeah. For me, they’re a good beta relationship. For other people, they’re a good alpha relationship. Totally fine either way.
Anika: Can I just say I think it was Landry? Cool, cool, cool, cool.
Liz: No judgment here. I have also been in the Tilly/Landry mines.
Anika: I had a cute little ship name for them, but we’ll get to it.
Anika: Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media, credits for our theme music and transcripts of our episodes. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky, all at Antimatter Pod, and Mastodon at antimatterpod@10forward.social.
Anika: If you like us, 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 tell your friends. Join us next week when we will be discussing the next episode of Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, “Choose Your Pain.”