Anika and Liz take off for a cheeky little diplomatic meeting with some Klingons. What could go wrong?
We are discussing Star Trek: Discovery‘s “Lethe”, an episode which inspired our friendship, a whole lot of fic and a conversation about whether it is a flawless piece of Star Trek, or if it has merely a single flaw.
We are not here to be cool or reasonable about Admiral Kat
- Normal Human Guy Ash Tyler and Normal Federation Captain Lorca
- At any time, it is reasonable to assume that Sarek is disappointed in at least one of his children
- Ash Tyler could never appear in SNW because his whole existence is a rebuke to that series’ biological determinism
- Anika’s Wonderland Corner: the Vulcans at Michael’s graduation are dressed as chess pieces (Michael, like L’Rell, is a white pawn)
- We have. A lot. Of feelings. About Katrina Cornwell
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 6, “Lethe”. And this is a big call, but I think this is a flawless episode.
Anika: It’s certainly flawless for us. There’s one thing that makes me roll my eyes.
Liz: Fair.
Anika: And it’s very small.
Liz: I’ve seen this episode quite a few times. It’s one of the Discovery episodes I’ve rewatched the most. And watching it again this week, I was struck by how well it balances all the different subplots and all the characters. And it’s just good.
Anika: It’s actually an ode to characters and relationships.
Liz: It’s really character driven in the best way.
Anika: Is it overly convenient that everyone on the shuttle is important to — it’s the main cast? Yes. Do I care? No.
Liz: I mean, that’s just how Star Trek works.
Anika: That’s just how television, just how storytelling works.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: The people that matter are the people that are in the scenes.
Liz: And the great thing about season one of Discovery is that you can ascribe a lot of these little conveniences and contrivances to Lorca pulling strings.
Anika: True. I mean, in this one, that is almost fully – except that Michael chooses Tilly, and she literally says, I need her.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: It’s all perfect in every way. I love their shuttle trip. I love every single thing that happens in this episode except for the one thing that makes me roll my eyes, which we’ll get to.
Liz: Okay. I’m eager to know what that is.
Anika: I basically made a list of characters because as you said, this is very character driven. Why this episode is so good is because every part of it is related to other parts of it. There’s nothing that’s like an extra random subplot that conveniently comes into it. It’s just actually all layered together like a pretty little cake.
Liz: Yeah, it’s balanced really well. Saru does not have a big part in it, but he has been such a prominent part of previous episodes and honestly, not a very positive one. So I’m really okay with giving him a break, giving Doug Jones a day off and just focusing on the characters, especially getting into Ash as the new member of the regular cast.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And so, yeah, let’s go down the list and we’ll start with Tilly’s emotional intelligence and self-awareness. And again, you can see the seeds of who she is going to be as an instructor at Starfleet Academy. It’s so great.
Anika: Absolutely. It’s beautiful. Tilly is so young in first season Discovery. She’s just a baby. It’s just incredible that we got to watch her grow into a teacher, you know, not just that we watched her grow up, quote unquote. And this is 10 years ago. It’s not like she was actually a baby, but we got to see her grow from a cadet, like a senior cadet, you know, a I’m ready to graduate cadet. But still, a senior in college is still young and naive and not yet a fully formed human being. And now she is leading those same characters — that same level of character. And I just think that is a beautiful growth arc.
Liz: And I think one thing that really works about it is that she does make mistakes and her emotional intelligence is not flawless. But she is the person that Michael needs right now, because Michael, at this age, didn’t have a BFF to confide in or to help her work through her feelings. She was actively prevented from having that. And so Michael is older, although Sonequa Martin-Green and Mary Wiseman are about the same age. Michael is older, but she has this sort of stunted growth in terms of her emotional development. And a lot of season one is about getting through that.
Anika: Yeah. The Michael flashbacks take place at a time where Michael is that sort of that age that Tilly is now. Or, you know, again, Tilly is a little bit beyond that, but the same era if we’re talking about eras. And so that’s what I mean when I say that every part of this episode links to other parts. I think that it is intentional that we’re talking about, like Michael is training Tilly in this episode on purpose.
Liz: Yes, because it links up to Michael being that age and as you say, not really having a mentor, just having parents and being let down by them.
Anika: So, and Michael at the beginning of the episode is so hardcore in her Vulcan era, really pushing, this is the best way to become a Starfleet captain. And it’s all logic and nutrition and do this list of 10 things correctly and well and improve on them every day and then you will make it. And Tilly says: I don’t think that’s what Captain is actually about.
Liz: No.
Anika: And she is correct.
Liz: Yeah, it’s not that Michael is wrong, but as she learns over the course of this episode, she learns an important lesson that we all have our path and it doesn’t always have to look the same.
Anika: Right. And I also think that Michael’s in a sort of a terrible place right now, right? Like she was on a path. She was going to be captain. She was going to move up. And then she was knocked all the way down off the board entirely. She doesn’t actually have space here, even though people are responding to her and she’s building a space here. Lorca is the only one keeping her here, right? Starfleet could at any moment say, no, that’s not fair. And so she is sort of regressing to her childhood. She’s leaning on the first lessons that she had, because that’s when everything made sense, and nothing makes sense now.
Liz: Yeah, it’s just good.
Anika: I just thought of something in relation to the one thing that makes me roll my eyes and it still makes me roll my eyes, but I just thought of how I just came up with a way that it’s good.
Liz: Please don’t leave me in suspense any longer. What is the thing that makes you roll your eyes?
Anika: It is when Sarek and Michael have their space nebula link up and she goes across the screen and there’s many Michaels because she’s being pulled out of her body mentally and it’s all very trippy. I didn’t like it in the pilot, and I don’t like it now. I do not like the space where Michael and Sarek go to talk to each other across the nebula of space and time.
Liz: It’s a bit nerdy. They need a better zoom background for this. I agree.
Anika: The concept is okay, but the gimmicks are really bad, but skipping ahead to the end and Anika’s Wonderland Corner, it is kind of wonderlandy.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So I will give them a pass.
Liz: I think it’s funny that both this and The Last Jedi have this sort of force timing plot device.
Anika: The idea of Michael and Sarek being able to communicate to mind meld across time and space is not horrible. It’s an interesting concept, but the way that it’s executed, they do it three times and it’s never great. I just don’t like how they describe it, like how they put it forth. Not to be me, but Star Wars is better because they just talk to each other and it’s fine.
Liz: Yeah, and I do think there was maybe this pressure to make it cool in some way.
Anika: Yeah, and I am always, like, pull back from the instinct to make it cool and just make it good.
Liz: Trying to make something cool can only end in something deeply, profoundly uncool. I don’t hate the idea and I like the fact that both the franchises around this time were very interested in the concept of connection and what does that mean and what do we get out of that and how do we build bridges and how do we maintain the bridges that we have between ourselves and others.
Anika: Spiritual connections that are not religious.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: But we’re sort of in Michael now. So Michael, as I said, is very Vulcan-esque until she starts being right angry about all Vulcans, which is her right and she is correct.
She even sums it up herself when she’s saying, you know, I spent my whole childhood living in this conflict between, she doesn’t say Vulcan and human, but I’m going to Vulcan logic and human emotions.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And now my emotions are in conflict with themselves, and I don’t understand. That’s weird.
Liz: Unlike Tilly, she does not enjoy feeling feelings.
Anika: No, she does not enjoy feeling feelings. She’s been suppressing them forever. So we understand why. I love Michael feeling feelings, and I really enjoy how many feelings are exposed in this episode, because she has been very buttoned up. Even when she’s at her worst, and absolutely devastated by feelings on the inside, she hasn’t been expressing them openly.
Liz: And it’s very Star Trek, and it’s particularly very Star Trek: Discovery, that she deals with this by sitting down and analytically explaining what she is feeling and why. Same thing Saru did last week, and I think we’re setting up for the problem in later seasons, where people just trauma dump in random situations. But I do think it’s a skill worth developing. We just need to work on our timing, guys.
Anika: I mean, they’re doing it correctly in these episodes, where they have finished the crisis, and then they talk about it.
Liz: That is the correct order of events, guys.
Anika: When you pointed that out in the notes, I was like, oh, wow, that’s so true. And it’s such an issue with the way television is now, where you can’t just tell the same story. Like, you have to up everything each time. So, by the time we get to the fourth and fifth seasons, everyone’s just trauma dumping in the middle of everything. And it’s like record scratch, let me tell you my tragic backstory. That was unnecessary. That was not what we were asking for. But I was like, oh, that’s so real to this moment in time. That’s a normal thing. That’s always been true. But in the current television landscape, it’s like instead of going from like volume one to volume two or three, it’s like we’re going to go from volume one to volume eight. And then we’re going to go to volume 17. And it’s like, okay, calm down.
Liz: Yeah. I also think this is a wider cultural change. I see younger people come into work and they’re like, oh, I can’t do that because I have this trauma. And it’s like, it’s your first day on the job, honey. If you’re having trouble, you can ask for help. But we keep our trauma in a box until after work hours.
Anika: You’ve got to learn these things. I think it’s upsetting to me as someone who studies this stuff, that the word trauma is losing meaning.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: As it has become more widely used. No, that’s a word that means things. And I know that the way the etymology of words and language works is that they change and it’s fluid. I understand that. But it’s also like, I need words to mean things. And trauma is one of those where it’s being used as shorthand. That is antithetical to the purpose of trauma. The meaning of trauma is not something that is shorthand. That’s not how it works.
Liz: It’s like the colloquial use of trigger to mean something that’s mildly upsetting.
Anika: Exactly, they’re these therapy terms that have become very mainstream and now they’ve drifted from the initial meaning in a way that is troubling sometimes.
Liz: And Discovery is very much Therapy Speak: The Show, which makes the significance of Kat in this episode particularly amusing because she is an ex-psychiatrist and she is absolutely going to weaponize therapy speech. I love that about her, it’s a problem. But we’re not there.
Anika: Exactly, yes, just before we move off of Michael, the fact that she internalizes that Sarek is spending potentially his last hours of life being mad at her for her failures. That is also very this time period, this generation of her.
Liz: Star Trek: Are You Mad At Me?
Anika: That is it. I love it. I love this as a flaw for Michael and how everything happens. Again, I loved her being angry. I loved her being upset that he was so disappointed in her that it reached across the galaxy to envelop her in his disappointment. That’s amazing.
Liz: But that is also peak Sarek, and I just want to point out that when Sarek literally dies, his main feeling is how angry and disappointed he is with Spock. This is canonical Sarek behavior. Michael is wrong about the source of his feelings, but it is reasonable to assume at any given point that Sarek is disappointed in one or more of his children.
Anika: Oh my god. I love him so much. He’s horrible.
Liz: I know. He’s terrible. I love him. He’s my favorite.
Anika: But I have down here, I just want to point out that at the very end, when she confronts Sarek, she is the most Sarek of Sarek’s children. She is totally throwing it back in his face. She’s like, oh, you’re disappointed in me? Well, I’m disappointed in you too. And we’re going to talk about it when you’re ready. Dad. It’s so good. And it’s so Vulcan of her. It’s great.
Liz: And it’s really age-appropriate for her as someone who is in her 30s, where … there’s the teenage rebellion era, and there is the realization that your parents are just flawed humans like everyone else or flawed Vulcans or whatever. But in your 30s is when you start to really be confronted by the fact that your parents aren’t going to change. And you can be angry about that, and you can demand better of them. But you also have to be realistic. And so, she’s angry and disappointed, but she’s also, she walks away and she’s like, this is a problem for me to fix because Sarek is Sarek.
Anika: Yeah, I think that she’s like, okay, I no longer have to win his approval. She’s like, I have reached the point in my life where you’re either going to approve of me or not. And that’s on you and my reaction is on me. And so, she still wants his approval, but she’s not going to define herself by it anymore or require it.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And it just feels realistic for where she is in life. Beyond the mutiny thing, I just think this is a thing that a lot of people go through in their thirties.
Anika: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting to me to look at how people age. And how you can get stuck in certain spaces. Some people get to their thirties and this is where they should be, but they’re like hanging on to something else.You know, they’re not ready for it. And I just think it’s interesting to see how there are these stages.
And it’s not universal. Everybody takes their own time. And some people approach things and some people skip around, but they exist. Growing into yourself doesn’t stop at 13 or 18 or 26, you know. You keep growing into yourself as you age. I think I’ve said before, and I say it all the time, it’s like one of my little catchphrases is that coming of age stories about adults are my favorite thing. Because they prove that you never stop quote unquote coming of age, you just come of different ages. Stages might be the better way of saying it.
Liz: No, it’s like the idea that brains aren’t fully mature until a particular age is increasingly discredited, because it’s starting to look like the human brain never stops developing. There’s always room for growth and change. But there comes a point where it’s requires a lot more effort. I think that’s what I meant when I was thinking about like, in your 30s, you have to accept that your parents aren’t going to change. They can work at it, but most people don’t really want to.
Anika: Yeah, they don’t really want… I mean, there’s also that saying that I didn’t change, I just became more clearly myself. And I think it makes perfect sense that you don’t stop, like that your brain would never stop growing. That’s silly. I think your brain is always working until it is not anymore, and then you’re dead. So of course, it’s going to keep growing. But I do think that as you grow, certain pathways become stronger.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It’s easier to let the other ones die off. So you’re like, you’re going to stick on this one because that’s the one that you’ve spent the most time on, you know? So it’s like, this is a thing that is important to me, and I’ve built it up, and it’s hard to change those things, the older you get because you have had that part of you for so long.
Liz: I assume this is what neuroplasticity is all about. But unlike some admirals, I am not qualified to use psychological terms of art.
Anika: Let’s move on to Lorca, someone who is definitely disinterested in changing, ever.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Even though, as we said last week, he has this whole new universe.
Liz: Right, right. This is a glorious opportunity for someone who has grown up in an oppressive environment. He’s like, no, I really just want to get back to the oppression, thanks.
Anika: Which is, yeah, that’s so Lorca. He is working very hard to make Discovery his own little mirror universe fiefdom within the Prime Universe.
Liz: Cool and normal.
Anika: As like a variant. And again, it’s devastating to me that we didn’t think he was always from the mirror universe. I think I am emotionally unprepared.
Liz: It’s obviously embarrassing now, and I think of all the Kat/Lorca fic that I wrote after this episode, none of which I should say was particularly interested in glorifying or romanticizing a sexual encounter that ends in violence. I just want to be really clear about that. But getting into the why and the how of what this character was all about was really interesting to me.
And this was kind of around the time that I started to develop a theory that he was not from an alternate universe, but the Buran had not been destroyed, but had been trapped in an alternate reality or between realities. And the reason he’s doing this weird little science project in his quarters and the reason he’s pushing Stamets so hard and the reason he’s like this is because he wants to rescue the Buran and save the crew that are thought dead.
Anika: Interesting. That’s, like, way too much plot. I like it as a theory, but it’s like I can’t imagine writing that. It would not go well.
Liz: I did write that fic. I wrote it between the two halves of the seasons, but I wrote it entirely from Kat’s point of view. From her point of view, Discovery blips out and she’s badly injured and then Discovery’s back and has the Buran and also off-page, Michael and Saru led a little bit of a mutiny because that’s what I thought the series was building to. It’s about coming together a mutiny as a family.
Anika: I want the story where Michael convinces Saru to mutiny.
Anika: That would be an amazing story. Circular logic. I love it.
Liz: I love the Mirror Universe twist, but in retrospect and re-watching now, it feels inevitable, but it really wasn’t. It did feel like there were other ways this story was going. That’s why I like this season so much. It was inexorably moving towards one set ending, but it wasn’t obvious until we look at it in retrospect.
Anika: Now I’m just like, oh my God, literally everything Kat says is a clue. First of all, I was like, wow, I haven’t wanted to write Kat since Discovery Season 2, and I want to again. I could go back to this because the amount, like we get to have that confrontation with her and Lorca.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I want it so badly.
Liz: I want it so badly. You wrote out all of her lines into our notes, but she is so close to spotting it.
Anika: Yes. She’s right there. But of course, why would she imagine, he’s been replaced by a doppelganger from an alternate evil universe? That’s not a thing that people think might have happened. Of course, she’s going to explain it away as trauma and war and all of this nonsense is going on. He was in the ship, you know, yes, he was the sole survivor, but he witnessed it. And his eyes were hurt. So if his eyes were hurt, why are we not thinking that his brain was hurt? There’s many more unconceivable reasons for him to be acting the way he is than he’s literally been replaced by the evil version of him. That’s, so it’s fair to her, but also, I desperately want her to have that, “I knew it wasn’t you, and I didn’t trust myself.” The confrontation with Mirror Lorca and or the I am so sorry I failed you conversation with Prime Lorca.
Liz: I’ve written the I’m so sorry I failed you scene many times. I do keep writing the same fic over and over again, and it’s not out of my system yet. I’m sorry.
But suddenly, what I want now is the AU where she does figure it out, and she relieves him of command and doesn’t get captured and runs the scans that reveal that he is not from this universe. I think that is something I’ve never written. Other people probably have, but I haven’t read it. But yeah, I want to go back to that.
Anika: Even with the other characters, legitimately I almost started crying when Michael said that Lorca is a good captain to learn from or something. She was like, I’m really glad that I had you as my captain. And I was like, I can’t handle this.
Liz: She says, I am lucky to serve under a captain like you.
Anika: Oh my god, that hurt my soul.
Liz: No, I know.
Anika: I was just like, no. But with Michael, she is literally the only person in the universe, or I guess the multiverse, who he has any actual feelings for. He literally doesn’t care about anyone else. They are all just pieces that he moves around on the board. But Michael, he cares about her so much that he threatens Ash to come back with her or don’t come back because I will kill you and then eat you.
Liz: That is a particularly unhinged scene, and it’s been going around my Tumblr dash just in the last couple of weeks, so it was on my mind. But what does Ash think in that moment? Does he think that Michael and the captain have a thing? Does he think, okay, cool, a normal guy? Because Ash is also in that space where he’s grateful to serve under Lorca. Normal human guy is grateful to have a normal human guy captain.
Anika: It is so, oh my god. Yes, normal human guy Ash, who is my favorite. I just love him so much.
But yeah, because we have the whole scene at the beginning, where Lorca is clearly testing him, like testing his story that he is Ash and that he knows where Ash came from and like important biographical details and all this sort of stuff. Ash knows that Lorca is questioning him and that he’s passed, but he also knows that clearly Lorca is the type of guy who’s never really gonna stop questioning you. Lorca’s paranoia levels are off the charts. Anyone is gonna realize that.
And I think that Ash has to be collecting his own evidence about Lorca. If he’s at all good as a chief of security, he has his own little folder of observations about Lorca and how he’s kind of weird. And that scene, as you say, is unhinged. It is unhinged on many levels, but it’s also amazing. It’s like Lorca trusts Ash to the point where he’s willing to make this threat. And thinks that Ash is not going to run to the Admiral and be like, oh, what the fuck? You know? There are layers here and it’s very interesting.
Liz: Intertwined levels of unhinged-osity.
Anika: Just absolutely amazing. I love that Ash is the one who figures out what Sarek’s deal really is. I love that Ash is the one that tells Michael that how she’s feeling is human. The whole Ash to Voq, Voq to Ash to Voq stuff is so crazy to me. The Lorca stuff is so much more obvious.
The Ash stuff is my favorite trope, which is, I didn’t know I was evil until I was evil. And then it turns out that I wasn’t actually evil because I spent all that time not being evil, you know? Like, that’s one of my favorite stories. It’s my Russian spy story. And the fact that it happened here at the same time as the Lorca stuff, you know, I was just saying that your plot was too complicated. That’s way too complicated. I can’t believe they did it.
Liz: And they pulled it off. And it works because, okay, there is something deeply ironic about a guy who’s been human for a week having the self-confidence to lecture a human about the human experience. But I’m not mad about it because it’s so charming and it’s so sincere. Ash is just such a good character, and he is the inverse of Lorca. He has this opportunity to become someone new, and he takes it and ultimately embraces it.
Anika: Now I love Ash even more.
Liz: And this kind of makes sense as to why he disappears after season 2, because a character this complex has no place in Strange New Worlds and frankly, his existence really undermines the biological determinism of Strange New Worlds.
Anika: Again, every single thing you say makes me love Ash more.
Liz: Yep.
Anika: He is amazing. And you’re right, he would just be ruined with current… Yeah. So it’s probably better that he’s gone off and he’s safe. He’s safe from all of this.
Liz: I mean, he’s running section 31. I don’t know how safe he is, but he’s safe from that specific bad writing.
Anika: I just want to mention that his mother is a third-grade teacher, which is adorable. I love that for her. Unnamed Ash’s mom.
But again, because Amanda is quote-unquote introduced, this version of Amanda, this is her first appearance. And Amanda is canonically a teacher, which means that the parallels, there are the characters that are sort of moving around in the middle of the board, and then there are the other characters who are like the satellites.
And that doesn’t mean that they’re less important. It just means that they’re on the outskirts. They’re not part of the central identity plot that is the plot, you know what I mean? Stamets and Tilly and Culber, they’re all out here having their own little arcs, but they’re not part of necessarily the identity arc that’s being told amongst Lorca and Michael and Ash. And I would add L’Rell.
Liz: Yes, absolutely.
Anika: She’s, you know, so they’re like in the little thing. But so, the fact that Michael can have parallels to L’Rell and also parallels to Ash, and Ash can have parallels to Michael and also parallels to Lorca. I like the web that is being drawn amongst these characters, that they’re all saying what is important here is identity and how to like figure it out and how to find it and what it means and how to choose your own versus what is being provided to you by society or family or whatever external forces. There’s all this stuff. How does the pawn cross the board, right? That’s where we’re at. And so, the fact that Ash had that parallel to Michael, that I didn’t notice.
Liz: No, I missed that too.
Anika: I completely didn’t think about it. But the fact that it is there in this episode, I was like, oh, that was something that we weren’t necessarily supposed to notice. It wasn’t important. Oh, this is a plot point that you have to pay attention to. It was just an extra layer of thought that went into how this is working. And I really appreciate those. That’s why I love this season so much, is that I really feel like everything, we could pick out anything that happens and make it relate to something else.
Liz: Yeah, it’s very intentional, mostly.
Anika: So yeah, I just like that.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And then there’s Stamets. We’re at Mushroom Stamets, who legit, I wrote down Groovy Stamets first, because he literally says the word groovy.
Liz: He sure does.
Anika: But then I was like, it’s because he’s on mushrooms. That you’re actually really literally … we’re not really sure. So I called it Mushroom Stamets, and I think that he would appreciate that more. And again, not to be me, Anika in Wonderland, but mushrooms are important to Wonderland.
Liz: They are!
Anika: And that’s why, again, that the part that I don’t like is sort of a psychedelic vision. And Stamets is totally acting like he’s a little bit high in this scene compared to who he has been previously. And obviously we will get very mushroom-heavy next week. But I think that it’s fun to see that the mushroom injection has in fact affected him.
Liz: And it’s changed his personality a little, but not as radically as I thought the first time I watched it. Like, he was coming around to being a more chill guy, at least with Michael, before the self-injection.
Anika: Yeah, I think that he is very particular about who… There is the Stamets that he projects to the crowd, which is very dismissive, and I don’t have time for you. But if he decides that you’re worthy of his attention or something, then…
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And that makes him sound horrible.
Liz: I was going to say, that doesn’t make him sound like not an asshole.
Anika: Yeah, he’s arrogant, but yeah. But he is very particular about who he lets see, who he really is, I think is fair to say. As you say, he was coming around to letting Michael in, and he honestly seems to like Tilly from the beginning.
Liz: Yeah, he’s not friendly to her, but he’s not as openly disrespectful as he is to others. I think in the time travel episode in season five of Discovery, where we revisit pre-mushroom Stamets, he’s straight up horrified by how rude he is to his staff and how they’re scared of him. I don’t think he was really a totally friendly, cool guy, but he certainly wasn’t as simplistic as he seemed on his first introduction.
Anika: You know, he’s a driven scientist and they don’t always have the most easy breezy social skills.
Liz: No, and you work in a university science department, so you probably have some experience with this, but a lot of really great minds have neglected the soft skills and get away with it because, oh, they’re a genius. They’re so smart. We need them.
Anika: Speaking of, let’s talk about Vulcans.
Liz: There is so much Vulcan on Vulcan bitchiness in this episode. It’s like, eyebrows at dawn, and we haven’t seen this much since basically Enterprise. It’s great, as a Vulcan fan.
Anika: Fun fact, I had started photocapping this episode, and I really only got through the Vulcan extremists until Sarek is injured. But I was like, oh man, I could see the screen caps in my head as I was watching the show. I thought, oh, it’s the Vulcan extremists. I got so excited because the logic extremists are hilarious to me. In Enterprise, too, all of the Vulcan nonsense, I enjoy it. My brother recently texted me saying that there are no nice Vulcans, and he thinks it’s a problem.
Liz: Okay, first of all, this is Tuvok erasure.
Anika: Yeah, I don’t know how much of Voyager my brother has seen. So yeah, I would agree. But he’s like, they’re always mean to Spock, and I thought it was because he was Spock, but then I realized that they’re just kind of always mean to everybody.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. I remember when season one of Discovery hit, people were really mad about the Vulcan extremists, and they’re like, they’re ruining the Vulcans. But this thread was explored with Enterprise, but it actually started in late TNG, where we encounter a Vulcan terrorist who was posing as a Romulan.
Anika: Yeah, you’re right. Robin Curtis.
Liz: Yeah. So none of this is new to Discovery, none of this is new to Star Trek. Once again, Discovery is not single-handedly destroying Gene Roddenberry’s vision.
Anika: But also, yes, my brother might have a point that we need to see the softer side of Vulcan sometimes. Yes, to your point, Tuvok sort of fits that, partly. But also, having people who are logic extremists also expand the Vulcan lore, right?
Liz: It tells us a lot about their society, not necessarily anything good.
Anika: I love the idea of the Vulcan alt-right. No one is a monolith. The Vulcans really want us to believe that they’re a monolith, but that’s nonsense. That’s not how people work. And it’s not how Vulcans work. People are like, oh, but they’re Vulcans. They’re not humans. You can’t like judge them through humanity, to which I say, first of all, they don’t exist, so yes, I can. But second of all, it’s not logical to believe that all people would be the same. I am strongly opposed to biological determinism because it’s wrong, but also because it doesn’t make sense as a psychological, scientific way of looking at the world. That doesn’t make sense. If there is difference in individuals, then there would be difference within groups.
Liz: This season is really about who were the Klingons and who did the Klingons want to be, and who was the Federation and who does the Federation want to be. And it makes sense to also explore some of that with divisions within Vulcan society as well. I think that’s really smart.
Anika: Yes. So, there’s the logic extremists, who take it to terrorist levels. And then there’s the terrible people in charge of the Vulcan exploratory something.
Liz: Who are just regular old bigots.
Anika: Yes. I wrote out the campaign against Sarek’s children, the campaign against Sarek’s experiments, right? And so I initially had struck the word experiments and left the word children. The campaign against Sarek’s, you know, ha ha ha experiments, but in reality children. But then I watched the show, they literally use the word experiments. And so I switched it to crossing out children and putting in experiments because of that is how at least the mainstream Vulcans of the Vulcan Academy see Michael and Spock, both of them. As not quite Vulcan. And therefore lesser, therefore inferior.
So, yeah, the logic extremists take it to a we’re gonna murder you level, but these guys aren’t actually any better. I guess they are better because they’re not murdering people, but they’re not a healthy society. And it is the tragedy of Sarek that he chooses Spock, who never wanted to be in there anyway in the first place. And honestly would be terrible at it.
Liz: We see how the Vulcan Expeditionary Force treats T’Pol. And it’s like, why do you want to be in this horrible organization? Even allowing for the probability of cultural change over the ensuing century. They don’t even believe in time travel.
Anika: Spock never belonged there. Because Spock, the reality of Spock is he doesn’t actually want to be a Vulcan Vulcan, he just thinks he’s supposed to be. Whereas Michael thinks she’s not supposed to be, but kind of does want to be one, at least when we see her there. Again, the way she acts at the beginning of this episode. This is the better version of me, right? Is the Vulcan version of me.
Liz: Yeah, which, honey, you don’t have to believe that, but okay.
Anika: Yeah, I’m not saying she’s right, but I’m saying that’s what she believes in. So she would be a better choice for trying to be as Vulcan as possible than Spock, who even when he’s trying to be as Vulcan as possible, isn’t any good at it and doesn’t actually want it, and straight up leaves. More than once, that’s what happens. It’s so sad that Sarek went with the Vulcan extremists and the logic extremists and picked the biological determinism of, this one is my actual son and so I will choose him. It’s so good. So terrible.
Liz: They still target him for assassination anyway, because there is no compromising with bigots.
Anika: Sarek is a tragic figure. He does it all himself, which I guess is what makes him truly a tragic hero. It’s all his fault. I love this.
I didn’t put this in the document, but I’m glad that I remembered to say it. We talk about prequels and prequel traps a lot. And I think that this storyline of showing Sarek making the choice to allow Spock the path that we know Spock doesn’t choose is a really good illustration of what prequels can do. It adds to Spock’s and Sarek’s story. It doesn’t take anything away from them. It does provide an explanation, but it doesn’t provide an explanation that we didn’t need.
Liz: It adds more nuance. It doesn’t contradict anything.
Anika: Yeah, that’s what it is. It doesn’t contradict it. It just adds new context.
Liz: And it tells us something new about Spock after 60 years, or 50 years, as it was then.
Anika: Exactly. Which is amazing. I just think that this is such a good – because I love, I’ve said, I love prequels. I love the prequels. I think that they can expand the story if they’re done with intention and with care. And it’s not about solving a problem. I think that when people are like, “We don’t know where Han got his name. That’s a problem.” It’s like, no, it isn’t.
Liz: That was never a problem.
Anika: You’re making up a problem so that you could make up a solution. But when you’re saying, this is an interesting storyline. And what if this also happened? And you’re adding to the tapestry instead of trying to explain part of it that already exists.
Liz: Speaking of how Han got his name, I just want to put in a plug for the podcast Going Rogue, which started as a deep dive into the production and writing of Rogue One, and then had a three-episode miniseries on Solo. And it’s absolutely fascinating. The presenter, writer, everything, is an Australian critic, so she has a great accent. So nice to hear about this stuff being talked about by someone with a real accent. But just the level of research is really thoughtful.
And she straight up says she doesn’t like Solo as a movie, but her criticisms of it are really reasonable and cogent. And she points out that, for example, Han never loses anything that he really valued. He doesn’t get the girl, but we know there’s a better girl for him out there. He doesn’t change. And yeah, we didn’t need to know how he got his name. That’s just trivia. It’s like you said last week, it’s history book stuff.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And so the trick with any prequel is to ask yourself, is this a story or is it an entry on a Wikipedia page?
Anika: I’m going to say something crazy for me.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That I enjoy Solo. Mainly because I love Qi’ra.
Liz: You should absolutely listen to this podcast just for its deep dive into how Qi’ra was failed.
Anika: Oh, yes. Oh my God. I’m going to go add it to my queue immediately. But I think that if it was not a Star Wars movie, that Solo as a movie is more fun than Solo as a Star Wars movie.
Liz: Yeah. Because also, this is the other problem with prequels. People already have their own ideas about Han Solo. One of the reasons Rogue One is successful, Andor is successful, is that we don’t really know anything about those characters. These guys are all new to us.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And that’s why Discovery is most effective when it is about Michael and her journey.
Liz: And Strange New Worlds is about characters we already know and that we’ve already thought about and doesn’t say anything interesting about them.
Anika: Yeah. I mean, so this is the thing. Strange New Worlds, it really hurts me because season one was fine. I was like, okay, fun, right? Whatever. I had some problems with some things. I enjoyed some other things, whatever. I really liked season two. I enjoyed season two of Strange New Worlds. Pike was in it less.
Liz: Nothing but support for giving Anson Mount paternity leave.
Anika: I liked what they were doing with Spock. I liked what they were doing with Chapel. I felt like they were adding to their story without taking anything away. I thought that they were going in a good direction and I enjoyed it. Then season three was a slap in the face. It was like everything you liked about that, we’re going to take away. We’re going to make it bad and then we’re going to ramp up everything you disliked. Here’s your Star Trek. I was just like, wow. It’s interesting to me as it’s like the three different kinds of prequels in three seasons. It’s like the ‘whatever it’s fine,’ the ‘oh, this is good,’ and the ‘I didn’t need to know any of that.’ That’s what we got.
Liz: Strange New Worlds has become Solo.
Anika: It was very interesting. It’s like, wow, I have very low expectations for season four. Maybe it will surprise me.
Liz: There’s a puppet episode, Anika.
Anika: Maybe it will be like one of those odd and even type of things. Is it time for Anika’s Wonderland Corner?
Liz: Please!
Anika: So I waxed rhapsodically about L’Rell being dressed as a pawn and how she was going to be a queen by the end of the year, and also that she is para-L’Rell-ed with Michael. So, the Vulcan school scene, which I don’t know, is it graduation day? And then they get assignments, or something? That’s what’s going on there. But that open garden of Versailles type of place that they exist in, right?
Liz: Presumably somewhere in Toronto.
Anika: Their pretty little court is totally a chessboard. Literally all of the Vulcans, but especially the young ones who are graduating are dressed as chess pieces. Like, they have that ridiculous collar. Even, you know, Sarek in his judo robes that they’re all in. They’re all in these robes, right? Vaguely Japanese, but not. The young ones all have the high collars that make them look even more like chess pieces.
And they’re all in white and they’re all in neutral colors. Everyone in there is in a neutral color. But honestly, there’s a lot of white. There’s a lot of … it’s not red, but it’s in the red family. There’s not a lot of black, which is fun. And then there’s the neutrals like Sarek. So it’s a chessboard. There’s a whole bunch of pawns on it. And they’re all being literally moved around by their elders.
And Michael is, again, all in white with the collar. She’s literally a pawn. And then there’s Amanda, also all in white, but wearing a tiara because she’s Amanda. And that’s what Amanda does because she’s a boss. But she is literally the white queen. She gives the book in this scene, Alice in Wonderland, she gives it to Michael and she tells her to always remember that she’s human, which is an impossible thing. Because humans are impossible, according to Vulcans. So it’s really smart. Alice is literally all over this. And then Sarek says, this is dialogue, straight from the subtitles, “You ask me to make an impossible choice.”
Liz: Oh my god.
Anika: Amanda, the White Queen, would say, I can make six of those before breakfast. But Sarek, the Vulcan, cannot. And I love that for them.
Liz: No, it’s so good.
Anika: Beautiful use of that text. I’m now convinced that every episode is going to have some kind of nod to it. And you also point out that last week’s episode ended with a reflection, and so does this one. And that is, you know, again, we’ve discussed how through the looking glass, that’s where they go, right? They go into the mirror universe, which is literally through the looking glass. So it’s all related. And I again, I just, this season, and the people that built it, my hat’s off to them.
Liz: I can easily picture a scenario where they just picked Alice in Wonderland out of a hat as a text that most people would know and then maybe read the Wikipedia page or something to refresh themselves.
Liz: But no, someone sat down and read the book.
Anika: Right. I legitimately feel like someone was either already well-versed in this or as you say, they went to the text and they’re like, we’re going to use this. You know how The Greatest Trek just did “Space Seed”, right? And they were talking about Paradise Lost. And at the end, they’re like, they couldn’t have possibly known that in Star Trek 2, this would all come back and it would be really important. And it’s like, no, they didn’t know, but someone cared. And someone said, oh, they’re talking about Paradise Lost. Let’s read that book and make this movie all about it. You know?
So it’s the same thing. It’s like, they cared to not just use it as a throwaway. We’re gonna talk about how being a human and a Vulcan is like being lost in Wonderland, which, you know, on its, if that was all they did, that would be a good metaphor. It’s all, that’s fine that way. But they took it to the next level and said, we know we’re actually gonna make this make sense. We’re gonna care about it. And so the mushrooms matter. The mirrors matter. All of these little pieces. And that just makes me love it more because now I can say: oh, someone made a vision board about Alice in Wonderland and then took that and put it into the Star Trek story that they wanted to tell.
Liz: The other thing is, and I don’t want to make this a Liz Complains About Strange New Worlds‘s podcast again, but the trailer came out for the next season just recently.
Liz: And then La Girafe has pointed out that it opens with a quote from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was a eugenicist and a big believer in quote unquote scientific racism. And now there’s a lot of debate. When a quote like this is used in media, do we really expect the writers to be aware of all of this context?
And I kind of think that, yes, Star Trek itself, through Discovery, has demonstrated that they can be and they can use it effectively. And even, you know, I saw someone going, well, Lewis Carroll may have been a pedophile, so does that mean that Discovery using Alice in Wonderland is endorsing pedophilia? And first of all, there’s a big question mark over Carroll’s relationship with children, and he could have just been a weird little guy. But also, there is the subtext of Lorca’s inappropriate pursuit of Michael. And the word grooming is used, which I’m going to rant about when the time comes. But yeah, that is something that they were obviously conscious of.
Anika: Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m not going to get into Lewis Carroll as a person, because I honestly don’t think we can know.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: There’s a lot of evidence for both sides. And I don’t think we can look at something happening in Victorian times through the lens of 2026. An anthropologist should do that, not me.
Liz: Whereas I think Burroughs’ scientific racism and eugenicism was intrinsic to his work and can’t really be separated from it, which is why he’s such a problematic choice for a Star Trek.
Anika: And I think that my issue is if they hadn’t done the horrible Vulcan episode.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: If there weren’t already things that were problematic, in that lane of problematic, that I was already upset about, I wouldn’t… It would go over my… I would be like, whatever. Like, they chose it for the adventure spirit or whatever, right?
Liz: Yeah, that’s fair.
Anika: But because I’m already… I had a full-on conversation with a biologist about the biological determinism of Strange New Worlds and how much it bothered me. That’s why it bothers me. I don’t think that it is… Like, we just said that everything… All use of Alice in Wonderland in Star Trek: Discovery is intentional. So why wouldn’t it be intentional there? You know what I mean? That’s where I’m at. don’t believe that they didn’t intend it because they already did this other thing that bothers me.
Liz: Yeah, and I had no problem calling out Star Trek: Picard for citing Asimov, even though Asimov is arguably much more relevant to season one of Star Trek: Picard than Edgar Rice Burroughs is hopefully to season four of Strange New Worlds.
Anika: Right. I have not even watched that preview.
Liz: No, me neither.
Anika: I’m going to watch it. I’m going to talk about it with you. I would love to be pleasantly surprised. Just, season three left a bad taste in my mouth and specifically in this particular realm. Anyway, is it time for shipping news?
Liz: Here is a thing, I was mildly interested in Kat, and I was very interested in Lorca for Jason Isaac’s reasons, which I think is cool. We all know why we’re here. But I have this thing where I become more interested in a character when someone deeply cares about them. And in this case, Kat’s care for Lorca made me more interested in his character, but it also made me more interested in hers because in some way, it was obviously reciprocated.
And that turns out to be a lie, but it also meant a lot to me that we had a female character who was a woman in a position of authority who was allowed to have casual sex with a friend and she didn’t die, she wasn’t punished for it, she was captured by Klingons. And that really meant a lot to me. And it’s kind of funny because the original intent for her character was that she was going to die at the end of this episode. Jayne Brook was not originally cast in the role. And I think if they had not recast her, she would be another dead woman in this show. And I would not be here today, probably.
Anika: I know, right? Can you imagine? Like, if I had lost Kat at this point, I do not… That’s an alternate universe I don’t want to live in. And considering the universe I do live in, that’s saying a lot. But I am obsessed with Kat and Lorca. I love them so much. I have so many… I have this fic where each chapter is a different version of Kat and Gabriel meeting.
Liz: Oh, I remember that one.
Anika: I just want to think about all of the different ways it could happen. I love them. I love everything about them. She is not only his peer, she’s actually a few years older. They’re peers in so many different ways. They’ve known each other for so long. She cares about him so deeply. And you know, you can call that whatever version of love you want. I don’t care what terms you use to describe their relationship, but it is clearly important to her. Like, even if he’s right and she was using going to bed with him to like try to figure out what was going on with him, she did that out of a need to know that he was okay.
Liz: Yeah, and it feels like a facet of their relationship that is not new to it. Like, you get the impression that they haven’t been intimate for a while, probably since she got to a point where she outranked him, but there is that trust that should be there and she’s looking for it.
And the scene, there were two moments where I became obsessed with her character. One is the bit where he’s dozing because he’s had an orgasm and she’s lying awake like, what the fuck just happened? She’s looking at his scars and the camera follows her hand. I was struck by the shape of Jayne Brook’s hand and the veins on it. This is not the hand of a woman who’s pretending to be younger than she is. And so that really interested me.
And then at the end, when she’s captured, her expression is resignation without fear. Like, shit is going to happen and it’s going to be terrible. She’s apprehensive, but she’s not terrified. And I was like, I love you and I can’t stop thinking about you. Literally, I went to bed that night and I lay awake, unable to sleep because I was so excited about this character, who was not the main character, who was not an important character, but suddenly she was part of a story. And it was so exciting to me.
Anika: I was … okay. So I was obviously dancing in the streets about the fact that I was correct that they were exes. I was so happy that I read that correctly because I, you know me, I add relationships to everything. I’m like, I’ll ship that and I’ll ship that and I’ll ship that. And I’ll ship that. That is what I do. And it very seldom works out for me in that it’s real, right?
Liz: We make a lot of stuff up.
Anika: That doesn’t happen to me. And so the fact that I understood it and it was true, I felt this legitimate sense of rightness, you know? I was like, oh my gosh. And then, they’re so cute. The Perseids, I will never be over the Perseids. Like, literally watching falling stars together is the cutest thing that any silly little Star Trek people would do. I can’t handle that.
The fact that she takes off, like you said, they haven’t been intimate since she outranked him, which I absolutely agree because Kat is very rules-driven for a lot of it. And when she takes off her rank insignia and puts it down, and I was just like, I will follow you anywhere. That is so powerful. It’s just this amazing, I am making this choice. I am specifically saying that this is not a rank thing. This is not a Starfleet thing. This is a personal thing. This is separate.
But then there’s this added layer of what are her motivations? What are her intentions? What is she actually trying to do? Is she charmed by him or is she playing along with being charmed by him so that she gets more intel? There’s so many layers. It’s like, we know what he’s doing, but she could be doing anything.
Liz: And she’s such a compartmentalized person. And as you say, she’s very rules-driven, but sleeping with him is against the rules. And not removing him from command right away is a misjudgement on her part that has devastating consequences. So it’s like, yes, she’s a woman in charge and everything, but she’s also, she’s making a mistake. And maybe this is the defining mistake of her character. This is the reason those rules exist.
Anika: It’s right there in front of us. It’s like, oh my gosh. Not only are you doing the wrong thing, but you’re proving why it’s the wrong thing. It’s just amazing story telling.
Liz: She’s doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. It’s so good.
Anika: It’s so good.
Anika: And I just love them.
Liz: Yeah. And I do think that if they had not recast and if they had not had an actress who is friends with the producers, and the original actress cast was Wendy Crewson, who we see opposite Jason Isaacs in Good Sam, and she is a much more, I think, sexy ball buster is kind of the trope that she seems to go with. And I think that would have been a reasonable take for Kat. But Jayne Brook plays her much softer and more softly spoken, and she carries her authority very lightly, which is really interesting.
And then had she died at the end of this episode, it really would have been a woman gets punished for having ill-considered sex scenario. And instead, she doesn’t come out completely unscathed, but she lives for another season.
Anika: And so, like legitimately, this was the character that brought me back into Star Trek. Obviously, I was watching Star Trek: Discovery. I was enjoying Star Trek: Discovery. I loved all the Alice in Wonderland stuff. I loved Michael Burnham from jump. But Katrina Cornwell was the one that I sat up and went, oh, this is-
Liz: Oh, you’re mine.
Anika: Exactly. That you are why I, I needed it. Star Trek has always been this thing for me where I needed Beverly Crusher when I was a small motherless child. And I needed Janeway and Seven when I was a teen and a young adult trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with life. And I needed Katrina Cornwell when I was a middle-aged woman trying to live in this world. You know, by myself and figure out what matters and what I didn’t have any flex to give. I just glommed on to her and I just loved her so much. She was like just enough older than me to be a mentor figure, right? And a map. I always said that Seven and Nine was my map. And then I got her back. I’ve said this in Picard too, but Katrina was exactly what she did when she showed up.
Liz: For me, it’s that she’s old enough to have a past and young enough to have a future. And that meant so much to me and still does.
Anika: That’s a really good way of putting it. And yes, it means it’s so… I made friends because of this character. I started the magical Discord and the Tumblr and I actively sought out other people who understood. And there was so many… When we weren’t sure that she was alive.
Liz: Oh my god.
Anika: And I got all these mess… I wrote on Tumblr how I was feeling and how… I was crying in my kitchen about it. Because it was such… You have to flash back to 2017. It wasn’t a great time, guys. And then, you know, that happened. And I was just like… I cried and then I picked myself up and I got off the floor and I moved on with my life. Because that’s what Kat would want me to do, you know, kind of things. And then I got like these multiple messages from people who were like, yeah, same. And it just felt like we were all living in this moment and we all needed this thing where it was like, we didn’t have this in Star Trek before.
Liz: And for me, it had been a long time since a new character had come across that I was obsessed with like this. And you know, there’s the first flush of a new obsession with a fictional character. I thought maybe I was just too old to feel that anymore. And it turned out I wasn’t. That was such a great gift. And now I would like to feel it again, please, because they blew her up. I’m still mad about it.
And the other thing is, like, we eventually learn that the sex that happens in this episode was a rape. It was a form of rape. She would not have consented to sleeping with Lorca if she had known who he was. And she is eventually allowed to be angry about that and to respond to that. Not as much as I would have liked, but again, she’s not a main character.
But also, Jayne Brook knew all along. Some of the cast were deceived about Lorca, but Jayne Brook was not one of them. And I do think that’s important. And it felt like for all the missteps around L’Rell and stuff, this was a Star Trek that understood consent.
Anika: Yeah. It’s devastating really, because they’re, you know, first they’re like fighting and then he’s like, okay, let’s take this to my quarters if you want to. If you’re here because you’re my friend, let’s go be friends. And then it became flirty and then it became full on, let’s do this thing. And then she was contemplative and then it was like literally a crime. It was all of a sudden really scary.
Liz: He puts his hands on her throat. I got into a fight with someone on Tumblr in 2017 about this and she was like, oh, but he touches her face afterwards. It’s so romantic. And I’m like, no, that is him signaling that he still has access to her throat. This is really dangerous.
Anika: The phaser, the strangling, the crazy eyes. And like honestly, the way he is for the rest of that scene is not romantic. It is really scary. But that was also interesting because they obviously had a relationship that was important to her and she had real feelings for him, and this was really scary. And that’s a good story to tell, too.
Liz: And she makes a mistake in not relieving him of command right away, but she hasn’t had time to process her own feelings of fear and betrayal and terror that her friend who she trusted has just treated her like this. It’s really well done. And I love that we never see them kiss. And through their whole flirting scene and afterwards, Jason Isaacs is not sexy. He is flushed. He is panicked. He doesn’t look like a man in control. And there is nothing suave about him. I really appreciate that.
Anika: Yeah. So he takes the alcohol out. It was like, hey, let’s take this somewhere else. And even that feels threatening instead of like, I’m inviting you for a drink. It’s more, he really seems like he’s so on the edge. He is desperately trying to control the situation.
Liz: Yeah. And I appreciate now how desperate he was because it wasn’t until I rewatched it that I saw how close she got. To him, it probably felt like she was figuring out who he was.
Anika: I mean, it’s like, oh my gosh. So I wrote down, let’s see, that’s one, two, three, four, five, six different times she says something along the lines of, you’re not who you were, you’re not who I know. You’re a different person. She just straight up says it.
Liz: She says, “The truth is, you are not the man I used to know. I hate that I can’t tell if this is really you.” It’s so good.
Anika: I’m just like, oh my God. I started writing them down and I was like, I’m crying about this because I love this episode. I love that scene. I love everything about it. I love their relationships so much. I was so invested and it is so upsetting when you add the extra layer of truth to it.
Liz: It’s so good. And yeah, it’s just really well executed. And then I guess we have to talk about Lorca/Ash, which is also well executed, but there’s no intention behind it. I assume they just have a lot of really homoerotic laser tag. I am sorry.
Anika: I mentioned it like this scene where they were playing laser tag together is just like dripping with sexual tension.
Liz: I’m just like, I don’t understand you guys.
Anika: Ash has this whole thing where he pretends that he’s not as good, that he didn’t beat Lorca and it’s just, it’s, oh my God. You can see Voq in that moment. And there’s just so many layers of that, but it’s also just super distracting because I’m sitting here like Tilly is sexualizing Ash. Michael and Ash are clearly supposed to be a thing that we’re like vibing on, right? But I’m sitting here going, okay, but his actual chemistry is with Lorca, you guys. Yes, they’re cute over here. That’s cute and much more healthy, but this laser tag over here is sexy as hell.
Liz: I think we have to contemplate the reality that Shazad Latif has chemistry with everyone. He’s just one of those guys and that’s okay. And isn’t that a gift? Isn’t it great that we’ve got to appreciate that?
Anika: Yeah, I have to say… So I was doing my Pixie ships and people were like, you know, what do you think of… There was like Lorca, Kat and Ash, and I was like, yes. And so I had a whole scenario for that. And then it was like Lorca, Michael and Ash, and I was like, yes, let me explain how that would work over here. You know, and so any of these, like any of this, any variation on these different people together is just, yes, just add Ash to everything. It’s fine. It’s good. We like it.
Liz: Friend of the podcast, Jules has talked about how Star Trek stopped being horny when Jason Isaacs left. And that’s true, but it wasn’t just Jason Isaacs. It was Shazad Latif out here having chemistry with literally everyone.
Anika: Yes, Shazad Latif just has chemistry with everyone. Tilly is right. He is ridiculously charming. He has everything going for him. I adore him.
Liz: I don’t even mind that he’s a Klingon.
Anika: Everything is perfect about Ash. I just love him so much, but I don’t care. I don’t care who he ends up with. It will be hot and amazing, but also he’s cute with Michael. They’re going to get cuter and cuter. It’s going to be very sweet. And I do like that he immediately has a vibe with Michael. He’s immediately like, oh, you’re the one. Tilly is straight up, like I said, sexualizing him, but he’s like, you’re nice.
Liz: And I like that this doesn’t become a rivalry between Tilly, that the second Tilly realizes Michael’s interest is serious, she backs off. I think her interest persists into the next episode, but she doesn’t treat it seriously because she sees that Michael is down bad. Like, she’s a girl’s girl.
Anika: It’s so good. They’re all so wonderful. I love them all. So yeah, cool beans.
Liz: And then we have Tilly and Michael, again, don’t really ship it, but they have great interaction. Sarek and Amanda get to be sort of flirty with each other, but also Sarek is busy being terrible elsewhere.
Anika: Okay. So we know that canonically, Sarek never told Michael any of this, even though, God, Sarek, you’re just the worst. So obviously he definitely never told Amanda either.
Liz: Oh no, she would not have stood for that. Amanda puts up with a lot, but I feel like she would not tolerate this choice.
Anika: I’m just like, so do you think that he ever tells Amanda? Because at this point when Michael confronts him and is like, I know what you did, and I remember it all, so if you thought maybe that was just mind-meld nonsense, no. And so I wonder if he ever admits anything to Amanda after that point.
Liz: The thing is we know that she will put up with all sorts of bad behavior from him without calling him out. This is the situation with Spock. So I like to think that she would not put up with this behavior from Sarek, but I feel like she is absolutely an enabler.
Anika: She would.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. She would come up with a… It’s rough. I love them and I also am constantly like Amanda, girl.
Liz: She’s just not making good choices. And again, I would marry Sarek.
Anika: I love Sarek and I would excuse a lot as well. So, you know, whatever. It’s fine. However, real talk. Girl. Girl. Girl, sit down and think about your life.
Liz: Think about your children.
Anika: I mean, my God. Would Michael and Spock be better off if they were raised in a joint custody situation?
Liz: Yes. Absolutely. They can have weekends and holidays with Sarek. But also, this family should be living on Earth. Like, Sarek can live in the Vulcan Embassy or whatever.
Anika: Oh my god. Literally just that would have improved their lives so much
Liz: Send these kids to a school on Earth and they can have after school logic lessons to learn about their Vulcan heritage and blah, blah, blah. But, yeah. I mean, really, the problem with Spock is that he’s a third culture kid invented in a time before multiculturalism was invented.
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 some transcripts of our episodes. I will say that I listen to podcasts on Apple podcasts, and their transcription has become really good. So, if you ever want to read, rather than listen to our podcast, legitimately, Apple podcasts does it well.
Liz: Yeah. I did start working on transcripts again. It’s just really fiddly because I’m a pedantic asshole.
Anika: Whereas I am perfectly… this is fine. This is close enough. It’s good. But it’s pretty close.
Liz: It’s pretty close. I just want to go in and fix the commas, you know?
Anika: Well, as you know, I don’t write with punctuation in my first few drafts.
Liz: Yeah. I need to try that. I just don’t think I can.
Anika: You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram and Blue Sky, all at antimatterpod and on Mastodon and antimatterpod@tenforward.social. If you like us, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you consume your podcasts other than Spotify and at the moment YouTube, but coming soon. The more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us and tell your friends.
Join us next week when we’ll be discussing the next episode of Star Trek: Discovery season one, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”. Get ready for my opinions.
Liz: It’s going to be something.
Anika: I apologize in advance. Maybe my Alice in Wonderland thing will make me like it more.