The Enterprise goes back in time and doesn’t prevent a genocide, but Anika and Liz would like to go back in time to prevent this episode from ever being made. Oh, did the fourth season premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds displease us? It sure did!
“Don’t overthink it!”
- This episode provides more evidence for our argument that Pike is bad at his job
- Words we use to describe this episode: “nonsense”, “dreadful”, “terrible”, “morally broken”, “anti Star Trek“, “almost clever”
- Why does SNW want us to hate La’an?
- Leaning into the biological determinism with this Kha’an arc
- The Martians and Spock are totally incurious about each other, because this is The Least Curious Star Trek
- “Let’s not worry too much about that genocide we facilitated” is … not a great twist in 2026. Or ever.
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: Strange New Worlds, Season 4, Episode 1, “Valles Marineris.”
Anika: It sounds like a pasta dish to me.
Liz: Yeah, it sounds tasty.
Anika: I know it’s a real thing that’s really on Mars, but it sounds like a pasta dish.
Liz: If I knew anything about Martian geography, it would have been a huge spoiler, that title. But luckily, I don’t. I am an ignoramus. Though I think I’m still overall in a better position than the writers of this episode.
Before we get into that, I do have a personal announcement. I have some good news. Early this year, I made a commitment to the listeners of this podcast that I was going to buy a new desk chair. And now I have. I’m sitting in it right now, and it doesn’t make a weird thunk, thunk sound whenever I shift my weight.
Anika: Hooray! So comfortable.
Liz: It really is. It still creaks a little, but I think that’s just a fact of living in a physical body, which I have been trying to get out of, but I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter.
Anika: I have not purchased a new laptop yet. Sorry.
Liz: Oh, please. Don’t worry yourself on my account.
Let’s talk about people who are dealing with their emotional problems by making everyone else suffer. Welcome to the stage, worst captain in Starfleet, Christopher Pike.
Anika: The fact that throughout this episode, the crew are feeling overworked and under-appreciated, and they’re like, “We have to leave the room before he realizes that he gave us a night off” is pretty damning, I have to say.
Liz: I just don’t want crunch culture to come to Starfleet, and I think the fact that he’s doing this so that he doesn’t have to deal with his own emotional problems makes it worse. There’s no greater cause here. Do what you did at the end of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, and go take six months off to ride horses and grow a beard of manly sadness.
Anika: Yeah, it’s rough. I guess people were like, that was the wrong track that time, and so now he’s doing something else, but it’s like, no, Chris, the point is that you’re supposed to deal with what you’re dealing with.
Liz: They’re not even getting weekends.
Anika: Not try to escape it in some way.
Liz: The Enterprise crew need to unionize against their captain. Except La’an, because she’s a cop. Cops are not workers.
Anika: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is rough. Everything is very rough. Okay. Spoiler alert, everyone. I hate this episode. I was really looking forward to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 reminding me why I like the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek. And we are zero for one at the moment.
Liz: We open with the horses and the cowboys. And I was like, okay, this is nonsense, but we’re playing to Anson Mount’s strengths. He wants to be a cowboy.
Anika: I will say it’s early in the episode, but I was rewatching this because I hate myself.
Liz: And I love that for you.
Anika: Dear listeners, I rewatched this episode in order to be coherent and have a good outline and to have good arguments for what was and was not… This is not just vibes. I interacted with the text.
Liz: And you watched your screener a couple of weeks ago, and you’re a very polite person. You use expletives very judiciously. Listeners, Anika sent me a DM and it just said, “Wow, fuck this show.”
And so I went in thinking, well, I didn’t have high expectations to start with. And then Anika lowered them. And then I, a person who swears quite a lot, messaged her halfway through my screener going, “Anika, this is dreadful.”
Anika: But so, 10 minutes into my rewatch, I sent the message that “this is inconsequential, but Anson Mount’s hair is so ridiculous.” It is distractingly ridiculous. It is now two-toned waves. It’s not just high and stiff and strange, but it’s literally, they’re trying to sculpt it into some kind of art project. And normally I would approve of that, but it’s really distracting.
Liz: It’s distracting and it simply looks sticky. There’s a texture thing happening here that I find … yeah. Hologram Janeway in Prodigy – sometimes I think about cosplaying her, and I think, to do her hair, I would try to sculpt hair out of foam rather than doing anything with real hair or a wig or anything. And that’s what Pike’s hair looks like here. It looks computer-generated.
Anika: Yes. Again, inconsequential to my negativity, but it is also there.
Liz: It is distracting, and I think it’s a sign of how much Strange New Worlds has lent into self-parody.
Anika: Right.
Liz: It simply isn’t able to tell a story that stands alone. We need all these gimmicks like cowboys and dinosaurs, and La’an punches a pterodactyl, and Pike’s hair is Pike’s hairing harder than ever. It’s just trying really hard with very little to say, and what it does have to say is toxic.
Anika: It’s almost like the production team are on this, ‘we really have to make all the visuals so distracting that you don’t notice what the actual plot was or what’s happening.’ And I’m an optimist, and so I am hopeful that this is going somewhere and that the end of this series is going to be some kind of treatise on how all of this was building up to them realizing the errors of their ways.
Liz: I don’t feel terribly optimistic on that front, I have to say.
Anika: Okay, so yeah, so I don’t want to just go through this scene by scene, we don’t do that anyway, but it’s just, I’m going to skip around a lot because it’s all infuriating. The plot is that the Enterprise is ordered to go look at a pretty part of space, they can’t help themselves from touching the fire.
Liz: We look with our sensors, guys.
Anika: And they’re sucked back in time 65 million years.
Liz: Billion, it’s a billion years.
Anika: Excuse me, 65 billion years. And also back to Earth space for reasons.
Liz: The reason is that America, I mean Earth, I mean America, is the most important.
Anika: It’s definitely America. You can’t do cowboys—
Liz: No.
Anika: —And not be a metaphor for America, I’m sorry. Okay, so they end up back in our solar system and they need to get iridium, and they find a crashed ship has some iridium on the third planet. And so they send an away team to get the iridium from the third planet. Guess what? It’s Earth. And—
Liz: Surprise!
Anika: Meanwhile, the ship is taken into custody by a superior race, except they don’t have warp. They’re a non-warp capable superior race.
Liz: I’m sorry. Insert my rant again about how the Prime Directive is bad. And particularly the Strange New Worlds version of the Prime Directive is incoherent.
Anika: Because this is Star Trek, instead of fighting with them, they invite them onto the ship to negotiate and trade backstories so they can work together and stop them, get their ship back, and it’ll be fine. Everything’s great. A
nd that’s when they find out that they’re in the past, and these are past spacefarers who don’t know what a Federation is. Anyway, long story short, they’re Martians and they’re at war with the fifth planet of the solar system, which is populated by insects, and they blow them up using future technology stolen from the Enterprise. And that fixes our time stream. Yay.
Liz: You’ve forgotten two key details. One is that the Martians look like Vulcans and it’s hinted that Vulcan was settled by refugees from Mars, which-
Anika: That’s a whole bullet point. We’re going to talk about the Vulcan. Oh, good. So I didn’t forget, I was just holding it.
Liz: Oh, I’m so sorry to jump on that point. The other point is that the leader of the Martians is an older woman in command played by Saffron Burrows. And I love her. She’s great.
Anika: She-
Liz: I don’t want to say she does nothing wrong ever in her entire life, because she does kind of do a genocide.
Anika: Committed genocide. You’re tight.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. I’m here to say she has my full support. Naturally, she dies.
Anika: Saffron Burrows is actually amazing in this role.
Liz: She is so good.
Anika: I just want to say, it’s really well done.
Liz: I remember she turned up in the 90s, and she was doing a lot of British rom-coms and trashy, low-budget American action movies. And I never really got a handle on her as an actor. But God, she does good work there. I’m suddenly like, I want to go back and watch Wing Commander. How is it that she has never been in Doctor Who? Yeah.
Anika: Yes. So because this plot is actually terrible, it doesn’t make any sense on a historic level. It doesn’t make any sense on an anthropological level. And it definitely doesn’t make any sense on a scientific level.
Liz: No, it doesn’t even work on the level of Star Trek stuff that we already know about.
Anika: But it’s also just so morally broken. Because the excuse of ‘this terrible thing has already happened, and therefore we don’t have to do anything to stop it from happening’ … it’s so nihilistic and just surrendering before you try. It feels like they’re stuck in a depression, like they’ve become the worst version of themselves because they can’t imagine something better.
Liz: It feels like anti-Star Trek in that sense. And you know how Starfleet Academy is like, we’re a product of the 2020s, and we’re fighting as hard as we can against the nihilism of the 2020s? Strange New Worlds is like, we can have a little nihilism as a treat. Admiral April straight up says, don’t overthink it. And if that is not the defining phrase of this entire series, I don’t know what is.
Anika: It really is. Which brings us back to our distractions. I want to talk about all about our distractions, and then we can really go in on how horrible the twist is.
Liz: Yeah. But also, there’s a La’an subplot, and it’s probably the arc for the season. Don’t worry, we hate that too.
Anika: So we’ve already discussed the horses, and how it starts with this whole, ‘back to what you loved about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike on a horse, and this time, he’s got his friends with him,’ and it’s straight out of Young Guns. It’s great, everybody. We love it. And fine. Again, if that was the worst thing, in this episode, I’d be fine with it.
But I do have to mention that La’an apparently won the day by her drinking someone under the table again. And I just want to put it out there. I don’t actually think that is a great diplomatic … I don’t think that’s diplomacy, exactly. And I don’t think we should be leaning on it as our plan for having contact with other cultures. Just a thought.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, because Spock did it back in “Broken Circle,” it’s come up a few times. I feel like it’s possible that, I don’t want to say it’s the writers of Strange New Worlds, because a lot of them also worked on Starfleet Academy and did fine work. But I’m going to say Akiva Goldsman doesn’t really understand what diplomacy is or how it works.
Anika: It’s just strange. When it was one person on their own, like you said in “Broken Circle,” where both La’an and Spock did this thing, it was a Marian in Temple — not Temple of Doom, Raiders of the Lost Ark, fun character trait, right?
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Because it was one person trying to get information out of the other side. In Spock’s case, it’s a little bit odd, but the Klingons are a known, ‘we’re still trying to figure them out’, and we know, because it’s a Star Trek, we know that Spock actually spends his entire life trying to figure out the Klingons and working with them, and against them, and through them. And so it’s sort of part of the Spock story.
Liz: And it’s also consistent with what we know of Klingons.
Anika: Right. I have no idea who these aliens are, what the purpose of the meeting. I have no, it could be anything. And the fact that it’s like, ha ha, La’an, our Chief of Security, why are you even on this away team? Fine. Our Chief of Security drank a guy under the table and it saved the day. It’s like, it’s no longer funny and clever and cute and a character trait. It’s like, no, that’s not diplomacy. Where’s Carol Freeman?
Liz: It also comes back to that sort of thing where Strange New Worlds has a really strange relationship with alcohol.
Anika: Right. I forgot about that. Oh my goodness.
Liz: Well, I remembered in the last scene in the bar with the cocktails and yeah. And I was like, oh yeah, this is the Star Trek for alcoholics.
Anika: So yeah, so it’s okay. The next thing that they try to distract us with is a brand new young female Vulcan. Oh, interesting. This is the third one. They all kind of look the same. I’m not saying I don’t like the new Vulcans. It’s just kind of funny to me that it’s like, everyone is doing the new Vulcan.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It’s a little bit like, okay, all right. It partly seems that they brought her in to be mean to Spock, because that is another thing that this show really loves to do, is pick on Spock. So, exciting that we have a new character to bully Spock.
Liz: That’s fun.
Anika: And apparently is going to also bully Uhura and bully Spock through Uhura, which is like layers.
Liz: Yeah. We’ve found so many ways to do workplace bullying.
Anika: And the end of the storyline is pretty obvious, and that she’s going to learn to be more human. That’s going to be great. Yeah. So, so fine.
Liz: And in the meantime, Uhura is still going to talk to her as if she’s a broken human, instead of meeting her where she is as a Vulcan. Because I just feel like, if you’re a communications officer and a linguist and you know how to talk to people, you don’t walk up to a Vulcan and say, how do you feel?
Anika: I mean, Uhura is young.
Liz: Yeah, but she’s supposed to be good at this.
Anika: And she is really sad. It’s a sad state of affairs. So anyway, there she is, New Vulcan. I’m glad you know her name.
Liz: I paused the credits to write it down.
Anika: Okay. So of course, Pelia is in this episode and Pelia is always fun. But now the Doctor Who stuff is becoming a distraction.
Liz: It’s a crutch.
Anika: A crutch, that’s a good word for it. Yeah. We seem to be going towards Pelia is a Time Lord and her ilk.
Liz: It’s just interesting to me because, I guess through a coincidence of timing, this is also coming at a point where Doctor Who had a run of mostly unsuccessful episodes that didn’t really do much to respond to the culture of today. And it’s just the franchise problem again.
Anika: So at this point, all of the Doctor Who mentions are actively turning me against Pelia, whom I love, who as you said was already sort of on a downward trajectory. And of course, the Strange New Worlds, which…
Liz: Yeah. It’s also that the writing for Pelia suffers in comparison to the writing for Nahle because we have learned so much about Lanthanites who were invented for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but we only learn about them as people through Starfleet Academy.
Anika: Right. And I know it’s a whole thing where the first pancake is a little funky and Pelia is that compared to Nahle, but also, it’s their fault that we’re comparing them.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: Just like it’s their fault that I’m comparing all the new Vulcans.
Liz: I mean, it’s also that Carol Kane is talented, and she can do heavier work even if that’s not what she’s best known for, and they just have her playing the same note over and over again.
Anika: Right. She’s in it too much for that to be the only thing she’s doing.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You either give us small bites, or you give her something more to do.
Liz: Yeah. It’s as if Garak appeared in most of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but the only thing he ever did was be a little bit creepy and never anything else.
Anika: Exactly. All right. So the next one, I’m just going to say is going to be one sentence, but because I’m me, I noticed Una has Rumi from KPop Demon Hunters hair in this episode and I approve.
Liz: It was nice hair.
Anika: So that was a distraction just for me. Now we get to the big two, the big two distractions. One that is literally colossal and one that is truly terrible. So we start with dinosaurs.
Liz: Dinosaurs.
Anika: You said you didn’t have a dinosaur phase when you were young.
Liz: I did not. I saw Jurassic Park as everyone of my age did, but I never really went through a stage — like, I was a Titanic kid, not a dinosaur kid.
Anika: Okay. I like that those are, I can see that there’s two sides.
Liz: They’re not mutually exclusive, but yeah.
Anika: I was very into dinosaurs. And so I too saw Jurassic Park. I don’t remember seeing the first one. I definitely saw it in theaters, but what I actually have the vividest memory of is the sequel, The Lost World. I went to that opening night, and it was a huge, big thing for me to go. And I love every Jurassic movie. I love them, which is to say, I’m so angry about these dinosaurs.
Liz: Yeah, it just feels cheap. And I don’t mean in terms of special effects, which are very good, although I feel like paleontologists are going to have a lot to say about using old ideas of what dinosaurs look like, instead of the current science. But it just felt narratively cheap.
Anika: It was incredibly narratively cheap. Because they introduced the before we learned it’s Earth. And I wanted it to be a cool reveal. They wanted it to be a cool reveal, I guess I should say.
Liz: And it was not.
Anika: This was not Jurassic Park. They didn’t know how to use the dinosaurs. They hid them until a big reveal, the way you do in Jurassic Park, but they didn’t do it correctly. They didn’t understand the majesty and beauty. Jurassic Park works because when you finally first see them, you have that big swelling music, and you have the humans seeing them first and then you pan to the dinosaurs. And they’re the nice dinosaurs who are just out drinking and eating and living their lives. And they’re all plant eaters.
In this case, they decided to have La’an shoot at them before anything. It is just, wow, they want me to hate La’an. It is no longer, we want you to be sad about the loss of her potential. They’re actively trying to make me dislike her.
Liz: Oh my gosh, La’an was my favorite character in season one and two. I liked Chapel, I liked Una, but La’an was my favorite and they have just absolutely destroyed everything that made her appealing. She has become the cop who bursts in and shoots the family dog.
Anika: Una’s like, why did she do that? Correct. And she’s like, oh, it’s stunned, it’s fine. Her subplot is apparently going to be she’s becoming more Khan-like, which is very in keeping with Strange New Worlds. And is, of course, where this was always heading. Of course, obviously, I feel stupid for ever thinking it could not end up here. However, it’s still bad and horrible and wrong, and a waste of potential and a lack of imagination.
Liz: Yeah, and I would also say a waste of Christina Chong’s talent, but honestly, I feel like she was phoning it in.
Anika: I mean, all she does in this episode is be the tough girl. She’s the tough girl, and then she’s got some cosplay kink going on with Spock. The only times that I cared about La’an as a person were her scenes with Christine Chapel, and when I say scenes, they literally exchanged too lines.
Liz: But those scenes are not weird mean girl backbiting, so … I think they may even pass the Bechdel test.
Anika: It was like I saw La’an struggling with her inner self, which again, I assume that is the whole point of all of this, but I only saw it in those moments. The rest of the time she, even when she punched the Velociraptor — and you said Pterodactyl. Pterodactyl is the flying one.
Liz: I was not a dinosaur child.
Anika: The Velociraptor, which also is weird to me that they give the Velociraptor’s feathers as sort of a bone to the people who care that dinosaurs are now understood to be very, as you said, very different from even the original Jurassic Park. Forget about my childhood. So who knows which one of it was supposed to be. And Rexy, who is always gonna be my fave.
Liz: Obviously.
Anika: Were straight up out of 90s, 70s, 50s, understanding of dinosaurs. And then the Velociraptors, who only became a thing thanks to Jurassic Park. No one knew that name before that movie.
Liz: No.
Anika: Are feathered and they have peacock color feathers. It’s interesting, but it’s weird that those are the only ones.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And then she punches one out and it’s like no, that’s not what you do with the Velociraptor. What are you doing?
Liz: No, they’re speedy little guys. It would bite your hand off.
Anika: Of all dinosaurs.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And again, we all know that because we all have seen those movies. Even the ones people hate, they have seen more than once.
Liz: I have only seen the first Jurassic Park, and I’ve seen it three or four times. But it’s a great movie. And what you were saying about how the reveal with the Brontosaurus and the swelling music and Laura Dern, freezing in place with wonder. It feels like this episode tried to hint at that when everyone is admiring the space storm, but it just felt so rote. It felt like there was a post-it note on the planning board that said, ‘sense of wonder goes here.’
Anika: No, that’s such a good comment. You’re right. This is what happens. They go see this beautiful singularity, right? And it’s stunning. And they’re the only ones who could see it and get up this close to it. And it’s amazing. And this is why they joined the Starfleet.
And then they’re transported billions of years back in time to see dinosaurs and Martians and a whole new insect species that they’ve never heard of because they were eradicated by them. And there’s all of this and all of Pelia’s stupid comments about the police box were like the nods to whimsy and wonder. And it’s just like, why is everything backwards and wrong?
Liz: And then at the end, we get this brief, glorious montage of the dinosaurs doing dinosaur things. But I had no emotional reaction because, one, I have seen Jurassic Park. Two, we’ve just had a genocide. And apparently this episode wants us to be sadder about the dinosaurs than the, you know, the sentient people who are wiped out. And three, we know now that the asteroid, which we also caused, is coming.
I think it’s meant to be the sense of bittersweet, impending loss and isn’t it glorious that they existed for just a moment. But we didn’t get any of that for the insectoid people.
Anika: Yeah, and this, it ends with that sweeping scene straight out of Jurassic movies. Every Jurassic movie ends with a sweeping, look at all the dinosaurs. That’s how they’re supposed to end. And this was their nod to that. But when they were talking about the dinosaurs — so it’s Una, Ortegas and La’an on Earth with the dinosaurs. And it’s like they wave at the idea that this is cool. But La’an spends the entire time hating them and trying to murder them for some reason. Ortegas is mainly complaining about how they’re getting in the way of her job, which — I understand that they have a mission and they should be doing it. And frankly, she’s the only person who shows any interest in the insect people.
Liz: Right, right.
Anika: Good for her.
Liz: She’s come a long way. I think she’s actually my favorite character now. I hope they never do another episode about her.
Anika: I don’t even really know what Una was doing. I don’t remember. I just remember her hair. I don’t blame Rebecca for any of that. It’s not her fault that her character is whatever the plot needs it to be. And so it’s hard actually for me to pay attention ,because I just expect that she’s going to be the exposition piece. She’s going to be the fly in the ointment. She’s going to be the person that pushes Pike to do what he needs to do. And she’s never actually going to do anything on her own or about her.
Liz: We’d never find out if she was a dinosaur child.
Anika: Right.
Liz: Although she does know how to identify the sex of a T-Rex, which raises a lot of questions for me, just about dinosaur biology and cloacas and stuff that I don’t really want to think about to any great extent. But good for her.
Anika: Yes. So they failed with the dinosaurs and they really — I am the easiest person to distract with dinosaurs.
Liz: I’m going to keep this in mind next time you need a distraction. I am excited.
Anika: I have a little plush blue velociraptor right here. So I was the easiest person and they failed because I spent the entire time angry, being like, no, I will not look at your dinosaurs because I know what’s going on over there. Yeah.
Liz: And I would say I love Vulcans. I love ancient empires. I love women in command who are open to genocide. I should have been all over the stuff with the Martians. And obviously, I love Saffron Burrows. I love her character. But I was unengaged because Pike was there and I knew that it was all going to end very badly.
Anika: Okay. So we go to our final bullet point.
Liz: The Vulcan Martians.
Anika: The Vulcan Martians. So when we say Vulcan Martians, they have pointy ears, they have pointy eyebrows, they have dark hair.
Liz: They look like pre-Surak Vulcans. I thought that’s what they were going to turn out to be.
Anika: Yeah. I mean, and sort of, sort of.
Liz: I guess.
Anika: Because, so they’re very militant. Imagine back when Vulcans and Romulans were the same.
Liz: Oh, yeah. No.
Anika: They have these face, I don’t know. Tattoos? It looks more like Chakotay’s tattoo than something that they’re born with.
Liz: Yeah, I assumed that was cultural rather than biological.
Anika: But it is an interesting forehead type thing.
Liz: Yeah, they have a forehead situation happening.
Anika: Vulcans and Romulans. It’s not like we weren’t supposed to think that. We were definitely supposed to think that because see end of the episode.
Liz: Yes. Did you think it was weird that they see Spock and don’t react to him at all? Because if I was that Martian commander and I saw a guy who looked like me, but was dressed like these weird aliens, I would be like, “Hey, what the fuck? Why aren’t you in our army? Were you stolen as a child? Tell me your deal.” She should be addressing her words to Spock, not Pike.
Anika: It was weird. I absolutely agree that it was weird because he looks literally just like her without the facial thing. This is Spock. He looks even more like her than any other Vulcan would. It’s just weird. It’s just weird. And yes, so like I’m…
Liz: And he isn’t curious either.
Anika: Yeah. No one mentions it. Liz has literally never mentioned again until the very end where they’re like, oh, ha ha ha ha, some of them escaped and they’re probably landed on Vulcan. It is so weird that they’re literally no one, not Sam Kirk — that’s his job.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I do not understand why no one was curious about how they are Vulcanoids.
Liz: This is the least curious Star Trek.
Anika: It is so weird. It is so weird. They bring in Sam Kirk. I was like, at least he is definitely going to say, even as a joke, like an aside to Uhura, “Ha ha ha. She has Spock’s personality.” Anything. One nod to the fact that she was clearly Vulcanoid. Even if they called her an elf, I would have taken that. That’s the level of literally no one said anything.
Liz: Do you think the logic was, ‘oh, we don’t see race?’
Anika: Ew. I’m sorry. That was my response. That is my entire response to, we don’t see race.
Liz: I mean, I didn’t like hearing the words come out of my mouth.
Anika: This is a new alien species. This is a new alien species that is clearly related. I know you could say, oh, but in Star Trek, everybody is basically humanoid. So everybody is clearly related, and so they don’t want to say that. But no, they made a choice. They made a choice to give her pointy ears, which is literally the first aliens in Star Trek. You go back and watch the cage. That’s what they look like. So no, I refuse.
And again, it does matter, and we are supposed to think it, because the episode ends with… It’s Chapel again. Chapel did very little in this episode, and yet was the MVP. And I know it, I’m me, and so I’m biased. However…
Liz: No, I think at this point, Jess Bush and Babs Olusanmokun are the best actors in this series, and they uplift everyone they interact with, but also their scenes just really highlight how they are leaps like a million miles ahead of everyone else in the cast, except Celia Rose Gooding, who I think is very good, but she’s getting terrible material.
Anika: Yeah. There are some actors who can make really bad material into something.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And most of this cast is not those people, which does not mean they’re bad actors. It means they’re not being supported.
Liz: By this point in the series, they should know their actor’s strength and write to them. Like I’ve said this a bunch of times, Gates McFadden is not a great actor, but the TNG writers consistently wrote to her strengths.
Anika: So, Chapel says, showing more compassion than everyone else. What about Commander Cassel? She destroyed her entire civilization.
Liz: Yeah, because genociding the fifth planet turned it into the asteroid belt, and that has also changed the orbit of Mars, which is no longer going to support life in the coming, I guess, millennia.
Anika: And, you know, M’Benga pipes up with, “Well, we found evidence of…” What are they? Martians. I can’t even say it. But okay, so we found evidence of Martian DNA across the galaxy.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And so they weren’t all wiped out.
Liz: No one looks across the room at Spock.
Anika: I mean, and it would… that would be cool. It would actually be cool if both sides of Spock’s alien DNA were from our solar system. That’s an interesting story thing.
Liz: It’s interesting, but the Earthcentricity of it, I just find really tiresome.
Anika: It’s not a very… It’s not a great necessarily science fiction slash Star Trek thing.
Liz: No.
Anika: But it’s an interesting story point for Spock.
Liz: Yes. And definitely one he can throw in his dad’s face if they ever have a conversation again.
Anika: Exactly. Which is really all we want. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. Ammunition in Spock family arguments. Yeah.
Anika: So why are the Martians vulcanoid? That’s a great question.
Liz: Yeah. No idea.
Anika: Does literally anything that happens in this episode require them to be? No. Does it say anything interesting about Vulcans or Martians?
Liz: No.
Anika: No. So why though?
Liz: You know what would have been genuinely interesting? If the Martians were proto-Klingons. I don’t think it would have been better because it’s still super Earth-centric, but I kind of like the idea that our enemy for centuries was also from our solar system.
But also that the Klingons have always been a diaspora and Qo’noS was not their original homeworld. Maybe this is why there are so many different types of Klingon, that they didn’t all evolve on the same planet.
Anika: Okay, I agree with you and I think that actually would be a more interesting twist. Because in this era, they’re the enemies, right?
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Romulans don’t really get to be that for a long while. And okay, and so it’s like the extended canon makes the Vulcan choice more interesting to me because I have read a lot of Vulcan and Romulan novels. And in Enterprise and Picard, they sort of started canonizing some of that. In Enterprise, the idea that the Vulcans were watching Earth for a long while, and then in this here, Strange New Worlds, the Romulans are watching Earth for a long while, right?
So the idea that there are Vulcan and Romulan anthropologists who are like, this is where our species started, and so we should go see what’s what, and then they don’t find anything about their people, but they find these Earthlings, and the Earthlings are interesting, and that’s interesting to me. So I like that they’re Vulcanoids, but only because I am already immersed in it, and because I’m interested in that side of things, not because of anything that happens in this episode. They’re really banking on us having feelings about Vulcans.
Liz: And they’re also banking on us having read Edgar Rice Burroughs and A Princess of Mars. That sort of early science fantasy with the Martians. The Martians were kind of like Vulcans. They’re this exotic, robe-wearing, vaguely matriarchal orientalist aliens. A lot of that aesthetic has simply been passed on to Vulcans. And so that’s interesting.
But as we have discussed in our Star Trek: Discovery episodes, Burroughs is a little problematic. And I don’t think that was an unintentional… I think they knew what they were doing when they had Pike quoting Burroughs. And it was a… ‘Actually, we think the eugenics is pretty cool, actually’ problem.
Anika: This is the real problem. The real problem is that when the trailer came out, and over here, we had 30% of the fans going, wait, but that’s… Quoting Burroughs is bad, actually.
Liz: Yeah, we don’t fuck with Burroughs.
Anika: And others were like, “I’s just quoting an adventure story. You’re thinking about it too much. Ha ha, don’t overthink it.”
Liz: Don’t overthink it.
Anika: It’s not what the story is about. And this is the premiere. And the premiere says, no, that’s what the story is about.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You guys were correct. But you shouldn’t be angry about it.
Liz: It’s about evil genes and genocide.
Anika: Wait a minute, guys.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Remember how when La’an became a Vulcan, and she actually became a Romulan?
Liz: Because her genes are evil? Yeah, yeah, I do. I really do.
Anika: Because I feel like it’s related. And the fact that these guys were very militants, but they, Cassel was actually — for a character that’s only in one episode, and was supposed to be with Pike. She’s great. She’s like the Romulan commander. This is interesting. This is a one-off, interesting, sympathetic character who is also morally wrong and militant and their problems, right? I really like her and I want to talk about her more. I wish that we could just talk about her morality.
Liz: Because her whole thing about the scar across the face of Vulcan is exactly like the stuff about the scar across Earth where Florida used to be in season three of Enterprise. And their justification for this genocide against an insectoid species is exactly like the Xindi stuff that Trip was saying and that he was ultimately wrong because even Enterprise was not a pro genocide series.
Anika: Oh my gosh, how far we’ve fallen.
Liz: How do you misunderstand the message of the post-9/11 George W. Bush era Star Trek? It wasn’t subtle. How do you be more right wing than that?
Anika: I will wave hands at America. We have become more right wing. That’s just true.
Liz: That is true. But I look at the whole of Strange New Worlds and I go, how many unintentional pro-genocide, pro-eugenics subtexts can you bring in before we have to conclude that it is in fact intentional?
Anika: Right. Yeah. Right. Because you want to believe that these people who are making Star Trek of all things would not be pro-eugenics. It was like, in the original series, in what is still considered the best of the movies by many, many people, it would be anti-eugenics. I don’t understand. But so when you were talking there, you called it the Scar of Vulcan.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And it’s the Scar of Mars. It’s the Scar of Mars.
Liz: In my defense, they are basically the same planet.
Anika: That’s what I was like, oh, wait, Vulcan is a red desert planet. So it’s almost clever. They had an idea. And if they had followed through with that idea instead of this, I think it would have been…
Liz: And I definitely think that better writers could make the connection between Vulcan and A Princess of Mars without leaning into the pro-genocide, pro-eugenics of it all. But Akiva Goldsman is simply not that guy. And he co-wrote this episode with the person who wrote, “What Is Starfleet?” Another unintentionally pro-genocide episode.
Anika: Or at least I don’t really remember it.
Liz: Another episode that had a decidedly mixed message.
Anika: Both “What Is Starfleet?” and the one where it was Kirk’s first command.
Liz: Oh yeah.
Anika: There is a through-line to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but I don’t think I like it. I think I have some problems. And it’s also, as much as I feel like there was a change in between season two and season three, I love the episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” I love that episode, but there is a whole genocide and eugenics. Those are all parts of the themes in that episode as well.
Liz: And also, “Ad Astra per Aspera” is subtextually about societal repression, but it’s straight up pro-eugenics.
Anika: Right, so it’s all there.
Liz: I thought “Ad Astra” was setting up a story where we were going to explore the eugenics practices of the Illyrians and how it is different from what humans did and how it is maybe in some ways the same, and it’s not just one thing or another. But no, there’s been no world building. Most of the time, this series forgets that Una is not human.
Anika: Which brings us back around to La’an and the fact that this was always where her character was going to go. They literally can’t, it’s the same way they’ve made her Kha’an. I have to say, that’s the second time I’ve done it and I’m not doing it intentionally. But I’ve decided that Kha’an is actually Kha’an. I don’t know why I’m doing that.
Liz: When we get to the episode where La’an’s evil genes take over and she becomes a warlord, that’s where Kha’an comes into play.
Anika: Right. But they chose to make Khan a child, and then they never grappled with that.
Liz: No.
Anika: You know?
Liz: No.
Anika: They didn’t do anything interesting with it. Similarly to this, where they’re getting ready to basically sacrifice the ship and their lives to stop the genocide of the insect people, and Pike says, “Wait, that planet doesn’t exist in our history, in our future. Therefore, we’re not supposed to stop this,” and everyone’s like, they trust him, and they follow his orders, and they don’t do anything. But it’s only in the meeting later where people are like, well, I guess that was the right choice. It’s just weird.
Liz: It nods at a really interesting question, which is, yes, this was the right choice for preserving the timeline, but was it the right choice morally? And how do you live with yourself if you have facilitated a genocide, even though it worked out okay in the end? And say, okay, you know, we have civilizations who are just erased from history because they were so lost so long ago, and that’s a tragedy.
And then instead of Admiral April going, this is fascinating, we’ve learned so much about the origin of life in our solar system, we have to do the research to uncover more about this history and honor this, honor what we’ve learned and honor the sacrifices of lives, that honor the deaths that we had a part in. He’s just like, we’re going to keep it secret. Don’t overthink it. Definitely don’t do any land acknowledgments.
Anika: Yeah. Talk about how Admiral April, what a… Now, I’m sort of offended by the fact that they cross-race cast him, you know, against the quote unquote canon of TAS in order to have that guy consistently be the face and voice of Starfleet’s extremely regressive positions and lies. Straight up, we’re going to keep all of this to ourselves.
Liz: Yeah. And first of all, I take back everything mean I have ever said about Admiral Vance. He is the best admiral in all of Starfleet. I love him. He’s great. He’s good at his job.
And simply to have this story come now, this genocide happened and it’s the reason that we exist as a planet and as a people and as a nation, and we’re just not going to talk about it or acknowledge it in any way. It hits really close to home, because Australia and the United States both exist, like most settler colonial states exist, because of a genocide.
And frankly, a land acknowledgement or an Acknowledgement of Country, as we call it in Australia, or a welcome to Country where an Indigenous person does it, doesn’t really make up for anything, but it keeps the original sin front of mind. We can’t forget our history because we talk about it all the time.
But in Australia, and I assume in America, there’s a pushback against doing these acknowledgements and talking about it. And it happened in the past. I just need to shut up and be grateful.
Anika: So I don’t know if you know this, but America turned 250 years old this month.
Liz: I noticed there were a few fireworks. Happy birthday.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: So how’s your reflecting pool?
Anika: Okay. So I was in DC two weeks before the 4th of July. And I went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Liz: Great place. I would love to go there.
Anika: We chose to go there because we wanted to see the ruby slippers.
Liz: Totally valid.
Anika: And the Batmobile. So it wasn’t like I was looking for, quote unquote, American history. Sadly, the Batmobile is no longer there, but we did get to see the ruby slippers. And also, incredibly, two costumes from Star Trek: Discovery worn by Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh.
Liz: Oh my God. Amazing.
Anika: Fully worth it. And honestly, it was a great time. I love museums, and the Smithsonian in particular, all of the Smithsonian’s are really wonderful museums who put a lot of effort into being a place that your kid and your senior grandma are all going to like, that are worth going to, and they’re all free. It’s this beautiful thing that exists in the middle of horror.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: But I read this article.
Liz: Your president is doing some stuff to the Smithsonian.
Anika: Where, of course, we know that this horrible, the current federal government, the current administration, topped by Mr. Trump, is doing everything in their power to ruin anything that makes America good.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: All of it, including the Smithsonian. They have defunded them significantly. They have ordered them to change museum, displays, to basically, as you say, get rid of land acknowledgments, to say America is great, has always been great, will be great. And none of that bad stuff matters.
Liz: And don’t go looking for any displays celebrating the contributions of Black people because we took them down.
Anika: Exactly. They’re bad. Immigrants are bad. It’s just forget about the fact that the entire nation is immigrants, but whatever, it’s fine. And so all of it is really, they’ve been doing that since they got in power.
But the New York Times had this article on specifically that museum that I went to, and how it is the worst version of America, and how if you go there as an American, its goal is to make you feel bad about yourself. And I was like, that is so far from the experience that I had. I literally do not understand what you’re talking about. It is extremely patriotic. It is extremely pro-America. There is an entire display that we couldn’t figure out the theme of, so we just called it the rich people room. Because it is just about all of the rich people who have contributed to America.
There is a placard about unions. According to Donald Trump, it would be like this amazing thing that would make you feel bad about yourself because unions are evil and they’re telling you, that is not true. It is, you will be shocked to learn, not particularly pro-union. So I do not understand what they’re talking about. And also if that museum is too woke, too anti-American, I shudder to think of what they think is pro-American.
And so when Star Trek, of all things, Star Trek, who is in, I think three separate Smithsonian museums, because it is culturally significant, are playing along with that version of, yeah, acknowledging genocide is bad, actually.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I don’t know where to go from there.
Liz: It also, because everything I do, eventually, I start thinking about Israel and Palestine again, and I am not singling Israel out. Like I said, all settler colonial states are built on a genocide, but what makes Israel stand out is that the Nakba happened in my grandparent’s lifetime, and I didn’t even know about it. I literally studied the foundation of Israel in high school and did not know about the Nakba. It was just like, ‘oh, we signed some treaties and for some reason, the Arab states were really unhappy about the creation of Israel.’ And I think we got to the Six Day War, then modern history moved on. But there is this push to never talk about it.
And how can you begin a process of reconciliation and peace building if you won’t talk about it? And so this whole ‘don’t overthink it’ thing, I think is really toxic. I think we have to overthink it. I think we owe it to ourselves as human beings to acknowledge that our ancestors have done the wrong thing. And in some ways, we benefit from that privilege. And I’m not saying we need to go around wearing sackcloth and ashes and being performatively guilty. I think we have to understand the history so that we don’t repeat it and so that we can make our societies better.
Anika: Right. People who want to acknowledge that slavery and the treatment of the indigenous people of America are bad, they want you to feel sorry. They don’t want you to feel bad about yourself. They don’t want you to burst into tears. And they’re like, what can any individual do? Nothing. No one wants that. That is not the purpose. The purpose is, as you say, to say, we shouldn’t do that again. And we should try to make it up to these people in some way.
And literally the first step is acknowledging. You know, land acknowledgments are performative. They’re not solving a problem, but it’s the bare minimum that you can do to say, you’re right, this was wrong.
It’s just true that if there were space-faring insectoids, that they, that was an intelligent species. I’m sorry if they built a starship that has iridium for you to steal, then they were a sentient, fully real, they weren’t bug people, they were people and they matter. And I can’t stand the fact that I’m upset about this. I don’t wanna be emotional about this fake species that I learned about yesterday.
Liz: We’re expected to care less because they’re insects. And insect is a word that’s used to dehumanize Palestinians. I don’t know, at this point, I just don’t feel like it’s coincidence. Maybe it is, maybe I’m too woke and paranoid, but how long do we keep saying, oh no, they don’t know the story they’re telling, they’re not thinking about it enough? What if they know?
Anika: And you were absolutely right about, so the destruction of the fifth planet obviously destroys all of the insects. And you know what? How come, I mean, I guess we didn’t get any DNA from the insects, but no one talks about how they escaped and are somewhere.
Liz: No, they don’t get to go and be Vulcans.
Anika: And Mars was destroyed because of its change in orbit and atmosphere, but at least they get to go be Vulcans. And a piece of the fifth planet that no longer exists broke off and hit Earth and created the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs. And yes, we are supposed to be sadder about the dinosaurs. Who, to quote Ian Malcolm, they had their time, yeah. They lived for a really long time. They had the Earth. Bad things happened.
Am I sad that there are no dinosaurs today? Obviously, of course I’m sad. Do I want a Rexy of my very own? Yes, but the insect people, they were also people. It’s just, like you said, it’s the same thing as in “What Is Starfleet?” and that other episode with Kirk, that we’re just supposed to be like, well, our team is sad about something, and so they did their best.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. It happened a long time ago. It’s in the past. The important thing is that it’s behind us, and we never need to think about it again.
Anika: Like for another franchise, Terminator.
Liz: Yes, I am familiar with Terminator.
Anika: Starting with Terminator 2 is trying to avoid the genocide of the human race via the machines.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It’s just like what happened between 1992 and now that we just give up.
Liz: I mean, I think, like you said, this is a very nihilistic time. And I think it expresses itself as doomerism on the left and accelerationism on the right. And in between, and I do think this is Strange New Worlds being very centrist as usual, “it’s just really complicated. What can you do? Don’t overthink it. Look at Pike’s hair.”
Anika: ‘Don’t overthink it’ is the same as ‘don’t look up.’
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Or they say this in Rogue One, if you only look at the flag, then you don’t see the fighting and the people and the dying that’s going on around it.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: It’s just, why are we choosing to be the empire? Why are we choosing? I don’t just, it’s just, I don’t like.
Liz: Yeah. Strange New Worlds is propaganda for the empire. Yeah.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Do you feel up to shipping news?
Anika: I mean, I really want to talk about shipping news, so yes.
Liz: Okay. But it’s sad.
Anika: I don’t want to talk about Spock and La’an because I actively don’t ship it.
Liz: I hate it.
Anika: They really tried. They tried to be cute and they failed. That’s what I had to say about that. I also, I didn’t even write this down as Pike and Una because I refuse. I refuse to ship Pike. Anyway, I refuse to ship Pike with anybody, but I definitely refuse to ship Pike and Una. But remember when we shipped Pike and Una, I feel like this episode wants us to.
Liz: Yeah, because his girlfriend who was like a wife to him has died. So he’s available. He’s single ladies. He’s available.
Anika: You know what? If you squint, they’re the same.
Liz: Yeah. They’re both ladies and they both have hair, and they both wear yellow shirts. And Una just got promoted to the rank we always thought she had.
Anika: I’m sure I knew that she was Lieutenant Commander and not a Commander, but also, come on, who cares? They acted like it was so big and exciting. And we’re moving forward. We’re moving forward the Una plot. Soon she’ll be Captain. And if it took her this long to be Commander, probably not. What if they’re gonna promote her this season? No.
Liz: She has been well and truly glass ceilinged.
Anika: The scene, it was at the very beginning where she was like, hey, you know what, maybe you should take a break and give us a break and not try to outrun your life so hard. That was super shippy and I do not ship it. That’s all I’ve said.
Liz: No, no. I’m actively repelled by so many characters on this show now.
Anika: I know. Okay, then we haven’t even talked about Scotty, but there was a subplot of Scotty and Ortegas fighting over — she wants to make the ship go fast and he wants the ship to be safe.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Uhura was in the middle of it.
Liz: Because subtextually, they are fighting over Uhura, and the second Uhura gets together with Scotty, her friendship with Ortegas is going to be dropped like a hot stone.
Anika: So, so quickly. Because Uhura already dated her brother, right? Yeah, yeah. If I was going to write fan fiction about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it would be about how Ortegas was in love with Uhura, and Uhura kept choosing other people.
Liz: Oh, yeah. It is absolutely the lesbian pining after a straight girl dynamic.
Anika: It is very there. But I don’t actually want to watch that on… I would like Scotty, Ortegas, and Uhura to all be taken out of that plot, because I just don’t want to watch it.
Liz: No.
Anika: And also, Scotty is doing nothing wrong.
Liz: No, Scotty is correct.
Anika: Scotty is so very correct in all of his legitimately poor Scotty. All right. So, Pike and Commander Cassel, which, gosh, I wish I liked Pike at all.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. If he was in any way appealing, I would be all over that.
Anika: It is so- it’s- and it’s- you know what? I’m not- I’m going to say something nice about- Anson Mount.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: He has charm. There were sparks. It was there. There was something happening. He was playing, I kind of like this lady. I’m still smarting about my quote, quote, wife and everything is bad and all of that. But she’s that. I like a lady in charge. That’s his thing.
Liz: I do respect a woman who would destroy her ship, her life, her enemy, and her own planet to get away from Pike.
Anika: Well-played.
Liz: Thank you.
Anika: It was very well done. Thank you.
So you mentioned that Una could tell that the dinosaur was a girl.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: Which I took — as I know that we’ve seen Una in more romantic relationships with men. However, I think the fact that she could tell that Rexy was a girl means she likes girls.
Liz: Yeah. She wants to be the heroine of a Chuck Tingle novel titled Tenderly Romanced by the T-Rex.
Anika: Who is a girl.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Who is a girl. And they always are in the Jurassics. So, yeah, Una and Girl Type Rexie.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: OTP of this episode, if not series. Which brings us to, I’ve mentioned it already, Chapel and La’an. I desperately want La’an — I want to like her. I loved the idea of her, and I want the reality of her to live up to what I imagine for her. But again, she was best served in her two exchanges with Christine Chapel. And frankly, I will ship them over Spock and Chapel, or La’an and Spock at this point.
Liz: La’an and Chapel definitely have more chemistry than La’an and Spock. Yeah. Sorry. Also, I think Spock deserves the Legend of Korra ending where both of his girlfriends start dating each other and not him.
Anika: Spock about 1000% deserves that. And he kind of acts like that’s what happened in TOS. It kind of works for canon.
Liz: Just saying.
Anika: And this is mainly a Jess Bush Is Amazing point. But I don’t think it would be ridiculous for me to say that she had the fewest lines of all the regulars in this episode. But definitely had the least to do. But she did so much with what she had. And I imagined an entire relationship with La’an. I was just like, that’s what should happen.
Liz: So the happy ending for them is that La’an becomes a time cop, who I guess shoots the family dog, but every now and then she uses her time bracelet or whatever to pop in on the Enterprise and date Chapel. And they hang out and Spock, like TOS Spock, walks into the mess hall and there’s La’an and Chapel holding hands. And he’s like, my feelings about this are very illogical.
Anika: I approve. And that’s a happy note to end on.
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.
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We will return next week to discuss the next episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “The Griffin Incident.” I’m sure it will be great.