Anika and Liz toast some marshmallows in the Atrium’s brand new open fireplace (Nus Braka: Interior Decorator) and discuss the first season finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, “Rubincon”.
- A finale where the good guys don’t fire a single shot, and where we apply the lessons learned through the whole season
- Stakes? Too high? Just high enough? Is Star Trek actually good at telling small scale stories?
- “What is Starfleet?” Caleb finally gives Anika a satisfying answer.
- A handsome, arrogant guy with neglectful parents and a crush on a Klingon? Darem has been Tom Paris all along!
- Nus is too solipsistic and misogynistic to realise that Anisha isn’t on his side
- Anisha was never the villain, but she is an antagonist, and with good reason
- Nahla, Anisha and restorative justice
- Nahla punching Nus: ma’am, you do not get to have little a police brutality as a treat, that felt ill-considered and out of character
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 the first season finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, “Rubincon”, an episode where the good guys do not fire a single weapon.
Anika: Yes! That’s great.
Liz: I realized that on my second watch through, and I was like, oh my gosh, that is so Star Trek of you.
Anika: I think it was a very strong ending.
Liz: Absolutely. It was a little talky and quite dense in what it was saying. I don’t know if we can really do justice to it at this stage. I’m looking forward to seeing what the smart people in fandom have to say about it because I think I’m going to learn something. I feel very underqualified going in to talk about it without that.
But I love that we saved the Federation through science and communication and emotional growth, and you pointed out that every single thing… We’ve seen them learning all the skills that they had to use to get to this point. That’s brilliant.
Anika: It was a very well-built finale, in that all of the lessons learned along the way came back and came into play. In a sort of seamless way where it wasn’t like, you remember when this happened, we’re doing it again. But just building on the different things that they did and learned and moved through so that they could do them again. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. No one’s skills in this episode felt like they had come out of nowhere.
Anika: Right. And they were leaning on things that they learned and that they learned together.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: Having our Academy crew on the bridge was earned in that way, I think, is what, guess what I’m saying. It did come down to these kids have to save everybody. But it felt like it was building to that instead of it being, you know, in, I don’t know, like Top Gun. They’re just suddenly, all of a sudden, we’re in a war game. A real thing is happening. And it’s like, wait.
Liz: Wait, what?
Anika: It was one kind of story and now it’s everything matters.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And it’s a trope and it’s like how stories are told and I get it. And so I, of course, was expecting us to get to here. But I just feel like they did it in such a way that, like you said, nobody’s skills were unearned. And I think that that’s what’s great about it.
Liz: I guess my main question would be, when did Tarima become proficient in this science subspacey thing? And that’s again, we needed those extra few episodes between the life of the village and now. And that’s a short season problem, not a writing problem. I suppose a writing problem is a short season, a short season problem is a writing problem, but it feels imposed from without. And it feels like that’s how television works these days for better or for worse.
Speaking of, I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that the stakes are too high in this finale. There shouldn’t be a world-shattering cataclysm. And I want to push back on that, because I feel like we’re at a stage of environmental collapse and social collapse in parts of the Western world that I won’t name, and an illegal war with Iran and all of this. The world kind of feels like the stakes are high right now. And there are certainly ways to tell a story with smaller stakes, and they could have just been saving one planet from the Vanari Raal or whatever. But I feel like Nus Braka is a villain for the Trump era, and this is a story for the Trump era.
Anika: My take is, you just said that’s how television is these days. If it wasn’t like this, if it wasn’t a cataclysmic event that they were fighting, people would complain that it wasn’t. Someone will always bring up, this was too much or this was too little, that’s just going to happen. But besides that, if you look at the way that every Star Trek season goes, that’s just how it is. And not just Star Trek, like every…
Liz: Right, right, and this has been the story format for a lot of genre television, basically since Joss Whedon developed it with Buffy. You have an ongoing arc, it develops into a crisis in the climax, because that’s how Western storytelling works.
I think the people complaining that this is not how they did it on Star Trek: The Next Generation, need to sit down and wrestle with the fact that they’re not 10 years old anymore. And storytelling tropes and expectations in television have changed since 1989.
Anika: Right, that’s just what I’m saying, is we have moved past that. And it’s partly because there’s so much more television out there that in order to stand out, everybody has to put everything up to 11 at all times. And maybe that’s not great for the medium, but that’s a different conversation. We can’t expect Star Trek to be like, we’re going to be, you know, quiet and not do a big finale of all television. I feel like Star Trek isn’t the one to pull back in that.
Liz: “Hey, guys, we’re just going to tell a really small story. You don’t really have to care. Yeah, just thanks for watching. Sorry about the low stakes.” I actually think Star Wars is the only franchise right now big enough to get away with small stakes stories where you have something like Skeleton Crew or even Andor, where that’s a lot of… The stakes are really high, but the stories are really small-scale.
Anika: Right. Yeah, it’s just whatever. We don’t have to talk about this anymore, but I just think it’s silly.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: That’s my opinion. I think thematically, this was a really good stamp on what this show is about. And I think I said last week that hearing what Starfleet is from someone like Caleb is, I think, the way they finally got me. It needed to be an outsider who tells me what Starfleet means for me to understand and believe it and not think that it’s propaganda and marketing the way that Nus tells Caleb that his whole speech is just propaganda and brainwashing.
I don’t want to have anything in common with Nus, but I think that I was sort of on that side of like, this is all just propaganda and brainwashing and fake. But when Caleb said it, I did believe him. I saw it happening to him this season. I got to see him go through being transformed by Starfleet. Whereas when La’an says it, it’s like, okay, I guess, but I met you when you were already here.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And you don’t seem to be super in control of your life and yourself, so I don’t understand it actually. But Caleb, I saw the growth. I experienced it along with him.
Liz: Right. Right. And he seems so much more mature now than he did at the beginning of the series. He seems more like the 21-year-old that he is, and less like the lost little boy, or the angry young man that he was. Growth. Character growth.
Anika: Character growth. Beautiful.
Liz: But also this is a really good ensemble piece. A lot of it is just Paul Giamatti giving a speech, and Tatiana Maslany and Holly Hunter talking to each other, which is amazing, and I could watch 25 hours of it. And so much of it rides on Caleb, but everyone has a part to play, and everyone gets their time to shine.
Anika: So when I was, I was in between, when I watched it without taking notes, and then when I watched it, specifically pause and write things down, and I was thinking about it in that in between, and I was like, I really feel like everybody got to do something other than Jay-Den. And I was like, Jay-Den didn’t really get to do anything, but I watched it, and the camera, he is used as a point of view character for the audience often.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: He is not active necessarily as much as everyone else, but he is very much a part of it. And then, he is the one who figures out the riddle. He literally solves the problem.
Liz: Right.
Anika: So I was like, oh, I was wrong. You know, it’s like, I just forgot, because it’s a quiet moment, because he is a quiet character compared to everyone else. You know what I mean? And he does have that, I am in the background supporting everybody else’s energy. But literally, he solves it.
Liz: Yeah. And I am not mad that he is more of a background character this time around, because he’s had two very big moments in this season. And he sort of had his character development, and now he’s just quietly doing his job and observing and supporting his friends. And that’s okay too. You don’t have to be in the spotlight for every episode.
And Darem doesn’t really have a big role. His main thing is to be the pilot and almost crash the ship. But I think it cements his place in the team. You know, a few weeks ago, we were debating who’s the captain? Where’s Darem going to end up? And the answer is, it feels obvious. Of course, he’s a pilot. He’s a bit of an arrogant dipshit. He’s Tom Paris.
Anika: Yeah, the pieces are falling into place in this episode. And I do feel like, yes, Darem become the pilot. And for what it’s worth, Reno brought Caleb down into engineering with her. And was like, you and I are going to fix this thing.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And he is the one who comes up with the program. He is definitely the engineer in terms of where he’s fitting into in this iteration.
Liz: Yes, but also, he’s still running the team to an extent. Genesis has the conn, but Caleb is the one. First, he’s the one who sees that Tarima is in distress. And second, he’s the one who makes the connection between her abilities and his belief in her ability to control them and echolocation, which, I don’t know how Tarima’s powers work. And at this point, I’m scared to ask, but I think they work according to the power of plot. And I guess I respect that.
Anika: That’s definitely how they work. But I just want to say, absolutely, I will even go so far as to say, I have now decided that when Caleb grows up, he’s going to be Admiral Vance, but he’s gonna be better at it.
Liz: I mean, he’d want to be.
Anika: I have now decided to shoot him all the way to the top.
Liz: I love this.
Anika: Based on his actions in the last two episodes, I’m like, you know what? This is where he should end up. And it’s like this hopeful – you have said over and over again that this is a story about young people that we need right now because of how awful the world is for young people and that they have to put up with all of this. And so I want to see the person who is growing up in the terrible times get to the pinnacle of everything and through what, again, we get to watch on screen be the right person for that.
Liz: I love this idea that he is going to end up in Admiral Vance’s role because, yes, he’s a strategist and he knows how to use resources and he’s always thinking. He also does the captain thing of sacrificing himself and giving the speech and providing the distractions so that the team can get on with disabling the Omega 47. But I can really see him in that Vance role.
Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I think that the ideal end for this series is for Vance to retire, to spend time with his family and Nahle takes over his job. So for her to eventually move on to something else because she’s not going to die of older age or anytime soon. But for her to move on and for Caleb to take her place eventually, I think that’s great.
Anika: It would be a beautiful line of success.
Liz: Then we have this burgeoning second or third generation of 32nd, 33rd century officers because we know that Leto Burnham is going to be a starship captain, and is he going to be serving under Admiral Mir’s leadership?
Anika: Because we got some comments that obviously Caleb is the engineer, and I was like, yes, true, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be in command. Yeah. And I think that, I don’t know, I was watching this particular episode and the way that Vance treats Caleb’s mom. Yeah. It’s like a blink and you’ll miss it interaction, but I was just like, what I want now is for Caleb to have that job.
Liz: No, no, I think that’s true. And I really like the scene where Vance starts to apologize to Anisha. And she doesn’t want to hear it.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: In some ways, I think she thinks all of these apologies are self-serving. But Vance is gentlemanly in the same way that Caleb is a gentleman.
Anika: Right. Right. A peacemaker.
Liz: Yeah. And unlike Vance, I think Caleb would be competent in a conflict situation.
Anika: He’s already proven it.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So the trial. I like what they did with the Atrium and how destroyed it is.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I feel like that was fun for whoever got to destroy that set. It looked fun to me. But at the same time, it was like I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to look fake on purpose, over the top, to the point of it looked like a post-apocalyptic, it looked like something out of Mad Max, you know? It looked like we have taken this shiny, beautiful thing and turned it into a hell hole. And it’s like, well, why though? If your real goal is to help people and become a coalition of non-federated planets or whatever, wouldn’t you want to use those resources, not destroy them?
Liz: I agree, but I also think that it shows through set design, Nus’ deception and also his short-sightedness, that he can’t fake it even long enough to build a coalition. He has no intention of building a real coalition. He just wants to build a kleptocracy with himself at the top.
Anika: So you think it was intentional on the point near the production design, but not intentional on the point of view.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anika: OK, OK. I can accept that read. That’s where I was just sort of bumping. I was like, I can’t quite tell.
Liz: I definitely think that it’s a sign of poor choices on Nus’ part, but I also don’t think he’s a good choice guy. Osyraa wouldn’t have done this because Osyraa was better at long-term planning.
Anika: He’s a terrible choice guy. He’s like, I have decided that I’m going to make this trial happen. I mean, that was the plan all along, but obviously we talked about it. They love to put the Federation on trial, but he finds out that Anisha’s alive and there, and he decides to put her knowing nothing. Knowing only what he thinks he knows about her, he decides to put her in the opposite. And it’s like, she could have gone way off script.
And when Caleb shows up, he’s like, oh, we can’t let this happen. This is bad because I know what’s gonna happen now. And Caleb’s like, well, you’re the one who started it. And he sort of painted it into a corner.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: He should have seen that coming. Don’t be stupid, Nus, but he clearly is. He cannot, and he’s a perfect Trump allegory.
Liz: That’s, yeah.
Anika: He cannot see past his own desires for more than five minutes.
Liz: And he particularly can’t see women as people. It doesn’t seem to cross his mind that Anisha’s perspective might be different from his, or that she might have her own agenda. All he wants to do is demean Anisha and Nahle and make them laugh at his jokes and make them listen to his speeches.
Anika: He pits them against each other in a way that is almost like two dogs.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You know, like, I’m going to make you fight.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’m going to starve you both and then make you fight too. And it’s just like, that’s not how people work. And I just, every time, again, the camera would focus on Anisha, even when she’s giving her big speech to Nahle about dancing at her grave, the whole time I was just like, she’s not on your side. None of this is actually serving Nus’ goals at all.
Liz: No. And I guess it’s a problem that so much of this story turns on the villain being short sighted and self-absorbed and kind of stupid. But have you seen Donald Trump and his administration? Unfortunately, 2026 is very badly written.
Anika: It’s hugely frustrating because I’m like, wow, I wish Sam and Jay-Den and Caleb and Genesis and Darem and Tarima were here. I wish I had them because this stuff keeps happening and yet there isn’t a way to stop it. We don’t have an Athena coming to the rescue, even though people want to.
And we do have all of those people that I just mentioned. We have analogs for all of us, but the plot keeps going in the wrong direction in reality. And I’m like, oh. So it makes me a little frustrated for it to tie up so nicely.
Liz: No, absolutely. And this is where I think that small stake stories do have a lot of value in that we have the people in Minneapolis and all around the United States putting their lives on the line to protect their neighbors from ICE. We could tell that story as well in this situation. And certainly, Andor did it very effectively, but it’s hard to strike a balance and obviously Star Trek, on a storytelling level, is always more about the macro and the empires and the blah blah blah than the small acts of defiance.
Even looking at the Maquis, they go from a few guys to a pseudo-military really fast, probably because they’re so heavily formally Starfleet that they just keep falling into Starfleet ways of thinking. But Star Trek is kind of bad at the small level resistance stuff. And I think that’s a real weakness in the franchise that could be addressed. But also, I’m not going to complain that this specific story is part of that pattern because I think I want to engage with the story that we have, not the story that I want to have.
Anika: I think that’s a good way of putting it. It’s what Picard was supposed to be, but it wasn’t.
Liz: And failed miserably. Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Miserably, three times.
Liz: And that’s the other thing. Fandom says they want small stakes, but do they really? Because until the universe ending threat in Picard manifested, everyone was like, nothing is happening, I don’t care. Where’s the real story? So, yeah, yeah. It’s a problem with a lot of space opera, but particularly Star Trek because Star Trek is so genre defining.
Anika: Yeah, I think that’s a good, yes. So I am more interested in Anisha and Nahle and Caleb in the trial than I am in Nus.
Liz: Oh, absolutely.
Anika: They really tried.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: They tried to give Nus, you know, a tragic backstory and a reason for everything, and he never won me over.
Liz: No, no, but I think, I do think it’s interesting that he seems to sincerely believe that his planet was blown up by the Federation when his dad was literally building a weapon against them. And sometimes you build a weapon and it blows up in your face. And then you get the kid in the pit who lost two fingers because he was playing with fire. Anyway, the point is, I think, it’s very coherent that Nus would be wrong about this.
But yeah, everyone’s been saying all along, and we have said that Anisha would be the real big bad. And she’s not, she’s a victim, but she is the real antagonist and the real center of the story. And the person who’s pushing back against Starfleet and the Federation is important and valid and interesting.
Anika: Yeah, antagonist is the right…
Liz: Yeah, because she’s completely right.
Anika: Is the right verdict for it.
Liz: Yeah, she’s completely correct. And certainly, a lot of people on Tumblr have been saying this all along about Nahle’s soft landing and resigning is a nice gesture, but resigning after the fact is a bit, you know, self-serving. And then taking Caleb and essentially blackmailing him into joining the Academy. It’s rough. All of these criticisms are true.
Anika: Right. Even Nus, yes, in the end, his father created the situation, but they were in need and they were being ignored. And we talk about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few all the time. But when you’re the few, it sucks. Absolutely. Of course, it’s going to be hard for his small colony to see the Federation going other places and helping them out and flying over them.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I mean, it’s another, sort of interesting because, you know, here in America, which is huge, we say that there’s the two coasts and then there’s the flyover. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And that’s where the real resentment against the government often begins, is in those states that feel like they are powerless and no one’s paying any attention to them because there’s so many more people on the coasts. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s a triage situation. It’s like you look and you see where you can do the most good or where you can minimize the most harm more likely.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And that’s where you put your energies.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And so-
Liz: But you take that too far and you end up with something like effective altruism, which is neither. And so it’s a really easy trap to fall into.
And the other thing is Nahle’s right when she says that Nus’ colony had something to trade and there were places out there with nothing to trade. But also letting a world rely on commerce alone is not necessarily guaranteed to succeed. We live in a free market right now. How’s that going for us?
Anika: This is one of those moments where everything is true.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And everyone has a point.
Liz: Even Nus, much as I hate to admit it.
Anika: There’s no good answer to that situation. And that’s kind of what I was saying, you know, with my I wish real life wasn’t so frustrating all the time, is that you feel like that there’s no good choices.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And you just are trying to make the least bad choice. And that never feels good. It never feels good to be making the least bad choice instead of a good choice.
Liz: No. And I feel like Anisha and Nahle were both making the least bad choices as they understood them 15 years ago. Whereas Nus has made consistently bad choices deliberately at every turn.
Anika: Right. He’s a chaos goblin.
Liz: Oh, absolutely.
Anika: He’s not actually trying to build anything.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: He just wants to tear everyone else down.
Liz: No. His little alliance would fall apart as soon as one of the other members had something he wanted.
Anika: Right. But I like how prickly everything is. And I don’t think that we come out of this saying, everything is better now and it’s all fixed. I would hope that Admiral Vance is going to say, okay, we have to have a better way of people asking for help or something. We have to at least acknowledge everybody. If we can’t help everybody, we at least have to say something about them. We have to say, yes, we know that you’re there. And here’s a list of suggestions that you can do while you’re waiting for us because you’re 20th in line or something.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Which again, doesn’t make you make anything better, doesn’t make you feel better, but it’s at least acknowledging that they exist and that we see the harms.
Liz: And doing them that respect and courtesy instead of just going, this is really hard, we’ll get to you, sorry.
Anika: I think that Nus’ childhood was about being forgotten.
Liz: Yes. Nus is introduced as a foil for Nahle, but really he’s the foil for Caleb. He’s the angry child that Caleb is growing out of being.
Anika: I mean, if you want to take the real bird’s eye view, you look down and you say, these three people are who Caleb gets to choose to be, right? He gets to choose to be Nus, Anisha or Nahle.
Liz: Yeah. Anisha would not be a bad choice.
Anika: No, she would not be a bad choice. He says, I love you and I see you, and he does the thing, right? But I am choosing to be Nahle. She accepts it because she sees that it’s actually a really good place for him.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: He’s good at it and he has friends and he has the community and the life and all the things that she wanted for him. He’s now getting.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And Anisha, because she is not Nus Brakka and is not stuck in her trauma and in her anger, is able to see that this is what Caleb wants and needs. And because he starts that speech with, I love you, he’s not giving her up to get it.
Liz: No. And the thing is, he would not be such a good Starfleet cadet if he didn’t have the six years he spent with his mother learning from her. And he’s spent this last year building on that. If Anisha can let go of her anger at Starfleet, without forgiving them, without for a minute saying that anything they did is okay, she too can grow past the person that she was.
Anika: Right. We can end with Anisha joining Starfleet Academy. I was like, maybe, she’s smart, clearly. So, if she wants to teach, or if she wants to be a guest lecturer, or if she wants to be a cadet, then join Starfleet. I can see Anisha coming to accept Starfleet in some way.
Liz: Yeah. And sort of doing the Ro Laren thing of “Starfleet has a lot to learn from me”.
Anika: Yeah. I would love to see the non-Starfleet side of Star Trek, but that’s not actually what Star Trek is ever about.
Liz: No.
Anika: Even when they pretend. So, I think that I should give up on that and just say, I would like the people within Starfleet to be as widely diverse as possible. And I think Anisha would be an amazing addition in that sense.
Liz: So, here I have to confess something. Last weekend, I watched the penultimate episode before I went to my Lorde concert. And then I told you, I went through the whole thing of, oh, I could just watch the finale and be late to the gig. That’s fine. But no.
Instead, I opened the screener for the finale and went straight to the last five minutes because I was terrified that Nahle was going to die. And I just needed to know. I needed to know. And so we got to the bit with Anisha and Nahle looking at each other from the balcony. I was like, oh, my God, they both live. And now Anisha is teaching at the Academy. That’s so perfect.
And now that I’ve watched the episode, I don’t think that Anisha necessarily wants to spend time around the Academy, but I can see her going into higher education and sort of making academia a part of her life and being part of the same milieu of higher education that Nahle and Caleb are in.
Anika: I think what’s amazing is that now Anisha has possibilities.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: They’re going to Earth. They’re getting to the place that they dreamed of getting to. And then she can pretty much do anything because she has people who can help her.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And again, she’s smart and she’s clever and also good with people.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And she can build on that. So she can go anywhere. And I just think that’s what higher education should always be. And it’s what I think Starfleet Academy is trying to say is what Starfleet is.
Liz: Yeah. This series is so very steeped in higher education as a setting and as an idea and a concept, that even if Tatiana Maslainy only turns up now and then going forward, I would love to learn that she has gone to university as a mature age student and that she is still pursuing knowledge and lifelong learning and that just because she spent the first 40 years of her life in poverty and desperation and as a fugitive and a prisoner, now she can be something else and it’s okay for your life to begin again at 40.
Anika: Right. I love Anisha. What an amazing character.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: So she gave that big speech about what she went through because of Nahle. But then, the way that she acts after that, all of that is still in everything that’s happening. But this is what I mean when it was like, it was so obvious that she was never on Nus Braka’s side. And he was never in control of what she was going to do or say.
And it was like, this is never going to go well for you, sir. You should not have given her the amount of power that you did because she has her own agenda and it’s not his. She just wanted truth. She wanted Nahle to acknowledge what happened. And she listened when Nahle was talking about the officer who died. There were just so many layers of reaction that Tatiana Maslainy was giving the entire time. And I just really loved the way that those two actresses played off of each other.
Liz: I said a while back when we thought that Anisha was the villain that you need a Tatiana Maslainy to go up against a Paul Giamatti. But actually you need a Tatiana Maslainy to go up against a Holly Hunter.
Anika: Yeah, but they pull it off so well. And then at the end when they’re doing their little, I acknowledge you, nods to each other. I love the end scene when Caleb and Nahle are walking together and just have this absolutely perfect relationship. And then he goes to be with his mom and they also have a perfect relationship. He didn’t have to give any of either away.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: To have it. It was all just good and they all they acknowledge each other and they acknowledge that they’re both giving Caleb something that the other person can’t or doesn’t have the ability to.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: That he needs all of it. There’s no competition.
Liz: If Caleb and Anisha had been able to have a normal stable family life, that’s how it would have been. Caleb would have had teachers and there would have been other adults in his life. And that opportunity was another thing that Nahle took from them. And so now Nahle has, you know, I feel like Nahle could spend her entire life trying to make up for what she did to the Mir family. But she’s not being everything to Caleb, the way Anisha had to be. You know, there’s also Jett and Lura and everyone else.
And Caleb needs that. He needs his peers and his friends and his girlfriend. But now he also has his mom. And now both Anisha and Nahle can sort of step back and have a more balanced relationship with Caleb.
Anika: Right. There was this freeness to the way that he and Nahle were talking. There wasn’t any of that weird, what are we to each other stuff going on? Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That layer of ‘we’re not allowed to be as close as we want to be’ was gone because they could just be what they are.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. And there is no more surrogate parenthood. It’s just a healthy mentor protege who genuinely like each other relationship. And that’s good. Obviously, when Nahle and Anisha get married, they’ll have to reassess their relationship with Caleb again. But, you know, that’s for down the line. That’s for the future.
Anika: That’s okay. That’s fine. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
Liz: It’s a future problem.
Anika: Should we move over to what happens on the ship?
Liz: I just want to say that I think that Anisha’s story is really about the failure of the carceral justice system and what she and Nahle both talk about in terms of guilt and dealing with a crime that you’ve committed is in terms of acknowledging it and feeling the guilt and feeling the loss that you’ve created in the world.
And I really respect that, but I think the one advantage of the carceral justice system, if it actually worked, which obviously it does not, is that you do your time and then it’s behind you and hypothetically you should be able to just go out into the world and say that’s behind me and I’ve had my punishment and it’s over now. And the problem is that our societies just keep punishing people over and over again. But I don’t know that eternal guilt is also an effective solution.
And maybe this is just me as a Catholic who tries not to fall into the Catholic guilt tropes but maybe that’s also not healthy. It’s part of the process but it shouldn’t be the only part of the process. I don’t think that a Star Trek podcast can solve the problem of the justice system.
Anika: No. I’m sorry. I don’t think any podcast can solve the problem of the justice system. I’m just going to say that. Or television series. Neither of those things are what is needed. I think you’re right that if in this shocking world where if you do something and you’re punished for it and then your record is wiped clean again, if that was a thing, then that would work.
Liz: Hypothetically, it sounds great. Let’s try it one day.
Anika: However, that is not even remotely how it works. And there are so many people who are really punished because they just don’t have the money to not be punished.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And so it’s just the system is so incredibly not broken because people will say that it’s working exactly as it’s set up to, which is to punish the people who are being punished, but non-functional.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: And yes, I mean, restorative justice is about acknowledging the harm that you’ve done to the people who’ve been harmed and acknowledging that it was wrong, that there was some, you have done the harm. Yeah. The harm just didn’t happen. But you were an active participant. And I don’t think the goal is guilt. The goal is understanding and having the compassion to realize that, if we take Anisha, she wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. She didn’t want anyone to get killed, but she was willing to allow someone to get killed to get her needs met.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Because she was just thinking about her and her son.
Liz: Which is understandable, but a level of carelessness that lost a man his life.
Anika: Right. She clearly does acknowledge that that happened, and she does feel guilty for that person. But the fact of the matter is that she was punished, Caleb was punished, I guess Nus was punished. Everyone was punished and no one was free. Nothing good came of it.
Liz: No.
Anika: If the only goal is punishment, then that’s no way for a society to move forward either. It’s stuck in punishment forever.
Liz: No, there has to be a third solution. Anyway, I thought it was interesting and I felt like it was a really compelling scene and I really enjoyed watching these two great actresses have this conversation about something genuinely complicated and heartbreaking.
Anika: Yes, that does not have anything like an easy solution. Yeah. So we’d have to keep talking about it.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let’s talk about the kids on the ship because they were all great. Actually, no, before we talk about the kids on the ship, let’s talk about how Jet is teaching at every moment and she too is a better teacher now than she was at the beginning of the school year.
Anika: She has grown so much. Yes. Also, even just as a character, since we first saw her to now.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. I was like, wow, she was vital to this episode. I was sitting here going, like, I was putting other people into her role and it didn’t work.
Liz: Yeah. No.
Anika: This is who we needed. We needed Jett. It would be a different story if it wasn’t her.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: And going all the way back to when we were talking about how she took Darem under her wing and said, look, kid.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Your parents are jerks. Let them go. It’s fine. And she did it to Caleb too, where she was like, you are punishing for yourself for no reason. Just stop making it about you and realize that you did the right thing. And now we’re going to move forward and continue doing the right thing, which is do the best we can to fix all this bad stuff that’s happening. She can cut it down to, what do we need to do right now?
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But she does it in a way that lifts people up and gives them exactly what they need, as if it was this rousing speech when it’s really just saying, this is what you need to listen to in this moment. And this is the moment that matters, because this is the moment that we’re living in right now.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. One thing I really liked about everyone in this episode is how they acknowledge that Caleb is going through something really hard and he has a lot of feelings and he feels like they’re sacrificing his mother.
And they tell him to get it together and the needs of the many, blah, blah, blah, without denying the validity of those feelings. And I don’t mean that in a right wing, safe space, dismissive sort of way. I mean, he’s in a really difficult situation and just telling him the needs of the many wouldn’t have been helpful, but acknowledging the importance of Anisha and Nahle is the right place to start. And acknowledging that he’s having a really hard time.
Anika: I loved, I wrote it down here, the conversation that Jett and Caleb had and where she says, I think because I wrote this down after we’d already talked about it a little and we said that Jett had become such a better teacher since that first day of class.
And so the fact that she says on screen, also remember that first day of class, I was like, yes, so. But remember the first day of class, when I asked you to tell me who you are, you just told me because he said that anybody would go back and she’s like, no, you went back. That’s what matters. And I think it’s true. I think that if you’re a quote unquote Starfleet type person, just to, you know, to lean on the trope a bit, if you’re a Starfleet type person, you automatically think, I can’t let these people die for something that, if I can stop it from happening, I should try, right? And if you are that type of person, you think everybody is.
But there are plenty of people who wouldn’t go back and who would just escape with their mom because it was more important that I found the person I was looking for all these years. And now we’re going to get away before we get sucked back into this much bigger story that last time it sucked us in, we were separated for 15 years.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. No. The framing of Starfleet in this century as sort of the first responders, the people who run into the burning building to save others, is really effective.
Anika: Right. And I do think that it’s also hard. This is why I decided that it had to be Jett. Because Jett is the person who can sort of say that deadpan, no, not everybody runs into the fire. That’s not a thing.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You think that because you are here with all of the people who are running into the fire. So you don’t see that the rest of it. And I just, you know, I’m not a firefighter, I don’t run into fires. But sometimes I do sit here going, I don’t understand how people can X, Y, Z, like how people can think that their comfort is more important than this person over here having the necessities, having the barest of foundational needs met. Yeah. You know, I just sit here going, I don’t understand how you can do that. But I guess I’m saying that I’m a Starfleet person. So, I don’t get it.
Liz: But very much against your will, you’re a Starfleet person.
Anika: Yeah, I know. I’m going to say I’m an Anisha person.
Liz: No, no, I think that’s fair.
Anika: Because you know what? Anisha also went back.
Liz: She did.
Anika: Yeah. That’s the thing. I said it last week too, that she did not abandon them. She did not abandon her son, but she also did not abandon those people. And she does it again in this episode. She says she wants to leave and she desperately wants to leave because she’s having like a panic attack about it. And she threatens Nahle more than once, but she also does what Nahle asks her to do.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: She joins in, she takes a station, she distracts Nus and puts herself in harm’s way. And again, she was never on his side throughout that trial. She wanted actual justice. She didn’t want fake justice. She wanted actual justice. That’s why I’m like, maybe she should teach and maybe she should join Starfleet, is because she has that same instinct.
Liz: Right. We were talking the other week about where did Caleb learn these values? How did he learn to be a gentleman? From his mother.
Anika: Clearly.
Liz: Yes. And it’s embarrassing.
Anika: That’s how he was raised.
Liz: That we didn’t think of it sooner. But I think, like many people, I was very much on board the Anisha has something else going on trade. And it really wasn’t until we actually saw her last week that I was like, oh no, this is just a woman who is trying to survive. And it’s interesting to me that TrekCore review was saying, Anisha is a character we’re clearly meant to hate, because I kind of don’t, guys. Respectfully.
Anika: I can’t imagine hating her. I know. That’s another thing where I’m just like, what are you talking about? I mean, I love some really despicable characters, but Anisha is not a despicable character. I don’t know what she did wrong.
Liz: No.
Anika: She acknowledges what she did wrong. You know what I mean? She’s broken up about the things that she wishes were different. So I don’t like why the only reason to hate her is because she’s not a kick-ass villain that you wanted her to be. Yeah.
Liz: And in fact, on some level, she is deeply traumatized and broken. And I think all through her scenes in the trial with Nahle, she had not fully believed Nahle saying that Caleb was alive. She thought that was another trick.
Anika: Yeah. She wanted to believe it, and she on a certain level needed to, because they did need to be allies in order to get through this. But at the same time, of course, she thinks it’s a trick.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Of course, she doesn’t trust Nahle to tell her the truth either.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: She trusted Nahle, and she was betrayed by that trust.
Liz: Yeah. She is completely within her rights to be wary of Nahle. And it’s a really fascinating dynamic. And rewatching the trial scene, realising that Anisha didn’t think Caleb was alive. It’s so rich. Anyway, back to the kids. Let’s talk about Genesis having the con, because I am so proud of her. And taking the chair and then realising she needs to pee is so relatable for me as a small-bladder girly. Yeah. Just fantastic all around. And she’s good at it.
Anika: She’s good at it. And the thing is that when she left, that was the captain thing to do.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Yeah. Giving up the con to go where she was needed.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That was the captain thing to do. There you go, Genesis.
Liz: You can tell by the way the camera follows her into the turbo lift. That’s the captain shot. That’s the sort of shot that Janeway gets.
Anika: Exactly. Oh gosh. She got all of the captain shots. She fully did. And I was so proud of her. And I loved her scene with Sam when Sam says that she felt like a mirror.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Which is heart breaking. And Genesis, she could have had the same reaction she did to Caleb last week, which was defensive and angry at and now I’m just going to leave. But instead, she felt it and she and she brought it in and she gave Sam what she needed. Again, she put Sam’s needs ahead of her own and Sam’s feelings ahead of her own. And that was leadership. And I was so proud of her.
Liz: I have to say the thing with the language between them, I didn’t fully follow. I know that’s how they met. Sam was greeting people in other languages, but then the dialogue here suggests it’s like a made-up language and I just want to go back and go over that with a red pen or something because I was confused.
Anika: That’s something that I think we needed. Like you said, we needed more.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: We need more episodes or, because even the second time I was like, am I supposed to remember this? Is this a thing that happened that I have forgotten? Because I don’t remember this ever coming up. I was like, because you’re right, I do remember Sam greeting everybody in funny languages, but until you just said it now, I didn’t connect that. I legitimately thought that Sam had made up a language and taught it to Genesis. Yeah. I just didn’t see that.
Liz: It was one of the very few glaring flaws in the finale, I thought. It was just confusing. But I love their friendship and I love that Sam 2.0 is more complicated now, and Genesis is totally down for that. I think Sam’s feelings are so relatable.
I talked last week about how sometimes you feel like the sidekick to your best friend, and I think that’s how she was feeling. And it’s rough and it is something you have to learn to deal with as a young adult, and Genesis handles it with a lot of grace. And she gives the proper response, which is, “I thought I was your sidekick.”
Anika: Right. Yeah. Just as you said that, Sam, you’re my hero. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: It was beautiful. So everything Sam does ever is perfect. Her reaction to them winning.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Where she’s like screeching out of control and just saying, you know, let’s go, let’s go. That was just so much joy. Yeah.
Liz: It was so great.
Anika: It was infectious.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: There are so many reasons why I love a Starfleet Academy series, like this age group. But one of them is that she doesn’t have to be an officer at all. Yeah. She doesn’t have to have protocol. She can just lose it to her excitement on the bridge and it’s fine because she’s a kid.
Liz: It’s one of the appeals of YA in general, I think, for an adult audience, the raw unfiltered emotion of a young person is very cathartic.
Anika: It was so beautiful.
Liz: Yeah. It was so good. And Darem, I said he was Tom Paris because he has parents who aren’t really interested in him and he’s sort of arrogant and a reflexive flirt and deep down secretly a good guy. And he’s into a Klingon.
Anika: I think. It makes perfect sense.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: We already said that of course he’s a pilot. And, again, I really like the relationship between Jet and Darem. She’s so reluctantly his mentor. And yet she absolutely is. She had that great conversation with Caleb, which was exactly what he needed to hear. But she’s not his mentor. He has one. But she is like, I guess I’m stuck with Darem. But she does three or four times seriously in the episode. She tells Darem exactly what he needs to hear. Yeah. And it’s just so correct. And I just love it. I love that for both of them in a delightful to watch kind of way.
Liz: I really like when she says you learn more when things go wrong, because I think that’s sort of the ethos of the whole series, that I’ve said that this is a safe place to experience failure. And one of the ways we learn is by looking at a failure and going, okay, what went wrong and what will we do differently next time? And here we are, guys. That to me is the point of the Kobayashi Maru.
Anika: Yes, of course it is. The reason that I’m so down on it is you’re like everybody knows it. And it’s like, yeah, if everybody knows then it no longer is a lesson.
Liz: I do feel like by this point in the timeline, it’s like a ritual rather than a meaningful test. But obviously everyone wants to do the test that Captain Kirk cheated his way through.
Anika: Only if you want to show up Captain Kirk.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And he’s been dead for 800 years, so, move on.
Liz: I just think there’s a psychological value in tying yourself to generations past through this stupid test that doesn’t mean anything.
Anika: I guess. I think that you could tie yourself to generations past without a pointless ritual that makes everyone feel bad about it.
Liz: Dare you to say that to any Klingon.
Anika: I don’t think that you learn failure from the Kobayashi Maru. I think that it teaches you a false version of failure.
Liz: No, that’s fair.
Anika: I think you have to actually fail. And like you said, in a safe place, in a safe environment, or like I’m saying all the time about how science failure is just built into it. And if you embrace that, instead of you learn so much more when things go wrong, we’ve learned so many more things in science when things go wrong.
Liz: No, that’s very true. I can also see this argument happening in the Starfleet Academy classroom, which is absolutely a place where all the best arguments happen.
Anika: Yes. So, okay. The only other thing that happened on the ship that we haven’t touched on is the Doctor.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And his whole plot line, his whole subplot, where he pretends to be the broken up ship. Pretty amazing, gotta say. And loses his marbles and has to learn how to communicate again. I know he’s trying to communicate the entire time, but they have to learn how to listen to him.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Which is another, it’s another recurring theme in the series.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And we were saying that “Rubincon”. Oh, yeah. It turns out it was correct. And “Rubincon” is wrong on purpose.
Liz: Which I kind of guessed because it’s, you know, Paramount is shonky, but it’s not that shonky.
Anika: I like that the doctor of all people, the beginning of him was all about learning how to use the right kinds of language to talk to the people that he needs to talk to. That was his whole thing. Because “please state the nature of the medical emergency”. It was the only thing he was ever meant to say.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: He was supposed to be a stopgap measure, and he had to become a human, and that meant he had to learn how to talk to people, like we were saying with Kes. And so I really like that this version of the doctor, who has so many hundreds of years of memories and knowledge was brought down to that, and he had to learn how to tell his daughter the right things. His daughter and her peers, it was like a payoff to the whole “Real Life” stuff.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I was just like, oh my gosh, this is, I don’t know. I really liked how that came. Again, he had one scene, and it was so poignant. Again, the way that Kerrice Brooks and Robert Ricardo played their relationship now is so amazing.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’m so impressed with them. I fully believe that they lived 17 years of a life together, and that they are father and daughter.
Liz: Absolutely.
Anika: It’s incredible.
Liz: The Doctor becomes the ship, holographically thing, also feels like a bit of a Voyager deep cut, because in Basics Part 1, they install holo-emitters on the outside of Voyager to make it look like they have allies, but the thing goes wrong and the Doctor himself is projected into space. And it was like a bit of weak comedy and a mediocre cliffhanger, you know, all of that. But it felt like not necessarily full circle, but one of the ways in which the events of the Doctor’s life keep repeating themselves.
Anika: Yes. Tarima.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: We need to talk about Tarima.
Liz: Oh, I am so happy. Tarima gets to control her powers, she gets to have agency, she gets to use her abilities for something constructive instead of destructive.
Anika: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yes. And Caleb saw that. I fully believe that everyone in Tarima’s life, they were like, you’re this amazing, great, wonderful person, but you have this propensity to do something terrible. And we have to stop you from doing that. We have to stop that from happening to you, because we’re really trying to save you, you know, we love you and we know that you’re this good person. And so we’re going to stop you from doing this thing.
And Caleb, because again, because he’s Caleb, because of who Caleb is, is like, what if all of that is on his face wrong, and you can use it, that you can control it, that it is not uncontrollable, that it is something that you have the ability to direct. Everyone else was afraid of it, and he was like, I, you know, you’re just beautiful.
Liz: So it also reminds me of how Nahle looked at this kid, this petty criminal, this angry boy and saw someone who could be an officer.
Anika: Yes. Yes.
Liz: He’s sort of paying her gift forward.
Anika: That amazing scene where he towers over her, and she’s like, oh, you poor child instead of shivering. Yeah. Yeah. Because she sees the kid and not the angry man who could hurt her.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Caleb sees Tarima as someone who could do this amazing thing, that he could save all of them, who could find his mom for him. Yeah. And he’s not afraid of her at all. He says, do you trust me? And she’s like, not sure. And he says, I trust you.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Well, I don’t think anyone’s ever been…
Liz: I was literally about to say.
Anika: Even her brother has never been able to say, I trust you to not hurt me.
Liz: Yeah. Which…
Anika: In that same way…
Liz: …is not a fault on Occam’s part because he has never been taught that he can trust his sister.
Anika: Right. So that was beautiful.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I love them.
Liz: They still feel very anxiety-coded to me. I’m sorry.
Anika: Oh my gosh. I love them. I love them. Now they have this connection.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: They can’t not have that connection. Whatever happens going forward.
Liz: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: They’re going to be connected forever. And that’s just the way it is.
Liz: Yep. Sorry. Ripped to any of their future partners because that’s just something they’re going to have to live with.
Anika: It’s just a thing. But I mean, I’m so proud of both of them. I’m so proud of them for coming to that. And it was so beautiful. And oh, my gosh, the music, the transition from… So they’re on the bridge and they’re like touching foreheads in the flowers. And then they’re touching foreheads on the bridge and they pull back. And the music starts with that transition.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I immediately went to Apple Music and I was like, this isn’t up yet, is it? Because I need the second half of Starfleet Academy. I need that music to be on my playlists. I cannot tell you. I was waiting for it the second time. I was like, it’s coming. Props to Jeff Russo, because he is very good at creating music that just sort of disappears into the background and just supports it. And then every once in a while, this absolutely banger of a theme that I think about for days.
Liz: I have to admit that I have not been hugely impressed with Jeff Russo’s score for Starfleet Academy. And I was almost wondering, has he said everything he needs to say about Star Trek? And is it time to find another composer? And that’s not really a criticism of him. I think he does great work in general. I just think, you work on one thing for a long time, you run out of things to say, totally normal. But then, we get to this, and it’s just so good. Just a great piece of work. I cannot wait to have it in my playlist.
Anika: I mean, clearly, this episode, from beginning to end, they treat it as a season finale.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: The opening with the broken ships and the Star Trek logo. The ending credits with the photos and Rufus Wainwright back.
Liz: Yes. Again, Millennial Bait.
Anika: This was very crafted. They were like, we’re going to have all of the things in this episode, and we are going, you know, the music has to be a part of it. But I mean, I just, that was so good. That motif was so good.
Liz: It’s great.
Anika: I love it.
Liz: And we don’t really see much of Tarima after that scene, but in the final scene in the Atrium, she is holding herself with more confidence and she seems a little looser. And so I’m really excited to see where she goes in season two.
Anika: I feel like she could become Tarima 2.0 the way that Sam is 2.0. I feel like that we could get that for them both and that that’s really… And then again, it’s earned and it’s what we want for them.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I just want nothing but the best for my kids.
Anika: I know. They’re all, I just, they’re all, I love them all. I love them all. I’m so proud of them. And I’ve said from the beginning that this series was… I’ve been waiting for this series for… It feels like my entire Star Trek life. At least since The Next Generation happened and I was like Wesley’s age.
They said at the premiere that Star Trek fans have been waiting to go to Starfleet Academy their whole lives because they want to be a part of Starfleet. And the way you get into Starfleet is to go to Starfleet Academy. And I was like, yeah, kind of. So I know that I’m the audience.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And so of course, it’s going to work on me. But I just really, I’m so happy with how it all worked out.
Liz: No, because it was good.
Anika: Yeah, because it was good. And they cared. Again, they put effort into this show. I really feel that all of the people who are working on it want to be doing it. Sometimes, and it was true, right? The people who made the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, they really wanted to be making Strange New Worlds. Yes. And the people who are making Star Trek: Picard, again, it was sort of like, we want to be making Star Trek: Picard season 3. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. I just want to say in both cases, the problem was specifically Akiva Goldsman.
Anika: But the people who are making Starfleet Academy clearly want to be making Starfleet Academy. Yeah. Yeah. This is the show that they want to be working on.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And they are putting all of their effort into making it as good as possible, instead of trying to turn it into the show that they want it to be. Yeah. That it’s just can’t be because it wasn’t supposed to be that to begin with.
Liz: I mean, it’s also interesting how many Strange New Worlds writers have moved on to Starfleet Academy and are doing much, much better work on SFA than they were on Strange New Worlds. I kind of feel like Starfleet Academy is just a more satisfying workplace and a more satisfying body of work to be creating. Once again, I think the problem is Akiva Goldsman.
Anika: We’ve been saying that we wanted to move into the future.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That we don’t want to be making prequels. We don’t want to be in this space where we’re constrained by what’s come before. We want to build on what’s come before.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’m acting like I’m a part of the Starfleet Academy crew. I am not, unfortunately.
Liz: I mean, I was going to say they should call you, but honestly, this feels like a series that does have a mental health consultant.
Anika: Yes, or something. Somebody is out there paying attention to things because specifically with Tarima and with Sam, trauma is being treated correctly.
Liz: And taken seriously without being a buzzword.
Anika: Right. There are things I could pick on throughout the season and in this particular episode, but overall, I’m just very happy with it.
Liz: Yeah, I think this is certainly the season of modern Star Trek that I’ve had the fewest notes on.
Anika: I do have one more thing to say about, I sort of said it when I was talking about Caleb and Nahle, and then Caleb and Anisha at the end. When Nahle is giving her rebuttal to Anisha, and she’s talking about the Hawaiian officer and his children, and crafting a story about this person who was a real person. And so there’s a consequence to all of this.
But she says that through Anisha’s actions, she changed the lives of that man and his children, and also her son, and that so did Nahle. And then Nahle did the same thing to Anisha, and all of that. But she says, we all have to live with it.
And then, if you take that, it’s a really sad part, right? Where she’s saying, I live with it every day. You’re already dancing on my grave, because I live with all of this every day. But at the end, when they’re looking at each other, and they do a little chin acknowledgement of each other, that’s when I wrote this down. I was like, what if it was good? What if living with it was a positive?
Liz: Yes.
Anika: What if we took all of this bad stuff that happened, and all of the trauma that we lived through, and all of the horrible feelings that we have, and instead of allowing them to weigh us down, what if we allowed them to lift us up? What if we became better people because of it?
Liz: It’s sort of the opposite of what I was saying earlier about guilt.
Anika: Right, I didn’t want to end this podcast without saying that I feel like that moment really hit me because the way that she says it in that rebuttal, Nahle herself is so, she’s feeling all of that trauma holding her down in that moment, but the way that they get through it is by Caleb reaching out to Anisha and then reaching out to Nahle and saying, we are three people who are affected by this, and we don’t have to stay there. We can move forward with it. And Nahle says it too, because she says, we don’t have to listen to Nus anymore. We don’t have to be with him. We can be with each other instead.
Liz: And that’s why Nahle and Anisha should get married.
Anika: Right. So moving on to shipping news.
Liz: I kind of feel like that’s the extent of my shipping news takes. We have reached an equilibrium with the Caleb and Tarima romance and nothing, none of the other romances really moved except that Jett and Laura are holding hands in public, which I feel like is actually a big step for them. So well done them.
Anika: In terms of Nahle and Anisha, all I really have to say is that literally every single thing they said to each other could have shipping subtext, which is flirtatious, semi-sexual, all of their lines.
Liz: And it’s just been a while since we had that sort of subtext between women. Seven and Raffi sort of went from nothing, to a couple who argue all the time and are horrible to each other, to breaking up.
Anika: But tell us how you really feel.
Liz: I just don’t think it was a very well-handled relationship. And you know that I did not like Beckett and Mariner. So I am excited for the tension between two women, whether that’s overtly shippy, whether it’s something people just write fic about, I’m into it. I enjoy it. I’m happy to see it back in my life.
Also, I was a Seven/Janeway shipper back in the day. And now I’m so old that I kind of look at it and go, oh no, that’s inappropriate. Whereas I don’t have that problem here, even though the age gap is so much greater.
Anika: The age gap is so much greater, but Nahle is sort of ageless in a way.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So it doesn’t feel… I mean, you can’t say that Anisha is not an adult.
Liz: No, no, no.
Anika: At a certain point, you have to acknowledge that women are able, are capable of making their own decisions.
Liz: And that’s where Nus Braka failed.
Anika: This was a not very shippy episode. Tarima and Caleb were the only overtly shippy couple, but there was so many platonic besties.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: That, of course, I am never gonna see as solely platonic because I’m me, but they were clearly. I would say that Sam and Genesis and Jay-Den and Caleb, Sam and Genesis had whole scenes. Caleb and Jay-Den legitimately had multiple little moments where they were acknowledging each other or hugging or smiling and just being bros.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I’m so happy for them to have that. I do not actually see any sexual tension between Jay-Den and Caleb, but I see a true brotherly connection.
Liz: Absolutely. I will say that I hope for season two that Tarima and Caleb as a ship move into the background and Darem and Jay-Den become the foreground ship, just because it would be nice to have some balance in the force and I want to see what happens there next.
Before we wrap up, I have one final non-shipping note and that’s my biggest problem with this episode, which is Nahle punching Nus at the end. I feel like Anisha earned that, but Nahle is in uniform, she’s an officer, he’s restrained. You can’t have littler police violence as a treat.
Anika: Yeah, right. It strikes me in the same way as whenever there are certain moments in Modern Trek where it’s just like, oh, no, that was for you, that wasn’t for the character. Yeah, yeah. That felt like the writers saying something about Nus. They were like, we want Nus to get punched and him to laugh it off, and then him to get punched again. Honestly, it would have landed better for me if Anisha did it twice.
Liz: Yes, or Anisha then Caleb.
Anika: Right. I didn’t like it being Nahle because that’s, I don’t recall any other time where Nahle was the type of person.
Liz: I was just going to say it feels out of character for her. You know, in later Voyager, there would be a lot of scenes where Janeway has an unspeakably cheesy line. In the episode with the Malon, she’s like, “let’s take out the trash,” and it was clearly inserted to go into the trailer for the episode on UPN. This felt like that. It felt like writing to the audience in the wrong way, rather than writing for the character.
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Exactly. So yeah, I was just like, no, that doesn’t work for me. And also I just, yeah, I agree with you that he was under arrest by the Federation at that point, and she is the literal face of the Federation. So the Federation has to take the high ground at that point. Yeah. Come on, what are we doing?
Liz: I think also I just have feelings about how we treat prisoners and all of that sort of thing. And I’m into season eight of SVU, and it’s in full blown “it’s okay if we brutalize this guy if we think he’s a rapist mode”. And I’m like, I don’t know, guys, I feel like this is a problem. I’m eager to get through this era.
Anika: Oh yeah, I was going to say, it gets fun.
Liz: Oh, I know, I know. I’m really excited to get to the woke SVU era where they are responding to criticism and trying to do better. But I also, I’m a completionist, so I can’t just start at season 20 or wherever.
Anika: And also, I would never tell you to skip season 8.
Liz: Oh my god, it is so shippy.
Anika: I love it. I can’t.
Anyway, 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 some of our episodes. We’re always continuing to work on that. Although I will say that most podcatchers now will do it and it’s not perfect, but it’s not as bad. It’s gotten a lot better. Automatic transcription has gotten better.
Liz: Honestly, the Apple transcripts are so much better than what our transcription-based editing software produces, which is unreadable.
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. The more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us. And tell your friends. And join us in two weeks when we will be discussing Star Trek: Voyager‘s “Real Life”.
Liz: For no reason whatsoever.