Anika and Liz beam up through an ion storm and discuss the third episode of Strange New Worlds, “Ghosts of Illyria”. Topics we cover include…
- This is a pretty mediocre episode and the character stuff is very hit or miss
- Do we need a log at the end to tell us what the moral is?
- We love La’an and we want to know everything about her, but her story makes no sense here
- “I never think of you as a child,” in the context of a character first encountered as a child, is a terrible line
- Somehow … Palpatine has returned (to our conversation)
- Has no one told La’an that she can just … change her name? People can do it all the time! Anika did it!
- Don’t sleep in your eye make-up, guys. This is an Antimatter Pod PSA.
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Anika: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. This week, we’re discussing the third episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season One, “Ghosts of Illyria.”
Liz: Your cat also wishes to contribute to this conversation.
Anika: My cat is a ghost of Illyria, turns out.
Liz: I wonder if she feels, as I do, that it’s very isolating being the only person who didn’t love this episode.
Anika: It was fine. I have no strong feelings either way. It was fine.
Liz: My strong feeling is that this show has such great characters and the plots are so… The science is dumb. The stories are predictable, mainly because we’ve already seen them in other Star Treks. It feels like it’s not just a rejection of Discovery’s serialized storytelling, but even the relative sophistication of season four of Enterprise under Manny Coto.
Anika: Wow, that is an opinion.
Liz: It’s… Look, we’re three episodes in, it has time to improve, but it worries me that episodic series need a long season to hit the ground and pick up pace. And this is a 10 episode season. So are we going to get to a point where this series is actually good?
Anika: Yeah, I think that it’s partly… In order to be episodic, which by definition means that it introduces the problem and solves the problem in the same episode. It can’t be giant world ending problems. And it’s not that I need everything to be on a giant world ending stage.
Liz: No, and I would love to see Discovery dig deep into a much smaller scale story.
Anika: Yes, but without an arc and without… There’s something lacking. I think it’s partly just because we’ve gotten used to watching television a certain way. So I watched this today. I didn’t watch it yesterday. Sorry. I’m a bad Star Trek fan.
Liz: It’s okay. I forgive you.
Anika: And then I immediately watched Law and Order and I’m halfway through SVU. And those are procedurals. We’ve talked about procedurals a lot on this show and what the difference between a long arc and a episodic procedural is. And I am sorry to inform everyone that SVU is less episodic than Strange New Worlds, despite being a procedural. And I think that’s a problem.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I think that they haven’t quite found the formula yet. I think there is a formula and the Strange New Worlds people haven’t gotten to it yet. And that’s fine. Again, it is only the third episode. There are plenty of things I enjoyed. I don’t have a lot to say.
Liz: My problem is that I am watching season one of ER for the very first time and it’s an amazing show. And by episode three, it was also a procedural with character arcs, just as Strange New Worlds wants to be. But the procedural side is tight, it’s interesting, it’s compelling, it’s not stupid.
“Ghosts of Illyria” was just stupid. A virus that travels by light that basically transforms the crew into moths. And Number One is immune, but no one is proactively trying to use that and experiment on her, M’Benga is just like, oh yeah, I can’t do it, sorry. And then he’s sick.
Anika: Definitely the Doctor, the EMH, would have her in a little bubble immediately.
Liz: And she knows she’s infected, but never even considers self-isolation. We’ve been through a virus, we’ve been through an epidemic, we know what to do when you’re infected. This was just silly. And I knew the second the light people turned up on the planet, that they were the Illyrian colonists. Because I have seen Star Trek.
This is not predictable in the way that Prodigy is predictable, because it’s guiding new viewers into a universe. It’s predictable because it’s appealing to the people who don’t like any television made post, I’m going to say post season two of Enterprise.
Anika: Really? I was thinking maybe post season two of TNG. But maybe that’s just me. What’s interesting about ER, is that ER was made at the same time as Voyager. And they’re very similar in strange ways, because they are both straddling that serial versus episodic.
Liz: Yeah, that tension.
Anika: That tension, yes, that tension. And sometimes they’re really good at and other times they fail. But ER was on for 15 years and the finale had direct callbacks to the pilot. And that was amazing. The entire final season is a wrap up of the whole series, because they knew it was their final season. They were doing this. And it’s just really smart. It’s just really well done to have done that. And I wish that more shows got that opportunity.
Because they didn’t get to have their 15 season wrap up without having had 14 seasons, popular seasons beforehand. You know, they didn’t have that. It’s harder. It’s harder for even Star Trek, which I think that – definitely up until Enterprise, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all had seven seasons. The assumption was that seven seasons was what you get. And I feel like, even though we’re only going into season five of Discovery, everyone at this point, since they passed the fourth season, thinks that they’re going to get to the seven seasons.
I think that they can find that sweet spot of being both episodic and serial. That’s actually what Strange New Worlds should be. And I hope that they’re going for that eventually. When this episode started, the teaser, the pre-credits sequence, I really thought that teaser was a tie-in to what I’m calling Pike’s arc of being, you know, having post-traumatic stress about his future.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Pre-post-traumatic stress.
Liz: Pre-traumatic stress. It’s totally a thing.
Anika: Wow, pre-traumatic stress. So anyway, but then none of that happened. Pike’s entire plot line in this episode was being in a room by himself with Spock. And nothing, that was a big nothing. And so I didn’t get what I expected. And it wasn’t that I was disappointed, but it was weird to me. It was jostling in some way.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. Obviously we’re due for a Number One episode. We are decades overdue for a Number One episode. I have not read the tie-in novels about her being Illyrian, but the second I saw the episode title, I was like, I have spent time on Memory Alpha. I know what’s happening here. And so again, none of it was a surprise.
But as you know, I really enjoy the taboo against genetic modification and the stories around that. And so I have been eager to see how this plays out. And truthfully, everything about Una’s storyline emotionally was great. I don’t think we need a log at the end to give us the moral of the story, because this is a show for adults, and it’s a little patronizing.
But I did appreciate that in her final log, Una points out that she doesn’t need to be one of the good ones for people to accept her. She shouldn’t have that burden. Even really terrible, genetically modified people. And I don’t mean taking over the world. I mean being total assholes in really petty and everyday ways. They’re still people. They’re still worthy of respect.
There’s a question to be raised about whether the eugenics soldiers were bad people because they were made that way or were they raised and taught to be that way. And certainly, however much of that genetic lineage is in La’an, she is a capable soldier, but violence doesn’t seem to be inherently part of her nature.
Anika: So first of all, I need to know more about La’an immediately. I need everything about La’an because those were breadcrumbs. That was where we got a little bit of a continuation. It was in the La’an and Una stuff, but it was strange.
Okay, so I agree. Una has needed this forever, but it was weird that we are coming into this series in the middle of the mission, and all of these people already know each other, other than new people like Uhura and La’an, but the rest of the crew has already been working together. Pike and Una definitely have a very close relationship, and La’an and Una have a close relationship. And yet there is this secret from both of them.
Liz: That didn’t quite land for me. Not that Pike didn’t know, because it makes sense that Una would keep this from her commanding officer, but I feel like young Una rescuing a traumatized little Noonien-Singh would say something. Try to connect on that level.
Anika: I really don’t understand why they introduced the two of them having that prior relationship if it wasn’t about this. I’m like, wait, what? And so all it ended up being, La’an gets angry. I think it would have been stronger storytelling if La’an knew and Pike didn’t.
Liz: I agree.
Anika: Because you think that her closest relationship was Pike, but her actual closest relationship is … I don’t know. That’s just a stronger idea for me. That’s just me.
Liz: No, I completely agree. But also La’an didn’t make a lot of sense to me as a character, because if she has this terrible hatred of augments and is burdened by, you know, having this notorious surname, La’an, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you can change your name.
Anika: Yeah, that’s where I was going with the, I need to understand why. Okay, so the line that really stuck out to me between the two of them was, I never think of you as a child. And I was like, whoa, that is so frightening. As someone who feels like they had to grow up too quickly because of trauma and life and whatever. And expectations.
I really relate to the idea of someone who doesn’t get to have their childhood and then doesn’t know how to be an adult because they didn’t get to go through the right steps. So that’s really interesting to me. And it adds a lot of nuance to the relationship that again, I want to know more about.
But who was La’an’s parents? Who was taking care of this child? Okay, if she was a child and she was an orphan, great, that’s normal in Starfleet apparently. So someone had to take care of her. And if it wasn’t Una, who was it? And why didn’t they change her name? And why did they let people bully her about something that is literally centuries ago that she has no control over? I just, I cannot with that.
Liz: No, the world building around La’an really confuses me, because the first episode implied that Una rescued her as a child. And then she’s like, I don’t think of you as a child. And that’s, okay, that is really sad. But also, that’s like groomer talk. And I don’t want to get into the intense puriteen side of fandom, but that was the moment I stopped shipping La’an/Una because I don’t want to go there.
And what you were saying about La’an being forced to grow up too fast and sort of never having had a childhood and so not knowing how to be an adult, that actually makes the surname thing make sense to me. She’s carrying all this rage about something that she can change, but she doesn’t feel like she has that power.
And yet people of our generation and the younger generation behind us change their names really easily. First names and surnames. It seems anachronistic that this would not be an option in the future. I was thinking about you.
Anika: I literally changed my name because I was done with men. It’s not impossible. I would assume that in the utopian future of the Federation, it would be easy, easier, easiest. And if Una wasn’t the adult who was looking out for her, were there no adults looking out for her? And if not, why? Why are there no adults looking out for her? I’m very concerned.
Liz: Can we write the fic where it’s Katrina Cornwell raising La’an?
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Because I will say the relationship between Una and La’an is basically what I had envisioned between Katrina and Una.
Anika: And Una.
Liz: Yeah. And just as we have the whole Georgiou to Michael to Tilly mentorship generations, I like the idea of this happening all over Starfleet with different people, but mostly different women. Cause we don’t get enough stories about women in mentorship roles.
Anika: Also, just before we move off of La’an and how her story makes no sense. So, Khan Noonien Singh had a family, I guess, and they were allowed to procreate throughout the ages.
Liz: I mean, if Emperor Palpatine had a granddaughter…
Anika: But that’s okay. So that’s also bad. But so Emperor Palpatine made a clone of himself, made multiple clones of himself so that he would never have to die. And one of his clones escaped the lab and fell in love with a force user and they had a baby named Rey.
Liz: It worries me that you know this.
Anika: All of that is ridiculous. However, it at least is logical within if you have to, if you accept that Palpatine is a person who makes sense, then you can accept all of that nonsense. If you accept that Khan is a person who makes sense, yeah, sure, I can totally see him seeding the world, but none of them would have his last name.
Liz: That’s the thing. That’s the thing. We know from “Space Seed” that Khan is very charming and he enjoys the company of women and he can marry and have a relationship until she tragically dies on whatever planet that was that were abandoned on because Kirk is the worst.
So sure, he probably had children on Earth. Why are they raised with his last name? Was his partner just really anti-feminist? If that’s a side of the whole eugenics thing, like an anti-feminist backlash, totally buy it.
Anika: I don’t, but I want to believe in a 2050, I don’t know when this happened, where they beat back the evil supermen and they find a whole bunch of little kids that are baby supermen, I guess. And they say, oh, well, we can’t just, it’s not their fault. So we’re going to take these children and we’re going to make sure that they’re okay. But again, you give them to people and you change their name, they become adopted by the nations of the world.
Liz: Let them grow up in anonymity.
Anika: Exactly, not within the shadow of the actual person who tried to take over the world.
Liz: Also, because I just recently watched the first Augment trilogy on Enterprise with Brent Spiner, he found a bunch of embryos and grew them and raised them. So-
Anika: Just like Emperor Palpatine, sorry.
Liz: Yes. And the amazing thing is that he didn’t genetically alter them, all of them to look like him. But how does that tie in with an actual Noonien-Singh family? Again, I ask, why do they still have the surname?
Anika: They all have the same name. It’s weird. It’s weird. It’s weird that Noonien-Singh are so close and they have the same plot now. It’s weird that I just, I don’t buy it.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I don’t buy it. I don’t think that would happen.
Liz: I will say that in La’an’s case, I don’t buy it in a way that makes me think that if the show improves, I could end up writing fan fiction, because this is the sort of gap Voyager would give us that I would have to explain away in fic. I just thought we were at a stage where we didn’t need to do all the work ourselves, you know? I love Voyager, but why would you reproduce its storytelling?
Anika: It’s fine. I feel badly. I shouldn’t rant and compare La’an to Palpatine, but…
Liz: I mean, by this comparison, I think she’s Rey.
Anika: That’s good. She can be saved. There’s nothing wrong with Rey. It’s just all the people who ruined, tried to make her bad.
Liz: What I propose is that La’an’s last word in the series is to introduce herself as La’an Skywalker.
Anika: Canon. That’s, I’m making that happen. Let’s talk about something else.
Liz: Let’s talk about Pike and Spock.
Anika: Again, they didn’t actually do anything in this episode. They were literally in a room and then they explained everything that happened in the episode to the audience.
Liz: I kind of enjoyed that the male leads, the ones that the worst parts of the audience want to see most of, were in a totally passive role. This is old school Uhura and Rand stuff that they were basically doing. They were in a room and they were doing research and they were being menaced and then protected and yeah.
Anika: There’s two things about Pike that again, I think do actually tie in to his Pike arc. The first is that, so they’re on the planet and Spock’s off doing whatever research and Una says, I’ll go get him. And Pike says, no, I’ll go get him. You take the crew up and runs off. That’s why I was thinking that he’s just being overtly reckless that he knows he’s not gonna die for 10 years.
And so he’s just gonna do whatever he wants between now and then he’s gonna throw himself into danger forever, which is a superhero idea that I had once, that if there was a person whose only superpower was that he knew exactly when he was gonna die, that he could be a hero forever until that moment.
Liz: Yep.
Anika: You know? So that’s sort of what I was reading into Pike and against is because it’s this idea I had when I was 12 or whatever and now-
Liz: No, it’s a good idea.
Anika: It’s just stuck in my head. And so that’s what I thought Pike was doing. And so I did like when he was pacing and he said, I don’t like feeling helpless. And he was physically incapable of standing still, while Spock was being very research oriented. I did the comparison and that contrast and it was very, Pike is, you know, in the Kirk milieu of someone who’s like an action hero and doesn’t do well with being in that passive role.
Liz: And it’s a way of highlighting his fear about disability without getting into ableist visual tropes, like the chair.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: You’re right, you’re right. The issue isn’t that he is going to be trapped in his body or in his chair or in something that is holding him in, but it’s that he can’t be that hero. He can’t be that reckless person. He can’t rush into fire.
Liz: And if you had foreknowledge that you’re going to become paraplegic or something, that would be really scary. You know, people who become disabled later in life do have a transition period and a mourning period. It’s just that Pike has never given the opportunity to go through that and come out the other side. And that’s the ableism, that you’re always the tragic disabled person. And meanwhile, Spock is reading the cylinders and just being a general nerd. And I respect that.
Anika: Spock is great. He’s just so… I liked the, I am arming us with knowledge. That was so good. I was very proud of him.
Liz: I was like, I think he might be trying to tell a joke. It’s not funny, but I’m very proud.
Anika: But it was funny that he was trying, so it worked. It was just, they were fun.
Liz: Yes. And Christine is also great. We didn’t really see much of her, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And again, because her job is temporary genetic changes, I was waiting for her to play a part in this storyline, and she didn’t really get to.
Anika: Well, she did, because she actually created the serum or whatever, but it was all off-screen. We didn’t get to see it. When I wrote this line in our notes, that Christine Chapel continues to be the actual best, was when Mbenga wakes up and Una’s like, we fixed it. And Christine comes over and she’s like, yeah, I totally created the serum. That’s me. I’m awesome. She is so amazing and I loved her. I just love her.
Liz: She’s so great.
Anika: With two lines, she’s the best of the episode for me.
Liz: Jess Bush is absolutely turning into a scene stealer and I love it. And M’benga gets a bit more depth, which I think is great. He has this terribly sad story of trying to save his little girl, which apparently those fans hate it because God forbid someone value the life of a little Black girl. But I thought it was very sweet.
Anika: It was very sweet. It was very sweet and I like it for another reason. Like, obviously I value the lives of little Black girls, but also I like, especially in this particular episode, which was at its core about people playing God by genetically altering their children to some purpose and how the Federation is against that.
And then we had M’Benga, who was not genetically altering his child, but preserving her in a space so that he could find the cure. And that is the same thing, you know, they’re like two sides of the same coin kind of thing.
Liz: Alteration and preservation.
Anika: Right, and so with the goal being save my kid and, you know, have them be safe from disease. And I think that’s really interesting in a show that is, you know, it’s science fiction. Everyone always says the Star Trek is very based in reality, based in those kinds of things. And to have the doctor and, it was an interesting twist that I liked that part of the story more than Una’s part of the story.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. I also really liked Hemmer and his interactions with Una. And again, thinking about Enterprise, why can’t they make his antennae move? They had the technology in the early 2000s. However, I love him. I ship them. Get yourself a lady who can throw you over her shoulder.
Anika: Right? He’s completely crazy. He captured part of a star in the transporter room. That’s amazing.
Liz: I just want to point out that Una beamed up her whole landing party in the middle of an ion storm and not a single person was swapped with their mirror universe counterpart. But I choose to believe that bit of molten planetary core is actually a mirror universe molten planetary core.
Anika: Oh, I like it. Yes. That makes sense to me.
Liz: There are rules here, guys.
Anika: And it was a perfectly good…
Liz: Thank you. Thank you.
Anika: I like it a lot.
Liz: Let’s talk about fashion.
Anika: Okay. So first they had the cool jackets.
Liz: I love them.
Anika: Which we’d already seen in stills and stuff, but I was very excited to see the jackets. They were very reminiscent of the Star Trek: Beyond jackets, which is a compliment, just in case everybody was concerned. I have desperately wanted a Star Trek: Beyond jacket and these are the more sedate version and…
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: It would be easier to wear. So I will definitely take a Strange New Worlds version of the jacket, but I would totally wear that over a little black dress, clubbing, let’s go.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I would just wear it all the time, but I would love to wear it on a date, not that I date.
Liz: But you could. If you had that jacket, you could do anything. I love the jacket. I come to the conclusion that I don’t love the Strange New Worlds Fluevogs. They’re selling for $600 here and I was like, oh, I really want to them, but I already have my Star Wars replica Rey boots.
Anika: Are those shoes?
Liz: Yes. Oh, they’re the boots.
Anika: Like Fluevog?
Liz: I’ll send you some links.
Anika: Is that what you said?
Liz: Yeah, that’s the brand. They made these shoes for Strange New Worlds and now they’re selling on the retail market. I just think they’re a little weirdly balanced at the back and I’ve decided that I don’t want them. So I’m going to save my $600.
Anika: No. That’s a no from me. I’m trying to think of a shoe I would spend $600 on. Sorry.
Liz: Your note here is Una’s Randian hair and it took me a minute to realize you were talking about Janice Rand, not Ayn Rand.
Anika: I thought that too when I wrote it. I was like, this is totally what Liz is going to think. But no, because she has the braid around the ponytail. So it’s not the bun and, but it is like a ponytail and then it has the braid around like that.
Liz: Yeah, that was a good catch.
Anika: Yeah, that is definitely Janice Rand hair and I appreciate it. I love it. She looks amazing. Her high ponytail is just chef’s kiss. Yeah. So, you know, A plus, I don’t think you can make Rebecca Romijn look bad. But she looked really good.
Liz: Once I saw your note and realized that it could plausibly be a modernization of the iconic Janice Rand basket beehive. As a subtle modern homage, I really like that.
Anika: An homage. Yeah.
Liz: And Uhura’s eyelids are naturally glittery because she sleeps in her makeup, apparently.
Anika: Could not stop laughing. You don’t understand. It had that beautiful shot. It was like stars across the black night sky, but it was actually Uhura’s eyelids. And it was great. I was super into it, but it was also, no. You shouldn’t sleep in your eyeshadow, ladies. Pro tip.
Liz: They went to the trouble of wrapping up her hair, but still she’s sleeping in her eye makeup. Guys, come on.
Anika: But that’s why I was like, obviously Uhura just has glittery skin.
Liz: I totally buy it.
Anika: She’s in the future. That’s the way it is.
Liz: She has a secret genetic manipulation of her own.
Anika: Exactly, that’s right. So can we talk about lockdown before we get to it?
Liz: Oh, oh gosh. Yes.
Anika: Because I got to say.
Liz: When Uhura called for a level five lockdown, that’s what Melbourne was in for most of two years, and my flatmate and I were just like, no, we can’t do this. I’m sorry.
Anika: Meanwhile, I was over here saying that would never happen. That’s not how that works.
Liz: It’s not even how it worked on American military ships.
Anika: No way would the US military or NASA or Space Force or anything even remotely related to the United States of America go on lockdown. That just doesn’t, sadly, sad but true. And so I just, yeah, yeah, it was hilarious to me. It was just so funny because we literally never were actually in lockdown.
Liz: I was going to say I highly rate it. I highly rate lockdown, provided then you don’t just open up and let it rip and suddenly you have more cases than you’ve ever had before in the country right now, today, and everyone’s just carrying on like it’s business as usual.
Anika: Anyway, yeah, so that was a no.
Liz: No, I understand.
Anika: Unrealistic.
Liz: Anika, where is Katrina Cornwell right now?
Anika: Okay, so since you mentioned the ion storm, my new pet theory is that when Katrina Cornwell was hit with the radiation of the torpedo, actually she was skipped into the mirror universe because Discovery had come from the, you know, there was the radiation of Discovery going over to the Enterprise, clinging on to everybody. So that’s what happened. And so she ended up in the mirror universe, but because she had knowledge of what the mirror universe was, she figured it out quickly and she went off to find Lorca.
Liz: I love that. I think someone should write that fic, and if you don’t do it, I will. For a brief, glorious moment, I thought she was in M’Benga’s transporter buffer, because I was like, he was on the Enterprise at the time. She died on the Enterprise. (She didn’t die. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I would say that.) And he saved her. And now he’s just trying to figure out how to revive her. Obviously, I think the story about his daughter is better for him and for the series.
Anika: For the series? But for us.
Liz: Yeah, but what about us guys? What about us?
Anika: What about us?
Liz: So I decided that following her near miss with a torpedo, she has resigned from Starfleet and she is in a nice house by the sea writing a paper on pre-traumatic stress disorder.
Anika: Someone asked her to.
Liz: Right, right.
Anika: It’s very relevant to Starfleet.
Liz: Yeah, look, Pike might be the first case, but is he going to be the last? He is not. So that’s what Katrina Cornwell is doing.
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