Anika and Liz have put on our memorial pins and fishing hats (and briefly considered, then rejected, a body swap) to discuss Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episodes Memento Mori and Spock Amok…
- Everyone says SNW is a good show and we’re starting to feel a bit gaslit…
- “Memento Mori” and SNW’s whole depiction of the Gorn becomes uncomfortable when you look at “Arena” and realise they were conceived as an allegory for Native Americans
- Liz cites Finding Eliza by Larissa Behrendt as, among other things, an examination of the European preoccupation with cannibalism
- It’s weird how Worf, Michael and La’an all have exactly the same backstory
- Anika is explicitly opposed to eating children
- We were promised that SNW would have serialised emotional arcs, so … why is La’an fine now?
- Ortegas will be getting a second dimension to her character any day, right…?
- It’s troubling how sidelined MBenga has been through this season, especially when you consider the racial dynamics and how Uhura gets one whole line in “Spock Amok”
- Clearly Spock/T’Pring is doomed BUT CONSIDER: movie-era Spock/T’Pring! Picard attended the wedding of Sarek’s son in the early 2300s! THINK ABOUT IT!
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. This week, we’re discussing Star Trek, Strange New Worlds Season 1 episodes, “Memento Mori” and “Spock Amok.”
Anika: I don’t like either of these titles, but that’s a silly criticism.
Liz: At least we haven’t gone to the Voyager level of one word title starting with R. But it does feel like we’re reproducing Voyager‘s problems all over again, nevertheless.
Anika: I’m sure many, many people love “Spock Amok.” It’s definitely a me thing to say that it’s…
Liz: Yeah, I’m at the point where I’m starting to feel like maybe the universe is just gaslighting me and everyone else is getting a much better version of Strange New Worlds. Either that or I have extremely superior refined taste and everyone else is just … pretend I said something really snobby there.
Anika: I liked the episodes fine. I really enjoyed “Memento Mori.” It was fun, but also had a lot of tension. And “Spock Amok,” I have many problems, but I understand why people like it, because it was just silly and fun and whatever. It was fine. There was nothing … it was fine.
Liz: It was mostly inoffensive. I really enjoyed “Memento Mori.” I was like, finally we have an episode with substance. We have an episode with a lot of tension. I really enjoy the throwback to that TOS feeling of the universe is a dark and scary place and every Federation colony is really out there on their own and who knows what is out there.
However, I think it was @BadSocialism on Twitter who pointed out that in TOS, the Gorn were sort of a stand in for Native Americans. And if Star Trek is the wagon train to the stars, then the Gorn are the Native Americans going, hey, you’re actually on our land and we don’t really appreciate that. So we’re going to kill you, but please understand we actually have a good reason for it. We’re not just doing this because we’re savages and unknowable.
And that was the whole point of “Arena,” which I rewatched last weekend. It was a very boring episode, but I loved the opening scene where they’ve been down to the planet and there’s the survivor and, you know, the Gorn are the technological equals of the Federation. So it’s not purely a Native American analogue. And just right up until the bit where the godlike aliens have to make Kirk fight the Gorn captain and the Enterprise crew is watching it on the view screen like it’s an episode of Star Trek that they’re talking through.
(I would watch Spock and McCoy’s Star Trek podcast. I would definitely subscribe to that.)
But yeah, that subtext made the comments about the Gorn in “Memento Mori” much more unpleasant, because I completely understand La’an’s trauma, and that La’an cannot forgive the Gorn for what they have done. I assume that we are going to make first contact or something with the Gorn and we’re going to learn that they’re people. But I’m uncomfortable with the way Strange New Worlds has portrayed them, especially with the bit in the first episode where La’an’s like, oh yeah, they ate my family, because indigenous people as cannibals is such an old and racist and inaccurate stereotype.
Anika: Although they wouldn’t really be cannibals because they’re Gorn. So it’s more like dinosaurs eating us, but it’s intelligent dinosaurs.
Liz: It’s akin to Emperor Georgiou eating Kelpiens. So-
Anika: She’s a problem.
Liz: They’re not literally cannibals, but they do eat people.
Anika: A little weird. I don’t know quite why they keep going to that ‘then they ate us’ well, because as you’re saying, then it becomes harder to accept them not being the enemy. When we go to these disgust places, they’re not just bad and evil and villains and on the wrong side or on the other side, they’re eating us.
It’s another one of those, why are you making it so hard for yourself? People still haven’t gotten over Georgiou and the Kelpiens, they still hate her because of that, even though we had a whole episode about her learning the Kelpiens matter.
Liz: And Voq and L’Rell ate Georgiou’s, prime Georgiou’s body, which is more understandable given that it was a starvation situation.
But it’s like, okay, I read this really interesting book called Finding Eliza by an Aboriginal author named Larissa Behrendt, and it’s basically looking at these stories that settlers tell about Indigenous people and the Indigenous sides of those stories. And she pointed out that in America, in Australia, in Africa, wherever Europeans go, they’re just obsessed with this terror of being eaten. It’s like this visceral thing that’s really ingrained into the European psyche. It’s used to justify all sorts of crimes against Indigenous people around the world.
And so it’s interesting and troubling to me that Star Trek keeps going here. Why does Alex Kurtzman fear that he’s going to be eaten?
Anika: Wait, that’s what I was going to point out. It is definitely a… Modern Trek is being made by the same people. They keep using the same tropes and it’s strange. It’s a strange trope to be fixated on.
Liz: I assumed that it started because, you know, Discovery was initially helmed by Bryan Fuller and he did Hannibal and he really likes that sort of extremely psychologically upsetting stuff. But why is it still here now?
Anika: And while we’re speaking about the wells they keep going back to, we already knew that La’an’s backstory was the same as Michael’s backstory, was the same as Worf’s backstory. But why?
I sort of liked it when it was Worf and Michael because the Klingons attacked Michael’s colony and killed her parents and then the Romulans attacked the Klingon colony and killed Worf. That was interesting to me as this ongoing ‘who your enemy is changes and who your friend is changes and it’s like a good happy collective of federated planets’ type story.
But adding in La’an’s family was also destroyed and eaten by the Gorn. Then it becomes, I mean you said you liked when it’s that all of space is out to get us.
Liz: Yes, but why is it out to get us in the same way?
Anika: Why is it out to get us in the same way? The way that it’s being presented, if we take these three happenstances, it’s that the Federation is the peaceful, nice, good coloniser, and everyone else is bad is colonising in the bad way of attacking and ruining. Where’s the conversation about all of colonisation is bad?
Liz: Right, the Federation is just like, oh, this planet seems empty, so I guess it’s our manifest destiny to drop some people on it.
And, okay, this goes back to a thought that I had way back when the first Strange New Worlds posters dropped and there was something about Find the Frontier, or I can’t remember what the text was on every character poster, but I looked at it and I went, that’s colonizer speak. And it was addressed and dismissed way back in the very first episode of Deep Space Nine. Why are we regressing? We need to decolonize Star Trek, basically.
Anika: And I think our first note in the outline here about Memorial Day and how that didn’t happen until now as well is notable. It gets related.
Liz: This is a thought that I’ve been having ever since I listened to the Greatest Generation guys covering Deep Space Nine, because they would talk about how odd it was that there was no memorial for Wolf 359 and it was just an anniversary that Sisko grieved alone.
And it struck me that this is something that’s changed since 9/11, that America is much more strongly promoting these memorial holidays, and whether that’s literally Memorial Day, as you guys have it, or Veterans Day, or September 11th, and it’s the same in Australia. We have gone fully gung-ho jingoism on Anzac Day.
Anika: All of those, obviously, other than whatever September 11th day is, I don’t celebrate. Obviously, Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Independence Day, of course, all predate 9/11 by many years, and parades and all of this nonsense that happens on all of them certainly predate 9/11, but they weren’t in Star Trek.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: There was that ridiculous episode where Kirk does the Pledge of Allegiance, but that was an outlier. That was just nonsense. That wasn’t about American values and memorializing. It was different. It was about crazy admirals.
Liz: I think in some ways that’s what has changed since 9/11, from my perspective as an outsider, that it’s less about memorializing loss and more about pushing that pro-American military agenda.
Anika: Nationalism.
Liz: Yeah, and like I said, Australia is doing it too, so you guys are totally not alone here, but what struck me is that we have Memorial Day in the Star Trek universe, but also it incorporates memorials of civilian ships that were lost, and that I really liked.
Anika: Mm-hmm.
Liz: That made it feel less like Federation jingoism.
Anika: Yeah, it is interesting because, like you said, there wasn’t one for Wolf 359, but there is one in Picard, whatever happened on First Contact Day.
Liz: I was just going to say.
Anika: They have a whole celebration about that. That’s why he gives his interview, all of that was very 9/11 Remembrance Day kind of stuff going on, and so it is definitely something that is in modern Trek and was not in previous Treks.
Liz: Yes, and I can absolutely see Lower Decks featuring Wolf 359 Day, and Mariner screwing it up by shouting Picard did Wolf 359.
Anika: You have to pay her if that happens.
Liz: Michael, call me. We can work something out. But yeah, I liked the civilian memorializing aspect of it. It made it less jingoistic. And yeah, aside from the racism, I really enjoyed “Memento Mori.” You know, I love a submarine episode.
Anika: I thought of you when I thought of the migration. I was like, oh, I know what people are going to love about this.
Whereas I, of course, love the line where it was like the Federation doesn’t see enemies, we see opportunities. And I was like, that’s right. Good job, Federation. But that being said, when they are enemies, and certainly there’s a difference between the Federation and even Captain Pike as a representative of the Federation treating the Gorn as equals and peers and not automatically enemies – and La’an, a traumatized child, whose entire community was wiped out.
She’s the sole survivor, and they were eaten. Her big brother, who she loved, was eaten by the Gorn. She doesn’t have to forgive them. The personal victims, they can be angry. That they can continue to have all of those very valid feelings about hating the Gorn. And I just want to put that out there as if this is not me going against my love all dragons stance. I’m saying there’s a difference between my choice to love all dragons, and La’an’s choice to be very upset at the people who ate her family.
Liz: Right. I don’t think we’re meant to take La’an at her word when she says that the Gorn don’t deserve empathy. She is clearly not coming from a good place.
Anika: Absolutely not.
Liz: Pike only pushes back gently because clearly he knows that is not going to do anything in this moment. But I don’t think the show is endorsing her position. My fear is that we are going to learn that the Gorn are people and they have their own perspective and that will make La’an forgive them.
Anika: That’s my fear as well. I want her trauma to be treated with respect.
Liz: I want her trauma to be dealt with and decoupled from the racism she has adopted as a defense mechanism.
Anika: I don’t know how old she’s supposed to be.
Liz: I’m very bad with kids’ ages, but I would say somewhere between 10 and 14. Quite young, old enough to comprehend what’s happening, but too young to deal with it with an adult’s mind and experience.
Anika: Yeah, you’re definitely right about the response being protective. Her anger and her racism is protecting her because she needed it in that moment when she was a 10-year-old child.
Liz: And it is protective because it’s almost worse to think that your family were hunted and killed by people rather than monsters. That is really hard to deal with. I have a lot of empathy for La’an and I hope that she can come to extend empathy to the Gorn, but she doesn’t have to forgive them. It’s complicated and I think this is why racial allegories are bad. Just putting that out there.
Anika: Hey guys, also because I worry sometimes that people don’t get it, that they don’t get the allegory, that they only see it as this very black and white, us versus them. And then read their own biases into that and put their own biases on top of that. Then the racial allegories become really problematic because you have people understanding the story in a way that isn’t what the writers intended and is entirely based on their own racial biases.
Liz: I saw a lot of people sharing the I Stand with Una graphics that Star Trek created after “Ghosts of Illyria.” And I knew for a fact that these people who really support this nice white lady and her fake imaginary bigotry have said terrible things about the Black women of Star Trek. So I think in some ways an allegory is a cop-out and it lets you enjoy the story without confronting your own biases. And I do think allegory generally has a place, but the place is not 2022.
Your note here, so many raiders, so many orphans. Was that in regards to Sarek’s family building or just the population of Starfleet?
Anika: No, just the population of Starfleet. But I just, when you said it out loud, the way you said it, I was like, oh, that makes it sound like the raiders are gathering the orphans. They’re not creating the orphans by raiding. They’re raiding and taking children. That’s not what I meant.
Liz: The child’s flesh is the most tender and delicious. It’s like veal.
Anika: Oh dear, oh dear.
Liz: Antimatter Pod comes out in favor of eating children. Anika wishes to note that she is vegetarian.
Anika: Or dinosaurs.
Liz: Yes. I do think the other visceral element of the Gorn that works really well is that they are cold-blooded. And again, you consider the allegory that’s really yikes, but taking the story on a surface level, we as mammals have a really profound… I think there’s something quite terrifying about the idea of a sentient. What’s the word that means you’re cold-blooded? A sentient lizard. I’m just gonna…
Anika: Weren’t Cardassians supposed to be…
Liz: Yeah, yeah, but then Seska’s breastfeeding her child, so…
Anika: Yeah, I was gonna say, I never understood how the Cardassians were…
Liz: I think Cardassians just reject the mammal/lizard binary. I really cannot remember the proper word. It’s so embarrassing.
Anika: It’s okay. Reptile.
Liz: That’s it. Oh my gosh.
Anika: I’m like, I can do it.
Liz: Yes, Cardassians reject the mammal reptile binary, and I’m happy for them.
Anika: “Arena” is one of the handful of TOS episodes that I’ve watched multiple times on purpose, mainly because my child loved dinosaurs and Spock. It was two things, Spock and dinosaurs. And so I said, hey, there’s one episode where there’s a dinosaur and Spock, so let’s go watch it.
But I agree with you that it is super boring if you don’t have a small child there to create action and fun and ongoing commentary. He could join the Spock and Bones podcast, and it would be great. But I do have this sort of nostalgic, happy feeling about that episode. Of course. And it is the, what you think is your enemy is not your enemy trope that I love.
Liz: That is sort of my other concern, that if it’s not until Kirk’s era that the Federation learns about the Gorn, then how can this plotline resolve in a satisfactory way?
Anika: It is concerning, especially since the only people we’ve seen, Kirk, who’s not even in it until the second season, but the only person we’ve seen Kirk interacting with in the second season is La’an. It’s a little weird. It’s a little, what is being built up here? I want to know more.
Liz: Honestly, if this was a whole season about Pike’s Enterprise investigating raids on Federation colonies and saving people and trying to learn about the Gorn and popping back to Starbase 1 for repairs and hijinks, I guess I would be really into that. But overall, this so far feels like 5 episodes and 4 of them are the sort of filler that I skip. I know I’m alone in this. Everyone but us loves the filler episodes.
Anika: I know. Okay, so can we talk about the second episode, “Spock Amok,” now? Can we go into my problems?
Liz: My only final remark about “Memento Mori” is that it’s horrifying that the Federation didn’t do more to get psychological help for La’an. And this really interferes with my headcanon where Katrina Cornwell adopted her.
Anika: Do I have to give my whole rant again about how no one is looking out after this child? They can’t even use the ‘he was a Klingon and so we’re not going to take care of the Klingon baby and was the only Klingon on Earth’ issue with Worf. Worf seems better adjusted than La’an because he had good parents.
Liz: It’s just troubling.
Anika: I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why no one was taking care of La’an.
Liz: No.
Anika: Because she’s still dealing with it. She clearly has a lot of… she was having visions. She was in a post-traumatic stress.
Liz: She’s having flashbacks.
Anika: It was happening and so I’m concerned about her.
And so, segue into, my main issue with “Spock Amok” is that she’s fine. She’s fine and she shouldn’t be. And it’s so easy to fix this. It is so easy to fix this problem because all you have to do is make La’an focus on on Enterprise Bingo, be avoiding dealing with her. That, you know, M’Benga also, he has a stupid plot this episode too. So I would put M’Benga in that, in my new plot for La’an. And he would be trying to get her to go see a therapist on Starbase One and discuss things and check in. “Nothing on your record. We’re not going to do anything to you. You’re not being punished, but let’s all, let’s all talk about it.”
And she would say, no, I have very important security things that I have to do. And Una would be like, don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. I’ll watch her. And then they would do Enterprise Bingo and bond, and everything that happens would happen. But it would be about La’an dealing with her trauma in a different way, instead of just ignoring that it ever happened.
Liz: Oh, I’m so annoyed about that. But also, we learn in episode three that Una is in fact an alien pretending to be human. And that seems to have been forgotten.
Anika: She should also have to go talk to someone who’s nervous.
Liz: Secretly. Enterprise Bingo could have been, Una realizes that there’s this whole facet of human nature that she has never seen the need to understand. And that’s fine. She doesn’t have a problem with it. But what if learning how to have fun made her a better leader? Because I feel like the Illyrians are all about self-improvement and that is part of Una’s vibe. And then La’an is avoiding her trauma. And so together, they do the shenanigans and they learn something about themselves.
Anika: Yeah, they learn something about themselves and the shenanigans have a purpose beyond just being shenanigans. And I get it. It was a very easy, fun episode to watch. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching it. But I did not like it in the context of the series, in the context of the story that is being told and the characters that are being used to tell that story.
Liz: It just needed a little bit of work to be better and that was really frustrating. And it’s the Voyager problem. And you know, I love Voyager, but I don’t need a new Voyager in 2022. Why are we reproducing the problems of the most mediocre Star Trek?
Anika: So, I don’t even, where in this list of things that I made do you want to go next?
Liz: Happy Pride Month, everyone is straight. Yes.
Anika: All right. So, this is how I was watching the show in the first, the opening scene with Ortegas and Christine Chapel. Ortegas’s first name is Erika, so Erika and Christine are at the bar and they’re chatting and they’re making plans or whatever. And they’re reminiscing about other encounters that Chapel has had, and one of them was with a lady.
Liz: A gal.
Anika: It was very offhand. And to be fair, Christine Chapel did say the words, that was one time.
Liz: It really felt like we have a throwaway line suggesting that this character is bisexual and the entire rest of the episode, including her interactions with other characters, are going to be about heterosexuality. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy heterosexuality, but I don’t enjoy heteronormativity.
Anika: If that’s you waving your hand at diversity, then keep it. I am done with this. I want it to be clear. I don’t want us to be arguing about this, and people are arguing about it. Tumblr is very convinced that Christine Chapel is bisexual, whereas Twitter is convinced that Spock is the only man she will ever love.
Liz: Both of those things can be true.
Anika: Both of those things have evidence in the episode. And right, both of those things can be true. And also, I don’t need her to have a whole coming out conversation with Ortegas over hot chocolate or whatever. That is not what I’m asking for. I’m just saying, don’t do the opening scene where we suggest that Christine Chapel’s bisexual. And then the final scene, not even the whole middle, I don’t actually have a problem with because it was cute.
But the final scene, we get back with Christine and Erika, and Erika’s like, you know, maybe someday you’ll find someone you want to have a relationship with. And Christine says that it would have to be the right guy. And it was like, just don’t say guy, just literally use a gender neutral term. And I am okay with everything else that happened. That’s all I want.
Liz: Right. And the thing is, there are so many different ways to be bisexual, and they are all valid. But I don’t think Star Trek has so many bisexual characters, and I particularly don’t trust Akiva Goldsman to explore a character who is bisexual but hetero-romantic. Whereas something like Loki is the work of bisexual writers and directors who are telling their own story. So bisexual characters falling in love with someone of a different gender felt real. This felt tokenistic. And then the use of ‘the right guy’ at the end really highlights how little they thought about this.
Anika: It was, I don’t want to say purely rainbow washing, but at the end of Seven’s first episode in Picard where they’re just talking about the amazing pilot and they just use ‘he’. Yes. And it’s like it’s not necessary. You don’t have to do that. You can just not do that. You can choose to be better.
Liz: Yeah, and I’m excited for Christine to be bi. And I really love her chemistry with Spock. For the very first time in 50 odd years, I’m willing to ship it. But I want them to think about what they’re doing.
Anika: And it’s also because in this particular episode, it matters a little bit more because half the time she was spending with Spock, she was with Spock in a woman’s body. So there are more letters to this. And I want to, I would have rather seen an exploration of that than, I don’t know. It just seems like it was a missed opportunity. And instead, we just get Christine and Ortegas do Sex and the Starship.
Liz: It felt like that.
Anika: That’s how it felt to me. It really felt like they’re two gal pals having their conversation over drinks and working out their men troubles.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And Sex and the City was in the 90s. Can we move on?
Liz: It felt like a very dated way of depicting female relationships and female friendship. And I want to know, what are Ortegas’s relationships like? We assume she’s queer, but that’s really just her haircut.
Anika: I have no idea.
Liz: She is a one-note character.
Anika: I had to look up her name. I had to look up her first name. I do not know it because I had no reason to learn it. She has cute little quicks. She’s really Detmer 2.0 so far because she has an interesting look and she’s a good pilot.
Liz: And everyone loves her and I don’t understand why.
Anika: She really needs a lot of help. And that’s writers, just do it. But I’m concerned they won’t because everyone loves her already.
Liz: It’s a real sign of growth that fandom loves a woman of color with a one-note personality instead of a white man with a one-note personality. Congratulations, fandom, we’ve come a long way. But I would like the writers to do some work on Ortegas. Where is she from? How was she horribly orphaned? What is her deal? What does she want out of life beyond Starship Go Fast?
Anika: I feel like I have a better handle on Kyle. And he is an extra. He’s an important extra, but he is not a member of the main cast.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I love him and he’s adorable, but it’s just interesting.
Liz: We know more about his relationships and how the crew sees him than we do about Erika. And one by one, they’re sort of going through the new characters and fleshing them out. We know a little bit about M’Benga, even though he was totally out of character this week. We have learned about Hemmer and how he reconciles his pacifism with being in Starfleet.
Anika: Even though he was missing this week. Again.
Liz: I realize he’s a recurring character, not a regular, but still, I love him and I would trade Ortegas for Hemmer.
Anika: Again, he had a big deal. He was important in the previous episode and then now he did not get to go have therapy, did not get to go have shore leave, did not just just not appear.
Liz: No, I want to know what Hemmer does for fun. Also, this is stupid, but I was really distracted in the Hemmer-Uhura scenes in “Memento Mori” because the console that he would use if he wasn’t injured is so badly designed for anyone, but particularly a blind person. There’s no tactile or audio interface for him to use. It’s great that they have a blind actor playing a blind character, but where is the accessibility in the rest of the set and the story? I just have questions.
Anika: I like the amount of time that we’ve seen him. He feels like an Odo to me, where he would get too much attention and I would get tired of it. Sorry, Odo fans. So I’m okay with his… I’m more upset about M’Benga. I really feel that M’Benga is being let down because he has had one moment that was actually about him.
Liz: And unlike Hemmer, he is meant to be a regular.
Anika: Right. And every other thing that he’s done has been very superficial, very… I’m a prop. I’m a joke. This episode, he was just there for people to laugh at his hat and I didn’t like it. Yeah, and to end a mess up and tell Una, that wouldn’t happen. Why would I just… I feel like he was the wrong character for all of that. And the only reason it was him was because they’re like, he’s a regular. We have to do something with him. So he can be this. It didn’t work for him. And that’s why I want to give him an entire other plot.
Liz: No, I agree. And it’s so weird that we go from his family, his daughter, being ill and basically existing in a transporter buffer to lol, he’s going fishing and he has some sort of relationship with some sort of expert that we never actually see. And as you say, it’s treating him as a prop.
And then we get to Uhura, whose job is literally to sit and take shorthand and ask one question. And Uhura’s had a lot of attention, so I understand that they are going to sideline her. But shorthand is a really valuable skill. It’s a dying art. And as a secretary, I would never object to the depiction of a secretary. But with the history of Uhura as a character and how she was very quickly reduced to hailing frequencies open and the starship switchboard operator, felt like a bad sign.
Anika: I don’t really have a handle on what… I guess Uhura is the new Tilly because she’s a cadet and she doesn’t have an actual position on the ship yet. But she’s on the Enterprise, not the Discovery, so she’s being moved around to wherever she’s needed, I guess. So she’s the new Wesley? I don’t know. Yeah. It’s interesting.
Liz: To me, it works that as a communications cadet, like a future communications officer, she is allowed to sit in on these negotiations because that would be part of her job. But I wanted a little less hijinks and a little more of Uhura’s perspective. If we had cut the M’Benga stuff entirely or trimmed down Enterprise Bingo, this felt like a bunch of Star Trek episodes smooshed together unsuccessfully.
Anika: Well, because there wasn’t a plot. There wasn’t one thing that happened. The closest would be the Spock and T’Pring stuff. And it wasn’t a overarching A plot. So this episode was like a collection of B and C plots that did not culminate in anything bigger, which is fine. Again, very easy to watch, enjoyable. It wasn’t about anything.
Liz: The most damning thing I can say is that my flatmate was like, I’m not really in the mood to watch Strange New Worlds. I don’t really care what happens, so let’s just watch ER. So we watched ER.
Anika: Whoops.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Where are you in ER? I’m very invested in your ER.
Liz: We just finished season one. So Tag has left Carol at the altar and her bridesmaids were in really terrible dresses, and Susan’s sister has left her with the baby and Benton’s mother has died. Can I say I really love Benton? And I don’t understand why he’s on lists of the most annoying characters ever.
Anika: Benton is the best. Don’t listen to anybody who hates Benton. He is the best.
Liz: Also, I believe we’re getting close to George Clooney getting a decent haircut.
Anika: Yeah, that was the second season.
Liz: Because he looks wrong with that much hair. Anyway, we’re going to take a break and watch all the other shows that have accumulated, but yeah, it’s great. Love it. So much better than Strange New Worlds.
Anika: When did Antimatter Pod turn into an ER podcast?
Liz: Oh my gosh!
Anika: Bad to say, before this episode.
Liz: Okay, let’s talk about T’Pring and Spock.
Anika: Okay.
Liz: And love them.
Anika: I love them too.
Liz: You know how I often ship exes? I really want movie era Spock/T’Pring, where Stonn has died conveniently or something, or he has decided it’s logical to move on, and Spock has died but come back, and he and T’Pring rebuild their relationship and become a couple. And all the time Kirk is in the background going, okay, but you remember what happened at your wedding, right? The first time? That was bad?
Anika: But Kirk would forgive. Kirk is the one guy who would definitely be like, as long as you’re happy, Spock, that’s what I want for you.
Liz: He would absolutely tease T’Pring for a really long time, and T’Pring would be like, my god, this guy’s worse than Chris. But…
Anika: But she would call him Jim, and it would be super adorable.
Liz: But also T’Pring and Bones, because Bones carried his Katra, and so he’s like a brother to Spock. And Bones has the whole southern gentleman thing. I just think they would be such good friends.
Anika: They would be such besties. They would have such a great relationship.
Liz: Oh my gosh, this goes back to my thing where Spock asks T’Pring and Stonn to help him raise Saavik. Spoilers, I’m not much of a Spock-Savik shipper.
Anika: Oh, because Saavik was a child when they met?
Liz: Yeah, I was into that when I was younger, and now I’m older and I go yikes.
Anika: Yes, another orphan rescued by Starfleet.
Liz: But I also like the idea of Spock coming home to Vulcan and holding out this child to his father and going, Look, I found you an orphan.
Anika: That was one of my favorite things about movie Spock is that he adopted people the way that his dad did. It was like, oh, carrying on the family. It was, I was, I like it. And Picard was supposed to have gone to Sarik’s son’s wedding.
Liz: Right.
Anika: And although I love the theory that it is an never-before-mentioned son of Sarik, because that would be amazing.
Liz: What if it was Spock and T’Pring’s wedding?
Anika: Yes, but what if it was Spock and T’Pring’s second wedding? Oh my gosh. I love this. I agree with you. I am a huge fan of people who meet when they’re young and either don’t have a relationship because they’re not ready for it or have a relationship that they’re not ready for. That is too much. And then they’re apart for decades and then come back together again. And all of those feelings are still there, but they’re old enough and they’ve had all this experience, and they’ve had all this life. And then they can have that relationship that they weren’t ready for.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And I love that. Justice for T’Pring. I love T’Pring. I love her job. It’s amazing. It is the best. Just everything about T’Pring is amazing to me. They have taken a character that fandom has hated for whatever, decades, a few years and made her a real person who has so much personality. We’ve only had two episodes, but I am so absolutely smitten with her.
I loved that moment when Pike gives his speech and then he goes up to her and says, her in Spock’s body and says, this was a horrible mistake. I should not have done this to you. He realized that I put you in this awful position, that you were not ready for it, that was not at all appropriate, and I’m going to get you out of it now. That was just so heartwarming. It made me feel like they have this really great relationship, whatever it is, of respect.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And there is so much respect between Spock and T’Pring, and as much as he fears that she rejects his human heritage, it’s more, you know, Vulcans are very monocultural, and so they’re still grappling a couple of hundred years later with the influence of humans and other aliens on their world. And I think T’Pring is clearly not bigoted against humans, but it’s a bit like being an immigrant coming to a country like America or Australia. You’re part of that country, but you’re also clinging on to the traditions of your home.
And T’Pring, as a Vulcan, is still clinging on to the traditions of Vulcan. And yet she comes to understand that some of those traditions were hurtful to Spock, and they are working so hard to find common ground. And I completely understand why they cannot get married now. I think as young people, even in ten years’ time, they would not have been happy together, but they have so much between them that I absolutely see them getting back together later in life. I didn’t expect to come out of this a Spock to Pring shipper, but here we are.
Anika: I’ll be honest, I ship Spock with everyone. I think Spock is very shippable.
Liz: It’s notable how all of his chemistry seems to be with women.
Anika: It is true. I don’t know if that is direction or acting or writing. Maybe it’s those, the scene, I have this line here that Spock has sexually charged scenes with three women. So La’an, T’Pring and Christine.
And obviously all of the scenes with T’Pring are about their relationship. And they have a physical one as well as a mental and emotional one. And then Christine, they’re friends. They’re just friends in this, but he’s sitting and she leaves her date to go sit with him and have a date. So yes, we’re just friends, but it’s also we’re friends in a bar pretending to have a date so that people leave us alone.
And what I mean with La’an is actually in the earlier episode in “Memento Mori,” when they have the mind meld, which is close physical. You have to trust that person that you’re having the mind meld in order for it to work correctly. And he saw things that she wasn’t even ready to see herself.
Liz: Yes. And she is aware of his sister. That scene was so interesting to me because they had such tremendous sexual chemistry, but they also have this bond as siblings who have lost siblings. And I enjoy that. Does that mean they should be a couple, or does that mean they should be in group therapy together? Not sure. Could go either way.
Anika: Probably group therapy. And also could be, I lost a big sister, I lost a big brother. Can be that for each other. We can find it. And so there is, other than T’Pring, which is clearly supposed to be a romantic sexual relationship. I’m not saying that he’s only being written into relationships with women, but they are focused in a very specific way. He didn’t have a mind meld with Pike.
Liz: I also want to flag the whole Short Trek Q&A, which is basically Spock and Una flirting in a turbo lift.
Anika: Yeah, absolutely. I totally ship that after that. Is it the writing? Is it the chemistry between the actors? What is going on here?
Liz: I also wonder if it’s simply that there aren’t that many men in Strange New Worlds for Spock to interact with. He had this really fun scene with Hemmer, where I would totally buy them as a couple, to be honest. They had a shorthand, but that’s sort of it. And Pike is so paternal with Spock. I don’t ship it at all.
Anika: No, I don’t ship it at all either.
Liz: No, although I reckon T’Pring would be up for a bit of Pike/Spock.
Anika: I ship T’Pring…
Liz: Alternate version of Amok time, where it’s Pike that T’Pring wants to marry. Okay, I realize by that point he’s already been menageried, but what if they just went back a week later and fixed him?
Anika: What if that didn’t happen? I’m still holding out. What if that didn’t happen?
Liz: He’s just in a wheelchair and living his life. T’Pring will help him use logic to… Yeah. They should kiss with their mouths. I keep seeing people being upset that Vulcans kiss with mouths, but so far all of these Vulcans have technically been 0.75 of Vulcans. But we’ve also seen Trip and T’Pol.
Anika: That’s what I was going to say. Sorry, Trip and T’Pol exist, and therefore your argument is invalid. Don’t be mad at me, be mad at Enterprise.
Liz: Oh, I am. Often. But, you know, the touch telepathy and the sexy handholding and all of that totally makes sense. I love it. But also touching mouths is very pleasurable.
Anika: So, look, at the day we have the same bodies as Vulcans. Yeah, maybe our organs are in slightly different places and our blood is a different color, but we have the same…
Liz: Shell.
Anika: Bodies. And therefore, our erogenous zones are going to be similar. That’s just the way it is. I’m gonna guarantee you that those ears are…
Liz: Vulcan oo-mox.
Anika: And also, if you’re a touch telepath, I’ve done this in fic, You’re not finger-touched telepaths. Your entire body is in tune with the other person’s body. And so it’s like body meld. That’s what sex is. So what are people complaining about?
Liz: Your skin is your largest organ. Vulcans are like humans in many ways.
Anika: We’ve had no kissing and certainly no sex scenes for so long. I’m not going to turn them down.
Liz: Please give us more kissing.
Anika: I want more, not less. Sorry.
Liz: I really want more queerness and more overt queerness, not just a throwaway line. But maybe that will come. I’m so sick of waiting for it as a consolation prize or an afterthought. But I like the relationships that we have nonetheless. I want queerness in addition to what we have. Do we have anything else to say? Oh, I do. Did I say this earlier? They had better have gone back to Save That Doberman on the colony planet.
Anika: I agree.
Liz: Thank you.
Anika: Save the dog.
Liz: Save the dog.
Anika: Save the dog. It’s Starfleet Principle 2.
Liz: Maybe they went back to Save the Dog and he is at this moment hanging out in Pike’s quarters.
Anika: Oh, yeah. Also, I really enjoyed that Pike said to the, whatever those aliens were, I wish I’d known that you were coming. I would have cooked you up a great meal. Pike cooking for everyone confirmed, not just his crew, everyone. That’s how he does care. It’s so good. And he definitely needs a dog.
Liz: 100%. Porthos and Number One can’t be the only dogs in Star Trek. Also, I really liked his speech at the end where he was like, yeah, joining the Federation is a risk and you might not consider the rewards worth it. And you do give something up, whether that’s some level of security from the Romulans and Klingons or the sovereignty of making your own decisions without input from anyone else. I really loved that scene. Pike’s speeches in “Memento Mori” didn’t really work for me because they were a bit generic, but his speech here was specific and really meaningful.
Anika: He’s a good captain, I gotta say. I’ve been resisting Pike as best captain, but he did a lot of really good things in these two episodes in that he was treating La’an with respect, but also making sure that she wasn’t the only voice. He completely trusted her, but he also was making sure that there were two sides to the story or there was more to it. The level of trust and respect while also caring about her emotionally was just really breathtaking. And strange, strange for all of the other captains.
Liz: I was going to say the captain I would most like to serve under is Michael, but I think she has learned about captaincy from Pike. And it’s just that the inspirational speeches from him don’t work as well for me. Whereas I think Michael has the same care and love for everyone. I don’t know if she can cook, but she can learn. And her speeches can be a little more specific. But if I found myself on the Enterprise under Pike, clearly something has gone terribly wrong in my life, but I wouldn’t be begging for a transfer right away.
Anika: I definitely wouldn’t be there. I want to work for T’Pring in her helping the prisoners. 100% I want that.
Liz: After all of our rants about the Vulcan criminal justice system in Discovery, in the Vulcan criminal justice system, the people are represented by two… No, how does it go? You know what I mean.
Anika: Separate but equal. Separate but equally important.
Liz: Two separately but equally important? Oh, I don’t know.
Anika: The point is, to bring is better than law and order. You heard it here first.
Liz: Yes, and you said it. I can put my chung chungs in. Excellent. Thank you.
Where is Katrina Cornwell right now?
Anika: She’s definitely relaxing on rebuilt Starbase 1.
Liz: Oh, 100%.
Anika: Now, she is not the type of person who loves camping. So she’s not going to be out there fishing and doing all of that. But I can imagine her reading a book in a bikini the way Picard does.
Liz: Yes. My theory is that she saw the new Admiral’s uniforms coming down the pipeline, saw how ill-fitting they are, and decided that faking her death was better than having to deal with those. Why she didn’t just resign? Not clear, but she is on a quiet planet somewhere that’s not subject to raiders, and she is going to therapy regularly and has a dog.
Anika: Very good. Very good. Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media, credits for our theme music, and transcripts of our episodes.
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Join us in another two weeks, when we will be discussing the next episodes of Strange New Worlds.
Liz: I know I said this last time, but even when I don’t love the episodes, I really enjoy talking about them with you.
Anika: I really enjoyed it. I have a lot of fun.