Content warning: We discuss school shootings, gun violence and child death a LOT in this episode, but specific time stamps are as follows:
- Conversation about the Uvalde massacre from 4:30 to 6:26
- The coronavirus death toll: 8:42 to 9:01 but also Liz is very mean about the British to 10:04
- Back to school shootings, and also Kenobi, from 25:41 to 31:38
Anika and Liz don their finest catsuits to plan a jail break and discuss episodes 6 (“Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”) and 7 (“The Serene Squall”) of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
- Is it possible we are being punked? Is everyone else getting a different, better version of Strange New Worlds?
- If you’re going to rip off Le Guin, at least try and do a good job
- Everyone who called Discovery “grimdark” and “nihilistic” owes it an apology
- It left the sexism behind, but otherwise Strange New Worlds is very much the heir to Enterprise
- We are very concerned for M’Benga and Rukia, and also very mad about fandom’s racism towards them
- Following last episode’s strong anti-child-eating stance, we’re going to take another radical position: maybe we shouldn’t let children die?
- Anika will not stand by and let Liz criticise the Star Wars prequels
- SNW is like season 3 of Voyager: competent but not in any way groundbreaking or remarkable
- “The Serene Squall” owes something to How Much For Just The Planet? Except that was … good
- We’ve seen Our Flag Means Death, we have standards when it comes to comedy pirates
- Honestly, we would feel better about the trans/non-binary representation here if the writers were not cis and the writing was not so heteronormative
- (It’s so heteronormative!)
- Anika has a controversial opinion: let’s decanonise TOS
- Hey, remember when this series had two Black regulars? Where’d they go?
- Maybe they’re in the same place as that emotional continuity we were promised?
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Anika: And 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 One episodes, “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” and “The Serene Squall.”
Liz: Anika.
Anika: Yes?
Liz: Is it possible that we are being punked? Are we on candid camera? Is Ashton Kutcher going to pop out and go, “Hey, as a social experiment, you guys got different episodes to the rest of the entire internet?”
Anika: Oh, they’re going to a lot of effort if this is all about making sure that we’re being gaslit by the Star Trek fandom. But different episodes than everyone else? That’s a plausible concept to me.
Liz: Because I do not understand how people watch the two episodes that you and I watched and went, oh yeah, this is good television.
Anika: People are rapturous.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: They find “Lift Us…” to be profound and something that we’re going to think about for years after watching.
Liz: I mean, I have been thinking about it for a week, but that’s because I’m so angry about how bad it was. If you’re going to rip off Le Guin, at least try and do a good job.
Anika: And then “The Serene Squall,” everyone’s saying it’s a romp, it’s just so fun and enjoyable, and what a great amazing villain who’s going to recur, and they in fact want them to have their own spinoff.
Liz: Oh my god, I would totally watch a Dr. Aspen spinoff. I would be very on the fence about watching a Captain Angel spinoff, but I assume that this is just cosmic payback for my love for Emperor Georgiou, who is, you know, also a controversial character.
I will say it was certainly a fun episode in that by the end, my flatmate and I were so completely not on board that we were howling with laughter at every single development. But we were laughing at it, not with it.
Anika: So, I had issues with both of these episodes.
Liz: Spoilers.
Anika: I don’t even know which one I liked less for different reasons. I think that at the end of the day, the first one was the less imaginative and more annoying. So that’s the one that I don’t like. The only thing I like about it is the title.
Liz: The title is outstanding.
Anika: The cute little kids and Rukiya, who I will die for.
Liz: Yes, and also the cute little kid’s very handsome dad.
Anika: Yes, that too.
Liz: Who is only doing his best in a terrible situation and a very bad script.
Anika: “The Serene Squall,” I agree. It’s fun. It had a lot of playful hijinks going on, but there was a real… I didn’t like the juxtaposition of serious topics like Spock’s issues with his identity and Dr. Aspen slash Angel’s belief system and their whole subplot, and then the completely ridiculous pirate stuff.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: There was just such a big dissonance between ‘we’re having serious Vulcan conversations’ and ‘we are talking like pirates for fun’. And the mutiny scene was hilarious, but also so over the top. Everything pirate was more over the top than I can handle.
Liz: Yes, I was unable to connect on any level with the pirate stuff. And for the record, I loved Our Flag Means Death. So I don’t have a problem with comedy pirates, but these comedy pirates weren’t actually funny. It was just a lot of noise and running around, distracting and undercutting from the Spock story, which was genuinely interesting, although subtextually I had problems with it.
But first, let’s talk about the dead child story. Because in 2022, a few weeks after a terrible school massacre where a lot of brown children were murdered, we have to see a brown child being sacrificed by a white lady for the good of society.
Anika: Brown children were murdered and the authorities stood by and did nothing. Yeah. That is literally what happened in Uvalde, Texas. There are multiple reports that the police stood and watched the school shooting go on for over an hour.
Liz: While parents were trying to break into the school.
Anika: While parents were trying to fight their way into the school and while 10-year-olds were speaking with 911 operators begging someone to help them.
Liz: I worry that my tone might come across as flippant. My heart has been breaking with every new piece of news, and I thought that I was very desensitized to American gun violence.
Anika: And then the other thing is that there have been multiple shootings every day since then in America that we don’t even talk about anymore because it’s just what happens.
Liz: Right. And ever since I think the Pulse Massacre, I have gotten very used to waking up and checking the news and seeing that there’s been a fresh atrocity. So it’s all very well to rip off Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, but America is Omelas. And if it takes an episode of Star Trek to even get you thinking about it, that’s a you problem.
And – I’m sorry, this is heavy stuff for first thing in the morning – but the allegory doesn’t hold up. And as I said in our last episode, I am skeptical of allegory in this particular era. “Omelas” was a groundbreaking story when it was published in 1973. It’s not only too close to home right now, because really the world is Omelas, but the idea that you will just either stay or walk away is a false binary. And I think it’s significant to note that N.K. Jemisin’s tribute to Omelas is called “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”.
Anika: Right. So I completely agree with allegory, mostly because I have two reasons. And the first is that people aren’t swayed by allegory. There are certainly Star Trek fans, or people who firmly believe that New Trek is too woke. Quote, unquote. Because there are allegories of non-binaryness, for example.
Liz: But not only that, but there are literal non-binary characters and there are literally queer characters. And they’re not just played by cis het people wearing funny makeup.
Anika: And then people are saying, you know, when did Star Trek become woke? And the answer is 1966. Except that they don’t read that because they don’t see the allegory. They see it as a sci-fi story. They don’t see it as something that relates to reality.
Liz: Right.
Anika: And then the second reason is that since 1966 and the 90s, particularly, we as a society have become really bad at media literacy.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I am just devastated by the state of analysis these days where people point at any story and say this is a plot hole, and it is literally the plot. It is not a plot hole if they don’t tell you what to believe in episode one and wait to reveal something in episode three. That is called storytelling. I don’t understand what is going on in the world. And then the thing is that, yes, the whole world is Omelas, and we don’t have to relate it to a school shooting. We can also relate it to the handling of the coronavirus.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And how we’ve just decided to give up and say, hey, anybody who’s immunocompromised or too young, oh well.
Liz: Oh, look, I noticed that a disproportionate number of people who really loved that episode were British. And not all Brits, obviously, but even very left-wing British people were very into this. And I truly do believe it’s because the whole United Kingdom is a society that’s overtly founded on the suffering of others, whether that’s the British Empire or more recently, their treatment of the disabled, which has then led to this massive, terrible situation where they just let coronavirus happen.
I don’t think all British people are bad. I think Australia honestly has very similar problems and a very similar smallness of spirit, but it just jumped out at me that this was the demographic so particularly responsive to this episode, especially because it’s not legally available in the UK.
Anika: So they’re pirates who are inspired. I just want to read this thing that I read on Twitter and I’m not going to say who it was because I don’t think that’s important. It was a oft relayed opinion. “I had to give Alora credit for pointing out our own societies built on the suffering of the poor, including children, but they don’t look away from it.”
Liz: They know how that’s worse, right?
Anika: But yeah, [inaudible] needed here because that’s not good. That’s not good. Looking at it and deciding to do it anyway, not a good look.
But also, you’re saying, if you had to have a Star Trek alien lady on a really screwed up utopia dystopia world tell you that our society is built on suffering, but we look away from it, you’re looking away from it. That’s it’s true. You are looking away from it and you’re not seeing it. And I don’t understand how, what you take away from that is ‘good job Star Trek’.
Liz: Especially because this was presented as the lighter, episodic Star Trek that is not going to go to grimdark nihilistic places, the way Discovery is widely accused of doing. And then we’re just like, “Hey, dead child! Oh, well, that’s sad.”
I mean, I’m sorry, but I have ranted before about the foolishness of calling Discovery grimdark or nihilistic, even in its first season. This was nihilistic.
Anika: And Michael Burnham would have saved that child.
Liz: Michael Burnham would have saved the child. Every single captain who has had a series would save that child, except possibly Archer, because he’s your trash captain. But also, Strange New Worlds is very much the heir to Enterprise.
Anika: I agree. Yes, very true. And that’s interesting. It’s interesting if they’re trying to tell the story of people who don’t have it all together and don’t have a saving people thing and don’t work that way yet, except that Pike is definitely being hailed in a similar way. This is why Archer is my trash captain, is that he becomes president of the Federation and an ambassador, and he is personally responsible for everything wrong in the Federation.
And Pike is his successor in that way, in that if he is the pinnacle of Starfleet, which they have said on the series and in Discovery multiple times, then him staring into the sun, that’s his ultimate plot of this episode is, oh, well, that happened. I’m going to be sad now. That’s a problem. Of course, there’s not an easy solution. I get that maybe Michael Burnham’s solution would be too easy and too simple. But also doing nothing is doing nothing.
Liz: I would also say that Michael would get a whole season to solve this problem. And so we would have the child and his dad request asylum and Alora tries to get him back. And when that fails, they finally have to turn in earnest to the search for another solution.
Because these people have space travel and it hasn’t occurred to them that they can just find a nice planet that’s not a lava filled hellscape or barely subsistence level and they can colonize that. They clearly have tremendous resources.
Anika: It’s very strange. Yeah, if you start thinking about the worldbuilding of their society, they are truly evil. They are just dark. She says they’ve always been trying for years and decades in my whole life to come up with a solution. And I don’t believe her. Because if your solution is looking at the kid and having a big party for him, a big party that I’m going to just put out there, it looks like an Indian wedding.
Liz: It was problematic.
Anika: Which is bad. But that’s not a good thing, guys. And the solution is to trick the kid into being happy about it and sending any dissident to it to a moon. It’s a rock. There’s so many things wrong with this society.
Liz: I think part of the problem is that they had this idea of doing what I shall generously call an homage to Omelas. But Omelas is a very small, short story. And frankly, it’s not the kind of narrative that is designed to need a lot of world building. Whereas an episode of Star Trek needs that level of logistical thinking. Even if it’s not obvious in the script, you need to think about how society works to build the foundations for what we see on screen.
And it just, it speaks to me of the creative bankruptcy of Strange New Worlds. That when Gene Roddenberry wanted his Star Trek to have credibility as a work of science fiction, he employed cutting edge science fiction writers to write scripts for his episodes. Obviously, that worked out badly with Harlan Ellison. But the results were iconic episodes like “Amok Time” and “The City on the Edge of Forever”. And the other writers, you know, D.C. Fontana, Gene Coon and all the rest, they were really engaged with contemporary science fiction.
And then you get to Strange New Worlds and they’re like, oh yeah, we’re just going to do this short story that was cutting edge and brilliant and world changing when it was first published four years after Star Trek was cancelled.
Anika: Before the first convention.
My other really big problem is that I got the impression that we were supposed to believe that the child choosing to accept his fate of being a battery for their entire civilization for however long he would survive is the same as Pike accepting his fate of saving a bunch of people and becoming disabled for life.
Liz: Yeah, I’m just going to put this out there. Children can’t consent to that.
Anika: That kid obviously was not told.
Liz: No, he was led to believe that there was some sort of noble fate for him, but he didn’t know what it would entail. And even if he did, he would not be able to freely consent.
Anika: Right.
Liz: If they had adapted their system to run off half a dozen adults, that is still terrible. And that is a great tragedy. But those adults would at least be able to consent to their fate.
Anika: So that’s bad. And also the way that it ended with him staring into the sun and with this subtext, I felt like Pike was thinking to himself, gee, that kid died and it’s actually all about me.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Which again, not a good look for our favorite captain.
Liz: I kind of hate Pike right now.
Anika: You know, we’re all, again, supposed to believe that he is tricked by his sexy ex. And they have this tragic love story that can’t work because she’s actually evil.
Liz: Mmm.
Anika: Mmm. And none of that works for me. None of it works for me. Spock and the kid was my favorite part.
Liz: Yes. Yes.
Anika: Rukiya and M’Benga. I continue to be upset about the whole M’Benga of it all, but at least he has a plot. But also because that story was being told in this episode, the subtext was Rukiya needs to be sacrificed.
Liz: I am concerned that’s where they’re going with it. I saw something that really enraged me as I was looking at the reviews. There was a comment at trekmovie.com, nearly always the source of the worst comments outside of Reddit, but they said M’Benga was abusive to Rukiya because he’s keeping her in the transporter buffer.
And okay, this is not a sustainable situation. It’s not emotionally healthy for either of them. And yes, something has to change. But I feel like just letting your child die is not great either. I’m going to take a really radical stance here. I think the preventable death of children is something that we should avoid, both in real life and in fiction.
Anika: Weird.
Liz: Controversial. Look, last episode you came out with a very strong anti-child eating stance, and I respect that. I’m going to take it a step further and say, let’s just not let children die if we can possibly avoid it.
If this was an episode of ER, I feel like the plot would be M’Benga learning to let Rukiya go, that prolonging her life is worse, ultimately, than allowing her disease to run its course. However, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is not ER, unfortunately. This is Star Trek.
Anika: That is a plot. Oh, see?
Liz: I know how this genre works.
Anika: It is an ongoing subplot in, I’m going to say the third season, but I’m not exactly sure. That is literally about both the parent and the child and the doctor coming to the realization that what’s best for the child is to let them go. That they can’t save them, and trying to save them is just going to lower their enjoyment of life.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And that’s super sad.
Liz: It’s tragic. And I do feel like that is a possible way for Rukiya’s story to go. But I want that to be earned, and I want that to be ultimately empowering for M’Benga and Rukiya, even though it is tragic, and even though, how empowered can Rukiya be when she’s dead?
But the way this episode was handled, I have lost all faith that they would execute that story in a tasteful or meaningful way. And I feel like M’Benga and Rukiya and their storyline have already been subject to a lot of fandom racism, and I don’t want to see a Black family suffer.
Anika: Exactly. I am very upset because, again, there was this real feeling that they are looking at a little Black girl and they don’t want to save her. And kind of they don’t want to save the little brown kid either.
And again, that’s just a bunch of people standing outside and saying, oh, well, that’s pretty sad that those people are dying, but they’re not my kids. They’re expecting them to die and not trying anything, whereas M’Benga is trying. And the thing about, okay, so with the abuse comment, yes, so M’Benga’s solution is problematic.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And it’s a flaw in his parenting and his doctoring. However, Rukiya knows, they have a conversation about why it’s happening in this episode. So the idea that she’s being abused is just insane to me.
Liz: No, no, this is because fandom hates Black people and it does not want to see a Black father acting out of desperation to save his child as anything other than cruelty. And I’m just going to put this out there. I think fandom would have a lot more problems with this whole episode if the child was an adorable little white girl and Alora was played by Indira Varma, say.
Anika: I don’t like it. Again, I really liked Spock and the First Servant.
Liz: No, he’s not allowed to have a name. He’s just the First Servant. There is a story here about why his father has stuck by him and maneuvered to become his physician because he’s not allowed to be his father. And what happened to his mother? Has she accepted his fate and detached herself emotionally from him as far as that is possible? There is a whole story about this broken little family and I’m really sad that we didn’t get it.
Anika: And then instead we got Pike’s sad girlfriend.
Liz: Can I just say?
Anika: You know, that relationship did not sell me in any way.
Liz: No, I was about to say I knew from the very first preview scene that this was going to be an Omelas homage. I didn’t expect it to end the way it did, but that meant that at no point did I trust Alora and I didn’t find her convincing. No disrespect to the actress who I understand was in something or other, but the character was a generic Star Trek love interest.
Anika: She was in Librarians with Rebecca.
Liz: Of course, yes.
Anika: This episode really upset me in profound ways. I can’t say anything more about it. I just I want Rukiya to live because Jim Kirk lived in Into Darkness. So let Rukiya live. That’s where I am. I don’t want her to be sacrificed to teach M’Benga a lesson about grief and life. I don’t want M’Benga’s white colleagues to tell him he did the right thing. I want none of that. I want him to use the information from the first servant’s dad to help Rukiya. And I don’t care if that’s fantasy. I don’t care if that’s too packed or too easy. I just I don’t care. That’s what I want.
Liz: Look, I want a future where I can imagine Rukiya as a cadet on the Enterprise under Kirk.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: I want little Black girls to have the same opportunities for a future as Spock and Chapel.
Anika: Spock died and came back. Kirk died and came back.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah.
Anika: So many men died and came back in multiple franchises.
Liz: This is literally one of the theses of the novel I am revising. That and the Prime Directive: actually, it’s bad. So really, this whole episode just exists to promote my book.
Anika: If something good can come of it.
Liz: Before we move on to “The Serene Squall,” let’s have a quick discussion of another series which has had some pretty violent school shooting illusions.
Anika: And somehow people didn’t get it until our year 2022.
Liz: We’re talking about Kenobi and people are just now figuring out that Darth Vader is basically a school shooter.
Anika: I don’t understand how you can have watched those movies and not gotten this from the beginning.
Liz: And why are people angry at this revelation now?
Anika: Yes.
Liz: And why were the people who, around The Last Jedi, were saying Kylo Ren is literally a school shooter, not like that good Darth Vader boy? Why are they suddenly so quiet?
Anika: Okay. And so they’re also now calling Reva literally a school shooter, not like that Darth Vader guy, even though her actual backstory is being a survivor of Darth Vader’s school shooting. This is what I mean when I say that media literacy has flatlined. Because I do not understand how you can watch any of this. People were, when they were watching the Book of Boba Fett, and there were a hundred think pieces about how Anakin killing the Sand People was bad, and they’d never noticed before.
Liz: What?
Anika: That is literally a plot point.
Liz: And I understand that many of the people talking now saw those movies when they were quite young. I understand that you miss things, but I just think that there is something to be said for revisiting the stories of your childhood as an adult and reconsidering them in that light. And for the record, I don’t know that I think we needed to see this much of Order 66 on our screens.
Anika: Order 66 has been revisited in every single Star Wars property that has happened since Revenge of the Sith. It was in Clone Wars. It was in Rebels. They don’t do Order 66 in Mandalorian because he wasn’t there, but they do basically the same thing with his backstory of being a child who is hunted down by stormtroopers.
Liz: Also, Grogu did survive Order 66. We don’t see much of it, but there are glimpses.
Anika: I guarantee in Mandalorian Season 3, we’re going to see Grogu’s flashback to Order 66.
Liz: Yes, because seeing it through the eyes of a very small child is just what we need right now.
Anika: And the thing is that in my other, my Star Wars podcast, we did a favorite moments, top three moments in Revenge of the Sith. And my first one that I mentioned was Vader killing the younglings.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That’s one of my favorite moments in the film because it is so impactful. It is a change to the storyline. It is how Darth Vader exists.
Liz: Yes. And those scenes and the Order 66 sequence are extraordinary. They’re certainly not scenes that I enjoy watching, but in a fairly bad movie, in a fairly bad trilogy, they stand out as one of the few moments of really profound emotional impact.
Anika: So I’m just going to say. There are many flaws in Star Wars prequels, but they are neither a bad trilogy and that is the best Star Wars movie.
Liz: I completely respect your opinion and I do enjoy Revenge of the Sith in many ways.
Anika: It might not be the best Star Wars movie, but it is my favorite.
Liz: I love that.
Anika: I will admit that it is not the best. And the thing is that I love those movies. The Star Wars prequels are still my favorite movies in the world.
Liz: Right. And the thing about Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith was that was the early 2000s. It was after Columbine, but school shootings and massacres in general were not a daily part of our lives. I completely understand why Dave Filoni keeps revisiting this, but I don’t think we need to keep seeing it. And Reva’s memory of playing dead among her fallen schoolmates, as a real little girl did in Uvalde, was devastating.
Anika: Was devastating. Obviously, all of that was written and filmed before Uvalde.
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: They didn’t know.
Liz: No.
Anika: It’s traumatic. And I want to say, because we took Paramount Plus to task for this, that Disney Plus did put up a warning saying that this is hard.
Liz: It’s interesting that they did that in America because there was no warning in Australia. And school shootings are obviously much more abstract here, but we have been getting the same headlines.
Anika: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot on Twitter about how American news gets everywhere.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Much more than other news gets to us, which I firmly believe.
Liz: And this is often the case with really terrible events, especially in English-speaking countries. The Grenfell disaster was covered minute by minute here, but Uvalde has certainly been a prominent part of our news cycle. And even stuff like the police lying about their actions has made it to headlines, which is very unusual. Usually I have to seek out American sources for coverage at that level. So I am surprised Disney Plus didn’t put its warning out internationally, but I’m glad they put it out in America where it’s most needed.
Anika: Just before we get off of our digression into Kenobi, which is the best, by the way.
Liz: It is very good.
Anika: I do want to mention that in Clone Wars, when they did Order 66, they didn’t do the temple. They did Ahsoka and Rex and Maul and the Stormtroopers, which was just as traumatic, but it was traumatic in a different way. And again, it was about adults. Even Ahsoka at that point, she’s not an adult. She’s 16 or 17, but she is not a baby. So there is a different level of trauma.
Liz: The Temple Massacre is its own thing.
Anika: Right. But now I forgot what I was going to say about Kenobi. Oh, that the plot of Kenobi, and obviously we’re spoiling this all over the place, but the plot of Kenobi, there’s only one episode less. So I feel comfortable saying this and knowing what happens in the future of the series. It’s about Obi-Wan learning that he has to be one of the people who stands and fights and not one of the people who walks away. That’s literally the plot. And so they are doing the Omelas story in a much better way than this episode of Star Trek did.
Liz: It’s also, you know, Indira Varma’s character talking about how she participated in the murder of families and Force sensitive children, and now she saves them. And I really hope that’s going to be the fate of Reva as well. And it’s much messier and more complicated than staring into the sun and being sad.
Anika: Right. But I love, because when Kenobi was first announced, and I liked every single tweet that was like, Kenobi can be about Obi-Wan standing in the sand and looking at the sun for six hours, and I will love it. And it’s like, that’s true, but it is so much better than that. I love that this series has validated my beliefs of Obi-Wan Kenobi, like all of his flaws and all of his strengths.
And I feel like I’m living a high, again, as someone who the prequels are my favorite films in Star Wars and also just in general of every franchise. I feel like I’ve been given an award that everything I believed, what I thought those movies were about is true.
It’s just this really wonderful feeling and it’s the opposite with Strange New Worlds. I’m kind of upset about it because Strange New Worlds has so much going for it. It has wonderful performances and it’s beautiful to look at and the stories aren’t bad on their face.
Liz: I was thinking aside from the last two episodes and I guess my opinion might be subjective, whatever, but this season of Strange New Worlds feels like season three of Voyager, in that it’s very competent Star Trek without being in any way groundbreaking, original or challenging. And that is overall faint praise. I love season three of Voyager, but that’s because I know it’s sort of leveling up and preparing to level up again for season four.
It’s also a pretty impressive feat for a Star Trek first season, but the thing is we’ve had Discovery and Prodigy and Lower Decks and we know how good a Star Trek first season can actually be. Okay, let’s start again. I was just going to say the first season of Discovery was messy as hell, but it was actively trying to do something new and Strange New Worlds very much is not.
Anika: Right.
Liz: So talk like a pirate day.
Anika: I don’t even know where to begin. Okay, so there is the central character of not Dr. Aspen, but actually Captain Angel.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Played by Jesse James Keitel.
Liz: Can I say I love her? I love Jesse James Keitel and I love who we thought Dr. Aspen was and I cannot stand Captain Angel.
Anika: Remember many, many episodes ago, we discussed How Much for Just the Planet, the novel. John Ford, I think. So there is a character in that book that is a pirate queen. She’s literally called a pirate queen. And she does a song and dance number in black lace and leather.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: And that is all I could think about. As soon as the Captain Angel reveal happened, it came an homage to How Much for Just the Planet, which is a book that is purposefully over the top and ridiculous.
Liz: Yes. Also, How Much for Just the Planet was good. And this was kind of annoying. It really troubled me that we had this wonderful performance from Keitel as Dr. Aspen. And then she unmasks herself as the pirate queen, which is amazing. And also, I don’t know what Captain Angel’s pronouns are. They might be they. Either way, they are a pirate monarch, but they’re also kind of a ranting pantomime villain.
Anika: Right. It was like a switch was flipped clearly on purpose because again, everything that happened with pirates in this, from the Orion to the Black Lieutenant to the mutiny, even the Enterprise crew, was ridiculous and over the top and purposefully piratical.
Liz: But bad.
Anika: I didn’t like that. So their conversations with Spock before the reveal were really interesting. Yes. The needling and the I am going to make you think about your life and my life and how they’re similar. That was really well done and it was subtle and it was nuanced. And there was a point.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And then it turned out that it was just all manipulation for their plan to get Xaverius out of jail.
Liz: Xaverius.
Anika: I was just, I don’t know. I felt like something got lost in translation.
Liz: It really did. I’m looking at the notes that I took during this episode. I wrote, I love Dr. Aspen, but their costumes are awful. Next bullet point: oh, twist. Oh, an evil trans woman. Okay, a trans woman playing an evil enby. Now they’re ranting and sexualized, but at least their costumes make sense.
Then my flatmate, said, it’s like she’s forgotten how to act. And she started shouting about how bad this was. So I have to admit that there came a point where I sort of stopped paying attention because I was shouting, and I totally missed Stonn, for example.
Anika: I was obsessed with Stonn. That was my favorite part of the entire episode. Gosh.
Liz: Oh, gosh. I don’t want to watch it again, but maybe I’ll…
Anika: It’s one line, and I don’t care.
Liz: I might scrobble through to see Stonn because I saw that they did get his hair right, but I was totally oblivious. I was very distracted by thinking about how it’s 2022 and we have a situation where a trans actress plays a non-binary character who is faking their identity to get access to a secured location.
Anika: It’s so painful. Okay. So I want to read Jesse James Keitel’s tweet.
Liz: Yes, do.
Anika: Because I wanted their opinion to be referenced.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: “Trans people have a complicated history with TV and film, but at a time when trans women are constantly vilified, mocked and legislated against in real life, I take pride in flipping the script. Cis actors get to play every shade of good and evil. Let us do the same.”
Liz: I totally agree with her. And I will also note that the episode’s director is a Navajo trans woman. However, the writers are both cis. They are a cis gay man and a cis straight white woman who is the author of a really bad looking YA science fiction romance trilogy. I spent yesterday reading the one star reviews. They’re actually hilarious.
And the thing about television is that it’s not a medium where directors have a lot of power. You know, they call it the writer’s medium. And I completely understand what Jesse James Keitel is saying. And I agree with her that she should have the opportunity to be evil and bad and manipulative.
Anika: A pirate queen.
Liz: A pirate queen. A pirate monarch of any gender. I just don’t think this is that episode. And I don’t think that this is a franchise which has laid the groundwork for that to be okay.
Anika: I’m hanging on to the hope this character will come back. They escaped, so they’re clearly being set up. And they’re important to Sybok, so they’re clearly… I feel like they’re going to be the big bad couple of… If not, probably by the end of this season, they’ll be revealed. And then next season, it’ll be like, they’re the big bad couple that’s going after everything, which is kind of… That’s exciting to me. I’m into that. Let’s see it. That’s awesome.
But the way that this particular episode played out, I really liked them more when they were pretending. And it’s upsetting because when they’re not pretending, obviously that is their real personality. But it felt like the other way around. It felt like I was getting to know them more, and I had more intimate knowledge when they were pretending than when they were revealed.
Liz: The mask came off and it turned out to be a less interesting mask underneath. I really love the real Dr. Aspen. If Keitel’s performance as Dr. Aspen is anything like the real character, I would like them also to have a dual role as the real Dr. Aspen.
The thing is, there’s no conversation about Dr. Aspen’s pronouns. They’re just referred to as ‘they’ briefly in the first scene. It’s very organic and it’s very understated as people were saying that they wished Adira, Adira’s pronoun conversation had been.
The thing is, it’s therefore really easy to miss that they are non-binary. I’ve seen people misgendering them by accident simply because they did not realize. Their conversations with Spock were a really great opportunity to say, you don’t have to be part of the binary just like I’m not part of the gender binary. It could have been as simple as that. I know you said it was nuanced and subtle. I just think it was maybe too subtle.
Anika: Because of the way that it was presented and because they didn’t do that, it was suggested that Spock’s identity as a half-Vulcan and half-human is the same as a non-binary person, I guess, as a half-man, half-woman. That’s not how it works, but okay.
And therefore, again, just like with Pike staring into the sun and thinking about his own future instead of the dead child, we have Spock thinking about his own identity instead of Dr. Aspen slash Captain Angel’s. I get that they’re the main characters, but it feels like they’re stealing the thunder from the people who are actually these identities. I just don’t like that.
Liz: The critic Darren Mooney, who is also getting the mediocre versions of Strange New Worlds that you and I are getting, has a really interesting review about Spock as a queer icon going back to the 60s and how tiptoeing around that is actually sort of putting him back in the celluloid closet. Because the writing for Spock continues to be incredibly heteronormative. The writing for everyone. No, I know.
Anika: I know. I did not believe people when they said that the Spock and Uhura relationship only exists for Spock to be heterosexual.
Liz: No, I always thought that was wildly unfair.
Anika: The fact that we are now seven episodes into this series and he has been very heterosexual and Pike too.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: They are just blatantly heterosexual. The closest we get to any queering is Captain Angel. And again, we don’t actually know what their deal is versus Dr. Aspen. And potentially Christine Chapel, who in this episode, kisses Spock. And I loved that because I hate the kiss they have in TOS. And this was fixing it in a way. I love their relationship. I love that he said, I need a friend.
Everything Christine Chapel. She continues to be my favorite part of this show. And everything Chapel and Spock was really good. Everything T’Pring and Spock was really good. I am so excited to watch T’Pring and Stan fall in love in the background. I cannot wait for it. But those are four people. And like my friend Sam, friend of the pod, always says a triangle has three sides. There could be another way of looking at this. We could get some male-male or female-female relationships here.
Liz: Right. So far, it’s not that Spock couldn’t be bisexual. It’s that the writers have not even considered that possibility. I’m going to say something very mean about Akiva Goldsman. He seems like the type of guy who is completely oblivious to the existence of Kirk/Spock slash going back decades.
Anika: Which is incomprehensible to me.
Liz: No, same, but…
Anika: As someone who doesn’t even ship it.
Liz: No! Look, just this morning, I saw someone musing that Chapel knows more about Spock than Kirk does, and someone replied, that’s because Kirk is not in love with Spock. And I also don’t ship it, and yet I was outraged.
Anika: It’s just painful to me.
Liz: I’m just so mad that the most overtly queer character in this series so far is evil.
Anika: Is evil.
Liz: I’m sorry.
Anika: Is The Pirate Monarch. Yeah. And their crew is, okay.
Liz: Their crew is an Irish stereotype and mostly people of color.
Anika: Yes. I just want to give a shout out to unnamed black lady lieutenant because she was clearly the most competent person on that ship and was running the thing and getting zero credit and that is very true to life, but I want better for her.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I wanted the Enterprise to save her.
Liz: I want these pirates to unionize.
Anika: I am just so mad. You mentioned Our Flag Means Death. The makeup was very Our Flag Means Death or Jack Sparrow. It was very typical now times, modern times piracy, which is not there in Black Sails. They all have the same look that is not true to life. But also it’s the future. These pirates doing it. So it was like, why?
Liz: The other thing is that they looked like the Belters from The Expanse. And particularly in the final couple of seasons, where the villainous Belters were predominantly dark-skinned Black women as distinct from the heroic light-skinned Black women.
Anika: And also the Orion’s makeup was so bad.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: Just like Uhura and her glittery eyeshadow, his whole face glittered. My green son looked like that green was his skin. This guy looked like he had taken green face paint and painted Oliver’s face to make a point. And I was very upset by the whole thing. I know that’s a stupid thing to be upset about, but I was. It was very distracting. I didn’t like him.
Liz: Our brief is fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace. On which note, I would like to say that the costumes for the guest actors on this series and some of the civilian wear for the regulars is really cheap-looking and badly made. And the only exception has been a few of T’Pring’s outfits, including the designer dress, which I think is Balenciaga, in Spock’s dream.
Anika: I’m very excited for next episode because there’s exciting costumes. So I’m looking forward to that.
Liz: Maybe that’s where the costume budget went.
Anika: But I hate the 90s aesthetic that is on this show. I don’t understand it. It is not futuristic in any way. It is just that all fits weird. But the thing that Dr. Aspen was wearing, like you, I was like, how is this a professional person? No, I was like, what is that?
Liz: This looks like it comes from Shein. And it looks like nightclub wear. And I was thinking, is this an homage to Counselor Troi? You know, the Counselor is always a bit sexy. That’s inappropriate. It looks like the sort of thing that Deanna wears when she’s possessed and sexualized.
Anika: But it was also very similar to what Nurse Chapel wore in the shore leave episode. So it’s like it’s supposed to be fashion. But I hated it on Christine Chapel and I hated it on Dr. Aspen.
Liz: Maybe I’m just a prude, but I don’t think you should have your butt cheek out at work.
Anika: It was just that and that was the thing is that Nurse Chapel wore it on vacation. What she wears to work. And I get that Dr. Aspen is not in Starfleet and I like what I wear to work is not what people would consider professional. So I’m not against the idea of wearing whatever you want and being a professional person that shouldn’t take away from them just because they’re wearing clubbing clothes on the bridge. But it was strange. Yeah.
Liz: And as we said, it makes more sense after the reveal, but it was just so cheap looking that it was really distracting me. Whereas Ortegas and Pike and Chapel some of the time, they’re civilian clothes. They look like they shop at Uniqlo. It’s boring. It’s not futuristic, but at least Uniqlo stuff is well made.
Anika: Right. This looked like knockoffs from Urban Outfitters. That is not a compliment.
Liz: No.
Anika: And so I likened it to what Gwen Stefani wore when No Doubt was the biggest band. And I should say that No Doubt is the first band I saw in person.
Liz: Oh my god, I’m so jealous.
Anika: My first concert was No Doubt. And because I’m me, obviously dressed exactly like Gwen Stefani to go to the concert.
Liz: Did you wear an appropriative bindi?
Anika: No, because this was pre-bindi. This was when No Doubt was, it was that first album.
Liz: Oh yeah. Oh god, that album was so good.
Anika: It was, you know, the one with “Just a Girl.” Their first, Tragic Kingdom. It was the Tragic Kingdom era, which was pre-bindi.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Anika: I’m sure it’s still appropriation, but pre-bindi. So that’s what I associate these costumes with. It’s this very specific 90s look. Late 90s, you know. 98, 99 or whatever. It’s just super interesting to me. And so it’s my childhood and it’s, you know, that hilarious time when I was 18 and people thought I was a 25-year-old Gwen Stefani in a bar. It’s all hilarious, you know? And so it’s just, I have fond memories of these costumes, of this fashion.
And so, I want to like the costumes, but I, because of that, I cannot think of them as anything from this 23rd century. Not work for me. And I agree with you. They’re cheap. They’re like the knockoff version. They’re not what Gwen Stefani would wear, what I would wear, pretending to be Gwen Stefani.
Liz: I noticed it particularly with Alora’s costume in “Lift Us…” Particularly her first costume. It was very much like what Delenn wore from season two of Babylon 5 onwards, but with a sort of oddly shaped chest piece that didn’t quite fit. And then T’Pring was also wearing an interestingly fitted chest piece this week.
And the other thing was Babylon 5 also had no costume budget whatsoever, and yet Alora’s costume looked even cheaper than Delenn’s, which looked like it had been assembled from fabric from Jo-Ann’s. It’s just very strange. Where is the money gone? What are their priorities? I really like the Starfleet uniforms, but all the other costumes I’m very indifferent to.
Anika: Yeah, and they have too many Starfleet uniforms.
Liz: Yeah, it’s so weird.
Anika: They could catch fewer and then have… I don’t know. It’s just strange. The costuming is odd. Can we talk about Sybok?
Liz: I realized the reveal was coming, and I was so angry that they were bringing in Sybok, who I love, in this terrible episode.
Anika: First of all, his wig…
Liz: So bad.
Anika: I cannot. It is so fake. So, I mean, I realized that we don’t know who the actor is and we don’t know what’s going on there, but oh my gosh, it was horrific wigging. And the other thing about Sybok that I want to say is people are up in arms about the idea of Kolinahr being something that all Vulcans go through. And I want to say, why are you trusting Captain Angel and Sybok for knowing what Kolinahr is? Do not be angry at the lore changing when it’s coming from extremely unreliable narrators.
Liz: Why are we mad about that and not Spock and T’Pring just ending their engagement without a fight to the death? Or Spock saying Sybok was born out of wedlock when we know this was Sarek’s first wife? There is lore that matters to me and then there is the nature of Kolinahr.
Anika: It’s exactly like the kissing. People just need to calm down. I love that T’Pring is doing human sexuality research.
Liz: T’Pring, honey, please stop reading the fiction of 20th century men to get your ideas of human sex. Please read something written in your century.
Anika: My headcanon is that she’s actually, she started there and has gone all the way to the future, but Spock wouldn’t let her finish.
Liz: Oh, okay. I like that idea. Also, I just pictured her reading 50 Shades of Grey, and that is objectively hilarious.
Anika: People are just so angry about Vulcan culture, which Vulcan culture, I just want to put it out there. Everyone doesn’t exist.
Liz: I will say I have a really hard time reconciling “Amok Time” with what we have here where they briefly end and then resume their engagement, but also everything we know about T’Pring so far tells me that if she fell in love with Ston and no longer wanted to marry Spock, she would communicate this well in advance of Spock’s pon far in writing in triplicate.
Anika: People are upset that T’Pring and Spock have a good relationship.
Liz: Oh no, I love that. I’m just having a lot of trouble reconciling “Amok Time” with what we have here. Presumably other stuff will happen.
Anika: Like I said, I was already team decanonized the menagerie. I’m just decanonized TOS. I am for it. I have never, as I said earlier, that the Star Wars prequels are my favorite films. I actually love prequels as a concept because I think that there’s a rigidity of storytelling that requires you to tell stories smartly that I enjoy.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: So I have never been anti-prequel, and I’ve never fully understood people who are anti-prequel because it’s just not my point of view, so it’s hard for me to relate to. But now I am now fully, I want TOS to go away, and I understand that this series makes TOS bad, and it was already bad. So I say that with affection, obviously not all TOS. And there’s plenty of good, and there’s things that I enjoy and I appreciate it historically. But everything that happens with Dupreeh, everything that happens with Pike, everything that happens with Chapel, all of it, I am just like, no. I don’t want any of that for these people.
Liz: No, and I completely understand, but it would also be so easy for the Strange New Worlds writers to make more effort to conform to what we already have with TOS. You talked about prequels forcing a writer to work with cleverness. Yeah, yeah. They have looked at the restrictions they imposed on themselves and went, nah. And that feels like cheating to me.
Anika: Very strange.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: But I also, a particular Christine Chapel, who again, is my favorite part of Strange New Worlds. I do not want them Angel Barrett version.
Liz: No, if we can CGI Jess Bush into TOS, that would make me very happy. I read a really great Vanity Fair article with her where she discussed her art because she is also a painter and a sculptor. And then I went through her portfolio. Oh my gosh, I love her work. It’s weird. It’s a little vulgar. It’s beautiful. It’s detailed.
She has this extraordinary oil portrait of Uncle Jack Charles who is an iconic Aboriginal actor and elder and activist. And it is just extraordinary. And if I had $10,000, I would buy that painting. And so I feel like Jess Bush is in fact much too good for Star Trek, but I want her to earn a lot of money on Strange New Worlds and then have a long career of getting convention fees to fund her art.
Anika: She’s amazing. Oh, with the other thing, the final thing we should say about this episode is Uhura was not in it.
Liz: I certainly feel away about that because I’m remembering the early part of the season when she was basically the point of view character. And it’s the week of Juneteenth. And M’Benga and Uhura, M’Benga had one line and Uhura wasn’t in it at all.
Anika: M’Benga had one line part of the pirate plot.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Totally nonsensical. And the thing is that he had a big, I get that we’re back to episodic, but I do, I continue to not like the idea that things don’t, T’Pring and Spock have an arc going on. So the fact that M’Benga, that Una has never brought up Rukiya to M’Benga.
Liz: No.
Anika: They haven’t had a conversation since the beginning.
Liz: But Una also hasn’t managed to have a conversation about how she has been pretending to be a human for decades. They said at the beginning that this was going to be episodic, but with emotional continuity, but so far only Pike and Spock are getting that. And Spock says, did you know that he has a lot of conflict between his human and Vulcan sides? But this has never been explored before. This is completely new information to me. I’m so glad we’re finally looking at this side of his life.
Anika: All of TOS, all of the movies, and season two of Discovery were about Spock dealing with this. But we’re going to continue. We have this game that we’re playing in our Discord. What’s this episode going to be like? Who is this episode going to be about? And it’s a little upsetting that Spock is winning. When he is straight up, again, if you’ve never seen Star Trek, you know who Spock is.
Liz: Right. Meanwhile, Ortegas has not had a single episode. Literally all we know about her is that she flies good and she quips.
Anika: Right. And Juneteenth, you mentioned, is now a federal holiday. I get it off from work.
Liz: I know that not all slavery conforms to the American model, but it’s weird to have an episode around Juneteenth when slavery is very much in the conversation. And also the prospect of being sold to Klingons and enslaved is kind of a joke.
Anika: We haven’t even discussed the horrible actual subplot of the pirates, which is they kidnap the crew and they’re going to sell them into slavery. Yes. And that they are being sold by fake Dr. Aspen as the problem at the border. What is happening in space, the Federation and any other nice, good, assimilated peoples would all be getting along together and everything would be hunky dory, if not for these evil people at the border who, as far as I can tell, again, looking at my unnamed Black lady, just want a better life.
Liz: Yeah. And also these people are asking for our help, but actually it’s a trap. There is a really interesting story here. And it comes back to my idea that this should have been a season about investigating attacks on colonies. This idea that if you leave Federation space, you are on your own. And if you get into trouble, no one will come for you unless you have an advocate within the Federation. That is really interesting.
That is a problem with the Federation that I am much more interested in exploring than the alleged poverty and squalor that Allura accuses Pike of ignoring. Which, oh my God, have you actually seen Star Trek?
Anyway, and instead of that interesting story about the problems with the Federation, we have the fake humanitarian crisis and the evil queer person. Erin said this and then you said something very similar the next day. It’s like Strange New Worlds is taking progressive elements like inclusion and diversity and throwing them at the story, but without thinking about them in any way and without thinking about the subtext they are creating. They want the credit for being inclusive, but they don’t want to actually do the work.
Anika: Yes, and that is also everything wrong with the social media branding of social justice as well.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It’s everything wrong with the world.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It can be universalized to not just a problem with Star Trek, but also a problem with America and the whole, you know, of humanity.
Liz: Yes, but to confine it to within Star Trek, you contrast this with Discovery, which is sort of Strange New Worlds‘ sister series, where they’ve made mistakes and very serious ones and they have been responsive to criticism and have always made an honest effort to consider and be aware of the subtext and the stories that they were telling and what those stories meant for the audience.
And certainly, I went looking, as of course I do on Reddit and in the comments of reviews, and yes, some trans and non-binary people really loved Aspen’s Slash Angel and others were really hurt and it’s impossible to create a character that everyone will love and that everyone will feel okay with, but the proportion of people who felt harmed by Aspen was greater than it should have been.
Anika: Sorry everybody, I didn’t like these episodes.
Liz: I want to see the real Dr. Aspen also played by Jesse James Keitel. I want them to be identical but without the face tattoo and with a wardrobe of well-cut, extremely sexy suits. And if they’ve gone back for Dr. Aspen, then the doctor can hang out with the dog that they rescued after “Memento Mori.”
Anika: Sounds good.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Happy ending.
Liz: Happy endings for them. Also, Sybok and Captain Angel as partners, romantic partners, as husband and wife maybe. I love that. And I am picturing the awkward Thanksgiving dinner at Sarek’s house. And it’s great.
Anika: I am, however, gracing myself for her tragedy.
Liz: Yeah, I don’t think…
Anika: For Captain Angel to die in a horrible way that makes Sybok worse.
Liz: I didn’t even think of that, but you’re right. Sorry.
Anika: Captain Angel is not in Star Trek V. Therefore, something horrible happened.
Liz: Which is a real shame because I actually think that their aesthetic would really suit Star Trek V. I agree. I could see them on Nimbus III.
Anika: Man, I still… I just want to put it out there. I still want my Nimbus III. Sorry. I want that series. Can we… I mean, if Captain Angel were to get a spinoff series, that’s what I would want it to be.
Liz: Oh, my God. You would have Romulans, but before they came out of hiding and Klingons. Oh, my gosh. Yes, that would be amazing.
Where is Katrina Cornwell right now?
Anika: This mess. It is painful to me to even imagine where Katrina Cornwell is right now. Let’s say she is working with T’Pring and Stan in Vulcan Knot Prison.
Liz: Oh, yes.
Anika: Because I really love Vulcan not-Prison, and it would be kind of fun if Katrina Cornwell was like Stonn’s BFF where he was sad that T’Pring wasn’t available and he was trying to force down his, you know, emotions that he’s not supposed to have. And she was like, you know, you just got to accept these things and make it about you and not about her and come to a healthy realization. So she’s giving marriage counseling to Stonn, is apparently my answer.
Liz: I love this so much. And I loved how the Vulcan not-Prison basically looked like a mindfulness retreat. I want to go to that place for a spa day.
My answer is that I watched season four of Stranger Things last week and I was very inspired by its silliest plot line. So Katrina Cornwell was beamed out of the explosion by the Klingons and partially healed and sort of shaken down for any Federation secrets in her head. And now she is in the gulag of Rura Penthe.
Anika: Oh, yes.
Liz: In the dilithium mines.
Anika: Can Tom Wlaschiha be with her?
Liz: Yes, because I love him.
Anika: Can Enzo be with her? That’s easier to say.
Liz: Oh my god. So he was one of the villains in the Das Boot and I love him. And I’m so glad that he got to play a more sympathetic character than a true believer Nazi. And yes, he can play one of the other prisoners.
Anika: Everyone go watch Crossing Lines on Netflix.
Liz: Really?
Anika: Yes, he’s awesome in it. And so is everybody else.
Liz: I will do that. But also if anyone loves submarines and has access to the Das Boot, I haven’t seen the third season yet. It’s still being subtitled for Australia. But the first two seasons were great. It does end with a whole lot of characters on their way to a concentration camp. So you kind of have to be in the mood for it. But if you enjoy your submarine dramas.
Anika: Alright, so now I’m shipping them and we’re good.
Liz: 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. Although our transcripts are sadly out of date because look, the software I’ve been using stopped being good. And it really takes a lot of time to correct it. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, all at antimatterpod.
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 join us in three weeks when we’ll be discussing the final three episodes of Strange New Worlds Season 1. What date is that?
Anika: We’re recording on the 16th and 17th, I don’t know.
Liz: Is that three weeks away?
Anika: It’s July. Yeah, mid-July is three weeks away, sorry.
Liz: Okay, join us in mid-July when we’ll be discussing the final three episodes of Strange New Worlds Season 1.