(Note: our episodes are getting shorter because the screeners are fairly low quality and don’t have subtitles, so it’s a bit harder to get deep into the weeds of a story than if we were recording as episodes air. But our day jobs are quite busy, so we need to record as far in advance as possible in order to make our self-imposed deadlines. It’s a pickle!)
Anika and Liz beam over to an eerily familiar starship, steal a locket and a plush gecko, and discuss episode 5 of Star Trek: Discovery‘s fifth and final season, “Mirrors”.
- It’s a double date for L’ak and Moll and Book and Michael!
- We take it back about not being able to emotionally engage with L’ak
- Liz has a theory about what this episode is setting up
- We’re checking in with Hugh
- Respectfully, so far the puzzle isn’t very puzzling
- Rayner’s performance anxiety
Transcript
Liz: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today we’re discussing Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, Mirrors.
So as we record, the new Taylor Swift album has just dropped, and famously track 5 on all of her albums is like an emotional turning point. And the midpoint of a story is always a turning point. Where do you think we’ve turned?
Anika: Well, we learned about L’ak and Moll, which I think is important.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Because we needed to care.
Liz: Yeah, we were saying just last week that they’ve made a choice to focus on Rayner, and I think that was the right one. But now we’re sort of overdue for some emotional engagement with L’ak and Moll.
Anika: And I mean, I know you can say like, oh, well, the mirror just refers to the ISS Enterprise. That is not true.
Liz: No, not at all.
Anika: I just want to point out that the two couples are on the old dead mirror universe Enterprise together.
Liz: It’s a double date!
Anika: And that is significant. I think they are mirroring. And I think that we get to learn the love story of Moll and L’ak in this episode on purpose.
Liz: I agree. And I think the turning point, the emotional turning point, is that this is Michael and Book beginning to reconcile. They’ve passed through the awkwardness. Michael has had her encounter with past Book and remembers how good they were and how much she loved him. And she’s opening herself to the possibility of loving him again.
But yes, mirrors. Like, Moll lost her family at a young age. She’s very, very damaged by that. And L’ak is also a Disney prince.
Anika: Exactly. Like, straight up Disney prince. And, oh my goodness. Okay. So I was saying that I wasn’t going to care about L’ak because he was going to die.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I failed.
Liz: Do you still think he’s sacrifice coded? I think that if he was going to die, it would have been this week.
Anika: I think that he is no longer sacrifice coded, but now I’m worried. I mean, I’m just — someone’s going to die. So now I’ve decided Rayner. I’ve moved on to that.
Liz: I really hope you’re wrong because one of my friends was like, oh, he’s absolutely going to heroically sacrifice himself in the end. But Callum Keith Rennie was saying he would have been a regular if there had been a season six. And I’m like, yes, but Jason Isaacs was talking about being in it for the seven year long haul. We know you people lie.
Anika: Yeah. And this is me again. I am broken. Media has broken me. So I am just convinced someone has to die because that’s how they do this these days. And no one has died in Discovery in a couple of years, therefore…
Liz: Maybe the series will end with Admiral Vance heroically blowing himself up.
Anika: Oh my goodness.
Liz: Right after we meet his wife.
Anika: I don’t want to lose any of them. I was like, I guess they can kill off L’ak, because I don’t care about him, but no, they cannot kill off L’ak, because I love him. And the moment that it happened was when he killed his uncle or whatever. And after having shot him, he says, he raised me. And I was like, ah, sobbing everywhere. I couldn’t handle it.
Liz: No, I completely understand.
Anika: Now he’s become Anika coded.
Liz: L’ak, open parentheses, Anika’s version, close parentheses. I really enjoyed the revelation that L’ak is Breen. We knew that the Breen were hanging around and I kind of wondered because, you know, they were in Deep Space Nine, but we’ve never seen their faces. We’ve never heard their voices. So what better alien to introduce seeing his face and then reveal.
But there’s some sort of second face happening. I — okay, our screeners are really low quality and I couldn’t see properly what was happening on screen. So I assume that after we’ve recorded this, after this episode has gone out, Professor Mohammed Noor or someone will come on to explain what I was seeing, which was pixels.
Anika: He was, like, liquid. Translucent.
Liz: Yeah, do the Breen have a slime form?
Anika: But he can be solid. And then they were sort of like, “don’t do that. That’s gross.” And he was like, “I don’t know, I kind of like it. My girlfriend likes it.”
I think that L’ak, and from the beginning, he’s been clearly like, he’s not really into this whole, we’re gonna be bounty hunters and we’re gonna be pirates. Like, he doesn’t actually like doing that. He’s only in it for her.
Liz: And she’s only in it to protect him.
Anika: And she’s only in it to — I mean, now it’s like a love story for the ages and they’re all trauma bonded and it’s just — I can’t handle it. So good job, Discovery. You won me over. I’m down for it. I can’t even handle how much I love these two. I still think that they’ve been taken out of a different universe, a different version, a different genre and dropped over in here, but that’s okay.
Liz: You remember in season three, I was saying that Grey and Adira felt like they’d been dropped in from a YA novel. I actually feel the same way about L’ak and Moll. They’re both very young. They are adults, but they’re young adults. And their romance is so tropey, which again, you have to do in a 10-episode series when you’re introducing new characters. He’s a disgraced prince who’s raised by his uncle, and she’s the bounty hunter slash smuggler. These are broad strokes, but we know this story. We can fill in the blanks.
Anika: Exactly. I have to say, I don’t know how long ago that was, but they were like, time has passed, look, her hair is different. And I actually really liked the difference in Moll between young Moll and current Moll, that she’s harder. She was playing a part back there in Breenland, and now she seems to be — she’s still playing a part, but she’s like all in, she believes it.
Liz: She’s becoming the mask.
Anika: This is sticking, this is all I can do. And so I’m gonna be it to my absolute utmost instead of trying to see if there’s anything else.
Liz: And L’ak is not so all in, but he has to be with her to survive. And he doesn’t like what she’s becoming.
Anika: Yes, exactly.
Liz: I am so into this. I am so invested.
Anika: Exactly. The girl that he met wasn’t that hard and wasn’t that, you know, far over.
Liz: I like the glimpses of world building that we get for the Breen, that there’s some sort of monarchical politics happening in space. Everything’s better in space. But also the cultural stuff of, they electronically alter their voices, they hide their faces. It’s like L’ak is an outlier and he’s the opposite of autistic. He’s the weirdo who makes eye contact and shows his face.
Anika: Yeah, well, yeah, and which — presumably like you can sort of extrapolate that they are a secretive society or, you know, that everything is culturally held back. There has to be space between what is true and what isn’t. And, you know, they’re repressed in that way.
Liz: And you sort of see that the secrecy plus the openness in the way L’ak and Moll, they’re not going to his quarters to make out. They’re not going into her ship. They’re using a cloaking device to do it in full view of everyone, but hidden. Obviously they’re like — you know, they didn’t want to pay money for sets. They didn’t want to do all of that, but it tells us something about them and it tells us something about brain culture.
And then we have the other side of the double date, Michael and Book, who, you know, it’s the sort of — you have to go on an away team with your ex. There’s no way around it. I’m so sorry.
Anika: I like how Rayner was like, no, you don’t, you don’t have to go. It’s okay. And Michael is like, no, this is very important. This is, this is, you know, on the checklist.
Liz: “You have to understand on my ship, we try to balance the professional with intense personal conversations. And that’s how we organize it. You know, that’s how we set it up.”
Anika: It’s just really funny to me. I was like–
Liz: He’s Rikering his little heart out.
Anika: Like, he was Rikering his little heart out in every way. He was like, no, no, no, I can see where this is going to go. And I don’t want it to, I don’t, that’s too many feelings for me. And look, it was just really funny to me. It was fully in character for the Rayner that he has been this entire time. And he was also like trying to get out of being in charge because he didn’t, doesn’t want to be. But also he was just like, no, wait, you’re like a couple, but not a couple. And I don’t want to deal with any of that.
Liz: He is not Marie Kondo, and he does not love mess.
One thing that surprised me was that I expected the return of the ISS Enterprise, which we saw foreshadowed in the trailers and stuff to be a really fan wanky, self-indulgence, Strange New Worlds crossover. I was bracing for it. However, Star Trek: Discovery has been Anson Mount Free since 2019.
I just want to mention that today is the anniversary of the airing of Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2 in your time zone.
Anika: No, why did you have to remind me of that?
Liz: Because I’m reminded.
Anika: That’s horrible.
Liz: Yeah, I’m sorry.
Anika: I’m glad that we are enjoying something that is so much better.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, I’m still not okay, by the way, if you’re wondering, but it’s been five years.
Anika: No, I will legitimately never get over Such Sweet Sorry Part 2. 2019 was bad for me.
Liz: It was a rough year and then the pandemic came. So I was like, I’m going to cope with all of this in 2020. And I’m still just pushing that down the line. We’ll check in in 2030, see how I’m going. Anyway, the important thing is that this was not a Strange New Worlds crossover. I think if it is setting up anything at all, it’s the Section 31 movie.
Anika: I think that it could just be closing a circle.
Liz: No, no, I agree.
Anika: Not setting up anything anywhere else.
Liz: It could well be that they were like, well, we have to use the Strange New World sets to save money, and why don’t we just take this opportunity to do a little more world building with the history of the Terran Empire and its collapse. And we know from DS9 that it’s collapses within a generation of the original series.
Anika: I mean, yes, it could be setting something up and that would be fine. I don’t, you know, I’m just saying.
Liz: I do have an argument to make.
Anika: It also doesn’t have to be.
Liz: No, no, it could well be its own thing. And I love the idea of Terran refugees coming to the Federation. I’ve written that fic multiple times. And I think it sort of comes down to the fact that Terrans are not inherently evil. They can change, but they have to choose to change. As this science officer who started as a Terran and became a Starfleet Admiral in the Federation. And obviously, being a bit evil is not actually going to count against you if you’re applying for a job as an Admiral.
Anika: I was going to say, have you met any Admiral?
Liz: Yeah. Honestly, someone who’s quite upfront about being from the murder universe is going to be refreshing. But no, the reason I think this could possibly be setting up Section 31 is that we know that the movie stars Rachel Garrett, the captain of the Enterprise C, as a younger woman. That’s, I was going to look up the timeline, but it’s about 50 to 70 odd years before the next generation. So, say 60 years. That is plenty of time for a young Terran science officer to rise in the ranks and become an admiral in the Federation and to be around and active in the 2360s with The Chase.
Anika: Interesting. They did go into that person’s backstory a lot.
Liz: There is a young Asian woman in the cast of Section 31. For all we know, she’s playing young Georgiou, or whatever. Like, this could be a completely separate story. I just think if it is an Easter egg, that’s cool. And if it’s not, we know that Saru, mirror Saru, made it to the Federation as an elderly Kelpien.
Anika: Oh my goodness.
Liz: No, I know.
Anika: That is so beautiful and wonderful and amazing, because Georgiou saved him. I can’t handle my emotions. I watched that arc recently for many reasons and it just gets me so, like it’s such a beautiful send off for that character.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And I was so, so pleased with that whole – like, that she couldn’t save Michael, but she could save Saru. And I was just like, ah! And that to know that it meant something, that he was able to also save all these other people.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Those are the ripples. They are so amazing in time travel and parallel universe stories.
Liz: Yeah, it’s so great. And this means that, like, the Kelpien homeworld had a Saru back. Who was also a leader and a survivor. Though probably also kind of hardcore.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: Action Saru in any universe.
Anika: Action Saru in any universe. What also really got me in my feels was Michael reminiscing about Spock.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Like, just for that, I was all on board with like, let’s get on the ISS Enterprise for two reasons. One, that I am very sad about the Michael and Spock situation and how, you know, Sarek and Amanda and none of them can talk about her, and she’s just cut off from all of them forever. And it’s just all very sad. So, I appreciate when we remember that. And then it also does again, parallel and mirror to Moll and to Book. And to L’ak too, because he lost his whole family. So it’s like, it brings them all in the same sad orphan…
Liz: So really, we don’t need to be shooting at each other. We just need everyone to sit down with Hugh for a bit of therapy.
Anika: Exactly. And then, also, that she said she never met the Mirror Universe version of Spock, but she assumes that he’s just as terrible as everybody else. And I was like, no, that’s not true. I was like, yay.
Liz: And the thing is, by the DS9 era, everyone knows about the Mirror Universe, but she ends up there literally for the first time and Book’s like, I’ve read about this. And Book is clearly very familiar with it, but Michael has chosen not to look up any of that. And I think we sort of know from Unification III that she hasn’t sought out information about her family and her loved ones.
Anika: Can you imagine how hard that would be?
Liz: I mean, it’s Spock. Can you imagine how hard it would be to avoid running into his Wikipedia page?
Anika: Well, but I mean for emotionally hard. To go and see what happened to someone after you left them.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And think about how it would have been if you were there.
Liz: And that’s kind of what Book represents to Moll as the guy who was actually raised by her dad. Who, I’m just gonna say, it seems like kind of a deadbeat. Like, he felt bad about it, but he still left his family and didn’t go back.
Anika: That’s not great. Not great, dad.
Liz: I’m putting Cleveland Booker, was it the third or the fourth? Either way, I’m putting that guy in with Sarek and Worf in the Bad Dad Club.
Anika: He told her this story about this place that they could go to, and then that’s her goal. Like, it’s, again, Anika coded.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It’s like, oh my goodness.
Liz: Anika coded, but also, again, therapy. Have you seen Deep Space Nine, girl? Nothing good happens in the Gamma Quadrant.
Did you appreciate just how well Chapel’s sickbay was used as a set? Because every scene, I was like, oh, that’s where Christina and M’Benga were! I love them!
Anika: I know. And it’s like, obviously, Discovery was the first show where they like wore white.
Anika: I mean, I think maybe Motion Picture, but like, it was the first television series that put the medical people in white. But I saw the people in white, and like Hugh has been in white his entire time. Isaw them in that set, and I was like, oh, look! Which is ridiculous. But that’s exactly where my mind went. I was like, no, this is not sickbay. Because we’ve seen Discovery’s sickbay. It’s a closet.
Liz: I was about to say, I think the Strange New Worlds sickbay set is a million times better than Discovery‘s. It’s like they looked at Discovery and did the exact opposite.
Anika: It’s just really funny to me. That is not your sickbay. You got a renovation.
Liz: Oh, yeah. I loved seeing the Enterprise set. I loved getting the world building for the Mirror Universe. But ultimately, this really was a Michael and Book story.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: And you have a note here that says what’s up with Hugh.
Anika: He is sad. I think he has been, you know, what’s the word? He had this out of body experience while he was in his body. And that was weird for him. And it reminds him of all the other out of body experiences that he’s had.
Liz: Understandably.
Anika: He’s feeling weird about it. And the only thing I really cared about in that plotline was how Tilly offered to talk to him. And was like, you know, you listen to everybody else, but somebody can listen to you too. I thought that was very sweet, and it reminded me that Tilly has been gone. And it’s sort of like, who has he been able to talk to?
Liz: Yeah, because Adira has filled Tilly’s role as the young person who is learning and the awkward one, but they can’t fill Tilly’s role of being the “I love feeling feelings” friend. And they particularly can’t do it for Hugh and Paul, who are, you know, their adults.
Anika: And, you know, Tilly was the first to reach out to Ash Tyler, and Tilly was Airiam’s best friend. Tilly is that linchpin character for many of these people. And no one has filled that role on the ship, unless it’s Hugh, and he can’t fill it for himself.
Liz: I actually think it’s good that no one has sit seamlessly into Tilly’s role as the emotional support person, because I think that’s often how it goes. Someone leaves a group and the dynamic changes, and we’re all individuals. We’re all irreplaceable in our way. I’m just so glad to have Mary Wiseman back full time this season.
Doug Jones seems to be taking a break. He wasn’t in this episode and barely appeared last episode. Good for him, he deserves a holiday. And I’m glad. As with Tilly, I’m glad that they have the courage to change the ensemble up a bit, and they don’t feel beholden to have every single person in every single episode. But it’s good to have Tilly back.
Anika: They’ve really widened the cast this season.
Liz: They really have.
Anika: Which I appreciate.
Liz: We once again have our beta shift friends.
Liz: I feel like they’re trolling Owosekun and Detmer fans, because they were mentioned and they take off with the Enterprise, but they’re not in this episode at all. Iwanted Detmer to go, so Owosekun could sound on her own. But I guess they come as a pair.
Anika: They’re a pairing, Liz.
Liz: Owo can do better.
Anika: Maybe she doesn’t want to. You love who you love.
Liz: Yeah, but, girl.
So I find, weirdly, I have very little to say about this episode, even though I think it was great. Whereas episode six, the next one, I don’t think was as good, but I’m going to have so much to say about it.
Anika: Well, you know, that happens. Sometimes the episodes that don’t hit you are the ones that you have more to say about.
Liz: Mostly I wanted one thing from this episode, which was to not break my prime Lorca headcanons. And it didn’t. It simply gave me a new way to bring him back to the Federation, and that’s actually all I wanted.
Anika: So there you go. You’re good. I will say the whole story of the ISS Enterprise, I’m glad that we got it, but the way that it was delivered, I sort of lost. I stopped paying attention and I had to go back. I was like, I can’t actually pay attention to this. So I think it could have been done better, but I don’t know how.
Liz: I don’t have suggestions, but I just feel that there was a little too much talk. It could have been delivered differently. I actually had the problem where I was listening to that monologue so intently for some sort of Lorca canon that I didn’t pay attention to what was actually being said, which is sort of a metaphor for how it is when you’re obsessed with a character or a ship. I had to go back and watch that scene again to catch up. And then I had to go back and — like, is the locket that Michael picked up significant? Is that an Easter egg? I don’t think so.
Anika: No, that’s it. It was Michael being clever. Good job, Michael.
Liz: Not really telegraphing it.
Anika: It was fun though. I like the locket. I like that she wears the locket for the rest of the episode. It was sort of fun to, you know, what is the actual story here? Is she right? Or is she bluffing? Cause you know, that was fun for me, especially since the puzzle is like — it’s not much of a puzzle.
Liz: It’s really not.
Anika: The pieces go right together. It’s not that much of a puzzle. It would be more fun if it was actually, this little tiny piece is a puzzle. That was the part though, where I was paying attention to Michael playing with the locket, instead of paying attention to what was being told to me. And so I was like, wait, what was this all about? What happened here? Who are these people? Where are the, you know, what are the refugees? They had a cute little lizard plush. I was like, oh, that’s cute. So I got a little confused in those parts.
Liz: Once again, Discovery is not being made for the people watching with their phone in their hand. Which is not a criticism.
Anika: No.
Anika: But the only thing that I really want to talk about is Rayner.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And his anxiety about being in command. And how people reached out to him and tried to help him with it, and how it kinda worked. He did the thing where he asked for people’s opinions on the bridge and had like a bridge meeting where it’s like, what are your ideas, people? I really liked his growth.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And also that he was legitimately afraid to sit in the captain’s chair.
Liz: Look, mood.
Anika: No, it was such a good choice. He wasn’t obviously avoiding it, but he was just sort of like standing around, like, yeah, I’m just going to stand.
Liz: And not to be obsessed again, but it’s very Lorca coded, because you remember in the first few episodes of season one, Jason Isaacs deliberately did not sit in the chair.
Liz: And the first time we see him in the chair is Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad. And that was like a whole thing like for Lorca, it was he shouldn’t be in the chair. And for Rayner, he feels like he shouldn’t be in the chair.
Anika: Yes, but like they’re trying to show him that not only does he belong in the chair, he belongs in Starfleet, he belongs on their ship.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It’s just — it’s just a nice, interesting reverse. You know, we’re gonna accept you as one of our own, whether you like it or not.
Liz: And it tells us again what a serious blow to his confidence his near — expulsion is not the word, but his demotion and his near removal from Starfleet. This is a guy who’s had a 30-year career. He seems middle aged. He’s well and truly an adult. And then to just catastrophically fail for making a decision, which to be honest, wasn’t bad in the moment. He covers it up well because he’s quite good at his job, but he needs to rebuild his confidence. And this is the same as Michael coming aboard Discovery for the first time and feeling like she doesn’t have a place on the bridge.
Anika: It’s really nice that Discovery is the place for those people. I appreciate it. As someone who always likes the misfits.
Liz: And the bridge meeting has been a thing. Even Cornwell did it when she was briefly in command. That is how Discovery works. We didn’t even find out that they had a conference room until Lorca was dead. And they rarely use it because they don’t need it.
Anika: They don’t need it. That’s just not how it works on their ship. And it works for their crew and their ship.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It’s almost like the name Discovery, where you’re going and discovering things, your main emotion is curiosity.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And I feel like that type of person, they don’t go to a conference room. They’re in their lab, figuring things out and talking about it there. They’re, like, doing things at the same time as they’re talking about it.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Because they’re discoverers.
Anika: Whereas Enterprise, no offense to Enterprise. However, “enterprise” is a corporate term for business where you 100% always have a conference room and you always talk about stuff in the conference room. And that is a place where you follow the rules. And when they don’t follow the rules, it’s like a big deal.
Liz: And this is true of literally every Enterprise we’ve seen.
Anika: Exactly. So I think it’s actually really clever to play on the ideas of how these different crews work.
Liz: I mean, by this logic, the crew of the Defiant should conduct all of their meetings while sparring or whatever.
Anika: I mean, they kind of do. Have you watched that show?
Liz: I meant physically sparring, but verbally…
Anika: Think about it a little. But yeah, so I really liked the physicality of Rayner’s story arc, really throughout the season so far. But this episode highlighted it maybe a little for me. Just the way that he enters rooms and talks to people and he keeps space between them, I liked how Paul was like, I’m going to quote something that you said last episode, just like you quoted something that he said last episode to you. And I was like, nice continuity, a really quick turn around.
Liz: Yeah, I like that.
Anika: I think they’re doing a really good job with Rayner’s story, is what I’m saying.
Liz: No, no, I agree. And I was just thinking about what you said about how he maintains space with people. And it’s such a subtle way of conveying that this dude is not a creep. Like, obviously, I’m all about season one and Lorca being in literally everybody’s space, but that was not a man who respected boundaries.
Anika: And also, I have to point out that Michael decided to do some research on his culture so that she could use idioms from his culture. And I was like, they just care about each other. I really like it.
Liz: I also feel like we’re remembering belatedly that Book is not human. Like, he’s not just a human with a different culture, but he is an alien. And I appreciate that. It’s kind of been a minor pet peeve of mine basically since he was introduced that he’s very human-like. And then we had Strange New Worlds and the reveal that Una is an alien, and that literally changes nothing about her. All of her references are still Earth and human-centric and her name is human. Book has a human name, but it’s not his real name.
Anika: It’s not his real name.
Anika: Maybe this will be about him reclaiming his name.
Liz: Reclaiming his identity as opposed to what he has sort of stolen from Moll, from her perspective.
Anika: Right, exactly. That would be a good story. Yeah.
Liz: I still just want Book to settle down on Ni’var and raise his kids with Michael, and Moll and L’ak can babysit.
Anika: I don’t know if I trust Moll to babysit.
Liz: I definitely trust L’ak.
Anika: L’ak would be such a good babysitter.
Anika: He could have a daycare center. And I think he would be happy. He just gives off this, you know, I want to be a kindergarten teacher vibe. I just love him so much. I’m so mad about it.
Liz: I can sense your rage.
Anika: It’s just like, no, no, but yes.
Liz: I kind of feel like that’s all we have to say. And it’s a bit of a problem with having screeners that we watch everything so far ahead of everyone else that we don’t have other people’s ideas and conversations to bounce off of. And I just really liked this episode without having a terrible amount to say about it, which is not to say it didn’t have substance.
Anika: You didn’t mention that the Breen are Mandalorians.
Liz: I mentioned that first off, you know, the Bucketheads, but not the kind of Bucketheads that worked for Osyraa.
Anika: I was at work today. We had a celebration of science and it included a 3D printer. And one of the 3D printed things that we had was a Mandalorian helmet. And I picked it up and I said, Breen!
Liz: Breen!
Anika: And no one knew what I was talking about, and it was great.
Liz: Super happy for you.
Anika: I was very happy.
Anika: But yeah, no, like I said, I think that this was a really solid episode. I think that there were actually were layers to it.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: In terms of the relationships and in terms of how the relationships intersect, both the double date, but also even the people on Discovery, because in the end, they had to communicate.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Through ways that they, you know, weren’t sure that they were going to be able to, you know, and it was a leap of faith. It was a leap of faith for L’ak to side with Moll. It was a leap of faith for Michael to trust that Rayner would get her message and understand it. There are lots of different smaller stories being told within this story. And I sort of feel that maybe we’ll see more layers to it even as we go on.
Liz: I definitely agree.
Anika: Because, particularly with Moll and L’ak, I feel like they were planting little seeds that are going to come and flower as we go on.
Liz: I was about to say, there’s also the failed leap of faith that Book and Michael take that they will be able to get through to Moll and L’ak. But I absolutely believe that that’s planted a seed that will bring them on to the same side further on.
Anika: The most interesting part was when L’ak and Michael were alone in sickbay.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Because it was like, we literally don’t know anything about each other, other than that we’re in love with the other person. And that was a really interesting dynamic. I feel like if they had had time to really communicate, like, Michael is the type of person that would 100% be able to get through to L’ak because he is open to it in a way that Moll is not. And Michael, like as much as Book thinks that he’s the person who’s going to get through to them, I think that Michael is better at it. Because she has like the intellectual – like, she’s the xenoanthropologist, and she has distance from it where that Book does not.
Liz: Absolutely. And she has the double advantage of being a Starfleet officer with courier experience. She sort of knows where they’re coming from. But also, she’s more likely to get through to L’ak, because he has had a much more privileged life than Moll. And that makes him softer. You know, obviously he was like a Breen soldier. He was demoted down to shuttle, stormtrooper duty. But he was obviously still pretty comfortable. He wasn’t out, like, killing people. He wasn’t working to survive the way Moll had to.
Anika: Yes. And Michael also sort of has that backstory with her time on Vulcan, where she was very protected, but also an outsider. And people knew that she didn’t belong, but she still had all of the outward trappings of it.
Liz: Yes. Importantly, Michael did not kill Sarek.
Anika: Michael is his favorite child, let’s be honest. She is his favorite, 100%. His last interaction with Spock was to have an argument with him.
Anika: Sarek, what is wrong with you?
Liz: Truly the refrain of this podcast.
Anika: Anyway. Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media, credits for our theme music and transcripts of our episodes.
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