Liz has done it AGAIN: she forgot to move her microphone. She’s audible but a little echoey for the first 10 minutes, before she has a horrible realisation.
Anika and Liz are spending their vacation AT THE LIBRARY, where they are checking out some books and checking in on Michael Burnham.
- Every single thing in this episode is Sarek’s fault
- Libraries and archives are never apolitical
- Primarch Ruhn heard there were drag queens doing storytime at the Eternal Archive, and he is NOT happy about it
- Anika has been linking Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland for YEARS
- An alarming amount of people don’t believe in atonement or redemption
- Michael’s riddle is, do you understand the point of Star Trek: Discovery?
- Is the Federation bigoted against slime people?
- “What I’m about to say is going to make it sound like I ship Vance and Rayner, and I want you to know that I do.”
Transcript
Anika: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext, and subspace hosted by Anika and Liz. Today, we are discussing Star Trek: Discovery, season five, episode seven, Labyrinths.
Liz: So I’m just gonna say up top, every single thing that happens in this episode is Sarek’s fault.
Anika: I was so excited that we’re getting back to our roots.
Liz: In so many ways. I really, really loved this episode. I feel like Discovery is cruising into a good finale, even though I hate the plot itself.
Anika: This episode is amazing. Everything about it is amazing. I love so many things. Moll is my favorite. I adore her.
Liz: Let’s, let’s just go down the list of things in our notes because we’ve got so much to talk about.
Anika: So much to talk about.
Liz: First of all, as a Voyager fan, I love the new special effects for the Badlands. I don’t normally nerd out about stuff like that, but it was cool.
Anika: It was amazing that Badlands were scary. They were silly back in Voyager. I know that we were supposed to be afraid, but it was such a 1994 effect. It was obvious. You know, they were doing their best and I don’t fault them in any way. I got the purpose. I got the point. So, you know, it was like — but this, I was just like, oh yeah, we’re in the Badlands. This is real.
Liz: I am retrospectively more impressed by Voyager, OG Voyager, that it’s still the best ship to navigate the Badlands 900 years later. And this is very nerdy. And I hope no one fact checks me on this cause I’m going by vibes, but the fake destruction maneuver at the end is the sort of Maquis tactic that Chakotay and B’Elanna used. And I think the Kazon use it at one point, because Seska teaches it to them. So a lot of this season has felt like a love letter to DS9, but Voyager is definitely in the mix. And I just felt like that was all really clever.
Anika: It is. I like how the new series in general are referencing the older series. They all do it. And I just think that that continuity, as opposed to the continuity of plot, it makes you feel like we’re all Star Trek fans and we’re all connected. And it doesn’t matter that the special effects have gotten better because it’s still Star Trek.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And as someone who is a fan of the Star Trek universe, whether or not I love a particular series, I think that’s really cool.
Anika: It’s absolutely cool. I got excited last week when they mentioned the Badlands and I was like, oh boy, we’re going to the Badlands. I totally nerded out about that, because Voyager is my show.
Liz: It’s my heart. I also loved my new best friend, the manic pixie dream librarian.
Anika: I want to cosplay her so bad.
Liz: Oh, I know, I know. I have a degree in librarianship. I don’t use it. Like, my skills are very out of date. But one thing that I really liked about this archive is that it’s an ethical archive. They let Book take the remnant of his civilization away with him. This is not the British Museum, is what I’m saying.
Anika: Yes, it was. I loved everything about the archive. We have a special collections at Wesleyan that I have visited a few times recently, because I was taking a class where we got to choose a book. I chose one from the 1400s that had plants pressed between the pages. It was like, these plants are hundreds of years old, centuries old. Bugs had gotten in, and so there was the remnants of — it was amazing. It was beautiful and creepy. That’s what a special collections is about, is about this. We’re keeping something from so long ago, so that people are amazed by what existed.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And they also keep information, like, libraries are magical. And I don’t think that everyone – like, lately, the conversation has been about how the library is a community space. I don’t want to take anything away from that, but you don’t need that to prove that libraries are good.
Liz: No, no. Libraries are so many different things. And the purpose of a special collection is different from the purpose of a public library. I really liked that the archive wants to be apolitical, but nothing is apolitical.
Anika: Right.
Liz: And so they have to ban the Breen from the library because the Breen are like, hey, I hear you have drag queens doing story time.
Anika: And she immediately is like, okay, I was being neutral and I came at you with a plan and you just blew right through it. And so now I’m, you know, sorry, I gave you a chance and you know, you lost your chance and it shut down immediately. And that was so powerful, honestly.
Liz: All due respect to my good friend, the Manic Pixie Dream Librarian, but you can’t be a centrist in a world with extremists. You just can’t. And I think they’ve learned an important lesson.
Anika: Especially when you’re protecting information and culture.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Liz: And Ruhn’s final sin is that he is prepared to destroy his own cultural history to get the clue, because he’s the worst.
Anika: That’s your through line. By the way, Primarch Ruhn is the worst. I have to point out that this library was like Belle’s library on steroids.
Liz: Yes, it had that vibe.
Anika: I guess it’s the Beast’s library, but it was very much — it had that same effect on me. And also it reminded me of in the first season of Picard, when Seven becomes the queen and she looks up and it’s like this wild, you know, Borg thing. And I was like, it’s like a library Borg, which I just think is kind of fun that, and it’s another labyrinth, you know? I appreciated those visuals.
Liz: Thematically, it came together really well. Like, you’ve called out the shout out to the Goblin King and Michael’s thing with the labyrinth. Again, this is vibes. There is no maze in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book, but a lot of stuff around Alice involves mazes. You know, I think Disneyland Paris has an Alice maze. It’s something that for some reason we associate with that story.
Anika: I think it’s because of the riddles.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: Riddles are a part of Alice, and riddles are inherent to labyrinths.
Liz: Yeah, that makes sense. And then you have Labyrinth, the iconic Jennifer Connelly-David Bowie movie, which is in its own way, a variation on Alice in Wonderland.
Anika: Absolutely. I say that on my blog. It’s been up for, I don’t know, 12, 15 years. I don’t know how long I’ve had that.
Liz: But I love that I had to quickly Google ‘Labyrinth, Alice in Wonderland’, and you’ve already done the work.
Anika: I’m just saying it’s right there on my about page. So yes, the shout out to the Goblin King. Beyond, honestly, the costuming is related.
Anika: But she calls her dungeon an oubliette, and I was like, Labyrinth, Labyrinth.
Liz: It definitely felt like they knew what they were doing in the best way. When Michael finds the path to the clue and goes down, I was like, oh, she’s being inner lit. But no, it’s Alice in Wonderland because that is Michael’s book.
Anika: Again, I love going back to that beginning.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: We didn’t know anything about Michael, and we learned about her love of Alice in Wonderland.
Liz: Very early on, like third episode. So yeah, and Book is like a really sexy Cheshire cat. And Michael, God bless her heart. She’s like, “Oh, the clue is hidden in something that looks like a Book!” And I was like, girl, think about what you just said. Think really hard about what you just said.
Anika: But she, like Alice, has to go through the journey. She has to think about the riddle. It’s not something that you just get right away.
Liz: No, because this is Michael Burnham, she has to go through the process of mapping out the labyrinth using her technology. Sand in a bucket is a type of technology. And she has to get it wrong before she gets it right. And that’s kind of Michael’s whole arc.
Anika: Right.
Liz: We were saying last week that Michael’s mistakes have made her a better captain.
Anika: Yes. And that, again, we have said, is such an important message that you learn so much by failing. It makes you better at succeeding.
Liz: I just have to apologize. I just realized I forgot to move my microphone.
Anika: I could hear you.
Liz: I would have been audible.
Anika: Oh, that is much better.
Liz: No, I would have been audible, but I am so, so sorry that I did it again.
Anika: I’m sorry. It’s significantly better. I didn’t notice.
Liz: I am very sorry to our listeners and to me, who was going to have to edit that 11 minutes of rough audio. Anyway, Michael, she learns from her mistakes, as I try to do.
Anika: Well, you know, it’s all related. The fact that the journey is more important than the answer is the same as saying the failure is just as important as the success. And we are told by society more often that failure is an end point. And we have to get away from that if we want to succeed as humanity.
Liz: But also, Picard tells us in TNG that it is possible to do everything right and still fail, but Picard rarely ever failed. His biggest trauma was something that was done to him.
Anika: Right.
Liz: Michael throws herself headfirst into her mistakes.
Anika: Picard also consistently fails and no one notices or cares.
Liz: I mean, that’s the magic of being a white man. And I think it is inspiring to have in Michael a woman who fails because of her own choices. Obviously, there are extenuating circumstances, there’s childhood trauma, but she is the adult making the choices. And then she gets up and keeps going and thrives.
Anika: And that’s my favorite message. That’s why I love all the characters I love that consistently fail and have to get up and do it again. And sometimes they try to burn the world, but that’s also to agency.
Liz: Women can have a little war crime as a treat.
Anika: Again, Moll is my favorite.
Liz: This is also such a good episode for Michael because she’s in such a good place this season. She is doing so well as captain. She knows who she is. She knows what she wants.
Anika: And the ability to see failure as a lesson and set an end point is powerful. Gives you confidence.
Liz: But also we learn, like, she learns that part of that confidence is a front. She is terrified of failure. Every success has brought her to a position where the penalty for failure is much higher. You know, at the beginning of season one, she failed and that was the end of her career and the death of one captain. If she fails now, a lot more people are going to die. And of course that weighs on her because she’s a human being and she would be a psychopath if that wasn’t an issue for her. But you can’t live in that fear, but you have to acknowledge that fear. And this is what Cheshire Cat Book was to getting at.
Anika: I just needed to point out that her subconscious chose Book and she even like has this whole through line about how she should have chosen Tilly, which is delightful, but her subconscious didn’t give her a scientist as her Cheshire Cat Guide.
Liz: It gave her an empath.
Anika: And I think that that is notable. It’s not just that it’s Book, but it’s who Book is to her and who Book represents to her.
Liz: Yeah. And Book in some ways also represents a failure because she couldn’t stop him from making his choices last season. And yet she loves him. She’s realized that over the last few episodes, and I just want them to kiss again. I just want to mash their little faces together.
Anika: It was very sweet how concerned both Book and Rayner were about Michael.
Liz: I remember, I think I said this about Anson Mount and how I liked Pike so much better in season one. I’m sorry, in season two of Discovery rather than Strange New Worlds. But a white man whose first point of concern is the well-being of a Black woman is just very appealing. That’s a low bar, I have to say. We should be sailing over that bar every single day. And yet.
Anika: And yet.
Liz: I had this moment of thinking, would I want Discovery to continue with a different captain, like if Rayner stepped up? And I was like, no, absolutely not. Full body recoil. I love him, but Michael is the lead character here.
Anika: And it’s episodes like this that prove it.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I read the critiques online every Thursday. And I will say again that the people who are complaining about Discovery have not watched past the first two episodes. Because they are still complaining about that. They haven’t gotten over it. And it is a hundred years later.
Liz: Truthfully, one thing that I’ve noticed in a lot of Trekkies on Facebook and Reddit and like everywhere, is that they don’t believe in redemption. And they want punitive justice for any wrongdoing.
Anika: I can’t handle it.
Liz: They want Janeway to be in prison for Tuvix. They want Sisko to be in prison for the stuff he pulled when he was chasing Eddison. They never want Picard to face any consequences for anything. But they’re very angry that Michael Burnham was only in prison for six months, which I’m just going to say is the amount of time that Garak got for attempted genocide. So, you know.
Anika: Just saying. Yeah. Yes. I mean, absolutely. I think that that is a very good insight to something that is, I don’t want to say wrong, but rotten, something that is rotten in Star Trek fandom and also all of society.
Liz: All of society, but Star Trek fans claim to be better than that. And it’s like people who think that Gul Dukat got what he deserved, but Kai Win deserved worse.
Anika: Yes. And it’s all related. And again, I am pro all redemption, all atonement that people, we need to accept failure not only in ourselves, but also in everyone else.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Liz: I think these people find it particularly infuriating that a Black woman has had a redemption arc. They’re also very angry that Dr Mbenga is not in prison after the Klingon ambassador episode. Like, there’s a throughline here. There’s something connecting these people. I don’t know if you can see it.
Anika: And again, like, it’s visible everywhere. It is visible in everything that is going on, in the campus protests right now. It is visible in all of politics. And like, it’s hard. All of these questions are hard. But the concept of forgiveness being allowed to white men who speak in a certain way — Picard — versus anyone else, but especially a Black man or a Black woman.
Liz: “Rayner did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to be demoted, but Michael should be in prison.”
Anika: And Michael never deserved to be in prison? So people are against redemption in life and in… I mean, it’s the whole cancel culture concept, is that they want people to just go away forever. And I want people to acknowledge their wrongdoings.
Liz: And what’s wild to me is that people even struggle with the idea that you’ve done your time and you’ve made restitution and therefore we can let it go. Like, Book has been punished for his crimes, and yet people are mad that he is allowed to participate in saving the universe. Which I’m going to say, I’m going to put out there, is maybe not the cushiest job in the world. It’s not like he’s sitting on a couch with Grudge, eating bonbons.
Anika: Right. It’s just weird.
Liz: Well, I think it comes back to your note here, that the answer to Michael’s riddle is, do you understand the point of Star Trek: Discovery?
Anika: I loved that scene where Michael acknowledges her fears, her failures and her deepest feelings, really. And that was the key.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That was what she needed to do in order to get out. That was the win. It was saying, I don’t know everything. And I can’t do this. And I’m scared.
Liz: I think it’s interesting that Moll has managed to avoid going through that process. She didn’t have to complete that riddle. Because I don’t know that she would have succeeded. She is much younger and more brittle and not in a good place.
Anika: Not in a good place. Moll is in her Daenerys era.
Liz: I love this for you. And I love her for it.
Anika: I love it for me too. I’ve needed it. I have been missing it. House of the Dragon didn’t give it to me. But Star Trek: Discovery is providing it to me. And she’s also being a Seska. And I love that. Always.
Liz: I think she’s also being a Michael Burnham. Obviously, the details are very different, but here is a young woman who has had a really terrible childhood, who struggled to find a home and has lost the home that she built, in part through her own choices. And whereas Michael did her mutiny and lost Georgiou and turned inward, Moll is turning her rage outward.
Anika: Yes. And the thing is that she is focusing it on the worst people, Primarch Ruhn.
Liz: The worst.
Anika: And she wants to save people. No, she was opposed to fighting Discovery. She was opposed to fighting the library. She didn’t want to just go on a random rampage. She just wants power to run her own life.
Liz: And the irony is that without being Breen, she is a better leader of the Breen soldiers than Primarch Ruhn. Who’s…
Anika: So much better.
Liz: His interest is personal power. And there was a point where I was like, they have to kill this guy this episode because he is too stupid to be a sustainable villain for the rest of the series. It was the Maje Culluh problem.
Anika: I was going to say, your description of him as Maje Culluh was excellent, because he doesn’t have the ability to sustain being the villain, to being the bad guy. And they introduce bad guys in whatever media, and they are the ones who you want to stick around, even if they’re horrible and you hate them. You still want them to stick around because they are a great foil, because they have a point of view, and because they bring something to the plot and to the characterization and to the story. But then there are villains who are just there to be antagonists, who are just there to get in the way and create the situation that the protagonists and the heroes have to go through, and they don’t have a point of view. They’re just plot and they’re just problem.
Liz: I actually have a slightly different take on Primarch Ruhn, which is that, like the first season villain in Star Trek: Discovery, he is Donald Trump. He wants power for himself. He doesn’t really know how to use it, but he really wants it. He’s a bully. He’s too short sighted to keep his own people on side. He doesn’t care about culture or history or anything like that. All he cares about, ultimately, is his own personal success and power.
Anika: I agree with everything you just said.
Liz: It makes it easy for Moll to manipulate him, but he has to be taken out.
Anika: I hate that I’m going to say this. I want everyone to know that I hate every word that’s going to come out of my mouth now.
Liz: I’m so excited.
Anika: Primarch Ruhn is not as charismatic as Donald Trump.
Liz: No, I agree. I think that when you’re a pile of goo in a leather suit, then you’re just not doing well.
Anika: He just brings nothing to the table. That’s my point with that.
Liz: No, the other reason I felt that they needed to get rid of Ruhn as the villain, is that the guy has no face, he’s always wearing a mask, and he doesn’t even have as much personality as a Mandalorian character. Like, this is no Pedro’s Pascal, is what I’m saying.
Anika: The other guy, I’m not sure if he has a name.
Liz: He does. I saw it in the credits.
Anika: I’m sure he has a name, but I don’t know what it is. But that guy, the other guy that started the shouting and that Moll figured out was going to be her ally, he had a lot of personality. I was rooting for him.
Liz: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But that’s because we see him supporting Moll. Like, if he was just out on his own doing his own thing, would we care?
Anika: Probably not, no.
Liz: There’s nothing there. There’s no face to connect with. I remember you talking about parasocial relationships and how, you know, you have television, you bring people into your house, you make eye contact. No one is making eye contact with the Breen.
Anika: No, and that’s purposeful. You know, it’s like the Stormtrooper concept.
Anika:
Liz: Oh, yeah, yeah. And that’s why it’s radical that Finn in The Force Awakens is a Stormtrooper. But the first thing we see him do is take his helmet off. And in The Mandalorian, yes, you’ve got a guy with a bucket on his head as the main character, but the very first episode they introduce Baby Yoda, the cutest creation ever conceived. And so that’s the hook.
Anika: Right. Exactly. That’s the hook. And we see that the tin can with no soul and no face and no eyes — the eyes to the window of the soul is very important. And that a statue basically that can move around falls in love with Baby Yoda. And that relationship is what matters to us, to the point where when it stops being about that relationship, everyone was like, what is this show even?
Liz: My minority opinion is that I love wanky Mandalorian nonsense. But yes, I actually think I’m in the wrong here. And the thing is, like, the Breen have always been mysterious faceless villains. The first thing we learn about them is that they imprisoned and enslaved Tora Ziyal and a lot of Bajoran refugees. And then this is the very first time that they have personality and internal conflict and politics and beliefs. And I think it’s really cool, but part of what I want for the Breen this season in the two episodes we have left is…
Anika: No!
Liz: No, I know! But I want them to stop being the faceless guys that it’s okay to kill.
Anika: I know that, you know, I am on record as not wanting L’ak to be brought back to life. Even though that’s very sad, I acknowledge that. But my guy, my new friend, who doesn’t have a name, but is Moll’s bestie, he could remove his mask and show his face and learn to be a person.
Liz: That’s what I’m saying. And for Rayner, I would… The thing that interested me about Rayner this week is that he becomes the hunter, and he returns to the guy who was defending his planet. And I think at one point we see on the Breen footage, he’s like, “Take that, gelatinous bastard!” And it’s like, I want him to go through the process of, “Oh, I can’t think of these people as other anymore. I have to move on from that.” Because I think that’s a really interesting story. And because Discovery didn’t stick around long after the war, we didn’t see them go through that with the Klingons, and we haven’t heard from the Klingons at all in this era.
Anika: Yeah, that would be so healing, right? It would be healing for not just Rayner, but for all of us. And again, those are the messages that we need to be learning. Those are the messages that we need to get out into the world through our art. And every time we have that, you know, don’t think of someone that you’re up against as an other. Like, we need that over and over and over and over again.
Liz: And I think what particularly works with the Breen is that they are genuinely dangerous, that they genuinely see other civilizations as non-people that they can and should kill. And they have no respect for us. So in a way, us taking that attitude is self-defense. But what happens when the Breen are changing, so we have to change?
Anika: And they’re not monsters like the Gorn in Strange New Worlds.
Liz: I mean, the Gorn also aren’t monsters like the Gorn in Strange New Worlds.
Anika: Obviously. But I’m just saying that the visuals are, you know, we should be able to connect more with the Breen.
Liz: Yeah, I like that. First, we meet the nice, handsome prince, and then we meet the rest of them who are the monsters.
Anika: Right. We meet L’ak before we know he’s Breen. So we already have a connection to him. And we already have seen his eyes.
Liz: The other thing that’s interesting, and this is just me floating a thought bubble, it’s not really relevant to this episode specifically, but I’m starting to think that people in the Federation have some kind of bigotry against gelatinous and slimy species. In The Next Generation, someone refers to a melanoid slimeworm as the most grotesque and disgusting thing in the world, and then we meet Murf, and he’s beautiful, and we have the Breen who, obviously, they kind of earn it, but the way Rayner talks about them being gelatinous, it’s a bit sus, and then you have the Founders, and the way Odo was treated even before we know his species, I just think this is maybe something that Federation needs to think about. Slime is people.
Anika: Slime is people. Well, not to be a science nerd, but we are predisposed to be afraid of things that look like disease.
Liz: That makes sense.
Anika: And melting people is definitely something that looks like disease.
Liz: Yeah, and this is gross, but you think about pus and mucus and other symptoms of, you know, things that our body creates when there’s an infection. Yeah, yeah. It completely makes sense that we have this visceral reaction, but I feel like the point of Star Trek is to overcome the visceral reaction.
Anika: I agree, but I just think it’s interesting. I think it’s interesting on two levels, both within universe and on a meta level, as the reason that we make these the bad guys. It is that primal urge.
Liz: Yes. Gosh, I feel like I’ve just stumbled half-assedly into something really interesting. I also want to say, I know I said this episode is Sarek’s fault, but it was Amanda who read Alice in Wonderland to Michael, so really it’s everyone’s fault.
Anika: There’s a reason that Sarek and Amanda are married.
Liz: Yes.
Liz: Actually, I saw a Tumblr post going around, and then I saw it screen-capped on Facebook, which is how you know it’s really arrived, basically pointing out that simply by staying with Sarek, Amanda is maybe not the best mother. Like, it doesn’t make her a bad person, but just because a lady is nice doesn’t make her a great mother.
Anika: Spock would disagree.
Liz: Look, I think it’s also natural for a son to love his mother, and you know, in Reddit family subreddit terms, she’s the enabler.
Anika: I’m just noting that I didn’t say Michael would disagree. I just said Spock would disagree.
Liz: I think Michael has reached a point in her life where she can look at her family with very clear eyes, and even if her parents hadn’t died, I’m sure she would grow up to be the perfectionist that she is, because that’s who she is, and also her parents were very high achieving, and her mother literally saved the universe, so that’s a high bar to reach.
Anika: And then joined a cult that is about acknowledging your failure over and over and over again.
Liz: Gabrielle, are you okay?
Anika: I’m just saying, there’s a lot there.
Liz: So much there. But obviously Michael losing her parents, losing them to violence, and then being taken by Sarek, and you think about the flashback in, I think, the first episode where she’s struggling in the learning pit and he’s like, well, the problem is not your Vulcan tongue, but your human heart. And it’s like, bro. Bro!
Anika: But again, he doesn’t know any better.
Liz: No, no. Look, I firmly believe that Sarek’s parents absolutely messed him up as much as…
Anika: It’s an ongoing concern, which is why we need Michael to become a parent so that we can all heal.
Liz: Look, she’s either going to break the cycle or just massively mess up her kids in her own new way. And I’m here for it.
Anika: Which is everyone’s… You know, that’s what we all go through. It’s okay. As long as you mess up your kids in a different way…
Liz: Yeah…
Anika: then you have grown.
Liz: Book will be the fun parent and Michael will be the strict parent. And…
Anika: Book would be such a good stay-at-home dad.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: I’m gonna say like a ridiculous thing.
Anika: But he would be a good stay-at-home dad the way that Anakin Skywalker would be a good stay-at-home dad.
Liz: No, I can see it. A lot of problems would have been avoided if Anakin Skywalker had been a stay-at-home dad.
Anika: Just let the woman be the overachiever. Go save the universe on her own. Take care of the kids. Embrace your dadness. I think they both have that personality.
Liz: I’m going to be really disappointed if this is not the end of the season between you and me.
Anika: I’m so upset that we only have two more episodes. I can’t even imagine how they’re going to fix this.
Liz: I really just want to skip past all the bit with the Progenitor technology. Get to the bit at the end where everyone’s okay and we know what they’re doing next.
Anika: I assume that that’s going to happen. I just don’t think it’s going to be satisfying in the same way. Because we have to go through all that nonsense. We have to solve the problem, and go to the place, and meet the thing, and go through the test, and have them all fail the test, and then have it be okay anyway, and save the Breen and save the Kweijian. All this stuff is going to happen that I assume is going to happen. I don’t want any of that. I just want to continue on this journey of self-actualization.
Liz: I’m probably going to enjoy it when I actually see it. But the problem with the way this season has prioritized character over story is that there comes a point where you do have to tell the damn story. This is also a problem that I regularly face in my writing.
Anika: I know.
Anika: So relatable. So, so relatable. What if I was just talking about their feelings? Why does it have to be a plot?
Liz: I kind of do want L’ak to be brought back to life so that he can be a stay-at-home dad while Moll runs the Breen. I think that would also…
Anika: I also approve of that.
Liz: He and Book can have play dates.
Anika: The thing is that L’ak has zero interest in ruling the Breen. That’s not what he wants. I mean, again, not to throw in Game of Thrones, but he is 100% Jon Snow, who never had any ambition to do anything. He was just forced into power over and over and over again, and he just wanted to go out into the woods and live his life.
Liz: He just wanted to hang out with his dog, man.
Anika: And, you know, his love for Moll is his main force in life. Yeah.
Liz: I mean, what would he even do? He is very much a wife guy because he has nothing else going on.
Anika: Isn’t that so cute?
Liz: I don’t even know if Moll would be interested in leading the Breen. I don’t love the optics of a human coming in and running these aliens, but you’ve got to steer these people to some sort of democracy, I guess.
Anika: Let’s just go back to all Moll wants in life is to go find the paradise that her father told her fairy tales about when she was a child. Her horrible father who left her. It is so sad. And I just need it to end better than all of my other fandoms, where they don’t get that. And they’re generally usually alone. I just need her not to be alone. I need her to be alive. I need her to not be alone. And I need her to find some semblance of happiness. And I agree with you that I don’t think that actually is leading the Breen. She wants a home too. Like, she and Book just want a home.
Liz: They just need like adjoining houses on Ni’Var where they can hang out. Book can give her a kitten.
Anika: Oh my goodness.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, it’s hard.
Anika: I’m gonna cry about things that haven’t happened yet.
Liz: So I watched Shōgun this week. It was really good, like life-changingly good television. But the female lead, she’s introduced and she wants to die. Like, her family is disgraced. She wants to sacrifice herself and commit ritual suicide. And she wants to die and she wants to die and she falls in love, but she wants to die and all of this. And then in the penultimate episode, she heroically sacrifices herself by standing in front of an explosion. And I was like, this is foreshadowed. It’s what you wanted. You had agency. Your arc came to its proper ending. Why does this keep happening to me?
Anika: This isn’t what I wanted. It’s very sad to me how few happy endings there are in this world. I was complaining about it. And I was saying it personally. I was saying, why do I only care about characters who are universally denied a happy ending? And a friend of mine said, no, no, no. It’s everyone now. Happy endings don’t happen anymore. And I was like, oh. And, you know, another person was like, just trust Disney. And I was like, have you seen what Disney has been doing lately? It is not happy endings.
Liz: Respectfully, in Australia, Shōgun is on Disney+.
Anika: Yeah, exactly. I was like, no, no, no, no. I am talking about Disney.
Liz: And I don’t even need a happy ending where everyone is married and has babies and will live happily ever after. I just want people to be in a better place than where they started. I will say, I am extremely confident that Michael Burnham is not going to heroically sacrifice herself by blowing herself up at the end of this series.
Anika: And she’s not going to retire on her desert planet where she’s alone.
Liz: No.
Anika: For no reason.
Liz: No. Michael is going to get a happy ending.
Anika: Michael is going to get a happy ending. Tilly is going to get a happy ending. Paul and Hugh are probably going to get a happy ending. I feel pretty safe.
Liz: Yeah. I only have a question mark over Rayner, and that’s because I’ve met Jason Isaacs, and there’s always the possibility that Callum Keith Rennie is lying about how he would have been a regular in season six.
Anika: I’m not even sure what Rayner’s happy ending would be. I think just being okay with himself.
Liz: Yeah. I think continuing to be the first officer of the USS Discovery.
Anika: I think that is his happy ending.
Liz: And finding a way to a place where he doesn’t have to be haunted by the Breen anymore. And that’s fine, because you know.
Anika: He needs to heal so that he can… We have this relationship between him and Vance, and I get the impression that Vance is literally his only friend.
Liz: Oh yeah.
Anika: And Vance fired him. Not because he didn’t care about him, but just because that’s the way it is, right?
Liz: What I’m about to say is going to make it sound like I ship Vance and Rayner, and why I want you to know that I do. But if Rayner is Lorca, then Vance is his Cornwell.
Anika: Yes. Yes, I agree. And the thing is that in both of those cases, they only had that person. And that is the tragedy. Because you can’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Liz: I mean, it’s a thing that men do apparently. They don’t have many friends, so they just rely on one or two people. And that’s really tragic. So I’m into that as like a story that reflects our culture. But it’s very telling that we didn’t even see the bridge or the crew of the USS Antares. And I know that that’s like to save money and all of that. But on a storytelling level, it means Rayner is easily separated.
Anika: Those are 100% his colleagues. Those were not his friends.
Liz: Yeah, I’m sure he was a good captain and they respected him deeply. But he could serve on that ship for seven years or more, and he would never be invited to a poker game.
Anika: Exactly, exactly what I meant. And I love that he is being integrated into the Discovery crew and the Discovery way of life.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And so I want to believe that his happy ending is literally just learning how to have a friend.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: And then, you know, going out into the world and doing it.
Liz: I think the happy ending I want for Rayner is, like, if the final scene is something like Saru’s wedding, I want to see Rayner and Vance having a drink together as friends again.
Anika: I want all of that.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I want all of it. We definitely need to see the wedding. Like, you don’t tease a wedding and then don’t have the wedding.
Liz: Oh my god. I would be so angry.
Anika: I will riot.
Liz: We will just turn up at Paramount Headquarters.
Anika: Michael McMahan, call me, and also, where’s my wedding?
Liz: We were promised a wedding, guys. But also, if Michael McMahan wanted to write that wedding, I’d be okay with it. I think we have effectively achieved our goal, which is to skip over the plot side of the ending and go straight to the hugs at the end.
Anika: I don’t care about any of that. The only thing I want to say is, as we mentioned briefly, that Book got his roots back.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: It was a very effective scene.
Liz: I teared up, but I was also thinking, oh, we’re going to come down to a choice between bringing L’ak back to life or bringing the Kweijian back to life, and for the reasons I outlined in our last episode, I just think there are logistical issues with Kweijian, and I hope it’s L’ak. Oh my, I just had the funniest thought.
What if the only person they can bring back to life is Brent Spiner?
Anika: I thought you were going to say Primarch Ruhn!
Liz: Oh, no. No one wants him.
Anika: See? Now Brent Spiner seems popular, right? Now you want Brent Spiner. Do you mean fake Brent Spiner, from the beginning?
Liz: Oh, well, no.
Anika: That would be actually hilarious.
Liz: I meant literally any Brent Spiner character, but I was tossing up between that and Jean-Luc Picard.
Anika: Look, I was going to go out on a limb and say, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart are not in Star Trek: Discovery, and that is a good thing.
Liz: I agree. Remember when we were predicting that Brent Spiner would be in the season two finale of Strange New Worlds, and we were very wrong, but I think he’s still out there.
Anika: I mean, he is definitely still out there hanging over us.
Liz: You are never entirely safe from a Brent Spiner cameo, but I am confident it’s not going to be in Discovery.
Anika: It’s not going to be in Discovery.
Liz: Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at www.antimatterpod.com, including links to our social media, credits for our theme music, and transcripts of our episodes. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Blue Sky, all at antimatterpod, and on Mastodon at @antimatterpod@tenforward.social.
If you like us, leave a review wherever you consume your podcasts. The more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us. Join us next week when we’ll be discussing the next episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Lagrange Point, and probably I’ll have my microphone approximately in my vicinity.