Anika and Liz get all dressed up to attend a wedding. They just have to figure out the meaning of life first. Easy, right?
It’s a very special episode as we discuss the series finale of Star Trek: Discovery, “Life, Itself”!
- We thought we were ready for Discovery to end, but we were wrong
- Liz suffered a finale-related injury and Anika has wine
- The Sega Star Trek: The Next Generation game (and also Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video essay about Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser experience)
- It feels like they were setting up Primarch Tahal as the big villain for season 6
- We have even more feelings about Rayner than we do about the Galactic Starcruiser video
- Moll’s ending is not what we expected, but we like it
- Discovery streaming movies when?
- The epilogue! The Star Trek: Legacy we deserve!
Transcript
Anika: I just want to warn you, I’m drinking wine. In my defense, it is commencement, I am extremely overworked, and Discovery is ending, and I’m really upset about it. Like, really upset.
Liz: Oh yeah. Do you want to do an intro about it?
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 the series finale of Star Trek: Discovery, Life, Itself.
Liz: So I was really nervous going into this. We got the screener a week ago today, and I looked at it, and I thought, I’m not ready to watch you. A, because I’m not ready for it to be over, and B, there is only one Star Trek that has had a good final episode.
Anika: It was much more likely to be a disappointment than a success. So, but honestly, I got everything I wanted out of this. I’m still super sad. I don’t want it to be over, which is weird because I had resigned myself before this season started. And then this season was really good, and I’m sad.
Liz: We now have two good final episodes of a Star Trek.
Anika: I don’t even know where to start. It was so emotional for me, actually.
Liz: At one point, I started crying, and it was the Progenitor’s speech towards the end, at the same point you lost it. And then through that and Saru’s wedding and the epilogue, I was crying so hard that at one point, I like pressed my knuckles into my eyes. I guess the skin there is very thin, because I cut myself just under my eyebrow, and then it was bleeding, and I did not notice until I was finished and got up to wash my face and take a Panadol. I still have a paper cut under my eyebrow because of how strongly I was experiencing the emotions of this finale.
Anika: It was a truly beautiful ending that was — but also clearly, like, there was the ending and then there was like, and now we’re going to have some more that we weren’t expecting to have.
Liz: I know people have been speculating that this scene or that scene was filmed later and inserted into an episode. No, there was what they filmed in 2022, and then there was the 20 minutes they went back with almost exclusively Sonequa Martin-Green and David Ajala and a guest star, and then Annabelle Wallis, and that was what they filmed.
Anika: And it was beautiful. It was so beautiful.
Liz: It was great, and I love that it doesn’t close anything off, that if they want to bring this cast back or parts of this cast back for streaming movies every couple of years, that is totally open to them. I would be really happy if they did it. They were clearly setting stuff up for a fight against Primarch Tahal in season six, and I’m sad that we won’t get more of Callum Keith Rennie’s face as he deals with that. But this was very much…
Anika: My Rayner emotions! I can’t even rein them in. It is too much. I can’t handle… Like, the Michael and Book stuff is so beautiful and so wonderful. And we get… It’s not even closure. It’s like hope. It’s this beautiful… You’ve been pitching, like, how about every five years we have a movie with this cast? And like, yes, absolutely. would watch that. I would feel safe because Michael and Book and Tilly and Vance are gonna be okay.
Liz: No, absolutely.
Liz: And I do love that we know that Michael has a happy ending and that she is still on good terms with Tilly.
Liz: And I think we can assume everyone. Like, this is not a group that’s going to not speak for 20 years because Terry Matalas thinks that’s how stories and people work. The epilogue was very much Michael’s story. And I have always felt this about Discovery, that she is the protagonist and it is about her. And that is good. And I love that this is a story about her. And now her story has been told and I kind of want to get into the cracks and deal with everyone else. That, to me, is what fandom is about. Not sidelining Michael, not replacing her as protagonist, but following the other threads.
Anika: Yes. First of all, okay, let’s start with this episode. We’re just saying that Sonequa Martin-Green is a treasure.
Liz: She’s amazing.
Anika: She brings so much to this role. To me, it feels like she considers herself a curator of Star Trek. And puts that into her performance. It’s just so strong and so connected to everything.
Liz: Yes, and I hope that she continues to have a flourishing career for years to come. Because she’s not just a nice person by all accounts, but she’s so talented. I love Sonequa. love how much this finale was about her. Plot, as you note, remains an afterthought. I can’t believe that ‘build the shape of the one between the many’ is literally a geometry puzzle. We had so many theories.
Anika: It was completely unimportant and unnecessary. I loved it.
Liz: It was literally a science museum puzzle for children.
Anika: Yeah, I mean, I put in here that the barrel, inside the barrel is such a distillation, which is good for barrels, of so many different random references. And one of those is Survivor. And I appreciated that. I was like, this is literally just a Survivor challenge. And that’s fine. You know what? Michael should be the ultimate Survivor. It works for me.
Liz: No, no, that was great. I liked how the aesthetics inside the barrel were often extremely high femme. You have what I called the planet based on my car, because my car is Barbie pink, and you have that planet of pink flowers and pink everything. I loved it. And then the center is just marigolds and flowers. And it was so interesting.
Anika: I just loved everything, like the entire barrel aesthetic. I have like a list of things, and it’s not even complete, because when you said marigolds, I was like, oh yeah, book of life, like the day of the dead and the underground. And it was just like, it’s so beautiful. It’s like such a celebration of life and just people. And everything about inside the barrel was magical to me, which, and I was like completely — I was expecting the blank space. I said it was going to be a white nothingness. And it was the opposite of that. It was like, no, we are going to fill this with everything. It’s going to be too much instead of nothingness. And I was like, oh wow, that’s like actual real life. Like, they’re really leaning into the idea of this.
Liz: But also, you have the video game platformer thing and Michael goes in and she sees it. And I’m like, I have actually played this game. This is a familiar environment to me. And that’s so appropriate for this video game of a season.
Anika: I think I’ve mentioned this before that my brothers all had a Nintendo and I had a Sega and I had the Star Trek: The Next Generation Sega game.
Liz: Oh my God.
Anika: And it was an awful, awful, awful game that I do not suggest anyone ever play. But it was like entirely, you’re in the Enterprise and you’re going around and you get to a mission and the mission is just like solve this puzzle. And there were no battles. It was just like, here is this triangle puzzle. Solve the triangle puzzle. Here is a riddle. Solve the riddle. And, like, it was clunky and it didn’t ever work properly. But it was also — I play games where they’re, you know, puzzles, literally puzzles. Super Puzzle Fighter is my favorite. And yeah, you said video game and like, yeah, it’s absolutely a video game. But it’s also, it’s like the kind of video game that Star Trek people create. Know what I mean?
Liz: I also watched the four hour Jenny Nicholson video on YouTube about her Galactic Starcruiser experience, which I am now obsessed with, because I know you went and you had a great time. And yet for the amount of money you’re paying, there should not be such a divergence of experience. But what you were just saying about the Sega Star Trek game kind of feels like what they did with the Galactic Starcruiser.
Anika: Right. Yes, exactly. And if you know the answer, like if you can play the puzzle, you’re into it and you’re like, it’s supporting you and it’s giving you everything you need. But if you’re a different kind of video game player, then you’re not going to enjoy it.
Liz: Right. When it comes to puzzles, I am a video gamer like Moll and I’m bad at puzzles and I just don’t pay attention. So I use Google and a walkthrough to find the answer to the riddle in the video game.
Anika: So you know Dungeons and Dragons?
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I’m sure you know Dungeons and Dragons. So I have often been told that I play Dungeons and Dragons incorrectly.
Liz: Oh.
Anika: Because I focus on the character. I don’t min-max in any way. And I’ve been told this about every game, like HeroClix and any game where that you have points and you put them into something. I don’t care about any of that.
And we have done Dungeons, and there is a puzzle involved, like, there was this one where it was like, I was like a cryptid and it was, you know, A is this and B is this and C is that, and I figured it out after like the second one. right? And then we would go into the next one and I would just immediately take it from the DM and like start solving the problem, right? And everyone else would fight monsters or whatever. I would just be like, I’m just gonna do this because this is what I understand and this is what I’m good at.
And it worked, you know? So it was like, you need the whole team. You need everybody. You need the people who min-max and like can beat all the dragons. But then you also need the person who can solve the puzzles. And that’s what Discovery is about. I know that that was like a side track into my own personal way of playing games. But I honestly feel that even when the Progenitor said some people are like this and some people are like that, it was like you need all of those people together to actually understand the meaning of life.
Liz: Yes. And I don’t play Dungeons and Dragons, but I play a lot of Bioware RPG video games. And I always dump as much power as I can into whatever trait will let me bypass the puzzles and just open the thing. And once I’ve done that, that’s when I concentrate on like strength and skill and all of that. If we were playing Dungeons and Dragons, you would be Michael sitting in the corner working on the puzzle, and I would be Rayner blowing some stuff up.
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: And protecting you. And both are necessary to win the deck. Here we have Michael dealing with a higher-level problem. We have Rayner bringing the strategy and the war games. And then we have Saru bringing the diplomacy.
Anika: I wasn’t fully understanding Saru’s arc in, like, how this season connected to it. But then in his final episode, where he was both Action Saru and Diplomat Saru at the same time, he needed both sides in order to do it. And it was just like, he’s become himself. If that makes sense.
Liz: No, no, he has found a way to acknowledge that his people are predators and to use that productively and constructively. And he harms no one in this episode. But he absolutely could.
Can I just say that I’ve had a crush on Primarch Tahal for a while and now we actually saw her briefly and she is indeed sexy. What an opportunity it would have been to cast Mary Chieffo as Tahal for season 6.
Anika: You said that Primarch Tahal was obviously going to be the big bad in season 6 and I was like, oh no, I’m so sad. There’s so much potential here that isn’t going to be used and I’m very sad about it. I’m actually really happy with this ending. It was a good ending, but it was like a continuation. There’s plenty that you could do with this in different ways.
Liz: I would much rather the series ends with potential that hasn’t been met and stories that haven’t been told, than going for seven seasons and getting to the end, and you’ve wrung out every possible drop of creativity and ideas from the series, and you’re just going through the motions until you get to the finale, Voyager. But at the same time, I think if this was 20 years ago, Simon and Schuster and Pocket Books would be launching Discovery: The Breen Wars as like a three book series to wrap that arc up and we can pick and choose what we like from it for canon. We’re not going to get that and frankly, even if they did announce those books, unless Una McCormack was writing them, I wouldn’t bother reading them.
Anika: No, honestly, I’m going to say, and I love Una McCormack and I love her writing, but I would want someone who has never written for Star Trek. I’m not interested in anything that has been written recently because it’s the same like four people and I’m just over it.
Liz: Right, right. And Discovery in particular was such a missed opportunity to bring the extremely competent, best-selling, talented Black women and authors of science fiction working right now. I want to see NK Jemisin write Michael Burnham.
Anika: Yeah, exactly. I’m just tired. I can’t even with the entire literature side of Star Trek right now, I’m over it.
Liz: That’s okay, because so are they.
Anika: The comic books, I think, have more potential, and I can imagine a Breen War comic book, but it’s also like instead of being an audience of whatever, 500,000, you’re getting an audience of like 30,000 at best for a comic book. It’s really sad that — I don’t know.
Liz: And it seems like the comic books right now are more interested in big crossover events, and can the Enterprise beat up the Defiant and the stuff that I don’t care about.
Anika: I’ve been in comic book fandom for a really long time, long enough to have left it more than once because it disappoints me constantly. And that is the number one problem with comic books. And it’s not actually the problem with the authors or the artists or the people who are behind the stories. It is the problem with the industry. Only a crossover will sell, they focus on those. I mean, it’s the same thing that’s wrong with Star Wars Hotel. Like, it’s all related. If you only care about making money, then you don’t get the art.
Liz: And I think it is not insignificant that the most creatively successful Star Treks of the new era, Discovery, Prodigy and Lower Decks, are also the least successful. I mean, Lower Decks is wildly successful, but it’s also been cancelled. So we’re just left with Strange New Worlds.
Anika: They don’t get the attention.
Liz: Yeah. And it’s sort of like how Deep Space Nine got away with a lot because Voyager took Rick Berman’s attention away from it. And yeah, it’s disappointing.
And this was something I thought about again in the four-hour Starcruiser video, how much potential is squandered when instead of going, hey, we can spend a lot of money and do this and create something sustainable that will last a long time and be appealing to many people, we’re just going to cut corners, do this on the cheap, and create something that literally has no other purpose. A hotel with only 100 rooms and no fire escapes. Guys, sorry, I’m just, I’m going to come back to that no fire escape thing for a very long time to come.
Anika: I mean, to be fair, I felt safe the entire time.
Liz: Oh yeah, look, I am sure that if there is an emergency and you have to go into your little fireproof shame closet, that is completely fine. I’m the fire warden for my building and I’m on the top floor of a skyscraper. So yeah, I can’t do the fire escape stairs. So if there’s a fire, I have to wait in the stairs to be rescued. And I know that’s safe, but I also feel like you’re just asking people for a level of trauma. Like, if you have six people in one of those little rooms, how many are going to fit in the shame closet? Anyway, this is not…
Anika: There were eight people in my room, to be fair. And since I was the person… I was the least… They would all go in the closet before me. Let’s just put it that way.
Liz: So you are the designated dyer on this… But we are not a Disney Galactic Starcruiser podcast. As much as that would be great.
The Book and Hugh road trip… I was not concerned that Hugh was going to die, but I was very worried for Book. And there was a point where I was worried for Book and Discovery. I was certain that only one of them would go, but I was concerned that Michael would lose her ship or her boyfriend.
Anika: Honestly, I was not worried about anyone the entire time. I felt that — which is, you know, me. I’ve been convinced that someone’s going to die the entire season, but I got to this end and I was like, oh, no, it’s going to be okay. Everyone’s going to make it.
Liz: I realized afterwards that this was not written as a finale. So of course, Discovery was going to make it.
Anika: I felt very safe. It wasn’t even that. It was just sort of like they weren’t going to play with me or they like, they weren’t going to hurt me. felt safe. I felt like I was going to be taken care of and it was going to be okay.
Liz: And in the end, the only death is L’ak, who has already died. And it simply turns out that Moll was wrong about the power.
Anika: And look, I feel bad. I’m sorry to everyone, but I was thrilled that L’ak didn’t get resurrected. I was like, this is correct. And okay, so I mean, I’m going to — okay, you know, trigger warning for, like, sadness or whatever. But my mother died when I was a child, and it created in me an understanding of death that I think helps me, in that I don’t want any – like, I’m very upset whenever anyone comes back to life. Because that is not how it’s supposed to be. I’m just really anti-resurrection. And I wrote a thing once where it was like, if anyone ever brings like Uncle Ben or Thomas Wayne back to life, then I will like hunt whoever that person is and tell them why that can never happen. Like, it’s just not how it’s supposed to be.
Liz: No, I completely get that.
Anika: And L’ak, you know, as much as I was convinced that I was safe, I was also convinced that L’ak was going to come back, and it was going to break my rule, and that I was going to be upset about it, but also unable to express that I was upset about it because I’m not supposed to be.
Liz: That’s an uncomfortable feeling.
Anika: Yeah. And instead it was this. And I wrote in our notes here, ‘L’ak wasn’t resurrected, Anika feels responsible’. I was like, Oh my God, it’s my fault that L’ak wasn’t resurrected, but also like sorry, not sorry, because that’s not how stories – like, that’s not how life goes. And so that’s not how stories should go.
Liz: No, that’s a really interesting perspective that I hadn’t thought of. My only feeling was that I was really attached to the idea of L’ak and Book living next door to each other and raising their kids together while their wives have, you know, shenanigans. But I kind of also love the ending that we got for Moll, where she’s bent, but she’s not broken. And once she comes around to the idea, she’s going to have a new purpose working for Dr Kovach. And I’m guessing, given what we now know about him and what we know about Moll’s skills in this area, tracking down remnants of temporal war weapons. Once again, she could have come back in season six.
Anika: In The Expanse — I haven’t read the books, I just want to say. I’ve only watched the series. And one of my favorite characters is Clarissa Mao.
Anika: And Moll’s ending reminded me of her, in that it’s sort of her actual ending. She’s supposed to be in prison, but she gets out of prison and gets to have this…
Liz: Second chance.
Anika: Second chance, and I was like, that’s how I felt like Moll’s story was going to go. That she was going to have a second life.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That was going to be on her own terms, instead of on her father’s terms, and instead of on the circumstances of her childhood and her backstory and her life and her careers, and falling in love and all this other stuff, that she was going to come into her own… realize what matters to her separate from everything else.
Liz: Yeah, and like Michael in season one, she gets a second chance in terms of an opportunity to serve a greater good, and what she makes of that is up to her. But also, because it’s Moll, it’s a secret and morally ambiguous greater good, rather than…
Anika: Yeah, which is interesting. Which is, again, this idea of these characters who do horrible things, but that’s not what defines them, you know? And I want there to be forgiveness for those people.
Liz: And at the end of the battle, Rayner even spares the Breen. He gives them a miniature Voyager treatment, but…
Anika: I can’t even handle Rayner. I am completely un-normal. I can’t do it. Rayner… Rayner is too much for me.
Liz: It’s a real problem.
Anika: I’m gonna, like, start crying. Because when they said the capacity for change and then they had him saying, like, I am crying thinking about it. His arc, and he was only here for 10 episodes, and it was beautiful and amazing, and everything I ever wanted.
Liz: And it really does feel like everyone else’s story has come to a logical ending point. We’ve had them for years. Rayner, not so much. I kind of want a mini-series about, like, Rayner and Adira, our other newer character, on some mission where we get to see those next steps in their development. Because a lot of Adira’s arc this season has been about growing into confidence in their career and supporting Paul and Hugh.
Anika: The smile that Tilly gives Rayner when he says that he’s going to send them to the Great Barrier. And it’s better than what they gave his family. I was like, I can’t deal with that entire storyline.
Liz: Can I just say, I’m not shipping Tilly Rayner any less.
Anika: I can’t. They are perfect. They are everything. I feel like a crazy person. But my Rayner feelings are out of control. And I just thought it was, I was like, I’m just going to like him because he’s Callum Keith Rennie, but oh my god.
Liz: No, no. And I have always — like, Callum Keith Rennie turns up in everything and I’m like, oh, it’s CKR. Hi, I like you. Oh no, I have a lot of feelings now. I am ready to go back and rewatch Battlestar. Like, if you are in fandom long enough, a Callum Keith Rennie character will be assigned to you.
Anika: It is not fair. That character is amazing. I don’t understand. I legitimately don’t understand how I have so many feelings.
Liz: I have a theory and it’s that he was sort of introduced before the season as a grumpy fellow captain. And I know at least one of us (me) was like, oh, like a Lorca who’s a good guy. And then he’s demoted and becomes Michael’s protege. And that is a story that Star Trek has never told. Kirk gets demoted, but that means he gets to be a captain again and that means he gets everything he wants. Michael is demoted and that’s deeply humiliating, but also a next step in her story. But a lot of Michael’s growth, she has to do on her own. Rayner has to be led by Michael. And I think this is maybe a bit depressing, but when a middle-aged white man defers to a young black woman, that is really powerful to see. This is how Anson Mount seemed charismatic in season 2.
Anika: I’m sobbing.
Liz: You are!
Anika: And to Tilly, who is a neurodivergent woman, and to Adira, who is non-binary and also neurodivergent, and super smart. I can’t actually handle my emotions. But everything about Rayner and how he interacts with other people, even how he interacts with Rhys and with Bryce, and with like, he hugs Joann in that montage at the end, and I started sobbing. I was like, you don’t even know her. It was just — I actually cannot handle how much Rayner has become a part of the crew and how that was his entire story and his entire point, and how he was like the audience insert for everybody who hates Discovery and doesn’t understand it. And they won him over and he became fully integrated into the Discovery way of life. And that’s how he was able to save the day. It was because he trusted all these other people, all these other weird people who he didn’t understand. But now he does.
Liz: He goes on that journey, but he doesn’t fundamentally change. He is still grumpy. He’s still a bit of an asshole. He absolutely does not want to talk about his feelings, least of all, on the bridge. He is still that guy.
Anika: That’s why Tilly smiles at him. Because he is entirely the same person and yet also completely different.
Liz: Yeah, it’s really fantastic. And I really do think that Discovery as a series has benefited from having someone whose style and tone and attitude is not like theirs. I joke a lot about how fandom treats a found family like it’s a cult, but Discovery’s crew, and I say this with all due love and respect, is kind of cult-y. It’s a nice cult, but…
Anika: This episode actually had everything because Nahn was also like… She’s another one that didn’t fully understand the cult of Discovery. And then she was like right there. She got to be mentioned in the Progenitor’s speech. As important to the whole thing. And obviously Book, and like… Everybody, everybody was integral to like building these little tiny building blocks. It was like, the puzzle was actually the people.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I’m sorry. I’m gonna be crying. I gotta stop. I’m so sorry. I haven’t had that much wine. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Liz: I’m just gonna say, for the benefit of the people who are not watching this Zoom call, Anika has tears streaming down her face.
Anika: I’m so sorry. I just… I was okay. I was okay. And then I was not okay.
Liz: Look, I think this is so much better than when we recorded the day after the season 2 Discovery finale, when I kept crying and I was genuinely on the fence about whether I wanted to keep watching Star Trek: Discovery. And I know a lot of people say that the series lost its way when it went to the far future, and I was absolutely skeptical about that decision, but it was so very much the right choice.
Anika: It became the series that we’ve said that we’ve wanted, which is building the Federation. Building Star Trek and creating all of this Star Trek that we all want to believe in and that we all want to live in as Star Trek fans, but seems impossible, looking around at reality.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’ve mentioned this before that Rayner reminded me of Idris Elba in Star Trek Beyond, and I love Star Trek Beyond except for the fact that he dies. I get really, really upset. I’m like, Kirk could have saved him, and that would have been such a better story. That would have been more true to the feeling of it all. That wasn’t the story they were telling, and so that’s not what happened. But this is the story that I’ve wanted since whenever Star Trek Beyond came out, because this is that story of taking that person who is a Starfleet and is Federation, but has lost their way because of how awful reality is. And I need that story. Since 2019, I have needed that story.
Liz: Yeah, it’s really important. And I think it’s just also great that — the TrekCore reviewer for last week’s episode talked about how so often the grumpy character sacrifices himself for all the sunshine people. And she didn’t want that to happen to Rayner. And she was going to start People For The Ethical Treatment Of Grumpy Guys, which I am completely on board with. I’ve never agreed harder with a TrekCore reviewer. And I am so glad that Rayner gets to live. Literally everyone except L’ak gets to live. And I am okay with a sacrificial L’ak.
Anika: Yes, because L’ak, you know, it’s sad. Of course it’s sad. I don’t want anyone to die. I mean, I’m sorry. I don’t want anyone to die. But it’s also, like, death is a fact of life. Death is something that happens. And when it — like, you know, you know me, the death of Kat Cornwell was stupid.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And I will never not be angry about it because it didn’t serve a purpose. L’ak’s death did serve a purpose.
Liz: It did, but it was also narratively — it was a mistake. He didn’t mean to die. That was an accident. And I think that is actually a really good storytelling choice.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: I would rather have someone die in a stupid accident than die because the door only works from the inside, you know.
Anika: And also they said we could bring him back, but he wouldn’t be the same person or something like that. And I was scared. I was like, oh no, they’re going to do that. And it’s going to be that trope of, like, Moll can convince him that he was, you know, can remind him of who he was or anything. And that didn’t happen either.
Liz: Some sort of weird poor things situation where you have like adult L’ak, but with a baby’s mind and she has to raise him and it’s gross.
Anika: I don’t like, like they just, they avoided every terrible death trope.
Liz: Yeah. They even thought about my logistical issues with bringing back Kweijian.
Anika: Like, they acknowledged that death is something that happens, and that we all have like, you know, Michael has this whole thing about how — oh my god, I’m so sorry. Michael has this thing how life itself is meaning. That’s all that we need. All that we need to understand and to feel good about life is to have life. And like, death is also meaningful. That’s why I care about stupid deaths and about stakes, like deaths for stakes. Those don’t matter because life is already the stakes. You don’t need to kill someone off to prove that life is meaningful. And so you should only kill people off… You know, accidental death is actually way better. Disease death is way better. Like, things that just happen because that’s reality. It’s much more realistic that someone dies of a disease or someone dies of a mistake or someone dies of an accident than someone dies sacrificing their self for the universe. And it’s more important to our own stories to acknowledge those quote unquote bad deaths.
Liz: So I’m thinking about another Star Trek finale as you say this, and I’m afraid you may have turned me around into liking Trip Tucker’s death. Which, like Katrina Cornwell’s death, is basically a failure of workplace health and safety standards. It was extremely preventable. My minority opinion is that I actually think that These Are The Voyages… is a perfectly good episode, and I really would have enjoyed it as say, a sweeps week very special Star Trek celebration, not the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Anika: The Federation stuff, the founding Federation parts of that episode are actually very good.
Liz: Oh yeah, it’s just the framing device where it’s all about Riker. It is just really frustrating. And I think the Enterprise cast themselves have said it was deeply insulting to them that this was how they went out. And I saw a lot of people on Reddit saying that their ideal ending for Discovery was Riker shutting down his holonovel. And I was like, fuck you, buddy.
Anika: Come on. Honestly, this was probably my ideal ending for Discovery. I cannot get over the epilogue. This is like fan fiction for me.
Liz: Let’s talk about Kovach and the wedding, and then we’ll get to the epilogue. I think it is so nice of Discovery to cross-promote The Greatest Generation’s Star Trek: Enterprise era.
Anika: It is very nice of them. They announced recently, and I put zero, probably negative faith into these rumors. So I don’t actually believe any of this, but they were like, this new Star Trek film is going to be a prequel to 2009 that is about building the Federation and building Starfleet, and everyone’s like, that already exists and it’s called Enterprise. And then this episode was like, did you know that Enterprise is actually important? I was like, first of all…
Liz: The film division is absolutely not talking to the streaming television division.
Anika: They never ever talk to each other.
Liz: But also, they just announce Star Trek film projects whenever there’s a big shareholder meeting coming up, whenever they’re trying to boost their value for people who want to buy them, as is happening now. This is not going to happen. This is the film equivalent of the Galactic Starcruiser. This is a boondoggle.
Anika: I’m gonna say they’re never going to make another Star Trek film for a long time. They have to get rid of that entire division because they don’t know what they’re doing. So yes, they completely just announce things randomly at all times.
Liz: I genuinely do think that if Section 31 is successful, we will see more streaming Star Trek films. And probably some of them will get some sort of limited cinema release, like some Doctor Who specials did in the Moffat era. I could see that happening.
Anika: When you just said Doctor Who special, that’s what I consider the Section 31… And that’s not a ding on them at all. I’m just saying that the Section 31 film doesn’t feel like a film because it’s not going to be released in theaters.
Liz: No, no. I assume we’re going to watch it in pixelated form in a screener.
Anika: But, you know, setting that completely aside, I cannot believe that in their final episode, Discovery was like, “Also, Enterprise. Remember the temporal war? Anybody remember that?” Delightful. Delightful.
Liz: I can’t believe that my NC-17 highly explicit Scott Bakula/David Cronenberg fic is canon. Like, I’m sorry, but Archer and Agent Daniels, definitely – like, that was 100%.
Anika: It’s so funny to me. Again, it felt like a little Valentine for me personally.
Liz: Oh, yeah. And Kovach having a collection of Captain’s trinkets.
Anika: Like, oh, my God.
Liz: OK, remember a few weeks ago when we were joking about Kovach doing an Officeworks run in the 21st century to get his legal pads?
Anika: Yes.
Liz: We were right. We were 100% right.
Anika: We were 100% right. And OK, so can we talk about how it was Chateau Picard, Geordie’s visor and Sisko’s baseball? That is a hilarious trio. Sisko’s baseball is so poignant. And the other two are so random. Geordie didn’t wear a visor when he was captain.
Liz: No, no. But I figure it’s been 800 years or whatever. And the material culture that survives that long is completely random.
Anika: Yes. I’m not saying anything against these items. It was delightful. It was fun that those were the items. But it is hilarious to me. Like, Captain Picard, Captain Picard’s entire legacy being Chateau Picard wine.
Liz: His shitty father’s dream.
Anika: So yeah, exactly. The fact that there was a running joke that his wine is undrinkable. It was so funny.
Liz: It was glorious.
Anika: I love it so much. It’s like, it is so bougie Jean-Luc Picard. It is perfect. It is a perfect encapsulation of Jean-Luc Picard. And I’m going to lbe laughing about it for 10 years.
Liz: Like, the Kovach is, Agent Daniel’s thing is one of those things that’s going to be completely lost on everyone that’s not up on Enterprise. But that kind of — it is so obscure and fan wanky. And if it was like a big deal, I would probably be annoyed by it. But as a thing that they drop in literally the final episode, I thought it was really funny.
Anika: It was hilarious. And it was also hilarious that Michael was like, you’re going to tell me who you are, right? Like, you’re going to tell me your deal. You can’t just leave me hanging. It was so funny. He was like, okay. Like, he didn’t have to give in to her, but he totally did because he’s like, you know what, you deserve, you deserve Michael Burnham.
Liz: You had four billion years of knowledge beamed into your head. You can handle this one bit of Star Trek trivia.
And then we get the wedding. So we’re not going to riot outside Paramount, which is good because I’ve actually got a pretty busy month coming up and I didn’t know that I had time. It did not cross my mind that the wedding would be on Kaminar. I had only pictured it on Fed HQ.
Anika: Yeah, I agree.
Liz: And I’m sad that we didn’t get the full Vulcan betrothal dinner with Michael rocking up to roast T’Rina and to give T’Rina’s family tips on how to roast Saru.
Anika: Most excellent.
Anika: But they couldn’t put everything in.
Liz: Sadly no.
Anika: I guess.
Liz: I guess.
Anika: I just, I was just like, literally every single character is hot at this wedding. Every single person, I’m just like, I’m ready. I would do all of you.
Liz: I thought it was very bold of Tilly to bring Rayner as her date. I’m just going to float the idea that Saru and T’Rina don’t really know Rayner and maybe wouldn’t have invited him. But Tilly brought him as her plus one. Like, I actually, I actually do think Saru invited him as a courtesy, but they don’t really know that guy. It’s like that guy from work that you have to invite because you’re inviting everyone else from the office.
Anika: But like, Tilly and Rayner were almost joined at the hip. And also Tilly’s random dude that was in the first episode was not there. So I was like, you know what? That was like evidence that Tilly was interested in dating, but she settled on Rayner. Sorry to that guy.
Liz: She’s back at the Academy, so she and Rayner are no longer in the same chain of command.
Anika: That’s right.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. Also not at this wedding is Vance’s wife?
Anika: Nope.
Liz: Just, just…
Anika: Again, like they keep telling me that Vance is married and monogamous, but like, I don’t see that. That hasn’t happened on screen for me. At the end of last season, Tilly and Vance were alone in Starfleet HQ, and I haven’t written it yet, but they definitely got together. They had a physical relationship during that moment. And then, like in this episode, when he sees her with Rayner, and he was like, oh… Like, I think Vance would be like, positive about that.
Liz: I agree.
Anika: Make him happy.
Liz: I think that one thing that Tilly and Rayner both have in common is that they’ve made out with Vance.
Anika: Exactly. And that’s why, like, an outsider POV… Fics that I should really write. The outsider POV of Vance watching Rayner and Tilly at the wedding, knowing that they haven’t slept together yet, but are on the cusp.
Liz: Please write that. Please, please, please.
Anika: I’m just like, that needs to happen.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
I think one thing that excites me about this finale is that sometimes a series ends and my interest in it, which has been real and dedicated, just shrivels up and blows away. This happened with Voyager, in fact. I was not inspired by Voyager‘s finale. I don’t feel that way with Discovery. And I do think it’s because there are still these threads that they didn’t get to explore. I want to write the Rayner fic. I want to think about what Adira does next. You know, do they transfer to another ship where they’re going to get more experience and basically aren’t living on a ship with their parents? You know? I think that there are still stories to be told, and I’m kind of glad that it’s in fandom’s hands now.
Anika: Yeah, I trust us.
Liz: The thing is that when you read a really bad fic, it’s a lot easier to just close the tab and move on than when you watch a really bad episode and it’s canon.
Anika: Right, exactly.
Liz: Yeah. The other thing about the wedding is that I thought it was funny that we hardly see any Kelpiens or Vulcans or Ba’ul. Do you invite a Ba’ul to a Kelpien wedding? Anyway, but we saw there were several huts, so I assume that they all like, is this wedding segregated? Saru?
Anika: Many, many things could be written about that wedding.
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: It’s the bottom line. There are many, many things that we didn’t get to see that could be seen.
Liz: I mean, it literally ends, as far as we see, with Book and Michael giving it another chance. And they were like, you, me and Grudge, and I was like, oh, they’re not going to have children. And then we get to the epilogue, and it’s like, yes! I don’t know why I’m so invested in Michael having kids. It’s just that, aside from Benjamin Sisko, we never see that with the Starfleet captains. And so, I guess let’s talk about the finale and how much I like it.
Anika: My precious little Leto.
Liz: I had missed that his name was Leto after Book’s nephew, but that is also the name of the dad in Dune who is so handsome and charismatic and sexy that he has to be assassinated for the sake of the universe. And he’s played by Oscar Isaac in the most recent movies. So, you know.
Anika: Got it.
Liz: Suffice to say Leto Burnham Booker has a lot to live up to.
Anika: Look, Leto Burnham Booker is perfect.
Liz: I love him.
Anika: He’s perfect. Every single thing about him.
Liz: I love that Michael’s son becomes a Starfleet captain who has literal empathy as his superpower.
Anika: Yes. It is such an encapsulation of all of Discovery. The purpose of everything.
Liz: Also, this is the Star Trek: Legacy I want. This is my nepo baby era.
Anika: Okay, look. This is the Star Trek: Legacy we deserve.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That has nothing to do with the past, really. It wouldn’t be built on anything other than Leto.
Liz: Actually, I’m going to propose that the Admiral Vance who’s mentioned in this timeline, is actually Charles Vance’s daughter.
Anika: Is his daughter? Yes. I approve of this 100%. Because I want her to be awesome.
Liz: Also, I ship her with Leto.
Anika: I mean, you were like, he was your new favorite nepo baby. And I was like, that’s fair, because he’s amazing and perfect and I love him. But I can’t give up on Jack.
Anika:
Anika:
Anika: No, no, no.
Liz: You can love more than one nepo baby.
Anika: So I was like, how, you know, I’m not really above shipping Leto/Jack. Like, I’m into that. And then I thought about it and it was like, wait, no. Leto/Kestra.
Liz: Oh my God, the forgotten nepo baby.
Anika: I want it so badly now. Like, I understand that timeline wise doesn’t work out.
Liz: Excuse me. Now that we can deduce that David Cronenberg can time travel. He is our time traveling Pope. That’s what Popes do, right? They just set people up.
Anika: I am so into that ship that I just made up randomly while writing our outline. Like, I don’t care. I want it to happen. I love him. And he gets five minutes of screen time. And that’s not fair. We should get more Leto. Captain Leto. And also, like, again, no offense. Full offense. Full offense to Admiral Picard and Admiral Crusher. But Admiral Burnham’s speech to Captain Leto is like 400,000 times better than anything Jean-Luc or Beverly ever told Jack in a shuttle.
Liz: I’m going to respectfully float the idea that season five of Discovery is much better than season three of Picard. And if it wasn’t that people were blinded by nostalgia and the familiar characters, they would see that.
Anika: Look, Captain Leto can be captain of the Enterprise.
Liz: Oh my god.
Anika: There’s no reason for him not to be captain of the Enterprise.
Liz: At this point, they’ve run out of letters in the English human alphabet and they’re on to some sort of weird Vulcan letter.
Anika: Adira can be his Chief Engineer.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: And so we’re, you know, look, we already got queer people and we can have plenty of more. There’s plenty of places to put as many as you want. Like, look, I’m sorry, when I say Star Trek: Legacy we deserve, I mean it. I’m not just saying that. Like, that is literally because the fandom, when I say this is someone who loves Jack Crusher.
Liz: You are the person who loves Jack Crusher.
Anika: The person who loves Jack Crusher more than anyone else that you know or anyone else you’ve heard of. I love Jack Crusher more than Ed Speleers does, and yet the Star Trek: Legacy with Captain Leto of the Enterprise, and I also love Seven of Nine more than like anything, would be better for fandom and for society than the one with Captain Seven.
Liz: Yeah, I agree.
Liz: And people will be like, oh, but you are getting rid of a series with a bisexual captain. I’m sorry, why are we assuming that Captain Leto is straight?
Anika: Yeah, right. Exactly.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Plenty of plenty of space for every single kind of queer representation you want.
Liz: Also, Sarek’s nephew, I’m sorry, Sarek’s grandson is an empath, and that makes me very happy. Sybok’s nephew is an empath.
Anika: Oh my god.
Liz: Also Spock might have some feelings about it, but I don’t care.
Anika: Bless. Just bless. Oh man, I want Sarek and Leto. I’m gonna cry now. I want Amanda and Leto, like even ignoring the Leto of everything, which like I can’t because I love him. But Book and Michael.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: Oh my gosh. That was everything I ever wanted.
Liz: That Michael gets to have her career and a long and happy marriage to a partner that she loves. No other Starfleet captain gets that. Michael is the first.
Anika: No other Starfleet captain. Exactly. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. That planet, and you described it as like, so they’re on Sanctuary 4 because we see the wormy things and everything. But in a section that looks like Vulcan, exactly.
Liz: At first, looking at those red leaves, I thought we were on Vulcan.
Anika: Oh my gosh.
Liz: Ni’Var.
Anika: Oh my gosh. It’s perfect. And then I can’t even handle the fact that she named that deer Alice. I was like, nope, nope, I’m done. It was just everything about everything. She’s living her fairy tale happy ending life with her husband and her son and her family. And she’s in the wilderness, but also like can go to Starfleet whenever she wants because she has a shuttle like right in the backyard. Everything about it is beautiful. And she’s like literally a Disney princess with a dear fox antelope thing that is named Alice because she’s Alice in Wonderland forever. Like I can’t, I don’t understand how they like wrote me personally the perfect ending to Star Trek: Discovery.
Liz: No, no, I actually only have one problem with this ending. And that’s simply that I don’t care about Calypso. I always thought it was overrated and is the sort of story that inspires AI bros to simulate Scarlett Johansson’s voice after she explicitly denies them permission. Sending Zora off into deep space by herself for an indeterminate amount of time just seems kind of mean.
Anika: I mean, so okay, it had to happen because Calypso existed and they like agreed — I remember back when they went to the future in season three, they were like, don’t worry, we’re going to make it line up with Calypso. And I was like, I don’t care. Like I have seen Calypso once.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Like you commented, you said, oh, Calypso tie-in surprise. And I was like, first of all, it’s not a surprise because of course they’re going to tie in Calypso. The second of all, I didn’t notice because I literally don’t know what happens in Calypso. So I went to the Memory Alpha page and I read it and I was like, I literally don’t remember any of this. I guess Crash had left family that he like went back to and he was sad that he was like cheating on his wife. I don’t remember any of this. And also I hate it. I mean, I think that the reason I don’t remember any of that story is because it sounds awful for me. I don’t want any of that. I want none of any of that. And so like, I don’t care. It got Michael back on Discovery one more time. I don’t really actually even understand what happens because she like lets flies and it goes away and they go out. But isn’t she on Discovery by herself?
Liz: Like, yeah, like who was doing the spore drive?
Anika: How did she get home? Who’s going to go get Michael?
Liz: I figure that Stamets is down in the spore drive. Admiral Stamets, the grumpiest man in Starfleet. And there is like a high-speed shuttle in the shuttle bay waiting to take them home.
Anika: Also, you know when the dots are like, were they taking away the A?
Liz: Yeah, yeah, because in Calypso, Discovery is still in its season two configuration. And because fan wank, they have to change the Discovery A back to a 23rd century ship. This is what I mean. It’s just fan wanky in a distracting way instead of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fun way like Agent Daniels.
Anika: The first time I watched it, I paid no attention. I assumed that they were adding the A and I was like, I don’t really understand what anything is happening here. But look, it’s a nice montage of people saying goodbye and that’s nice. So whatever. I didn’t understand. And then you were like, it’s Calypso, and it was like, I guess I have to understand what that means. And so I went back and I watched again and I was like, oh, they must be taking away the A and I didn’t understand why. And like, I don’t care about any of that. None of that matters. All I care about is Leto.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: That’s legitimately all I care about in the future is happy Michael and Leto. I was like, oh my God, Book being like fully the house husband, you know, cooking shows on YouTube and then making them, I was like, oh my God, this is everything I ever wanted.
Liz: He’s like a wildlife ranger and a house husband and like looking after the garden and he seems so chill. He’s not haunted the way he was when he was younger.
Anika: No, no. You know, when Leto arrives and she’s like, oh, you’re here. And they hug and then Book comes out. He’s like, no hugging without me. They were a perfect family. And also, yes, we were also worried that like the whole Kweijian of it all was going to be a thing. And no, it’s just on his coffee table. He’s just keeping a keeper of the tree.
Liz: But you do pan out to see the tree.
Anika: But we get the tree, we get the tree that I asked for it like, I was like, I want just the big tree. That’s all we want. I love it when stories end the way I expect them to. I know that’s anathema to people, but that’s exactly — I don’t want to be tricked. I don’t want to be surprised. I don’t want any of that. I want the story to make sense and to go to the ending. And this was the ending that I was like, Oh, well, you know, what would be the ending of this plot point, blah, blah, blah. This would be perfect. And then they gave it to me.
And even like, the whole — we didn’t even talk about what happens in the barrel. And how that whole like, it doesn’t matter. But like that, all of that was just Michael saying, you know what? This is too much power for anybody, so we should just leave it here. It was a great ending. It was a perfect ending.
Liz: It was exactly what I expected. And for a moment there, I was afraid that they were going to pull a Sisko and make Michael like the keeper of the Progenitor tech and have her live in the barrel forever. And I was prepared to throw a tantrum.
Liz: And then just as quickly, Michael was like, no.
Anika: She was like, no, that’s not my destiny, actually. I choose not. But the Progenitor too, like that Progenitor, I love that she was like, yeah, we’re not, we didn’t do this.
Liz: No.
Anika: Other people of higher power than us made this and I was like, oh my gosh.
Liz: We are never going to meet God.
Anika: Which we shouldn’t. Again, these are things that we shouldn’t ever do. So, Hugh’s arc, Hugh’s arc is beautiful in that it’s okay to not know. That was like the whole point of him and it was the whole point of the Progenitor and it was great.
Liz: I love that Hugh, in becoming psychic, has become Kes.
Anika: Yes. And like, the Kes that we always wanted.
Liz: The Kes that they could not have envisioned as a 20-year-old girl in 1995. And then I also love that the Progenitor is no longer Salome Jens, but a Black woman. Because in the cosmology of Discovery, you know, you go back to the story in the opening of Brother, the season 2 finale, and The Girl Who Made The Stars, the cosmology always says that the universe was created by a Black woman. And that felt very meaningful. This finale, I think earlier you said you felt like you were in safe hands. And yeah, it’s that feeling that I’ve had since season 3, that Discovery knows the story it’s telling and is telling it to the best of its ability.
Anika: Exactly. Yes. That is exactly it. That there is this — I trust — it’s almost weird, because I was burned by season 2. Like season 2 legitimately, I know we like rank the seasons of Star Trek, and so there’s like New Trek … New Trek starts with Discovery season 1, right? And I rank Discovery season 2 under every other one. And that includes things that I hate. It was such a betrayal. Discovery season 2 was a betrayal to the story of Discovery. And I liked season 3 and season 4. But oh my god, season 5 was… t gave me back season 1.
Liz: I agree, but I also think we needed the foundations of 3 and 4 for 5 to be this meaningful. I’ve seen a lot of people going, oh why hasn’t Star Trek: Discovery always been this good? First of all, it has always been this good. It’s just that this is a very simple plot that you will understand even when you’re looking at your phone and previous seasons have required you to pay attention. But yeah, the power of season 5 comes from the foundations laid in all the previous seasons, even season 2. But yes, I also think that it is simply impossible to expect a good season to happen when you have literally three different showrunners across 13 episodes.
Anika: Oh yeah, I mean, season 2 was cursed. Not to be me, but Law & Order Organized Crime had seven showrunners in his first three seasons. And then it got one for season 4 and it was the same guy for all of season 4.
Liz: Wow, better?
Anika: Easily the best season.
Liz: Surely not.
Anika: And it’s like, yeah, if you have someone who understands the story that they’re telling and trusts the actors, trust themself, and trust the audience, like you need those three things together and you get something like this.
Liz: And I’m very excited to see what Michelle Paradise goes on to do next.
Anika: I mean, like this, I, I’m just happy. I’m just happy.
Liz: It’s good.
Anika: I’m happy in a way that I don’t have any caveats.
Liz: I have complaints, but they’re insignificant.
Anika: Yeah, exactly. Nothing’s perfect. Everything’s a mess. I love mess more than I love not mess. We all know that. But I just feel good about these characters. They created feelings within me that make me happy. Even when I’m crying about it.
Liz: I sobbed through that entire epilogue, but it was a good feeling, aside from my bleeding eyebrow.
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. And while we have a few weeks off, I will try to work on those transcripts. 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 on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you consume your podcasts. The more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us. We’re going to take a few weeks off, but we’ll be back in late June with, among other things, a chat with my friend Lauren, who watched Star Trek for the first time in 2020.