After some minor timeline mishaps, Anika and Liz finally stop to read Temporal Mechanics 101! Yes, we’re discussing the fourth episode of Star Trek: Prodigy‘s second season, including…
- Intertextuality within the Star Trek canon
- Ma’jel upsets the group dynamic in a fun way — every time a Star Trek starts getting stale, they should add a young Vulcan woman to the cast
- The binge model has robbed us of the joy of speculating wildly about who the mysterious benefactor is
- Ilthuran is not a regular dad, he’s a cool dad! AND WE HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT HIM
- The Doctor is so well-used in Prodigy that we’re more positive about his joining Starfleet Academy than we would have been a month ago!
- The Antimatter Pod Shipping News
- An interlude where we stop to dunk on Sarek for a while #OurBrand
Transcript
Liz: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace hosted by Anika and Liz. Today, we’re discussing the second season episode of Star Trek: Prodigy, Temporal Mechanics 101. And speaking of temporal mechanics, I am really annoyed that this was dropped in July, which is, I think, your busiest month of the year, or one of them?
Anika It sure is!
Liz: Do you have months that aren’t busy?
Anika Now. Right now. Currently, I am not working. I am taking a much-needed vacation. It has been just a few days, and you have no idea how much better every part of my life is.
Liz: I am so glad to hear it.
Anika I am restful and sleeping and eating regular meals. It’s the small things. But my attitude is so much brighter. I just hadn’t had a break in so long. It wasn’t that I was overworking because I had a job. I was overworking because I had two jobs. It was the busiest time of the year for me. The two jobs culminated in the busiest month of the year for me, and it was huge. It was the biggest it’s ever been. It went very, very well and everything’s great, and I had a wonderful time and I’m very proud of myself, but I was exhausted and just immensely and emotionally drained.
Liz: I understand.
Anika So apologies to podcasting, but they’re not letting up on us because Lower Decks is coming up hot.
Liz: We worked out this week that we need to record two episodes a weekend, most weekends and combine a few episodes into one discussion to cover all of Prodigy. And even then, I think we’ll probably be dropping a Prodigy episode and a Lower Decks episode in the same week.
So prayer circle for us, especially because I regret to say the first half of August is super busy for me. This time next weekend, I will be minuting a meeting and then the weekend after that, I will be in New Zealand for a conference. Then I’m taking three or four days off to explore New Zealand, a country I’ve never been to. But yeah, our recording schedule is a bit haywire and I’m basically going to be editing on the fly. So prayer circle for your humble Star Trek podcasters.
And I feel like, in keeping with the wibbly wobbliness of our schedule for this season, I felt like this episode really suffered from the binge release because I watched it for the first time and it was one of a whole bunch of episodes I watched the night it dropped. And then I watched it again last week when we were going to try and record last week. And I was like, oh, this is a nice episode, but I don’t really have much to say about it. It’s really just getting the characters from point A to point B. And we know what happens next. And then I opened the show notes that you always create and they’re always excellent. And you have written so much!
Anika But you’re absolutely right. Because in my show notes, it says, ‘wow, imagine this episode coming out when there was a week before the next one. And all of the discussion that would have been happening during that week.’ It’s really sad how this particular episode and really the next episode as well.
Liz: Almost the whole season suffers from that. We would have had so much fun with so many things. That’s not to say I did not love inhaling Prodigy in a few days, but I really do wish that it had been stretched out and that I could watch it again not knowing what’s coming next.
Anika Right. It wasn’t made with any binging in mind.
Liz: No, absolutely not. It’s just disappointing. This doesn’t serve Prodigy well. And yet it is such a great show. And this really is a good episode that deserves to be appreciated.
Anika Let’s get into it. So I kept getting vibes to previous Star Trek episodes in this one. Obviously, Prodigy, similarly to the Lower Decks, directly references all of Star Trek in a very specific way. And that’s part of the DNA of the show. But this particular episode, they just kept throwing things in when I was like, oh, that reminds me of this thing that happened.
And it wasn’t a reference. It was more, like I said, vibes. It was a superficial thing that only people like me maybe even notice, because those kinds of connections jump out at me. I’m always looking for them. I’m always noticing them. It’s not even really that I’m seeking them out. It’s that that’s how my brain works. And I see this is an echo of XYZ.
Liz: And your XYZ in particular is Pathfinder. Is that a reference to the Voyager episode, Pathfinder, with Barclay?
Anika Yes. But let’s not call it a Barclay episode, because he’s the worst part of that very good episode.
Liz: It is the episode where Voyager makes contact with the Alpha Quadrant in an ongoing way.
Anika An episode that is, whatever, 20 years old and I have seen a hundred times, and yet I still get teary-eyed at the end of it every single time. Because it is so rewarding.
Liz: And it is that connecting over long distances.
Anika And obviously, they didn’t have the same many years and long distance, and we thought you were dead type of gravitas to the connection. But because they’re kids and because it’s Janeway, they still had that same vibe of we’ve reconnected. I can imagine if I were Janeway, every single time I lost track of anyone in my life for even five minutes, after the whole Delta Quadrant thing, I would be losing my mind.
Liz: She actually has AirTags on every single former member of her crew.
Anika That’s just how it is. So I liked the Pathfinder vibes in that particular moment, and then I had more vibes later on.
Liz: I feel like Pathfinder loomed over Discovery too, with the detail that the Federation has mastered a Pathfinder drive, which I assume uses the same technology Barclay developed to communicate with the Delta Quadrant something, something tiny black hole as an alternative to traditional warp drive. Sometimes you can tell when some or all of the writers across the various shows have been hanging out and watching episodes together. Not in a bad way, like I really-
Anika Not in a bad way. And again, that’s one of my favorite episodes of Voyager. I think it is a very good episode that reflects what Voyager is and why Voyager matters. So it’s like, they should be watching that one.
Liz: And I appreciate that when Voyager does make contact with the Infinity, like, Dal and his team have screwed up, but it was also kind of unavoidable. And no one is getting mad about it. No one is going, how dare you? No one is going, you’ve ruined our mission. You’ve made Janeway sad. There’s none of the recrimination that I expected. Because I am Rok-Tahk and I do expect to get in trouble and to face serious consequences for any infraction. And instead, they were supportive. Everyone was like, this is a heck of a pickle we’re in and we’re going to help each other get out of it.
Anika Right. It happens sometimes. This is the future we want.
Liz: It is. It’s great. Unlike the future of Solum, which is still kind of grim. You know, we briefly glimpse the Diviner in his evil era.
Anika In his evil era?
Liz: His Reputation era. Reputation (Ilthuran’s Version).
Anika Oh my god. Anyway, I’m going to be dining out on that for at least a day. So, in Solum’s future, where we have stranded children trying to work together and not being very good at it, because as I write here, they have different alignments. They’re all good, but Dala is chaotic, Zero is neutral, and Ma’jel is lawful, and the three combined have some issues.
Liz: And, you know, it took a big chunk of a season for this original group to come together and to be able to work seamlessly. And now we have Ma’jel, who is sort of throwing them out in different ways, in a really necessary way, from a storytelling point of view. And also, Jankom is not chaotic the way he was in season one. And so, yeah, their teamwork dynamic needs to change. And I think that’s great. I think that, like adding T’Lyn to lower decks, it really refreshes it. Basically, what I’m saying is anytime your Star Trek starts to feel like it needs a bit of a shake up, you need to add a young Vulcan woman.
Anika That’s right. Exactly. Good plans.
Jankom, in this episode, we get to see both his polite, overly polite Jankom side, his restrained Jankom side. And also, his, “I am losing my temper” Jankom side is reversion to form, but he doesn’t actually revert to form. He’s struggling with trying to maintain his emotional balance. And he gets upset and he, you know, hits something and it works. And that is, I mean, it’s a tried and true — anytime anything is broken, you always hit it on a television screen. That’s always how it works.
But Jankom proves that you can be both, that you can hold both those types within you. That because he is restrained, because he holds himself back, doesn’t mean he has to give up on the rest of them. Like, this is his turning point.
And then if you watch the rest of the season, Jankom is very much in like, “I’m going to be ‘Jankom Pog respectfully declines’ and ‘Jankom Pog uses percussive maintenance’.” You know, at once, he’s both. And that balance actually is like very healthy. Jankom’s growth is amazing. I wish that he had more of an arc, but his sort of background reality is very interesting.
Liz: Jankom is such a broad character that I think it’s hard to make him the focus of a story. People talk about how annoying Dal is, but I think Jankom as the protagonist would be actively off-putting. Like, remember how much we disliked him for a lot of season one.
Anika Yes, absolutely.
Liz: Now I am ride or die for Jankom, but I also really appreciate him specifically as a background character. And that is not a flaw in the writing, that is just understanding that some characters have their place.
I really like Ma’jel because like Rok-Tahk, she is a tattletale. The first thing she says to Janeway is, yeah, Dal screwed up. But also, she says, “We can be nothing less than perfect.” And I think that’s a great insight into her character. Like, we know she has high standards, we know she’s kind of snooty, but she holds herself to those standards. And in hanging out with the Prodigy team, she needs to get comfortable with imperfection.
Anika Right. I really like Ma’jel too. And one of the things that sort of came to me, I was always watching, was that she represents the perfect Starfleet cadet.
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah.
Anika She is the aspirational Starfleet officer that all of these kids are supposed to be like, right? She’s not even a cadet yet, but she’s already acting like she’s a full-on officer. She has a 10-year plan and she’s enacting it all. And I always talk about how I don’t belong in the Enterprise. I would never be invited into the Enterprise.
Liz: I say don’t sell yourself short.
Anika But I’m just saying, you know, I fit over on Voyager, which is made up entirely of misfits.I would fit in on the Cerritos. I would fit in on La Serena. My people are the people who don’t really do Starfleet and don’t even want to.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika They were like, I aspire to be better than Starfleet. Those are my people, which is why I’m a Dal. And I really like the inclusion of Ma’jel because they put an Enterprise character into a Voyager show. And that is always good. Adding that tension is really, really good.
Liz: Yes. And it’s also kind of for her almost a Seven of Nine arc, in that she’s pulled out of her comfort zone of seeking perfection and has to get along with these messy misfits who are deeply imperfect and appreciate her own imperfections.
I’ve talked about how I think Seven would be a great mentor for Dal if we got a third season when she’s in her Fenris Rangers era, and Dal sort of has to deal with the fact that he doesn’t have the relationship with Janeway that he kind of assumed he would get and neither does Seven, but I also think Seven and Ma’jel would vibe in an interesting way.
Anika Yeah, they’re not obvious the way that Seven and Dal are.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika But I get it. I can see the plan. I can see the vision.
Liz: Basically, we need a third season because I really do want to see Seven have a moment in Prodigy.
Liz: It doesn’t need to be a big moment. You know, this show knows who its main characters are. But yeah.
Can I just say that I really love the pun when Zero picks up Ma’jel and Dal and carries them into the pit, and they ask what they’re doing and they’re like, I’m de-escalating the situation. I’m sorry. I’m a sucker for a bad pun.
Anika See, Zero is the problem solver. Zero is the person in between who can see both sides and says, we can’t deal with that right now. But yes, it is a good pun.
Liz: But I also love that Zero has no problem with picking people up and moving them around, but also they do not like to be picked up and used as a torch. So, yeah, so like, think about this Zero, make this connection, but also maybe Dal should ask before he uses Zero as a torch. You know, respect, it’s all about respect.
Anika So in Solum’s present, the pre-sadness era, we have Gwyn fading in and out of existence, like back to the future. And she gets pulled into a nebula Zoom call. Legitimately, that is the only way to describe what happens. And that’s where I got vibes from Lethe, and even from the beginning of Discovery. The first season Discovery, where Sarek and Michael were shown to have nebula Zoom.
Liz: This profound psychic bond.
Anika And so, you know, I’m entertained by the fact that Gwyn can also have nebula Zoom calls. I just think that it was funny, like it was very sweet when Sarek and Michael had it, but it was also sort of ridiculous and funny. And this is so much more ridiculous and funny, especially once you know who it is.
Anika That it is perfection.
Liz: And it really is like the person behind the call has put on a Zoom filter so that they look like a nebula or a blob.
Anika Exactly. Exactly. It is a nebula Zoom call from a nebula.
Liz: “I am not a cat.”
Anika Because they don’t want to be — it’s just really good.
Liz: And this is another point where I wish that we had gotten this weekly because we would have had so many theories about who the mysterious benefactor is.
Anika The whole list. Look at my list.
Liz: Future Gwyn, Michael Burnham, Wesley Crusher, Jonathan Archer, Kovich. Kovich was my guess. Actually, I was very sure we were going to get David Cronenberg. Talinn, Kore Soong, some other Soong. Yes, we are never completely safe from Brent Spiner. A Q, William Boimler. I love that. An Illyrian, Gabrielle Burnham. I would have offered Section 31, Philippa Georgiou, or–
Anika That’s why William Boimler. Because William Boimler is recruited by Section 31, and so I was like, if you’re going to put a Section 31 person into the show, it should be William Boimler.
Liz: But what I’m hearing is that Emperor Georgiou/William Boimler is canon.
Anika That’s what you’re hearing? Okay.
Liz: Yeah. This is what I’m getting from this.
Anika Okay. Cool. Cool. You heard it here first.
Liz: I know Dr Erin asked us very nicely not to create new quantum realities, but I do want our Instagram post this week to be the list of candidates that we would have had in the quantum reality where we got this weekly.
Anika Would have, could have, should have had.
Liz: Yeah.
Liz: Deepest apologies to Dr Erin, whom I like and respect very much.
Anika Let’s throw Sarek on there. He’s the originator of the nebula Zoom call.
Liz: Yes.
Anika The other things that happen here in Solum Present before our heroes arrive is that we get Good Dad… What’s his name?
Liz: Ilthuran.
Anika What’s his name? Ilthuran. I gave him a nickname last week.
Liz: Stargazer.
Anika Stargazer. Okay. In my defense, it was three weeks.
Liz: Yeah. We’ve missed some episodes.
Anika Stargazer, Good Dad Stargazer. There are just these wonderful little moments where, first of all, he literally says, I’m putting you first, which Gwyn needed to hear. It was so beautiful.
Liz: She has this line that I actually wrote down in my notes. “A soldier, a tyrant, always a father last.” And that’s the thing. This is an amazing summary of their relationship as it was, but also it kind of points to something in Gwyn’s character that I think is maybe a flaw, that if the Diviner had not abandoned her and had not explicitly chosen the Protostar over her, she probably wouldn’t have switched sides.
Like, obviously she believes in the Federation, she works really hard to be a good person and to redeem herself from being complicit in her father’s crimes. But she was balancing on a knife edge at that point, and it could have fallen either way if the Diviner had made a different choice.
Anika And that makes sense.
Liz: Yes. And it makes her a richer character.
Anika She is Evil Stargazer’s, daughter, both genetically and raised by him. So that means that she has every opportunity to be as ruthless and uncaring as he did. But we see that he, given the opportunity to not be, also can take that. And so they’re both — it’s just a really interesting concept of — I like that ‘time travel makes people kinder’ version of this story that we’re being told.
It gives me Jaime Lannister, because we’re introduced in the pilot episode of Game of Thrones to Jaime Lannister literally pushing a child out of a window so that no one finds out about his illicit affair with his sister. So there’s like nothing good about Jaime Lannister. And the fact that you can then have a point where you feel sorry for Jaime Lannister, you start to root for Jaime Lannister, and then all of a sudden you’re like, you know, I would die for you, Jaime Lannister. And how dare you revert to kind. That progression is so much more powerful because we started at less than zero. We started at negative 12,000.
And the Diviner similarly was just introduced as someone who literally owns a child slavery plant and created a science experiment daughter, not because he wanted a daughter. But so that he could pass on his legacy of child slavery and world destruction.
Liz: And the irony is that if he had loved Gwyn, if he had shown her that care, then she wouldn’t have betrayed him and she would have probably turned out as evil as the Diviner. And instead he didn’t love her and she ran away from him and became a better person.
Anika And became the type of person who can now give him a second chance.
Liz: What I’m saying is loving your children is a huge mistake and you should never do it. This message brought to you by the Republican Party.
Anika Yikes. Anyway, so don’t elect the Diviner.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika Elect Stargazer.
But there is this moment when our heroes arrive from the future and save Gwyn and they immediately see the Diviner and they recognize him. Even though once again, he’s so much hotter. Like, I understand, of course, he’s the same person, so they recognize him, but I am not scared of him in any way anymore.
Liz: I mean, he just has better vibes.
Anika But they are because they’re children and it’s fine. They immediately go on guard and Gwyn has to jump in and say, he’s okay, he’s on our side. And then he backs off.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika And lets her go in front and shows them that he’s on their side. And that tiny moment was so powerful.
Liz: Yeah, it was amazing. It reminded me of the encounter between the Diviner in his amnesiac state and Dal in Janeway’s body in season one, which is again, a sort of recognition but not recognition, and a situation where respect is given. And that was our first sign that the Diviner was very much redeemable. Though I missed it because I was convinced he was faking his amnesia. Sorry.
Anika But you’re right, that these seeds were there.
Liz: Yeah. And Dal saw them.
Anika That’s why I’m saying that it’s a really small… Right. And Dal saw them. Because again, Dal isn’t someone like Gwyn, who — she at least had the opportunity to miss having her father’s attention and love. Dal just has nothing. He didn’t even know who his family was or where he came from or anything about it. He was alone in the universe. And so he…
Liz: Worse than that, he’s a Soong.
Anika He can only go on vibes. And he is willing to give people the benefit of the doubt because that’s what he wants them to do for him.
Liz: Yeah. That’s a really good observation.
But also, at the same time, Ilthuran is so happy to meet Gwyn’s friends. And in a different situation, he’d be like, “Do you want to come around to our place? Can I get you snacks? I’ll make some snacks. Do you guys like hot dogs? I’ll make hot dogs.”
Anika It’s so cute. Good Dad Ilthuran is kind of amazing. You know, because as much as I was just saying that the Diviner only made her to secure his weird plans for Universal Domination. He also clearly always wanted a daughter or family or a friend or, you know, someone to live in his observatory with, you know?
Liz: He wanted a legacy, which I think is very common. And instead of creating a family, you know, through love and through hope for the future and all of that, he created a progeny for vengeance. And that tainted everything about their relationship. But now they can try again, provided that Gwyn can be stabilized in this quantum reality and isn’t erased from history.
Anika So the Doctor saves her, you know, temporarily. It’s not a permanent solution, but he saves her with a little doohickey that basically looks the same as his mobile emitter. I just want to say, Dr. Ex Machina, that was for me, I just really appreciate it. I love when they go back to their roots and just say, hey, the Doctor can do anything because he’s the Doctor, legitimately. I want to thank whoever did that because they understand the Doctor’s character.
Liz: They do, and I really came to dislike the Doctor in Voyager. He’s just not a person that I want to hang out with, and I can make allowances because he’s like seven years old at the end. But, you know, he’s a blowhard, he’s a mansplainer, he’s kind of a creep. I don’t like the Doctor.
And yet I so enjoyed him in Prodigy. I think he was really well used. They understood the best and worst parts of his character. They gently shaved away the really awful bits. And what we got was the perfect distillation of a genuinely popular and important character.
And so the announcement that Robert Picardo will be in Starfleet Academy playing the EMH, a few weeks ago I would have been like, “This is terrible, I hate it, I’m so mad.” I’m definitely wary, but I’m also positive and curious to see how this goes.
Anika Right, I was thinking, well, shouldn’t it be in sort of the same role as he is in Prodigy? So I’m kind of into that, I like it. And it was also as I was thinking, like you, it was like, oh, what a difference a month makes. Because I would have been dreading it the same way I dread Brent Spiner. And instead I was saying, wow, what an upgrade from Brent Spiner.
Liz: I’m also going to say, Picardo is an immensely talented and dynamic actor, and he plays many, many roles, and he completely disappears into his roles, in a way that Spiner generally does not.
Anika And he’s a giving scene partner, which Brent Spiner is the opposite of.
Liz: Picardo is absolutely one of those actors who, you put him in a room with someone who is less experienced or less talented, he uplifts them instead of steam-rollering them. Patrick Stewart does that, Kate Mulgrew does that. You know, it’s a real skill. Sonequa Martin-Green, absolutely brilliant at it. But yeah, Picardo does that as well. I do think he is a good choice for a series with a lot of new and relatively inexperienced actors.
Anika Is it time to talk about my ships?
Liz: Please, the shipping news, the Antimatter Pod shipping news.
Anika Which I’m definitely going to do every week now.
Liz: I’m delighted.
Anika So I just want to say that, as I said last time, we were worried about Dal/Ma’jel putting a wedge between Dal and Gwyn. And not only did that not happen, but Dal and Gwyn are just like solid throughout.
Liz: The universe came to Gwyn and said, you can’t be separated.
Anika Yes, exactly.
Liz: And I have to say, the end of season one with Gwyn going off on her own, I was kind of like, oh, I don’t know how I feel about that because they’re such a great team. And does this mean Gwyn is going to have a smaller role? I don’t know how she’s going to go separate from the rest of the group. And the fact that by this point in season two, they’re like, actually, you all have to stay together for the sake of the universe. I was like, yes, thank you. That is exactly what I needed. Shipping aside, and obviously, the shipping is also important, but…
Anika Yeah, but also all of the relationships, the relationship between all of them is important. But Dal needs her. Remember how we were saying that Dal was on the ship without anybody in his corner? And he doesn’t even need her to be in his corner, because he’s in hers.
Liz: Yes.
Anika And that is just such a good… Like, it’s a perfect… It’s exactly the kind of relationship that I will always ship. I will ship from now until the end of time. And it’s that thing where like I can see them in old age. However they are together, they will be together.
Liz: Absolutely.
Liz: And you said that she doesn’t need to be in his corner, but she absolutely is. She knows him, she respects him, she understands his weaknesses, and she builds his strengths. And I think that’s really important because again, I always look at Dal and I know that he is voiced by a young Black man. And I think that sort of support is really important to see, especially in what is effectively an interracial relationship. You know, I don’t ship Detmer and Owosekun because Detmer never supports Owosekun, it’s always the other way around. But Gwyn does support Dal. And vice versa.
Anika Gwyn does support Dal and will even stand up to other people and say, hey, you know, this is the way that you get what you want out of Dal. Not that way.
Liz: Not in a way that makes him seem weak or needing — like, if other people don’t get that, she makes that their problem, not his problem.
Anika Right.
Liz: And then on the other hand, we have the, I’m going to say less chaotic and dramatic, but equally sincere bond developing between Ma’jel and Zero.
Anika It was in this episode. But the thing was, I was like, well, I’m just me. I’m shipping this in this episode, but that doesn’t mean anything. But no. It’s real. And I’m just so here for it.
Liz: It’s so good.
Anika It’s so good. In every way, everything about this relationship is wonderful. You look at Ma’jel and you’re like, oh, of course, Zero was the one who interests her, who gets her attention, you know? It makes sense that, yeah, she’s butting up against Dal, but that doesn’t have to equal sexual tension.
Liz: No, no. And that’s the mistake that we were making.
Anika Right. Because we’re like, programmed to have to see it that way. And instead, Zero just being competent and aware of their own self and needs and being not Dal. Ma’jel realizes that she has an ally.
Liz: I definitely think that on the scale of interspecies relationships between Vulcans and aliens, this is more at the Saru/T’Rina end of the scale than the Sarek/Amanda end of the scale. This is two very rational beings forming a connection rather than Sarek going, “This is so illogical of me, but I love her. (I will never speak to our children.)”
Anika Please do your Sarek impression again.
Liz: “I will zoom call our daughter psychically at every possible moment, but I will never make eye contact with my failsons. That would be illogical.” He’s getting some vocal fry in there, I don’t know why.
Anika So what you’re saying is Sarek is a girl dad.
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sarek is going to all of Michael’s gymnastics performance, performances, shows, competitions, competitions, that’s the word! Yeah, yeah, I don’t sport. The Olympics are on, I briefly paid attention to gymnastics and that’s as far as it goes. Anyway, yeah, he’s going to all of Michael’s gymnastics meets and none of Spock’s lute recitals or Sybok’s slam poetry competitions. He’s like, “I’m sorry, I have other engagements. Your mother will go.”
Anika Sybok’s slam poetry.
Liz: Which is really hard to say, as it turns out.
Anika Oh my god, don’t forget his secret third son.
Liz: Oh, don’t worry, he has forgotten. Sarek has absolutely forgotten.
Anika Sarek has forgotten his secret third son, but I haven’t.
Liz: This is the one whose wedding Picard attended?
Anika Yeah.
Liz: Okay, cool. I think that’s the replacement baby that Amanda is pregnant with in season two of Strange New Worlds, for the record. His name is Michael.
Anika No, his name is not Michael.
Liz: Michael Grayson.
Anika I-
Liz: He is the humanest half-Vulcan you ever met. He is also not on speaking terms with his dad.
Anika What’s his middle name? I’m sorry. Did you say Benson?
Liz: No, I said Grayson. His surname is Grayson.
Anika Grayson. I was like, what are you talking about?
Liz: Michael Grayson.
Anika No.
Liz: Yes.
Anika No. Sarek would do that. Amanda would not do that. I have to believe. I know she has issues.
Liz: I just think one of her kids should have her own last name.
Anika Yes, Grayson. Fine. Michael. No.
Liz: Oh. No, no. That is a bit tasteless. The replacement goldfish.
Anika Samuel.
Liz: Yes. Because it has to start with an S.
Anika Or Silas. Silas Grayson.
Liz: A human name that could also pass for a Vulcan name. But ironically, he’s the one who’s like, no, I’m human guys. Don’t look at these pointy ears.
Anika Okay. Anyway, I’m going to immediately go write a story for Silas Grayson, who Jean-Luc Picard goes to the wedding of. I already had the headcanon that Jack Crusher, the worst, was his date for that wedding.
Liz: 100 percent.
Anika Everyone look forward to it.
Liz: Oh, I am. I was going to say something about one of your other fics, but actually I’m going to wait for a few weeks until the big reveal about who mysterious, nebular, future, deus ex machina guy is. So stay tuned.
Liz: The only other thing I have to say is that at the end, when Murph is talking to Blob Guy, I was certain that it was either Kovach or Future Guy from Enterprise. Even though my recollection is that Future Guy is the evil one who’s like masterminding the Temporal War.
Anika Right. It did look like Enterprise, like more than anything, it looked like Enterprise, but that didn’t make sense. This is why I put in my bit, so and so from episode X of series Y, because it couldn’t be the future people from Enterprise, because that didn’t make sense. He reminded me of John Doe from the TNG episode–
Liz: Transfigurations. Transfigurations, where he turns into a glowing guy. I mostly remember that as the episode where Beverly makes out with one of her patients, and everyone’s completely chilled with that. But yes — actually, I don’t think she kisses him. I think he just touches her face.
Anika Yeah, they have a flirtation that doesn’t go anywhere because he literally turns into a light bulb.
Liz: I mean.
Anika And has to zoom away, because that’s Beverly’s life.
Liz: You know, if she doesn’t leave them first, they turn into a light bulb and leave her. But given who Nebula Guy is, that’s actually an interesting bit of connection to make.
Anika It’s like, it’s fun. But when I was watching this episode, that’s the first thing that came to mind. And I almost put it on my list and I was like, literally no one is going to know what I’m talking about.
Liz: No, I knew exactly what you’re talking about.
Anika That’s why I said so and so from episode X. It was John Doe from Transfiguration.
Liz: I mean, it could also be that guy in Lower Decks who was trying to ascend and I think Tendi keeps interfering with his ascension. What I’m saying is there’s too much Star Trek.
Anika So many different things that are wrong now because not only was this bingeable so no one was talking about it, but also like social media is a disaster right now. There is no hub anymore. So we wouldn’t be having these conversations and it’s just very sad to me because a few years ago would have been amazing.
Liz: I know, we would have had so much fun. I will say that season two has just become available for digital purchase and it’s gone up the charts. It’s like number one in Canada or something. As soon as the Blu-ray is available for pre-order in Australia, I’m going to snaffle it.
Anika Alex Kurtzman said at SDCC that if you want more Star Trek, be noisy about it by watching things and purchasing things and that’s the way to do it.
Liz: So I mean, here we are. We’re watching things, we’re talking about them, we’ll spend money and buy them. So please give us more Star Trek and keep the Tawny Newsome era going because I’m really intrigued about her new project, the live action comedy. And I’m really excited about her work on Starfleet Academy. And I’m glad she’s sticking around because I still stand by my rule that all Star Treks should have a five season limit. So I’m not advocating for a sixth season of Lower Decks, but I’m glad that we’re not losing her.
Anika Right. More Tawny Newsome is good.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika Agreed. 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. You can follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Blue Sky all at antimatterpod, and on Mastodon at @antimatterpod@tenforward.social. But I understand if you can’t find any of those or if you’re bored by those, because again, social media is a mess. So really, find us at our website and listen to our show.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika 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. Join us next week when we recap Prodigy‘s next episode, Observer’s Paradox.