Anika and Liz put on their cutest wedding outfits and settle in to discuss episode 2 of Strange New Worlds‘ third season: “Wedding Bell Blues”. Liz is gonna try not to talk about Pike. Anika is going to do her best not to implode. It’s fun!
- This episode was engineered in a lab to target Anika personally
- Is this a mean-spirited commentary on shippers?
- We did not need a second sequel to “The Q and the Gray”. Or a first sequel. Or “The Q and the Gray”.
- Christine: I don’t want any big romantic gestures
Spock: Big romantic gesture, got it - It’s weird how we’re being gaslit into thinking Korby is a decent guy
- “It’s gonna be really hard for me to not talk about dinosaurs on my podcast.”
- We’re so happy for an Orgetas subplot that we’re not even mad it’s the same as Detmer in season 3 of Discovery
- Batel is firmly in the Girlfriend Box, not the Captain Box
- The snake/garden of Eden/Taylor Swift’s Reputation era styling of Christine’s “wedding dress” was a … choice
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Liz: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today we’re discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Wedding Bell Blues,” an episode which was engineered in a lab to target Anika.
Anika: In a bad way.
Liz: Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.
Anika: A crime against me personally.
Liz: You may be entitled to compensation.
Anika: I have since calmed down since the first time I watched this, but I was live texting poor Liz here while watching it. And I believe I used the word, and my anger is biblical. So yeah, that’s where I was the first time I saw this episode.
Liz: I am not particularly emotionally engaged with the Spock/Chapel relationship, except vicariously through you, which means that I see people talking shit about it, and I go, hey, that’s my friend’s OTP, how dare you?
Anika: Yes, well, I mean, they’re doing their level best to disavow me of that opinion. So what can I say?
Liz: It was interesting to watch this episode without being involved in the shipping, because it felt like a really mean-spirited commentary on fandom and shippers, and almost wagging their fingers at you, saying, you’re doing it wrong.
Anika: Yeah, so I knew that I was biased, and so I assumed that how I felt targeted and attacked and called out, I thought that was just a me problem. But you’re saying that part of it is baked in.
Liz: I think part of it is, and obviously I have my own bias, in that I saw your biblical anger before I watched the episode, and I generally don’t go into Star Trek: Strange New Worlds expecting good episodes. But to be honest, I had gone in assuming that this episode was going to be about some type of terrible Pike-Batel wedding. So at first, I was briefly relieved.
Then I realized it was the Rhys Darby episode, and I have nothing against Rhys Darby. He’s a nice man and a talented actor. But Our Flag Means Death fandom is deeply annoying. Not least because no matter how carefully I curate my block lists, they just always get around. In fairness, it’s really hard to block the word “teach” or “ed”. You miss out on stuff that way.
So, I didn’t want to see Rhys Darby. I certainly didn’t want to see him as this Trelane figure. The last thing anyone ever needed was a second sequel to “The Q and the Grey.” We didn’t even need a first sequel.
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: Then it’s this whole thing with the Spock/Chapel relationship, where what’s really important, what really matters is that Spock and Korby like each other.
Anika: Yeah, right. The fact that, okay, so these are the things that bothered me. I mean, the whole thing. But what bothered me was that, yes, Spock and Korby had to team up to get everything on track and getting everything on track meant blowing up their relationship. And Spock didn’t. So, it starts in the beginning when Spock did exactly what Christine told him not to do.
Liz: He has a real problem with listening to women.
Anika: And make a big deal out of everything and do this grand romantic gesture.
Liz: And she specifically told him she didn’t want that.
Anika: That she used the words, “don’t do a big romantic gesture.” The actual words, it could not be more clear. But he did. And then, you know, it backfires because she’s dating Roger Korby now. So, it was already bad, right? It was already bad.
And then we go into this fake out, like, we’re playing with Spock’s emotions, like the universe is playing with Spock’s emotions, which is kind of what happened in the musical episode. So I don’t like that. And then he has to make friends with Roger Korby. And they have to get everything on track by undoing everything that is good. And Christine’s wedding dress was appalling. The entire wedding was appalling.
Liz: Very tacky. Do not get a Q to plan your wedding. It’s just…
Anika: And then at the end, when we get the reveal and everything, and I was just like, like you said, this was cooked up in a lab to personally attack me.
Liz: But also, it just wasn’t a very interesting episode in its own light. It sort of hits the same beats as “The Squire of Gothos” and a bunch of other Q episodes, but less interesting.
Anika: Nothing happens. It’s just, it’s literally just we’re playing with Spock. That’s it. That’s the entire plot.
Liz: It’s so interesting that this was co-written by Kirsten Beyer, because she started out as a tie-in novelist, but her writing partner for several years was Heather Jarman, who I remember from alt.startrek.creative as this incredibly talented writer, who just sort of came in from nowhere, wrote a bunch of really outstanding Janeway/Chakotay fics, and then the next thing we knew, she had turned professional. And we were like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Heather Jarman and Una McCormack both went pro roughly around the same time, and no one was surprised because that was the kind of talent they had.
But obviously Kirsten is aware, or should be aware of fandom and fan fiction and shipping.
Anika: I feel like I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what is real. I feel like I say this every episode now. I don’t know what is real or what the writers intend, because if it’s supposed to be like this tongue in cheek version and it’s not, “we’re attacking you, Anika,” but, “isn’t this funny, isn’t this clever, how we’re giving you what you want, but then ripping it away, because that’s what a Q does,” or like … if it wasn’t mean spirited, like it was all in good fun. You know what I mean?
I feel like they thought they were writing it all in good fun, but it did not feel all in good fun to me.
Liz: Yeah, I mean, first of all, comedy is writing on hard mode, and so far, very little of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ comedy has landed for me. I also simply think that it is an episode that is so determined to make the audience like Roger Korby, and it’s actually quite effective at that. There is a level of skill here in terms of bringing in a character who has, through no fault of his own, attracted Trelane’s ire, which means the audience is primed against Korby because he’s quote unquote stealing Christine from Spock, and also, we’ve seen TOS, and we know he’s going to be a bad guy.
Anika: That’s my issue. My issue is not that he exists and is getting in the way of Spock and Chappell. It’s that his ending is awful. He’s a horrible person who replaces her with a robot. There’s nothing good about their relationship in TOS. So, I don’t want to ship them, and it has nothing to do with Spock.
Liz: It’s kind of inviting the audience to become fond of a character who essentially ends as an abuser. No, thank you.
Anika: Now I’m like, look, unless you are literally redoing that episode to fix it, I don’t want to be involved in this anymore.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Which is, I don’t know. And I don’t know what to do with that. Are they trying to trick me into really wanting the TOS rewrite?
Liz: Maybe.
Anika: Because it’s working. This is like the second episode where I’m like, okay, just redo it and then it’ll be okay. And I’ll feel better about it.
Liz: My confusion arises because last episode, you talked about what Akiva Goldsman said at the premiere, and he really wants the audience to be on Spock’s side. And so far, I’m kind of on everyone’s side and no one’s.
For Spock to find that Christine has broken up with him because she couldn’t commit and then immediately committed to a more serious relationship, that really hurts, but she hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s just an experience that many people go through.
And he even comes to the same conclusion, which is that he just has to sit with his feelings and accept it. Christine didn’t cheat. She doesn’t completely understand why she’s drawn to Roger, although I feel like the fact that Roger is interested in her as a person and…
Anika: What? I mean, they have work in common. It’s not crazy to me that she went somewhere… She’s super smart and everyone’s always telling her how smart she is on the enterprise, but she doesn’t have any peers.
And I don’t mean that she doesn’t have people who are smart enough. I just mean that she doesn’t have people that she can talk about the stuff she’s interested in. She has friends, but she doesn’t have people who can talk about the weird stuff that she thinks is really, really cool. Spock was one of the only people. And then that got screwed up by feelings on both sides.
And so it was probably refreshing to be somewhere where that wasn’t there. And then she started to have those feelings again. So maybe, like you said, it’s just that people who are on her level and the ability to have those conversations. And again, I’m not saying that she’s a super genius. I mean more of the weirdness level.
Liz: The common interests and yeah.
Anika: The niche weird stuff that we like. And you know, I was talking about with my son, we just got out of Jurassic World Rebirth. And I was like, it’s gonna be really, really hard for me to not talk about dinosaurs on my podcast. So, even though it’s a Star Trek podcast and there are no dinosaurs involved.
And he’s like, yeah, I get that. I’m the same way where I just really into this thing. And I just want to tell everybody about it, even if they’re not interested. And so I feel like there’s that. There’s that, I don’t have to hold back my interest in this weird, crazy thing. I can just talk about it with you for hours.
Liz: Yeah. And first of all, I do think that this episode would have been improved with dinosaurs. Right?
Anika: Come on, Trelane. Come on, Qs.
Liz: Have a bit of imagination, for heaven’s sake.
But the thing is, not only does Korby connect with her on that level, but whereas Spock spends a lot of time thinking about Spock, Korby seems genuinely interested in Christine’s personhood. More interested than the script, I would say. And so, he notices when she’s feeling down and she talks to him about her mother, and for whatever reason, and I have some theories, she never had that with Spock.
And I’m not going to say that women are a monolith, but people really like it when you’re interested in them.
Anika: Nah. It’s just frustrating to me. It’s frustrating to me. And again, if the story they’re telling is how Spock goes from his adolescent feeling phase to his adult feeling phase that we see in TOS, and then he eventually matures into the Spock we know and love when he’s realized exactly who he is when he goes through everything. I think that’s interesting, and I think that it’s kind of cool that Christine is a part of that and that his relationship with her is a part of that and like thinking out those feelings. It’s just that I don’t want it to be at her expense.
Liz: This episode was completely at her expense. And the only acknowledgement is her at the end going, yeah, this was kind of a terrible experience for me and I’m pretty unhappy. And even then, because she’s Christine, she has to couch it in an amusing and flippant way.
Anika: Right, right. Yeah, which again, they keep doing that and that makes perfect sense for the character even as we know her in TOS. Even taking apart the more depth that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Jess Bush gives her, even in TOS, you can read everything that happens then as, oh, that’s because she’s deflecting, it’s because she has all of the same hangups that Spock has about feelings.
It’s interesting that, knowing her various traumas, now you can see those things. But it’s like what we were saying with Uhura, that they’re just saying, look at all these things that Uhura has to go through, but not actually using them. I just want them to get to that next level of, okay, and now let’s do something with it.
Liz: I think this show is so scared of going past the superficial. And I do worry that even though this was an episode where everyone is behaving in a mature way, except the actual child in Rhys Darby’s body, that there’s going to be some kind of turn where it’s like, look, Korby was the nice guy all along, but he’s really a villain and he’s turned on Christine and she should have stayed with Spock and all of that. I just don’t like it. I don’t trust it.
Anika: Yeah, I mean, I definitely don’t trust it. I don’t trust anything.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: I don’t trust anything in television these days, but I especially don’t trust anything in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
So let’s talk about Ortegas and her brother.
Liz: Oh my god. I am so happy for an Ortegas subplot. I don’t even mind that it’s basically the same thing that we did with Detmer in season three of Discovery.
Anika: That’s true. Now that you say it. But that’s, yeah.
Liz: I’m sorry.
Anika: You know, whatever. They’re the same character.
Liz: I love that we meet Ortegas’ brother. I love that we see her speaking Spanish. I love that we’re sort of getting into her interior life. And it’s basically what I said, that she puts up a front and because of the Gorn experience on top of everything else she went through in the war, she’s kind of at the point where she can’t repress anymore. And I’m excited to see what happens next.
I also feel like this is where Melissa Navia’s natural magnetism is finally being used to full effect. I saw her at a con the other year, and I was really impressed with how she interacted with everyone, like fans and everything. She is a presence. And I remember that she sort of blanked you at the first premiere and we were like, hmm, don’t like that. But then we found out that her partner was dying and it must have been really hard for her to be there.
Anika: Awful, yeah. To be there and trying to not let it show, you know, to be like, this is our big intro. Like, it’s awful that she got this show at that same time. And also I have to say, my friend Amy works with real space people and astronauts and everything. And she has been able to put together a few events that include both Star Trek people and space people. And Melissa Navia has been a part of some of those. And she’s just, it’s really fun to watch Melissa Navia and actual astronauts interact. And they’re both like…
Liz: She seems really enthusiastic.
Anika: …Fangirling each other, you know? It’s just really. I love that vibe with anyone in Star Trek. I feel like it’s almost universal, but she’s just really good, you’re right, that she’s just really good at being a presence and being enthusiastic and being with people. And so, I want Ortegas to have that too. And because she does in the tiny little moments where we get her to say anything at all that is something about her and not the plot, you know, which is very few moments.
Liz: Or even about other characters. Through a lot of season 2, her role is hyping up someone else, whether that’s Uhura or Boimler or Mariner. And she’s really effective at it. But this is the first time we’ve seen her bringing that energy to a personal interaction that’s not about, it’s with her brother. It’s about him and her and their family.
Anika: Yeah, so more of that because I want to know Ortegas. Yeah. And it’s not even like a Detmer situation. Detmer was not part of the main cast.
Liz: And yet we know more about Detmer.
Anika: So, please, I’m glad that she’s getting this and I want to see more of it and yeah.
Liz: Yeah, I’m excited to see new facets of Ortegas.
I don’t know how I feel about La’an as dancing instructor.
Anika: Yeah, so okay. Remember in season one when Una and La’an were playing the Enterprise Bingo game?
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: How did we get from that to this? Please, please explain to me.
Liz: I completely buy that La’an wanted to be a prima ballerina, because what little girl didn’t. And she certainly can dance. But this felt more like a reflection of the friendship between Ethan Peck and Christina Chong, who collaborated musically, rather than true to the characters. I think this should have been Una.
Anika: Yeah, because in the musical, it is Una, so.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So why? It’s just weird. It’s just I, okay. Unless they’re setting up Spock and La’an, which I am 100 percent here for, I was already shipping it in other seasons. I was into it, into their dynamic, before Christine became an actual option. But that’s the only thing I got out of it.
I was like, so are they trying to make me ship this? Because otherwise I don’t understand. Now you’re right, I didn’t think of it as it could be the actors, and they just have natural chemistry. And maybe that’s why they’re throwing them together, like with Beverly and Data.
Liz: Yeah, that’s exactly what it reminded me of. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but La’an and Beverly are not interchangeable personalities.
Anika: Well, that’s what I’m saying. I agree with you. I think that she wanted to be a ballerina, and then she got attacked by Gorn, and stopped wanting to be a ballerina, and didn’t connect with that again until now. And that’s kind of cool, and I like it, but that’s not what came across in this scene. You know what I mean? I had to just make that up.
Liz: No, and again, this scene was about Spock, not about La’an.
Anika: This scene was about Spock, not about La’an. All of it, everything. I guess the other thing is that she knew about the big romantic gesture, and she was his sidekick in this whole thing, which is why, for me, it feels like, oh, so they’re setting up Spock and La’an now to have a fling, because Spock is a serial monogamist who is incapable of not, maybe he has to sit in his feelings, like you said, and maybe he’s learned, and maybe that won’t happen, but it felt like that.
Liz: At this point, my OTP for Spock is being alone forever, because he doesn’t deserve to have a partner. But I will say, you know who else is a serial monogamist and can’t be alone? Sarek.
Anika: Oh, you’re so right.
Liz: But I did not get shippy vibes between La’an and Spock, and I could be wrong there, but I got sibling vibes.
Anika: I was gonna say, I knew you were gonna say sibling, I was like, she’s gonna say sibling, and I’m gonna say, that doesn’t preclude shipping.
Liz: Well, to go back all the way to our second or third episode, La’an is his wing woman.
Anika: Yes. In season one, I was like, La’an comes across as asexual to me, and that blew up, which is fine, because I actually really like the whole Kirk subplot with her. So I agree, it can be siblings, they can be besties. I didn’t ship Data and Beverly.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: So it’s fine, but I can’t wait till our wedding episode where we compare and contrast these scenes, because that’s what I, yeah. And I will ship literally anything, so don’t take me and my shippiness, including siblings, too seriously. I don’t really mean that, I just want to say.
Liz: Look, I think Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has made it very clear that they disapprove of your shipping and they want you to stop. Okay. And for that reason, you should ship everything harder.
Anika: Exactly. 100% ship everything harder, like Batel and Una.
Liz: Yes. Oh my goodness. It’s so weird that they haven’t interacted, right? Like not since season two, since “Ad Astra per Aspera.”
Anika: It’s so weird, but whatever. I have now added to my, so if the worst happens, and Batel ends up having Christopher Pike’s baby, what if she raises that child with Una?
Liz: I love it.
Anika: On his horse farm.
Liz: I will allow it, but I want Una to go in with her Illyrian technology and quietly excise the stupid bits from the child’s DNA.
Anika: Oh, my gosh. So this could be a genetically engineered child, because if Batel ends up with any latent Illyrian-ness, yeah, and Pike is clearly special in some way because he wouldn’t have this whole mess if he wasn’t. So, interesting, interesting. Now we have a Frankenbaby.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: But anyway, I just want them to grow old together.
Liz: I love that, and I want that too. But speaking of Batel, it’s so weird how, you know, last week we were talking about how Una is never framed as a future captain.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: Batel is barely treated as a captain.
Anika: Yeah, as a captain.
Liz: We only see her in that role once in “Hegemony, Part I,” and then she loses her ship, and now apparently, she’s spent the last three months on Pike’s couch wearing knitwear, which sounds cosy, but-
Anika: But it’s freaking weird.
Liz: I want to see this woman in charge. Yeah! What about her crew? What about the job of notifying their families that they all died? Where is her grief for them?
You know, in season five of Star Trek: Discovery, it kind of bugged me that we never got to see much of how Rayner was as a captain. We never saw the inside of his ship. It bugs me even more with Batel, because she is a captain right now.
Anika: She is a captain right now, and she’s not being treated like one. Like, if she wanted-
Liz: A girlfriend edit.
Anika: To spend her medical leave hanging out with Pike on his ship, like, that’s weird, but okay. And not weird for her to want that, but weird for it to be allowed. But, you know, sure. But I don’t want it to now move into, like, and now we never see her, like, we just check in with her when he wants to see her, which I know she’s not a character, and he’s the main character, but it just feels really weird for her to really only exist within his orbit.
Liz: That’s it. Katrina Cornwell only appeared in six or seven episodes, but we had a strong sense of her life and relationships outside of interacting with the Star Trek: Discovery crew. And that’s not just stuff that I’ve made up in my head, I promise. We know that she has a sort of fraught relationship with Admiral the Vulcan guy, the very handsome…
Anika: I know who you mean. I don’t remember his name, but.
Liz: Me neither. But the way she says he’s pissed at Lorca, quote, and he’s a damn Vulcan, we know that they respect each other, but maybe, you know, irritate each other. Stuff like that. We saw her interacting with a much wider range of Star Trek: Discovery crew people than Batel gets with Enterprise.
Anika: Nine months hanging out with Sarek.
Liz: Right.
Anika: Which I love.
Liz: And it just kind of is that thing where if you write a woman as a girlfriend first, she doesn’t get to be as complex a character, whereas if you write her as this is her job first and then introduce her personal life…
Anika: Yes. Right. I really liked her whole legal…
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Her foray into law and order over there. I want more of that. So if she doesn’t want to be in command and she just wants to go be JAG all the time, that’s cool too. So there are options, I guess is what I’m saying. She is an interesting character who does interesting things that have nothing to do with Pike, but all we ever get is she’s either a plot point or Pike’s girlfriend or both.
Liz: Yeah. I feel like she’s not even an interesting character yet. She’s just a sketch of a potentially interesting character. Maybe I only want more of her because I want her to exist outside of Pike’s shadow because the guy annoys me and I’m trying actively not to talk about him this week.
Anika: But he didn’t really do anything with talking about, to be honest.
Liz: There’s the bit at the end where he has to give an impromptu speech and he’s really bad at it. And I was like, this is like the most basic part of your job. Why are you so bad? Anyway, anyway, I’m not going to be a hater.
Anika: What’s interesting is, I think that the Pike that I imagine is a more interesting Pike than the one that we’re supposed to believe in. Because the Pike that I imagine is this guy who’s faking it all the time. And that is his interest, he’s really good at faking it, but only to a point, I don’t know. I think that there is something there about Pike being super charming, but not, again, he’s just Ken. He’s just Ken. And that is interesting. It is actually interesting to think about Ken tricking everyone into believing that he is the best captain in Starfleet. That’s, there’s something there.
Liz: Yeah, but that’s a story about a con artist.
Anika: Yeah, but it’s, I mean, I don’t think he knows though. Ken also doesn’t know he’s a con artist. You know, he’s just doing his thing.
Liz: This framing of Pike is so interesting because we live in a world where con artists are running the place. And so it’s very telling that you have this protagonist who is so hollow and yet he blends in so well with the real men who are in charge of things.
Anika: There’s a whole online thing about how Pike is the answer to non-toxic masculinity.
Liz: Yeah, I don’t care about that.
Anika: I’m sorry I can’t even say it with a straight face. But it’s wild. It’s wild to me. And I, now that I have figured out that he’s Ken, it is my new favorite thing. And I like him better.
Liz: I thought the costumes were really good this week, except all of the civilian clothes in the bar and stuff were pure 2025. And I actually saw La’an’s Dance Lesson Catsuit in H&M last weekend. It was on sale.
Anika: I didn’t get it. I don’t remember any of the costumes other than the wedding dress that they put on my beloved Christine. And I was like, no.
Liz: We’ll talk about that in a minute, because I found it very interesting. But Erica wears a boiler suit. And again, pure 2025, but also very Star Trek: Enterprise. I almost mentioned it when we were recording Hair Trek 2 yesterday. And then I remembered spoilers. But yeah, it continued the queerness of Erica’s coding.
And I can’t remember the outfit that Uhura wore to the wedding, but she has grown out her hair and she was wearing it in Bantu knots. And it was so cute. Really suited her.
Anika: Legitimately, I don’t remember anything anyone was wearing except for that wedding dress, quote unquote, wedding dress. I’m so sorry. I apologize to the costumer. I’m sure it’s fine. It was supposed to be fake. The whole thing was fake. It doesn’t matter. Also, Christine’s hair was what the hell? What’s wrong with Christine’s hair throughout the entire episode, but especially in the bedroom scene.
Liz: It just looks like a really, really cheap wig. I think Uhura’s curls also didn’t look that great when they were loose. But oh my God, that wig on Jess Bush.
Anika: It was also a crime. That was another crime. I was like, what are you doing to this beautiful woman?
Liz: It looks like the cheap hair that you get off AliExpress to re-root a Barbie doll.
Anika: I was bad and then I just, I can’t even really describe the dress. You called it-
Liz: I can, in one word, snake.
Anika: Yeah, like snake. I see that. When I watched it, I didn’t have this thought, but when you described it that I was like, okay, so is it not just my eye or that is biblical? Is the episode also biblical?
Liz: That’s much better than where I was going. Because it put me in mind of the styling that Taylor Swift had around the time she released Reputation, where there were a lot of snake emojis. She sort of very heavily identified with the snake emoji, and the shaggy blonde hair, and the fringe, and it was very 2017 Taylor Swift in a bad way. And yeah, obviously, wearing green to a wedding is very fraught. It’s against the quote unquote rules.
Anika: But again, this was a wedding that was created by a child with omnipotent power. So whatever, Christine didn’t choose that.
Liz: No, but it did make me think of, yes, Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. And it does make me think that we’re going to be expected to turn on Christine.
Anika: Yeah, she is temptation incarnate. That Spock has gone down this path that is against his Vulcan cult, and that’s bad.
Liz: And it’s her fault.
Anika: And it’s her fault. Because women, am I right?
Liz: You are so right. An interesting thing I noticed this season is that there are a number of episodes co-written by women, but no women have a solo credit. In fact, only one episode is credited to one writer. And I’m going to put it out there that that’s actually a bad sign.
Anika: Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t think that’s good because, okay, so television series have a writer’s room. Many people, like let’s say eight people, are involved in the actual writing of an episode, but it’s always given one or two people who craft it and who guide it and who write the most important things or whatever, you know. It’s supposed to be collaborative, but also have a cohesive vision. And when every episode has dueling visions, that means you’re not quite sure what you’re doing.
Liz: Right. Also, television writing is collaborative, so it’s not completely surprising that you have multiple people contributing, but it just feels like a bad sign that there are no solo women’s voices.
Anika: Right. And now that you’ve said that, it’s like, oh, so I’m concerned. I don’t know. I’m not there in the writing room or anything. Call me. But I do think that what that reads as is that the women, in this episode, they were like, oh, well, this is episode where Christine does stuff and Uhura does stuff and Ortegas does stuff, and they’re women, so we got to have a lady in here. And so they’re like, okay, you know, write some dialogue for these people, and then the man will come in and fix it.
And obviously, I don’t know or truly believe that that’s what happened, but it feels like, you know, we’re gonna let the ladies write for the women every once in a while, but we’re not gonna give them credit for the rest. And also, in this scenario, Spock is a woman.
Liz: From the way Christine was written in this episode, I was genuinely shocked that a woman was credited with the script.
Anika: Although I will say, no shade to Kirsten Beyer, but I don’t actually like most of her work.
Liz: I like her ideas, but I don’t necessarily like the execution. I find it very hit and miss. She did some stuff that I really liked in Star Trek: Discovery and had some ideas that I really liked in season one of Star Trek: Picard. And that’s about it. And I was never a massive fan of her novels either, to be honest. They were competent, but not world shattering.
Anika: So, good job for her having a job on Star Trek. Awesome.
Liz: Absolutely. And I do wish that we had more of that. And I think she understands Star Trek quite well. I just think this was a bad episode.
Anika: Yeah, I just think this was a bad episode. And who knows what did she have the idea or was she handed the idea? I don’t know. It was a bad idea that I don’t like, and I didn’t need and didn’t want and kind of hate. So that’s all I have to say about it. The fact that we were tricked into thinking that we were getting some shippy content in the trailers and stuff and then we got this. It literally feels like a punch to the face. That’s all I have to say.
Liz: I never watched Supernatural, but obviously I am aware of Supernatural because I exist on the internet. And I know that series had multiple episodes that was kind of finger wagging at fandom for doing it wrong. And I kind of feel like this is part of that genre.
Anika: Yeah. And it’s a genre. It’s becoming more and more commonplace. It hit 9-1-1, which is a Ryan Murphy procedural about first responders, like a pretty mainstream nonsense show.
Liz: Is that the one where Angela Bassett has to land a passenger jet on a highway? Amazing. That’s literally the only thing I know about it. And it had a canonical male-male pairing that made it take over my Tumblr algorithm for a week.
Anika: Yeah, but it was the wrong male-male pairing. See, the thing is that there are shippers of these two characters, which until recently, neither of him were ever coded as anything other than heterosexual. But then one of them was given a boyfriend, and it was great. I actually really loved the way that his coming out was done. It was very well done.
But it’s very preachy, and it’s sort of like, look, we gave him a boyfriend, so get over it, and stop clamoring for this other pairing that is wildly popular and the most popular thing ever. And it felt gross. I was like, I don’t even ship these people, and I’m mad at you about it. And then they killed off the main character. And all of fandom is like, so we don’t have to watch this anymore, right? Stop talking down to us. We are your audience. You don’t exist without us.
Liz: So it’s so weird that shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are leaning so hard into fan service. And “look, it’s a Star Trek thing. And look, it’s John de Lancie. And look, this is like that episode from 1967 that you definitely remember well because you watched it as a child.” But then you flip to the other side of fandom, the transformative shipping character-oriented side. And it’s going, you girls are doing it wrong.
Anika: Yes, that’s how it feels. And it feels that way in everywhere. And it’s just, I don’t like, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why people are actively antagonizing their audience. No, just tell me the story. I think you just explained it, that they have an idea of who their audience should be versus the audience that they actually have. And they want to fix that in some way.
Liz: I would also suggest that the transformative character-oriented side of fandom, which is not just women, but it demands more from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. And it’s much more critical of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Anika: Yeah, and it should be.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: I’m not saying that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds shouldn’t exist. I actually want Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to be good. I think that there are moments that are amazing.
Liz: I think it has a great cast, with one exception, and great characters with two exceptions. And it just keeps overlooking them in favor of going, “hey, look, it’s a Star Trek thing.”
And then the heteronormativity. Did you spot how gendered the wedding preparation was? That it’s a whole thing that Q is emasculating Roger Korby by making him Christine’s best man. And he’s meant to be going and getting facials with the girls.
At one point, it started to feel like the Rhys Darby character was your old fashioned predatory gay creeping on Spock. To the point where I was relieved that actually, his issue is that he hates Roger Korby the way I hate Christopher Pike. And he’s the fic writer who can’t stop bashing the character he dislikes in his fic.
Anika: Okay, so going back to the Roger Korby episode at all, I’m so mad that I feel bad for Roger Korby.
Liz: Right.
Anika: I’m so mad about it.
Liz: The guy is going to be a monster.
Anika: It’s just fine. Again, I am actively, I am right now, I will say it right now. I will create a hashtag. I’m actively campaigning for redo TOS and fix everything that was wrong because it was the 60s and no one knew that they were bad.
Liz: I wouldn’t even go that far. I just want these people, and by that, I mean Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, to walk away from Star Trek. What’s his face? Terry Matalas walked away from Star Trek to do something else. Go ruin another franchise. Go write a Marvel show.
Anika: No, don’t ruin Marvel. It’s already been through so much.
Liz: Go write a Marvel show, but not about any characters that Anika cares about.
Anika: OK, there we go. That’s acceptable. I feel like we’ve said everything that can be said in this episode. I feel like we’ve said everything.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: It’s bad. TLDR, I didn’t like it. But that, you know, if you did, cool. I also don’t like “New Eden”, so it’s fine.
Liz: This could be just more of “Antimatter Pod hates the episodes everyone loves”.
Anika: Everyone loves. I hope you love it because I want people to be happy.
Liz: Alternatively, I would like people smarter than me to sort of dig into the subtext of this episode and get all Henry Jenkins on what it’s saying about fandom.
Anika: Okay.
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Join us in a week when we will be discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 3, “Shuttle to Kenfori.” Be prepared.