Anika and Liz beam down to a nice planet where nothing bad happens and everyone leaves with the same amount of eyeballs they started with. WAIT, NO, we’re discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ “Through the Lens of Time”…
- This once again felt like several unrelated episodes smushed together
- Like season 5 of Discovery, this video game is on easy mode
- La’an is completely out of character in this episode, being both stupid and mean in a misogynistic way
- (NEVER date Spock, he is BAD FOR WOMEN)
- Since when was trust a problem between Spock and Christine?
- Hey, a queer-coded male character! Wait, nevermind
- SNW doesn’t have enough episodes to tell these stories
- We are no longer interested in Uhura/Beto
- The Gorn, the Vezda, and setting up for an Aliens v Predator story
Transcript
(Please note this transcript was generated automatically by Apple Podcasts, and though it was edited by a human, some errors may remain.)
Anika: 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 latest from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Through the Lens of Time.”
Liz: This is such an odd episode. I’ve literally only just watched the screener, so I haven’t really had much time to process it, and for that, I apologize. But it felt like it one third-exposition, one-third relationship drama, one-third genuinely interesting and scary horror, and they never quite gelled together.
Anika: That’s fair. I think that’s fair. I think that overall I enjoyed this episode, not as much as the previous one, but more than the other three. I think that it was finally moving the plot forward, which I always approve of.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Any forward motion is just, generally speaking, something that I look forward to in a series, in a story. And it’s hard. It’s hard sometimes. There’s a lot of spinning plates. Sometimes for various reasons, they got an extra season or episodes, or there was a strike, or there’s some reason that they have to sort of not move forward a lot of the time. And in the other three episodes, and in fairness, also the fourth one, really felt like nothing was happening.
And this one was like, oh, plot, yay. So that was good for me. And I liked the alleged mystery. I say alleged because it didn’t feel, it was very, you described it as a video game. 100% it is a video game. And also it feels like a video game on Easy.
Liz: Yes. I was going to compare it to season five of Star Trek: Discovery, where you’ve got your ancient astronauts, which is again, a racist idea. I know it’s canon, but it’s still racist. But you also have these puzzles that are not very puzzling. And I think Easy mode is a really good way to put it.
Anika: But it did hold my attention in a way that the shuttle one didn’t.
Liz: I’ve got to say, the stuff on the planet, I found very boring. I kept looking at the little marker crawling across the screen to tell me how much episode that was left. And then we’d get back to the ship and the M’Benga stuff, and I was like, this is so good, more of this.
Anika: All of the M’Benga stuff was good. The planet stuff kept expecting explosions and relationship drama and it didn’t really come. And so that kept me interested, but that’s just because it’s me. You said last week that all of the stuff should be on AO3, not on the show. And that is very true. Most of this episode was like, okay, y’all, I appreciate that this is happening on the real series, but also I don’t think it should be.
Liz: If this was a fic, I would think it had a good balance of plot and romance by the standards of fan fiction. I actually have higher standards for professional writing, I think is fair to say.
Anika: So I love fan fiction. So it’s never an insult for me to describe something as fan fiction, but it is a critique.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Does that make sense?
Liz: Fan fiction is amazing. It’s work that people do for free as amateurs, and they do it for the love. If you’re doing something at a professional level, I do kind of expect a higher standard of work to go in. And frankly, there would be better interpersonal stuff in a fic.
Anika: Right. Like I said, I kept waiting for the relations to shenanigans to actually happen. On one hand, I was sort of pleasantly surprised that there were no fireworks. That was not, again, it’s sort of like, oh, okay, that was an interesting choice that interests me. But on the other hand, there was this tension build up and it didn’t go anywhere.
Liz: Yeah. And setting that tension in place was a choice. We literally opened the episode with La’an saying to Christine, don’t be one of those women. And I drew little red flags into my notes because that is an awful thing to say. And La’an just felt completely out of character for all of this episode. She’s mean to Christine for no reason. And also kind of stupid.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: She kept cutting Christine down.
Anika: Right. She kept cutting Christine down. Yes. In sort of this preemptive strike. And it was like, Christine’s done nothing. I don’t understand why you’re fighting with her. Because she didn’t act in any way that would create. It was all in La’an’s head. And on a fic level, that’s interesting. On a, this is in the show level, I was like, wait, I don’t think you understand. Why is she being so caustic? And also, you said stupid. She’s there because she’s the chief of security. And it was a weird episode for La’an.
Liz: Yeah. And then at the end, where Christine and La’an are holding hands. I’m into it. Christine was super handsy with, with La’an the whole episode, but it felt totally unearned. Because we didn’t have that release of tension.
Anika: Right. Exactly. I was like, oh, so what if they dropped both the boys and dated each other?
Liz: I mean, I’m totally in favor of that.
Anika: But of course, none of that was actually there. It was unearned. That whole invisible bridge thing was… So they step on, and the bridge immediately comes to life, and no one else has any. It was so silly to me because it was obvious that it was there. So it was Spock’s idea. So of course, it was true. Spock is always correct.
I actually really liked the moment where Spock convinced Christine to do it. I really liked the moment where Christine took La’an’s hand because she was like, we have to do this together, but don’t worry, I’m here for you.
I actually really liked everything that was underneath the surface with those three characters in that moment, but then they step on the thing and it comes to life and that’s it. And it’s like we’re skipping along the Yellow Brick Road at that point. And it was just… I was just laughing. I was like, okay, I guess that happened.
Liz: Truthfully, there were a lot of points in the plot in both locations where it felt like people were making leaps of logic that only worked because the plot required them to. At one point, I wrote, “trust is a two-way street. Why is this coming up?” Because I don’t understand how it came up in the context of the conversation. And it’s because we needed to call back to it later.
Anika: Exactly.
Liz: You talk about effect preceding cause, the tail is wagging the dog with this script.
Anika: Right. Because you get to that point and you’re like, oh, okay. Now I understand. And because they, right, they were never, they were literally never talking about my trust. I sat and thought about the entire Spock and Chapel relationship and was like, I don’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know what’s going on in this.
I like their whole, their silence in the turbolift, which was a callback, that’s a thing that, and I want to make a fan vid that is just like non-conversations in the turbolifts between Spock and Christine, but there’s no trust involved. That was never their problem. They honestly do trust each other.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: So it was weird.
Liz: Trust has not actually been betrayed at any point in this relationship, except possibly Spock might be cheating on T’Pring.
Anika: It stood out as a, okay, I guess that’s what we’re going to say this relationship drama is about now. And how is Spock and La’an different in that way? Because they can dance together, now they trust each other? That’s where my head went, because it didn’t make sense on any level. But then it comes to the end. And again, I really liked that scene. It was a good scene for those three characters, but also it was not earned in any way.
Liz: Yeah. It felt like the montage of female heroes in Avengers: Endgame. This is really cool, nothing about it has been set up properly. Right.
Anika: None of these people know each other’s names.
Liz: I mean, at this point, I genuinely don’t think that Christine and La’an know each other’s names. Last week, after I watched episode four, I was messaging you about, is sleeping with Spock a violation of the girl code by La’an? I don’t even believe in the girl code. It just seems like a bad move. And you pointed out that they’ve never really been friends. And now I’m like, have they actually spoken before?
Anika: They have. They have. But this is why I said they’re not really friends. It’s because the time that springs to mind, in my mind, the time that they spoke was in the episode, it was in “Charades”, at the beginning of the episode, when Christine is practicing for her Vulcan interview, La’an says, “I don’t understand, why aren’t you practicing with Spock?” And I was like, so that’s proof that they don’t know each other at all. They are not on that level of friends.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: Because she doesn’t end up in the colorful shuttle. She doesn’t get to go on that little adventure because La’an is not Christine’s friend. She’s just someone that she can have a drink with because they work together.
Liz: And that’s fine. That’s actually interesting. It’s just like, why the hostility there? I don’t understand. I don’t understand these dynamics. And honestly, “don’t be one of those women” is one of those lines that doesn’t feel like it’s written by a woman. Can I put that out there? It feels like once again, the show wants us to hate Christine, and Christine’s just like going about her business, doing her thing, hurting no one.
Anika: Christine, so Christine in this episode, I loved Christine in this episode. I was like, oh my gosh, they’re giving her authority. They immediately take it away, but that’s okay because they gave her authority. She was in charge. She was the liaison between Korby and his scientific mission and Starfleet, because she’s on both sides. And I was like, this is a really great place for Christine to be. I’m really into it.
I loved that she told Korby to not do the rash thing and then immediately did it herself. I was like, yes, exactly. That is the best version of this character. And at no point was I angry with the characterization of Christine in this episode. I think she did great with Korby. I think she did great with La’an, honestly. And I think she did great with Spock. It was all good for Christine. And so I think that’s why I was like, I think I like this episode because it respects Christine. But the plot was stupid.
Liz: Oh my god, so stupid. My only beef with Christine in this episode is that she spends quite a lot of scenes on the verge of tears. And I don’t know if Jess Bush made that choice or if it was a director choice. But it didn’t feel earned, the theme of this episode, and made me think no one is going to complain about this, the way they complain about Michael Burnham crying every now and then.
Anika: Okay, so I have this note where I’m saying, this stupid show is making me like Korby. Not as a person, because you just say that he’s even a worse archaeologist than Indiana Jones, which is true.
Liz: Yeah, and that’s a low bar.
Anika: That is a very low bar. Okay, my son and I recently watched all of the Indiana Jones and we loved doing it. But legitimately, by the end of it, our thesis was, Indiana Jones is terrible at every job he has.
Liz: It’s true, he just gets away with it because he looks like Harrison Ford.
Anika: Right, exactly. He gets away there because he’s super charming. And that’s like, oh, these stupid adventure movies are saying something interesting by accident.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: I felt the same way about Korby, where I was like, okay, in this episode, specifically, I started – this is my superpower. I’ve said this before. And why I do like that transformative side of fandom so much is that, if I hate something that I want to love, I’m really good at playing out the prosecution and the defense in my head to the point where I can convince myself is good actually. And when I can’t do that, that’s when I realize that something has really, really disappointed me. And then it has to be blacklisted forever.
Liz: Law and Order, fandom edition.
Anika: Korby in this episode, I was like, oh, I get it. I can see this version of Korby in this episode, who I don’t hate, becoming the version in TOS that I do hate. He started on the path and I was like, I see it, I get it. This is good for me.
Liz: So yeah, yeah, he makes sense. He’s curious and reckless and doesn’t think things through before he picks up the shiny object. This is absolutely a guy who is going to end up being replaced by an android double or whatever happens in “What Are Little Girls Made Of”. Right.
Anika: And he has this obsession with, it’s so stupid, the entire concept of immortality in The Fountain of Youth. The Fountain of Youth got an actual shout out in this episode. And I, again, I’m watching all these movies with my son. And we watched the worst Pirates of the Caribbean, which is about the Fountain of Youth. And I was like, so that’s kind of based in history. And he was shocked. And we looked up all of, you know, Ponce de Leon and the whole thing. And it was just like, this is so absurd. It is sort of a version of archaeology, right? And…
Liz: I guess.
Anika: Well, it’s just, you know, you said that the ancient astronaut theory is racist. And so is most of archaeology. And so is most of…
Liz: Oh, yeah.
Anika: What, you know, all of this is, it’s all related. It feels like the Korbiness of it all, and the ancient astronaut theory, and the fountain of youth, all of that is related in this weird need to live forever in some way. And so when Korby said that, you don’t want that, you don’t want to have your consciousness go on forever to Spock. And it’s so absurd, because if he knows anything about Vulcans, which apparently he doesn’t, they do. That’s what happens on Vulcan.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: So, but anyway, but he says that, and I was just like, oh, I get it now. I see how this version of Korby, I understand why Christine likes him and even loves him, can get to that Korby. And that’s interesting. That’s good. That’s good storytelling. Yeah. Gold star for that.
Liz: It doesn’t have the same gaslighty vibes as “Wedding Bell Blues”. ‘Here’s Roger Korby. He’s such a great guy.’ Here’s Roger Korby. He’s a decent guy with a couple of red flags.
Anika: Right.
Liz: Not as many red flags as La’an for some reason.
Anika: Poor La’an. I’m just… Poor La’an.
Liz: I just think… I said last week that Spock carries a sexually transmitted disease that ruins characterization. And it’s true. You know, when his relationship with Christine was the entire focus of her story, that was bad. They broke up, she has a career again. Now he’s with La’an, and she’s no longer as curious and smart and decent as she was before they were together.
I think this is actually also Sarek’s fault somehow.
Anika: It’s definitely Sarek’s fault. It’s always Sarek’s fault. But it is. If you take it to an extreme and you say Spock’s understanding of a relationship is his parents, it explains everything. Legitimately.
Liz: I also blame Amanda for not modeling a better relationship.
Anika: Sarek and Amanda love each other, but that doesn’t mean that they have a good relationship.
Liz: And it definitely doesn’t mean they’re good parents.
Anika: Right. And so they’re not modeling the kind of relationship that Spock would thrive in.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Anika: That takes the judgment out of it. But legitimately, he would not thrive in a relationship that was like Sarek and Amanda’s. Because Spock is very unique.
Liz: No, no. And he never does.
Anika: Right. He never… that’s the tragedy of it all, is that Spock doesn’t ever actually get that good relationship in canon.
Liz: No. And I think that’s why people glom on to Kirk/Spock so hard and all of that, because his friendships are his life. But he’s also apparently not asexual, so he does have this missing component. Anyway, it’s just bad. It’s just bad.
Let’s talk about something that’s also bad, which is that this show gives us this wonderful queer-coded character in Nurse Gamble, and he has this amazing relationship with M’Benga, where I was totally shipping it, and then he’s killed off.
Anika: Yeah. So I can see where you were going with the shipping, but I was coding it as not paternal, but mentor/metee the entire time, which can, if he had been around longer, I think that – I don’t ship men, generally speaking, but I can get to it, in an Obi-Wan/Anakin kind of way, if we’d gotten more of him.
So I have here that they did learn from Star Trek: Discovery in that they introduced this character early enough that we care about him. I loved him.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: Legitimately, I was like, I love this new nurse. I want him to stick around forever because he’s adorable and he’s eager and he’s just fun. And we need that. And also, M’Benga, I loved the idea that he got to mentor this kid, because, remember in the war episode where he was mentoring a kid and then that kid died. And you could sort of imagine that for the, however many months or years he was doing that, he was involved in the war, he probably mentored lots of kids who then died. And that’s really sad and horrible. And also his daughter, they brought her up for a reason, because we were supposed to remember that he is a parent who lost a child.
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah.
Anika: And so, I was seeing it in those terms the entire time, and it was horrifically sad for me. So, they did-
Liz: My thing is that I have a very long history of shipping mentors with their protégés and vice versa. It’s problematic and there’s an age gap, and that’s why I like it. And so, you’re completely correct, and I definitely think that if he had been a longer running character, we would have been told over and over again how paternal this relationship is. But I ship it.
Anika: That’s fair, because they’re not related, and it’s, you know, it’s whatever. It’s Star Trek. You can ship whatever you want. It’s Star Trek.
Liz: It’s like Janeway/Seven, only less problematic, because Gamble has been a person for more than five months.
Anika: So they introduced the character, and he was in it enough to be interesting and for me to become attached to him. without telling me really anything about him, and they didn’t in this episode either. So this is what my issue is.
Remember Airiam? I remember Airiam was like a cipher until the episode where she died, and then all of a sudden we were like, look at all these reasons that you should care about Airiam. And I didn’t. To this day, I don’t get upset about Airiam’s death because, why am I supposed to care about this? No shade to anybody who does care about her, because they glomped on to her as a background character. That’s totally fine. I’m just like, the show did that poorly. That’s my critique. My critique is the show did not give me a reason to care about Airiam until they had already decided to kill her off.
Whereas I was not expecting this kid to die at any point.
Liz: No, no, same.
Anika: So it hit me much harder because he was just a character that I liked enough to be sad when he died. They didn’t have to give him this whole backstory or shove him in my face in order for me to care about him. They just had to make Joseph care about him. And that was it. That was enough.
Liz: Yeah, he got as much characterization in one episode as I’d say Erica got in at least a season and a half. And never had to tell us multiple times what his job is. So yeah, it’s really sad that they killed him off, but also annoying because he is a queer coded character and they’ve just buried a gay without letting him come out.
Anika: And also, I mean, I’ll be honest, when he was put on the landing party, I was like, oh, so he’s the red shirt.
Liz: I mean, absolutely.
Anika: If you look at the makeup of the landing party, I was like, oh, so this is the extra sacrifice. Got it. So I was expecting it. And he actually, it took longer for him to die than I expected. And he did so good. That kid, I’m like, look, you should definitely add this entire episode to your reel because you play a lot of different roles. And it’s great.
Liz: He’s so good.
Anika: The end, the very, his very last scene is the alien and the alien pretending to be the ensign. And it’s too much, you know? It’s like he’s not the ensign. He’s a little bit too much. He’s acting as the ensign. And I was like, this is, I don’t know how –20s, that actor seems to me to be early 20s.
Liz: He seems very young.
Anika: Yeah, really, I was at the beginning of his career. And I was like, you go. You are really putting your all into this nothing role, honestly. So good job him.
Liz: Yes. We’ve talked about how Babs elevates the people he shares scenes with.
Anika: Yes.
Liz: This actor was equally good with every other scene partner he had. And I really enjoyed watching him.
Anika: Right. He was magnetic. Like this, I would like the whole time, I’m just like, yes, you and I’m really sad that he died and we don’t get to have him anymore.
Liz: Same. I just really wanted him and M’Benga to kiss. I’m sorry.
Anika: It’s okay. You’re allowed.
Liz: Thank you.
Anika: Getting back to relationship shenanigans, I don’t think that Spock and La’an needed to be in an actual relationship in order for anything in this episode to happen. I think they could have had a flirtation and it would have gotten the exact same results.
There was one moment where Spock was unsure of himself. And instead of looking to Christine, he looked to La’an. And I liked that because it was like, it’s told us something about Spock. It didn’t tell us anything about La’an, but it told us something about Spock. And you know, not necessarily a good thing, but something. And I think that that was positive. For me, it was positive.
But it was not … so I say that they learned from Star Trek: Discovery in terms of introduction of secondary characters and their deaths, and also in plotting. I do think, watching this episode, I was like, oh, the other four episodes were building to this. I just didn’t notice until afterwards. But again, it’s not like the best, because I think you want to notice the breadcrumbs before you realize they’re breadcrumbs. That’s like the idea. But the breadcrumbs were there, so that’s like, okay. At least the breadcrumbs were there.
Liz: They still don’t make sense.
Anika: The problem is the pacing, and the pacing problem really comes out of the 10-episode season. That’s what I came out way from it. I was like, okay, so if they had had three more episodes, not even, you know, ten more episodes, literally just three more episodes, I think they could have extended the La’an and Spock stuff, so that it got to a point where it wasn’t out of nowhere, and it wasn’t nonsense, and it wasn’t them jumping into a relationship that neither of them were ready for.
Liz: I agree. I really think The Pitt hit the perfect season length with 15 episodes. However, I don’t know that I want to be lobbying for more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because we’re at the halfway mark of this season and haven’t had a good episode yet.
Anika: I’m just-
Liz: By this point in season two, we had already had “The Broken Circle” and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, whatever, and “Ad Astra”, which are all-
Anika: Good.
Liz: Yeah. So we had three solid episodes.
Anika: I mean, it is—
Liz: It’s rough.
Anika: It’s rough. It is rough. I think that they are— I mean, I think that it’s very clear based on this episode alone, it’s very clear to me that they have an idea of what the overarching plot is. They don’t really know what the filler is. And so they’re just doing whatever for the filler. And sometimes that hits. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow could be seen as filler, but it’s great.
Liz: Oh, yeah. No, that’s the thing. It’s this season, they have decided that episodic means gimmicky. And episodic television is an opportunity to write short stories. And they’re not really taking that. They’re writing cartoons and not especially good cartoons. A lot of this self-referential silly stuff is stuff that Lower Decks has already done better.
Anika: And so in “Shuttle to Kenfori,” I know that’s two weeks ago at this point, but whatever. I’m going to say anyway, my issue with it is that we didn’t need to have the ambiguity of that episode to happen. We didn’t need resolution. The ambiguity was the point. And I think that modern television is really obsessed with making sure there’s no ambiguity. And I think that that is a storytelling flaw.
Liz: I think especially this sort of middlebrow pop science fiction that’s aimed at the widest possible audience, because you get more niche stuff like Foundation that revels in the ambiguity, but something like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and also Murderbot, which is also a Paramount production, are very much, we’re going to stop and explain the subtext for you.
Anika: And so this is, I think, and I’ve said this many times in the podcast, I’ve said it many times on panels, I’ve said it many times in blog posts, and I’ve said it many times on social media. The failure to trust the audience is the number one thing that’s wrong in storytelling today.
Liz: Yes. And the other problem is that if you’re stopping to explain the subtext, you’re only able to explain the subtext that you notice and you understand. And so, you miss things like, the landing party is three straight romantic couples and one queer-coded Black man.
Anika: Right. So again, this is not an insult, but it is a critique that the makeup of the landing parties was 100% fan fiction and not Star Trek storytelling. It was not the level of television that I expect.
Liz: Agreed. I also did not love Uhura/Beto this episode. She’s doing all the work of holding him together while he’s just being weirdly flirty.
Anika: And it’s like, he was really pushy. Wasn’t he really pushy in this episode? Yeah.
Liz: I wrote down, “why is het flirting in this show always so obligatory?” It just felt joyless and compulsive.
Anika: That was where the subtext needed to be. It was like, we don’t need this blatant flirting. We just need there to be chemistry between these people, these two people. This is sounds so stupid. There was so much chemistry between Christine and La’an and between Spock and Korby. And the whole time they were like, no, Beto and Uhura, they have all the chemistry. I’m like, they really don’t. You are forcing this.
Liz: It’s the same with Pike and Batel, where we’re meant to believe in them as a serious committed couple. And it’s like, well, they’ve probably met.
Anika: And you’re over here like, look, M’Benga and Gamble are so much more interesting, you know? It’s like, it’s that, it’s because it’s kind of the same thing, right? One has the medical, psychological, psychosocial, weird alien problem. And the other one is trying to address that, but also while holding on to the person that the person they love is.
Liz: Yeah, it should be a great parallel. And it just, yeah.
Anika: It’s more compelling in M’Benga and this character that we met three episodes ago, than it is with Pike and Batel, who have been together since literally the first episode of this series.
Liz: Literally the first scene of the first episode, yeah. It’s really fascinating to me how much this relationship doesn’t work. And honestly, the fact that Pike doesn’t find hybrid Marie incredibly hot is weird and another sign that he’s not good enough for her. And I’ve got to say, Marie, if you come to Tumblr, there are a lot of monster fuckers there who will embrace you with open arms.
Anika: Are we going to talk about how the plot of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds morphed from Aliens to Aliens Versus Predator now?
Liz: Yeah, unpack that for me, because I have not seen the crossover movies. And I never felt like I was missing out on anything.
Anika: You are definitely not missing out on anything. And I will say upfront that I like less than 50% of the Aliens movies and really none of the Predator movies. I probably most enjoy Predator 2, which is by far the worst.
Liz: But I have only seen Prey, the very recent Native American one, and it was really good.
Anika: So I was talking about this with my son. We’re going to jump to the concept of evil and specifically ancient evil. This episode literally ends with Pelia giving a monologue about ancient evil. And so I straight up just asked my son, I was like, so do you believe in evil? And he answered, no, without a second’s hesitation. He immediately said no. And I was like, okay, so you’re my son. It was like a parenting win for me because I felt like I raised him correctly to have that answer.
Now, and this is where I’m coming from. I am not saying that evil doesn’t exist and neither was my son, but we believe the evil is made. And we also believe that good is made. Everybody starts out at a blank slate and based on the choices you make and the different things you do with that is what you are. And I just straight up do not believe in the concept of something that is born evil. I just don’t. And so I cannot get into this whole belief, I didn’t believe that the Gorn were born evil and I definitely don’t believe that the Vezda, I think that’s what they’re called, are born evil.
So as I described to my son, I was like, so the Gorn existed in Star Trek. Their introduction back in 1966 or whatever was, they are an alien species that we don’t understand and we’ve been fighting with for however long. And we fight them. You know, Kirk has a fist fight with the Gorn and then realizes that there’s no actual reason for him to be fighting the Gorn other than he was told to. And he decides that he’s not going to do that. And then they come to a compromise or whatever. They decide on peace.
And Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reimagined the Gorn as something that has an animalistic evil-ness to them. And I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree that we should ever be killing babies. I’m sorry. I feel like that’s not a crazy thing to say, but you know, I would also say about dragon babies. You know, we shouldn’t be killing them.
Liz: And I think also the Gorn as presented in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds represent a lot of antisemitic tropes that I’m embarrassed that I have only just recently noticed. But they’re lizard people who steal our children and take our land and impregnate our women.
Anika: Right.
Liz: That’s bad.
Anika: And these are the things that, again, I do not think that anyone in the writers room is going out of their way to be like, we’re definitely gonna get in a lot of antisemitic tropes into this. That’s not their goal.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: They truly believe in this-
Liz: I just think again, they don’t understand subtext.
Anika: Exactly. “We have to introduce the concept of evil into Star Trek.” And A, no, they don’t. And I’ve seen the discourse online and I know that there are plenty of people who I respect who disagree with this, but this is my position. So I’m not speaking for all of Star Trek. I’m not speaking for anyone other than myself. But in my opinion, there is no such thing as an irredeemable monster. That’s just not a thing that exists.
And what they did in this episode was introduce an even bigger fish, you know? There’s a fish and then there’s a bigger fish who eats it. And then there’s another bigger fish that eats that fish. And there’s always a bigger fish. So they introduced something that’s worse than the Gorn.
And that’s where the Aliens Versus Predator come in. So there’s the aliens, who are an ancient evil and the predator,s who are an ancient evil. And humanity just sort of gets in between them accidentally. It actually has nothing to do with humanity. It’s all about the aliens and the predators and their ancient war that precedes the concept of humanity. But humanity gets in the way and causes drama, which is a very Star Trek thing. So I see why they were drawn to this idea.
And once they made the Gorn aliens, I understand why they decided to bring in the predators. It makes sense to me. This plot makes sense to me and it could be interesting and they could do interesting things with it. But the people behind it have said explicitly that they are trying to introduce the concept of actual evil into the Star Trek universe.
And again, I just fundamentally do not believe in that in any universe. Not in the one, in our actual reality. I do not believe in evil, born evil. Yes, people can make horrible choices that are evil choices that cause harm to millions of people. Look at politics.
Liz: No, no human is inherently evil. No person is inherently evil.
Anika: No person, no personality.
Liz: From birth.
Anika: No one is just inherently evil from birth. That’s just not a thing that is real. And also no one is inherently good either. You have to make choices. You have to make choices to be good or evil. And that’s where you build your personality and everyone has flaws. Everyone makes the wrong choice sometimes. It’s okay. But when you make many, many, many wrong choices, that’s when you tip over into the dark side and you should try to avoid that. But even if you tip all the way over in there, that doesn’t mean that you are this inherently evil person. You can still make better choices and climb out. You called me idealistic last week.
Liz: No, no, I’m not wrong. I love that you’re idealistic. And I think Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is also weirdly idealistic, in that just as it believes in inherent evil, it believes in inherent good. And therefore, any choice that Spock or Pike make is good because they’re the main characters, regardless of how illogical or nonsensical those choices are. And I do think it’s like two sides of the same coin. And it’s really frustrating.
I am concerned that this series is going to build up to a finale where Marie has to sacrifice her life to stop the other ancient evil.
Anika: Yes. Okay, so…
Liz: The only good thing I have to say about that is that it’s better than what I was concerned about last week, which is that Pike is going to have to take her out.
Anika: So, I keep bringing up the movies that my son and I are watching, but it’s like, I just want to say, I fully recommend watching franchise movies all in a row, in a group. Whoever it is that you can get together to do this, I think that it is very worth doing. But right now, we’re in the middle of Lord of the Rings, which is extremely obsessed with people aren’t one way or another. I can enjoy Lord of the Rings, but I could never actually be a fan of them, is because I do not believe in the worldview that is presented in Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit, and that whole side of all of Tolkien. I just don’t agree with him. I just don’t.
Liz: Yeah, it’s very much a position of his time, and religion, and his wartime experiences. It’s very specific. You can’t really translate it to a wider worldview.
Anika: That’s super interesting on an anthropological level, and I’m not saying that Tolkien is bad, because I think he’s a great storyteller. I don’t really like his writing, but I think he’s a great storyteller, but I don’t agree with his worldview, and that’s fine. Whatever. He doesn’t care what I think.
Liz: He told me that he was really hurt.
Anika: So, but, it feels like the same sort of thing, where they’re trying to create, within Star Trek, this very black and white version of reality, and I’m like, no, that is not the way it is. And I say this about science too.
Liz: It’s just frustrating. It just feels so half-baked. And I’m really, I’m glad we’ve reached the end of our screeners and we can take a couple of weeks off, because I’m kind of sick of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Anika: I’m so sorry.
Liz: It’s not your fault.
Anika: I genuinely enjoy the series more than you do. And I think it’s because I can turn off the little voices inside my head and just pay attention to the characters that I care about and the relationships that I care about and enjoy those.
Liz: Yeah, I don’t have that skill.
Anika: That is legitimately a skill. Like I said, that it’s my super power to make something that I want to like better. And I can do that with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Liz: Yeah. My brother said something about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds being fun TV to switch your brain off to watch. And I was like, this has been a source of conflict between us since we were children, but you know I am not capable of that.
Anika: And that’s fine. You should be proud of that. That’s not something to be apologetic for.
Liz: It’s not very restful. That is true.
Anika: I do think that I, you know, and I’ve said this before, I purposefully watch television that I think is bad because I think it’s actually good. I think that bad television says something about society and about reality, and I want to participate in that.
Liz: And no, and that’s fair.
Anika: I don’t enjoy good television. There’s something weird. There’s something really wrong with me in that I don’t enjoy stuff that I can’t critique. I don’t enjoy that. So I purposefully pay attention to the mainstream schlock that is kavaganda and weird and like a soap opera and whatever, because there are these moments that are really, really brilliant within that.
And, you know, whatever, pulp fiction can be good. And I don’t apologize for that, but I absolutely would not even recommend people to be like me. That’s why I say that I watch it so you don’t have to. Legitimately, save yourself and don’t watch this stuff. Yeah, just read my blog.
Liz: I love your blog. I don’t know that we have anything else to say. Do you?
Anika: I do want to say at one point Spock says, “Curiouser and curiouser, “when he notices that he got hurt. And it happened after he’d seen the result of him getting hurt. He says, “Curiouser and curiouser.” And I legitimately paused my watching to make the notes. All of the notes, literally 90% of the notes that were written into the document were made at that point.
Because I was like, I need to write this down. I need to write down the fact that Spock quoted Alice in Wonderland. Because that is important to me personally, as a person who loves Alice in Wonderland and who loves the idea of Amanda reading Alice in Wonderland to Spock and to Michael, as shown in the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, a season that I hate. It’s my least favorite season of all of modern Trek. However, I love the Alice in Wonderland stuff. It started in Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 and was even attached to Amanda in Season 1. But we actually get to see her reading it to both of them in Season 2. And I really appreciate that.
And so I just loved that line. I was like, this is a callback for me personally. I needed to shut that out because I felt seen and I felt respected as a fan because that one reference of Alice in Wonderland connected this version, the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds version of Spock to the Spock that we got in Star Trek: Discovery, who was obviously built on the Spock that we got in the original series and even in the Kelvinverse. And so I just need to mention that because it was very meaningful to me. Other than that, I feel like we’ve discussed everything.
Liz: I just want to point out that Erica’s hair was really bad this week.
Anika: And weird, right? So Erica had nothing to do this week. Una had nothing to do this week. Pelia was hilarious this week. I do actually want to say that I like the concept of Pelia as a publicity whore.
Liz: Oh, absolutely.
Anika: Fully into that. But Pelia was the one, again, who had this monologue about ancient evil. And that’s interesting to me. On a level as someone who doesn’t believe in the ancient evil, the concept of someone who is that long lived, who does, is actually very interesting. Like I’m like, oh, tell me more.
Liz: I think she was giving that monologue to play up to the camera. It’s not necessarily what she believes. Yeah. She also seems very perturbed.
Anika: So Pelia reminds me of Guinan. I think on purpose, right? Okay. So that’s the one other thing I want to say, is that I’ve seen online, and again, by people I respect, people that I legitimately think have good opinions about Star Trek have been talking about this because Alex Kurtzman brought up the concept of evil in that Q&A back at the very first premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season three. I’ve been talking about it since then, because it’s not something that has been a foundational concept in Star Trek. Star Trek is actually very more nurtured than nature.
Liz: Yeah.
Anika: And so it’s a sort of a deviation to be like, no, there is actual evil in this universe that is undeniably evil. And this person that I’m thinking of, brought up the Borg and how the Borg, when they were first introduced, were this really creepy, scary, evil thing. And then they were softened by Hugh, by the Borg Queen, by Seven of Nine. The concept of the Borg was softened. And obviously, as me, I love the fact that they were softened, because again, I don’t think that, I mean, the Borg in particular, we should never, they are victims. Every single Borg is a victim. So, screw that, if you think that they are evil to begin with. That’s just wrong, in my opinion. But I do understand that they were scary. And that scary thing is like a good villain, and that they were like, when they were softened, if they became less scary. But again, me being me, I just always love a villain who has a reason.
So, I prefer the version of the Borg who have a reason. I prefer the version of the Gorn who have a reason. I prefer the version of the Vezda, whatever they are, that have a reason. I don’t want to believe in anything that is just born evil.
Liz: The other thing with the Vezda is that even in their name, they’re very much a Stranger Things rip off. And we don’t need that.
Anika: Yeah, we don’t need that. I said it was Aliens vs Predator, and I stand by that. I think it is very clearly Aliens vs Predator.
Liz: I think that’s the build up.
Anika: Yes, absolutely, Stranger Things. Legitimately, they were just in the TARDIS. I was like, so this is a TARDIS. The nonsense they did with putting the, put this down first and then put that down first, and then everybody appears in the same space, and just like that console, it was a TARDIS. I’m sorry. It was a TARDIS. They were in a TARDIS. I don’t even like Doctor Who and they were in a TARDIS.
Liz: There’s definitely a feeling like Strange New Worlds is not being an original story, it’s just an assemblage of other science fiction concepts.
Anika: And again, I fully, 100% do that in all of my fan fiction. All of my fan chicken is like, I’m going to borrow this from this and borrow this from this and borrow this from this, but also it is on AO3. I am not trying to sell it anywhere. I have original fiction that I would try to actually get published. My fan fiction, I just put out there in the world and enjoy. So don’t be like that.
Liz: Okay.
Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod. You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.com including links to our social media, credits for our theme music, and transcripts of our episodes.
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