It’s documentary time! Anika and Liz look straight into the camera and share their feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ “What Is Starfleet?”, including…
- We have complicated feelings about this episode! It interrogates the documentary as a form of propaganda, but also interrogates the Federation in bad faith?
- SNW is not equipped to deal with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia through allegory
- Liz would like to apologise to the Spanish speaking population of Earth for her pronunciation of “Beto”
- This is an episode about journalism that doesn’t want the audience to ask too many questions
- Anika appreciates the messiness of this story
- Did we not? Have a whole Prime Directive? About not getting involved in foreign wars?
- SNW has a lot of the same problems as Voyager
- We did not need a self-harm story from Spock, anymore than we needed an animal harm story from Pike
- It’s not enough that now everyone joins Starfleet because of trauma, but now everyone is alone and friendless until they are assigned to the hero ship
- It’s so unfair? How people keep bringing up that murder M’Benga did? It’s actually really triggering for him?
- Anika explains how Starfleet is like the spirit of Norway
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. “What Is Starfleet?”
Liz: Can I say that when you watched this a week ago and said that it was targeted at us personally, I for some reason thought you were saying it was good.
Anika: I mean, I think I said it was the best thing they could ever do. So I can see where that was… But I wasn’t really saying it was the best. Or I think it’s a really good episode. I’m not sure it’s a really good philosophy.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if I can call something good when I’m literally lying in bed at night afterwards trying to make sense of the ethics of it.
Anika: Well, I think that maybe that is a… I think that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. I think that’s what it’s shooting for. And so it’s sort of high concept. And I appreciate that.
Liz: Look, they tried. I don’t know if Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is equipped to deal with Israel and Palestine or Russia and Ukraine via allegory. I would probably say it is the worst possible Star Trek to… No, no, there’s still Star Trek: Enterprise.
I’ve got to say, as we record, in the last 24 hours, it’s come out that one of the Star Trek: Enterprise producers is pitching an Archer series that’s like the birth of the Federation and it’s the President Archer series. And then I watched this episode and I was like, Star Trek in the 2020s is not intellectually equipped to do that. I’m sorry.
Anika: That was all over everywhere. And it’s really interesting because there are people saying that. They were saying like, I don’t know if Star Trek wants to answer those questions or grapple with those questions even, because it’s better left vague for storytelling purposes. And I was like, I want to know what every single one of these people thinks of this episode because I had seen it already.
Liz: I know, I know. I wish I could open a door into the future.
Anika: It’s gonna be so much discourse.
Liz: I will say, oh, I love the documentary as a framing device and the way this episode interrogates the documentary. You compare it to the ER, West Wing and CSI versions. I really loved the ER version. That was the episode they did live and then did live again a couple of hours later for the West Coast. That was really effective, but it had a gimmick beyond being a documentary episode.
Whereas … I’m going to talk about Babylon 5. I’m sorry. Just bear with me. It had two documentary episodes. And this is similar to the second one, which is called “The Illusion of Truth,” where Earth’s fascist government has sent a news crew out to Babylon 5, which has seceded from Earth, to basically do a propaganda piece.
And the Babylon 5 team are all like, great, wonderful, the fourth estate, we can really get our perspective across. And then they’re shocked and amazed to learn that it’s edited to make them look bad. But also, how dare these mean journalists criticize them for the mistakes they’ve actually made.
Anika: So was it like this where it was the actual documentary?
Liz: No, no, Babylon 5 did do that episode as well. Yeah, yeah. Are all just following those whole episodes.
Anika: Yeah, so it was like the recording part. I think why this was so effective for me is because it was the actual documentary. And so I think that it is asking you to interrogate it in a way that those episodes do not because they’re more like a gimmick.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That’s why I think that this was really, I think it was very effective in terms of the presentation of the story and the point of view. And I think that maybe you and I are asking questions that they thought this answered. And I don’t think that it answered them.
Liz: I would say not only does this episode think it answered these questions, but it doesn’t consider the questions legitimate. What separates a federation from an empire is a really good question, and one that we have discussed. And as you know, I’m very much on team ‘the federation is the most benevolent an empire can be. But it’s still an empire and it’s still worth interrogating that’.
And this episode suggests that just bringing up the subject is offensive, which is in fairness, the attitude of a lot of fans. And also, no offense, but a lot of Americans when you talk about American hegemony, not you, because you’re not like that.
Anika: I’m not a very good American, it turns out.
Liz: You’re doing your best.
Anika: When they start throwing out Americans, I will be on the list.
Liz: I have a sofa bed.
Anika: When they released the titles of the episodes, I saw “What Is Starfleet?” and I was like, oh, they’re listening to our podcast. They’re stalking me online and they know that I’m constantly complaining that they keep saying, we are Starfleet and they don’t ever explain what that means. So I was like, they’re coming for me directly.
And then I watched the episode and I was like, oh, there really are in fact coming for me directly. From beginning to the end, this episode was directed at me. I mean, obviously not really, not personally, but I do think that maybe fans like me.
Liz: I think it’s certainly trying to, but it doesn’t understand the question that we’re asking, and so it doesn’t know how to respond to it. There are things this episode does that I love, like freedom of information in the 23rd century. Yes, transparency is at the heart of democracy. Uhura is the heart of this episode. This is a really wonderful episode for developing Ortegas, who is in traditional Erica fashion, dodging and weaving and avoiding the question. It’s just the mission itself is like, oh, guys.
Anika: Yes. So do we want to get into the mission itself?
Liz: Well, I do want to say this episode also, this episode for me comes back to late Star Trek: Enterprise with the Federation building stuff. And you know, in one of the very last episodes, there’s, I think it’s Mayweather’s ex, who has become a journalist and she’s asking really good questions about Starfleet as a colonialist and imperialist force. And I was like, oh my god, I can’t believe we’re waiting to the very end of the series to ask these questions. And then it turns out she’s an anti-Starfleet terrorist because that’s the only way to criticize Starfleet.
There’s no legitimate criticism of Starfleet. And Beto is, he’s a ‘just asking questions’ guy. And it turns out that his problem with Starfleet is because of his trauma. And A, I think there are ways to critique Starfleet without doing so in bad faith, which Beto is. And also, I don’t think you need to be traumatized by an organization to criticize it, personally.
Anika: I’m gonna say something. I think that Uhura is the one who tells Beto that that’s what he’s doing, right? This is your trauma and you’re just upset by your sister. It actually has nothing to do with Starfleet itself. And I think that she convinced him. I’m not sure that that is everything that was happening when he first started. I think that he met Uhura and likes her as a person and wants to…
He was just angry at all of Starfleet. Maybe it was because of his sister. I don’t know. I’m saying that there is an interesting… And then this is why I’m interested in the format as well, is because maybe Beto is an unreliable narrator. I want to see the raw footage.
Liz: I think that makes this episode a lot more interesting. Release the uncut version.
Anika: Yes, because it’s Uhura. And it’s like, it’s perfect that it’s Uhura. It should be Uhura at the heart of this episode. But if they didn’t have the Uhura and Beto whatever’s going on between them, happening at the same time, I just really feel like she has a pull on him and tells him what he wants to hear. And that gives him the ability to make this a positive spin on something that he wasn’t sure was positive.
Liz: No, that’s really interesting. And it’s why Uhura is such a good ambassador for Starfleet, because she can persuade him to change his propaganda to make it more supportive.
I’m sorry, I am so cynical. I think you’re looking at this episode in good faith, and I’m maybe not. I think your version is a lot more complex and interesting.
Anika: Well, you said that about us three episodes ago, because I like it. I think it sparked a whole conversation with my son, who hasn’t even seen it and barely watches Star Trek anymore. But I was telling him about the Jikaru and the decision at the end. And I was sort of like, but then what happens to the war?
Liz: Like, what about…?
Anika: What happens to that side? And he was like, well, they decided to enslave a creature. So they brought it on themselves. And I was like, I don’t know, because even the one person from that planet that we met was saying that it was a mistake and they shouldn’t have done that. So they’re not bad people. I’m curious what happens next.
So, even with a non-fan, I was able to have these conversations and we did discuss. And we decided that the… So in terms of the Israel, Palestine and Russia, Ukraine, I think that that was there and I think it was a poor choice on their part and they should have made it as not about that as possible.
Liz: Absolutely.
Anika: Because it just adds things that are not necessary or good. Both times I watched this episode, I paused at that screen to read it three times through, to try to understand what they were saying, because I wanted to know which side struck first, the one with the millions of deaths or the one with hundreds of thousands of deaths. To try to figure out what real world situation I was supposed to be putting this into.
And I think that it’s not their fault that there’s all these terrible things happening in the real world, but I think it would have been better if they had a situation that was less fraught or less connected. I agree. If it was blatantly some war that happened 500 years ago, or just unrelated to anything, it would have been better.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And it occurred to me last night while I was lying awake worrying at it that the scripts for these episodes were completed before the strike. So before 7 October, before everything in Gaza has escalated. Which means that this is more likely to be about Russia and Ukraine. But the idea that America should withdraw support from Ukraine is very much a pro-Russian op.
So again, the politics of this episode is really messy. And I like your note that whichever analogy you think this is, it’s both thinly veiled and ambiguous, adds nothing and is not the point. And I just think when you have so much death and so much violence to use these conflicts in such a pointless way, it’s just tasteless.
Anika: Right. Again, I don’t know what they were thinking about back. But I do think that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been pretty on the nose about politics in the past. So I think I don’t think I’m reading too much into it to think that they’re trying to say something.
Liz: No. And part of the problem is also that Anson Mount is a self-professed Christian Zionist, and in 2023, he was trolling Muslim Congress people on Twitter. So there’s that in the background too. Just intentionally or otherwise, the context of this episode makes it more problematic. Right.
Anika: The morality of the creature and protecting the creature, we’re supposed to be on that side. We’re supposed to see that as the greater good. And I’m not even saying that it isn’t the greater good. I’m just wondering what the consequences of that choice are. Maybe it’s in the raw footage, but this particular presentation of what happened is not interested in that question.
Liz: No. I also discussed this episode last night, I discussed it with my flatmate, and she said that it sounds like that sort of white liberal, “Oh, we really should save these people. Wait, wait, they’re cruel to animals. Wait, wait, they throw gay people off the roofs of buildings, so you don’t actually need to support the Palestinians.” It just feels like reaching for an excuse to not support people in need.
But then there’s the whole question of why is the Federation supplying weapons to these people? Do we not have a prime directive? And I know we’re anti-prime directive, but the whole point of it, as Roddenberry conceived, it was that American interventionism was a bad idea and the Federation isn’t going to do that.
Anika: Yeah, I mean, to me, it was wild that Erika, of all people, was the one who was like, “I don’t think we should be doing this.” Because, as we all know, one of her three character traits is, “I was in a war.”
Liz: And she’s space racist.
Anika: And she’s space racist. So it’s interesting that she was the one who was like, “Why are we on this side of helping these people now?” So that was one of the things I couldn’t follow, why? And it was purposefully obfuscated, because I think that they didn’t want to answer that question either, because that was all of the whole mission parameters were discussed in the staff meeting where Erika and Uhura don’t get to know what’s going on. They’re just told what to do. So it was purposefully vague as to what Starfleet wants out of this or why it was happening.
Liz: Yeah, but there comes a point where vagueness is just incoherence. I don’t understand what’s happening with this story. I don’t understand what the intentions were. And I think in this case, the intentions really matter. And it’s like we were saying with Pike sending La’an away into danger last week. Sometimes you do need to stop and explain what’s happening.
Anika: Yeah, I also discussed that episode with my son. And I told him how Kirk said that he was wasn’t sad about them until he found out they were human. And my son, who again, he mainly knows the Kelvinverse movies, which he loves, and some of Star Trek: Discovery.
Liz: He is a man of taste.
Anika: But he was like, Captain Kirk would never. He was so mad. He was like, “I hate it when they say something in the real canon that you know they would never say, because then you have to accept it as real and you shouldn’t.” He was spitting angry about a character that, he’s a Spock guy. Kirk is not his favorite. When he was like, “I barely know Captain Kirk, but I know that.”
Liz: So he’s wise.
Anika: So they’re doing badly. That’s just what I’m saying.
Liz: And I think that the problem last week it carries over into this week, because millions more people are going to die because they let the Jikaru end its life. And it’s like, well, they’re only aliens. Hashtag horse lives matter.
Anika: Yeah. The fact that the Jikaru, they’re initially described as livestock. He literally says they’re technically livestock. Clearly they’re not. Clearly that the Jikaru are more than livestock, but it’s still we went from treating this as property to treating this as we are going to bend all the rules for them and not worry about the Lutani.
Liz: I feel like a hypocrite, because I hate any story of animal cruelty or animal injury. I wanted to fast forward through Pike’s whole story about the horse he had to put down. And also, I’m sorry, it’s the 23rd century. And I really do think that vet science should have improved, and all horses can live to a happy horse old age before they die a natural horsey death.
Anika: Anyway, but Pike doesn’t believe in that. He lives on a ranch as if it was the 19th century. Yeah.
Liz: And I guess I have ethical issues with that from an animal cruelty perspective. So the thing is, sometimes I lie awake and I worry about Gaza. And then when I really want to upset myself, I worry about the pets and the animals who are dying. And it’s not that I value animal lives over human. I just hate to think of animals suffering because they didn’t get a say. They didn’t get a say any more than babies. Anyway, so that’s me.
But also, if the people of Gaza wanted to load up a dolphin with explosives and put it in a trebuchet and launch it at the IDF checkpoints stopping them from getting food, I’d be like, well, that’s rough for the dolphin, but good on them. I feel like a hypocrite. But also I don’t think we should be exploding dolphins.
Anika: That’s why I just wish there was more. I wish that there was again any… And it could have been in text, in white on black caps lock text, the way other stuff was, it said something like, and then the Federation started negotiations with the Lutani and the … starts with a K, I don’t remember them, people. They’re ongoing. It doesn’t even have to say that there was a resolution. It could just say that we started negotiations or we’re approaching them to start discussions. Anything that said that, and also we care about the Lutani and the K people. We should care about them too, even though they’re the aggressors.
Liz: No, no.
Anika: Why are they the aggressors? Let’s find out.
Liz: Yeah. I thought this was going to be an episode where the Enterprise is sent in to negotiate a peace, and Beto is asking like, who does the Federation think it is? Is this cultural imperialism? Is this ethical? And those are good questions. But instead we get this sort of tortured analogy and this story without a good resolution, except that, yeah, I don’t understand the choices. The theme of this season.
Anika: Yeah, I definitely don’t understand the choices. I like this episode for what it’s attempting. And I think that I like mess and I like questions and I like thorny bits. And so it doesn’t have to make sense or be good. And for me to find it worthy and valid and interesting.
Liz: No, I understand that. I just think that if you’re dealing with such complicated and ugly real world issues, you kind of owe it to everyone to do a reasonable job.
The other thing, it reminded me of this recurring thing throughout Star Trek: Voyager, particularly in its later seasons, where anyone who needs Star Trek: Voyager‘s assistance for any reason is deceiving them and undeserving. There’s no mutual aid in the Delta Quadrant. And this sort of had that same isolationist, we shouldn’t get involved tendency, even though we also literally have Uhura giving a pro-interventionist speech.
Anika: Right. I think that is a valid comparison. And I mean, I love Star Trek: Voyager, but I just said that it doesn’t have to be good for me to love something. And I do think that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has a lot of Star Trek: Voyager‘s problems. I think that they have parallel journeys that they’re on.
Even though, on one hand, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is in Federation space, but they’re in the Wild Wild West Federation space, the pre-TOS, where things are weird. So there is that. But I don’t know, they do have this same, ‘we’re trying to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing out here’ vibe.
And yeah, it was a huge problem on Star Trek: Voyager that they were trying to, quote unquote, hold on to Federation ideals in a place that didn’t even know what those were, forget about if they agreed with them or not. And what that meant was that Voyager was constantly at odds with everyone. And they weren’t even given the choice or the option.
It was sort of like, you can’t be Federation because we’re the only Federation ship out here, and this is like null space where the Federation doesn’t exist yet, so we can’t invite you into the club, and so we can just be kind of jerks about you should give us what we want, and we will give you nothing back. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. It takes a real terra nullius approach to the Delta Quadrant. And I kind of feel like, you’re right, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has a lot of that, and it has a lot of Star Trek: Enterprise. And it’s a problem because neither of those are what I would call hugely successful at being stories. They both have very deep flaws, which as you say makes them interesting. But I just want things to be good sometimes. Is that so wrong?
Anika: I mean, this was at least a polished episode.
Liz: That’s true. That’s true. It looked great. The whole execution of the documentary was amazing.
Anika: It was really good. It was really well made.
Liz: Yeah. Everyone gave a great performance, including Anson Mount.
Anika: Yeah. I mean, I think that Pike in this … I don’t know, he was literally describing horses the whole time. And he was a manly man. He was also trying to, you know, grapple with something. Anson Mount did well.
And this was a version of this, this was a true to who I understand Pike to be version of Pike, which I feel like has not been true as much because he’s just been annoying me. I don’t know. It was like, this was the best version of Pike that we could get because it’s not, it’s on camera and he knew he was on camera.
Liz: Oh yeah, yeah. And Pike does get to indirectly kill some babies and he loves that. So, you know, that’s good for him.
Anika: But he also gets to save some babies.
Liz: He’s just very selective about which babies he saves.
Did you spot Batel in the last scene?
Anika: Yes. Yes. Which was weird, right? I was like, whoa. I mean, she doesn’t speak, so maybe she wasn’t paid for it. But I was like, she’s a named character. I feel like she’s going to get paid for this even though she does nothing and good for her.
Liz: I’m assuming that she had some scenes that were cut and probably about the Cayuga and Uhura’s friend who died, and Uhura didn’t notice because apparently she’s not a very good friend.
Anika: Yeah, that was a little … why? Why was that? Did we need a self-harm story from Spock? No, we did not. We absolutely did not need a self-harm story from Spock to show that Spock’s childhood was terrible. We know that. Maybe the audience of this, not the in real life audience, but the fake audience that’s watching this documentary, maybe they needed to know because they don’t know Spock’s history.
Liz: I keep picturing Sarek watching this.
Anika: I know, I was like, what the? Any Vulcan, any Vulcan watching this documentary would be like, oh, black mark against Spock and Sarek and anyone related to any of them. Amanda was shunned for months after this was on Vulcan.
Liz: She couldn’t buy eggs. T’Pring’s watching and she sees the bit where he brings tea or coffee to La’an, and she’s like, mm, he’s moved on again. How logical.
Anika: Right, I mean, they’re so, okay, now I just, I really need everyone watching’s reaction. Everyone’s going to be amazing.
Liz: I’m going to need Vulcan letterboxed.
Anika: Spock in particular, I understand, I do think that Spock’s answers were good for the story. They were good reasons for “What Is Starfleet?” and they helped the thesis, but it was, I was like, wow, Spock, that’s a lot. That’s a lot for like everyone who’s going to work with you from now on to know for the rest of your life, this exists in the world for anyone to watch. What’s up with that?
Liz: It’s going to follow him the way, like, your old Instagram account follows you. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be hilarious.
Anika: I mean, McCoy.
Liz: Oh my gosh.
Anika: McCoy is holding this in his back pocket for the rest of their lives.
Liz: Sometimes Spock says something just a little bit ridiculous, and McCoy just sends him a screengrab from the documentary. Not even a bit with Spock, just a screengrab to let Spock know that he has it.
Anika: So the Uhura section, also that was really sad. I understand Uhura’s backstory is that she only joined Starfleet because she needed to get away from home because her entire family was gone, and that’s all horrible. And so I understand why she wouldn’t be the most social butterfly at Starfleet Academy, but it was also weird. And did he know? Because he doesn’t pause and say like, oh, let me look up who that is. And then, oh, she’s dead.
Liz: Yeah, he knew.
Anika: He straight up was like, oh, she’s dead. Did you know that? Like that’s not great.
Liz: So no, this is why you don’t flirt with your journalism or documentary subjects because it raises ethical problems like this. But also, it’s not enough now that everyone joins Starfleet because they had a tragic and traumatic childhood. It’s that they didn’t have any friends until they reached the ship that’s the main, you know, the main ship of the series.
Anika: Yeah, which is, that’s really dark.
Liz: Yeah, and it just serves to make the world even smaller.
Anika: Yeah, I don’t want to believe that it’s like a submarine thing, you know, if you’re on a submarine, you have to trust those people and respect those people and care about those people more than anyone else in the world because you’re literally depending on each other for everything, because you’re far away from everything and underwater and there’s pressure and it’s just, you’re stuck, that’s it, you can’t leave. And I feel like that is what they’re trying to say with all of this?
Liz: No, okay, weird fact about me, I love submarine shit, I love submarine movies, I’ve read books about submarines, and the thing is, yes, you have this very, very tight bond between submariners, they are very dependent on one another, but they also, that bond when the assignment ends, otherwise, you would just have whole navies full of these incredibly co-dependent cults.
Anika: Which sounds bad.
Liz: It would probably be bad. Being able to form these bonds and then release them is part of the psychology that they look for in submarine crews.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: It feels like they’re going for the Discovery ‘we’re a family and we’re trauma bonded’ thing, but Discovery is like that for very specific reasons, and this is the Enterprise
Anika: You’re like, guys, you’re supposed to be better than this. So I have my little list here. First is, did they say actually Starfleet was, right? So, and I have first, no one said this explicitly, it’s really not the end, but it’s an escape. Every single person suggested that Starfleet was an escape for them. Spock, Uhura, Ortegas, Una, everybody.
Liz: There’s a whole episode about how Starfleet is an escape for Una. Everybody except M’Benga.
Anika: Right. As we’re talking about Beto’s choices, what was the whole, “Oh, by the way, M’Benga is a war criminal. Hey everybody, in case you didn’t know, M’Benga is a war criminal that they don’t want to talk about.” That was weird.
Liz: I’ve got to say, and this is – again, I feel like a hypocrite and M’Benga totally murdered a dude and then covered it up and lied about it and got away with it. And yet, because I like him, I’m like, “Stop being mean to M’Benga about that murder he did! He’s just had a really hard time. Your Honor, it’s actually really unfair to keep coming back to the murder.”
Anika: I mean, clearly, I’m like, okay, so maybe this is how he gets dragged and ends up demoted and whatever. Because this is now just straight up we’re using M’Benga. And it would be so American of them for Starfleet to use this documentary that is pro-Starfleet propaganda in the end, to be like, oh well, we’re not a military organization and this is our proof. And because of that, we’re going to now punish this one black guy for being too violent.
Liz: Oh my God, that is so American.
Anika: I just think that’s what’s going to happen.
Liz: And this goes back to “Under The Cloak Of War”, and all of that. I don’t think M’Benga has actually committed any actual war crimes. He’s like a special forces soldier who does precision strikes against very specific military targets. It’s violent and horrible, but yeah, it’s legitimate war shit. And then it’s like, well, Starfleet is the best we’ve got, if not us, then who? Which comes back to the American interventionism thing again. It’s a reasonable perspective.
And I do think that if the Federation wants to be a benevolent empire, then intervening to minimize war and to negotiate peace is something that they should be trying to do without imposing their culture on other non-aligned worlds.
You’re always going to get some cultural imperialism, but there’s always a question of how toxic that is. Can it be an exchange rather than a one-way thing? And the bigger the Federation gets, the more one-way it becomes. I’m just really torn. And then it’s like, Starfleet is control, it’s family, it’s a light in the darkness, it’s the people.
Please tell me about the spirit of Norway.
Anika: So Uhura ends up with the line, the thesis, the answer is the question. Everybody else has their answers, but we end on Uhura saying that Starfleet is the people. And then we see their little dinner party. It’s all lovely, right?
So that is the same ending to the now retired short film, The Spirit of Norway, that would play at the end of the Maelstrom ride in Epcot until it was rebranded as Frozen Ever After. And this movie plays in my mind. It starts with a kid touching a viking boat, and then we have the ocean, and it’s very pro-Norway, obviously. Norway is amazing, you guys. We used to be vikings, and now we’re oil people or some nonsense.
But there’s also ballerinas, and there’s a library, and there’s all this stuff, and they have festivals. And obviously, it’s very oceanic. And the point of it is that Norway is not vikings or what they can give to the world. Norway is the people. It’s the character of the people.
And so, all I could think, and I know this is very specific to me, but when she said Starfleet is the people, I was like, just like Norway! And that’s all I could think of. I heard Celia saying it in the Norwegian accent of this narrator from Epcot that doesn’t even exist anymore. You can watch it on YouTube, though.
Liz: Maybe I will.
Anika: It’s so… The point of Epcot was each little country, they were building the city of tomorrow, right? Where there were no borders, and you could just wander from one country to the other and enjoy all of their culture. But each pavilion in the World Showcase was purchased by that country. So, Norway gave Disney money to make that pavilion, so that people would come to Norway. That was the whole purpose of it all.
And so, at the end of this, this… Again, I really enjoyed watching this documentary and thinking about it, and I felt like it brought up all these interesting questions. But it ends with this patented, super cheesy, you know, fake Disney propaganda line. And I can’t unthink that. I can’t unthink it as they’re just trying to sell me Starfleet the way that they were trying to sell me Norway. And it half works, because I totally want to go to Norway. And I came away thinking like, you know what? Maybe they are the best we have, you know?
Liz: They are the best we have, but also if I’m a Federation citizen watching this documentary, what I’m taking away from it is that I need to write to my Federation Council member and go, hey, what are we doing here? Are we supplying weapons to other cultures?
Anika: Right.
Liz: Is that not illegal?
Anika: And also, again, do we really want the paramilitary organization that we have? Because it’s not like they proved that they weren’t a paramilitary organization. Do we really want it run by traumatized people who don’t fit in anywhere else?
Liz: Absolutely not.
Anika: And that’s the thing.
Liz: And this has been a problem through a lot of new Trek. No one joins Starfleet because they want to serve something greater or because they want to explore and meet new civilizations and expand the breadth of human and humanoid knowledge. They’re all joining because they’re traumatized and they need to get away from something.
And once or twice, that’s an interesting story. You get down to, oh, Erica joined because her mother was dying and she needed to get away from that. And it’s like, hmm, hmm, guys.
Anika: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Liz: And I do wonder how much of this is due to the post-9/11 US military recruitment, targeting people who are in need and who are vulnerable and who have reasons to want to join the military, the US military, to get away from their lives. Maybe this is not a good way to run a military either.
Anika: No, no, it isn’t. The cynical answer is they can take those people and they can turn them into whatever they want because they don’t have strong identities to begin with, because they are so traumatized, which is bad.
Liz: Hmm, interesting.
Anika: So, yeah, I mean, I would never join Starfleet for the same reasons I would never join the military, so I am not the audience for that, but…
Liz: It could be worse. Apparently, recruitment to the Australian military is way up because of TikTok ads. So, I don’t think that’s better.
Anika: I mean, let’s not get into my anti-militarism. It’s fine. Norway!
Liz: I do think that the reaction to Beto’s questions are very much like he’s asking sort of these big picture maximalist questions about Federation policy, and everyone is going, “How dare you dishonor our troops by saying that the Iraq invasion is bad?” They’re making it personal.
Anika: Right, right, right. I mean, that’s what happens.
Liz: Yes.
Anika: That’s what happens and that’s why we never get any answers to those questions. And because…
Liz: I just want Starfleet to be better.
Anika: I’ve given up on Starfleet being better.
Liz: Yeah. Which is funny because you’re the idealist. Oh my god, this is the one case where you’re too cynical. Yeah.
Okay, shipping news.
Anika: Okay, so Uhura and Beto, I don’t think this was great for them.
Liz: I feel like it’s over for them.
Anika: I think she’s right that he had an agenda when he came on the ship. And then he met her and it affected his plans. And that’s a bad way to start a relationship. So, I’m not rooting for them.
Liz: No, but Uhura has had her little flirtation, and now she can get on with the important business of getting closer to Scotty.
Anika: Or Spock and stealing him away from La’an.
Liz: Oh, God.
Anika: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to. No, no.
Liz: Completely correct.
Anika: Okay. So, Spock and Chapel continue to be weird trends.
Anika: Again, I really like the concept of a long-term Spock and Chapel awkward relationship. There’s just forever weird until they’re too old to care about it. So, I’m okay. I’m okay with it. But she definitely risked her life to help him, which, you know.
Liz: I’m really into the bit where the weirdness between them manifests as them being kind to each other.
Anika: Yeah.
Liz: And looking out for each other and saving each other. Like this. It’s like, oh, now I’m willing to ship it.
Anika: It’s actually very interesting that they get on really well now. It’s not like the weirdness has gone away, but it’s just manifesting itself as we get along and are on the same wavelength and sort of understand each other.
Liz: And it’s notable that there is no passive-aggressive undertone. There’s no, ‘we’re trying so hard to be respectful.’ They’re trying, but they don’t seem to resent the effort.
So the real twist this week is that I really liked what they did with Spock and La’an. And if they played that connection out as a slow burn and gave us this episode before that they got together, I would probably be much, much more open to it, because La’an talking about how Starfleet has provided her with discipline and she thinks this is something she needs, as she joins Spock in Vulcan meditation. I’m like, oh, okay. And this feels so much more in character for her than being a dance instructor.
Anika: Right. I was like, guys, I mean, on one hand, they’re doing Vulcan stuff together as well as the human stuff, which is the dancing, which is good. It means that they’re sort of balanced. I like that. I agree. I was like, this is nice. This is a lovely version of this relationship. Yeah.
Liz: I think if they hadn’t rushed it, it would have been much more popular. Because right now, I think there’s one person on Tumblr who ships it and that’s it. I will say though, to have Spock going, “being in Starfleet enables me to explore facets of myself that would be taboo on Vulcan,” as he’s heterosexually holding hands with a lady, feels like a bit of a slap in the face. They just do not want a shred of queer subtext. They are no homoing so hard.
Anika: It’s a little weird at this point.
Liz: It’s so weird.
Anika: Or a lot weird.
Liz: It’s so weird.
Anika: It’s wild to me that Spock is saying all that out loud. Just, Spock who, no one knew he had siblings until they showed up, is out here.
Liz: Do you think?
Anika: Who didn’t tell anyone that his parents were the Vulcan ambassador, that Spock is out here just talking about all the taboo things he’s doing in Starfleet. I just, I don’t quite understand what’s happening.
Liz: New theory, do we think Spock has hacked into Federation databases and just wiped this documentary entirely?
Anika: So no one’s ever seen it? I think that no one on the staff of the show thought about how people would watch this. That’s what I think. I think that was never in their mind about the audience who was not the Star Trek audience, but the audience that was the Starfleet audience, the Federation audience. They didn’t think about those people at all.
The Klingons are watching this. You know they hacked in and got a copy. I’m sorry. This is so bad business. I don’t know what to tell you guys. It’s a security risk. So, what we have to do…
Liz: In a few decades time, Gorkon is approaching Spock about negotiating a treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. And he opens by sending a screen cap from the documentary going, this you?
Anika: It’s really, really, really funny to me. I’m going to be enjoying that part forever. And it’s entirely unintentional.
Liz: Yeah. And then our final ship is Una and M’Benga, who I remember we decided to ship them way back in episode 3 of the first season.
Anika: And then they’ve barely spent any time together.
Liz: Yeah. And since M’Benga and La’an can’t be a thing now, I’m willing to go back to my original position. They were hot in their boxing scene.
Anika: I was like, so if this whole sparring thing, the last people, everybody spars, and then, I don’t know, guys, it’s just sexy, sexy.
Liz: I think it’s a problem that you can’t write a sparring scene that’s not sexy.
Anika: Yeah. It’s also just that he has chemistry with everything and everyone.
Liz: It’s honestly a problem. It’s getting to be a serious problem for me. I was going through Babs Olusanmokun’s IMDB. He’s been in a lot of stuff and most of it looks really bad and I have no choice but to watch every single thing.
Anika: Just to get your fix, right? Yeah.
Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Are we good to go?
Anika: I believe so.
Liz: 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 some transcripts of our episodes.
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And join us in a week when we’ll be discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3, Episode 8, “Four and a Half Vulcans,” an episode I’ve been dreading since we got a clip from it months ago. Are you going to tell me it’s not as bad as I expect?
Anika: No, it is worse.