thanks, same with yours! it seems like we are having a hard time putting the show down. i wish it would be back on faster than 2020. its just a really good show

also, i do keep returning to the Pavoh episode, even though it was my least favorite episode and watching experience. While we see Sauru continue to become such a strong and likeable character, how do we square that with his actions on Pavoh. The question i keep thinking about is, if you remove a critical influence on your life, like overwhelming fear, is that version of yourself your real self. is that who you truly are, or is it the opposite. can we blame him for what happened? is that who he truly is? or is it more complex than that. i just keep going back to, if you take away fear in a person that is and always has been dominated by it, who is that person? and how do we judge their actions? and how does that person navigate that experience? what do we do with that? i think this is mainly why i really liked this episode even though i didnt. I would be interested to see if they ever go back to that and talk about it.

Two notes so far. I didn’t really realize how much detail and significance of that detail was in this show until the beginning of the second half of the season. I was so used to other treks, particularly voyager, where most things don’t tie too much into one another. When I started watching I was so focused on the broader plot that I ended up not understanding it as well as I did after the rewatch and after listening to this and other podcast and recaps. I’m just so impressed by how much thought and care went into this show.  Second, I don’t know how writing or producing a tv how works, but it seems like the writers underestimated how much detail would be lost in the time between individual episodes, and between all the story arcs. There are so many more things that make sense when I watch the episodes back to back than when I watched it week to week and with the large break in between. I don’t think they were fully aware of how that time lapse would affect the audiences understanding of the story overall and how things unfolded. Particularly with Lorca’s story. When I first watched it, I saw Lorca change from a complex character to a one dimensional villain, and it seemed like a big failure on the parts of the writers and a disappointing undevelopment in the show. But rewatching it, I can see how creating this character knowing who he really is could blind you to how he developed through the eyes of the audience. We see him as such an interesting nuanced character because of how he was able to pull this whole plan off and the decisions he made to do it. We contextualize him from a perspective that I think the writers just didn’t have. So I guess I wonder how much of Lorca’s decent to evil villain trope was because of a lack of audience perspective than bad writing or storycraft. But maybe those things aren’t independent of each other. My point is, after rewatching the season, knowing that Lorca is mirror Lorca, my understanding of what happened in episode 13 has changed and makes a lot more sense. I can see how he was just really lucky and desperate instead of a nuanced genius. 

So just to make a comment on episode 8 in Pavoh. I don’t think they ever did go very deeply into why Sauru behaved as extremely as he did. To me, I have extreme anxiety and know a lot of people who do and really relate (somewhat) to his experience of feeling peace and fighting to not let it go. It really reminds me of how addiction can work, particularly with people who have anxiety and depression disorders. The relief from the kind of torture that the fear constantly extols on you is extremely powerful and seducing for lack of a better word. To face going back to it once you’ve experienced a complete sense of peace or serenity is it’s own kind of dread and fear.  It really resonated with my lived experience and I thought it was a great parallel for the connection of mental illness with addiction. I don’t know if that was the point, but it did give a great reflection of how those two things can play out. That’s not to say that violence or coercion or insanity is acceptable, but in those moments it can feel like you are totally powerless over everything and you will do what it take to maintain that feeling. So, although I am bringing in drug use and addiction, it didn’t seem like Sauru was under any influence except his own lack of fear. And I think that makes a really great thought experiment of what would happen if we lost our capacity to feel fear. Which ties into drug use, because that’s the simplest way to remove fear, but I think it’s bigger than just that. If you lost your capacity to feel fear, would you be under any moral considerations for your actions. Is fear the cornerstone of morality. Does it play the primary role informing our behavior? Or is that the case just for those who are consumed in it, whether because of a mental illness independent of circumstance or of a ptsd sort of influence. And if that’s the case, particularly for both these cases, inherent or learned, can one be “at fault” because of their actions in the absence of that fear and anxiety. Which I believe yes, you still have control over your actions including getting help for these issues and finding constructive ways of managing that fear.  The other side of this is people who do not have any issues and who are mentally “normal”. What happens if that fear is lost for them. Would the reaction be the same? Which kind of goes to the importance of fear, but also the cause or driving force of morality. Which is not necessarily based in fear and instead is based in either something independent of emotion or of empathy and compassion. So I guess how do all these things play out for people who experience fear in different ways and different intensities. I also think this can go to the question of morality based in and out of religion. Is morality a fear in being punished by a god, or is it an inherent set of values that come from being a socialized “animal” or something else. Morality as a set of principles that can and do exist out of a belief in some religion or supernatural set of consequences for “doing the wrong thing”. So I think this whole episode is an interesting display and consideration of all of these things, whether it was meant to be or not. 

She’s just such a wonderful character and I can never get over the relationship between her, Michael, and the crew. In such a short period of airtime she by far became my favorite Star Trek captain and such great representation for so many different things. But, I guess I need to move on, but if there was a prequel of adventures of the shenzhou my life would be complete. I love this podcast and it’s such a treat to delve so deep into the show. I haven’t checked out the other podcast you do on different star treks but I’m super excited for it.

aahhh bun of steel!! so good. im very excited for your extremely thorough analysis!

I'll have to check out that podcast. I am very into how in depth your analysis goes. you are definitely my favorite podcasters. but as for voyager, i am a fan of most episodes after 7-of-9 comes on board. Tuvix was a very interesting episode, and i think "riddles" where tuvok suffers some kind of brain problem that completely alters his personality. but, honestly i am just very invested in all the characters on voyager, particularly the relationship between janeway and 7-of-9 and tuvok and 7-of-9. Some episodes I like are "survival instinct", "body and soul", "author author", "the killing game I and II", "living witness" "drone", "timeless", im a sucker for time travel, and "latent image" I think after watching Discovery, there is a lot more care put into the show than Voyager. It may be reflective of time period or budget, but discovery is a top quality show. they are really two different beasts and difficult to compare. but i think of the 80s/90s star trek, voyager has the most interesting characters and adventures. and its really hard to beat a woman in charge with other women also in commanding positions. i think it makes it more interesting and sometimes challenges some of the more normative behavior in the other shows. Its great to see women talking to each other about things other than men or as plot points for male protagonists. voyager breaks that often, which i love.

how about reviewing a Voyager episode?! people tend to really talk it down, but its my favorite series.