Matthew
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends, you know I’m a baseball fan, and I’ve been watching some great stories about people getting to play with their heroes — with the people who inspired them to become baseball players. I get to do something like that today, because I never had a single thought about becoming a podcaster until I was dealing with my mother’s illness and driving across the country to California. I needed someone to keep me company, and I like Marvel movies, so I found this thing called the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast. I probably listened to a hundred of their episodes over a month. It kept me company, and eventually I decided to become a podcaster myself. I wrote into them, and now they’re kind of the reason why I’m a podcaster. So whether you thank him or blame him, say hello to Matt Carroll — my guest today — as we talk about Star Trek. He is one of the founders of the MCU podcast and the Stranded Panda podcast network. Matt, how are we doing today?
Matt Carroll
Hey, Matthew. I’m doing well, doing well. That’s way too kind of an intro, but I will self-deprecatingly spin it as: you just finally listened to a podcast that made it look easy enough. That’s the thing we do — we have very loose conversations over there, just guys talking. And I truly believe — I’ve said this before and it sounds almost cynical — for me, podcasting is like performing a friendship for an audience. Not that the friendship isn’t real, but you’re just putting it out there. These conversations are things I’ve been having since I was six. My buddy that I do the Star Trek podcast with — we were literally six years old, walking around a church parking lot having these kinds of conversations. Obviously hopefully they’ve been elevated past my six-year-old self, but we were having deep conversations about what would happen if this happened in Star Trek, and DC and Marvel and all that stuff, when we were six in that parking lot. And now I still talk to him every week about it, every time there’s a new episode of Star Trek.
Matthew
Well, I love that, and that’s a much better spin. The way I’ve described it is that Paul and I are so narcissistic that we think everyone wants to listen in on our conversations about things we love. You’ve got a better way to put it, but either way that’s the goal — just a couple of friends talking about the things they love. And I love what you said about the church parking lot, because I do a Star Wars podcast, and we’ll get into the back and forth between those two fandoms. I’ve often said that my idea that media — especially science fiction — is more than just cool spaceships and laser guns or laser swords, that it also raises ethical questions and morality and character studies, comes from watching the original series of Star Trek with my mother and asking things like: so this planet has people with faces that are black on one side and white on the other — what do you think? How does that connect to the real world? I love that that’s kind of a shared thing for both of us.
So now that a new Star Trek show has finished — Starfleet Academy is fully out, all ten episodes — I’ve been listening to you guys talk about it on your Star Trek podcast, which we’ll definitely give a shout-out to, and there’ll be a link in the show notes where to find it. I knew I wanted to get you on because this is a great show that raises a lot of great ethical questions that we’ll get into with a good deal of spoilers. So if you want to hit pause and watch it first — it’s only ten episodes — strong recommendation. But there are also a lot of ethical questions about the making of it and what its future looks like. I believe it’s going to have a second season but no more beyond that, and what that means for us as fans as certain people with certain political agendas become owners of the things we care about and love. So let’s start with the show itself. Give a quick overview — what is Starfleet Academy?
Matt Carroll
Well, it is set in the distant future of Star Trek — it’s sort of a spinoff of the show Discovery, but you don’t have to know any of that. It’s set in a time where Starfleet has fallen apart because of a calamity, and they’re finally able to rebuild Starfleet Academy and Starfleet itself. So it’s about putting together not just the Academy but also rebuilding the Federation and starting to deal with worlds that had been exiled from it — worlds that were no longer friends because of a period they call the Burn, where space travel became harder and they weren’t able to fulfill their mission the way they used to. Star Trek is all about a post-scarcity world — if you can just work out your differences, everyone can be fed and taken care of. But they went through a period of scarcity, and that caused them to lose their way. Now they’re rebuilding the Federation, and the show follows a group of students who go to Starfleet Academy. It sounds very Hogwarts-y, and I think in many ways it is, but it’s really good. It has a really great emotional core about the main character of the first season, with Tatiana Maslani as his mother, which was just a gift.
Matthew
Yeah, and it starts out better than Hogwarts, because when you watch it you’re not giving money to anti-trans hate. But I get you — I like 90210, I like shows about drama, and I was kind of excited for that part. There’s a little of it, but really the show focuses on the bigger questions, and from the perspective of people coming from a new place.
My mother was, as I said, a huge original series fan. She wasn’t as much a fan of TNG because it wasn’t what she grew up with. But she loved to explain the ’60s by explaining the hopefulness of the original series — the post-scarcity, post-religion world — and we loved talking about how that show was a window into the philosophy of the late ’60s. Then TNG and later DS9 and Voyager reflected a different time, different feelings — very much the late ’80s and ’90s. What do you think this show is doing in terms of reflecting the moment we’re in right now in the early-to-mid 2020s?
Matt Carroll
While we here in America haven’t gone through an actual scarcity, we’ve gone through a scarcity mindset in our politics. The adults on the show are very much still finding that balance between who can we help, who can we not help, how much do we have to give. And there’s a main character, Captain Ake, who is very much in the mode of: we need to be for the Federation again, we need to do all the things we used to do, we need to be open-hearted and open to everyone, as caring and as giving as we can be — and other people are pushing back on that. I think there’s definitely something of that in our politics today for sure. And also the show is just pushing Star Trek forward into a new era with all kinds of new representation, which has been great. I believe representation is important, but I don’t think it’s what alone makes a show progressive — does that make sense? This show kind of does it in both ways though. It really lays out a lot of the progressive ideals of the Federation while also including representation that allows us to see different kinds of people. And that’s really what Star Trek is all about, I think. To seek out new life and new civilizations is a great line about space travel, but it’s also about finding new types of life and accepting it as it is.
Matthew
I think one of the dangers of the checkbox idea of representation — which is not what people who are quote-unquote “woke” are actually talking about, but it’s how a lot of Hollywood often responds to it — is that you get tokenism. One of my favorite characters in this show is a Klingon who wants to be nonviolent and wants to be a nurse. We’ve gotten so much over the decades of Star Trek about how Klingons are a warrior race, and here’s a character who wants to challenge all of that. And not only is he challenging us as an audience, but his story within his own people is about how he doesn’t want to live the life his family wants him to live. To me, that was such a great way of challenging the idea that more representation is good while also telling stories about how no one person represents a whole group, and that differences within groups are worth exploring.
Matt Carroll
Yeah, and very much his story is about not being forced to live out the version of your life that your culture or your family or your religion has told you you’re supposed to live. You get to choose your own life and be who you are. And he has a brother who is a warrior — unlike him — but his brother still supports him being different. It’s really powerful.
Matthew
You mentioned Captain Ake — I wouldn’t say she’s quite as central to the show as Kirk was in the original series, but she’s very much in the tradition of Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway. She is the captain, the future of the school. So she’s our second woman in that kind of a role after Janeway — well, actually third or fourth when I think about it.
Matt Carroll
Discovery, and Gwendolyn too, yeah — from Prodigy.
Matthew
Right, and more. But she’s also — if you compare her to Janeway or to Burnham — a fundamentally different kind of character. She’s Holly Hunter playing her, and it is not Holly Hunter trying to be someone other than Holly Hunter, and she’s wonderful. And I want to go back to that point about scarcity, because I think it’s so important. One of the storylines that gets discussed — and my understanding is that both you and I wish had been developed a bit more in the finale — is the idea of: as you’re coming out of a scarcity model but still viewing the world through a scarcity lens, how do people who actually have a lot less look at you? And what’s the line between wanting to help people versus wanting to control them through your help, or bringing people into your group versus colonization?
For me, watching this show — about people suffering out there and the Federation having enough to help them but needing to figure out how — at a time when our own country is dramatically cutting its efforts to help the world and shifting toward a war-college mentality of interacting with the world through the military instead of through aid groups — this feels like a very relevant show. And it does all of that without hitting you over the head.
Matt Carroll
No, and obviously this show was filmed before USAID was really dismantled — I don’t know exactly when it was written — so I don’t think that was intentional, but man, it is all over the show. It’s a new setting for Star Trek, very different. It actually reminds me a little of what they did with Picard, which was also a period of scarcity that led into Picard trying to make Starfleet its best and reopen the Federation. Those ideas are really important for today, but also just in general those are the core ideas of Star Trek. In the old days, the original series felt very much like: you’re out there by yourself, so you have to make decisions that sometimes risk your crew while trying to hold up your ideals. TNG felt more like: Starfleet is everywhere and we are very powerful — and that’s very ’90s. This show just felt like a completely different new kind of era for Star Trek, but still trying to live up to those ideals while facing the practical challenges: what are you risking when you live up to those ideals? How much of yourself are you willing to give to make sure others are okay?
Matthew
Yeah. One thing my mom loved to point out is that in the ’60s, Star Trek was about the Cold War — the Klingons and the Romulans were kind of the Russians and the Chinese. Then TNG was written mostly in a time when the Berlin Wall had fallen, great peace with the Russians, and also peace with the Klingons — but the Romulans were still a threat. I think so much of that is true.
And looking at a larger question throughout the history of Star Trek — one that comes up a lot, sometimes in bad faith and sometimes in very nuanced ways — is whether Starfleet is a military and whether we should see it as one. I think Star Trek has engaged with that question to some extent this season. The whole question of should we have a war college, or should we have something that’s not focused on warfare — it feels like a really deep way to engage with that. Talk more about that tension: training young people for the military versus what Starfleet is supposed to be.
Matt Carroll
It’s interesting. I don’t remember if there was a war college in the old days of Star Trek, though there may have been something like it, since they obviously do combat. I think on Enterprise there was a group of space marine-type people who came on the ship for the final season when they were at war with the Xindi, so it’s not unprecedented. But in ’90s Trek — TNG, DS9, Voyager — Starfleet felt very much like a peaceful organization that had to resort to violence when it had to. And in this show, they’re coming out of a time where they’re not the big power they used to be. Now they have this war college, but I don’t think the show really questions it as an institution this season. Ake isn’t going in saying the war college people need to stop being a war college. She’s more like: that’s just not what we’re doing. You guys are necessary for what you’re necessary for; we’re necessary for something else.
I always find that interesting, because I think the Federation is still in a place where it needs that military capacity. And some of the most interesting episodes of Star Trek are the ones where characters do terrible things — the ones that aren’t progressive at all. My probably favorite episode of Star Trek is “In the Pale Moonlight” from DS9, where an officer commits what amounts to a war crime, believes he had to, tells you about it directly, and then deletes the log at the end. It’s so dark. And after the Burn, the calamity in Starfleet Academy, they don’t think they have a choice but to have a war college. In this season, a group of what I’d call terrorists for lack of a better term tries to fence the entire Federation in — and almost succeeds.
Matthew
I totally agree with that. And I’ll get to what I meant about the distinction there, but just on some of the specifics you mentioned — I do agree. And I think it’s one of the enduring tensions at the heart of Star Trek. Part of that tension is within the story itself, and part of it is the nature of storytelling. You like to joke that Star Wars is space battles and laser swords, while Star Trek is gathering around tables to better understand each other.
Matt Carroll
My line is: I don’t need my heroes and villains color-coded. That’s my line with Star Wars.
Matthew
I think there’s a lot of truth to that. But what is Picard most famous for within the Star Trek universe? It’s a combat maneuver — he figures something out about warp positioning. And what’s the single most popular Star Trek movie? Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, which is one hundred percent a submarine movie in space.
Matt Carroll
And part of that — we can get into this — but movies with spaceship battles make a lot more money than people sitting around tables. That’s my complaint about Marvel’s Civil War: I want Tony and Cap to just keep debating how to handle these questions instead of punching it out. What you’re getting at is an interesting tension. I think almost every geek property has this at its core — almost every one is inherently very progressive at the core of its philosophy.
Matthew
Yeah, in the social commentary and critique and the questions it’s asking.
Matt Carroll
Yes. And therefore the diehards — like you and me — and a lot of the podcasts in the networks we work with follow those philosophical things. But most people go to those movies for space battles and laser swords. The things that are most popular do those things well, but the people who are most driven — the deepest fans — fall in love with the philosophy. You want your fandom to be something you can dive into and really learn about yourself and your own philosophy. But a lot of people, when you want them to go see a movie like Deadpool and Wolverine, are there for the fights and the laughs. That’s a really interesting tension.
Matthew
And there’s room for all of it in fandom. We could probably find a podcast that goes deep on every different kind of Federation starship and who would beat who in a fight — and you and I love to talk about the ethical questions of Cap versus Tony. There are also people — and I think we’re some of both — who are really curious about whether Superman could beat Captain Marvel in a fight. There’s room for all of that.
And that tension is always present in the entertainment media industry, which we’ll get into in a bit. But this question of how many fight scenes versus how much time spent sitting and talking — the sitting and talking, or walking and talking, or as HBO decided, taking off your clothes while you’re talking, all of that catches people’s interest, but fight scenes are big too. Game of Thrones has a lot of great stuff, but that show doesn’t become as popular without some of the best medieval combat scenes we’ve ever seen.
Let’s get into the ethical questions the show raises — a lot of it episode by episode, some of it overarching. Let’s talk about the ones that frame the story. Our two main characters, really, are Ake — and by the way it’s Ake, not Acker, thank you — and Caleb Mir. And our opening scene is set in the past of the show — still thousands of years in the future for us — where Ake is functioning as something like a judge. Something criminal has happened, someone has died. Ake didn’t necessarily do the shooting, but Caleb’s mom —
Matt Carroll
Has been involved in a criminal activity, right. What was her name?
Matthew
Aleesha Mir. Aleesha — thank you. And Aleesha has a small child. The decision is made to put her into — we’re past the carceral systems of today, but there’s still some kind of prison system, a much nicer and more rehab-focused one, but it is still a prison of a kind — and her ability to interact with her son is going to be limited.
Matt Carroll
And there are two people involved: her, and the guy who actually did the shooting, Nus Braka. He is sent to a penal colony — straight-up sent to prison. So the prison does exist in this time period of the Federation. She is sent to a rehabilitation colony, right.
Matthew
Right. Where she’s going to have limited contact with her son, and she is still very angry about it. Ake acknowledges that she feels terrible about the situation and wishes there were some other solution. There’s a lot more nuance to it, but she winds up resigning, and then the story picks back up with her trying to find her son later and bring him into the Academy when it starts. What did you think of that storyline and how it was told?
Matt Carroll
I loved it so much — I’m going to get emotional talking about it. Ake as a character was so meaningful, so loving and caring, and wanted to help Caleb so much. There’s this first scene where she finds him after — I’m not sure exactly how many years, maybe fifteen — and he’s so much bigger than her. He escaped the facility as a little kid with some tech skill and made it on his own, surviving on a distant planet, living as what they call a space rat — just a little criminal his whole life. Then she finally finds him, and there’s this amazing scene where he is towering over her trying to menace her, and she won’t stop trying to embrace him metaphorically — telling him she wants him to have a life. She lost her son, she feels maternal toward him, she wants to help this kid who lost his mother because of her. It is just so, so powerful, and it’s a perfect example of the bigger themes of the season: Starfleet is small and not as powerful as it once was, but Ake is the kind of person who believes in embracing people regardless of your ability to beat them in a fight. That’s what she does with Caleb.
Holly Hunter is amazing in the show. Tatiana Maslani as Aneesha Mir is just killing it. And then Paul Giamatti as Nus Braka — those three together in a Star Trek show, I was sold. I was nervous about Academy when I heard about it, but the moment I heard those three were involved, I was in. And those three getting this entwined plotline that runs from the first episode all the way to the last — it’s a gift.
Matthew
The acting is so good, especially because in some ways they’re acting in different tones. It would be easy for this to become a remake of The Blind Side — the story about a privileged white woman who adopts a poor Black kid and helps him become an NFL star. The actual person at the center of that story has objected to it as a white savior narrative. It would be easy for this show to go that direction. But it doesn’t, because the story starts by acknowledging that yes, Ake is probably making the best of a number of bad choices — but they’re all bad choices. Part of that is because it’s still a carceral prison system, and that’s not good.
The dynamic between Ake and Mir plays out in a way that recognizes she loves him and wants to take care of him, but she’s also projecting her feelings about her dead son onto him. And he pushes back on that. He’s not her son, he’s not her second chance, and he has to get to do his own thing — including wanting to find his actual mother. The way the story was willing to deal with all of that complexity, to name it as a bad situation where no one is totally right and one person is mostly wrong — that’s the point.
And the tone is remarkable, because Holly Hunter and Tatiana Maslani are caught in this awful, heartbreaking courtroom drama in that first episode, and Paul Giamatti is chewing every piece of scenery he can find, having the time of his life — he literally has a mustache-twirling villain role, as you guys pointed out on your podcast. And they make it all fit together.
It made me think about my sister, who is looking into foster care. A lot of kids in foster care are there because their parents have gotten caught up in the prison industrial complex. She has a lot of feelings about wanting to help take care of those kids while also not wanting to be part of a system that takes kids from their parents when that doesn’t have to be the only option. I couldn’t help but think about all of that while watching.
Matt Carroll
Yeah. It’s such a well-told story, and with the exception of Noosbraka — who is very mustache-twirly, both physically and metaphorically — the story is told in a way that you really understand the perspective of all the characters. It means a ton. And it really is a great emotional heart for the first season. I’m wondering what they’ll do with the second season, because this season felt almost like a fairy tale — a mythic quest. A child ripped from the arms of his mother wanting to get back, and this judge who felt terrible about the choice she made. It’s so cohesive throughout, and yet also very episodic, with each episode telling its own little story. The balance between episodic and serialized — this show just did it in a great way.
Matthew
Right. And while that’s the main story, there’s also a structure like Buffy — a plot of the week alongside the overarching arc. A lot of other characters get developed. There’s an incredible story about photonic life and families — particularly if you’re a Voyager fan, there’s a beautiful callback to some harrowing experiences the Doctor went through that kind of got forgotten about. Some of those episode stories are better than others. There’s one storyline about a girl who is powerful and vulnerable and has to be controlled so she doesn’t hurt others — that’s a version of the Dark Phoenix story I’ve heard a few times. She’s doing great, for sure. But anyway.
I want to raise the question of who do we blame, because I think you and I had a similar perspective. Even Paul Giamatti’s character — Nus Braka, thank you — has a real chip on his shoulder against the Federation, and yes, there’s this whole thing at the end where he wants to put the Federation on trial. In some ways it’s a great callback to Q putting humanity on trial in TNG. But I feel like — and I think you felt similarly listening to my take on your podcast — the solution winds up being that the Federation is basically fine and that he’s misguided. Talk about that, because I feel like I wanted the Federation to be a little more actually on trial.
Matt Carroll
I agree with you. It’s hard to talk about this without mentioning a recent episode of Strange New Worlds where they do a documentary about the Federation. The entire episode is shot as a documentary following a filmmaker who’s been embedded on the ship all season. He makes a film arguing that Starfleet is fundamentally a military organization, showing all the questionable decisions captains have made, how they’ve prioritized military actions over humanitarian ones. It’s really intense, and then the third act reveals that his real problem with the Federation is personal — they took his sister away, and he’s just hurt that she left him for Starfleet. And it is one of the most disappointing episodes of Star Trek I’ve ever seen, because it starts so strong in questioning Federation ideals and then just collapses.
I believed in this show because of that very first episode, where Holly Hunter’s character makes a decision that tears a family apart. Family separation is a common discussion in this country right now, and it’s showing that — and she resigns from the Federation because of it. So I really thought when they got to the trial, they were going to go fully in. They did a much better job than that Strange New Worlds episode, but they still hinge the ending on the revelation that Nus Braka’s core origin story — the foundation of his hatred of the Federation — is factually wrong, and that undercuts it somewhat.
The structure they set up is wonderful though: Nus Braka puts the Federation on trial, using Ake as the avatar for the Federation and Aneesha as the avatar of those hurt by it, and he has them have a conversation in front of everyone about what was done to Aneesha. It’s spectacular. Ake doesn’t hold back about the Federation’s failures. They also don’t hold back about the fact that Aneesha was partially responsible for the death of a crewman — and it turns out Ake actually knew that crewman, was friends with him, and that’s a whole other layer of emotion. So they do a lot of really cool things where it’s morally gray and complicated.
But the Nus Braka of it all turns out to be that he’s angry because when resources were scarce, his family’s mining colony wasn’t prioritized — other colonies had it worse, so they were triaged. His father, angry at the Federation, tried to strike back. And in the course of the conversation, it’s revealed through science that his father’s own weapon ignited the atmosphere — not the Federation. The weapons burned a certain color, and Federation weapons burn a different color — which, yes, is a little color-coded.
Matt Carroll
For sure, for sure.
Matt Carroll
But it allows you to set aside Nus Braka’s grievances because he’s simply factually wrong. And that reminds me too much of that documentary episode. The Aneesha and Ake stuff is really strong, and it’s capped off by Caleb showing up and saying what he thinks of everything — which was a little bit weak, but it was also nice, because you’ve got these two women who have shaped his life in some ways arguing over him, and he shows up to speak for himself.
Matthew
Right, and both of them in some way speaking for him — until he speaks for himself. Yeah, I had a lot of similar frustrations. I think there’s something worth saying about how your desire to help and your desire to do a good thing doesn’t mean all your results are good, and doesn’t mean you’re excused from the harm you cause by trying to help. They do wrestle with that to some extent in the Ake-Caleb storyline. I wanted more of that in terms of the Federation itself.
When I watched it again, and after listening to you guys, I had a somewhat different take. I think he is meant as a metaphor — maybe it’s a little too on-the-nose as political commentary — but there are an awful lot of people right now who are very angry about things that are simply factually wrong, and where other people are lying to them, telling them their suffering is due to this particular cause when that’s simply not true. I think there’s a way to see him as that metaphor. But I wish the show had also acknowledged that even when someone is blaming their scarcity on the wrong things, there’s still a scarcity that started the anger in the first place, and we should have empathy for that. Part of what Ake says is essentially: you had a mining colony, so you were better off than others at least.
Matt Carroll
And you had something. There were colonies that had nothing, and we were helping those people. One line that breaks my heart: some colonies, all they needed was body bags.
Matthew
Hard times. And yeah. I wish it had been more of a reckoning with whether the Federation is wrong here. But it’s really complicated and nuanced. People with legitimate grievances sometimes do really terrible things with those grievances, or blame them on the wrong people. All of that is in this story.
Matt Carroll
I completely agree. And the thing I did love about the turn — where they realize Nus Braka is wrong, that his father’s own weapon ignited the atmosphere — is that Ake uses a kind of Socratic method. She asks questions of the people around her, gets them to answer, and uses science and evidence to establish what actually happened. That is Star Trek. Finding truth, using evidence, basing your conclusions on fact.
I think it’s Aneesha who pauses and, almost stone-faced, says that strontium burns red. And that’s when they all realize. He doesn’t buy it — he just starts going on about lies and propaganda — but it proves it to the gallery, the people who are actually judging them.
Matthew
And for me, that moment is so beautiful. And it’s also very much like a fairy tale. The people in the gallery don’t fully listen. But the hope embedded in that moment is real. Though I think there’s a valid critique that the show sometimes leans too heavily on the idea that science will fix everything. The science tells you what actually happened to that atmosphere — but some level of empathy is required too. If you use only science and math to decide which planets get help, congratulations, you’ve got a lot of very rightfully angry planets. And so it’s not perfect, but I do really like how the show wrestled with that — the idea that science is needed and important, and empathy too, but if you’re starting from incorrect facts, you’ll never get to the right place.
Matt Carroll
I agree completely. The thing I have a small issue with — way better treated than in that Strange New Worlds documentary episode, but still — is that the entirety of what they really question about the Federation in that final episode essentially comes down to: Aneesha had her son taken away. That’s pretty much the only thing that stands. Everything else gets explained away or answered by Ake. She even says something like: leadership is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes you have to make the hard calls. She says that directly to Nus Braka, who is trying to take over and be in charge in that quadrant. But I do love it, even with that quibble. You’re totally right about who he represents, and the way she dismantles his argument with science blows me away.
Matthew
I think the overall critique I’d have is that the show paints with a broad brush when making big points. There’s an episode that has some weak spots but makes a fantastic point about how theater and the arts can be an essential part of therapy and healing after trauma. There are parts of it where I kind of wish the arts had been shown working in conjunction with actual therapy rather than in place of it. But anyway, there’s so much more to get into, and I’m sure we’ll have you on for more discussions about this.
But the other side of all this — at least we can be safe because the people giving money to the show and getting money from the show are just letting the artists and the writers and the actors do whatever they want. No agenda there whatsoever. So we don’t have to worry about any of that, right?
Matt Carroll
Yep. No agenda, no agenda.
Matthew
We recently learned that Starfleet Academy is not going to have more than two seasons. It’s going to have a second season, but nothing beyond that. Talk about what’s going on here. I think we’re going to do a full episode on the role of money in deciding what messages get out and what don’t. But we’re getting to a worse place than we’ve been before. What’s happening?
Matt Carroll
Our landscape of art and media is becoming owned by billionaires in a way that is really scary. Right now, Warner Brothers and Paramount — which includes CNN — and TikTok, I believe all three have been bought up by the same family of billionaires who are close with Donald Trump. And I will get directly political and just say: this is a scary, scary thing. Donald Trump is Nus Braka. He has no connection with reality. His hatred of various groups — and his inspiration of hatred of various groups — is based in falsehood. And that is authoritarianism, plain and simple. Netflix was apparently going to buy Warner Brothers — they had already made a deal — and the Netflix CEO went to the White House to discuss whether the merger would be approved, and that same afternoon they dropped out so that the Ellisons could buy it instead.
Matthew
And to be very clear about the Ellisons — because there are people who own television studios and media companies and allow content that doesn’t fit their personal views, because they just care about making money. But the Ellisons are the exact same people who — because it’s Paramount and CBS — took Stephen Colbert off the air. The same people who tried to remove Jimmy Kimmel. They have a proven record of interfering with media. And this show was actively targeted: Elon Musk was tweeting about how bad and how woke this show was before it even came out.
Matt Carroll
Before the show came out — yes, just based on promotional images and things like that. They were mad that there was a slightly overweight person on the show. They were mad about a gay or bisexual Klingon, a Klingon deciding not to be a warrior. All of that stuff — they jumped on it before the show came out or right after the first episode and clearly never watched it. It’s infuriating. I’ve had maybe one actual Star Trek fan write in who didn’t like the show, while every right-wing person just trying to make a point on the internet talked about how much they hated it — and a lot of them had never talked about Star Trek before or since. Stephen Miller was up there saying the show should be taken away and creative control given to William Shatner. What? By the way, Shatner came out with a great statement in response.
Matthew
He’s problematic in a lot of ways, but he was very supportive of all the things the show is doing. And I’ll say — I don’t like the show quite as much as you do. I think it said some really important things and I’m really glad I watched it, and listening to your podcast honestly helped me appreciate it a lot more. But if I need a Star Trek fix, it might not be the first show I reach for. I think there are some legitimate aesthetic concerns and dislikes a person could have. But the right-wing hatred of it is so entirely bad faith. And like — if you think this show is political, Discovery had Stacey Abrams play the president of the Federation.
Matt Carroll
And they mention “Madam President” in this season too! I kept wanting her to show up. We joked on our podcast that every time the Federation president appears, it should be a different Democratic leader.
Matthew
Get Gretchen Whitmer to play her. Yeah, or AOC.
Matt Carroll
Yeah! And tell AOC about the show. We joke that next time the president shows up it’s AOC, or whoever we want. Obama is a Star Trek fan. Stacey Abrams came on because she’s a big Star Trek fan.
Matthew
And people will say, oh, but it’s woke now. Literally TV stations canceled Star Trek in the ’60s because it had an interracial kiss. That was always the mission — pushing boundaries, because that’s what Star Trek and science fiction have always done.
That’s right. So talk about what’s actually happening — we know there’s going to be a second season, but nothing beyond that, and there are pretty clear indications this isn’t just about bad ratings.
Matt Carroll
The reason you know it’s not a business decision is because they announced no third season before the second season has even come out. Because they want to kill it. If they had just wanted to make money and let it run its course, they would have let the second season air. And they’ve already announced that the second season ends on a cliffhanger — a writer has said that. And now, before season two comes out, they’re announcing season three won’t exist.
That is them deciding they want fans to lose investment in season two. This is the first season of a new Star Trek show with a mostly new cast and a completely different time period. It takes a season or two to get its footing. A lot of people might catch this over the next couple of months as people are talking about it — this is when the show could get popular. Some of your listeners may have heard from someone that it was bad — from the right-wing sphere — without ever having seen a single episode. They didn’t even consciously register it as political propaganda; they just heard it was bad. The people who like it need to get the word out. And they’ve already filmed season two — they’ve already made the show. They are shooting themselves in the foot financially to kill it. And that is targeting.
Matthew
And there are two connections here. First, Star Wars fans know exactly what this is — the exact same people used the exact same tactics against The Acolyte. Lesbian space witches and all that. And The Acolyte is a fantastic show with a lot going on, ended on cliffhangers, had a lot more story to tell. The other connection: I literally recorded a podcast about baseball about an hour ago — I’m not sure which one will come out first, they’ll be back to back — and we talked about how the owner of the Oakland Athletics intentionally tanked the team, let the stadium fall apart, didn’t bring in good players, made it a miserable experience so people stopped going, and then said to Major League Baseball: I can’t support a team in Oakland, let me move to Las Vegas. It’s the exact same thing happening here.
I want people to watch this show. I hope they don’t change the season two cliffhanger. With some shows they’re able to move to a different network — Orville was able to do that. But Star Trek has been associated with Paramount for nearly 70 years, so it’s going to be a lot harder. But if people put enough pressure on them — if it’s clear people are watching and people want it — either it puts pressure to prove that “go woke, go broke” isn’t true, or: hey, these are a publicly owned company, and shareholders care about that. So watch the show because it’s good, watch it because it asks great questions, and also watch it as a small way of pushing back on attempts to control what media you get to watch. Because we’re going to get a lot more right-wing media if this goes their way.
Matt Carroll
And there have been various moments in Star Trek — and we talked about it earlier — where some of the most beloved stories are basically just war movies in space. The Khan and Kirk conflict is about Kirk wrestling with his past, the mistakes he made coming back to haunt him — real questions a person would ask — along with: who do you bring into your tent, who do you take care of, who do you abandon? Just asking those ethical questions and looking at them from all the different angles is a lot of what’s important and gets people engaged. And I think it moves people toward progressivism. I don’t think they’re going to make right-wing Star Trek — that would be destroyed, no fans would want to watch it. But I think we’ll probably enter an era of politically neutral Star Trek.
Matthew
Yeah, I think we’re going to get something probably more focused on characters and space battles and that kind of thing. Like what JJ Abrams made.
Matt Carroll
For sure. He was more of a Star Wars fan.
Matthew
I mean, he did those movies as an audition to be able to make The Phantom Menace.
Matt Carroll
The Force Awakens! I wanted to get there before you just to claim it.
Matthew
And I think, yeah — I’ve read a lot about Black politics and Black history, resistance and reactions to racism within the Black community. There are books I wish a lot of my friends would read that they’re never going to read — but they’re going to watch Luke Cage and they’re going to watch Black Panther. And those movies help educate people about questions a lot of people hadn’t really thought about before: internal debates within communities, different ways of responding to racism. And they have incredible fight scenes and effects that are entertaining on their own. The starship battles in new Trek are better too — I have no argument with that. TNG didn’t have anywhere near as many space battles, partly because they wanted to focus on the philosophy, and partly because of budget and technology. They definitely look better now.
Matt Carroll
Yeah. Something I keep wanting to bring up — and I’ve brought it up on multiple podcasts, so forgive me for the repeat — is the idea of resolving all three levels of stakes at the same time in a battle scene. There’s a screenwriting book that discusses it: physical or external stakes; internal or emotional stakes; and philosophical stakes. And the best scenes resolve all three at once.
When Caleb walks into that room, it’s the emotional stakes of him finding his mother, the external stakes of him keeping Nus Braka occupied, and the philosophical stakes of him showing up to speak for himself. That is a truly meaningful moment in cinema. The example people always give from Star Wars is when Luke fires the shot on the Death Star — he decides to let go, that’s his internal stakes; he destroys the Death Star, that’s the external stakes; and the philosophy of the Force, trusting it, giving over your power to it — all of that is wrapped up in one press of a button. That’s why that explosion feels so good.
And oddly, sometimes the older Trek, with its less visually impressive space battles, is more emotionally powerful because they get those stakes right. All three align, and you hit that button or pull that lever, and you get catharsis. You feel completely fulfilled by the story.
Matthew
That’s such a great analysis, and I’m going to use it going forward. A lot of the time — especially in superhero movies and sci-fi — there are battles that land like that, and then there are fights where it’s like our hero has to beat up some nameless minions mid-story just to remind you they have cool superpowers. And those just don’t land the same way.
Matt Carroll
They make me bored every time. Even well-made shows can pull off smaller battles though — they don’t need to resolve the full philosophical stakes of the entire story, obviously, because that has to be saved for the end. But they need enough stakes in them that you feel something. I used to think about stakes purely in terms of: do you feel at risk in this battle? But that’s not really it. You have to feel that something is being resolved — internal, external, or philosophical. And real catharsis is when all three hit at once.
Matthew
I love that. I think one of the most famous battle scenes for comic book fans right now is the hallway scene from the first season of Daredevil on Netflix. One thousand percent. And setting aside everything else — in terms of pure cinematography, being essentially one shot, the coordination required among all those actors — it is a masterpiece of technical filmmaking. But it also has all three stakes. The external: it’s not saving a city, it’s rescuing one literal child in mortal danger — high stakes. The internal: the number of times Matt slumps against a wall in pain and exhaustion, and then another bad guy comes out — you see him fighting not just the physical battle but the mental one, his body and mind saying enough, and yet he keeps going. And the philosophical: can you be a hero without superpowers? Can you do right in the world through violence? That’s his whole struggle.
Matt Carroll
As a lawyer, that is the real philosophical stakes. And before he goes in, he sits with his priest and says he needs forgiveness for something he’s about to do. The priest says that’s not how it works — you get forgiveness after. And he says: I’m going to do a thing I’m not sure is right. But when he picks up that child at the end of the hallway, having fought through everything — the exhaustion, the doubt — that’s the philosophical stakes being resolved. I did something I wasn’t sure was right, because this child is all that matters in this moment. And I am what is required right now, even if I don’t love the idea of violence. But like, that is what the story is telling. Yeah, it’s a great, great moment.
Matthew
Well, I think we’ve been on a great tangent — a pretty far tangent from where we started with billionaires. So it may be time to wrap up the episode.
Matt Carroll
Hopefully it won’t be so bad. Hopefully we’ll get an era of Star Trek that still asks the questions. It may not. And in some ways, not always giving you the answer isn’t a bad thing — I think there are times in Star Trek where they’ve been a little too cautious about just saying the answer, and in retrospect it looks bad. But I do generally like when the enemies aren’t color-coded, and even when they are wrong, they’re explored fully and understood better.
Matthew
Either way, the power of Star Trek is going to continue. There is real value in doing things under the name Star Trek, with Klingons and Romulans and all the new races and all of it. And I will also stand by the idea — and you and I did a great podcast on it — that one of the best Star Trek shows ever made is The Orville. Because it is one hundred percent a love letter to Star Trek. And because it’s unconstrained by some of the franchise obligations, it was very critical of things like the Prime Directive. It also had a lot of juvenile humor that some people love and was not always my favorite. But it took the Star Trek idea and wrote a kind of loving critique — not dismissive, but: I am in love with you and I want to help you be better. And I absolutely think the people who wrote some of the newer shows are aware of The Orville.
I don’t think the Prime Directive got mentioned once in Starfleet Academy. Did it?
Matt Carroll
Oh, that’s a good question. I’m trying to think — they may not have encountered a world that wasn’t already warp-capable, since they were mostly operating within the center of the Federation.
Matthew
Yeah, and part of the story is that no one was warp-capable for a while, so in some ways it wasn’t relevant. But I do think it’s a conscious choice by the writers — we’re going to create a situation where that’s not the question we’re asking anymore, because maybe it wasn’t always the best question to ask.
Matt Carroll
Yeah. By the way, do you know they’re making another season of The Orville? No, really? Yes — I was listening to Seth on an interview the other day, mostly about Ted, and he made an offhand comment about finishing up production on season four of The Orville. I thought for sure that show was gone. It’s been a few years. Apparently it’s coming out in late ’26 or ’27.
Matthew
Oh, amazing. That’s so exciting. He just loves that show. And clearly The Orville is the closest direct analogue. You also have something like Galaxy Quest, which is clearly a Star Trek love letter. Things like that are out there.
Matt Carroll
And listen — if the Ellisons take Star Trek from us and make it into some bastardized version, let’s all just switch over and watch The Orville. The funny thing is, I think the third season got way more away from the juvenile humor. It still had humor, of course, but it started to be much more directly: this is Star Trek.
Matthew
Yeah, Seth has talked about that — he never wanted it to be the other thing, but people expected it because he’s Seth MacFarlane. They associated him with Family Guy and expected that from him.
Matt Carroll
Yeah, you’re the Family Guy guy, you’ve got to do this.
Matthew
Even halfway through the first season, it starts to taper off.
Matt Carroll
And there are great moments of juvenile humor in the first season that are genuinely funny. But they’re always mixed in with complex, great ethical situations — everything you’d want from Star Trek.
Matthew
As a side note — and then we’re actually going to get out of here — the amount of low-hanging fruit they avoid in The Orville is remarkable. For example, they do an episode about transgender rights and how we think about gender in general, and there is so much potential for lazy juvenile humor that they never go near. They just don’t. So yeah, it’s a fantastic show. One of the best Star Trek shows out there. We’ll keep having you on for that too. Thank you, Matt.
Matt Carroll
Oh, I know we need to wrap up — but did they mention going to the bathroom for, I think, the first time in Starfleet Academy? Did they?
Matthew
Oh, I know! There’s actually a band from the ’90s called Ookla the Mok — they’re like a Star Trek parody band — and they have a whole song called “Where Are the Bathrooms on the Enterprise?” because you never see a bathroom on Star Trek. They talk about sonic showers but never the bathroom — it’s just kind of gauche, I guess. But in Starfleet Academy, there’s a moment where a character takes the con and sits down and says “I have to pee.” Someone actually said they had to pee on Star Trek.
Matt Carroll
They play it for comedy. It is very funny. But I agree with you. And the sex scene — I really love this show and my niece is loving it. And then around episode five or six, they just have this really explicit scene where it’s very clear what’s happening. They’re not showing everything, but they show a lot. And it’s really hot. And I was like, I do not want to watch this scene with my niece. She’s fifteen, she can handle it I think, but this is just an awkward situation.
Matthew
It’s just an awkward situation.
Matt Carroll
Yeah, just awkward.
Matthew
It’s the only Star Trek scene I’ve ever seen where I would have said: Mom, watch this one on your own. My mother passed away a number of years ago, but yeah.
Matt Carroll
The other Star Trek scene that made me think I don’t know if I could watch this with a kid is in Discovery — they have a scene where they appear to kill a bloodline of Klingons. They’re faking it, but we don’t know that at the time. And the Klingons hold up the heads of the babies they killed. And it is dark. I was like, I don’t know that I could watch that with a kid. It’s an extra violent, dark scene. And you find out later they faked it, but you don’t know that while you’re watching it.
Matthew
That’s funny, because I recently talked on my other podcast, Star Wars Generations, about an episode of the Clone Wars — a kids’ show — where Darth Maul decapitates a number of people, and I think a head is held up. It’s pretty gruesome. So yeah, I get it.
All right. Anyway, I’m going to wrap up this show. Matt, you’re great to talk to, but we are absolutely on tangent patrol. That’s all the ways to find Matt and his great stuff. Of course, I am The Ethical Panda. You can find me at TheEthicalPanda.com or head over to TruStory.fm. Please tell people about the show — we want to bring more people into the conversation, get more questions, and hear from you. If you like the show, share it with a friend, come into our Discord and talk to us there.
Definitely give Starfleet Academy a watch. It is a different tone — it may not be everyone’s favorite — but it asks so many great questions and gives us so much to discuss. We need more television like this, and we need the billionaires to not control television. So thank you to Matt, and thank you all so much. May the Force be with you.
