Women at Warp Episode 158: “Before and After” Voiceover: You're listening to a Roddenberry podcast. Grace: Hi, and welcome to Women at Warp: a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast. Join us on our continuing mission to explore intersectional diversity in infinite combinations. My name is Grace, thank you for tuning in. With me today is my future and past friends, Sue Sue: *pause* Oh, me. Sorry. *laughs* Grace: and Jarrah. Jarrah: *making crying baby noises* Wah wah wah wah. *all laugh* Grace: Yes, past Jarrah. Hush hush, my child. Hush and know that the future holds better things. *whispering* Better things. Jarrah: You probably have not figured out what we're going to talk about today, but- *Sue laughs* Grace: And that just makes it better, honestly. *Jarrah laughs* Sue: I mean, presumably you've seen the episode title. Jarrah: Yeah. Okay. It's a good thing. Grace: Unless you've got this on shuffle in which case you're in for a wild ride. *Sue laughs* So before we get into our main topic, we have a little bit of housekeeping to do first. Our show is made possible by our patrons on Patreon. We love our patrons so much. We've revamped our Patreon tiers for the new year, bringing in some new rewards like exclusive Women at Warp merch. So if you've ever thought about checking out our Patreon, now's the perfect time. Time. Time. We really appreciate the support either way. Please check us out. You can find us patreon.com/womenatwarp. In fact today's episode was selected by one of our patrons. We've got quite a few to get to, but don't worry, we're working through them all. We love getting your suggestions and we love seeing what we can do with them. This episode is also brought to you by Text Expander, a little more on them later. We've also got our Teepublic store for t-shirts hoodies, mugs masks, and more at teepublic.com/stores/womenatwarp. We're regularly curating new designs. I'd say we've got some quality ones up there, and I'm not just saying that because I did a few of them. Jarrah: *Cheers* Sue: Team Tuvix! Grace: Yes. I think we're still at the point of Tuvix having outsold team Janeway. *Sue laughs* So that's where the universe stands right now. I think. All of these links are also going to be available on our website womenatwarp.com. And finally, we have a birthday shout out! Jarrah: Which is one of our new Patreon rewards. This is the first one to get to do! We're super excited! Grace: Yay! So we want to wish a happy birthday to our patron, Grey. Jarrah: Woo! Grace: Our skies are never grey with you around. Jarrah: Yes. Sue: *singing* Happy, happy birthday from all of us to you. Disney owns this tune, so I'm going to stop singing it. *all laugh* Grace: *singing* Better stop it soon. *Sue laughs* Jarrah: Grey, I hope that your birthday is Tea, Earl, you, hot. *all laugh/Grace cheers* Sue: Wow. Grace: That was quality! Jarrah: But seriously, happy birthday coming up on February 15th. And looking forward to doing more of these birthday greetings. For now, say to Grey that hopefully your year ahead is better, as it probably should hopefully be, than last year. And we are- our years already looking better because you're in it. *Sue awws* Grace: And that's Grey-t. Yeah. *laughs* All right then. This episode was a Patreon request from our patron Susan. Now, would anyone like to give the email from her a read? Jarrah: Sure. So, I think we'll probably read a couple of different parts in a couple different times, but starting out by saying that Susan had a really great argument for why we should talk about the Voyager episode Before And After. And she says, ""I do have memories, they just don't correspond with anyone else's" is the Kes version of, "if there's not something wrong with me, there must be something wrong the universe." Before And After may be my favorite Voyager episode and Kes is one of my favorite and possibly most interesting characters in Trek. While I'm sad they didn't use her to the fullest, either the interesting character or outstanding actress, we have at least several fab episodes in which to explore both." and then she lays out a whole bunch of awesome themes that this episode touches on. So I feel like we should maybe go through some of those. Sue: *laughs* So to jog your memory, Before And After is the Voyager episode that begins with KES as an old woman, waking up in sick bay and not knowing who or where she is or what's going on. And throughout the episode, she jumps backwards in time to earlier points in her life. And I guess Memento style, right? Sort of has to figure out what's going on and why, to solve this mystery. So we see her as a very old woman, and then she starts jumping a few weeks, and then a few months, and then years at a time. And I think that that basically sums up the gist of it without spending a ton of time on a recap. Grace: That's just a- that's about it. Yeah. Sue: I mean, this is not a new concept for Star Trek, right? This "I'm in a strange place and things are different and I got to figure out this mystery." We've got the one that Susan pointed out in her suggestion, that it parallels Remember Me. But also it has some similarities with All Good Things the TNG finale, with Future Imperfect where Rikers in the Romulan- or the kids simulation, he's not a Romulan. That's just another simulation within the simulation. There's Parallels, the Worf episode where he gets dizzy every time he jumps between alternate universes. So there's a lot going on. Jarrah: Yeah, definitely. Grace: And we do definitely have a lot of different sub topics to talk over with this. Which is on one hand really cool, because we get see Kes be sort of the lead in this high concept episode, which is cool. Cause I think in a lot of the examples we were going over just now there aren't a lot of lady led ones. I think we've got the one with Crusher and that's about it. And maybe the one with Guinan also, but there's a ratio there is what I'm saying. Jarrah: Totally. So one of the themes that Susan pulled out, which I- just struck me off the top, is ageism. Which I really noticed watching this because I hadn't actually thought about it as a- I hadn't thought about the connection to Remember Me. And I hadn't thought about it as a thing about believing women, and gaslighting, and age-ism. But then watching it with that lens, I was like, "Oh yeah." Basically people don't believe her because she's old. And then they believe her because she's like, adult. Like younger to middle-aged adult. And then they stop believing her when she's super young again. Grace: Yeah. Jarrah: It was just kind of like who- Grace: Which sounds about right. Jarrah: -Is trustworthy here and who gets agency? Grace: Yeah, one thing that I know a lot of the older women in my family have brought up a lot is as they age they get paid attention to less, just in terms of general attention. And also there's a lot more of, "I don't know. Are you sure about that?" Not- like it's kind of a sort of pathway to eventual stage of, "Oh mom, are you confused? Does grandma not know what's going on?" Sort of condescension. Jarrah: The moment that I think I was actually pretty appalled by, along those lines, was when Paris, who is her future husband, and Linnis their daughter are like fighting over whether they should extend her life, despite the quality of her life. And first of all, to me, it was like very unbelievable that you wouldn't have had that discussion before she turned nine. You know? They're just banking on The Doctor to come up with this cool theory. But at this point, like they're having this debate and Paris is like, "If we can keep your mother with us one more day, we have to do it." and she's like, "She wouldn't want that. And especially not now that-" she appears to basically have dementia. And then like Kes is like trying to talk and she's like, "Yes Mother, tell us, what do you want?" And it's like, why was that not your first question? Grace: Yeah. Yeah. Jarrah: And also, why are you asking it now? Sue: As morbid as it sounds, like general advice? Make a death plan. Jarrah: Oh my gosh. Yes. Grace: That's your advice today from this fun wacky Star Trek podcast, make a death plan. Sue: No, but seriously. *laughs* Jarrah: I would be lying if I said this didn't make me think about like my Mom and my Stepdad who really resisted doing so until very recently. And then even more recently, like, don't want to talk about it openly.