131. Fortune Cookie Therapy

Anika and Liz don their blue shirts and do a deep dive into depictions of depression in Star Trek. (Please note this includes discussions of suicide and self-harm.) 

• The early years: 
  • Dr Elizabeth Dehner
  • Badmirals
  • Spock's stories can be a metaphor for a lot of things, but the emotional repression to depression pipeline is definitely one of them
  • (Anika has a whole THING about The Motion Picture and Spock's arc, it's amazing)
• The 90s: 
  • A counsellor on the bridge
  • Stories that are explicitly about mental health
  • Lwaxana Troi
    
  • Sometimes the problem is not the depiction in the series, but the (ableist) reaction of fans
  • Anika presents a very strong argument for B'Elanna having an anxiety disorder
• Post 9/11 (ENT and the Kelvinverse films)
  • Liz says T'Pol was the first female Vulcan character when clearly she meant first female Vulcan regular, don't @ us
  • ENT reverts to a very masculine type of story: men deal with feelings through avoidance and sex, while T'Pol is literally too emotional
  • ENT and the AOS era: a time of magical healing vaginas as substitute for mental health care
• The Trek Renaissance
  • Discovery and Picard tell explicit stories about mental health, with varying levels of success
  • Prodigy and Lower Decks tell implicit stories
  • SNW takes us back to the manly man stories of the ENT era
• Harmful and helpful depictions
  • fandom ableism
  • Liz has an UNPOPULAR OPINION about the depiction of Seven in Picard
  • "I'm gonna say something mean about Katrina Cornwell."

Specific episodes we talk about include:

• "The Loss" (TNG)
  
• "Dark Page" (TNG)
  
• "Emissary" (DS9)
  
• "It's Only A Paper Moon" (DS9)
  
• "Night" (VOY)
  
• "Extreme Risk" (VOY)