antimatterpod
Antimatter Pod
a Star Trek podcast
hosted by Anika and Liz
208 posts
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Sometimes You Just Have To Let Things Go
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Anika and Liz are caught in a time loop, which is actually a nice opportunity for a nap when you think about it. We’re talking about Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4, “Face the Strange”!
Let’s check in with Anika, The Only Person Who Hated “Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad”. She thought “Face The Strange” was … good
“I don’t wanna sound creepy, but I have a pretty good idea of where Jason Isaacs is at all times.”
This season feels like an intentional final season, even though we know that’s not true
Michael is the collaborative leader that Pike pretends to be
We are platonically shipping Rayner and Reno as BFFs
Book’s job in this episode is to turn up, take his shirt off and be supportive. Perfect, no notes
L’ak is SO going to die
So far Discovery has focused on fleshing out Rayner, but at the expense of Moll and L’ak
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Anika and Liz beam down to Trill, don their finest red cloaks and hoods, and discuss the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery‘s season 5, “Janaal”. Including…
This is a perfectly fine episode, but it seems a shame to waste our limited time this season on something that is merely competent
RIP Star Trek: Lower Decks
Introducing the beta shift when fans are still under the impression that the alpha shift bridge crew should be the leads: brilliant trolling
We have always been Wilson Cruz Appreciators, but we are appreciating him extra hard!
We are concerned about Paul
“Not to be a Rayner apologist, but I am definitely going to be a Rayner apologist.”
The Vulcan alt-right sure does endure!
Adira and Grey are cosplaying maturity (and that’s okay)
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On Raffi by Anika Dane is in the current issue of Star Trek Quarterly
The Diversity Paradox: Star Trek, Star Trek fandom, and the limits of fandom as progressivism by Liz Barr is in Speculative Insight
SECOND, it’s time. Anika and Liz are being called away from a fancy 32nd century cocktail party to stand in an empty void and discuss the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery‘s fifth and final season…
Compared with the over-the-top emotional drama monarchs of Star Trek: Picard‘s third season, it’s just nice to be with competent professionals who get the job done
Picking up the threads of Star Trek: Picard‘s first season
Captain Picard is still the most important individual who ever existed
This arc so far has the Star Trek V problem: they can’t actually meet God, so the real meaning of life will be the friends we made along the way
Tilly has a rare but valuable anti-ambition arc
Moll and L’ak have wandered in from another series, but we’re not mad about it
It’s nice that Vance has a wife and Tilly has a love interest, but we’re still shipping Vance/Tilly and we’re not sorry
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Anika and Liz fire up the ancestry.com subscription and do a deep dive into an episode which does a deep dive into Kathryn Janeway’s heritage. Yes, we’re watching “11:59”, an episode which has aged badly but maybe wasn’t ever good to start with.
This is ostensibly the sort of filler episode that people now say they want more of, but it mistakes trivia for character development
“Small town business owner who hates progress and reveres the past” is a type that hits different in 2024
Henry Janeway voted for Mike Pence
Why are so many (white) starship captains from small town America?
“11:59” is not interested in exploring the forces that would drive a woman out of STEM and into homelessness
Has any problem in the history of humanity ever been solved by a benevolent corporation?
At 26:06, Liz says “dystopian” when she means “utopian”, please be assured this will keep her up at night for the foreseeable future
We debate the benefits and otherwise of genealogy (content warning: from 34:03 to 34:27, this includes revelations about incest)
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Anika and Liz assemble a board of inquiry and examine two episodes which turned out to be significant for Star Trek: Lower Decks – “The First Duty” and “Lower Decks”. Are we gonna cry? Oh yes.
“The First Duty”:
Imagine if Beverly Crusher got to parent her son
“Anika needs to talk about Jack Crusher” is an item in our outline
We get into the really serious issue: who is dating whom in Nova Squadron?
Liz’s knowledge of American high school life, as gleaned from YA fiction and Archie comics
Star Trek is a place where it’s okay to fail
“Lower Decks”:
Picard’s relationship with Sito
The Enterprise only takes the best. So why are the bridge crew SO bad at managing staff?
Except Worf, an unexpected contender for Best Boss Ever
And Deanna Troi, Holder of the Brain Cell
We can infer a lot about Sito’s personal growth between “The First Duty” and now, and her reconnection with Bajoran culture
Our semi-regular one-sided correspondence with Mike McMahon continues
Critiquing Worf’s contouring
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Anika and Liz don their finest gold mesh and settle in to discuss a key Star Trek episode: “Space Seed”…
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: this episode is super racist (would it have been better or worse if they had renamed Khan and made him Mexican?)
Time to ask the real questions: why are there so many women in Star Trek named Marla?
Marlene McGivers: aspiring tradwife
We’ve found it. A woman in Star Trek that neither Anika nor Liz can defend
Does SNW break “Space Seed”?
But seriously, why has La’an not changed her name
How did the Eugenics Wars … work?
Khan Noonien Singh: still a better world leader than Donald Trump
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Last April, Anika and Liz each bought a copy of the June 1999 issue of the official Star Trek magazine.
Then we had … some other things to podcast about.
But we’ve finally opened it, and we’re talking about…
Remember when we’d pay US$7.99 — or AU$15! — for a magazine that contained a couple of interviews, some facts we already knew about the Klingon Empire and a Bird-of-Prey pinup?
The Kate Mulgrew interview:
She does not talk about her relationship with Jeri Ryan (but we do)
None of the other captains of this era had to talk about how work took them away from their kids — and Scott Bakula had a toddler when Enterprise started!
(Hey, isn’t it cool that now Anson Mount can request and get paternity leave, and no one’s asking Sonequa Martin-Green how she balances motherhood with her career?)
Putting the Janeway/Chakotay relationship on the backburner (and where they could end up in Prodigy — that’s us speculating, not Kate in 1999…)
We try to picture Kate Mulgrew in the MCU and fail spectacularly
Let’s all take a moment to send bad vibes to Liz’s grade 10 drama teacher
Jason Alexander and the woke agenda
1999 NFTs
Anika wants you to know that D. C. Fontana shipped Spock/Christine
25 years later, Tim Russ deserves an apology for the interview which closes the magazine
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You might already be aware of this but thought I'd give you a heads up anyway but a lot of your ealy episodes (at least up to ep 63) are unavailable on many platforms. They're still accessable on your site but on apple podcasts, spotify, Overcast, etc you cannot listen to them
Thanks, Anonymous! That is super annoying, I'll have to look into it. But thank you for letting us know.
-- Liz
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We’re back for 2024! With some genuinely awful sound quality because Liz is so out of practice that she forgot to move her microphone from its place on top of the printer to … you know. Somewhere in the vicinity of her mouth.
But the show must go on, and Anika and Liz are pulling the names of Star Trek men out of a hat and deciding whether or not they’re any good in bed. Yes, it’s the SEX … Now That We’ve Got Your Attention episode, and decidedly not suitable for children.
The hat has us talking about…
Jack Crusher (the secret Picard baby, not Wesley’s dad)
Rom
Shaxs
Tuvok (our beloved)
Jean-Luc Picard
The Doctor
Jonathan Archer
Cris Rios
Odo
Gary Mitchell
Narek
Garak
Saru
Benjamin Sisko
Jack Ransom
Hugh Culber (with bonus Paul Stamets)
Liam Shaw
Dr Migleemo
We also abandoned the hat to specifically discuss…
Spock (Ethan Peck edition)
Chakotay
Will Riker
Chris Pike
Sarek (Vulcan’s greatest love machine)
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Heyo. Recently found your podcast through Women At Warp and was listening to your Q-Squared episode and all your thoughts about Peter David. I was wondering if you'd ever read any of his New Frontiers books? I remember trying to get into them early during my dive into Trek novels and being excited to see one-off characters brough back as main characters. Right up until actually reading the first book and their wildly flanderised characterisations of existing characters and terrible pronoun joke with Burgoyne 172 made me want to throw my copy out the window and from what I've read, the series doesn't really get much better from there
Liz here! I don't know about Anika, but I read the first one when it came out, and found it ... yeah. Disappointing. I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to describe the captain as a massive Gary-Stu, but that was the vibe.
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After a marathon run of So Much New Star Trek, Antimatter Pod is taking the next couple of months off! Join us in the new year to discuss "Space Seed", the Sito Jaxa episodes of TNG, '90s magazine coverage of Janeway AND MORE! Probably there'll be some more new Star Trek, too. It could happen!
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Anika and Liz do a deal with some Orions and definitely know which Chek(h)ov had the gun on the mantelpiece, it is a joke, we are only accepting criticism if it is delivered via Mark Twain impression. And Anika is not home to Mark Twain impressions.
Yes, it’s the finale of season 4 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Old Friends, New Planets”!
They stuck the landing!
We remain, as we have been since episode 1, a Beckett Mariner Stan Podcast
You Are Not Special, Bro: The Nicholas Locarno Story
Star Trek is bad at romance (but all media is bad at romance these days)
…we’re just gonna talk about shipping in the other series for a minute
Orion is Matriarchal Capitalist Westeros and we’re okay with that
Anika remains SHOCKINGLY BIASED against both Migleemo and Mark Twain
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Anika and Liz definitely failed Hoodlums and Racketeering 101 at the Academy, but that’s FINE, we’re just going to hang out on this nice jungle planet, hiding from various warring factions while we talk about the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “The Inner Fight”…
Tom Paris and Nicholas Locarno are different people, which we knew, but sometimes it’s nice to have it reinforced
Important sidebar: which canonical Vulcans are most likely to be in an MLM and why it T’Pring’s parents?
Freeman is the best captain because she’s the only one willing to make a fool of herself
“The First Duty”, “Lower Decks” and Beckett Mariner
Is Mariner the only character in the franchise who did NOT join Starfleet to escape trauma and/or her family?
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Anika and Liz beam down to a cave, get trapped, and record the shortest regular episode of Antimatter Pod yet! But that doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy Lower Decks season 4 episode 8, “Caves”, or that we’re not going to discuss important issues such as…
It is not, in fact, time for Lower Decks to break up the band
Are Vendorians real? Anika has doubts
Liz has THREE VERY SPECIFIC BONE SQUICKS and so far this season Lower Decks has hit two of them
This is an episode about fear of the unknown, and also Star Trek‘s consistent skepticism of conspiracy theories
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Anika and Liz grow some tomatoes and share some feelings in Evil Podcaster Therapy. Specifically, we’re sharing feelings about Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “A Few Badgeys More”, including:
This episode was made for Anika, except it’s about characters she doesn’t care about
The birds in Liz’s neighbourhood were extra loud just for us
The evil AI trope
We’re getting all Asimovian up in here
Like and subscribe to Badgeycast, the new podcast hosted by Badgey and the Cosmic Koala!
Er, how many times has the Federation almost been destroyed by an AI using its subspace network? Guys, please install a firewall or antivirus software or something?
(Is it a metaphor? For social media?)
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This episode is brought to you by Slug-O-Cola, platonic relationships, and Beckett Mariner’s emotional crisis
Is Beckett Mariner okay?
Do Tendi and Rutherford have feelings for each other? Are we meant to think that they do?
We need to admit that Migleemo is the sex god of the Cerritos
If there isn’t a thriving Landlord Cops fandom by the time this episode drops, we will be VERY disappointed
Liz predicts there will be Rom Discourse
“Joe Biden is not Rom. BUT…”
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It’s Romulan ale o’clock! Anika and Liz fill their yard glasses with something brightly coloured and alcoholic, don their finest diplomatic bicycle shorts, and discuss Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “Empathological Fallacies”!
This episode is truly a gift for Star Trek Las Vegas cosplayers
Anika’s Totally Spies theory
Liz’s Daria theory
Here on the Taking Things Too Seriously Podcast, we are curious about the evolutionary implications of Catians hunting Betazoids
“Shaxs, man. Shaxs.”
HOLISTIC SECURITY
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