Antimatter Pod

Anika does 133 jumps while Liz infiltrates a Klingon ship. What could go wrong? Well, this episode is late, so... Yes, we are discussing season 1, episode 9 of Star Trek: Discovery, "Into the Forest I Go". A nice walk in the woods! Everyone comes home!  Do all Starfleet captains disobey orders? Actually yes! Despite the stereotypes, the biggest exception is Kirk in TOS … and Liz has a theory about...

Anika and Liz go for a nice walk in the forest and discuss Star Trek: Discovery's "Si Vic Pacem, Para Bellum", and ask ourselves: which Discovery characters are most likely to massacre a bunch of Tusken Raiders? You may have noticed some audio issues lately, and this recording was particularly challenging, so Liz resorted to Descript's "studio sound" filter. This made everything more or less audib...

Anika and Liz don their finest 2017/2257 outfits and go to a party.  Then they do it all over again. Then they do it all over again.  Yes, we are caught a time loop and discussing Star Trek: Discovery's "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad"!  "This, to me, is like if Strange New Worlds was good." Is this Anika's least favourite episode of Discovery? Ash is happier and more successful as a human be...

Anika and Liz take off for a cheeky little diplomatic meeting with some Klingons. What could go wrong?  We are discussing Star Trek: Discovery's "Lethe", an episode which inspired our friendship, a whole lot of fic and a conversation about whether it is a flawless piece of Star Trek, or if it has merely a single flaw.  We are not here to be cool or reasonable about Admiral Kat Normal Human Guy Ash...

Anika and Liz are thrown into a Klingon prison, where they are absolutely choosing Lorca's pain. But no one is having a worse day than that poor innocent tardigrade!  We're discussing episode five of Star Trek: Discovery's first season, including:  This is the worst Saru episode of the entire series. It's rough, man Overthinking the "five best captains" list For an awful moment, we start to ask da...

Anika and Liz are petsitting a tardigrade while we discuss the fourth episode of Star Trek: Discovery's first season, "The Butcher's Knife Care's Not For The Lamb's Cry". This episode introduces Admiral Cornwell, and we are gonna be so cool about that. You wouldn't believe how cool and chill we are.  This is decidedly not one of Discovery's stronger scripts "Lorca is so clearly flagged as evil," w...

Anika and Liz continue their tour of Discovery's first season with "Context Is For Kings", an episode which introduces a whole lot of new regulars and dares to ask: is it possible to like Saru less? It's time to go down the rabbit hole as we discuss:   You are not gonna believe this, but Michael Burnham is the protagonist of Star Trek: Discovery. I know. Huge if true.  But Gabriel Lorca thinks he'...

Remember 2017? Taylor Swift released Reputation. Kendall Jenner fixed racism with a Pepsi ad. And Star Trek returned to the small screen with the launch of Discovery.  Anika and Liz go back in time to revisit the series which led us to become friends and launch a podcast ... and we are excited! We're starting with "The Vulcan Hello" and "The Battle at the Binary Stars", in which Michael Burnham ha...

Anika and Liz, two people with experience getting too attached to fictional characters and then mourning their deaths for 900 years, convene on the holodeck to discuss Star Trek: Voyager's "Real Life" ... and the cancellation of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.  We are sad and angry!  What does Paramount even want from Star Trek? "This episode is two B plots in search of an A plot."  "Conceptually, i...

Anika and Liz toast some marshmallows in the Atrium's brand new open fireplace (Nus Braka: Interior Decorator) and discuss the first season finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, "Rubincon".  A finale where the good guys don't fire a single shot, and where we apply the lessons learned through the whole season Stakes? Too high? Just high enough? Is Star Trek actually good at telling small scale st...

Anika and Liz don their finest cloaks, hoods and masks and beam down to a planet we've seen a few times before to find Anisha Mir and discuss the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's second season, "300th Night". We know the second semester goes by fast, but this is ridiculous! Caleb Did Nothing Wrong Genesis is wrong about Caleb, but in an understandable way Sam 2.0 is a little m...

Anika and Liz watch Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's "The Life of the Stars" and have a little cry. Featuring a special guest appearance by Bradley Whitford and Liz reads a brief excerpt from Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah.  We got Star Trekked. We got Our Towned. They got us RIGHT in the feels. The women that time forgot How much agency has Tarima had in her recovery? It seems like not much! Did...

Anika and Liz take a quick trip to the Khionian Realm to attend Darem's wedding, then follow along as Caleb and Genesis get up to hijinks. We're watching Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's "Ko'Zeine", and discussing:  Um. Did we make this episode happen?  It's a spring break episode, but no girls are going wild, no one is going to the beach (except Kyle, alone), and none of the usual cliches are deplo...

Anika and Liz go out on a training exercise that definitely won't go horribly wrong! We're discussing Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's "Come, Let's Away", and talking about... We really like how the season slowed down and gave us some slice of life stories and heavy characterisation -- and now, at the midpoint of the season, everything changes This is a great episode for exploring Nahla, but Anika h...

Every now and then, we at Antimatter Pod ask ourselves: is are we due for a DS9 rewatch? And Starfleet Academy wants us to know: the answer is always yes.  We're talking about episode 5 of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, "Series Acclimation Mil", an episode which dares to ask: is there such a thing as too much fan service?  Four episodes of SFA have aired at the time of recording, we check in on the...

Anika and Liz take their podiums to discuss Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's "Vox In Excelso". But there's not much debate to be had, because we agree it's very good!  Liz, a former debate kid, has a lot of feelings about this episode (and also about how debate bros have ruined the fine art of having a structured argument) We don't need Star Trek: United because we already have SFA Caleb is critical...

Anika and Liz are not sports people, but they're willing to watch from the sidelines as we discuss Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's "Vitus Reflux", including... No stakes! Only shenanigans! It's a Gen Z "Take Me Out To The Holosuite"! The War College kids are facing obsolescence and acting out, but their strategy, with overtones of hazing and sexuality, is also evidence of why the War College is bei...

Anika and Liz step through the 32nd century arches that give them new outfits and sprawl in their chairs to discuss the first two episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. And we like it a whoooooole lot.  "I think I just quoted Joe Biden. I did not mean to." Character beats - Caleb can handle himself, but in a crisis, he's an engineer; Jay-Den and Sam are simply too pure and we love them; Darem a...

Anika and Liz don their snazziest outfits and beam down to Vulcan for the most miserable wedding we've covered yet. It's Star Trek: Enterprise's "Home"! In which T'Pol marries some dude, while Archer goes rock climbing and Phlox encounters the spectre of xenophobia on Earth.  Is it possible that Tuvok is the only person in the history of Vulcan who ended up happy in his arranged marriage?  It's im...

Anika and Liz attend a four-day Klingon bachelor party -- where the feats of strength include somehow NOT developing a time machine to go back to 1997 and fight the entire DS9 writers room for Jadzia's honour.  Yes, our wedding series has brought us to Star Trek: Deep Space 9's "You Are Cordially Invited", and we have ... questions. Concerns. Loud protests. And that's just Anika's cats! Both this...

Come on a journey with us. A story of true love, as we watch Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Data's Day", one of the great romances of all time.  We speak, of course, of the relationship between Admiral Mendak and Subcommander Selok.  Also Miles and Keiko get married.  This is the third episode in our wedding series, and the first marriage between two enthusiastically consenting adults But is it...

We continue our wedding series with Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Haven" -- in which Deanna Troi's arranged marriage is interrupted by the arrival of an AIDS allegory. It's … rough. It's rough.  Note: Liz says two completely inaccurate things with absolute confidence: first she claims that Wyatt is the only guest star with a costume change (false, that is Lwaxana) and then she claims that he's...

It's wedding season! Anika and Liz are looking at some of Star Trek's key wedding episodes, beginning with the one that launched season 2 of The Original Series and rewrote a lot of people's brain chemistry: "Amok Time". And in typical "Antimatter Pod does it Antimatter Pod's way" fashion, we're gonna talk about ... how great it is for the Spock/Chapel ship.  Why we're doing a wedding series: we l...

Noted Doctor Who podcasters Anika and Liz settle in to watch a very bad Steven Moffat pastiche.  Yes, it's time for the season 3 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and spoilers, turning into a statue might be preferable to this. It turns out Marie's whole arc has been about becoming tradwife statuary The weird Christian subtext of the season intensifies, not in a good way The racial dynamics...

Anika and Liz get sucked into a wormhole and trapped on a moon orbiting a gas giant, which is actually pretty standard when you're adults with jobs trying to organise a board game night. We're discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3, episode 9, "Terrarium", an episode which comes so close to being good before it snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.  "We're going to give you the sto...