Antimatter Pod

When we planned this episode, we thought we were just going to talk about the newly announced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But real events took over, and so we encourage our listeners to donate to the ACLU, Black Lives Matters groups, FreeHer and other organisations raising money to fight systematic racism, injustice and police brutality. Check out antimatterpod.tumblr.com for specifics. It's ve...

We're talking about the medical professionals of Trek, including:  the changing prominence of doctors and medicine in Star Trek uh, does Phlox actually have a medical degree? our favourite doctor (and the good characters versus the ones we'd want actually treating us) Liz's nursing rant and Anika's related ER rant (it's on topic! We promise!) we have ... questions about Klingon medicine mental hea...

Anika and Liz discuss the classic TOS tie-in novel My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane, particularly:  Duane's take on Roman culture, and its ties to canon, especially in the wake of Star Trek: Picard Romulan language -- and how the heck do you pronounce "Mnhei’sahe"? Ael: a character we adore beyond reason Liz's elaborate headcanon about Romulan culture and politics in the 24th century Anika's etern...

Anika and Liz discuss the DS9 episode "Things Past", in which Sisko, Dax, Odo and Garak find themselves at the centre of an ugly incident during the Occupation. While Garak demands to see the manager, Odo has some guilt to work through. It turns out the Occupation was ... bad. Along the way, we discuss:  Odo's place in the hierarchy of the Occupation (and his claim to not have a place at all) how...

Anika and Liz are joined by Jules (of @juleshastweets and Bad Pajamas) to talk about our favourite villains! Complete with sidebars about Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender, and a a brief reinvention as an Expanse podcast.  Topics of discussion include:  villains versus antagonists redemption arcs  the mirror universe is Emperor Georgiou the Garak of Discovery? maybe Quark isn't a villain, b...

Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard has come to an end! What a strange, messy show it's been.  Special guest Sam ( @retconning ) joins us for the first thirty minutes to discuss Seven of Nine, queer representation throughout Trek's history, the heteronormativity of this particular series, and THE HANDHOLDING SCENE (the caps are necessary) in the final thirty seconds of the episode.  Then Liz and Anika t...

This week on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew beam down to an idyllic paradise whose scantily clad residents harbour a terrible secret. No, wait! It's Star Trek: Picard, and any resemblance to season one of TNG is entirely ... unfortunate. This week on Antimatter Pod... Anika has a shocking confession apparently we are meant to consider Bruce Maddox a great loss to humanity? Really? how Pi...

Join Liz and Anika as we pick up some "Broken Pieces" -- starting with our own audio: due to technical shenanigans, a really excellent rant was lost. But here's what survived:  so many secrets have been revealed! did the Borg/Seven subplot need more time? does the writing hold up? if you have to take to Instagram to explain plotholes, then no, it does not we make predictions for the end Somehow th...

Take a long, leisurely trip to Nepenthe with Anika and Liz as we discuss:  The Riker-Troi family, Kestra the perfect-but-not-in-a-Mary-Sue-way kid character, synths and stem cells and pizza Our very, very strong reservations about Hugh's fate, and Anika has found The Worst Take The fruitless search for depth in Narissa Cris Rios (he is not a clever man) Narek (and his collection of fidget spinners...

Just when we had gotten used to the idea that Star Trek: Picard was a bit rubbish, it went and threw a good episode at us! Anika and Liz are talking:  redemption and atonement arcs Anika has a LOT of feelings about Narek, okay? girl-as-mystery-box storytelling (with a semi-relevant interlude of Steven Moffat fangirling) Voyager references Rihannsu lore is creeping into canon and we are DELIGHTED E...

Put a feather in your hat and put on the silliest French accent you can manage, we're talking about "Stardust City Rag"!  And maybe it's time to admit that Star Trek: Picard is not a good show ... and that's okay?  Also discussed:  That shocking death in the teaser Kirsten Beyer as a writer Seven and Bjayzel Raffi is doing her best, okay? We love her. Star Trek: Picard features the consequences th...

Episode 4 of Star Trek: Picard raised a lot of questions! Like, does the show want us to dislike Picard? And, when will Elnor get his cat?  Discussed this week:  a Twitter troll accused Liz of having a "heavily misandrist" Star Trek podcast, and yes, we are very proud, thank you  Una McCormack's The Last Best Hope, a prequel to Star Trek: Picard (including spoilery chat about one particular subplo...

The End! Is the Beginning!  It's season 1, episode 3 of Star Trek: Picard, and we're discussing:  Romulannisters! Uh, are we meant to see this much chemistry between the Romulan siblings? [If this subject matter squicks you, skip ahead to about the 03:50 mark.] Smoking and space bongs and visual shorthand in Star Trek Ego as Picard's besetting flaw It's always a mistake to think too hard about the...

We discuss episode 2 of Star Trek: Picard, "Maps and Legends" -- an episode which contains very few legends and no maps at all. We're talking:  Romulans! (And Vulcans) Exposition! Women dunking on Picard! Detective fiction! Classism!  And more!

We're back! And we're talking about the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, "Remembrance".  It's difficult to get into a full list of topics covered without spoiling the episode's twists, but here's the short, vague version -- we talk about... exposition the treatment of black people in the script journalism in Star Trek 21st century moral dilemmas the characters the settings nuclear fission -- or...

In our last episode before the launch of Star Trek: Picard, we talk about the character of Jean-Luc Picard himself: an aristocrat who aspires to be a street hero, a man who seems to embody the Federation establishment, yet surrounds himself with outsiders. We also consider:  hobbies and ongoing education in the world of Star Trek legacies depictions of PTSD in Star Trek the secret underground bear...

"This isn't a romance. It's a horror story."  Anika and Liz take a look at TNG's "Sub Rosa". And, you know, we try really hard to be positive about matters Trekkish, even in the face of (say) a favourite character taking a photon torpedo in the face.  But there's no getting around it: "Sub Rosa" is terrible.  We talk about consent, depictions of sexuality in Star Trek, and the ... interesting take...

We're considering the notorious Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, wildly reviled as the worst Trek movie ever. And, well, we kind of like it! Why? Spock turns out to have yet another sibling he forgot to tell anyone about! The Nimbus III Three David Warner has never been sexier Who doesn't love a space cult? Caithlin Dar and Vixis and Uhura, oh my! We also wonder:  Is it possible Shatner is a bette...

Slightly belated discussion of New York Comic Con and the new trailers for Discovery and Picard, and also the two new Short Treks: "Q&A" and "The Trouble With Edward". (Well. They were new when we scheduled this episode.) Also covered:  Liz met Jason Isaacs Are the Disco writers softening us up for something controversial? How the Federation is like the Catholic Church No, really! Are we meant to...

To celebrate getting to thirty episodes, we invited listeners to submit questions! And went from worrying we wouldn't get any (so embarrassing) to putting out an 80 minute episode... We get to talk about the evolution of Star Trek's storytelling after the introduction of the VCR; assembling an all-female-character heist team; Klingon clickbait; genderswaps; our hopes for season 3 of Discovery; and...

Having spent their formative years in Voyager shipping circles -- don't worry, we'll define terms -- Liz and Anika talk romance on Voyager.  (Note: although we are generally family friendly...ish, this episode is definitely more PG-13 than others. And Liz uses the term "bone down" more than once, which is weird, because the words had never passed her lips before the day of recording.) Pairings dis...

Anika and Liz watch "Encounter at Farpoint" and discuss... ugly sweaters why is everyone on this ship so unfriendly? Tasha's backstory the state of the world today the Federation's failures umbrella frames as couture We managed to get more than 30 minutes in before we even mention Q. Take that, self-appointed judge of humanity! Check out a compilation of the @TrekDocs posts at Reddit , and see ant...

At various stages of TNG's development, the Enterprise's resident teen genius was going to be Leslie Crusher -- a girl. Anika and Liz wonder what it would have been like to have a girl STEM genius on television in 1987. Would she have been well-written? Would audiences have hated her as much as Wesley? Would she have inspired girls of our generation to become engineers?  We also talk about similar...

We're joined by friend of the podcast Jules to discuss religion in Star Trek, and to interrogate the alleged secularism of the franchise. You might know Jules as "the woman in the Captain Killy cosplay who asked Alex Kurtzman about the implications of erasing the Discovery crew from the record" at San Diego Comic Con -- and we talk about that, too. But by the end of this episode, you'll also know...

We're talking about Enterprise -- specifically the first two seasons: Our first encounters with the series, and why it wasn't a great introduction to Trek for Anika's eldest daughter Liz unearthed her reviews on the Wayback Machine and was appalled by her attitude towards Jolene Blalock In this house, we love and support T'Pol Archer is the worst captain (but Anika loves him) Trek for the George W...