Antimatter Pod

Anika and Liz don their cheapest wigs and TOS costumes to travel a year into the future: 1966. It's the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fourth season finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise", and don't be alarmed, but we actually like this one! This is the same plot as "Once La'an A Time", which is the same plot as "Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass" We've been on the "Pike is bad at his job" train since...

Anika and Liz put on their prettiest fairytale costumes and settle in to discuss "Once La'an A Time" -- an episode which Liz hated and Anika loved! Let's fight!  (We're not gonna fight.)  Looking back, "The Elysian Kingdom" was a gimmick episode - and this follow-up suffers from being one of so many gimmick episodes This is an episode of Once Upon A Time wearing a Starfleet uniform, and Anika is o...

Anika and Liz take command of the Enterprise and discuss Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "Orders of Magnitude". And Anika goes on a journey from "It's a good episode but I don't like it" to "Actually, maybe it's a bad episode?"  Finally we're back to proper Strange New Worlds: a deeply regressive and problematic story, competently told Why are we talking about the war like it was 20 years ago?  Is...

It's the soap opera episode. It's better than the puppet episode but not actually good. Season 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is killing Anika and Liz's will to live, one gimmick at a time. Why is SNW doing a soap opera episode? It doesn't seem to be out of great love and respect for the genre… Anson Mount is a much better character actor than leading man, and they should stop putting him in a...

Anika and Liz face an unexpected emergency situation: a ... good episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?  We're discussing "Off Hour", and in a shocking twist -- we like it! Pike does some good captaining AND spends a big chunk of the episode unconscious! Erica has real command potential! Scotty/Enterprise slow burn coworkers to lovers SNW takes Christine Chapel's rather sexist 1960s backstory a...

Anika and Liz, very much against their better judgement, watch The Puppet Episode. Yes, it's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "Level Five Transporter Accident", and we are using words like "I regret having a Star Trek podcast" and "it's a crime against humanity".  Hey, it's not as offensive as "Four and a Half Vulcans" Anika talks about the ancient art of puppetry, commedia dell'arte and Punch and J...

It's Antimatter Pod, but we're in black and white! We're discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 4, episode 4, "A Case of Chiaroscuro". Did Anika include a pronunciation guide in the show notes? She sure did!  This episode scales the giddy heights of "it's fine, I guess" "It's interested in the aesthetics of resistance without actually exploring what it is we're resisting."  Imagine if th...

Anika and Liz hang out with a cactus. Is it a tribute to the Doctor Who serial "Meglos"? No, we're talking about episode 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' fourth season, "Human Best Friend"! Strange New Worlds has become a show dedicated to pastiches of better media How many episodes inspired by Star Trek Las Vegas are too many episodes inspired by Star Trek Las Vegas They did it -- they finally...

Anika and Liz beam over to a long-abandoned and extremely haunted space ship. And instead of talking about what we experienced over there in the shadows, we're going to discuss episode 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' fourth season, "The Griffin Institute".  This episode is a huge step up from the premiere! And also still super-duper into the eugenics of it all! The away team's biggest fear is...

The Enterprise goes back in time and doesn't prevent a genocide, but Anika and Liz would like to go back in time to prevent this episode from ever being made. Oh, did the fourth season premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds displease us? It sure did!  "Don't overthink it!" This episode provides more evidence for our argument that Pike is bad at his job Words we use to describe this episode: "no...

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...