Antimatter Pod

With heavy hearts, Anika and Liz discuss "Four and a Half Vulcans", the worst episode of Star Trek's streaming era, and possibly one of the top five worst episodes of Star Trek ever. So that's fun.  Liz keeps returning to the question, "Is this worse than 'Code of Honor'?" "I understand that this is meant to be funny."  Genetics and hair don't work like that "I felt disrespected as a viewer." The...

It's documentary time! Anika and Liz look straight into the camera and share their feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "What Is Starfleet?", including... We have complicated feelings about this episode! It interrogates the documentary as a form of propaganda, but also interrogates the Federation in bad faith?  SNW is not equipped to deal with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia through al...

Anika and Liz battle an ancient and unbeatable enemy: grimdark anti-morality in Star Trek. We're discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail", an episode with all the ingredients of Star Trek except its soul... This feels like a backdoor pilot for a series which has been around for nearly 60 years Why are we spending so much time developing James Kirk instead of the regu...

Anika and Liz beam down to a nice planet where nothing bad happens and everyone leaves with the same amount of eyeballs they started with. WAIT, NO, we're discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "Through the Lens of Time"... This once again felt like several unrelated episodes smushed together Like season 5 of Discovery, this video game is on easy mode La'an is completely out of character in thi...

Anika and Liz are here, and we hunger for braincells! Unfortunately, before we can celebrate our favourite episode of the season so far, we have to talk about the Spock/La'an of it all... When Anika said she shipped Spock/La'an, she didn't mean in canon! "I want to slut shame Spock, and not in an ironic way." At this point it's gonna look pretty bad if Spock DOESN'T hook up with Uhura This episode...

Anika and Liz go on a nice road trip to pick some flowers, and nothing bad happens to anyone.  Okay, fine, we are discussing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 3, "Shuttle to Kenfori", including... First of all, WHAT IS HAPPENING ON REBECCA ROMIJN'S HEAD Season 3 has a recurring motif where a woman states explicitly what she wants, and her romantic partner decides to do the opposite B...

Anika and Liz put on their cutest wedding outfits and settle in to discuss episode 2 of Strange New Worlds' third season: "Wedding Bell Blues". Liz is gonna try not to talk about Pike. Anika is going to do her best not to implode. It's fun!  This episode was engineered in a lab to target Anika personally Is this a mean-spirited commentary on shippers?  We did not need a second sequel to "The Q and...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back, baby! Anika and Liz fight off some Gorn and settle in to discuss the premiere!  (We did not realise, when we recorded, that "Hegemony" part 2 would be dropping along with "Wedding Bell Blues", so we're only discussing that first episode now.) This is certainly an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Is Chris Pike the human embodiment of a Democratic Party...

Anika and Liz let their hair down, and as it tumbles over their shoulders in perfect beach waves identical to the hair of every other woman on television in the 2020s, they return to their discussion of hair and hair styling in Star Trek... Liz has a theory about why Janeway's early hair was … like that. And we're sorry, but it does involve Margaret Thatcher and Madeleine Albright Enterprise: the...

Anika and Liz put their hair up and settle in to discuss the most pressing topic of our time -- hairstyles in Star Trek.  We talked for so long that we wound up splitting this into a two-parter, which is PEAK Antimatter Pod, but in this first half, we discuss... Janice Rand, Marie Antoinette and Sabrina Carpenter Pavel Chekov, The Monkees and appealing to girls WASP beauty standards, "professional...

Anika and Liz put on their least comfortable lounging clothes and settle in to discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6, episode 22, "Suspicions". Why is Beverly Crusher hosting an astrophysics conference? And other questions that will forever go unanswered However, this episode, which makes no sense in the context of TNG, makes a LOT of sense in the context of Star Trek: Picard, and its t...

It's our 200th episode! A victory for quantity over quality and our small, chill audience of friends! To celebrate, Anika and Liz are talking about Star Trek: Open A Channel - A Woman's Trek, Nana Visitor's book about women in Star Trek.  Open A Channel is much more substantial than just girl power feminism. How Lucille Ball was erased from Star Trek's narrative The throughline of mentorship We ge...

Anika and Liz don their sparkliest shirts and biggest earrings, and sit down to watch Star Trek: Of Gods And Men, a fan film starring Nichelle Nichols, Alan Ruck, Walter Koenig and more. You can watch it here , or -- in a much smaller window -- watch an unauthorised HD remaster .  We're in our Alan Ruck era, but we were not prepared for the unbelievable hotness of Garrett Wang, or the SURPRISE LIB...

Liz takes a deep dive into Usenet archives and tells Anika about fandom's earliest discussions of Star Trek: Deep Space 9! (Please note, we are still having audio problems -- despite literally nothing changing in our set ups, Liz's feed is echoing on Anika's channel. This means Anika had to be muted for a lot of the time. At this point we may have to get two tin cans and a really big ball of strin...

Anika and Liz apply a normal amount of hair gel and step into a grim alternate universe to discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Yesterday's Enterprise", including... Is this TNG's best episode? It could be! This story turns on Picard absolutely trusting the word of a Black woman Rachel Garrett was Liz's very first female starship captain The original premise for this episode is FULLY BONKERS...

Anika and Liz are joined by guest Jonathan to discuss a movie Jonathan calls "the greatest Star Trek movie ever made": Star Trek: Generations. Our feels run the spectrum: Jonathan loves it, Liz loves everything except the plot and script, and Anika is … not a fan.  Everything that happens on the Enterprise B is the fault of Starfleet PR This is a movie that mistrusts nostalgia, but also believes r...

Anika and Liz are here to discuss the NEW and WIDELY REVILED streaming movie Star Trek: Section 31. And here's Antimatter Pod's hottest take yet: we ... liked it? Not because it's good! (It's not!) But ... well, have a listen while we discuss... We feel cheated that we didn't get series that Erika Lippoldt and Bo-yeon Kim wrote But is it Star Trek? Yes. Next question! We are intrigued by Georgiou'...

Anika and Liz don their gaudiest statement necklaces and medallions and get the band back together for an adventure in Millennial Greige, 46 years before TikTok invented that concept. Yes! It's time to discuss Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and yes, this episode is 90 minutes long, but please note that's still shorter than the movie itself. And we have a lot to talk about! Such as... Content note:...

Anika and Liz jump headfirst into the S-field to discuss the series finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks, "The New Next Generation", including... We love the coda so much that it makes us like the final season more This episode had the wrong type of ship nerdery for us The trouble with Tendi Rutherford has been even more underused than usual this season, which makes his subplot here feel like it came...

Anika and Liz are pretty sure our alternate universe selves are well-rested, organised and completely on top of their lives. But we are here to be tired, messy and talk about the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, "Fissure Quest"! While Anika was out touching grass, Liz was getting spoiled for every single surprise in this episode (and also getting blocked on Bsky by Mike McMahan) Jole...

Anika and Liz are briefly trapped on a world where months pass in the space of seconds, which gives us a lot of time to talk about how great Carol Freeman is. Yes, we're talking about Star Trek: Lower Decks' "Fully Dilated" and "Upper Decks". We liked one of these episodes! Mostly! "Fully Dilated" was a personal attack aimed at us Why is Tendi so out of character this season?  The Boimler and Ruth...

Anika and Liz mediate a war between sentient shapes, and try not to ask awkward questions like, "Why do you even HAVE genders?" Okay, no, we're discussing Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5, episode 6, "Of Gods and Angles"! Another round of the "accept what makes you different" moral, which is not bad, but more suited to Bluey than an allegedly sophisticated comedy for adults (Bluey is successful for...

Anika and Liz visit the Klingon homeworld and Starbase 80, and Anika does not partake in blood wine or corn dogs because these episodes are not inclusive for vegetarians. Yes, we're talking about Star Trek: Lower Decks episodes "A Farewell to Farms" and "Starbase 80?!", and we have a few things to say... "A Farewell to Farms" was fine Mary Chieffo deserves better It's time for Liz to admit the tru...

Anika and Liz visit a fabulous resort, where we get to sit by the pool and relax while nothing bad happens and no one is weirdly stalked by their ex-girlfriend. We're discussing Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel", and spoilers, we aren't fans! The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel did not deserve this "My shoulders went up around my ears and stayed there for the entire episode....

Anika and Liz meet their alternate timeline duplicates, who are exactly the same except Fake Anika is super right-wing and Fake Liz has a luscious beard. It's time! For the Star Trek: Lower Decks fifth season premiere! Liz: I don't ship Rutherford/Tendi/T'Lyn 61 seconds later… Liz: I ship Rutherford/Tendi/T'Lyn Remembering Jeri Taylor New York Comic Con: Anika has been in the presence of greatness...