Antimatter Pod

222. Tumblr Star Trek (SFA 1.05)

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 fandom (and have a little rant about media literacy)
• Does "Series Acclimation Mil" prioritise fanservice over the new viewer?
• Liz: "It's giving 'These Are The Voyages…' (complimentary?)"
• The adult plotline feels … mean and incomplete?
• Sam is dealing with being a homeschooled kid off to college, and helicopter parents who can't let her go, and in some ways, hers is a first-gen immigrant story
• Sam's story is also about the journey undergraduates take in their education, from learning facts to synthesising disparate resources and developing original research
• Hey kids! Don't do 12 shots in one night! Your Antimatter Pod Aunties are here to remind you to have fun and drink responsibly!

221. Starfleet Debate Bro (SFA 1.04)

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 of the Federation, but he also embodies its values, both the humanistic and paternalistic tendencies
• Is this an allegory for the queer experience, or is Jay-Den literally gay? And if he is not, we will be demanding compensation for queerbaiting. 
• "Actually, your dad abandoned you because he was supporting you" feels like Worf Parenting Apologia, but also, Lura clearly comes from a happy family and cannot imagine anything else
• Klingons are climate refugees
• A lot of YA is about the fantasy of teens having power; this is about the fantasy of adults respecting teens but taking responsibility for fixing the world
• Are we meant to be shipping Darem/Jay-Den? Because we think Darem is shipping it…
• Building a love interest for Captain Ake (when your brain was rewired by Picard/Crusher at a formative age)

220. Take Me Out To The Calica Court (SFA 1.03)

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 being phased out
• This episode understands that growing up with access to sports is a privilege
• Starfleet Academy is not Euphoria, thank goodness
• Darem is queer! Lura and Jett are dating! Kyle is totally into Jay-Den! 
• If any Star Trek is gonna give us polycule drama…

219. Liberal Arts Military School (SFA 1.01 and 1.02)

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 and Genesis are mirror images: privileged high achievers, but one is a natural leader and the other is a bully; Tarima is a character specifically for Anika. We are here to wax rhapsodic over Captain Ake. Nus Braka is giving Harry Mudd.
• Starfleet Academy is unusually interested in depicting disability, assistive devices and accommodations
• We have one problem with the premiere -- breaking down boot camp tropes, Black hair politics, what does "regulation" even mean in this context and when Caleb's peers are wearing piercings and jewellery?

218. Florida Man Discovers Metaphor (ENT 4.03)

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 impossible to square Koss's behaviour with the writers' apparent belief that he is a decent guy
• "Home" is ENT's "Family"
• Antimatter Pod pays salute to ENT's use of tropes in the Trip/T'Pol ship
• Archer's angry camping trip
• In its clumsy way, ENT was one of the first pieces of media to address the trauma of 9/11, not just the anger and desire for revenge
• If ENT wanted to be The Sexy Star Trek, they could have saved all the money they spent on decontamination gel and just put all the characters in Henleys
• What have we learned about weddings in Star Trek?
• Star Trek is a grim dystopia where your job matters more than your relationships, and that is why Star Trek's weddings and marriages are rarely executed or explored well

217. Dad Harder (DS9 6.07)

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 and "Data's Day" were written by Ronald D. Moore, and we are trying not to read too much into anything
• This is an episode about Dax rejecting the Klingon gender binary and being punished and publicly humiliated for it, including by her friends
• Not a single character is changed by the events of this episode, except Jadzia, who learns an important lesson about tolerating abuse (it's good and she should do it)
• Complaining that there are no TNG characters at Worf's wedding is a lot more fun than talking about all the ways the script throws Jadzia under the bus … so we do both!
• Lieutenant Atoa, infidelity and using Polynesian people as props
• If Odo has this "instinct for justice", why doesn't it apply to facing consequences for his own wrongs?
• Giving Avery Brooks a line telling Terry Farrell to suck it up and kiss the boots of a racist, xenophobic asshole is … a choice. A REAL choice. 
• Justice for all the Daxes (except Curzon, who is actually the reason some of the Daxes deserve justice)

216. Live Data Reaction (TNG 4.11)

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? Is it really?
• Keiko is a controversial character for a lot of reasons, many of which boil down to sexism and racism, but ALSO her introduction here does her no favours
• Much like Deanna and Wyatt in "Haven", Miles and Keiko's relationship is written as if they are adolescents AND IT'S WEIRD
• We are obsessed with all the background details: Age Gap Couple! The USS Zhukov! 17 feline supplements! Helm Ken! Patricia Tallman! 
• Data considers Worf a kindred spirit, and we have to ask: does Worf feel the same way?
• One oblique hint at a time, we WILL make Beverly Crusher a three-dimensional character!
• LOVE the costumes in this ep, mostly, but we cannot endorse Keiko's hair chopsticks
• Not many people know this, but T'Pel's shark fin hat and Winn's Sydney Opera House hat are friends

215. Stephen Miller's Betazoid Eugenics Program (TNG 1.10)

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 wearing grey in the holodeck scene (he is wearing burgundy). And unfortunately these were LOAD-BEARING INACCURACIES that couldn't easily be edited out. Never trust a podcaster. 

• "I don't know who wrote this, but I cannot support them." 
• We know early TNG loved a Special Boy, but why is Wyatt Miller the protagonist of this episode? 
• Is Lwaxana Troi a reliable source of information on Betazoid culture and custom? 
• "Genetic bonding" is a fancy word for "child betrothal" and also sounds kiiiiiiiinda sketchy? Were Ian Troi and the Millers attempting to pull some sort of eugenics shenanigans?
• (Streaming movie about Michelle Yeoh taking out Ian Troi, co-starring Jess Bush as young Lwaxana, when?)
• Liz is not a fan of Lwaxana and takes issue with the current "if you don't like Lwaxana Troi, you're a misogynist" discourse
• "I would like to have a dinner party with Lwaxana Troi and Cersei Lannister." 
• Is Mon Mothma the anti-Lwaxana Troi? Either way, she's joining Lwaxana and Cersei for cocktails

214. Spacebook Relationship Status (TOS 2.01)

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 love weddings, and we love how they can be used as a characterisation and worldbuilding tool
• Vulcans secretly live for the drama
• It does not do to dwell on the science and evolution behind pon farr and we should not have tried
• Liz is very concerned for the wellbeing of asexual Vulcans
• There's a lot of orientalism in our first glimpse of Vulcans and their culture, and modern Trek hasn't really walked that back
• We don't appreciate William Shatner enough (William Shatner did not pay us to say this)
• It's actually quite possible that McCoy and Chapel have never spoken outside of work
• Strange New Worlds has destroyed this episode and also Spock as a character
• Vulcans: we are an advanced and sophisticated culture
  Also Vulcans: please do not ask about the child marriages
• Kirk's infatuation with T'Pau is very important to us

213. Twentieth Century Thinking (SNW 3.10)

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 of this episode are very, very bad
• Do we need to dismantle the carceral state for the Vezda? 
• No more backstory for M'Benga, please, we have enough dog whistle racism
• Kirk, Spock, barroom mind melds, queerbaiting and the weirdness with La'an
• You almost have to respect the effort that went into dismantling Marie as a character before fridging her
• Speaking of dismantling characters: remember when we didn't hate La'an? When she was, in fact, one of our faves?