Antimatter Pod

Anika and Liz don their blue shirts and do a deep dive into depictions of depression in Star Trek. (Please note this includes discussions of suicide and self-harm.) 

• The early years: 
  • Dr Elizabeth Dehner
  • Badmirals
  • Spock's stories can be a metaphor for a lot of things, but the emotional repression to depression pipeline is definitely one of them
  • (Anika has a whole THING about The Motion Picture and Spock's arc, it's amazing)
• The 90s: 
  • A counsellor on the bridge
  • Stories that are explicitly about mental health
  • Lwaxana Troi
    
  • Sometimes the problem is not the depiction in the series, but the (ableist) reaction of fans
  • Anika presents a very strong argument for B'Elanna having an anxiety disorder
• Post 9/11 (ENT and the Kelvinverse films)
  • Liz says T'Pol was the first female Vulcan character when clearly she meant first female Vulcan regular, don't @ us
  • ENT reverts to a very masculine type of story: men deal with feelings through avoidance and sex, while T'Pol is literally too emotional
  • ENT and the AOS era: a time of magical healing vaginas as substitute for mental health care
• The Trek Renaissance
  • Discovery and Picard tell explicit stories about mental health, with varying levels of success
  • Prodigy and Lower Decks tell implicit stories
  • SNW takes us back to the manly man stories of the ENT era
• Harmful and helpful depictions
  • fandom ableism
  • Liz has an UNPOPULAR OPINION about the depiction of Seven in Picard
  • "I'm gonna say something mean about Katrina Cornwell."

Specific episodes we talk about include:

• "The Loss" (TNG)
  
• "Dark Page" (TNG)
  
• "Emissary" (DS9)
  
• "It's Only A Paper Moon" (DS9)
  
• "Night" (VOY)
  
• "Extreme Risk" (VOY)
  

Anika and Liz replicate a shuttle without seats and settle in to discuss the two-part finale of Star Trek: Prodigy's first season…

• Prodigy loves a Vulcan/Tellarite/Andorian trio
• COMMUNICATION is THE THEME
• Holo Janeway fulfills the dream of all Janeways everywhere
• Gwyn's big hero moment
• ALSO the Dal/Gwyn, we have been shipping it since episode one and we feel VERY GOOD about everything!
• Everyone should get a puppy (but especially Rok-Tahk)
• No offence but Zero looks like an iPod now
• What next for season 2?

Anika and Liz swap bodies and invade some holonovels as we discuss the Star Trek: Prodigy episodes "Ghost in the Machine" and "Mindwalk". And along the way, we touch on...

• Into the holo-verse
• Where is the Zero-as-Dixon-Hill story we need and deserve?
• Jankom Pog is NOT OKAY and we're into that
• Seriously, just a few weeks ago, we were like, "Jankom is the flattest character?" HOW WRONG WE WERE
• Murf. Just. Murf. What?
• It is OUTRAGEOUS that Paramount hasn't released Delta Heart: Magical Veterinarian as a phone game
• We do not dislike Dal's pirate game, but it doesn't really tell us anything new about him
• Liz is here to ship Control/The Living Construct. And also Zora/The Living Construct. Enemies to lovers but make it AI.
• Any time you can put Kate Mulgrew in a scene with herself, you get something good

Anika and Liz replicate some coffee, put on some classical music, and get into some backstory. And along the way, we discuss...

• Good news, Dal! We know who your family is! Bad news, they're the worst people in the galaxy. I'm sorry. You're a Soong.
• We continue to respectfully fangirl Aaron Waltke
• It's never too soon to introduce your children to bioethics
• Rok-Tahk is the anti Toph Beifong
• The Tellarites just took a DISABLED ORPHAN and THREW HIM INTO SPACE we are NOT OKAY and neither is Jankom Pog
• Now as much as in the '90s, the Kazon deserve better
• Like many people raised by abusive parents, Gwyn is incredibly aware of the emotional state of everyone around her
• IT'S JUST HEARTBREAK ALL THE WAY DOWN
• The Diviner: a bad person, should be stopped
• The Vindicator: she can have anything she wants, we support her
• (We ship it)
• We have a new theory about what Chakotay is doing, and if we're right (sometimes we're right!) it could justify his whole presence in the show and maybe even redeem the character from decades of racist writing

Due to real life shenanigans (Thanksgiving, a state election), Anika and Liz were unable to record last weekend. But here's a mini-ep we prepared earlier - a long rant about the state of Star Trek merchandising that was cut for time/relevance from our last full ep.

Topics include:

• Disney knows when to merchandise a series, and more important, when not to merchandise it
• Paramount can't do either
• When your merchandising is dominated by spirits, wine, beer and drinking glasses, there's a whoooooole demographic you're excluding - and we say that as people who drink!
• Also, our predictions for episode 15 of Prodigy? So wrong. SO wrong!

Anika and Liz don their cutest Starfleet-issue hooded coats and beam down to an icy outpost in search of some fugitives, and along the way, we discuss Star Trek: Prodigy's fourteenth episode!

• "We have a plan but everything goes wrong" and "this could all be resolved if people talk to each other" are classic plots going back to Shakespeare and beyond, BUT that doesn't mean we have to like them!
• Liz spends an episode talking about Xindi Insectoids even though they are clearly Reptilians
• Stop! Don't split up the landing party! Don't leave Rok-Tahk unsupervised! Honestly, these teenagers and children are weirdly not good at planning.
• You'd think Holo Janeway would have said something, but she's also very young! And also, she can't get home until the weapon is resolved? And she's a Janeway, so that must be hard? 
• We are mystified by the ongoing presence of Okona in the animated Treks. MYSTIFIED.
• Antimatter Pod remains an unapologetically pro-Romulan podcast
• We need to know every single thing about Commander Tysess, especially whether or not he and Tuvok are BFFs
• Some decades-overdue worldbuilding for the Tellarites, yet it has been 50-odd years and we have yet to see a single Tellarite woman
• We engage in wild and baseless speculation about what season 2 will look like -- will the kids steal a different starship? Will Admiral Janeway adopt Rok-Tahk? 
• Murf's new appearance is a bit. Um. 

Anika and Liz answer a distress call and wind up on the planet of the Strange New Worlds fans. We had some audio issues in recording and sound a bit like we're under flawlessly animated water, but we discuss things like…

• how Liz is explicitly banned from using her Shatner voice for the whole episode
• We have decided to ship Chakotay/The Diviner
• When entertainment becomes the entirety of one's culture
• How to be Starfleet (you don't need a uniform or a hashtag)
• Galaxy Quest, "Muse" and "Far Beyond the Stars"
• What better way to introduce young viewers to TOS than via the stage? (Just ask Anika!)
• We are NOT PREPARED for Murf to change! Yes, this is a series for young people and change is a fact of life BUT WE ARE GERIATRIC MILLENNIALS AND THIS IS ALL VERY STRESSFUL

Hey, that's a nice cube. Let's steal their stuff! What could possibly go wrong?! Anika and Liz discuss Star Trek: Prodigy's "Let Sleeping Borg Lie", including…

• Nodding to past Borg stories while also doing something new
• There's a fantastic synchronicity between Lower Decks's second contact concept and Prodigy's foundation being the Federation's apparent failure to follow up after a first contact
• All of Janeway's assumptions are wrong, and it's GREAT
• We take a few minutes to be a Tolkien podcast (Rings of Power spoilers)
• It turns out the real collective is the friends we made along the way
• Anika has SO MANY FEELINGS about redemption, atonement and forgiveness
• Prodigy has a very clear morality: it's a place where it's safe to be wrong and then do better, and you don't have to be powerful or important or a member of a quasi-military space force to do good in the universe

Anika and Liz are rolling up to a starbase in a stolen starship, putting on our un-earned cadet uniforms and discussing the new episode of Star Trek: Prodigy and children in Star Trek in general!

• The chase is on!
• Lieutenant jg Barniss Frex is THE WORST
• Starfleet needs to start recruiting career bureaucrats who LIKE being assigned to sit in an office in space and do paperwork. Like … us!
• We don't actually think Dal is a Janeway/Paris salamander baby, but we have a lot of thoughts about how it would be great if he was
• It would be terrible if the Diviner has done something to Gwyn to also make her a weapon. Absolutely awful. We wouldn't enjoy that one little bit. Honest.
• Rok-Tahk is safe to learn and make mistakes
• If kids go from "Hey, Murf is a Mellanoid slime worm, let's watch the only episode of Star Trek where those are mentioned," they'll watch "Coming of Age", the episode where Wesley fails to get into the Academy (and that's okay). Coincidence? Maybe!
• Liz wants to be happy about finally getting the J/C hug she's been waiting for since she was 14, but Robert Beltran's making it hard
• Anika has compiled some stats about children in Star Trek generally, and they are fascinating
• Like, TOS had FOUR episodes about kids taking over the ship! Out of nine across the franchise, and that's not counting Prodigy!
• In fact, you can kind of track social attitudes towards children via their presence in Star Trek, which makes it alarming that SNW keeps killing them

Anika went to New York ComicCon! So we're catching up on all the news, including…

• PLUSH MURF! An oasis in a quality merch desert! 
• Discovery season 5: this looks FUN
• Callum Keith Rennie's Captain Rayner sounds like Lorca 2.0, and we approve
• We already love L'ak and Moll, even though Liz is already planning a barrage of Australian puns
• Prodigy season 1.5: OUR CHILDREN ARE BACK
• Liz can tell the difference between Jameela Jamil and Ella Purnell, honest.
• From shipping Janeway/Janeway to making it WEIRD in record time
• Picard season 3: it's us! The only people in fandom who think this looks awful!
• The misogynoir starts in the trailer, and Michelle Hurd and Michael Dorn deserve better
• We're here for the Picard/Crusher, but also, we watched season 2, soooooooooo…?
• If they've killed off Laris, we're going to find a table and flip it
• For all our complaints about Picard and the way it dominates the conversation (and marketing budget), the future of Star Trek lies with the people who came in with Discovery and Prodigy, and that's wonderful.