Tony and Laurie are joined by the Shuttle Pod‘s Matt Wright this week. They kick off with the latest news including a wrestler added to the cast of Starfleet Academy, more details about the Section 31 movie, and the addition of The Wrath of Khan to the National Film Registry. The trio then digs into their review of the Lower Decks series finale, “The New Next Generation,” and say a sad farewell to the show. Everyone loved the finale , had very few nits to pick, and celebrated all the great moments that tied together the final season and the series as a whole. They wrap up with a look at TNG’s Tamarian language, the history of the Klingon Bird of Prey, and a special about Christmas movies featuring Star Trek celebs.

[Lower Decks review starts at 8:47] Anthony and Laurie start off taking a deep dive into the trailer for the upcoming Star Trek: Section 31 streaming movie. They agree it’s a better trailer and the movie looks like it has good production values and plenty of action, and they hope it can make good on promises to be “fun.” After that, they review the penultimate episode of Lower Decks, “Fissure Quest,” the first part of the two-part season and series finale. Both love the episode were surprised just how many canon connections (and characters) were jammed into it, thankful it had a longer runtime. The podcast wraps up with Tony’s conversation with Garrett Wang where he talks about playing various Kims on Lower Decks, along with how he feels about almost returning for Picard and more.

[Lower Decks review starts at 12:41] Anthony and Laurie talk about Star Trek’s two Saturn Awards nominations, then discuss the Section 31 catch-up video released by Paramount Plus. They chat about Robert Picardo’s praise of Paul Giamatti on Starfleet Academy, Tawny Newsome’s update on her live-action Trek comedy, Kate Mulgrew’s comments to a fan about a Janeway series, Anson Mount’s audition for Lorca, and Michael Dorn’s thoughts on playing Worf again. After that, they review the newest episode of Lower Decks, “Upper Decks,” which puts a spin on the concept of the show itself, then play Laurie’s interview with Jerry O’Connell about playing Ransom and being an expert on parallel universes.

As this is Thanksgiving week, we don’t cover the news except to point listeners to the site to check out Tony’s interview with the executive producer of “Unification” and breakdown of that short film featuring the return of classic Kirk and Spock. Anthony and Laurie review “Fully Dilated,” the newest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, relishing the guest star’s performance and all the meta fun. The podcast wraps up with Tony’s entire interview with Lower Decks supervising producer and director Barry J. Kelly talking about the making of this episode as well as giving us some hints for the rest of the season. Happy American Thanksgiving!

Anthony and Laurie start the week discussing the release of the Roddenberry Archive’s latest short film Unification, which has fandom buzzing over the return of William Shatner’s James T. Kirk. Roddenberry also released some cool new interviews with Shatner, Robin Curtis, and George Takei. They catch up on the latest news on Strange New Worlds and discuss Laurie’s conversation with DS9’s Nana Visitor about the journey she took writing  Open A Channel – A Woman’s Trek. [24:07] The podcasters then pivot to Lower Decks’ “Of Gods and Angles.”  Both agree it was a lot of fun but also predictable, while the highlight was the Boimler story with Dr. T’Ana. They roll in some audio from Tony’s new interview with Gillian Vigman talking about how she ad-libs T’Ana’s signature curses. [45:55] They wrap with a former NASA official who flashed the Vulcan salute while being sworn into for Congressional testimony, and how to stay in the loop on Trek Talks, which has a growing lineup of star-studded panels for the January 2025 charity event in support of the Hollywood Food Coalition.

[Lower Decks 505 reviews start at 34:05] Anthony and Laurie have a lot of news to cover this week! They talk about Strange New Worlds, drop a few tidbits about Starfleet Academy, and round up the latest intel on Section 31. They discuss Jeri Ryan’s description of a Captain Seven show she turned down and LeVar Burton’s thoughts on a legacy show, the Prodigy season 2 release on physical media, and the latest on the greenlit Star Trek movie and the one waiting in the wings. They also have updates on season 3 of Gates McFadden’s podcast, share the sad news that Tony Todd has died, and talk about the regional Creation cons happening around the country. With all that done, they review the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Starbase 80?!,” covering the Enterprise tribute, excellent guest stars, and more. They wrap up the podcast with some tales from their separate event screenings of To The Journey, the documentary about Star Trek: Voyager.

Anthony and Laurie skip the news this week to review two Star Trek: Lover Decks episodes, “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel” and “A Farewell to Farms.” We also hear a bit from showrunner Mike McMahan from New York Comic Con talking about Boimler’s “growing” arc this season.

Tony and Laurie will be reviewing the latest episode of Lower Decks (“The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel”) on next week’s episode along with episode 4. This week we present our season 5 interviews starting with Tony’s chat with T’lyn voice actress Gabrielle Ruiz focusing on this week’s latest episode. The former Broadway and Crazy Ex Girlfriend star talks about taking on the role of a Vulcan and how “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel” was a perfect fit for her. Up next is Tony participating in a NYCC remote roundtable interview with other media outlets with Lower Decks voice actors Tawny Newsome (Mariner), Jack Quaid (Boimler), Noël Wells (Tendi), and Eugene Cordero (Rutherford). The cast talks about season 5, emphasizing how much they don’t see it as the end of the stories for their characters. The pod wraps up with Laurie in a  roundtable interview with series creator/showrunner Mike McMahan, conducted in the press room at NYCC, so apologies for the background noise. Mike breaks down how he approached season 5 differently, dropping some hints on what we can expect for the rest of the season. Tony and Laurie will be back next week on November 8th to review Lower Decks season 5, episode 3 (“The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel”) and episode 4.  

Anthony and Laurie have two new episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks to review! Season 5 has finally begun with “Dos Cerritos” and “Shades of Green.” Before they can do that, they talk through all the news from the panels and our interviews at New York Comic Con about the streaming Section 31 movie, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Strange New Worlds season 3, and Lower Decks. They wrap up with a way to have a Star Trek experience on the Enterprise-D bridge built for Picard season 3 and LeVar Burton’s latest and much-deserved honor at the White House.

It’s the 200th episode of All Access Star Trek, so Anthony and Laurie asked Star Trek: The Next Generation legend Jonathan Frakes to come by and talk about Next Gen, Picard, directing Trek films and TV past and present, his early career, and a whole lot more. The chat spans his career from auditioning for Welcome Back Kotter through to his latest directing gigs, including for upcoming Star Trek shows and more. We also asked him if he thinks he will ever play William Riker again.