Like season 3 of Discovery, Liz and Anika are a little bit delayed but totally worth the wait. We hope!

We're discussing the first two episodes of Discovery's third season: "That Hope Is You" and "Far From Home". And, along the way, we talk about...

• Grudge, a good catte

Liz and Anika revisit "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident" -- the only two TOS episodes to feature the Romulans on screen. 

We discuss: 

• parallels and contrasts

And more!

We take a deep dive into episode 8 of Enterprise's third season: "Twilight", and discuss: 

• how much we love this episode (A LOT)

It's the episode where we ask, um, are we meant to find Phlox attractive here? Because, wow, baby!

Halfway through its first season, Liz and Anika revisit Lower Decks. Spoilers, we still like it! BUT...

• it really is awfully heterosexual

But also!

• this is still a Beckett Mariner stan podcast

Anika and Liz select characters, concepts and ideas which, if copyright law didn't exist (and also they controlled Star Trek, which, for some reason, they still don't), they would bring into the Trek universe. We're talking about...

• the value of retelling stories

It's the episode where we reject wholesale the end of Rogue One!

Hey, remember two weeks ago, when we were like, "Well, maybe Star Trek: Lower Decks won't be for us, and that's okay." 

SPOILERS: WE LOVED IT. 

• This is now a Beckett Mariner stan podcast

Anika and Liz discuss the news out of this year's virtual San Diego Comic Con. And ... there's not much of it! 

• We understand the reasons, but we're still disappointed at the lack of release date for season 3 of Discovery (three days later: 15 October!)

And, in the spirit of our traditional digressions, we also talk about Hanna (the movie and the Amazon Prime series); Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN by Susanne Daniels and Cynthia Littleton (a book whose title Liz has been misremembering since 2007); and Mo Ryan's Vanity Fair piece "'This Was Abuse': The Fall of a CBS Showrunner".

It's almost unheard of for a network to reject a pilot, only to request a new one. But Star Trek always was a bit special. Anika and Liz are here to discuss "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second -- and successful -- Star Trek pilot. And we have to ask -- is this real Star Trek, or just a generic action-adventure story wearing a Starfleet uniform, a shameless money grab, a blatant jumping of the shark? 

• But seriously, this is a strangely violent and callous episode!

It's our 50th episode! And we're celebrating with silliness: we've come up with 25 questions each, and given the other 60 seconds to consider important issues like: 

• why does Anika blame Jonathan Archer for everything that's wrong with the Federation?

And that barely scrapes the surface! 

When we planned this episode, we thought we were just going to talk about the newly announced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But real events took over, and so we encourage our listeners to donate to the ACLU, Black Lives Matters groups, FreeHer and other organisations raising money to fight systematic racism, injustice and police brutality. Check out antimatterpod.tumblr.com for specifics.

It's very difficult to pivot from that important business to something as frivolous as Star Trek! But we also discuss: 

• the extremely unfortunate optics of announcing a new series with an all-white (so far) cast

This week's pitch for a series that will never happen: Alexander Rozhenko: Attorney at Law.