The Incomparable Mothership

By Jason Snell

What's The Incomparable Mothership about?

The Incomparable Mothership is the flagship of the Incomparable podcast network. It’s all about geeky media we love, including movies, books, TV, and more, featuring a rotating panel of guests and hosted by Jason Snell and friends.

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The Incomparable Mothership episodes:

04.19.2024
712: Arguably the Saddest Record
It’s time to celebrate the music of the first decade of this century via our 2000s album draft! From opera to show tunes, we’ve got several musical styles covered—and those are just Andy’s picks! Why do James’s picks leave us...
04.12.2024
711: Creepy Bone Owl
Our book club reconvenes to discuss the “Shades of Magic” series by V.E. Schwab, as well as the start of a second trilogy, “The Fragile Threads of Power.” Before the spoilers begin, we’ll explain the parallel fantasy world structure and...
04.05.2024
710: Average Night at the Sicilian Opera
Just when we thought we were out, they pulled us back in! Long after we recorded our first episodes about “The Godfather,” our panelists get back together to talk about the late-sequel “The Godfather Part III,” or is it “The...
03.29.2024
709: Worms All the Way Down
Get on your sandworm and head south! It’s time to discuss “Dune Part 2,” a sequel with more sand, more Fremen, and more time spent at the super weird planet of the villainous Harkonnen family. Is Paul the hero, or…...
03.22.2024
708: Wet Hot Mutagenic Summer
It’s the first-ever Reboot a Bad Movie draft! In which our stalwart panelists grab an intellectual-property loser off the shelf, dust it off, and re-envision it in a new way that could maybe, possibly be a hit with modern audiences....
03.15.2024
707: Crime is Not Cozy
Nobody is more surprised than Antony Johnston to find he’s now a cozy crime author. Dan Moren sniffs out the secrets of his “Dog Sitter Detective” series....
03.08.2024
706: Riff on Biff
We conclude our movie-by-movie review of the “Back to the Future” series with the western-themed third installment, which features less time travel shenanigans and more old-west shenanigans....
03.01.2024
705: A Legacy of Biffs
It’s time again. Time! To go forward in time, then backward—or is it sideways?—in time, then further back in time, and then maybe even further back in time. It’s time for the bland future of 2015, the apocalyptic alt-present of...
02.23.2024
704: Kramer Before Kramer
Great Scott! No time to be a slacker, McFly, because we’ve gotta go back in time to 1985 so we can go back to 1955 so we can perfectly time a lightning strike. That’s right, it’s time to talk about...
02.16.2024
703: Communists? In Berkeley?
Jason’s favorite movie of 2023 was the gray flipside to “Barbie,” Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” And while none of us would exactly call ourselves Nolan fans, this one manages to grapple with a deep subject with great care. It’s got some...
02.09.2024
702: One Is Silly and One Is Wacky
Two nations, two sitcoms, one premise: What if one of us could see ghosts? Infusing genre complications into the world of TV situation comedies, “Ghosts” has become a hit in both the UK and the U.S.! We recommend both, compare...
02.02.2024
701: KEEP PANTYHOSE ON
KNEW THIS WAS ONE WAY TICKET BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO COME At long last, it’s the episode Jason has waited 13 years to schedule. Up from the depths of the ocean comes a long-awaited 4K transfer! It’s time...
01.26.2024
700: A Dark Totoro
We reconvene Miyazaki Club to discuss the master animator’s latest final movie, “The Boy and the Heron.” We went in wondering, will this be lyrical and nostalgic magical realism, or will it be a barrage of super-weird fantastical imagery? The...
01.19.2024
699: Merchant Ivory Godzilla
In 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One,” the classic monster doesn’t just represent nuclear disaster, but crushing guilt on personal and societal levels. What if someone built a deeply emotional human drama that was also a movie where Godzilla destroys a whole...
01.12.2024
698: Incarnation of the System
Crack open your psychohistory textbooks and ready a new batch of imperial clones, because it’s time to discuss the Apple TV+ series “Foundation,” extremely loosely based on the classic works of Isaac Asimov. Before the spoiler horn, we talk about...
12.29.2023
697: Three Things and a Blurt
Happy new year! Some of our most prolific panelists pick some of their favorite media of the year gone by, and a few listeners send in some favorite clips from The Incomparable in this past year. Onward to 2024!...
12.22.2023
696: Self-Aware and Unaware
It’s Kilmas 2023, in which we continue our annual celebration of the films of Val Kilmer. This year’s selection is “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” written and directed by Shane Black. It’s a film noir-ish story that wants to have everything...
12.15.2023
695: Uncanny Plastic Head
In the spirit of coming downstairs and finding presents waiting under the tree, we offer the Incomparable Toy Draft. It’s not just a story about our favorite childhood toys—it’s also a story about the toys we desperately wanted and never...
12.08.2023
694: Don't Take the Soylent Factory Tour
50 years later, “Soylent Green” is still made of people—and its futuristic setting of 2022 is shockingly relevant! But having given this film a full viewing, we think it’s also a pretty good example of ’70s eco sci-fi with a...
12.01.2023
693: Short-Selling Magic Crystals
Almost 100 episodes later, we reconvene (most of) our original panel to discuss season two of “The Wheel of Time.” How does it fit into the current set of big fantasy TV shows? Team Didn’t-Read-the-Books seems to be in agreement...
11.24.2023
692: The Penultimate Weapon
We don’t care what the box office says! We saw “The Marvels” and thought it was a lot of fun. And we worry that Marvel may take the wrong lessons from its box-office failure....
11.17.2023
691: You See... They're Ducks
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! For the holiday, we give you a turkey of a movie about a duck. It’s 1986’s “Howard the Duck.” (No way to conceal it.)...
11.10.2023
690: Some Possibly Shady Goings-On
Dan Moren’s new novel ‘All Souls Lost’ is a departure from his previously published work, but not as much as you might think. Antony talks to him about the book, how it came to be, and why it was a...
11.03.2023
689: Have Phaser, Will Travel
We have some suggestions for the next round of “Star Trek” TV series....
10.27.2023
666: Max Von Sydow Was 44
A mother seeks help for her troubled daughter from a medical profession that’s unable to find an answer it can believe. A priest questions his faith, until he gets projectile vomited in the face by a 12-year-old girl with her...
10.20.2023
688: They're All Messed Up
Grab some kindling and prepare to board up a window! Old Movie Club gets in the spirit of the spooky season with the 1969 movie that started it all—and by “all” we mean what we now think of as zombies—“Night...
10.13.2023
687: Resurrected Corpse
The Book Club closes the door on this year’s awards shortlist with some lively book ranking and a tour of the nominated short fiction....
10.06.2023
686: Selective Sequel
You will believe a man can fly… a seaplane! We take on the curious 2006 film “Superman Returns,” which is a sequel (sort of) to “Superman” and “Superman II” but most definitely not other movies. There’s a new cast and...
09.29.2023
685: The Execution Kills Me
You will believe a man can fly again! Super September continues with a discussion of “Superman II,” a troubled production that shows all the signs of being a superhero classic… but falls short of the mark more often than we...
09.22.2023
684: The Memory Cheats
We entered our viewing of 1978’s “Superman” with nostalgia and a sense of childlike wonder. We exited questioning everything about our fond memories of childhood....
09.15.2023
683: It Was Okay
Our Book Club concludes its reading of the Hugo and Nebula shortlist novels with “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and “The Spare Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal. One’s an homage to H.G. Wells (sort of?) and the...
09.08.2023
682: Heroes I Never Heard Of
Perhaps the best expression of the DC Animated Universe was its swan song: Justice League Unlimited, which improved upon its predecessor (Justice League Unadorned) with snappier pacing, a conspiracy story arc that anticipated today’s morally ambiguous super-teams, and a jumbo...
09.01.2023
681: Do More Harm
Arrange an assortment of home-cooked Vulcan appetizers and warm up your singing voices, because it’s time to discuss season two of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” This season took some big swings, and some of them didn’t quite connect—but a...
08.25.2023
680: A Better Lando Calrissian
Is there a movie everyone else thinks is bad, which you secretly love? Maybe more than one? Then this is the episode for you! Antony resurrects his old podcast and asks a panel of guests to draft and talk about...
08.18.2023
679: Fleshy and Gross
We travel the highways and byways of space, from gross flesh space stations to the weird suburbs of Counter-Earth, all with one quest in mind: talk about Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3!”...
08.11.2023
678: People Who Care About Kaiju
Our book club reads two Hugo nominees, “Nona the Ninth” and “The Kaiju Preservation Society.” One’s the third book in a series that’s a real departure from what has came before, and whether that’s good or bad depends on how...
08.04.2023
677: Pink Magic
When a movie is this pink and this popular, we can’t ignore it. Our panel came in with high expectations for “Barbie,” and somehow not one of them was disappointed. What is it about Barbie and Ken that made this...
07.28.2023
676: Crisis on Infinite Parkers
How can “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” live up to its predecessor? It seems like a tough one, but somehow this 2023 sequel manages it. Just don’t expect an ending—it was originally called “Part One” for a reason....
07.21.2023
675: I Know a Lot of Divers
Our Indy Summer concludes with the new release, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Ticking clocks! Antonio Banderas! Short Round II! We had a good time at the movie and we break it all down....
07.14.2023
674: Too Much Monkey Business
Bad news for the haters: We watched “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and must inform you that our nerd rage of the 2000s has abated and we think it’s mostly okay now, actually. Even the refrigerator....
07.07.2023
673: Ten Years or One Bullet Hole
Our revisiting of Indiana Jones movies continues with “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, a movie that may not achieve true greatness, but sure has a heck of a lot of fun, thanks to a solid job from Harrison Ford...
06.30.2023
672: Hot Pits
As an adjunct to the Summer of Spielberg, we are revisiting the Indiana Jones movies we only glossed over the last time we covered them! We begin with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” which gets credit for trying...
06.23.2023
671: Fuches is Everyone's Dad
“Barry” is the blackest of black comedies — if it’s even a comedy at all by season four. We knew Bill Hader was funny, but now we also know he’s an impressive actor and director, too. This spoiler-laden discussion of...
06.16.2023
670: I Guess I Like People?
From the sleeper hit that everyone clung to during the COVID lockdowns to a third season with Premier League-levels of hype and scrutiny, Ted Lasso was more than a breakout hit for Apple TV+. We dive into the Good, the...
06.09.2023
669: Friendship & Cinnamon Rolls
Our book club tackles two Nebula-nominated novels with ampersands in their titles! Is that all they have in common? It’s “Nettle & Bone” & “Legends & Lattes.” Plus: Is Scott the monster again this time? Maybe not!...
06.02.2023
668: McGuffins & Mechanics
They made a better movie about Dungeons & Dragons! Can you really go wrong with Chris Pine and Hugh Grant? Two expert DMs and a roleplaying novice break it all down!...
05.26.2023
667: This Show Was Weird, Right?
We go 20 minutes into the future and 36 years into the past to discuss ABC’s cyberpunk drama “Max Headroom.” For a show with an 80s pop-culture icon as its title character, it’s actually a prescient satire about where our...
05.15.2023
665: Defragment Your Data
They said that “Star Trek: Picard” wasn’t just going to be a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” reunion show, and that turned out to be true, at least about the first two seasons. We review the show’s just-completed third season,...
05.05.2023
664: The Book of Bo Katan
We gripe because we love! We break down the third season of “The Mandalorian.” Is burying part of the story in another show doing a disservice to this one? Why are there so may plot threads that seem to go...
04.28.2023
663: A Lot of Ocean
Our Book Club begins our walk through awards shortlist reading with two Nebula Awards nominees for best novel, “The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Nayler and “Spear” by Nicola Griffith. One’s a near-future thriller about sentient octopi, the other’s...

What's The Incomparable Mothership about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Incomparable Mothership episodes:

712: Arguably the Saddest Record

711: Creepy Bone Owl

710: Average Night at the Sicilian Opera

709: Worms All the Way Down

708: Wet Hot Mutagenic Summer

707: Crime is Not Cozy

706: Riff on Biff

705: A Legacy of Biffs

704: Kramer Before Kramer

703: Communists? In Berkeley?

702: One Is Silly and One Is Wacky

701: KEEP PANTYHOSE ON

700: A Dark Totoro

699: Merchant Ivory Godzilla

698: Incarnation of the System

697: Three Things and a Blurt

696: Self-Aware and Unaware

695: Uncanny Plastic Head

694: Don't Take the Soylent Factory Tour

693: Short-Selling Magic Crystals

692: The Penultimate Weapon

691: You See... They're Ducks

690: Some Possibly Shady Goings-On

689: Have Phaser, Will Travel

666: Max Von Sydow Was 44

688: They're All Messed Up

687: Resurrected Corpse

686: Selective Sequel

685: The Execution Kills Me

684: The Memory Cheats

683: It Was Okay

682: Heroes I Never Heard Of

681: Do More Harm

680: A Better Lando Calrissian

679: Fleshy and Gross

678: People Who Care About Kaiju

677: Pink Magic

676: Crisis on Infinite Parkers

675: I Know a Lot of Divers

674: Too Much Monkey Business

673: Ten Years or One Bullet Hole

672: Hot Pits

671: Fuches is Everyone's Dad

670: I Guess I Like People?

669: Friendship & Cinnamon Rolls

668: McGuffins & Mechanics

667: This Show Was Weird, Right?

665: Defragment Your Data

664: The Book of Bo Katan

663: A Lot of Ocean

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