In this first installment of a when-I-feel-like-it feature series in which I take a break from reviewing plain-old iTunes-submitted podcasts and cover shows only available to paying supporters on Patreon!
In essence a spin-off of the amazing podcast We Hate Movies, The Nexus features hosts Andrew Jupin, Chris Cabin, Steven Sajdak, and Eric Szyszka engaging in a monthly discussion of two Star Trek series, episode by episode. Available at the $8 per-month tier (stick around to the end of the review for everything also included!), each episode discusses one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and an episode of The Next Generation.
It’s a relatively simple idea on paper, one that others have done similarly with one show at a time on a weekly basis for years (the most popular example I can think of being The Greatest Generation that is now covering Deep Space Nine and Discovery), but with the secret blend of four spices that is the WHM crew the idea transcends a simple television watch-through podcast.
Some of the hosts have extensive experience with Trek as a franchise, some have next to none. Zero of them have an ounce of hero worship for Gene Roddenberry, which comes as a very refreshing change of pace from the usual rose-tinted look official Trek gives its creator. The Nexus gang frequently highlight moments in both show’s early episodes that have not aged well; from the messed-up sexual politics of TOS to TNG having one of the most racist plots ever as Episode 4.
The criticism never comes off as whining, in the way most generic tv/film review podcasts usually do, the bulk of negative Nexus comments come from either pure shock at the ridiculous things put on screen or from knowing how much better the franchise can (and has) been.
Of course it wouldn’t be a comedic review podcast without a healthy dose of impressions and running gags, which the Nexus boys bring in spades. Through the eyes of The Nexus Captain Kirk is an reckless pervert who has a macabre relationship in which Bones covers his ass by reporting dead crew members as “marooned” instead of killed. Spock doesn’t take guff from anyone and constantly criticizing everyone’s stupid decisions (oh, and as of last month is a secret foot fetishist who publishes a magazine titled Spock’s Foot Stuff).
Meanwhile in TNG the crew doesn’t fare much better, with a similarly perverted Commander Riker using the holodeck for various sex fantasies, a often frustrated Captain Picard loses his temper with Data’s odd gap in knowledge of basic words and phrases by demoting him to “mop-bot” duties (cleaning out the holodeck after Riker’s previously mentioned adventures. Oh, and as far as The Nexus has covered, Worf has basically spent his time either dying instantly or twiddling his thumbs on the bridge doing nothing, because season one of TNG is oddly bland and un-interesting for a Star Trek product.
One of the most exciting moments of my podcasting month is when I get a notification saying a new episode of The Nexus has been posted. What’s amazing about this little podcast is each episode is oozing with such concentrated amounts of fun commentary, jokes, anecdotes, tangents, and Star Trek discussion that they have an incredibly good shelf-life. I’ve listened to every episode of this series at least five times, with some episodes re-listens somewhere in the double-digits (and I laugh my ass off every time).
In the end, any review of a Patreon-exclusive podcast boils down to one incredibly subjective and blunt question: Is it worth it?
Supporting the We Hate Movies Patreon page for $8.00 USD per month gets listeners access to the following:
- a monthly episode of The Nexus (18 episodes as of this writing).
- a monthly episode of their series reviewing old cartoons Animation Damnation (17 episodes as of this writing)
- a monthly exclusive full episode of We Hate Movies not put on the main feed (3 episodes as of this writing.
- Access to quarterly WHM commentaries of a full movie (4 as of this recording)
- a link to a private Google Drive folder full of the first 200-ish episodes of WHM not available on the public RSS feed (also available for free on the website as manual downloads for free)
- access to the hosts’ monthly newsletter The Big Daddy Dispatch.
It’s not difficult to figure out where I’m going to come down on this one, I’ve been a WHM fan for a little over two years and have been a subscriber since the Nexus was launched. While $8 rivals a subscription to any streaming service, I find myself getting that much enjoyment out of the monthly episode of The Nexus, let alone the pile of WHM goodies delivered to my phone from the lower tiers. I can’t recommend We Hate Movies prime and The Nexus enough.
Media criticism and coverage writ large. 