RED LETTER MEDIA SEASON 2 REVIEW

Neatly summarises DSC season 2. A few good episodes in the beginning (New Eden and Sounds of Thunder) and then a nonsensical middle and end. What I like about the review is that these guys clearly love Star Trek and intelligent Sci-Fi.



It'd be great if there was a re:View series made entirely of "best of" and "worst of" TNG / DS9 episodes.

 

Been posted several times in the general chat thread already

 

What I don't like about your post is that it passive-aggressively implies that people who "clearly love Star Trek and intelligent Sci-Fi" wouldn't/shouldn't like Star Trek: Discovery.

 

i mentioned this in the general disco chat, but i'll expand on it here: i love red letter media, i love half in the bag, and of course the plinkett star wars prequels reviews are hilarious and 100% correct.

it's a shame the same attention to detail, insight, and care they put into those plinkett reviews weren't applied to their two star trek discovery re-views -- both are lazy and clearly geared toward criticizing the show at the expense of accuracy. they point out plot holes that are non-existent simply because they haven't paid close enough attention to the show itself, which is particularly annoying because there are plenty of real plot holes to nitpick. they also hold on so tight to canon and the previous entries in the franchise that it just feels like old school fans hating on the new series. they don't consider discovery on its face but how they feel about it as fans of star trek, which boils down to derision and dismissiveness, not real criticism or even parody.

ultimately these are supposed to be funny, but it's just not. discovery has myriad problems, deep flaws, and there's plenty of low hanging fruit to be mocked. but these reviews just fail so hard.

 

Is this another thread to bash DSC in?

Honestly, my respect for RLM has pretty much evaporated and this video (as highlighted by others in other threads) cements it. I get not liking a show or movie but looking down on others for liking it pretty much smacks of the gatekeeping that Trek fans are so often accused of.

 

I thought their criticisms were mostly on-point. However, they spent too much time meandering (the whole first segment was more then talking about Star Trek: Picard for example). And once they finally got into it they spent so much time talking about the logic holes in the plot they didn't bother discussing any of the other issues with the season - like underutilization of characters (Reno aside), unearned emotional drama, and muddled themes.

 

It sometimes feels like these review videos are being produced by some kind of algorithm that's programmed to check a set list of talking points and then generates text for it from a pre-written pool of sentences. Or maybe there's a script template for them with drop-down menus where you can choose common phrases and arguments.

My favorite part about these reviews is that most of the plot holes that are commonly criticized aren't even really plot holes, it's just that they are watching it with an overriding preconception of "DSC is crap", keep actively looking for things that reinforce their expectations, and don't really focus on anything else. And of course, if you're watching the series with that mindset, then every single background detail that you missed or didn't stop to think about instantaneously becomes an unexplained plot hole. Just to reinforce what I said in the General Disco Thread: just because it's not spelled out explicitly, it's not a plot hole.

I might be projecting a bit, but I think this argument has some merit based on that on this very site, the same old not-really-plotholes keep being brought up over and over again. Which is really a shame, as there are many things that can be legitimately be a matter of criticism in the series, like characters being sidelined and reduced to mandatory-line gimmicks, legitimate headscratchers like Sarek and Amanda teleporting across the galaxy to say their goodbyes, Burnham and Tyler's groanworthy romance that lacked any kind of chemistry, the very unsatisfying end that Lorca got, just to name a few.

 

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Rich is pretty clearly a "hater." He says right out in the opening section he will not watch Star Trek: Picard because Kurtzman is in charge and he thinks it will be a big, dumb action show no matter what the PR says. Mike, on the other hand, has a more complicated view of the show, actually ending with excessive compliments regarding the acting, VFX, and all other elements besides the writing.

To my mind the biggest flaw by far of the review is it doesn't say anything new. It critiques the show based upon seeming logic holes that were pointed out elsewhere months ago. Since they were late out the gate you'd think they would try to find something more insightful to say about why the show was ultimately flawed. Their trailer made it seem like they were going to concentrate on the technobabble and the melodramatic aspects of the season. But the first was basically quickly noted and then never addressed again, while the second was ignored entirely.

 

Can you give an example of a not-really-plothole?

 

Then I shall be more directly aggressive!

For sure I think that these are people who love Star Trek and intelligent Sci-Fi. And it's not only Discovery that I think that they wouldn't/shouldn't like.

Lets be honest a great deal of Star Trek is just dumb fun, e.g. The Gamesters of Triskellion, A Fistful of Datas, Our Man Bashir. Very few episodes are what I would call 'intelligent'. Some of it is risible: code of honour, rascals, sub rosa, threshold etc...

Rod Serling said of Star Trek:
"Star Trek was again a very inconsistent show which at times sparkled with true ingenuity and pure science fiction approaches. At other times it was more carnival-like, and very much more the creature of television than the creature of a legitimate literary form."

I personally dont' think that Star Trek DSC has hit the lows of previous series (nothing comes close to Code of Honour for example). But I don't think that it's come close to the highs. How I would love it if DSC could give us a stone cold classic like "The City on the Edge of Forever". "The Doomsday Machine". "The Menagerie". "Amok Time". "Arena". "Yesteryear", "The Best of Both Worlds", "Far Beyond the stars", "The Visitor" etc...

They have such short seasons. For them to be so average and full of plot holes is disappointing.

 

To quote the same as I used in the generic chat thread:

But I could also mention things like complaints about Tilly's presence on the ship as a cadet along the lines of "she's a cadet, she's supposed to be sitting in a classroom, her being on a starship makes no sense." Midshipman's cruises are a known training method in modern navies, and there was on-screen evidence of Tilly having skills that Lorca could utilize with the spore drive project, and even if it wasn't reason enough, her mirror universe counterpart turned out to be the captain of the ISS Discovery. Lorca had every reason to move some strings behind the scenes to get her on the ship. Basically, unexplained and not spelled out, but not a plot hole.

But Section 31 is something that always gets brought up, because, as the argument goes, apparently everyone knows about them in the 23rd century and this makes it hard to believe they retreat into obscurity just 120 years later. Even though, we haven't seen anything whatsoever to suggest that they actually are that well known. Starfleet officers seemed to recognize the black badges, but the civilian prisoner in Context is for Kings had obviously no idea what they stood for. And even if Starfleet officers recognize the black badges, it doesn't necessarily follow that they know every single detail about S31 other than they're the official military counter-espionage service. I think that many apparent plot holes are perceived as such only because viewers tend to think that the characters necessarily know everything the audience knows, which is not really the case most of the time.

 

One of the key elements of Rich's hatred of the show is laid bare when be basically says "sci-fi used to be for us nerds, now the jocks have taken it over."

I think this is somewhat false. But if you've spent your entire life, from childhood on, identifying yourself as a weird outcast in part due to your refined, non-mainstream tastes, and then in early middle age variations upon your original interests pop up absolutely everywhere in diluted form, chances are pretty high you're going to transform into a butthurt elitist.

 

I have other stuff to do today and places to be. So I'll cut straight to the heart of this.

You can honestly say that you don't think "Calypso" is close to any of those highs?

 

I thought Calypso was a sweet vignette -- a good example of its form -- but it didn't strike me as particularly new or innovative. So, yeah, I wouldn't put it anywhere near the pinnacle of Trek.

 

I'm really on the fence about Red Letter Media, though it really has nothing to do with Discovery, per se. They've given me many hours of entertainment, but well before this latest review, I had started to become increasingly uneasy with aspects of that channel. I'm not overly concerned if their views on Star Trek differ from my own. I mean, I personally really like First Contact while "Plinkett" bashed and nitpicked that movie along with the rest of the TNG films, but it's not like I was going to unsubscribe over that. However, what does bug me is this general sense that they're pandering to the toxic elements in fandom. Perhaps not to the extent of certain other geek-centric YouTube channels that routinely rant about feminism and SJWs, etc. ruining their favorite franchises, but that sort of attitude seems to be not too far under the surface in some of their videos.

 

Since I don't like the TNG Movies, or ENT, and am half-and-half on the Kelvin Films, I never thought bad of RLM. They were going after things I didn't really care about. I won't name names but "Plinkett" even reminds me of some posters here.

But then we get to DSC. Which is the first Star Trek I've really liked DS9 ended. So, naturally, I wouldn't look at RLM the same way I used to. They're Old-Schoolers. I get it. It's their shtick to not like any Star Trek made after a certain point. Maybe it's even what they really think. Probably is.

They're not spreading false information or trying to smear anyone. They're just loud-mouthed 40-Somethings I don't agree with. So I won't go so far as to block their channel from my feed like I did Midnight's Edge or Nerdrotic.

But if someone is going to post their videos, they should at least post the main talking points. Not everyone is interested in listening to two people blather for over 50 minutes. Myself included. And I'll say what I said before. It's too easy to just post a video. If you have an argument to make, or a case to make, put it in your own words in the initial post. So we can have a back-and-forth.