That Ceo guy kind of reminds me of when Barclay got addicted to the Holodeck. Socially awkward AF IRL and coping through being a badass in video games, I think most of us can relate.
CTO, I believe (Chief Technical Officer) I actually thought he might be autistic, as many adults don't seem "obviously" autistic, but I thought his love of Star Trek (I mean Space Fleet) might be his "special subject". My uncle is autistic, but you'd only guess if you spent tons of time around him. His special subject is finance. Just the other day he was waxing nostalgic about being gifted two pheasant chicks as an 8-year-old.... then raising them and selling them for a profit! Happy memories, naturally.
@@tastyloaf5487 Barclay would likely be a high functioning autistic, meaning he would have a normal or high IQ which would allow him to function as anyone else an daily activities, but would have trouble when it came to anything social. It's been rumored that Tilly on STD could also be autistic.
@@singarixVery questionable list. Courtney Love is more of a sociopath. Gordon Brown is not an "aspie", he is just a traditional dour Scotsman (that's what they used to be like) - he was a bit of a successful womaniser at Edinburgh University which is not an Asperger's trait. As for the rest of your list...nah... A lot of evidence against and little for. (Hard enough to diagnose living people, let alone dead ones).
I feel like the Callister episode was more about technology allowing us to form our own 'universes' of toxic, insular experience. Incels and such. Not really nostalgia or fandom, necessarily. In the context of Discovery, I think most people simply latched onto the visuals as a way of encapsulating their feeling that the setting had little in common with what they were interested in from the methodology of Trek storytelling, despite the visuals having little to do with that. Sort of like how people upset with Game of Thrones made a big deal out of water bottles on set - that had little to do with their actual contention, but it was an easy icon to exhibit their displeasure with more abstract issues. In Star Trek's case, it was a loss of Gene's spirit and original vision of a united humanity resolving issues with science and discussion, despite peoples' willingness to project those feelings onto Klingon hair styles or holographic interfaces. I guess in this case, Klingon foreheads would be the windmill. Either way, making a new story set just before TOS is probably the most foolish thing CBS did, if they wanted to update the look of the setting. But that was probably CBS trying to bank off market recognition of the Kirk and Spock era. (Again.) They keep doing that instead of just developing the setting towards new eras. I get the feeling the Picard series uniforms went backwards to TNG's aesthetic for exactly the same reason - CBS panic shifting their marketing towards a more stereotyped audience using things they thought more people would recognize as 'nostalgic.' The insanity of nostalgia is more a market problem of the IP holder than a fan problem, in Trek's case.
PlagueOfGripes has lots of good points here but I have to disagree on one: that DM was not a cautionary tale about toxic fandom’s obsession with nostalgia, which played out in Discovery’s effect on certain segments of Trek fandom. (Let me know, PoG if I misinterpreted your POV on that. I think that CBS most certainly erred in placing their innovative story smack dab in the middle of Trek nostalgia-central while making several WISE choices about tweaking the franchise. The former choice lead to viewer frustration while the latter choice breathed fresh air into the franchise, just in the wrong setting (23rd century). But while many fans complained about the damage done to their TOS canon and nostalgia, other fans complained about there being yet another voyage in the Trek “past” that they would hate even if the details were all canonically consistent. These fans screamed for a Trek just after Nemesis (which they might get in Picard). Complaints belch forth about uniforms, whether Picard’s bridge crew will guest star, the plethora of new and younger guest stars, etc etc etc. And the next generation of nostalgic toxicity is born. It’s the same ugly beast all over again, even though many of these fans criticized Discovery and JjTrek and Enterprise for being too nostalgic! I’m hoping Picard (and Disco3) both break free of nostalgia and make good on Kirk’s mandate to go where none have gone before.
The main unconscious message of Callister is ironically is that the ship functions much better when it is "toxic". When there are attempts to make the simulation more politically correct, it breaks down. In fact, the New Callister only breaks free of its past when it ceases to be a woke revisionist version of an old show, and becomes something completely new in its own right. Hollywood and Star Trek could learn something from that.
Where's the LOVE button. Thank you for expressing so eloquently what I have always thought. It is the reason why I have enjoyed Discovery more than Lower Decks.....or Picard Season 1 more than Season 2. Stories not seen, in ways not told kept it interesting and fresh, even if some elements didn't work.
Great video. Quality production throughout; from script, naration, visual-style through to clip choices, etc. I work for a media co. in England - so I'm going to share this around, if that's ok. I think my colleagues, well some of them, will be equally impressed. Thank you.
ok i forgive you guys for taking so long between essays - nostalgia is a drug more powerful that oxycontin - except you can blame the drug for its harmful side effects, nostalgias negative side effects are all user driven
Having been on oxy for about 6 years now for some very bad health problems... you are so very correct. Oxy becomes less effective with time .... Nostalgia becomes more effective.
This is my favourite ep of Black Mirror (although White Christmas comes very, very close). I actually just re-watched it today, coincidentally. I love the performance Jesse Plemons gave. You can tell he wanted to evoke Kirk with his speech cadences and body language, but he still owns the performance and makes it unique.
Glad to see Trekspertise back in full force. Not to put too fine a point on it, but y'all's work is a breath of fresh air compared to most Star Trek commentary on UA-cam nowadays.
Thanks! We try hard to be useful and to chase ideas that are interesting. Most of UA-cam is garbage. We want to learn from our journey of making videos.
The reference to the 17th Century and old literature is a good one. This being a parody of a tech company plantation. I worked as a university prof for ten years, then in industrial programming, then an independent analyst. As I reached my 50s I ended up in management positions of software development teams. My wife was the first to notice: The teams were highly diverse with lots of international guest workers often struggling with context and language, but there were just a couple of old style white guys in charge. They would hire me in from the outside, and make me overseer of the plantation as the board, owners and managers, who all fancied themselves progressives, were hiring less than fully functional outsource temps through head shops, paying them marginally, splitting the profit with the body shop (and I suspected some under table kickback from the markup), and expecting me as the "Estate Manager from a Kipling novel" to get proper results out of this team that would never move up. The estate manager met the clients, met the vendors, met the owners and investors. The estate manager was to provide the wallpaper to keep people from seeing the sweatshop vibe behind the curtain. After a few years I left that, as being ethically uneasy. It is so easy to fall back into the same patterns, despite the shiny new machinery or blinking lights, which in a way was the irony of TOS and TNG. Lots of diversity, lots of talent, but in the end the two or three white guys run the show and everyone else is a supporting character. Even a stock character, every one. A little more obvious with Roddenberry writing Paladin and Hey Boy scripts before Star Trek. Note celebrity progressive CEOs like Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk, etc over the past 40 years. They are personally progressive liberals, but professionally they are slave master plantation owners. Bezos pays his people very badly and monitors them electronically while championing worker rights in his newspaoer, Musk is often doing purges of his staff that he starts imagining are conspiring against him every time his stock plummets. Even Hillary Clinton's campaign was filled with a circle of diverse women, but when anything went wrong she would turn on them like a viper, and the whole operation was managed by an old white guy in a penthouse in NYC. When an employee she referred to as her "second daughter" turned up with supposedly erased emails on her pederist husband's computer, weeks before the election... ... she was suddenly "just a staffer". So much for professional "motherhood".
As usual, this is an awesome and insightful vid. Your channel has been a favorite of mine for years. Now as a counterpoint (ContraPoint? :) can you make a comprehensive video (or multiple) about "The Orville" as both an homage so spot-on it's almost more Trek then anything else these days -- yet also evolving into something quite its own. By season two, I would say it has boldly gone to ideas and topics -- where even Star Trek has not gone before. Or at least went a little bit further than Next Gen or DS9 could go -- and certainly in a very different direction than the movies or Discovery (we will see with Picard) -- yet it fits so well into the Trek zeitgeist, that it is simultaneously very nostalgic and very fresh, much like Callister. However, like original Trek, it is a throwback to tackling classic ideas and current social topics in a very sci-fi wrapped package. Obviously allowing those who might be staunchly on one side of an issue to see it in a new way, and perhaps be sympathetic to the other side and the complexity of the issue as a whole. And other times, watching The Orville is just fun -- stretching "Trek" the genre (or any space adventure show) further into comedy than it has gone before. In a post Battle Star Galactica [which I loved] reboot era -- where everything has turned to epic gritty dramas (cf. Lost in Space, The Expanse, etc.) it is very refreshing to have humor in a Space series done so well that it mixes seamlessly.
I have absolutely no nostalgia for Trek whatsoever. Actually, the first piece of Trek media I ever watched was the 2009 movie. I thought everything about the old Trek series seemed outdated and irrelevant. But then a couple years ago, I decided I would sit down and try watching some episodes. Pretty soon, I fell in love. DS9 is my favorite, but the philosophical and emotional episodes of TNG are mind-blowing and complex. Voyager is a fascinating story, too. I even quite enjoyed Enterprise (which most traditional fans seem to hate). Now while I can find entertainment value in the Kelvin movies and even Discovery and Picard, it really isn't the same level of science fiction. It's corporatized. I think your video essay really misses the point here. Fans aren't upset that things aren't *exactly the same*, and they're not obsessed, either. They're just angry that corporate and monopolistic media companies have capitalized off their nostalgia to make a quick buck. That there is no attention to detail or an embrace of the future ideals that old Trek strived for (even if they failed sometimes). We shouldn't be chiefly concerned with the "insanity of nostalgia," it's the corporatization of it. The same can be said for Star Wars or any other old series that has been rebooted in recent years. Additionally, practical effects and good dialogue have been replaced by video game CGI and forgettable one-liners.
A powerful and concise commentary on the state of all things Trek. Could not agree more with the need to avoid over sentimentalizing the past, in order to move forward. Bravo! So glad UA-cam & Netflix made the right decision! Looking forward to more.
It's a major plothole IMHO, because somehow the "clones" (if you can call them that) get the memories of the originals. In reality, no such thing would happen. He would have to scan their brains somehow as well and somehow map that in.
I remember thinking when I watched this episode that the episode was missing a key element. Namely, an actual fan of Space Fleet who would note that Dally is warping(heh heh) the values of the show to emphasize how he IS a toxic fan in comparison to those who love a Star Trek like show for what story they're trying to tell with the story. Maybe have Nanette being a fan as well. Instead, it comes off as "Fans of geek shows are creeps and people are right to avoid them."
I enjoy all the new Star Trek episodes. It just gets better every year. Everything I loved about TNG right there. Blown away by season 2 with changing one thing in the past caused an alternate universe. Wow! Season 2 got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Who would imagine Seth MacFarlane getting an emmy award.
@Timothy Vreeland Yeah. I'm primed and loaded for bear. Stay clear downrange! There is a danger of friendly fire! ;) :P Seriously though, there will be some that come along and totally agree with OPs statement. ;)
Fascinating!. But only don´t agree "USS Callister is a parody". The parody is in the twisted mind of Daly. And there are no "imitations" of Star Trek. The predecessor in the style of ST is a movie called "The Forbiden Planet" and ST has to keep evolving well. But BSG, B5, Farscape, etc. are what they are in their own style. As are many types of romantic comedy, wester, etc. This is an episode of BLACK MIRROR with an unique plot including a digital space environment; like a mix of ST and Tron. I love this episode cause at the end shows the beauty of being empowered, the mutual respect for each other and the value of teamwork like in TOS.
Incredible! Congratulations to Katie and the rest of Trekspertise for such a well researched, edited, and voiced visual essay! The topics are clear and concise, and follow a logical progression, and include parallels to existing media and literature to enforce claims and conclusions. Editing of stills provides an interesting method to illustrate the point of importance, and the video editing always matched with the topic being discussed in a manner that allows to viewer to visually draw the conclusion at the same time that the narration poses it. One critique is that the video tries too hard to address both Black Mirror and Star Trek in a way that might make the video uninteresting for those not invested in both series. If I'm solely interested in Black Mirror, the video loses meaning in the last parts of the video, especially when discussing Star Trek Discovery directly. If I'm solely interested in Star Trek, is there significant enough conclusion to be drawn here with relation to Star Trek that it's worth watching a fifteen minute discussion of an unrelated series? This format feels like it would have fit better as, address Black Mirror here and now, and in the future, when we discuss Discovery or Star Trek as a whole, maybe come back and watch this video for a deeper insight as to the dangers of obsession.
I challenge the idea that nostalgia made him nuts, at least compared to ST. ST is different in that, a real fan gets its moral points, and if they truly appreciate them they would be kinder, good not darker, mean. Toxic fans aren't real fans, they just like the window dressing (ships, space). In their core they are fundamentally bad ppl that choose to express it behind the veil of fandom. They probably also road rage, scream at their kids, lie on their taxes, vote for racists. They then pretend to love something that is antithetical to ask those things because they are obsessed with the facade. Maybe it's attention they like, maybe it's control, maybe it's codependency, but they take one fandom and abuse it to suit them. If ST didn't exist, they'd use another. Unlike other fandoms that are neutral, just celebrations of a fun thing and not moral tales, ST has moral ethical points. That immediately shows the hand of the person. You either live by the morals or you don't. It's a dead give away. If you don't, they saying your a ST fan is empty because you obviously don't get it. How can you be a fan of something that loves diversity and hate it? You can't. Similarly how can you write a show named after that moral etic but have no hopeful future in your show. You can't. I mean you can, but it doesn't make your show ST just because it looks like it. It all makes me really sad because I live in a world with no example of a hopeful future where people celebrate only brokenness and divisions. Where rape of thrones is the number one show and there is no hope. What we need is hope. Calister and what toxic fans want- neither provide that. Ppl Like me are nostalgic for hope, not a show. Because we are starving because we live in a world with none.
Ensign Tilly is frequently a stand-in for the Trek fan. Fortunately she's not a toxic and pokes fun at the insanely obvious. Such as pointing out the inconvenience of doors that suddenly open, time travel jokes, Michael's name and over complicated tech jargon. Reno and a few others also jab at fandom from time to time. 🖖
Yeah whatever but Tilly is the most annoying fucking character in literally any show I've ever watched. Every time she opens her mouth I find myself telling her to shut the fuck up.
@@BigFatCock0 To add, I don't think she's written as a so-called "toxic fan", but rather as misunderstood stereotype of what the writers think are nerds. Sort of along the lines of the misguided "nerds thank you" video they put out a while back. You can check out that abomination here: ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html
Because...fans need jabbed by the people we're employing to make these shows? I get it if people are troll haters at people creating the shows, but the...intensity of fandom is why Trek has been around for 50+ years, just like other fandoms. And no, you'll never be "perfect" for all the gatekeepers out there, but appealing to the broadest, simplest demographic of viewers isn't going to help your cause either. You can achieve a happy medium, if you have the skills & talent to do so.
16:10 seems like a dubious claim. People still tell stories of chivalrous Knights of honor, and all that. Don Quixote is relegated to obscure references, and can mostly be boiled down to version 1.0 of video games cause violence. Well presented, well spoken, poorly thought out.
... And now I get why their ship is called "Rocinante" in the Expanse. Touche, writers. It's a little less clever every time I think about it. ... moving along, now...
@13:04 the face removal thing. Remember Star Trek ep "Charlie X"? NO LAUGHING!!! Scared the crap outta me as a kid in the 70s! And remembering that old TOS ep, there're similarities to this Black Mirror show. A young person, not a man, who has ultimate power. Nice call back?
Terrific video. I like the idea of using Don Quixote as a lens to explore the idea of common visual and thematic language both as a tool for Trek but also as a call to try something different. As theses go, it seems like you're trying to have it both ways, but I think on a deeper level it's saying "These things are already established, go establish something else now." Given the events at the end of the second season of Discovery, and the short Trek "Calypso", we're given a really interesting opportunity to do just that. (Discovery S2 spoilers ahead) One of the chief complaints about Discovery at its announcement, other than its exclusive access through streaming, was when the series was to be set. Given the mixed response to the Kelvin-timeline movies as prequels-and, many moons ago, the mixed response to Enterprise-a lot of fans were concerned about traveling well-explored trails on our new Trek. The end of Discovery season 2 seeing Burnam and the Discovery traveling forward in the timeline a millennium, however, is an opportunity not only to have it both ways, like your thesis, but also to see the 3250s from the perspective of characters we now know from the 2250s, to act as audience perspective. We'll see the 3200s from the same wide and curious eyes as Tilly and Saru and Burnam and Owo and Detmer and Culber and Stamets and Reno and other characters yet undeveloped. This is that opportunity to move beyond the tilting at familiar windmills and move on to the next frontier, both with the familiar pieces in place for context, but also new ideas and new themes and new iconography.
Well, franchises do have to change. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result is one common definition for a colloquial insanity. That's a lesson Cervantes taught us 400 years ago and one that "USS Callister" reminds us to keep.
Thanks for this video. You guys are so great. Also thanks so I don't have to watch this episode of Black Mirror now. I can't watch that show because every time I do I fall into a weeklong depression like no other.
Don Quijote doesn't go insane from reading. he goes insane from reading tales of knights, Which Cervantes equals to reading *garbage*. Don Quijote goes insane from reading *garbage*. I wouldn't expect someone from the Anglosphere to understand such nuance.
It's unhelpful to compare yourself to other people. What you should do is compare yourself to how you where yesterday. Do you think you've improved sense you started? I can't awnser that question for you, but if yes that's all that matters.
So based on your analysis here why then is The Orville so much more popular than STD? Maybe Trek fans like the comfort of the past rather than having their universe upheaved like has been done on STD. Time will tell but I fully expect The Orville to outlive STD by a long margin
This was a good video, made me wanna watch the actual episode itself. I'm always weary when people group 'gate-keeping' with 'Toxic Fandoms' because I don't necessarily agree on that statement. I've met a lot of people who I will say " _Claim_ " a lot of things about say games, yet they refuse to ever go out of their comfort zone. If I argue with them, according to the popular consensus, that would make me a gate-keeper and a toxic fan, even though all I am trying to do is to get the person to realize the enormous potential in games they refuse to play, from systems in place to gameplay styles to even story. Isn't it better to encourage people, to experience more, than to have them perpetuate a lie? Of course what I am arguing for is probably not the same as what the person who wrote this meant with gate keeping so, I don't know. Just my two cents.
You know? Have seen Star Trek Discovery's first season. Got it on Blu Ray. It had flaws, but wasn't the worse thing I've seen. Honestly? Black Mirror, in many ways, was closer to being that. First one I saw was U.S.S. Callister. Have known Star Trek fans for years. Many of them. And the U.S.S. Callister basically perpetuated a screwed up stereotype of Trek fans even Gene Roddenberry himself fought in his lifetime. And upped the ante by turning the metaphorical "Space Fleet" fan into a cold blooded villain. After seeing another episode of Black Mirror? Decided to sit on that show. What Star Trek offers its supporters isn't mere blind fanaticism. Its a vision of a humane future-where many of our current cultural obstacles are overcome. And we're ready to venture beyond ourselves to explore new worlds. Since the middle of DS9? The shows writers have hacked away at that optimism. And that is the main reason why Trek may have become a shadow of itself. Black Mirror, and modern dystopian scifi in general, is very unimpressive to me. It seems like the bane of every fatalistic conspiracy theory, every cynical internet troll. In our changing nation? Going through bad growing pains? We need more humanistic future fiction and less self reflective dystopia.
When it comes to Star Trek, people never seem to mention the Star Trek bible. It applies to the original series and the later series, but shows set before the original series like Enterprise and Discovery aren't bound to it.
If you're referring to canon as the "bible", then you are mistaken. There is enough source material set within TOS that gives a rough history preceding TOS that also is canon. Staying within that rough history is not difficult, if the writers would simply take the time to learn it.
There are several major themes in USS Callister, but one is probably unconscious. On a conscious level it tries to deconstruct and revise old values, "toxic masculinity" and so on, but on an unconscious level, it actually *attacks* revisionist post-modern "woke" versions of old shows such as Discovery. It subverts itself... In fact the more woke the fake Callister becomes, the less well it functions. It also suggests we should be creating new franchises instead of feeding off the carcasses of old ones, Quixote-style, all (probably) unconsciously and unintentionally. It's like what William Blake said of John Milton who wrote "Paradise Lost", that Milton was "of the Devil's Party but did not know it." The people who made USS Callister are likewise sending out messages that they don't consciously intend, because they repress that part of themselves.
12:40 - I am totally convinced that Daly should have undoubtedly been celebrated, because after all, the fella was a goddamned genius who had thought up the whole thing and kept it successfully going whilst Walton was basically "just" a "mere" clerk who "just happened" to run the business. A business that would not be there without Daly in the first place. I may even go as far as to say (type down, actually) that the co-workers should have been kissing and licking Daly's feet, figuratively speaking, for his creating jobs, and thus securing livelihood, for them all from nothing. In a regard of the obedience issue, that is more difficult to tackle, but the punchline shall be that Daly was the main brain behind it all, the co-founder, the CTO, simply 'the boss', and there should have definitely been some natural subordination and corporate hierarchy in place within the company. I absolutely cannot picture myself to treat my manager the way the employees of Callister Inc. treated Daly, and moreover, on a seemingly regular basis. And why did they do that? Because he was insecure, socially awkward, and as a result thereof, came across as a creep at times? I mean, were they hyenas or what? I mean, the whole thing was most likely slow and gradual, but by the time we see Daly on this episode, it has definitely spiralled out of control. It should have never happened in the first place and the whole affair stinks with grievances, employment tribunals and maybe even some lawsuits. Basically, Daly is a product of his environment and the colleagues of his are to be blamed, among others. At the end of the day, he's a friggin' victim. No wonder that the fella went nuts and began to engage in those sick, but still just fictitious, games in a VIRTUAL world.
Naiive nostalgia is dangerous, but so is naiive acceptance of deconstruction and innovation. You may take it to far which Discovery has done in the opinion of many faithful and charitable fans. Especially in terms of continuity, storytelling and visual design.
As always on this channel, engaging and valuable insight into our mutual and unfolding pop culture. Thank you Katie for writing and Kyle for presenting - you always leave me with a greater sense that there is in fact a duty to not just binge but to thoughtfully consume and reflect. I think a question you leave us with at the end is "why is nostalgia so functional?" - to shamelessly plug a writing of my own that might pick-up this question, check out this piece on the phenomenon of "returns" in contemporary television and the inertia (which I think is a fitting word for the hazard Discovery needs to avoid as it evolves) of nostalgia: dawnzerlylight.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/returns-mst3k-twin-peaks-and-the-inertia-of-nostalgia/
A few issues: I like much of the comparison to Don Quixote, but there is a glaring difference that you left out: In the book, Quixote ends up being as necessary as the moving past what he is. It's made abundantly clear in the end when Quixote is disillusioned but still does the heroic thing. Benengeli admits in the end that, despite his constant attempts to tear down traditional chivalry, he NEEDED Don Quixote to do it. It is not a victory within the novel for Don Quixote to stop being who he is, it is a serious loss. In USS Callister, this is never implied once. In fact, if we take YOUR interpretation of the episode, it is implied that people like Daly are only a problem and are in no way part of moving forward. I love a lot of this video and all of your others, but why do you have to get so wrapped up in identity politics? Do you really think that there's a huge problem with men feeling entitled to "be worshiped"? Maybe there's some issues between the sexes,and that'd be interesting to discuss. But why in the world would the color of the guys skin matter? I do agree that Trek needs to move forward. But I really don't get your love for S1 of Discovery. I don't like S2 either, but S1 was such utter trash. And Calypso destroys everything about Trek's heart and soul. It doesn't have to be the same, but Trek has ALWAYS been about building a BRIGHTER future. If things get WORSE the further we go out, how is that still Trek? It's a deconstructed Trek... which is fine. But do it OUTSIDE Trek to show it from another angle. Just like Don Quixote did.... it's NOT set in a chilvaric novel, it's set in a post-chivalric period with a man who'se trying to be in something that no longer exists. Which is what Black Mirror did as well, and kudos to it for doing so. But why does it make any sense for Trek to be that? That would be like if Cervantes made his book an additional epic of Charlemagne. It just wouldn't work or make sense. That's why it had to be OUTSIDE of what he was deconstructing, but influenced by it. I really think that the answer to this nostalgia problem is to allow our beloved franchises to end. We need a new space exploration universe that is INFLUENCED by Trek, but ISN'T Trek.
I already briefly touched on this directly in response to an @Trekspertise reply (who knows if it’s actually Kyle who is replying), but I think my point bears further clarification. In his (or her?) reply, they stated that this video wasn’t even _about_ STD. Again, I will state what _I_ saw presented in this video. Please tell me if I'm somehow wrong: In the beginning we have mention of the future of STD, but to examine that issue we have to spend most of video talking about “toxic fandom” and its parallel…Don Quixote? We then conclude with the idea that Trek needs to “evolve” in order to survive with the _heavily_ implied subtext that out of touch “nerds” need to let go and accept that. Really? We’re going down that road? So, apparently everyone that doesn’t like STD is out of touch and maladjusted to reality somehow. They just can’t let go of the past and, gosh darn it, just give the show a chance, man! There’s also a (possible, IMHO) allusion to the writers of STD taking the good ship Discovery and its crew into the far future to accomplish the task of truly “taking Trek where it’s never gone before”. Yeah. Sure. OK. So, the writers have purposely been leading up to this with two whole seasons of weak meandering canon stomping material just to allow the writers to finally really stretch their wings! Um, sure. If you say so... 😉 So, be honest and tell me why can’t you, Trekspertise et al, admit that STD is struggling in the writing department? I mean, one only has to watch your STD Mid-Season 2 Review video to see that at least subconsciously you find the premises of each of the episodes to be, how shall I say it, “challenged”, if not outright absurd. You can literally see the look of disappointment on Kyle’s face as he struggles, STRUGGLES, to say something good about it. So again, why this need to delve into the tired excuse of “toxic fandom”? Listen, I do my utmost best to not disparage or otherwise belittle those who like the show in its current form. People will like what they like. There’s no problem with that. But what I _don’t_ understand is when I, or others, raise very real concerns and issues with the show, usually but not limited to, about its writing, it is met with very, dare I say, toxic responses? We are disparaged, maligned, told that we need to “get a life”, or at the very least to “get out of our parent’s basement”, and even...called “nerds” (Wait, WTF? I thought they were the very raison d'etre for the show's very existence! Please see: ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html ). Here’s the thing: the approach of my critique of STD isn’t from the standpoint of a “fan boi”. I am _not_ complaining about warp drive in a time where spore drive exists, tribbles inexplicably being tossed haphazardly into scenes (something which both the JJ films and STD did) or the fact that there is a window instead of a viewscreen on the bridge. No, my primary complaint is with the writing of the show. Writing being done by inexperienced Young Adult writers with very little science fiction work in their backgrounds. While I can certainly identify with the fan bois on some level and readily relate to some of the irksome things that they point out, that is however NOT my primary beef with the show. Even the abuse of canon isn’t the main issue at the forefront for me. I’ve already laid out my specific problems with the writing elsewhere here on this channel, so I won’t repeat them here. However, there is one other thing that needs to be addressed. That is this idea that everyone who hates STD…is somehow a “woman hating misogynist”. There _are_ legitimate concerns that Michael is written as a Mary Sue character (for the uninitiated, a Mary Sue is an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character.), but everyone who brings this point up somehow immediately gets pegged as and lumped in with the _actual_ misogynists. Now, there _are_ male Trek fans like that out there, but I don’t think it is as prevalent as many in the media would like us to believe. I can certainly say that in my travails around the Internet I haven’t really seen this massive onslaught of “toxic masculinity” that certain people claim is the primary motivator of the hate for the show. My 15 year old nephew has a teacher (this year they are studying science fiction, if you can believe that! I'm SO JEALOUS! :P ) who, when talking about STD, explains just how bad it is and why. Is _he_ a misogynist? :/ Let’s stop and talk about the “Feminist-ization” (capital "F") of the show for a moment. I am all for strong female characters and am, for one, VERY happy that there has been an uptick in the number of positive female role-models being depicted on both the large and small screen. The thing is that they need to be smartly written and often they just aren’t. What usually gets presented only seems to satisfy that animal instinct for “comeuppance”. Case in point, how about that guy in season 2 who disparages Michael only to moments later die a horrible death? What was the point of that? Where’s the lesson there? Why couldn’t they have written it so that Michael proves him wrong and in the end he has to come to her with hat in hand and apologize for what he said to her earlier? Was that too hard? Apparently, yes, it was. I guess it was simply much easier to just show the death of the “evil stupid man” than to actually show a potential solution or resolution to the conflict. So, instead of an actual exploration of misogyny and possible ways to address it, we got the “Yeah! He sure got what he deserved!” moment. Yeah, all "evil men" deserve death, the more horrible the better. You sure can't beat raw catharsis, can you, ladies and evil gentlemen! The bottom line is that it seems like a lot of the time people who create “Feminist-ized” character moments are just following a trend instead of _actually_ being concerned about the plight and advancement of women in society. Hot topics get coveted views, clicks, and "engagement". But, try and raise that concern and you get lumped in with the misogynists. WTF? Go figure. :/ Anyway, I think I’ve said all that needs to be said. I’m sorry that this comment is so long, but you can’t just throw up (literally) a 20-minute video, most of which paints a picture which implies that mouth breathing women hating _nerds_ are the problem, and then just casually act like “Heh… So, what’s your big deal, man?” I’m still going to come here and I still have notifications enabled. I think you are (obviously, based on the majority of your content pre-STD) capable of producing astoundingly deep, moving, and very personal looks at the many issues and themes that Trek has struggled to address (and sometimes admittedly very clumsily) over the many decades of its existence. But if this channel is going to turn into a, yes, _fan boi_ STD channel, I just might need to rethink my viewing choices. Please don’t let it be so. And if you respond with the tired "Good riddance, then! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" I will be even more disappointed. Look, you _can_ have problems with the show and _still_ like it! I get that. I _understand_ that. But don’t do this “everyone who hates it has severe mental issues” thing. You've done two videos on that topic in fairly rapid succession now and It’s extremely unbecoming of you in relation to your previous content and undermines why I started coming here regularly in the first place. Do more videos like your Mid-Season 2 Review video accept _actually_ talk about those issues instead of sheepishly looking off camera and going “Ummm… Uhhhh… Ummm… So, that happened…” I have faith in you, Kyle. I suspect that you know what I’m saying is true and it’s highly possible that your team has perhaps forced you into this position. You seem like a humble guy who wants everyone to get along and be happy, but remember, this is YOUR channel. You do YOU. But again, if it’s just going to be “STD is roses every day!” then I’m out of here. The show has _big_ problems. So, talk about them! Don’t just glaze over that fact with a goofy montage sequence. You know what? I have _yet_ to see you do one of your amazing deep dives into a topic/issue that has been (more than likely poorly) brought up in STD. So, I’m _daring_ you right here and now to do one. However, I’m afraid that if you do you will just end up simply correcting what the writers did and come from the standpoint of what you think they “actually wanted to do". But, hey! PROVE ME WRONG! ;) Make it so. Engage. That is all.
1) The video isn't about Discovery. We do say that "Calypso" was probably Discovery's best innovation on the Trek formula, but the take-away here is that the writers of Discovery and other future Trek spin-offs need to learn the lessons of Don Quixote...which is that doing things just for nostalgia's sake is empty and fruitless. Trek does need to evolve. And it has evolved before. DS9 is a perfect example of evolving along the lines of considered nostalgia. Discovery is certainly not doing that. At least, not yet. In the video, we expressed hope that Discovery might get to that level. 2) In no way shape or form is this video criticizing people who like Discovery, or people who dislike Discovery. It isn't talking about either of those groups of people. Anyone is very much allowed to dislike the series. This video does not express the thought of "giving Discovery a chance". It does wish the showrunners and writers luck for the future. Hopefully they will get it right. 3) Toxic Fandom is a thing. Expressing an opinion, good or bad, about a property does not make someone a toxic fan. At no point in this video are people who dislike Discovery called toxic fans. We would never do that becasue it is OK to have opinions about the show. Most people have opinions about the show. Toxic fandom is, by the way, a particularly negative strain of fan within a fan community defined by the use of inappropriate behaviors such as harassment, verbal abuse, gate-keeping, threats, and other socially unacceptable and antagonistic behaviors in order to define themselves within the fandom. Is the main character of "USS Callister" a toxic Space Fleet fan. No. He isn't exactly using his favorite IP to attack or misalign others. But the subtext is that unconsidered nostalgia can be a gateway to mistreating others who don't respect a favorite IP. That's not holding an opinion...that's actual mistreatment. You have to make a leap to become a toxic fan. Most people just have opinions. 4) People who dislike Discovery are not women-hating misogynists (unless, of course, a person doesn't think women should be able to lead a show). We implied nothing of the sort in this video. If fans out in the world have implied as such, well...see the above definition for toxic fandom. It is OK to have opinions about a character's death without being called names. Conversely, there are actual misogynists in the world. There is such a thing as toxic masculinity. They permeate the larger culture of things. And they are worth talking about and are certainly worth holding heated opinions and debates over. Does Discovery touch on that? Well, maybe. That is certainly, thankfully, up for interpretation. 5) This channel is not a Discovery fan channel. We are a science fiction essay channel. Yes, there has been a lot of Discovery content of late. But, in our defense, it is a brand new Star Trek series that we are trying to watch and understand. And so far, there are no apparent topics from Discovery solely that we can flesh out for an essay. It has only been two seasons. In time, something will pop up. We will continue to examine and think about it. In the meantime, we will consider Discovery in connection to larger topics about sci-fi. But, outside of the occasional review (we have the DIS End-Of-Season Review coming up), we aren't going to talk about how good or bad the writing for a show is. In connection to Star Trek, that is a sisyphean task. That's not really what we do here. Our preferred topics are along the lines of literature and anthropology and science and how sci-fi approaches those topics. But...we will try to find something to discuss in relation to Discovery. But never something negative for the sake of pointing out flaws by itself. If a flaw must be discussed, it has to be contained within a larger narrative or topic. 6) We do appreciate you taking the time to express yourself. And, of course, for taking the time to watch. There is nothing wrong with a heated opinion.
@@Trekspertise Thank you for taking the time to respond. Sorry I didn't get back sooner, but I have physical medical issues that reared their ugly head with a vengeance. I appreciate the clarification(s). There's a lot to process there. Please forgive me if I sounded exasperated. It's just that I get labeled toxic/misogynist (even when I say nothing about women at all)/"crazy" when all I'm talking about is mostly the writing. It seems that "toxicity" is STD-agnostic. :/ Perhaps it's just simply time to back away from it all. I just can't bear to watch the show anymore, which is sad because, regardless of whether one likes it or hates it, it is nonetheless undeniably part of Trek history now. And the franchise will evolve, certainly. We'll see how it goes. I hope you understand that I respect you and your team and the wonderful content you create. Please don't let my heated words reflect differently. And with that, I will turn the page. Take care, sir. :)
@@Trekspertise One more quick note: While I am happy to have grown up in a world where the pace of technology has accelerated to a breakneck pace, I still wish that some of its shortcomings were addressed. Such as how currently basic communication with others, more often than not in the form of text, almost completely nullifies subtlety. I think that a significant portion of the angst online today arguably boils down to simple misunderstandings/misreadings. We just don't have a way to tap into those evolutionary traits which were crucial in helping us avoid conflict in the past, such as vocal tonal shifts, facial tics, eye movement, and inflection. I think it would be fun to just relax over some fine ale or coffee at a local brewpub and talk about one of our favorite subjects. Hey, if you guys ever find yourself in/around the Ann Arbor, Michigan area I could certainly recommend some fine conversation enhancing establishments. ;) Again, thanks for your time! :)
I disagree with two things that end up with the same result. It's nothing to do with Toxic Masculinity or Toxic Fanboyism. The episode is more focused on what lies behind the mask. Though I can't remember the female led's name at the moment, her public face is very well groomed for people to see but behind that mask she's a "dirty girl". Whatever phrasing you want to use. The same is true for most of the main cast. CEO is a douchey, look at me boss type, but if you got to know him he feels very strongly for his child. The male lead however is the focus of this face behind the mask. That is to say, in public he is all but a whimpering dog but behind closed doors he would rule as a tyrant. Whether or not he is an underappreciated genius is beside the point. The second thing has to do with dehumanizing people. In the game, he sees them as only 1s and 0s to do his bidding. Because he doesn't see them as sentient, at this point, AI, he can abuse them because he owns them. This also has a connection to cloning and other AI that might be sentient. Is it okay to just outright delete them? If all people are seeing is toxic this or toxic that, you miss the technology side of everything. The "toxic" thing doesn't come into play. He is a man child who a god complex and he uses technology to satisfy his urges.
I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "toxic", because I am positive you aren't using it correctly in this video (although neither does anyone else online, so I guess that's expected).
I've said a bunch since a lot of franchises are getting old, that they either need to slow down and regroup, or just hang it up. Trek, Bond, Who, Batman, Godzilla even.. need to stop. Unfortunately, I don't think there are too many creative minds left in Hollywood. They just keep rehashing the same old stuff because it makes money, and that's they're only driving force, it seems. We need another Joss Whedon etc with fresh ideas to create something new again...
Bond was rebooted starting with Casino Royale. The latest Doctor Who was effectively a complete reboot, although they don't want to admit it. And rather than focusing on Batman, it would seem comic book movies and the whole MCU would be the greater issue. The occasional Batman film isn't bad since there's been so many different takes on the character. But the MCU is reaching a point where it's going to run into itself. They reset the X-Men films half way through the series and rendered the first films irrelevant, and they seem to have just done that in part with the latest Avengers film.
@@writerpatrick Craig's Bonds are still part on the ongoing franchise. I don't consider it a reboot, then you'd have to say each actor taking over the role over time is a reboot... I think I'm just a long time movie goes, pretty much seen it all, and would like something new again, and not retreads...
I enjoyed one or two later episodes of Voyager, and probably one episode of DS9. I think Star Trek has been cruising on an empty war core for years now.
You might call this episode a condemnation on modern Star Trek. I don't think this was intentional, but the problem with Daylys fantasy is it's Overally focused on the whims of one person. The biggest problem with Star Trek Discovery is the naritive is Overally focused on one character. The solution being get rid of that character, and let other people have the spotlight form time to time. Probably not what they ment, but I'll take that reading over yours. People in general like to over estimate the effect media has on indavuals. Has a fact ever changed your mind? No, why do you think Mickey Mouse can?
I disliked the flawed science in the Black Mirror episode. How could a DNA sample enable to clone a person's mind? This could have easily been remedied by some kind of mind scan in addition to the DNA sample.
Could be that the dna simply helps search an anonymised (possibly hacked) database of mind scans that already exists somewhere. The technology gets explained by the marketing lady, she probably has no idea how it actually works.
I respect your opinion, but it does not change my opinion of Star Trek Discovery. Which n my opinion is fine. It is not a good show, but not terrible and I feel it is using a brand that goes counter to the show's design, but it's fine overall. I never going to watch it again or praise it, but I am not going to say anything terrible about because it wasn't a terrible show. It was an experiment that I think it failed overall and may have done better if it was its own original show.
he had hopes about star trek in may 2019...well now we have another turd trek called "picard" ... star trek needs its own "mandalorian" to remember what its all about, but it doesnt look like its gonna happen soon.
The plot is even more mind-boggling with irrational AIs and Illogical time travel. Pike and Spock were interesting characters though who didn't always act like you would expect but who were well-acted and sympathetic.
*Oh god I am hoping and praying that this video isn't going to end up being* "Criticism of Discovery isn't legitimate because it's just overly nostalgic fanboys." Edit: 13:37 Oh shit here it comes! Yeah gimme hat sweet sweet conflating between criticism of a bad show with toxic fandom! Yes everyone who doesn't like something popular that you do like is just toxic! Legitimate critique can't exist! Final Edit: PHEW he didn't do it! Thank goodness, it was just 'nostalgia is making the writers bring back Spock.' I'm not going to say it was implied that the fans are ruining discovery because they're overly nostalic, I'm just going to write this as a win.
@Trekspertise No. You're not going to weasel out of this one. The connection between STD and so-called "toxic" fans was heavily implied. Why even mention it at all if your whole point was ostensibly that the show needs to change somehow. You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, as the saying goes. Why the duplicity?
To illustrate the point, you start with where STD is going. You the talk about "toxic fandom" for most of the video. Then you wrap up with how STD needs to change, the implication being that out of touch, disaffected, parent's basement dwelling haters of the show need to step aside and let the STD writers work their magic. Try and convince me otherwise.
@@CybershamanX You are not entitled to have someone try to convince you. If you have a thought you wish to spread, you must do the work to convince others yourself. Your over-the-top, disparaging reading of the video doesn't help your case. Your use of the toilet humor STD meme instead of the official DSC abbreviation doesn't help if you wish to appear as someone with a calm, rational critique deserving of attention. By all means, have your own opinion, but don't expect to convince anyone if you don't have at least the rhetorical ability to back it up.
The Callister is pretty shallow for all the praise it gets (which it gets from the people who already agree with the politics the show is screaming at you about). In a Star Trek story it would have been about what responsibility do we owe to artificial life forms we've created i.e. Measure of a Man from TNG. It would have asked the question is destroying the mind of a flesh and blood person in service to several AI's a good thing. Instead we got Black Mirror screaming at you YES IT IS AND QUESTIONING THE PREMISE MEANS YOU'RE A BAD PERSON. I've never really liked Black Mirror as it's about as subtle as a brick to the head but I've never been actively irritated by it until this episode. If you wanted to tell the story that it ended up being about there's hundred ways to make it better without loading it down with Star Trek references. All that did was make me see how they were missing the far more interesting premise in favor of the stupid one we got instead.
This may seem completely out of left field, but this perfectly articulates why I was so annoyed with the recent video game "Detroit: Become Human"... it teases an exploration about AI, philosophy of consciousness, and morality, but then side-steps all of that to jump straight to the conclusion that the AI characters are a repressed minority with ham-fisted analogies to the plight of African Americans in the 1960s... The thing is, I like the Black Mirror in spite of this. There may have been some *glaring* missed opportunities to explore these interesting questions, but the mere fact of its existence often raises the questions in the mind of the viewer regardless of the show's intent. Here we are talking about it now.
I think wow classic is proving Nostalgia isn't just happy feelings, it can be that these past things ARE good, and better than what we currently have, i think in 3 months everyone will figure it the fuck out, and 2 years later hollywood. Of course you have gatekeepers we have gatekeepers now with people saying masculinity can be "toxic" like anyone would be brave enough to say femininity could be because right now being a woman and complaining you get more power than men, even though it seems like the best jobs are filled by women that is a choice not forced onto women, they prefer less hours and being able to have kids. You'll have toxic fans who aren't even fans, who more defend companies, or consoles.. see the Xbox/Playstation fanboys they'd eat you alive if you disagree on something minor, but what these nostalgic media should do is bring people together to share in them and the messages they teach, which is almost always including everyone which funnily enough normally leads to the other side happening much more. I'd also ask what Unrelenting Nostalgia is? as a "Scifi" fan, i love most scifi, i don't like doctor who, or red dwarf very much, but pretty much the rest of notable acclaim from the past 20 years yep, My favorite Babylon 5.. and its a fantastic series with so many deep meanings in it.. it explores humanity and the progressive story telling method on tv before anyone else did, before Deep space nine copied, for a few seasons. Babylon 5 built a universe and a story and laid it bare for us and showed us that the heroes who saved the universe weren't all luke skywalker who would never give up (fuck the new movies, the EU is where luke really went) all of them were deeply flawed, one couldn't love again after being hurt so much lost the best person for her who'd be her everything its so heart breaking to know she never loved again and it took her 15 odd years to even get past it. Star Trek is also a great series, and Andromeda etc.. i have a massive collection of Starwars figures too, i love world of warcraft and lord of the rings.. all those "nerdy things" but i don't see Unrelenting Nostalgia, i see a term being made in order to shame people, to put a bunch of people you don't like into a box just like alt right and nazi's its not about changing them its about marking them with a nice little word rather than a star. Of course many aspects of our favorite things have in time waned due to better special effects less limitations etc, but the writing for some of these older games and movies.. it's very easy to see just how cheap and lazy writing has got in the past 8 or so years, and being Nostalgic for better writing and people who made media as a craft rather than to milk people for money isn't unrelenting Nostalgia its reminding us that we must learn from the past, we are repeating so many of the past's failures for no reason, so please re-consider creating a new term just to put "toxic fans" into another group in order to be ignored and shunned and refused dialogue because you can't be bothered talking it out and changing their minds.
@@Trekspertise Sure, but it's a bad term. The problem when people use the term "toxic masculity" it makes the assumption that you know where the line is between nature and nurture. What is culturally inforced, and what comes form our biology. You don't know that. I know you don't because I don't.
A fan you don't agree with and generally interact with through the use of ad hominem attacks rather than addressing their concerns directly. The term is frequently used by those defending a sub par production who's creators just can't admit that they have produced a middling piece of work.
I occasionally watch Nerdrotic and Midnight's Edge. They are a bit over the top with their outrage and language at times but I find most of their actual points and arguments reasonable. They meticulously criticize bad writing and the radical political ideology that often is behind it. How is that toxic?
@@Funaru Sadly, you will be berated by those that ostensibly "hate" those channels. I suspect that many of the people who disparage them have never actually watched a minute of one of their videos. I've tried to dig actual points of contention out of their haters, but have yet failed to do so. Yes, they can be dramatic at times, but their videos (specifically Midnight's Edge) are well researched and if they _do_ speculate they are careful to be clear that they are doing so. I know for a fact (since, well, I actually watch their videos) that the Midnight's Edge team are pretty ardant "nerds" in the best sense of the term and not its derogatory form that is often used bycertain individuals to somehow discredit them. Let's not forget that according to STD's own cast members that "nerds" are the sole reason that Star Trek is even still a thing, which is decidedly untrue. (Edit: here is that abomination of a video showing the cast singing the praises of "nerds": ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html)
That Ceo guy kind of reminds me of when Barclay got addicted to the Holodeck. Socially awkward AF IRL and coping through being a badass in video games, I think most of us can relate.
CTO, I believe (Chief Technical Officer)
I actually thought he might be autistic, as many adults don't seem "obviously" autistic, but I thought his love of Star Trek (I mean Space Fleet) might be his "special subject".
My uncle is autistic, but you'd only guess if you spent tons of time around him. His special subject is finance. Just the other day he was waxing nostalgic about being gifted two pheasant chicks as an 8-year-old.... then raising them and selling them for a profit!
Happy memories, naturally.
@@tastyloaf5487 Barclay would likely be a high functioning autistic, meaning he would have a normal or high IQ which would allow him to function as anyone else an daily activities, but would have trouble when it came to anything social. It's been rumored that Tilly on STD could also be autistic.
@@writerpatrick Tilly isn't autistic, she's just a spazz. Also, Spock isn't dislexic, because Spock isn't dyslexic, never was.
Barc was a badass though
@@singarixVery questionable list. Courtney Love is more of a sociopath. Gordon Brown is not an "aspie", he is just a traditional dour Scotsman (that's what they used to be like) - he was a bit of a successful womaniser at Edinburgh University which is not an Asperger's trait.
As for the rest of your list...nah... A lot of evidence against and little for. (Hard enough to diagnose living people, let alone dead ones).
I feel like the Callister episode was more about technology allowing us to form our own 'universes' of toxic, insular experience. Incels and such. Not really nostalgia or fandom, necessarily. In the context of Discovery, I think most people simply latched onto the visuals as a way of encapsulating their feeling that the setting had little in common with what they were interested in from the methodology of Trek storytelling, despite the visuals having little to do with that. Sort of like how people upset with Game of Thrones made a big deal out of water bottles on set - that had little to do with their actual contention, but it was an easy icon to exhibit their displeasure with more abstract issues. In Star Trek's case, it was a loss of Gene's spirit and original vision of a united humanity resolving issues with science and discussion, despite peoples' willingness to project those feelings onto Klingon hair styles or holographic interfaces. I guess in this case, Klingon foreheads would be the windmill. Either way, making a new story set just before TOS is probably the most foolish thing CBS did, if they wanted to update the look of the setting. But that was probably CBS trying to bank off market recognition of the Kirk and Spock era. (Again.) They keep doing that instead of just developing the setting towards new eras. I get the feeling the Picard series uniforms went backwards to TNG's aesthetic for exactly the same reason - CBS panic shifting their marketing towards a more stereotyped audience using things they thought more people would recognize as 'nostalgic.' The insanity of nostalgia is more a market problem of the IP holder than a fan problem, in Trek's case.
PlagueOfGripes has lots of good points here but I have to disagree on one: that DM was not a cautionary tale about toxic fandom’s obsession with nostalgia, which played out in Discovery’s effect on certain segments of Trek fandom. (Let me know, PoG if I misinterpreted your POV on that.
I think that CBS most certainly erred in placing their innovative story smack dab in the middle of Trek nostalgia-central while making several WISE choices about tweaking the franchise. The former choice lead to viewer frustration while the latter choice breathed fresh air into the franchise, just in the wrong setting (23rd century).
But while many fans complained about the damage done to their TOS canon and nostalgia, other fans complained about there being yet another voyage in the Trek “past” that they would hate even if the details were all canonically consistent. These fans screamed for a Trek just after Nemesis (which they might get in Picard).
Complaints belch forth about uniforms, whether Picard’s bridge crew will guest star, the plethora of new and younger guest stars, etc etc etc.
And the next generation of nostalgic toxicity is born. It’s the same ugly beast all over again, even though many of these fans criticized Discovery and JjTrek and Enterprise for being too nostalgic!
I’m hoping Picard (and Disco3) both break free of nostalgia and make good on Kirk’s mandate to go where none have gone before.
The main unconscious message of Callister is ironically is that the ship functions much better when it is "toxic". When there are attempts to make the simulation more politically correct, it breaks down. In fact, the New Callister only breaks free of its past when it ceases to be a woke revisionist version of an old show, and becomes something completely new in its own right.
Hollywood and Star Trek could learn something from that.
@@anonb4632 you should probably watch again, as your "interpretation" has little to do with the actual episode
This video was REALLY great, your message and analogies were spot on. Respect good man
Where's the LOVE button. Thank you for expressing so eloquently what I have always thought. It is the reason why I have enjoyed Discovery more than Lower Decks.....or Picard Season 1 more than Season 2. Stories not seen, in ways not told kept it interesting and fresh, even if some elements didn't work.
Great video. Quality production throughout; from script, naration, visual-style through to clip choices, etc. I work for a media co. in England - so I'm going to share this around, if that's ok. I think my colleagues, well some of them, will be equally impressed.
Thank you.
ok i forgive you guys for taking so long between essays - nostalgia is a drug more powerful that oxycontin - except you can blame the drug for its harmful side effects, nostalgias negative side effects are all user driven
Having been on oxy for about 6 years now for some very bad health problems... you are so very correct.
Oxy becomes less effective with time .... Nostalgia becomes more effective.
This is my favourite ep of Black Mirror (although White Christmas comes very, very close).
I actually just re-watched it today, coincidentally. I love the performance Jesse Plemons gave. You can tell he wanted to evoke Kirk with his speech cadences and body language, but he still owns the performance and makes it unique.
It got past the bs copyright claim? Yaay!
I agree, it was a BS claim. Any and all commentary would be impossible were that standard upheld universally.
Glad to see Trekspertise back in full force. Not to put too fine a point on it, but y'all's work is a breath of fresh air compared to most Star Trek commentary on UA-cam nowadays.
Thanks! We try hard to be useful and to chase ideas that are interesting. Most of UA-cam is garbage. We want to learn from our journey of making videos.
I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition
And the end credits are something completely different almost like Monty Python
Those were the days ;)
You can tell we are fans :)
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition....
Very fascinating and wonderful work man, keep it up!
Thanks, The Government!
if this is what we can expect from your discovery break down, i cant wait! brilliant video well put together
The reference to the 17th Century and old literature is a good one. This being a parody of a tech company plantation. I worked as a university prof for ten years, then in industrial programming, then an independent analyst. As I reached my 50s I ended up in management positions of software development teams. My wife was the first to notice:
The teams were highly diverse with lots of international guest workers often struggling with context and language, but there were just a couple of old style white guys in charge. They would hire me in from the outside, and make me overseer of the plantation as the board, owners and managers, who all fancied themselves progressives, were hiring less than fully functional outsource temps through head shops, paying them marginally, splitting the profit with the body shop (and I suspected some under table kickback from the markup), and expecting me as the "Estate Manager from a Kipling novel" to get proper results out of this team that would never move up. The estate manager met the clients, met the vendors, met the owners and investors. The estate manager was to provide the wallpaper to keep people from seeing the sweatshop vibe behind the curtain. After a few years I left that, as being ethically uneasy.
It is so easy to fall back into the same patterns, despite the shiny new machinery or blinking lights, which in a way was the irony of TOS and TNG. Lots of diversity, lots of talent, but in the end the two or three white guys run the show and everyone else is a supporting character. Even a stock character, every one. A little more obvious with Roddenberry writing Paladin and Hey Boy scripts before Star Trek.
Note celebrity progressive CEOs like Bezos, Gates, Jobs, Musk, etc over the past 40 years. They are personally progressive liberals, but professionally they are slave master plantation owners. Bezos pays his people very badly and monitors them electronically while championing worker rights in his newspaoer, Musk is often doing purges of his staff that he starts imagining are conspiring against him every time his stock plummets. Even Hillary Clinton's campaign was filled with a circle of diverse women, but when anything went wrong she would turn on them like a viper, and the whole operation was managed by an old white guy in a penthouse in NYC. When an employee she referred to as her "second daughter" turned up with supposedly erased emails on her pederist husband's computer, weeks before the election...
... she was suddenly "just a staffer". So much for professional "motherhood".
These people are only into "diversity" when it suits their agendas.
Sounds like a back-hand slap to The Orville
"let's just do TNG again, but with workplace banter this time." somehow it's the best show on TV right now.
@@arachnophilia427 Cause frankly, TNG-DS9 was the peak of the franchise, and only the fans seem to know it...
As usual, this is an awesome and insightful vid. Your channel has been a favorite of mine for years. Now as a counterpoint (ContraPoint? :) can you make a comprehensive video (or multiple) about "The Orville" as both an homage so spot-on it's almost more Trek then anything else these days -- yet also evolving into something quite its own. By season two, I would say it has boldly gone to ideas and topics -- where even Star Trek has not gone before. Or at least went a little bit further than Next Gen or DS9 could go -- and certainly in a very different direction than the movies or Discovery (we will see with Picard) -- yet it fits so well into the Trek zeitgeist, that it is simultaneously very nostalgic and very fresh, much like Callister. However, like original Trek, it is a throwback to tackling classic ideas and current social topics in a very sci-fi wrapped package. Obviously allowing those who might be staunchly on one side of an issue to see it in a new way, and perhaps be sympathetic to the other side and the complexity of the issue as a whole. And other times, watching The Orville is just fun -- stretching "Trek" the genre (or any space adventure show) further into comedy than it has gone before. In a post Battle Star Galactica [which I loved] reboot era -- where everything has turned to epic gritty dramas (cf. Lost in Space, The Expanse, etc.) it is very refreshing to have humor in a Space series done so well that it mixes seamlessly.
Makes me look at star trek discovery in a different way. Great video.
Thanks!
I had never watch Black Mirror until I saw this video and watch the episode. I am now hooked.
ive only watched the callister ep and now just watched bandersnatch - i feel a blackmirror bingewatch sesh after seein both of those
I have absolutely no nostalgia for Trek whatsoever. Actually, the first piece of Trek media I ever watched was the 2009 movie. I thought everything about the old Trek series seemed outdated and irrelevant. But then a couple years ago, I decided I would sit down and try watching some episodes. Pretty soon, I fell in love. DS9 is my favorite, but the philosophical and emotional episodes of TNG are mind-blowing and complex. Voyager is a fascinating story, too. I even quite enjoyed Enterprise (which most traditional fans seem to hate).
Now while I can find entertainment value in the Kelvin movies and even Discovery and Picard, it really isn't the same level of science fiction. It's corporatized.
I think your video essay really misses the point here. Fans aren't upset that things aren't *exactly the same*, and they're not obsessed, either. They're just angry that corporate and monopolistic media companies have capitalized off their nostalgia to make a quick buck. That there is no attention to detail or an embrace of the future ideals that old Trek strived for (even if they failed sometimes). We shouldn't be chiefly concerned with the "insanity of nostalgia," it's the corporatization of it. The same can be said for Star Wars or any other old series that has been rebooted in recent years. Additionally, practical effects and good dialogue have been replaced by video game CGI and forgettable one-liners.
Dude, you are putting out some high quality content, both technically and otherwise. Some very original shit too - I’m a fan! Subbed
Welcome aboard! Got some great stuff coming :)
A powerful and concise commentary on the state of all things Trek. Could not agree more with the need to avoid over sentimentalizing the past, in order to move forward. Bravo! So glad UA-cam & Netflix made the right decision! Looking forward to more.
I love how he "loads their DNA" into a 3D printer.
Works just like warp drive ')
It's a major plothole IMHO, because somehow the "clones" (if you can call them that) get the memories of the originals. In reality, no such thing would happen. He would have to scan their brains somehow as well and somehow map that in.
Fantastic video. For some reason, I've never managed to read Don Quixote, but after watching this, I think I'll give it another shot.
Perfect!
I have come to expect much from this chanel, this video sure delivers! Great job man.
Thank you for watching it!
I remember thinking when I watched this episode that the episode was missing a key element. Namely, an actual fan of Space Fleet who would note that Dally is warping(heh heh) the values of the show to emphasize how he IS a toxic fan in comparison to those who love a Star Trek like show for what story they're trying to tell with the story. Maybe have Nanette being a fan as well. Instead, it comes off as "Fans of geek shows are creeps and people are right to avoid them."
My takeaway exactly. Thank you!
Precisely!!
Raising the bar once again I see.
We do what we can =)
I enjoy all the new Star Trek episodes. It just gets better every year. Everything I loved about TNG right there. Blown away by season 2 with changing one thing in the past caused an alternate universe. Wow! Season 2 got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Who would imagine Seth MacFarlane getting an emmy award.
I like the fact that you mean Orville by saying Star Trek, not Discovery
Orville gets nostalgia right by updating the right nuances instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Um, how about you try that again. Season 2 of STD got an 82% from critics and a 36% audience score. www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_trek_discovery/s02
@Timothy Vreeland Yeah. I'm primed and loaded for bear. Stay clear downrange! There is a danger of friendly fire! ;) :P Seriously though, there will be some that come along and totally agree with OPs statement. ;)
@@Funaru
nuance isnt a word that really can be associated with the b'orville
Another great video, well done.
Thank you! Lots of hard work went into this one.
Well worth the wait, this is excellent!
Fascinating!. But only don´t agree "USS Callister is a parody". The parody is in the twisted mind of Daly. And there are no "imitations" of Star Trek. The predecessor in the style of ST is a movie called "The Forbiden Planet" and ST has to keep evolving well. But BSG, B5, Farscape, etc. are what they are in their own style. As are many types of romantic comedy, wester, etc. This is an episode of BLACK MIRROR with an unique plot including a digital space environment; like a mix of ST and Tron. I love this episode cause at the end shows the beauty of being empowered, the mutual respect for each other and the value of teamwork like in TOS.
Incredible! Congratulations to Katie and the rest of Trekspertise for such a well researched, edited, and voiced visual essay! The topics are clear and concise, and follow a logical progression, and include parallels to existing media and literature to enforce claims and conclusions. Editing of stills provides an interesting method to illustrate the point of importance, and the video editing always matched with the topic being discussed in a manner that allows to viewer to visually draw the conclusion at the same time that the narration poses it.
One critique is that the video tries too hard to address both Black Mirror and Star Trek in a way that might make the video uninteresting for those not invested in both series. If I'm solely interested in Black Mirror, the video loses meaning in the last parts of the video, especially when discussing Star Trek Discovery directly. If I'm solely interested in Star Trek, is there significant enough conclusion to be drawn here with relation to Star Trek that it's worth watching a fifteen minute discussion of an unrelated series? This format feels like it would have fit better as, address Black Mirror here and now, and in the future, when we discuss Discovery or Star Trek as a whole, maybe come back and watch this video for a deeper insight as to the dangers of obsession.
Thanks! I didn't know about this at all.
Gonna have to go watch a Don Quixote film now =)
Awesome video, I didn’t see you bring up the holodiction episode from TNG which basically mirrors this episode tho!!
13:41 oh the irony of this statement lol
I rewatched Callister too many times to count.
great editing!
Thanks! Sam and Kyle will be happy to hear =)
I challenge the idea that nostalgia made him nuts, at least compared to ST. ST is different in that, a real fan gets its moral points, and if they truly appreciate them they would be kinder, good not darker, mean. Toxic fans aren't real fans, they just like the window dressing (ships, space). In their core they are fundamentally bad ppl that choose to express it behind the veil of fandom. They probably also road rage, scream at their kids, lie on their taxes, vote for racists. They then pretend to love something that is antithetical to ask those things because they are obsessed with the facade. Maybe it's attention they like, maybe it's control, maybe it's codependency, but they take one fandom and abuse it to suit them. If ST didn't exist, they'd use another. Unlike other fandoms that are neutral, just celebrations of a fun thing and not moral tales, ST has moral ethical points. That immediately shows the hand of the person. You either live by the morals or you don't. It's a dead give away. If you don't, they saying your a ST fan is empty because you obviously don't get it. How can you be a fan of something that loves diversity and hate it? You can't. Similarly how can you write a show named after that moral etic but have no hopeful future in your show. You can't. I mean you can, but it doesn't make your show ST just because it looks like it. It all makes me really sad because I live in a world with no example of a hopeful future where people celebrate only brokenness and divisions. Where rape of thrones is the number one show and there is no hope. What we need is hope. Calister and what toxic fans want- neither provide that. Ppl Like me are nostalgic for hope, not a show. Because we are starving because we live in a world with none.
okay, now I am going to check out Don Quixote!
There is a reason it's lasted centuries :)
Yes yes yes! Awesome work.
Thank you for stopping by :)
To me the episode felt more about a different take on "I have no mouth and I must scream"
"...it's time to innovate before the franchise becomes a parody of itself."
**glances at Lower Decks**
Too late.
Brilliant video, guys!
Thank you! Took quite a lot of work.
I have a feeling I found this review far more entertaining than I would the episode it describes. 😆
Ensign Tilly is frequently a stand-in for the Trek fan. Fortunately she's not a toxic and pokes fun at the insanely obvious.
Such as pointing out the inconvenience of doors that suddenly open, time travel jokes, Michael's name and over complicated tech jargon.
Reno and a few others also jab at fandom from time to time. 🖖
Yeah whatever but Tilly is the most annoying fucking character in literally any show I've ever watched. Every time she opens her mouth I find myself telling her to shut the fuck up.
@@BigFatCock0 To add, I don't think she's written as a so-called "toxic fan", but rather as misunderstood stereotype of what the writers think are nerds. Sort of along the lines of the misguided "nerds thank you" video they put out a while back. You can check out that abomination here: ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html
Because...fans need jabbed by the people we're employing to make these shows? I get it if people are troll haters at people creating the shows, but the...intensity of fandom is why Trek has been around for 50+ years, just like other fandoms.
And no, you'll never be "perfect" for all the gatekeepers out there, but appealing to the broadest, simplest demographic of viewers isn't going to help your cause either. You can achieve a happy medium, if you have the skills & talent to do so.
I always remember that actor as "Fat Matt Damon". I literally don't know his name even though he's popping up in more and more stuff.
futureshocked Fat Damon. He’s on fire. Breaking Bad, Black Mirror, Vice etc...
This is well produced, but I feel like it really buries the lede. Eight minutes in, and I'm still not really sure what the point of the argument is.
By the fourth minute mark it is more than clear where this essay is heading.
subraxas please, enlighten us.
Great episode! Thanks for nice thought material!
Thanks for watching it =)
16:10 seems like a dubious claim. People still tell stories of chivalrous Knights of honor, and all that. Don Quixote is relegated to obscure references, and can mostly be boiled down to version 1.0 of video games cause violence. Well presented, well spoken, poorly thought out.
...
And now I get why their ship is called "Rocinante" in the Expanse.
Touche, writers. It's a little less clever every time I think about it.
... moving along, now...
In the books it's even more relevant to the plot because...
SPOILERS (I guess)
...Miller finding Holden and co because he made this connection.
There are Don Quixote references EVERYWHERE.
That was worth the wait.
Oh, but what a long wait =(
This was a fucking beast, well done
Thanks for watching. It's a favorite of ours.
@13:04 the face removal thing. Remember Star Trek ep "Charlie X"? NO LAUGHING!!! Scared the crap outta me as a kid in the 70s!
And remembering that old TOS ep, there're similarities to this Black Mirror show. A young person, not a man, who has ultimate power. Nice call back?
Actually reminds me of the Star Trek Futurama episode where an alien steals the original TOS cast and uses them as his play things to remake the show
One of the funniest episodes of black mirrors I’ve ever seen
Lol I thought it was one of the darkest. 😁
Terrific video. I like the idea of using Don Quixote as a lens to explore the idea of common visual and thematic language both as a tool for Trek but also as a call to try something different. As theses go, it seems like you're trying to have it both ways, but I think on a deeper level it's saying "These things are already established, go establish something else now."
Given the events at the end of the second season of Discovery, and the short Trek "Calypso", we're given a really interesting opportunity to do just that.
(Discovery S2 spoilers ahead)
One of the chief complaints about Discovery at its announcement, other than its exclusive access through streaming, was when the series was to be set. Given the mixed response to the Kelvin-timeline movies as prequels-and, many moons ago, the mixed response to Enterprise-a lot of fans were concerned about traveling well-explored trails on our new Trek.
The end of Discovery season 2 seeing Burnam and the Discovery traveling forward in the timeline a millennium, however, is an opportunity not only to have it both ways, like your thesis, but also to see the 3250s from the perspective of characters we now know from the 2250s, to act as audience perspective. We'll see the 3200s from the same wide and curious eyes as Tilly and Saru and Burnam and Owo and Detmer and Culber and Stamets and Reno and other characters yet undeveloped.
This is that opportunity to move beyond the tilting at familiar windmills and move on to the next frontier, both with the familiar pieces in place for context, but also new ideas and new themes and new iconography.
Well, franchises do have to change. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result is one common definition for a colloquial insanity. That's a lesson Cervantes taught us 400 years ago and one that "USS Callister" reminds us to keep.
This was amazing, great observations.
Thanks!
Thanks for this video. You guys are so great. Also thanks so I don't have to watch this episode of Black Mirror now. I can't watch that show because every time I do I fall into a weeklong depression like no other.
This episode is not depressing.
Don Quijote doesn't go insane from reading. he goes insane from reading tales of knights, Which Cervantes equals to reading *garbage*. Don Quijote goes insane from reading *garbage*. I wouldn't expect someone from the Anglosphere to understand such nuance.
Great video! Thanks for sharing it!
Thanks for taking the time to check it out!
These videos are so good it makes me ashamed of my own channel 😅
No need to be ashamed. Keep on kicking ass over there =)
_Trekspertise_
Thanks guys, you're nice. And congrats again on the amazing content.
It's unhelpful to compare yourself to other people. What you should do is compare yourself to how you where yesterday. Do you think you've improved sense you started? I can't awnser that question for you, but if yes that's all that matters.
So based on your analysis here why then is The Orville so much more popular than STD? Maybe Trek fans like the comfort of the past rather than having their universe upheaved like has been done on STD. Time will tell but I fully expect The Orville to outlive STD by a long margin
This was a fantastic video.
Ayyyyyy you got it on UA-cam. Now everyone can see Pensacon and the trek bar lol.
Alright, Pensacola. This is your moment =)
This was a good video, made me wanna watch the actual episode itself.
I'm always weary when people group 'gate-keeping' with 'Toxic Fandoms' because I don't necessarily agree on that statement. I've met a lot of people who I will say " _Claim_ " a lot of things about say games, yet they refuse to ever go out of their comfort zone. If I argue with them, according to the popular consensus, that would make me a gate-keeper and a toxic fan, even though all I am trying to do is to get the person to realize the enormous potential in games they refuse to play, from systems in place to gameplay styles to even story.
Isn't it better to encourage people, to experience more, than to have them perpetuate a lie?
Of course what I am arguing for is probably not the same as what the person who wrote this meant with gate keeping so, I don't know.
Just my two cents.
It reminds me of the episode the thaw from star trek voyager
Galaxy Queat is a great satire.
You know? Have seen Star Trek Discovery's first season. Got it on Blu Ray. It had flaws, but wasn't the worse thing I've seen. Honestly? Black Mirror, in many ways, was closer to being that. First one I saw was U.S.S. Callister. Have known Star Trek fans for years. Many of them. And the U.S.S. Callister basically perpetuated a screwed up stereotype of Trek fans even Gene Roddenberry himself fought in his lifetime. And upped the ante by turning the metaphorical "Space Fleet" fan into a cold blooded villain. After seeing another episode of Black Mirror? Decided to sit on that show. What Star Trek offers its supporters isn't mere blind fanaticism. Its a vision of a humane future-where many of our current cultural obstacles are overcome. And we're ready to venture beyond ourselves to explore new worlds. Since the middle of DS9? The shows writers have hacked away at that optimism. And that is the main reason why Trek may have become a shadow of itself. Black Mirror, and modern dystopian scifi in general, is very unimpressive to me. It seems like the bane of every fatalistic conspiracy theory, every cynical internet troll. In our changing nation? Going through bad growing pains? We need more humanistic future fiction and less self reflective dystopia.
When it comes to Star Trek, people never seem to mention the Star Trek bible. It applies to the original series and the later series, but shows set before the original series like Enterprise and Discovery aren't bound to it.
If you're referring to canon as the "bible", then you are mistaken. There is enough source material set within TOS that gives a rough history preceding TOS that also is canon. Staying within that rough history is not difficult, if the writers would simply take the time to learn it.
hahah that episode was awesome!
Thanks!!
There are several major themes in USS Callister, but one is probably unconscious. On a conscious level it tries to deconstruct and revise old values, "toxic masculinity" and so on, but on an unconscious level, it actually *attacks* revisionist post-modern "woke" versions of old shows such as Discovery. It subverts itself... In fact the more woke the fake Callister becomes, the less well it functions. It also suggests we should be creating new franchises instead of feeding off the carcasses of old ones, Quixote-style, all (probably) unconsciously and unintentionally. It's like what William Blake said of John Milton who wrote "Paradise Lost", that Milton was "of the Devil's Party but did not know it." The people who made USS Callister are likewise sending out messages that they don't consciously intend, because they repress that part of themselves.
12:40 - I am totally convinced that Daly should have undoubtedly been celebrated, because after all, the fella was a goddamned genius who had thought up the whole thing and kept it successfully going whilst Walton was basically "just" a "mere" clerk who "just happened" to run the business. A business that would not be there without Daly in the first place.
I may even go as far as to say (type down, actually) that the co-workers should have been kissing and licking Daly's feet, figuratively speaking, for his creating jobs, and thus securing livelihood, for them all from nothing.
In a regard of the obedience issue, that is more difficult to tackle, but the punchline shall be that Daly was the main brain behind it all, the co-founder, the CTO, simply 'the boss', and there should have definitely been some natural subordination and corporate hierarchy in place within the company.
I absolutely cannot picture myself to treat my manager the way the employees of Callister Inc. treated Daly, and moreover, on a seemingly regular basis.
And why did they do that? Because he was insecure, socially awkward, and as a result thereof, came across as a creep at times? I mean, were they hyenas or what?
I mean, the whole thing was most likely slow and gradual, but by the time we see Daly on this episode, it has definitely spiralled out of control.
It should have never happened in the first place and the whole affair stinks with grievances, employment tribunals and maybe even some lawsuits.
Basically, Daly is a product of his environment and the colleagues of his are to be blamed, among others. At the end of the day, he's a friggin' victim.
No wonder that the fella went nuts and began to engage in those sick, but still just fictitious, games in a VIRTUAL world.
Naiive nostalgia is dangerous, but so is naiive acceptance of deconstruction and innovation. You may take it to far which Discovery has done in the opinion of many faithful and charitable fans. Especially in terms of continuity, storytelling and visual design.
This video endorses nothing about Discovery, except hope for the future.
At long last, glad to see it.
And it is happy to see you =)
As always on this channel, engaging and valuable insight into our mutual and unfolding pop culture. Thank you Katie for writing and Kyle for presenting - you always leave me with a greater sense that there is in fact a duty to not just binge but to thoughtfully consume and reflect. I think a question you leave us with at the end is "why is nostalgia so functional?" - to shamelessly plug a writing of my own that might pick-up this question, check out this piece on the phenomenon of "returns" in contemporary television and the inertia (which I think is a fitting word for the hazard Discovery needs to avoid as it evolves) of nostalgia: dawnzerlylight.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/returns-mst3k-twin-peaks-and-the-inertia-of-nostalgia/
A few issues:
I like much of the comparison to Don Quixote, but there is a glaring difference that you left out: In the book, Quixote ends up being as necessary as the moving past what he is. It's made abundantly clear in the end when Quixote is disillusioned but still does the heroic thing. Benengeli admits in the end that, despite his constant attempts to tear down traditional chivalry, he NEEDED Don Quixote to do it. It is not a victory within the novel for Don Quixote to stop being who he is, it is a serious loss. In USS Callister, this is never implied once. In fact, if we take YOUR interpretation of the episode, it is implied that people like Daly are only a problem and are in no way part of moving forward.
I love a lot of this video and all of your others, but why do you have to get so wrapped up in identity politics? Do you really think that there's a huge problem with men feeling entitled to "be worshiped"? Maybe there's some issues between the sexes,and that'd be interesting to discuss. But why in the world would the color of the guys skin matter?
I do agree that Trek needs to move forward. But I really don't get your love for S1 of Discovery. I don't like S2 either, but S1 was such utter trash. And Calypso destroys everything about Trek's heart and soul. It doesn't have to be the same, but Trek has ALWAYS been about building a BRIGHTER future. If things get WORSE the further we go out, how is that still Trek? It's a deconstructed Trek... which is fine. But do it OUTSIDE Trek to show it from another angle. Just like Don Quixote did.... it's NOT set in a chilvaric novel, it's set in a post-chivalric period with a man who'se trying to be in something that no longer exists. Which is what Black Mirror did as well, and kudos to it for doing so. But why does it make any sense for Trek to be that? That would be like if Cervantes made his book an additional epic of Charlemagne. It just wouldn't work or make sense. That's why it had to be OUTSIDE of what he was deconstructing, but influenced by it.
I really think that the answer to this nostalgia problem is to allow our beloved franchises to end. We need a new space exploration universe that is INFLUENCED by Trek, but ISN'T Trek.
I already briefly touched on this directly in response to an @Trekspertise reply (who knows if it’s actually Kyle who is replying), but I think my point bears further clarification.
In his (or her?) reply, they stated that this video wasn’t even _about_ STD. Again, I will state what _I_ saw presented in this video. Please tell me if I'm somehow wrong: In the beginning we have mention of the future of STD, but to examine that issue we have to spend most of video talking about “toxic fandom” and its parallel…Don Quixote? We then conclude with the idea that Trek needs to “evolve” in order to survive with the _heavily_ implied subtext that out of touch “nerds” need to let go and accept that.
Really? We’re going down that road? So, apparently everyone that doesn’t like STD is out of touch and maladjusted to reality somehow. They just can’t let go of the past and, gosh darn it, just give the show a chance, man! There’s also a (possible, IMHO) allusion to the writers of STD taking the good ship Discovery and its crew into the far future to accomplish the task of truly “taking Trek where it’s never gone before”. Yeah. Sure. OK. So, the writers have purposely been leading up to this with two whole seasons of weak meandering canon stomping material just to allow the writers to finally really stretch their wings! Um, sure. If you say so... 😉
So, be honest and tell me why can’t you, Trekspertise et al, admit that STD is struggling in the writing department? I mean, one only has to watch your STD Mid-Season 2 Review video to see that at least subconsciously you find the premises of each of the episodes to be, how shall I say it, “challenged”, if not outright absurd. You can literally see the look of disappointment on Kyle’s face as he struggles, STRUGGLES, to say something good about it. So again, why this need to delve into the tired excuse of “toxic fandom”?
Listen, I do my utmost best to not disparage or otherwise belittle those who like the show in its current form. People will like what they like. There’s no problem with that. But what I _don’t_ understand is when I, or others, raise very real concerns and issues with the show, usually but not limited to, about its writing, it is met with very, dare I say, toxic responses? We are disparaged, maligned, told that we need to “get a life”, or at the very least to “get out of our parent’s basement”, and even...called “nerds” (Wait, WTF? I thought they were the very raison d'etre for the show's very existence! Please see: ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html ).
Here’s the thing: the approach of my critique of STD isn’t from the standpoint of a “fan boi”. I am _not_ complaining about warp drive in a time where spore drive exists, tribbles inexplicably being tossed haphazardly into scenes (something which both the JJ films and STD did) or the fact that there is a window instead of a viewscreen on the bridge. No, my primary complaint is with the writing of the show. Writing being done by inexperienced Young Adult writers with very little science fiction work in their backgrounds. While I can certainly identify with the fan bois on some level and readily relate to some of the irksome things that they point out, that is however NOT my primary beef with the show. Even the abuse of canon isn’t the main issue at the forefront for me.
I’ve already laid out my specific problems with the writing elsewhere here on this channel, so I won’t repeat them here. However, there is one other thing that needs to be addressed. That is this idea that everyone who hates STD…is somehow a “woman hating misogynist”. There _are_ legitimate concerns that Michael is written as a Mary Sue character (for the uninitiated, a Mary Sue is an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character.), but everyone who brings this point up somehow immediately gets pegged as and lumped in with the _actual_ misogynists. Now, there _are_ male Trek fans like that out there, but I don’t think it is as prevalent as many in the media would like us to believe. I can certainly say that in my travails around the Internet I haven’t really seen this massive onslaught of “toxic masculinity” that certain people claim is the primary motivator of the hate for the show.
My 15 year old nephew has a teacher (this year they are studying science fiction, if you can believe that! I'm SO JEALOUS! :P ) who, when talking about STD, explains just how bad it is and why. Is _he_ a misogynist? :/
Let’s stop and talk about the “Feminist-ization” (capital "F") of the show for a moment. I am all for strong female characters and am, for one, VERY happy that there has been an uptick in the number of positive female role-models being depicted on both the large and small screen. The thing is that they need to be smartly written and often they just aren’t. What usually gets presented only seems to satisfy that animal instinct for “comeuppance”. Case in point, how about that guy in season 2 who disparages Michael only to moments later die a horrible death? What was the point of that? Where’s the lesson there? Why couldn’t they have written it so that Michael proves him wrong and in the end he has to come to her with hat in hand and apologize for what he said to her earlier? Was that too hard? Apparently, yes, it was. I guess it was simply much easier to just show the death of the “evil stupid man” than to actually show a potential solution or resolution to the conflict. So, instead of an actual exploration of misogyny and possible ways to address it, we got the “Yeah! He sure got what he deserved!” moment. Yeah, all "evil men" deserve death, the more horrible the better. You sure can't beat raw catharsis, can you, ladies and evil gentlemen! The bottom line is that it seems like a lot of the time people who create “Feminist-ized” character moments are just following a trend instead of _actually_ being concerned about the plight and advancement of women in society. Hot topics get coveted views, clicks, and "engagement". But, try and raise that concern and you get lumped in with the misogynists. WTF? Go figure. :/
Anyway, I think I’ve said all that needs to be said. I’m sorry that this comment is so long, but you can’t just throw up (literally) a 20-minute video, most of which paints a picture which implies that mouth breathing women hating _nerds_ are the problem, and then just casually act like “Heh… So, what’s your big deal, man?” I’m still going to come here and I still have notifications enabled. I think you are (obviously, based on the majority of your content pre-STD) capable of producing astoundingly deep, moving, and very personal looks at the many issues and themes that Trek has struggled to address (and sometimes admittedly very clumsily) over the many decades of its existence. But if this channel is going to turn into a, yes, _fan boi_ STD channel, I just might need to rethink my viewing choices. Please don’t let it be so. And if you respond with the tired "Good riddance, then! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" I will be even more disappointed. Look, you _can_ have problems with the show and _still_ like it! I get that. I _understand_ that. But don’t do this “everyone who hates it has severe mental issues” thing. You've done two videos on that topic in fairly rapid succession now and It’s extremely unbecoming of you in relation to your previous content and undermines why I started coming here regularly in the first place. Do more videos like your Mid-Season 2 Review video accept _actually_ talk about those issues instead of sheepishly looking off camera and going “Ummm… Uhhhh… Ummm… So, that happened…” I have faith in you, Kyle. I suspect that you know what I’m saying is true and it’s highly possible that your team has perhaps forced you into this position. You seem like a humble guy who wants everyone to get along and be happy, but remember, this is YOUR channel. You do YOU. But again, if it’s just going to be “STD is roses every day!” then I’m out of here. The show has _big_ problems. So, talk about them! Don’t just glaze over that fact with a goofy montage sequence. You know what? I have _yet_ to see you do one of your amazing deep dives into a topic/issue that has been (more than likely poorly) brought up in STD. So, I’m _daring_ you right here and now to do one. However, I’m afraid that if you do you will just end up simply correcting what the writers did and come from the standpoint of what you think they “actually wanted to do". But, hey! PROVE ME WRONG! ;)
Make it so. Engage. That is all.
1) The video isn't about Discovery. We do say that "Calypso" was probably Discovery's best innovation on the Trek formula, but the take-away here is that the writers of Discovery and other future Trek spin-offs need to learn the lessons of Don Quixote...which is that doing things just for nostalgia's sake is empty and fruitless. Trek does need to evolve. And it has evolved before. DS9 is a perfect example of evolving along the lines of considered nostalgia. Discovery is certainly not doing that. At least, not yet. In the video, we expressed hope that Discovery might get to that level.
2) In no way shape or form is this video criticizing people who like Discovery, or people who dislike Discovery. It isn't talking about either of those groups of people. Anyone is very much allowed to dislike the series. This video does not express the thought of "giving Discovery a chance". It does wish the showrunners and writers luck for the future. Hopefully they will get it right.
3) Toxic Fandom is a thing. Expressing an opinion, good or bad, about a property does not make someone a toxic fan. At no point in this video are people who dislike Discovery called toxic fans. We would never do that becasue it is OK to have opinions about the show. Most people have opinions about the show. Toxic fandom is, by the way, a particularly negative strain of fan within a fan community defined by the use of inappropriate behaviors such as harassment, verbal abuse, gate-keeping, threats, and other socially unacceptable and antagonistic behaviors in order to define themselves within the fandom. Is the main character of "USS Callister" a toxic Space Fleet fan. No. He isn't exactly using his favorite IP to attack or misalign others. But the subtext is that unconsidered nostalgia can be a gateway to mistreating others who don't respect a favorite IP. That's not holding an opinion...that's actual mistreatment. You have to make a leap to become a toxic fan. Most people just have opinions.
4) People who dislike Discovery are not women-hating misogynists (unless, of course, a person doesn't think women should be able to lead a show). We implied nothing of the sort in this video. If fans out in the world have implied as such, well...see the above definition for toxic fandom. It is OK to have opinions about a character's death without being called names. Conversely, there are actual misogynists in the world. There is such a thing as toxic masculinity. They permeate the larger culture of things. And they are worth talking about and are certainly worth holding heated opinions and debates over. Does Discovery touch on that? Well, maybe. That is certainly, thankfully, up for interpretation.
5) This channel is not a Discovery fan channel. We are a science fiction essay channel. Yes, there has been a lot of Discovery content of late. But, in our defense, it is a brand new Star Trek series that we are trying to watch and understand. And so far, there are no apparent topics from Discovery solely that we can flesh out for an essay. It has only been two seasons. In time, something will pop up. We will continue to examine and think about it. In the meantime, we will consider Discovery in connection to larger topics about sci-fi. But, outside of the occasional review (we have the DIS End-Of-Season Review coming up), we aren't going to talk about how good or bad the writing for a show is. In connection to Star Trek, that is a sisyphean task. That's not really what we do here. Our preferred topics are along the lines of literature and anthropology and science and how sci-fi approaches those topics. But...we will try to find something to discuss in relation to Discovery. But never something negative for the sake of pointing out flaws by itself. If a flaw must be discussed, it has to be contained within a larger narrative or topic.
6) We do appreciate you taking the time to express yourself. And, of course, for taking the time to watch. There is nothing wrong with a heated opinion.
@@Trekspertise Thank you for taking the time to respond. Sorry I didn't get back sooner, but I have physical medical issues that reared their ugly head with a vengeance. I appreciate the clarification(s). There's a lot to process there. Please forgive me if I sounded exasperated. It's just that I get labeled toxic/misogynist (even when I say nothing about women at all)/"crazy" when all I'm talking about is mostly the writing. It seems that "toxicity" is STD-agnostic. :/ Perhaps it's just simply time to back away from it all. I just can't bear to watch the show anymore, which is sad because, regardless of whether one likes it or hates it, it is nonetheless undeniably part of Trek history now. And the franchise will evolve, certainly. We'll see how it goes. I hope you understand that I respect you and your team and the wonderful content you create. Please don't let my heated words reflect differently. And with that, I will turn the page. Take care, sir. :)
@@Trekspertise One more quick note: While I am happy to have grown up in a world where the pace of technology has accelerated to a breakneck pace, I still wish that some of its shortcomings were addressed. Such as how currently basic communication with others, more often than not in the form of text, almost completely nullifies subtlety. I think that a significant portion of the angst online today arguably boils down to simple misunderstandings/misreadings. We just don't have a way to tap into those evolutionary traits which were crucial in helping us avoid conflict in the past, such as vocal tonal shifts, facial tics, eye movement, and inflection. I think it would be fun to just relax over some fine ale or coffee at a local brewpub and talk about one of our favorite subjects. Hey, if you guys ever find yourself in/around the Ann Arbor, Michigan area I could certainly recommend some fine conversation enhancing establishments. ;)
Again, thanks for your time! :)
I disagree with two things that end up with the same result. It's nothing to do with Toxic Masculinity or Toxic Fanboyism. The episode is more focused on what lies behind the mask. Though I can't remember the female led's name at the moment, her public face is very well groomed for people to see but behind that mask she's a "dirty girl". Whatever phrasing you want to use. The same is true for most of the main cast. CEO is a douchey, look at me boss type, but if you got to know him he feels very strongly for his child. The male lead however is the focus of this face behind the mask. That is to say, in public he is all but a whimpering dog but behind closed doors he would rule as a tyrant. Whether or not he is an underappreciated genius is beside the point.
The second thing has to do with dehumanizing people. In the game, he sees them as only 1s and 0s to do his bidding. Because he doesn't see them as sentient, at this point, AI, he can abuse them because he owns them. This also has a connection to cloning and other AI that might be sentient. Is it okay to just outright delete them?
If all people are seeing is toxic this or toxic that, you miss the technology side of everything. The "toxic" thing doesn't come into play. He is a man child who a god complex and he uses technology to satisfy his urges.
I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "toxic", because I am positive you aren't using it correctly in this video (although neither does anyone else online, so I guess that's expected).
We are using it correctly.
I've said a bunch since a lot of franchises are getting old, that they either need to slow down and regroup, or just hang it up. Trek, Bond, Who, Batman, Godzilla even.. need to stop. Unfortunately, I don't think there are too many creative minds left in Hollywood. They just keep rehashing the same old stuff because it makes money, and that's they're only driving force, it seems. We need another Joss Whedon etc with fresh ideas to create something new again...
Bond was rebooted starting with Casino Royale. The latest Doctor Who was effectively a complete reboot, although they don't want to admit it.
And rather than focusing on Batman, it would seem comic book movies and the whole MCU would be the greater issue. The occasional Batman film isn't bad since there's been so many different takes on the character. But the MCU is reaching a point where it's going to run into itself. They reset the X-Men films half way through the series and rendered the first films irrelevant, and they seem to have just done that in part with the latest Avengers film.
@@writerpatrick Craig's Bonds are still part on the ongoing franchise. I don't consider it a reboot, then you'd have to say each actor taking over the role over time is a reboot... I think I'm just a long time movie goes, pretty much seen it all, and would like something new again, and not retreads...
I think he forgot the loud intro warning
No not all used up. But Discovery and Picard signaled that it's just flat out dead now.
I enjoyed one or two later episodes of Voyager, and probably one episode of DS9. I think Star Trek has been cruising on an empty war core for years now.
Wow just saw selmac/Jacob carter lol
Daly vs Barclay....sim to the death
hes just like me fr
You might call this episode a condemnation on modern Star Trek. I don't think this was intentional, but the problem with Daylys fantasy is it's Overally focused on the whims of one person. The biggest problem with Star Trek Discovery is the naritive is Overally focused on one character. The solution being get rid of that character, and let other people have the spotlight form time to time.
Probably not what they ment, but I'll take that reading over yours. People in general like to over estimate the effect media has on indavuals. Has a fact ever changed your mind? No, why do you think Mickey Mouse can?
>Toxic Masculinity
**eyeroll**
Hi how are you? I loved the episodes much to think about there!
We are great! Thank you for watching =)
Does anyone remember the cartoon Don coyote
I disliked the flawed science in the Black Mirror episode. How could a DNA sample enable to clone a person's mind? This could have easily been remedied by some kind of mind scan in addition to the DNA sample.
Due to a fracture in the between the . In the end it sounded better than eye of newt and toe of frog.
science FICTION
Could be that the dna simply helps search an anonymised (possibly hacked) database of mind scans that already exists somewhere.
The technology gets explained by the marketing lady, she probably has no idea how it actually works.
I respect your opinion, but it does not change my opinion of Star Trek Discovery. Which n my opinion is fine. It is not a good show, but not terrible and I feel it is using a brand that goes counter to the show's design, but it's fine overall. I never going to watch it again or praise it, but I am not going to say anything terrible about because it wasn't a terrible show. It was an experiment that I think it failed overall and may have done better if it was its own original show.
he had hopes about star trek in may 2019...well now we have another turd trek called "picard" ... star trek needs its own "mandalorian" to remember what its all about, but it doesnt look like its gonna happen soon.
It's another nearly dead franchise like Bond, Star Wars or Harry Potter. Or half that superhero junk. Time to put them down and do something new.
black mirror did a better job at capturing the aesthetic of the tos era than discovery...
That intro did have major TOS vibes.
black mirror was intending to mimic, DSCs goal was intended to reimagine
It's Barclay 2.0
It so is.
I just finished season 1 of STD and hated it with a burning PASSION shall I watch season 2
Season 2's captain pike is a pretty good character. Worth watching, imo. It is a shame he was not the focus of the show going forward.
Yes, season 2 is a lot more focused and Pike is a great character.
The plot is even more mind-boggling with irrational AIs and Illogical time travel. Pike and Spock were interesting characters though who didn't always act like you would expect but who were well-acted and sympathetic.
@Funaru Careful. You may get labeled as "toxic", regardless of whether or not your points are more than valid. ;)
*Oh god I am hoping and praying that this video isn't going to end up being* "Criticism of Discovery isn't legitimate because it's just overly nostalgic fanboys."
Edit: 13:37 Oh shit here it comes! Yeah gimme hat sweet sweet conflating between criticism of a bad show with toxic fandom! Yes everyone who doesn't like something popular that you do like is just toxic! Legitimate critique can't exist!
Final Edit: PHEW he didn't do it! Thank goodness, it was just 'nostalgia is making the writers bring back Spock.' I'm not going to say it was implied that the fans are ruining discovery because they're overly nostalic, I'm just going to write this as a win.
This essay doesn't have much to do with Discovery.
calm down
@Trekspertise No. You're not going to weasel out of this one. The connection between STD and so-called "toxic" fans was heavily implied. Why even mention it at all if your whole point was ostensibly that the show needs to change somehow. You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, as the saying goes. Why the duplicity?
To illustrate the point, you start with where STD is going. You the talk about "toxic fandom" for most of the video. Then you wrap up with how STD needs to change, the implication being that out of touch, disaffected, parent's basement dwelling haters of the show need to step aside and let the STD writers work their magic. Try and convince me otherwise.
@@CybershamanX You are not entitled to have someone try to convince you. If you have a thought you wish to spread, you must do the work to convince others yourself. Your over-the-top, disparaging reading of the video doesn't help your case. Your use of the toilet humor STD meme instead of the official DSC abbreviation doesn't help if you wish to appear as someone with a calm, rational critique deserving of attention. By all means, have your own opinion, but don't expect to convince anyone if you don't have at least the rhetorical ability to back it up.
The Callister is pretty shallow for all the praise it gets (which it gets from the people who already agree with the politics the show is screaming at you about). In a Star Trek story it would have been about what responsibility do we owe to artificial life forms we've created i.e. Measure of a Man from TNG. It would have asked the question is destroying the mind of a flesh and blood person in service to several AI's a good thing.
Instead we got Black Mirror screaming at you YES IT IS AND QUESTIONING THE PREMISE MEANS YOU'RE A BAD PERSON. I've never really liked Black Mirror as it's about as subtle as a brick to the head but I've never been actively irritated by it until this episode.
If you wanted to tell the story that it ended up being about there's hundred ways to make it better without loading it down with Star Trek references. All that did was make me see how they were missing the far more interesting premise in favor of the stupid one we got instead.
This may seem completely out of left field, but this perfectly articulates why I was so annoyed with the recent video game "Detroit: Become Human"... it teases an exploration about AI, philosophy of consciousness, and morality, but then side-steps all of that to jump straight to the conclusion that the AI characters are a repressed minority with ham-fisted analogies to the plight of African Americans in the 1960s... The thing is, I like the Black Mirror in spite of this. There may have been some *glaring* missed opportunities to explore these interesting questions, but the mere fact of its existence often raises the questions in the mind of the viewer regardless of the show's intent. Here we are talking about it now.
Narrator: Discovery did not improve.
*Writers change the smallest thing*
Now tHId iSn't tHe TrEk i kNOw
Idk man the shit they changed in Discovery ain't small
Voyager DS9 and Enterprise yes small things
i haven't seen discovery yet because i don't wanna pay for another service just to watch it. but, in general, trekkies seem to love the orville.
I think wow classic is proving Nostalgia isn't just happy feelings, it can be that these past things ARE good, and better than what we currently have, i think in 3 months everyone will figure it the fuck out, and 2 years later hollywood.
Of course you have gatekeepers we have gatekeepers now with people saying masculinity can be "toxic" like anyone would be brave enough to say femininity could be because right now being a woman and complaining you get more power than men, even though it seems like the best jobs are filled by women that is a choice not forced onto women, they prefer less hours and being able to have kids.
You'll have toxic fans who aren't even fans, who more defend companies, or consoles.. see the Xbox/Playstation fanboys they'd eat you alive if you disagree on something minor, but what these nostalgic media should do is bring people together to share in them and the messages they teach, which is almost always including everyone which funnily enough normally leads to the other side happening much more.
I'd also ask what Unrelenting Nostalgia is? as a "Scifi" fan, i love most scifi, i don't like doctor who, or red dwarf very much, but pretty much the rest of notable acclaim from the past 20 years yep, My favorite Babylon 5.. and its a fantastic series with so many deep meanings in it.. it explores humanity and the progressive story telling method on tv before anyone else did, before Deep space nine copied, for a few seasons.
Babylon 5 built a universe and a story and laid it bare for us and showed us that the heroes who saved the universe weren't all luke skywalker who would never give up (fuck the new movies, the EU is where luke really went) all of them were deeply flawed, one couldn't love again after being hurt so much lost the best person for her who'd be her everything its so heart breaking to know she never loved again and it took her 15 odd years to even get past it.
Star Trek is also a great series, and Andromeda etc.. i have a massive collection of Starwars figures too, i love world of warcraft and lord of the rings.. all those "nerdy things" but i don't see Unrelenting Nostalgia, i see a term being made in order to shame people, to put a bunch of people you don't like into a box just like alt right and nazi's its not about changing them its about marking them with a nice little word rather than a star.
Of course many aspects of our favorite things have in time waned due to better special effects less limitations etc, but the writing for some of these older games and movies.. it's very easy to see just how cheap and lazy writing has got in the past 8 or so years, and being Nostalgic for better writing and people who made media as a craft rather than to milk people for money isn't unrelenting Nostalgia its reminding us that we must learn from the past, we are repeating so many of the past's failures for no reason, so please re-consider creating a new term just to put "toxic fans" into another group in order to be ignored and shunned and refused dialogue because you can't be bothered talking it out and changing their minds.
You lost me when an arbitrary, madeup term like "toxic masculinity" is treated seriously.
Oh, it's a real term.
@@Trekspertise Sure, but it's a bad term. The problem when people use the term "toxic masculity" it makes the assumption that you know where the line is between nature and nurture. What is culturally inforced, and what comes form our biology.
You don't know that. I know you don't because I don't.
@@Trekspertise An IDEOLOGICAL term.
What is the definition of "toxic fandom"?
Funaru See: Nerdrotic, Midnights Edge, Doomcock and “The Fandom Menace”.
@@1978rharris What makes them toxic? What do they say or do that's toxic?
A fan you don't agree with and generally interact with through the use of ad hominem attacks rather than addressing their concerns directly. The term is frequently used by those defending a sub par production who's creators just can't admit that they have produced a middling piece of work.
I occasionally watch Nerdrotic and Midnight's Edge. They are a bit over the top with their outrage and language at times but I find most of their actual points and arguments reasonable. They meticulously criticize bad writing and the radical political ideology that often is behind it. How is that toxic?
@@Funaru Sadly, you will be berated by those that ostensibly "hate" those channels. I suspect that many of the people who disparage them have never actually watched a minute of one of their videos. I've tried to dig actual points of contention out of their haters, but have yet failed to do so. Yes, they can be dramatic at times, but their videos (specifically Midnight's Edge) are well researched and if they _do_ speculate they are careful to be clear that they are doing so. I know for a fact (since, well, I actually watch their videos) that the Midnight's Edge team are pretty ardant "nerds" in the best sense of the term and not its derogatory form that is often used bycertain individuals to somehow discredit them. Let's not forget that according to STD's own cast members that "nerds" are the sole reason that Star Trek is even still a thing, which is decidedly untrue. (Edit: here is that abomination of a video showing the cast singing the praises of "nerds": ua-cam.com/video/k4odaZBkNqM/v-deo.html)
Yassss!