I finally just watched that season 2 review video that johnjm posted. I'm only like 15 minutes in but it already bothers me that for how pedantically picky they're being a bout "real fans" vs "modern mainstream jock-pop-culture fans" and how much the groups respect proper sci-fi and Star Trek, they both constantly keep mistakenly using "Star trek" when they mean to say "Starship" so we've had multiple references to the "star trek enterprise" and the "star trek discovery" when they're talking about the ships themselves appearing in the shows/movies.
I am enjoying them recapping the utterly ridiculous over-complexity of a bunch of plot threads that go nowhere in the series though.
That said, they do miss out on a few things in the process of snarking about how dumb things are. Like the whole Voq/Tyler thing. One of them asks what the deal was with the character, if there was a "real" Ash Tyler or whatever. The other guy says "no" because he means to say that guy #1's theory that Voq/Tyler are a combined being (that Voq was essentially stuffed into the real Tyler's body) is incorrect and that the actual explanation is that Voq gets Star Trek magic plastic surgery to make him into a fake human (which is accurate). But it ignores that as far as I understood from the story, there was a real Tyler who was captured and I guess killed so that they could use his real history to inform Voq!Tyler's backstory and implanted memories. I mean, if there wasn't, it would've made the character the worst sleeper agent in history since all anyone would've had to do when he got onto the Discovery is punch up the Starfleet officer's database and realize "oh hell, this guy doesn't have a service record or a birth certificate or a personal history of any kind. But he says he's cool, so I guess that means it's a computer error and he's totally 100% legit and not something shifty".
Though now that I write all that out, I honestly could see the Discovery writers' room causing a plot hole by making that mistake because their slipshod approach to crafting 'meaningful' character stories and information was usually exactly that in depth and well-informed.
They also spend like 4 minutes referring to the engineer/security officer lady Pike brought with him questioning if she's a Benzite because of the breathing apparatus while completley whiffing on the fact that she is in fact another TNG alien callback (a Barzan from the episode about the wormhole that the Barzans were auctioning off usage rights to and the skeezy telepathic negotiator guy that was in on it).
If you're going to plan the trekkie fan card of
*nasal voice* "well,
*derisive tongue click* actually in episode ef0714b Kirk presses the button on his chair to activate red alert but then in ef0718 he presses the same button to jettison the sensor pod and presses the button 2 places to the left to activate red alert even though that's normally the button to cut off communications. I hope someone got fired for that blunder
*snorting laughter*" you'd damn well better be right. Otherwise you look like a colossal dick
and a lazy idiot.
Point being (before I got sidetracked into taking another shot at Discovery itself. Because honestly it's just so easy to dovetail basically
any discussion around the show into that sort of avenue) it's a little difficult to take scathing "you're not living up to the level of proper classic, non-insulting Star Trek" when you blitz through making a bunch of equally lazy mistakes without recognizing them. We've made similar mistakes here, but generally most of us have been aware of where they might be and that we're making them, we just don't want to take the time to research to fix them then and there. All it would've taken was a few vague "I remember this being a thing, but I don't remember the details or circumstances" type disclaimers on their critical statements to be able to brush that stuff off a little easier.
Also though I'm sitting through the whole video (between the time I wrote that I'm about 15 minutes in and now another 20 or so minutes have passed as I've pieced together this loooong post
), I feel like 50 minutes of just the two guys sitting in chairs awkwardly discussing the show is a little long. But gotta get dem stratified YT monetization tiers, I guess.
EDIT: Also while I'm not an uptight spineless wuss or anything, I'm not a fan of the number of casual f-bombs in their discussion. Profanity in a "professional" setting sounds less professional. I get that they're supposed to be a pair of people just shooting the breeze about whatever, but if you want to sound authoritative and knowledgeable, you should also sound like you're reasonably well put together and not just two dudes in a bar talking about a show after a half-dozen beers. Also every time you curse, it lessens the impact of the curse. Save the f-bombs for important punctuation, not because you dole them out like commas to pause your thought on.
