Red Letter Media

[Preferred Penne]

I feel like the main argument against allowing them to start a religion is that Earth has a long history of holy wars and killing in the name of belief, and they want to prevent that from happening to other civilizations.

As always, George Carlin has a relevant take on it.

 

[Travoltron]

I still don't understand the Minatakans. What is a "proto-Vulcan" anyways? How does that work?

 

[Quintex96]

I still don't understand the Minatakans. What is a "proto-Vulcan" anyways? How does that work?

I'm guessing a less evolved genetic cousin of Vulcans and before you claim that it is a stupid idea, the Romulans are also gentic cousins of Vulcans.

In reality they probably just reused Vulcan make-up to save money and spun an interesting idea out of it.

 

[KrewlKween]

I still don't understand the Minatakans. What is a "proto-Vulcan" anyways? How does that work?

Wasn't there a TOS episode that kind of explains that? Vulcans were descended from another race that seeded planets across the galaxy? They weren't always based in logic, they were once stupid emotional war mongers like every other race. Maybe whoever seeded Vulcan also seeded these people, and for whatever reason they just took forever evolving and figuring shit out. What doesn't make sense is that vulcans didn't evolve into logical beings over time, that came from Surak's teachings and the ones who called BS self weeded out to Romulus. Calling them "vulcan" is kind of a misnomer, but they got pointy ears and are rational so...probably more for the audience then anything.

 

[ditto]

Wasn't there a TOS episode that kind of explains that? Vulcans were descended from another race that seeded planets across the galaxy?

Wasn't that a TNG episode, that revealed everyone is descended from the one female shapeshifter.

 

[Racist Trash]

I still don't understand the Minatakans. What is a "proto-Vulcan" anyways? How does that work?

Remember there was that bald species which seeded that area of space with their space sperm so all races in that area are actually related in some form, some more than others.

 

[Standardized Profile]

I'm guessing a less evolved genetic cousin of Vulcans and before you claim that it is a stupid idea, the Romulans are also gentic cousins of Vulcans.

Romulans are descendants of Vulcans, or whatever the pointy-eared desert-planet people called themselves back then. Are your cousins also your ancestors?
It's just bad writing. They could have called them Vulcanoids (cf. humanoid), or quasi-Vulcans, or made them the descendants of an ancient Vulcan colony or reservation planet that descended into primitivism. Finding a planet of proto-Vulcans would be like finding a planet of Homo erectus.

 

[byuu]

Picard accidentally becoming a god was fun.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

Who watches the watchers is a great episode. The whole "heh... atheism" fedora-tipping m'ladying shit didn't exist back then when it came out. Rich makes the point that in real star trek, trite garbage concepts such as "faith" are null, a fact that falls on deaf ears with Picard and Discovery.

I liked every choice on their lists except this one. There's simply nothing about it that's exceptional. If it was #5 on his list I could stomach it a little more. But a favorite from a "superfan"? No way. It's a bit turgid and ultimately predictable.

Hell, the episode with the old man who wished away that entire race that killed his wife and fellow colononists was better than this one.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Who watches the watchers is a great episode. The whole "heh... atheism" fedora-tipping m'ladying shit didn't exist back then when it came out. Rich makes the point that in real star trek, trite garbage concepts such as "faith" are null, a fact that falls on deaf ears with Picard and Discovery.

With every passing day, I'm thinking Chesterton's quote is becoming more true:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

This is why I don't think true atheism will ever exist except for the very few. Most people have to believe in something. You can't get passionately riled up and willing to riot over something unless there's a transcendant quality to it. You can't claim to be a moral authority unless you think there's something that GIVES you moral authority. Even if that something is some nebulous sense of Progress... Even TNG had a couple episodes when the show treated Evolution as something that was being directed by some transcendent authority, as if a planet being doomed by some natural disaster was something that was meant to happen, not something that should be stopped.

This kind of thing, of course, varied with whatever writer was writing the episode...

 

[Fluoxetine Man]

Picard accidentally becoming a god was fun.

...that's cute

 

[BScCollateral]

Oddly enough, that's one of the few episodes of TNG I remember.

I thought it was fairly clumsy. Surely it would have been smarter for Picard and co. to dress up as the proto-Vulcans who rescued the "prophet" and try to convince everyone that he saw a group of perfectly mundane people and misremembered because he was seriously hurt. Surely, telling these people "Yep, we're aliens" would be just as bad as letting a rumor spread they were gods.

 

[Flexo]

Glad someone else thought so too. "Who Watches the Watchers" is not a "good, solid, average episode" of TNG. It's not the worst, either, but it's definitely on the poorer side of episodes. Prime Directive episodes are usually pretty trashy, mostly because the Prime Directive and how it works changes from writer to writer. Also, this is a good example of Trek's sneering at religion at its worst (at least until they actually banned characters from saying "God damn" on Discovery).

I love Rich Evans, but his smug atheism is pretty cringey when it raises its head.

It is funny because SFDebris did a back to back review of DS9's Rapture and this Watchers episode. In the latter, he discusses religion and compares the two and even makes a point that you could have other interpretations of this episode.

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t152.php

It is funny to watch Picard get shot with an arrow. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't reveal he survived BECAUSE he had an artificial heart (which he would later die from).

 

[Burned Man]

Oddly enough, that's one of the few episodes of TNG I remember.

I thought it was fairly clumsy. Surely it would have been smarter for Picard and co. to dress up as the proto-Vulcans who rescued the "prophet" and try to convince everyone that he saw a group of perfectly mundane people and misremembered because he was seriously hurt. Surely, telling these people "Yep, we're aliens" would be just as bad as letting a rumor spread they were gods.

I can see a certain logic to not letting these people know gods exist and can have an impact on their lives before you leave them forever never to return. These people now know for a fact god exists, they've seen him and met him. He's helped them out. What happens though when he no longer shows up? What will these people do to win his favor back now that they know god is just ignoring them. How far will they go? Sacrifices, self mutilation, purges, inquisitions, holy wars? I think trying to tell them that were just normal people, technologically advanced people, but still just people that happened to be coincidentally visiting them is probably better then leaving them with the god's real and you'll never see him again bomb.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Jay used to run a New Years stream where he'd play weird films and obscure RLM shit until 2014 when a guy archived it. That pissed Jay off and he hasn't done it since.

Jay also used to run a Youtube channel where he would upload weird, experimental videos but he totally abandoned it.

What's weird is I believe there's at least one RLM video uploaded to his channel and not the official RLM channel.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Jay used to run a New Years stream where he'd play weird films and obscure RLM shit until 2014 when a guy archived it. That pissed Jay off and he hasn't done it since.

I've been wondering where these went. Only got to see the last two.

Edit idk

 

[Dom Cruise]

they're not your friends, it's not because you see them act with their friends that they would be your friends. You're never going to sit on an episode of Best of the Worst, fucking deal with it.

It's impossible not to watch hours of people talking about stuff over a span of almost a decade and not develop a parasocial thing, isn't it? I will freely admit I kind of think of these guys as friends, but I'd never get into stalkerish behavior and I like to think if I ever did meet them, I'd play it cool.

But they're cool guys, who wouldn't want to be their friends and who wouldn't want to be a guest on Best of The Worst? Some people take things way too far though of course.

 

[Mola Ram]

It's impossible not to watch hours of people talking about stuff over a span of almost a decade and not develop a parasocial thing, isn't it? I will freely admit I kind of think of these guys as friends, but I'd never get into stalkerish behavior and I like to think if I ever did meet them, I'd play it cool.

But they're cool guys, who wouldn't want to be their friends and who wouldn't want to be a guest on Best of The Worst? Some people take things way too far though of course.

Consider that Max Landis grew up around some of the most famous people in Hollywood and still turned into a giggling idiot of a fanboy when he wound up on their set.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Consider that Max Landis grew up around some of the most famous people in Hollywood and still turned into a giggling idiot of a fanboy when he wound up on their set.

It'd be a real trip to meet these guys, but they didn't do convention appearances (at least after they really took off) or anything like that, right?

The fact that they don't do the usual eceleb stuff and that they are a little more mysterious is part of what makes them more interesting than other Youtube channels.

 

[Absolutego]

I wasn't aware that there was any other kind of atheism.

We exist, we just checked out of the e-fighting about it forever ago. The dangerhair infestation happened to us before just about anyone else.