JP's angry alter-ego is angry at CBS/YouTube
The Hope
Star Trek has long been a franchise about optimism and hope. It imagines a universe where the best of humanity is on full display. When I recently watched a video by Egotastic Fun Time's JP, featuring his reaction to the Star Trek: Picard trailer, I started sharing his optimism about the show.
JP's 10 minute reaction video played the one minute Picard teaser on a small window with the CBS logo looming largely over the video like a big ole' watermark, while JP spoke over the audio, clearly using the trailer in fair-use. He spoke about how he thought the teaser was good and how it had actually excited him about the upcoming Picard series, and it got me excited.
I agreed with him on the trailer - it was like CBS was throwing 'member-berries at us.
"'Member Picard? 'Member his vineyard and his wine?" (South Park reference)
The Struggle
I was also a little surprised that we both liked it. Since 2016, the Star Trek franchise has been marred with problem after problem. First, the third Kelvin movie, Star Trek: Beyond bombed in theaters, leading to the cancellation of a fourth Kelvin film, due to budget constraints. The following year saw the release of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery after months of delays, and the reaction to it was ... to say the least, mixed.
Some liked the new look and approach. Others hated it, but openly supported it out of fear that CBS would stop making Star Trek shows completely if Discovery bombed. Many Americans would have been open to watching Discovery, had it been on regular television, or a better streaming service such as Netflix, rather than the shoddy CBS All-Access (Americans can't get Discovery Through Netflix, only CBS All-Access). The rest were sadly disappointed at what Kurtzman tried to do and joined forces to make their voices heard on social media.
Season two of Discovery didn't do any better, despite rumors that it reportedly cost about $400 million dollars to produce, with the biggest offense being the re-imagined USS Enterprise bridge resembling a Twizzlers Factory. However, the audience who generally liked the show thought the best part about the season was Anson Mount's Captain Pike and began begging CBS to green light a show featuring Pike. CBS, out of touch with even fans of the show, instead announced that they were working on show featuring Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou, an over the top Empress from the Mirror Universe. Now there are rumors that even though a season three is green-lit for Discovery, Netflix and CBS refuse to cover the mounting costs which presumably leaves the show broke.
But through all of that, there has been one small shiny ray of hope. One tiny sliver of optimism that the franchise would indeed "live long and prosper". That hope has been for Star Trek: Picard. When Sir Patrick Stewart announced he would return to reprise his role as Captain Jean Luc Picard, I was so happy I cried. Then the realization that the same people who made Discovery would be the ones making Picard dawned on me and I have been nervous about it since. I mean, what if it sucks like Discovery did?
But then I saw JP's video and began to relax. This man is so positive and excited about the teaser, maybe I should just trust CBS. Surely they've learned from their past mistakes and do not wish to further upset the fans, since they're the ones paying the bills. Throughout the last few years CBS had begun to put their foot down when it came to copyrite issues, upsetting many fans. First they attacked fan films, which led to a lawsuit that put SO many restrictions on making a Star Trek fan film, that it drained any sense of creativity and vision from a project. Then they went after the gamers, specifically putting a cease and desist order on the creation of a free fan made interactive experience called Stage 9 that promised a recreation of the Enterprise-D that you could walk around in, like a digital museum. Then they went for the YouTubers, abusing their copyrite by blocking certain videos they didn't approve of, despite free-use laws.
But in this video, JP's being very positive and optimistic about what he just saw. This is certainly the type of promotion that CBS would embrace... no, I mean - should embrace. I, along with about sixteen thousand others watched this video, and seeing JP hopeful, also gave us hope.
"...then, the unimaginable."
JP then received an email from YouTube informing him that "the copyright owner" had "manually" claimed his video and then blocked it world-wide. JP responded by making another video where he explains the copyright claim and was clearly upset that CBS would go after such a positive and optimistic video and that it was probably a mistake to try and trust that CBS would eventually learn to understand Star Trek fans.
JP's YouTube notification/YouTube
Below are a couple of quotes from his video posted after the claim:
"It's a free promotion for everyone to enjoy and hopefully get pumped for Star Trek, and purchase subscriptions to CBS all access."
"People said I was crazy and that the show would definitely suck because CBS is making it... but I stayed strong, despite everything that was going on for the last couple of years that makes us want to make CBS "pay for what they've done", and break all of their little ships, I said "this trailer looks good"... I even kept fair-use in mind."
"This is why I stopped showing any still images on my views of Discovery and consequently just stopped doing Discovery reviews at all. Even though I tried to be fair in my reviews, talking about the stuff that I liked as well as the stuff that I didn't like and always expressing my hope for the series to keep trying to improve. But CBS, you make it impossible to want to support your content."
I've come to the conclusion that CBS is clearly out of touch with what Star Trek fans, and even Discovery fans want, and are incompetent at running this franchise. They can't get the Klingons right and they can't get the canon right. They disrespect the very shows that built their franchise and they disrespect the very fans that have been pumping money through the veins of this franchise for the last half a century. Now they're even attacking small time YouTube channels that give the slightest of hope that CBS would not disappoint them on Picard - only to then be unjustly dinged by them - probably because he didn't like Discovery. How disappointing.
Nobody wants Picard to fail. Captain Picard is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise and bringing him back may certainly pump new blood into it. However, if CBS continues to attack and disrespect its own consumers, then it's not gonna matter who's in it or whether it's good. You will just turn off so many people that they'll stop caring and they'll stop pumping money into it and they'll move onto other more successful franchises. If CBS cares enough about the future of Star Trek, the best thing to do is just sell Star Trek to a company that is willing to do what needs to be done, to see that the franchise lives long and prospers.
Watched JP's video on CBS below:
Update: CBS isn't the only one abusing the copyright laws, Disney is notorious for it and had even helped to create the most draconian copyright laws. Here is an example of Disney tagging a video from Geeks and Gamers over their views on Captain Marvel:
A more recent update from Geeks and Gamers. Let's stand together:
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