SF Debris / Tropes A to F

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A

• Aborted Arc: Hates how most Trek two-part series cliffhangers aren't written at the same time (several are the season finale and next season premiere), leading to them simply forgetting or not resolving plot-threads put forward in the first part.
  • Notes how in "Unimatrix Zero" the Borg Queen makes a cryptic comment that she'll be seeing Harry Kim very soon, is never brought up or mentioned again.
  • He specifically gives credit to part two of a DS9 two parter: "Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast". He notes that despite the second part being written by a different team of writers, it manages to maintain and build upon the plot of the first. And further adds how "Improbable Cause" was meant to be a stand alone episode which was transformed into a two-part story and still maintained the plot of the first.
• Accentuate the Negative: Even the most positively reviewed episodes focus more on the negatives than the positives, which can make the score at the end seem like whiplash given how little good was often noted.
  • This is particularly noticeable in his First Contact review, which is almost entirely pointing out plot holes and snarking, yet ends with a score of 8/10.
    • He then did more or less ecactly the same thing to the Voyager episode Future's End. He ragged on the villain for being basically cartoonishly evil and incompetent, criticised the constant regional stereotyping, bemoaned how the story had to be cut short (as it was supposed to be a 3-parter) in such a clumsy way and pointed out all the plot holes that the reckless use of time travel by the writers introduced, and then scored it 8/10.
  • He gave 8/10 to the Voyager episode "Relativity" too, even after pointing out how utterly stupid its plot was and asserting that the major theme of the episode was "I don't give a shit". In the end he said he found it enjoyable and fun in spite of (or because of?) it's stupidity. It's also worth noting that that score is relative to an average Voyager episode, which is a pretty low standard to pass.
  • And also in the Voyager 30th Trek anniversary episode "Flashback". He repeatedly points out, while tearing bits of it to shreds that it's not actually a bad episode, it's actually a really good episode of Voyager, compared to the others and it does do its job to entertain the Voyager fans. But he makes a point that even Brannon Braga, the writer of said episode, agreed that it was a poor contest when compared to Deep Space Nine's 30th Trek anniversary episode "Trials and Tribble-ations".
  • He addresses this tendency when he reviews the TOS episode "The Conscience of the King"; ironically, despite affirming his "nothing is sacred" attitude and insisting that it applies even to TOS, he then goes on to give it a glowing review.
  • All of the scores are relative to the series, so things like displaying badly dated values don't affect the score.
  • One way he likes to do this is to review an episode of something else that addresses similar themes, only much better before reviewing the target of his ire itself. For example he reviewed the DS9 episode "Whispers" and its explorations of the implications of cloning a sentient being just before reviewing the TNG episode "Up The Long Ladder" mainly so he could use what was discussed previously purely to mock how that episode dealt with a similar issue.
    • He did a similar thing in the post-episode coda of "Dear Doctor", showing Sisko's tearful confession of his crimes from "In the Pale Moonlight", which wound up saving billions, and then having that scene be back-to-back with Doctor Phlox from "Dear Doctor," talking about how proud he was that Archer took his advice and did not interfere with the Valakians or the Menk, winding up killing billions!
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Invoked during "The Game", where he jokes that before we discover they're actually talking about the titular game, the conversation sounds more like Crusher and Troi laughing at the latest STD Riker picked up on Risa.
  • In "Rascals", whilst talking about some of the difficulties that occur whenever doing a show involving child actors, Chuck mentions his own growth spurt during puberty;
    Chuck: Between the ages of 12 and 14, I grew 11 inches... taller!
  • In "Remember Me", Chuck puts the audio of the Traveler instructing Wesley on how to save his mother over a still shot of a shuttlecraft. Suddenly, everything the Traveler says comes off a lot creepier:
    The Traveler: There's "your warp bubble", Wesley.
  • He couldn't talk about Harry Kim's musical hobbies without running into these. Finally he just gave up:
    Chuck: [Beat] Harry has a clarinet.
  • Has an entire montage of them in part seven of his Torchwood: Miracle Day review collected from Classic Doctor Who episodes.
  • Gwen unzipping her flight suit in front of some guards to finish them off— "I mean, kill them!" (Galaxy Quest)
• Accidental Misnaming: Co-Executive Producer Brandon Braga!
  "It's, uh, Brannon. We've worked together for nine years. I..thought you'd have remembered that."
• Acronym Confusion: POTC: The Passion of the Christ or Pirates of the Caribbean?
  • He really wanted to see Jesus battling a Kraken.
• Acting for Two:invoked Comments on this a few times where Robert Picardo is concerned: he liked "Life Line" for having twice as much Picardo as usual (since Picardo plays both the Doctor and Lewis Zimmerman), and in "Author, Author", he facetiously suggests that maybe the reason that Zimmerman doesn't appear is that they couldn't get the actor on short notice.
  • Gives kudos to Brent Spiner for his work in "Datalore" and "Brothers" (TNG), managing to play several believably-distinct characters in the same scene.
  • Also comments on how well Roxann Dawson did with playing Klingon Torres and Human Torres during "Faces" (VOY), with both characters being sufficiently distinct from the original "half-and-half" Torres.
• Actually Pretty Funny: He admitted that Jack pretending to be Rex's boyfriend and Rex flipping him off in Torchwood: Miracle Day was pretty funny.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: This bit from his "Where No Man Has Gone Before" review:
  "Soon, Doctor Piper pops a peck of pasty pills, and Kirk is awakened. He prevents Piper's plan to prescribe his pal a pill, postponing the prescription to pursue the potent people to prevent their perverse plan to propagate such portentous progeny, then pass the pasty pill that Piper picks."
  • And this selection from "By Inferno's Light", when Dukat is trying to convince Sisko to convince the Federation to join the Dominion:
    "Considering the strategic significance should Sisko's station surrender, Sisko suggests shitting off. Sure, Sisko's station suffering some surprise sortie certainly signifies Starfleet's strategic softness, but surrender signifies Starfleet's slump, stagnation: a slippery slope signaling systems should ship out should some sovereign suggest cessesion. Such steps Sisko surely shan't sanction. I'm sorry. I can't read anymore. I seem to have spit all over the script."
  • There is a great moment (apparently unscripted) in "In Purgatory's Shadow" where Chuck trips over his tongue while trying to enunciate, "Bashir asserts such a search." He then criticizes his own writing as well as his Andy Serkis-like pronunciation of it.
• Aesop Amnesia: Discussed in the review of "In the Cards" (DS9), mentioning that in "Q-Less", Quark was mocked for spending his hard-earned money to buy superfluous junk, whereas in this episode Jake will go to great lengths to spend Nog's hard-earned money on superfluous junk.
• Agent Mulder: Discussed in review of "Fresh Bones" from The X-Files — one of the problems with doing a paranormal show like X-Files is that Mulder, the believer on the team, must believe in everything and what's worse, everything must be true. Related to that is Fridge Logic question: now when people know that voodoo is real and that it works, what prevents people to use it on hostile aliens invading the Earth, huh?
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Prime Directive has been torn apart piece by piece for what it turned into as Star Trek progressed, pointing out that it was conceived as a guideline put in place to prevent undeveloped civilizations from being taken advantage of, but from TNG onward, it was morphed into an institutionalized Bystander Syndrome. In a few of the episodes he covers, it was basically treated as an all-knowing, unquestionable entity in itself that was almost only ever used to justify genocide through deliberate inaction.
  • In Voyager's pilot, he points out that the one time Janeway has no trouble ignoring the Prime Directive to actually prevent genocide, it's to save the Ocampa, a civilization whose people live lives only barely more enviable (or longer) than that of goldfish, which causes him to wonder what makes them so special.
  • In his review of the Prime Directive overall, he compares it to watching a child burn to death while trapped in a car, hearing it screaming for someone, anyone to help... and then calling yourself a hero for letting that child die.
• Almighty Janitor: Chuck complains during his Knights of the Old Republic review that no one else in the entire galaxy except for Revan seems capable of doing... absolutely anything without him.
  There's no "I" in "Team," but there is one in "Fix my problems, Revan."
• All for Nothing: At the end of his "Macrocosm" review, he made a point to explain that he would be taking a break for various reasons. Many fans didn't watch till the end of video and flooded the comments section asking where he was.
  • When he said he was taking requests for other series via his donation system, and posted a link to the instructions on how to make a request via donations, fans ignored the bit where they have to give money and flooded the comments with demands for reviews without reading that they need to pay first.
  • Chuck seems very exasperated in later reviews when he has to continuously remind viewers how the rating system works by comparing it to episodes of the same series, and not the franchise as a whole.
• All Myths Are True: In his abbreviated history of the Nazi party, the key players in World War II included Slim Pickens, the Red Skull, Forrest Gump and Christian Bale. ("The Killing Game (Part 2)")
  Franklin D. Roosevelt: The only thing we have to fear is Batman.
• All of Them: The Annoying Character award for "The Begotten" went to everyone involved in the childbirth B-Plot. Everyone.
  • Ditto for "Ménage à Troi", featuring an event horizon of Wesley Crusher, Lwaxana Troi, and multiple Ferengi. End episode caption: "I give up." Strangely enough, Wesley's actions during that episode were among the redeeming points, leaving Lwaxana and the Ferengi to be truly annoying.
  • Nobody in "Profit and Lace" got out alive. Even Bashir, who directed the damn thing.
  • At the end of the Deep Space 9 episode "Let He Who Is Without Sin...", Chuck declares, "The annoying character goes to every single person we see this entire episode. Nobody is without excuse, no one escapes with their dignity intact." The Annoying Character caption: "Let he who is in this episode kiss my ass."
• All There in the Manual: He's really not a fan:
  • When it turned out he was a teacher, this makes even more sense; teachers can't in good faith give students credit for things not actually in their report.
  • Also shows up when he discusses the infamous reams of supplemental material for the film Sunshine.
  • He has referenced the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine tech manual however.
  • In his review of Star Trek (2009), though, he references all the backstory materials for Captain Nero and laments that if any of that had made it into the movie proper, Nero would have gone from "random bald emo Romulan" to "possibly the strongest villain the franchise has ever seen since Khan."
    "You don't get credit for stuff you don't put in the movie because, now try to follow this because it's a pretty big leap, you didn't put it in the movie. I shouldn't have to wait months and watch all your deleted scenes to say 'Oh, this finally makes sense!' or pore through some non-canon books to say 'Oh, so this isn't a pile of nonsensical horseshit after all!'"
• Always Wanted to Say That: Now it's time for...YAR'S REVENGE! ("Code of Honor")
  "I have waited a quarter of a century for that joke to come naturally, and it was so worth it."
  • When the VOY crew undergoes hypersleep in "One", Harry chimes to Tom to come to bed. Harry then squees that he's been practicing that line for ages before the cryo-pod slams shut on him.
• Ambiguous Syntax: When discussing Iggy Pop's guest appearance as Yelgrun in the Deep Space 9 episode "The Magnificent Ferengi":
  "Iggy Pop was not inexperienced in acting before this. His IMDb page lists all of his numerous previous roles, such as 'Prospective Guest', 'Skinny Player on Road', and—coming off of his most recent success—'Man Eating Bird Leg!' (No hyphen, so I assume he is a man eating a bird leg, but I cannot rule out that he was a bird leg that STALKED AND KILLED HUMANS.)"
• Anachronism Stew: Sometimes some of the "Conversations" between characters can come off as this, thanks to the screenshots being taken at different times. For example, in his review of "The Siege of AR-558," there is a fake conversation between Ben Sisko and a TNG-era redshirt. Why is this strange? Well, the redshirt has the uniform used in most of The Next Generation (primarily one color with black shoulders), while Sisko is wearing the grey uniforms used in later parts of DS9 and the TNG movies. While we could get this in Star Trek itself (Voyager being a prime example- due to being in the Delta Quadrant, they continued to use the black-uniforms-with-colored-shoulders that had been long abandoned by the rest of Starfleet in favor of the aforementioned grey ones), it didn't happen often.
• And Starring: Used the "And Introducing" variety (probably deliberately) in the YouTube teaser for his upcoming Doctor Who "Lost In Time: Found!" videos.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: A theory put forth in his review of the Star Wars: The Old Republic storyline is that it's possible that Cipher Twelve, whose memory Eckhard Lokin toasts every year, is in fact Lokin himself. He wanted out of the game, but still keeps his skills from those days sharp—just in case. It would certainly explain how a simple Fixer, who are supposed to just scientists, techs, and the like, would have dozens of safe houses across the galaxy—and why he seems to embody the real-world US Army Field Manual's ideal traits of an interrogator: self-motivated, alert, patient, self-controlled, has initiative, and an aura of professionalism.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: The prospect of bad things happening to Neelix makes Chuck very happy. In " Phage" his reaction to Neelix being incompatible for a transplant is that he's so heartbroken he can barely continue dancing.
• Angst? What Angst?: In-universe, wonders why in "Waltz" Dukat barely reacts to the hallucination of Damar showing up, considering that Damar both killed his daughter and is responsible for driving Dukat so insane, he's the reason why he's hallucinating?!
  • In his review of "The End of Time", notes that after the Doctor declared himself "The Timelord Victorious" and briefly turning into a terrifying reflection of Master... Chuck is completely perplexed how the next time we see him, he's joking about locking the TARDIS like a car and looks like he's just been to a luau. It's clear that the Doctor's been dossing about for a while (the episode itself clarifies that it's been many decades), but he seems to have completely forgotten about the event.
    • He gives the episode props later when in a conversation with Wilf, the Doctor tearfully alludes to what happened in "The Waters of Mars", admitting that when he traveled alone for a while, he tried to save everyone, but "it all went wrong".
• Anti-Humor: Chuck at one point of his Dragon Age: Origins playthrough/review threatens a character with having Sten tell jokes at him. His demonstration of what this would be like most definitely qualifies as anti-humor:
  Chuck (as Sten): (completely deadpan) A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?" The horse says nothing. Horses cannot speak. The bartender is a fool. Remember to tip your waitress.
• Anything but That!: Part 2 of the VOY premiere. "Now, where were we?"
  [cue banjo-playing hoedown]
  "No, no, no! It's wasn't that painful!"
  [cut to Harry shrieking as a spike impales his chest]
  "Ahhh, much better. Like the crash of waves and the call of seagulls..."
  • In "Love & Monsters", Victor Kennedy's evil plan is either to take over the world, or even worse, continuing the episode.
• April Fools' Day: On April Fools Day, of 2016, he posts a video claiming to be a review of three episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. He even spends the first minute or so of the video insisting that these are genuine reviews. They are.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Points out that Superman has no problem with the idea that he can travel faster-than-light using only his mind and that his vast array of powers will protect him as he crosses the vastness of space, carrying the shrunken bottled City of Kandor in tow; but considers the notion that he's biologically compatible enough with Lois Lane to conceive children, as the height of madness itself!
• Armchair Military: Chuck is unashamed to remind viewers that, despite his in-depth analysis of military operations and geopolitics, he has no military training or experience.
  ["Chain of Command" review] Now, I don't have any military experience, but I do own a Russian military ushanka hat that I found in a thrift store.
  ["Siege of AR-558" review] The closest thing I have to tactical training is beating Mass Effect 2 on Insanity.
• Armour-Piercing Question: From Hogan in "Alliances", painting him as one of the few sane people on Voyager.
  Hogan: Is holding onto our technology really worth dying for?
• Aroused by Their Voice:
  • This, despite summing his show up as "a guy with bad sinus congestion" complaining for thirty minutes at a time. He recorded this in "The Begotten", perhaps inspired by the following recap ("Profit and Lace") where he mentions the emails he's received from gay men complimenting his "sexy" voice.
  • And on the receiving end, in the review of the Farscape pilot episode he described Claudia Black as "a hottie with a voice that can cause a man's fly to open by itself".
  • Also, in the review of "His Way", he said that Sisko's singing voice once caused a pair of panties to spontaneously combust.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Captain Kirk being demoted for stealing Enterprise from drydock, along with Federation President Terry Pratchett's hat. (IV)
  • From the "Death Wish" review, Q orates about Quinn's achievements. Specifically: advancing science and mathematics, preventing the conquest of worlds by the Borg, and... Woodstock.
  • And after the long rant about evolution in "Threshold", he finishes it with:
    ("What the hell kind of name is Brannon anyway? Sounds like a high-fiber yogurt.")
  • He goes one further to say that the sequence could have been better if the Woodstock incident coincided with Quinn fixing the same microphone glitch at the Lincoln Memorial right before Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream!" speech.
• Artistic License – Geography: Brought up in his review of The Thing (1982), where he notes that base camps in the film are in Antarctica and with how far inland they're supposed to be, we shouldn't have transitions from day to night like in the rest of the world.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Brought up in his review of "Sleeping Dogs". Hoshi breaks just about every single rule about gun safety when she points a deadly weapon at Reed's chest while handing it back to him. Chuck snarks that "gun safety is tomorrow's lesson!"
  • Brought up in force for "Empok Nor", when a Starfleet officer has her phaser rifle pointed at a colleague and tells him, out loud, that the safety's on. He brings up how the NRA and the flipping gun industry itself list these as definite "no-no's."
  • "Past Tense" introduced a new award category: "Unsafety First", for when characters dangerously handle their firearms. In that case, it was an officer using a loaded firearm to wake up a homeless man.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: Atlantis: The Lost Empire and VOY's "Hope and Fear" feature this retort from Chuck when they take liberties on language.
  Morbo: LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!
• Artistic License – Religion: Brought up in his review of "Fair Haven." One of the Oireland characters tells the Doctor (who's playing a priest) that "[he's] broken the Fifth Commandment again!" The Doctor replies "Say ten 'Our Fathers' and call me in the morning." From the Irish setting, the Doctor's outfit, and the usage of "Our Father," the Doctor is playing a Catholic, and the Catholic Fifth Commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Kill."
  • He even has a pic of Pope Benedict XVI doing a face palm.
• As Himself: In his review of the finale of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Chuck states a belief that the nameless, powerless Spider-Man, an actor from "the real world" who plays Spider-Man and still had Spider-Man's voice, was actually supposed to be Spider-Man's voice actor himself, Christopher Daniel Barnes.
• Assimilation Backfire: In the review of "Unimatrix Zero", the Borg Queen begins to blow up her own ships, in an insanely ineffective way to stop Janeway. Chuck is of the opinion that Janeway, who he interprets as a sociopath, is taking over the Borg.
  Borg Queen: Destroying my own people to further my own ends? I have no idea where this thought came from.
  Janeway: Your mistake was assimilating ME!
• Atrocious Alias: He reflects on this in "Trials and Tribble-ations", given that Arne Darvin apparently chose the name "Barry Waddle" to live under for decades.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In order to set the plot of "The Killing Game" in motion, Voyager first had to cover the whole ship in the Doctor's emitters, given the holodeck control over living people, deliberately turned off all the safeties, and then blown a hole in the side of it. Chuck muses they're lucky that a 50-foot tall Seska isn't stomping around the ship.
• Author Appeal: The man likes his Terry Pratchett, Loreena McKennitt and AC/DC.
• Author Catchphrase: He has a very distinctive way of saying "No no no no" and "Fucking. Stupid.", among others.
  • "I'm just a viewer with an opinion."
  • "...y'know, For Science!!"
  • He (somewhat derisively) refers to the aggressive values-exporting of Trek's heroes as "Spreading the Starfleet Gospel." On two occasions, namely, "Unity" and "Unimatrix Zero", we see Voyager's enemies "Spreading the Borg Gospel." Iden in "Flesh and Blood" tries his hand at "Spreading the Hologram Gospel"—literally this time.
  • When a character does something particularly insipid, Chuck groans and calls them McFly.
  • Initially it was "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the idiocy that is Voyager / Enterprise." This was changed when he started doing reviews of the other three Star Trek TV shows, which he considers far better than Voyager or Enterprise. He also adds in the updated review of "The 37's" that the original catchphrase made it sound like the purpose of his reviews was Complaining About Shows Chuck Doesn't Like, rather than a balanced (albeit humorous) analysis of its strengths and flaws.
  • "KOMEDY!", in response to limp VOY "jokes."
  • His earlier reviews heavily used "Too good for 'em, I say!" (when something bad happens to the crews of Voyager or Enterprise) but he hasn't used this for a while.
  • "[Character]...is dead". Started out in his Mass Effect review, but has carried over to others.
  • He has a tendency to end reviews of particularly stupid episodes with "let's just get out of here."
  • "Calibrate the Blah blah of the bullshit bullshit!", when summarizing Trek technobabble.
    • Now replaced by "tech tech."
  • Phrase Catcher: The character of Harry Kim spawned a few.
    • "Poor, dumb Harry" (which he's accidentally applied to other characters when they do something dumb)
    • "(insert sexual longing or fantasy implied to be Tom Paris here)... for Libby! Because dammit, there's nothing gay about this!"
  • Another phrase has appeared a few times so far, where Chuck presents two options to why a stupid scene might've been written that way, but then concedes that in fact all options might be correct simultaneously. It generally goes like this:
    Chuck: I'm having a hard time deciding if the writer's a hack, or if Cutler's just a moron. But I suppose... it could be both. ("Dear Doctor", ENT)
  • He's had to remind viewers how the rating system works often enough for that to probably count too.
    Chuck: Final score for [x] is, and bear in mind that this score is relative to the series, not some nebulous measure of good is...
• Author Filibuster: Multi-part video reviews are usually reserved for the films and for the series' worst episodes^note (although they are also used for multi-part episodes, or when he's doing long arcs), like "A Night In Sickbay", "Code of Honor", and the infamous "Fair Haven" (and of course, multi-part episodes). For more colorful examples, see "'The Reason You Suck' Speech".
  • Certain characters voted "most annoying" also get filibusters against them, such as Okona, Lwaxana Troi and Lutan.
  • In several reviews he launches into lengthy speeches about concepts which annoy him, such as upholding the Prime Directive even when it leads to certain death of an entire intelligent species, Star Trek's tendency towards Planet of Hats and presenting a simplistic "technology is bad" view. An instance of the first in "Dear Doctor" led to an entire separate written essay about the subject in that episode.
• Author Tract: The Opinionated Guide takes a more libertarian stance toward Trek then most other reviews, often placing the franchise in the position of too extreme on both ends.
  • TNG and ENT get hit the hardest, the former being overrun with glib, touchy-feely 80's nonsense (dolphins in the navigation room!), and the latter making Jack Bauer look like Andy Griffith. It comes as no surprise, then, that Kirk and Sisko are his personal sweet spots.
    Kirk: Why don't you go back and make a nice, lacy card to thank Soran for the gentle anal sex he gave you? You look like a scrapbooker, am I right?
    Picard: [shrinking in his presence] Of... of course not!
  • He took aim at DS9's "Bar Association", an episode which is slanted heavily on the side of a labor unions and collective bargaining. Chuck's quibble is not with Rom organizing a strike as such (although he doesn't approve of it, either), but rather the strawmanning of Quark and the enforcers who are brought in to end the strike.
  • VOY is too harebrained to take seriously as a political or social work — Though Chuck finds the creepy, Stepford-like conformity of the crew troubling ("Future's End", "The Good Shephard").
• Avengers Assemble: In the case of really serious threats, Sisko calls forth "League of Starship Captains." ("The Visitor", "Unimatrix Zero", "In a Mirror, Darkly") Oddly enough, Janeway (depraved as ever) still has the highest success rate out of anyone sitting at the table.
  • In the Mirror Universe, Janeway is shown wearing a beard and serving up pot brownies, having been downgraded to a flower child. Archer has taken Sisko's place at the head of the table, and Grand Marshal Troi is running the entire Federation.
  • In "The Visitor", Shatner loses patience with Chris Pine's Kirk and decks him.
  • In "Shattered", Chuck announces, "TIME AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!" during the fourth-dimensional battle between Seska and VOY crewmen of past, present and future (while poking fun at Neelix for conveniently not appearing in the segment of the episode—in fact, he's the only main character who can appear^note (The Doctor not having his mobile emitter yet, Jennifer Lien having left the series, and Tuvok having temporarily died) but doesn't).
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Qalta Blade from Farscape, which can be fired as a gun, but requires holding the blade to steady it. Chuck theorizes that the reason D'argo wears gloves all the time is to prevent the recoil from severing his fingers.
• Awesome Yet Practical: Believes the TR-116 Rifle, a futuristic sniper rifle that uses transporters to beam a projectile through solid walls, with a visor that can see through them, was abandoned by the Federation simply because it worked.
• Awesome McCoolname: Bruce Maddox. Chuck laments that such an awesome name is wasted on a douchebag like him who doesn't deserve it.
• Awesomeness Is Volatile: Assumes this about Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
  "Ceti Alpha VI just blew up one day. I really have no idea how that just happened. Best guess, Khan took his shirt off, and his genetically enhanced Latin body was just too much for it to take."
  • When Sisko, Spock and Kirk are on the screen at the same time, his computer shut down for *ahem* ...personal, reasons...
    "My computer — Ruby — shutdown, and I noticed a wet spot under her processor."
• Awful Truth: Lampshaded in his description of Kyubey's reveal in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In-universe, it's an intentionally brutal exposition by the antagonist, so of course he describes it as a "truth enema". The result is, in his words, "not very pretty" .

B

• Backhanded Compliment:
  • In "Minefield", he congratulated Berman & Braga for an sprouting an entire cottage industry based around plugging up their plot holes. (The expanded universe novels.)
  • Combined with Bait-and-Switch in the "Endgame" review. Chuck salutes that B & B on proving him wrong about Voyager's short teasers being their most effective ones. The episode proves to him that they just as liable of falling completely flat.
• The Backwards Я: In "The Naked Now", after Wesley states he doesn't understand.
  Chuck: Spaz! S-P-A-3!
  • At the start of Star Trek: Nemesis, Chuck sees the stylized backwards "r" in the title, and says he must have gotten a bootlegged copy with Russian subtitles by mistake.
• Backstory of the Day: Spoofing Chakotay having differing interests.
  Chuck: Because this week, Chakotay has always been into... (dice roll) ANTHROPOLOGY!
• Bad "Bad Acting": Notes that everyone in "Encounter At Farpoint" has shades of this. Though it's possible they were simply trying to find their feet, he suspects it also had something to do with the direction given by Corey "He Controls The Sky!" Allen.
• Badass Boast: Janeway's parting shot at the Borg ("Unimatrix Zero").
  "Because you may be bigger, smarter, stronger, faster, but you will never! Ever! Be crazier.... Than meeeeeeeeeee."
• Badass Decay: One of the major problems he has in-universe with "Q and the Grey", and to a slightly lesser extent "Q2", is how the Q were subjected to this.
  • He also examined this phenomena with the treatment of the Borg between TNG and Voyager.
  • Likewise, in order to maintain continuity in "Regeneration", the Borg's standard hail is drastically shortened as not to identify themselves.
    Chuck: Everything the Borg do is supposed to be because it's logical. They say what they say so that you realise that resistance really is futile, because "We are the Borg. We don't lose". By not identifying themselves, by just giving the play-by-play, it's pointless. Archer is not filled with dread or fear, he's confused!
  • In "Unimatrix Zero Part 1", points out how ludicrous it is that Voyager can stand up to a Class 4 Tactical Cube, a more powerful vessel than those deployed to assimilate the entire Federation (twice) and responsible for annihilating an entire armada at Wolf 359.
    Chuck: Now this ship is the one that Borg employs when they decided that "this shit just got real!" This is the ship that the Borg send when they are deadly serious about fighting!
    Janeway: Meet me in engineering, we're going to find a way in!
    Chuck: Oh, for god's sakes!
• Bait-and-Switch: Occurs here and there, and in many forms. (see also the next two tropes)
  • In the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home review:
    Chuck: The year is 1986, and Leonard Nimoy will be bringing a much-known character — or rather, a re-born version of that character — back into the light in a popular science-fiction franchise, while attempting to deal with his over-weight and egotistical co-star.
    Galvatron: I will rip open Ultra Magnus and every other Autobot until the Matrix has been destroyed!
    Chuck But lets spend some time talking about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • In the review for "Where No One Has Gone Before" (TNG):
    Chuck: Troi provides us with her usual insight.
    Troi: [speaking about Kosinski] Also, he's arrogant, overbearing, self-important, and very sure of himself and his ability.
    Chuck: Yeah, we know about Riker, what about Kosinski?" [ba-dum-ching]
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: He has one complaint about Picard confronting Sarek, which is that it makes him want to see them have more scenes together.
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: From the review for "Counterpoint", between Janeway and Inspector Kashyk:
  Chuck: One is a jackbooted oppressor sowing fear and hopelessness everywhere... and the other's an inspector. Thank you joke formula number 97!
  • Mentioning that Barclay become smarter in "The Nth Degree" mirrors the plot of a certain science fiction work... a Japanese TV show:
    Chuck: As seen on the Spectreman two-parter, "Billy Don't Be A Monster" and "Genius Monster Norman", I swear I'm not making this up.
• Bemoaning the New Body: During Chuck's review of The Thing, he jokingly poses a scenario in which the two Things that have assimilated Norris and Palmer have a friendly chat about how stressful the situation's got, during which Norris-Thing grumbles over having the rotten luck to accurately shapeshift into a man with a heart condition, and remarks "I'm just gonna have the fucking heart attack and get it over with."
• Berserk Button:
  • He hates television surprise parties.
  • Lax gun safety drives him up the wall.
  • The broken radio gag occurs frequently enough that he became sick of it by the time of "Damage" (ENT).
  • Has no love for hippies or, for that matter, anyone who preaches against capitalistic society. This is less of a berserk button than a general dislike.
  • He REALLY hates Pulaski, due to her smug condescending nature and callous treatment towards Data.
  • Out of the Star Trek universe, he reserves special hatred for early TNG writer Maurice Hurley, whom he considers not only the worst writer^note (Or at least the worst long-term writer, since the third season of TOS and the first two seasons of TNG had a lot of writers who showed up, churned out one really awful script, and then were never heard from again) ever to have worked on Trek, but a loathsome human being as well^note (Due to the misogynistic overtones in several of his scripts, plus his alleged conduct toward Gates McFadden). Although plenty of other writers have drawn his ire over the years (Rick Berman and Kenneth Biller for their generally very poor track records, Brannon Braga for his science abuse, Jeri Taylor for her Janeway worship, and even Gene Roddenberry himself for a number of reasons), he says that Hurley is the only one he truly detests.
  • He admits to really hating the character of Lwaxana Troi, who in his opinion is nothing more than an insufferable, egotistical bully, who treats everyone around her like garbage, thinks the entire universe centres around her and who never knows when to shut the hell up.
  • Being a family man, his anger is prevalent in the VOY episode "Real Life" during the clumsy use of a dying child as a plot device, as he himself lived through the pain of not knowing whether his prematurely-born twin sons would survive the night or not. (They did, but the possibility that they might not left a profound effect on him).
  • Likewise, he has a low tolerance for 'zany' scenes of childbirth.
  • He tends to reserve some of his most animated hatred for Luddites. Not because he disagrees with the concept, but because they're often portrayed as being one of two extremes: either they're perfect and the viewer is supposed to agree with them, or they're evil. In either case, he's quick to note they're hypocrites because they define "technology" arbitrarily, and such episodes tend to downplay the obvious societal problems they would suffer for their rejection of it. Alixus, from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Paradise", earns a particularly angry rant for being an utterly reprehensible human being, torturing, procuring, killing and allowing her people to die from diseases in order to keep her power going, justifying her villainy thanks to the complete corruption of the Good Old Ways aesops. Basically, we got a community getting its collective face booted by a despot over a flawed ideology, making any reason to keep getting along with the tyranny and not trampling Alixus' power and face moot the second they knew she manipulated them. But instead, they thank her... His fanfic The Unity Saga was published long before he reviewed the episode, making it quite fun to revisit his portrayal of her in it.
    • The Bak'u from Star Trek Insurrection are an example at the opposite end of the scale. They appear to live in bucolic splendour, but as Chuck points out, it's simply ridiculous that they can live like that, given that their crops would need constant attention and irrigation, the metal objects they have had to have come from somewhere, etc. As he points out, when humans actually did live like that, their lives were an endless chore from sunrise to sunset, children were put to work as soon as they were old enough to hold a tool, people died young from disease and overwork and so on. The Bak'u society is literally impossible. Throw in an arbitrary definition of what constitutes "technology" (What do you think the iron smelting forge and the irrigation system are?") and you've just got a really irritating preachy example of a strawman.
  • Treating the audience like idiots, contrived coincidences, and people being "experts" but not acting like it also seem to fall under this, especially if they're all in play at the same time as his absolutely vitriolic review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park shows.
  • The treatment of the Prime Directive during the TNG era has driven him to rant angrily about the difference between the Prime Directive as an enlightened philosophy and the Prime Directive as an amoral religious dogma. Needless to say, he utterly loathes the latter, describing it as utterly cowardly and that anybody who adheres to it so dogmatically has no business even being an explorer. See his review of The Masterpiece Society for a prime example of such a rant.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Thinks that it'd have been hilarious if Worf went back to the smooth forehead of the TOS Klingons once in the past, only to have ridges again in the Deep Space Nine future, and have no-one comment on it at all.
  • His "Ashes to Ashes" review has him take a mental break from recalling "Innocence" by... watching a puppet show about a turtle.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In keeping with the theme in "Darmok" of overcoming language barriers, the opening credits appropriately is the original German version of "99 Luftballons".
  • In making a point about the phrase "Alter Ego," a Latin phrase using English words, Chuck shows a picture of a box that says "Hat Gift." To an English-speaker, this is innocuous enough, but to a German-speaker, it means the box contains poison.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Often makes fun of this when it gets really out of hand. Of note is "Elogium", in which he spends a lot of time pointing out how ridiculous, contrived, and utterly contradictory to basic survival Ocampan reproduction is, and that by all rights, the entire species should have gone extinct a long time ago.
  • The biggest is that, at maximum possible birthrate, seeing how they only have one child in their entire life, their numbers would halve every generation. Combined with the fact that they give birth standing up (to a child gestated on their back), achieve sexual maturity in less then a year, are excessively difficult to impregnate in the first place, and look youthful until the last few months before their death, Chuck thinks it's more likely that the Ocampa were created as sex slaves or toys by some evil race (which he mentions in Before & After).
  • The Kobali in "Ashes to Ashes" reproduce by taking the corpses of other species, altering their DNA and bringing them Back from the Dead. While this is even less plausibly a naturally-evolved form of reproduction than the Ocampa way, Chuck notes that it does represent a great solution to a Zombie Apocalypse.
    Chuck: Let's see how you like it!
  • The aliens encountered in Unexpected are even odder. They reproduce by having the male and female put their hands in pebbles which lets them read each others thoughts, the males grow nipples to feed the child (despite the females having breasts), and the child only has DNA from the mother. It's like Berman and Braga deliberately set out to make the most implausible and unrealistic species possible.
  • The aliens from "Macrocosm" who have a ridge running from the forehead, down their nose that then separated from their face over their mouth before reconnecting back to their chin; meaning that evolution gave them something that actually hinders the simple act of eating. As Chuck points out, the only way this species exists is "to prove God likes fucking with Atheists."
  • In "Workforce", Janeway's love interest is a man(?) apparently from a species without fathers. Since Chuck knows that there is no way that the Trek people would put Janeway into a relationship with a genderless, hermaphroditic or (*gasp*) lesbian entity of any species, we are left wondering why a species that does not require males to reproduce has males at all!
• Bizarro Universe: Suggests this is the reason Wonder Woman is able to do everything she does and gets the full backing of law enforcement.
• Black-and-White Morality: While this comes up a lot, he notes that the Voyager episode "Nothing Human" stands out as actually reversing this. The major conflict in the episode revolves around whether to use the medical knowledge gathered by Cardassian doctor Crell Moset, who was supposedly inspired by Nazi Doctor Mengele. However, Crell's actions are, while still horrible, not nearly as bad as those of the real Mengele, and Crell's experiments actually produced useful scientific data, as opposed to Mengele, who simply tortured for the sake of morbid curiosity. This, as Chuck points out, actually takes a black and white situation and gives it varying, perfectly defensible viewpoints.
  • Another example of this sort of subversion comes from "Tsunkatse," where the crew have perfectly frank discussions about boxing without the episode leaning one way or the other in someone's favor, listing how some people are for it and others are against it.
  • For episode "The High Ground" on The Next Generation Chuck notes that it is generally disliked by the writers yet audiences overall have a positive opinion on it. The writers considered it "a message show without a message" in that it tackles a complex important issue, in this case violent terrorist rebellion against a regime which refuses to respond to any attempts in peaceful negotiations, but it doesn't give a clear opinion about the subject. Chuck considers this lack of final message a strength since it results in portraying the issue with realistic complexity where neither side is clearly in the wrong or in the right.
  • However, it's usually played straight in Trek, which he complains about- they tend to take an issue that is very complex in the present (the death penalty, for example), and make it so utterly one-sided that you feel foolish for having sided against them.
• Black Dude Dies First: Discussed and turned into a running gag in the review of Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Where Silence Has Lease".
  "...And naturally there'd be no shortage of volunteers [From red-shirted black men for bridge positions]. People who've seen Science Fiction know the black dude dies first. And people who've seen the original series know the guy who beams down in a red shirt dies. So, black dude plus red shirt equals get a bridge job as fast as you can and hope an alien doesn't show up on the view screen looking to kill people for no reason."
  • Later on he does the voices of the various cast members to summarize the scene:
    Nagilum: Now would be a good time to learn about death by killing one of you.
    Riker: Oh, no!
    Picard: Oh, no!
    Troi: Oh, no!
    Data: Oh, no!
    Black Red Shirt: MOTHER FUCKER! (dies)
    Picard: Send another red-shirted black fellow to the bridge!
    Geordi: (leaves in a hurry)
  • Lampshaded in "The End of the World", where the blue guy died first.
  • Inverted in "Skin of Evil", where Chuck spends quite a bit of time pointing out that despite the episode containing a black Red Shirt, who is send out alone in a shuttle numbered 13 to boot, it's the attractive white blonde female main cast member who dies!
• Black Hole Sue: Often points out that most of Jeri Taylor's episodes are dedicated to how amazing and infallible Captain Janeway is, and how much everyone loves her.
  "Oh come on, it's a Jeri Taylor script. You know that even in an episode where Janeway's been going nuts, she's gonna have the strongest will there is, don't be silly."
• Blah, Blah, Blah: Invoked in TNG's "Disaster" when Troi is in charge of the bridge. Chuck puts this over O'Brien's and Ro's dialogues to indicate Troi's inability to understand their technobabble.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Deliberately invokes this for humor in "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" review by running the lyrics of La donna è mobile through Babylon online translation. The rice is false, indeed.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Discussed in length how a machine would have a very different morality to a human.
• Brain Bleach: Kate Mulgrew fanservice has Chuck reaching for the ammonia. ("Damn my eyes!") A well-wishing fan emailed him some nude Janeway photoshops just to see his reaction.
  • Neelix can do "some wonderful things with vegetables!" ("Do not want.")
  • Post-op transsexual Quark. Half of the audience has now reenacted Oedipus the King, but for those still with us, let's move on... ("Profit and Lace")
    "YOU ARE A NIGHTMARE MADE FLESH!"
  • Oswald Dane's final moments caused him great distress as a father. (Miracle Day) He pledged not to return until he'd hot showered himself to a lobster-red hue.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: In "Maneuvers", wonders what was the point of Seska torturing Chakotay for information to plan the Kazon's next snatch and grab of Federation technology, when they could simply rip the transporters and replicators from the shuttle that Chakotay was captured in, which they already have?
  Chuck: And of course you don't, because you're just as stupid as the rest of them!
  • Henry Starling in "Future's End", who repeatedly does unnecessarily villainous acts, despite them being detrimental to his overall plan. Such as hacking the Doctor enough to make him feel pain so he can torture him, when he could have simply made him compliant, allowing him to make a fortune from his knowledge of future medicine. And why killing Rain to silence her actually would make her information leak be taken more seriously!
    Chuck: You know, for a man who became master of a technological empire... you're an idiot!
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • In Godzilla 1985, Godzilla destroys Super-X and thus the heroes have few options left.
    "We have Steve Martin at the Pentagon, we have bird calls...we have Steve Martin making bird calls..."
  • In The Twilight Zone (1959) review, we have monsters who might be aliens, commies or alien commies.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Human Error":
  "You might be saying, 'Y'know, you may pretend you're fair, Chuck, but how come you'll bend over backwards trying to justify that stupid "Darmok" shish-koom-bah language, but you never turn out that kind of thinking to defend VOY. Why is that, and why is there blood on your clothes?'"
  • The Blacksmith from "Thine Own Self" earns the Most Annoying Character award for his horrible business practices of changing prices after something's been sold and stabbing customers through the torso.
• Brick Joke: His signature technique. Almost happens often enough to be Once an Episode. Early on, he'll make an offhand joke or aside about some minor story element, and later on he'll make another joke that ties into it.
  • The best example of this probably occurred in his "In Purgatory's Shadow" review where he stumbles over an Added Alliterative Appeal, only to have the following review of "In Inferno's Light" feature an insanely long alliterative discourse detailing the backstory of the events up to this point.
  • Yet another great one: In his redone review of "Caretaker", he makes a throw away joke at the fact that Janeway supposedly had plans on Earth while picking up Tom Paris which included "screwing with the replicators" and "installing [a] computer virus". Cut to Part 2 of his review of Star Trek: Nemesis 3 weeks later(!) where Picard is contacted by Janeway. Chuck proceeds to parody the scene by having Janeway explain that the events in the movie were all a part of her plan to take over the galaxy. Among the steps of her plan are to screw with the replicators on the Enterprise-E so that Picard's Earl Grey would be drugged, and creating a program that would make it so that whenever Picard was up for promotion, it would get rerouted to Janeway's file.
  • Points out that Blade Runner operates in the realm of, as the French say, mise-en-scène. Likewise, Deckard's rathole apartment speaks of a man who is, as the French say, "no-geev-è-crap."
  • The League of Captains and the Mindbomb during the Dominion war arc.
  • Also from the Dominion War arc, Sisko manages to curry the support of Starfleet admirals in by invoking the name of Randolph Scott. And at the end of Sacrifice of Angels, the end theme of Blazing Saddles plays over the crew's return to the station.
  • The "Turnip of Mass Destruction" in the Insurrection review.
  • Calls back to "Unimatrix Zero" in his review of "Ensign Ro" where Picard can't get involved in helping the Bajoran rebellion. Janeway pops up and claims that they should have called it a resistance.
  • Jokes in "Dark Frontier" that Dr. Phlox's notes on the Borg are incomplete due to having been gunned down by Breen assassins, referring to his theory that the Valakians from "Dear Doctor" eventually evolved into them and were not happy when they discovered that Phlox and Archer conspired to keep the cure for their plague from them, dooming their race to extinction.
  • The perfume scene from "Angel One" is met with cries of "Oh, for the love of God! Five, there are five lights! Five!", calling back to the torture scene from "Chain of Command".
  • In the review of the Doctor Who episode "Inferno", the Doctor starts singing "The Woman is Furniture" (see "Blind Idiot" Translation, above).
  • In the review of The Matrix, Chuck off-handedly mentions that he is currently drunk. A week later, we learn why: he was playing the Game Of Thrones drinking game, and he mixes up his notes regarding philosophy.
  • During the review of "In the Pale Moonlight", Chuck makes a complicated metaphor about how deep Sisko gets himself in that episode, comparing it to showing up hungover at a funeral, and singing "Old MacDonald" to the tune of "Amazing Grace". Flash-forward to the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan review, and Chuck mentions Scotty playing Spock of to the traditional funeral fare, "Old MacDonald".
  • In the review for "Up the Long Ladder" when it is mentioned that a solar flare threatens to destroy the colony, Chuck talks about the last time a solar flare hit Earth... which was a month ago. At the end of the review his video suddenly cuts off and then shows disaster footage. Guess another solar flare hit.
  • Near the beginning of the review for "Bliss" (VOY), Chuck ponders if Naomi Wildman is being deliberately mis-educated (due to an off-hand and mind-bogglingly-stupid remark from Paris about deuterium), and is taught among other things that dolphins are not fish, but apples. Later on in the same review, Naomi uses the phrase "The dolphin never falls far from the tree".
  • In the review for Farscape's "Crackers Don't Matter", Chuck says that the only way the day could get worse for Crichton is if T'raltixx's cloaking device was powered by punching Crichton in the dick. When Chiana actually punches Crichton in the dick later in the episode, breaking Crichton's resistance to T'raltixx's paranoia-inducing light, Chuck remarks that that was not what he meant.
  • In the review for Justice League Unlimited's "The Doomsday Sanction", Chuck makes fun of the use of the euphemism "delivering the package" for firing a nuke by showing a clip of a mailman delivering a package to a woman. Chuck then quips that it took forever to find a usable mail man clip that wasn't from gay porn. At the end of the review, Chuck shows another scene from the mail man clip that makes it clear that it is from porn.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Invoked in his introduction of Scorpius in one of his Farscape reviews.
  "As you can imagine, such a being is either going to be a half-mad animal, or the most disciplined and calculating mind in the Uncharted Territories, on a first-name basis with pain, and the will to travel from A to B in a straight line, no matter how many unfortunate people might be standing in that path. And guess what, Crichton? You now have his undivided attention. Under the circumstances, bladder release is permissible and, indeed, encouraged."
• Broke the Rating Scale: He uses a one-to-ten rating scale, and has deliberately chosen to only reward a score of zero to one episode per series: "Threshold" for Voyager, "A Night in Sickbay" for Enterprise, "Code of Honor" for TNG, "And The Children Shall Lead" for TOS, and "Profit and Lace" for DS9. 0s are supposedly reserved for episodes that make the entire franchise worse by association; indeed, he did not even assign a "0" score to any of the movies, instead giving two "1" scores (though he admitted he was strongly tempted to give a "0" to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and would probably have done so if not for the flashback involving McCoy's father). On the other hand we have the TNG episode "Family" which no score was given on account of being too different from the series as a whole (the episode wasn't bad, just not Star Trek-y).
  • Due to time travel shenanigans and deaths of VOY's crew spanning across 15 years, "Timeless" should have cleaned up at the Lazarus of the Week, Unsafe at Any Speed, You CAN Go Home Again and Burn, Baby Burn awards. But Chuck came down with a severe Timey Wimey allergy and skipped straight to credits. The same thing happened in "Children of Time".
    (I have no idea if any of this actually happened, so let's call it a draw.)
  • After noting that during his review of Voyager's "Unimatrix Zero" the real Captain Janeway and his cartoonish parody of her were both acting in more or less the same manner, for "Latent Image" he came up with "My Way or Janeway" - he measures how his own Parody!Janeway would handle each scene, then sees how the real Janeway measures up. He gives up within four minutes after the real Captain's actions^note hunting down and deleting all the Doctor's memories of a patient who died under his watch, while also outright stating at one point that she considers him no more human than the replicator that she uses to make her coffee each morning are more extreme than her parody's^note simply claiming the patient was already dead when she arrived in sickbay and deleting one recording that suggested otherwise.
  • He has so far refused to assign a score to two Voyager episodes:
    • Mortal Coil didn't receive a rating because Chuck's complete and utter loathing for Neelixinvoked had reached a point where he felt unable to be able to fairly score it, so he basically recused himself from assigning any score (the impression he gives is he probably would have given it a fairly decent score had it been focused on any other character).
    • 11:59 was not scored for the same reason as Family from TNG wasn't scored. He says it's a pretty decent episode, and praised Mulgrew's performance as Shannon O'Donnell because it gave her the chance to play a character that wasn't encumbered by the writer's tendency to not allow Janeway to show any kind of weakness or vulnerability. He also praised how the writing didn't automatically side with Jason Janeway for his obsession with the Good Old Ways, or demonise the people who wanted to build the Millennium Gate as Corrupt Corporate Executive types, but in the end he decided it wasn't "Star-Treky" enough to warrant a fair score.
  • The episode Believers from Babylon 5 also wasn't given a rating^note Instead of a 1-10 scale Chuck rates B5 episodes on their watchability ("recommended", "fine", "avoid", etc) and their importance to the overall story arc (ranging from "unimportant" to "must-see") because it hit too close to home. He both lauded and condemned it for being challenging and a difficult watch.
    What I dislike about this episode so much is... is that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing, that it's challenging me instead of giving me the easy feel-good third way out.
  • The same rating system used for Babylon 5 is also used for Stargate franchise shows, so they're also rated on importance and quality. The episode 38 Minutes from Stargate Atlantis gets an importance rating of "slightly important", and a quality rating of... "Death Star Reactor Port". This was Chuck's way of saying one horrible flaw ruined what would have otherwise been a fairly decent episode.
  • He also refused to assign a rating to the Lower Decks episode "Crisis Point", as he found the central concept so disturbing — Mariner, as a form of "therapy", constructs a holodeck scenario in which she brutally murders all her colleagues — that he just didn't want to think about it any more.
• Broken Aesop: Hope you girls have learned something between "The Way We Weren't" and "In a Mirror, Darkly":
  "You can seize the moment and make whatever dreams you have come true, whether it is flying a fighter starship or crowning yourself the head of an empire! ...So long as you sleep with the right man, first."
  • The Q arc in Voyager where the Q learn the value of freedom and individuality... for all of five minutes.
    Chuck: The whole point of "Death Wish" was that the Q had become stagnant, that Q was being mischievous out of boredom, and ironically became an agent to enforce the Q's status quo, even though he inspired the rebellious antics of Quinn that lead to him being sentenced to eternal imprisonment in unpleasant conditions. Then we had that idiotic Civil War where Q's side of freedom and individuality wins! And the result of this uprising? Is that Q is once again an Agent enforcing the status quo on his rebellious son and prepared to sentence to him to eternal imprisonment in unpleasant conditions!
  • invokedThe Bonding (TNG) gives us an interesting example that may be a form of Writer Revolt. The original draft of the story was about a boy who loses his Starfleet mother in an accident and tries to cope with a hologram copy of her. Gene Rodenberry flatly declared "humans in the 24th century do not grieve! Not even the children!" So it was modified, but the end result was subversive: a boy loses his mother and does his best to not grieve, but it's shown as being emotionally unhealthy and just plain wrong to not feel bad about losing someone and cover it up.
    • Wesley actually clarifies on this when talking about his experience when learning about the death of his father: He was indeed torn up inside but didn't show it to anyone because, "That's how he was expected to act."
  • In "Alliances", jokes that the end speech by Janeway is clearly meant to show us that Federation principles are sacred and should never be ignored, simply because it's easy option, Prime Directive, yadda, yadda, yadda...
    Chuck: Really? I thought the message was "you suck at making friends"...
  • In "Memorial", by repairing the Memorial and allowing it to continue to Mind Rape passers-by for centuries to come, the moral of the story is that the only tragedies that matter are the ones that we experience ourselves!
  • "Tattoo":
    So here's Star Trek's message: "We have a great respect for the cultures of the Native Americans... and we convey that by showing that they were backwards, languageless cavemen until they were touched by mystical white people from outer space." You're welcome.
  • A Broken Green Aesop, which could also double as a Fantastic Aesop, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home:
    Chuck: We get the oddest message here: "Don't bother being eco-friendly, because even if you do, it won't matter because some species being dead will cause aliens to screw [Earth] worse than we ever have."
  • Mentions how, in Star Trek, despite preaching tolerance and how people should be included in all things, how we are free of racism, that for some insane reason keeps also preaching the message that individuals should "Stick with their own kind." ("Faces")
• Buffy Speak: Uses the term "Native American-y" to describe Chakotay's medicine bundle, which includes the requisite bird feathers.
  • Referring to a specific medical device (known in canon as a "cortical monitor") as a "neck thingy".
    "Because by God, nobody comes into Sick bay and leaves without a neck thingy!"
    • And then there's the Forehead Thingy, for situations where a neck thingy just won't do!
  • The medicalticians in Night of the Comet:
    "Quick, bring me the thingy! No, the other thingy! What med school did you go to?"
  • Even the Xenomorph's mouth has a mouth. "THAT'S how mouthy it is!"
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When you're Janeway, it's important to ask all passerby, "Have we offended you in some way?" ("Year of Hell")
  (going down the list) "Did I help the Borg assimilate your people, uh, did Vidians I let escape murder your loved ones... or should I just mark this one down as miscellaneous?"
• But Thou Must!: An occasional complaint leveled at Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  Heskal: Choiiiice is an illusion!
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Harry Kim, of course. Chuck points out he's been killed, tortured, made the Chew Toy of the series and is seemingly horrified of being in an actual relationship. (For comedic emphasis, he showed Harry Kim having a dream about being aggressively smooched by Seven and waking up screaming. Sure, he omitted the part where Kim turns his head and suddenly sees an alien watching them, but everyone else in that episode was having nightmares, so that implies he's still terribly uncomfortable around Seven.) In fact, he's such a Butt-Monkey, that at one point during the review of the Farscape episode "Premiere," that when the main character (John Crichton) has had a (characteristic) run of bad luck, he has to catch himself so that he doesn't say "Poor Dumb Harry," and replaces it with "Crichton."
    • In "Repression" (VOY), Tuvok discovers that he's unknowingly been committing assaults against the ship's crew. He then points a phaser at Harry and Janeway.
      Chuck: This is familiar territory for both of them, though. [...] About 30% of the times that [Harry]'s been shot has been by members of Voyager's crew. In fact, statistically speaking, Harry's due to be shot by a member of the crew any day now!
      [Skip forward just a few scenes: Chakotay walks onto the bridge, pulls out a phaser, and shoots Harry in the chest.]
      Chuck: I knew it! I knew it! He was just way overdue. The only surprise is that he didn't get it in the face or in the junk.
  • According to SF Debris, the various incarnations of the USS Saratoga serve strictly as Starfleet's bitch.
    • In fact, almost any ship named Saratoga in almost any franchise you can name is the fleet bitch!
  • Archer seems to have demoted Hoshi to be the Enterprise's delivery girl for the jobs that the others can't be arsed to do. Moments after launching a Subspace Communications Amplifier, which needed to be checked was working properly so that Enterprise could maintain their link to Earth, he asked Hoshi to find out Reed's favorite food for his birthday, choosing her over any other random crewman, and told her to make it her top priority. It's not as though Hoshi is the damned Communications Officer!
    "Is there a medication for what you're on, Archer?"
  • John Crichton and the crew of Moya have no luck whatsoever, as Chuck explores in the Farscape episode reviews- "Premier" and "Nerve" being the most obvious examples.
    "To say our heroes are cursed would be underselling it- at least curses usually have a chance of being lifted in some way."
• Buxom Beauty Standard:
  • His two-part review of "The Outrageous Okona" is interspersed with (mostly comedic) references to breasts, including a point when he stops the review cold to conduct a "Battle of the Wikis" between Memory Alpha and Wookiepedia as regards the topic of breasts. He revisits it for the Blip reupload in May 2011. In both cases, Wookieepedia is the clear winner. In fact, he gives the Star Wars wiki higher marks the second time around, noting the addition of George Lucas-approved art in which a popular Expanded Universe character bares her breast.
    Chuck: Ball's in your court, CBS!
  • Chuck appears to be a definite breast man, given the approving remarks he has made about Christina Hendricks, Kat Dennings and Suranne Jones in that department, not the mention the Freudian Slippery Slope regarding Donna Noble/Catherine Tate.

C

• Calculator Spelling: In his review of "Blood" from The X-Files, Chuck jokes that the guy is freaked because his calculators spells "BLOOD". Normally it only spells "BOOBIES".
• Calculus Is Arcane Knowledge: Points out a particularly ridiculous employment of this trope in "Shuttlepod One". Apparently the writers think that Trip Tucker, who is the chief engineer in charge of the single most advanced star ship humans have ever had at the time, wouldn't be smart enough (or wouldn't have to be smart enough) to understand basic math problems.
• Call-Back: The Stinger for "Bounty" (ENT) is T'Pol saying to Phlox: "You have the cure. It's unethical for you to withhold it, doctor". This is presented as an obvious Call Back to "Dear Doctor", where Phlox withheld a cure for a plague that annihilated an entire species, and was presented by the writers as having done the right thing.
  • In his Gargoyles Review of; Thrill Of The Hunt, he refers to Inspector Gadget as his nemesis. This is a call back to the Battle Geek Plus' Bidding war for Capcom against other Channel Awesome producers, where Chuck used images of Dr. Claw?
• Captain Obvious: Or rather, "Lieutenant Commander No Shit!"
• Care-Bear Stare: In the review of "Threshold", he latches onto the technobabble phrase 'multi-spectral subspace engine design'. The only way 'multi-spectral' can fit into that phrase is, in chuck's own words, the ship is powered by rainbows, which gives him the mental image of shovelfuls of Care Bears being thrown kicking and screaming into Janeway's blast furnace.
• Catchphrase: Admiral Ross' go-to defense: "I don't have to explain myself to you captain."
  • Everytime Picard gets into a fight, "Argh! Not the face!"
  • Mayweather constantly reminding everyone, "Hey, did you know I've been in space!"
    • As of his reviews of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, "Bunny Cat is a dick!"
• Caustic Critic: Though he is quite happy to point out when the shows he's watching do something right, he still tears bad points of everything, even with episodes he likes.
• Celebrity Resemblance: "Federation President Terry Pratchett" in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: At exactly 18 minutes and 45 seconds into the pilot episode, the French Captain declares;
  Picard: Commander, signal the following in all languages and on all frequencies — "We surrender."
  Chuck: Make of that what you will.
  • Throughout the first series, Picard seems intent to seek out new life... and surrender to it.
  • From "The Killing Game", the Nazis "had large armies, irresistible tanks, superior air power, and the other side... well, is France."
  • In "Out of their Minds", is amused that the crew of Moya are completely aware of this and that it's even lampshaded in the episode, when Crichton asks D'Argo if they've sent their standard "Don't shoot at us, we're pathetic!" transmission and D'Argo replies that it was the first thing they tried.
• Chew Bubblegum: "I'm here to measure soil toxicity and kick ass! And I'm all out of samples!" (ENT: "Regeneration")
• Christmas Every Day: "You Better Watch Out" inflicts this on a criminal as punishment, doomed to take up the role of Santa Claus and deliver presents to everyone on Earth for eternity.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Everyone in the Star Trek: Enterprise depiction of the Mirror Universe is so keen on betraying everyone else to get ahead that Chuck has to wonder how the Terran Empire hasn't collapsed upon itself yet.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Surmises that the writers of Voyager somehow got it into their heads that they had killed off Lt. Carey, because after Series One, he simply disappeared from the show and from then on only ever showed up again in episodes set in the past. Then when the writers realised that Carey was in fact still alive, they were forced to bring him back for "Friendship One" in Series Seven, in order to actually make sure they'd killed him off this time.
• Clark Kenting: Points out that the use of it in the failed Wonder Woman pilot is even more idiotic than the trope namer. She used just a pair of glasses, not even slouched or acting in anyway different, and had her name be "Diana Prince." Not only is she a constantly photographed Superhero, she is as an owner of a mega-corporation that publicly states that she is Wonder Woman. The only reason it can possibly work is that she only uses it to shirk responsibilities, watch chick flicks and pet her cat.
• Cliché Storm: Mocked and invoked in his review of "Twisted", which he considers this.
  "At this point the turbolift opens, revealing a cop-on-the-edge who doesn't play by the rules, a greedy corporate big-wig looking to get rich by poisoning the water supply, and a skinny black guy whose job it is to say "Dayymn!" and refer to "My black ass!""
  • Additionally, in "Our Man Bashir," he notes that it starts off as a combination of a shuttle/runabout accident, transporter malfunction with a holodeck malfunction, so the episode was not only delving into every James Bond cliché, but every Star Trek cliché. He warns the goldshirt to change his uniform because "he's playing with fire!"
  • It happens again in his review of "The Royale," which was supposed to be a Cliché Storm: Sufficiently Advanced Aliens have recreated a hack novel about gangsters in a casino. However the episode itself features so many Star Trek clichés that, as Chuck puts it, it's a perfect case of irony. invoked
• Clone Angst: Points out the great tragedy in "Whispers" is that Clone!O'Brien is ultimately a victim. He was duplicated so perfectly that he really is Miles O'Brien, never even suspecting that he was a Manchurian Agent. But the people he calls his friends, treat him as not even a person at all, not being able to see past the weapon. Thus when he dies, no-one does anything to try to save him, and worse, no-one even seems to care.
• Close on Title:
  • The Ghostbusters (1984) review starts with no "SF Debris Presents" or thanks for the donor, saving those for the end with a mashup of Huey Long's "I Want A New Drug" and Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters."
  • The review of Titan A.E. also ends on the title, played over "A Whole New World" by Regina Belle and Peabo Bryson.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Kamina has an uncanny ability to stumble onto the right answer despite the insane leaps in logic.
  Chuck: Kamina has been known to be right despite all reason. He's very much like a man who decides he's going to get to the moon by digging a tunnel to get there... only to wind up falling into a cave containing a perfectly functioning alien spaceship. The journey may have been deeply flawed, but you can't argue with the results... no matter how much you want to.
• Clown Car: Compares the Maquis vessel in the VOY premiere to one of these. As we'll soon discover, they've got room for fifty additional people back there, plus Chakotay's medicine wheel.
• Clueless Mystery: Chuck admits that despite how good the film is, The Thing is a Clueless Mystery. He explores several of the scenes we see where the characters interact with the Thing, and points out how those scenes leave no way to deduce who is infected in later scenes. He cites some simple changes that could have been made, without making the Thing's identity being too obvious.
• Cold Open: Of sorts. Many reviews begin with a short scene or moment from later in the episode/movie - no context is given. Then Chuck chimes in with a comment or joke that culminates with his Catchphrase. Often the viewer is expected to already know the context of the scene anyway.
  • The "Genesis" TNG review starts like this:
    Data: [to Picard] I believe you will also de-evolve, into an earlier form of primate. Possibly similar to a Lemur, or Pygmy Marmoset.
    Chuck: Poor guy. Not only is he turning into an animal, he's turning into one that sucks. But then, I'm no special breed either, I'm just a viewer with an opinion.
• Commuting on a Bus: Believes that the reason Alexander would disappear for long stretches at a time on TNG, is because Worf kept hocking his son as collateral during poker night, then had to spend several episodes attempting to win him back.
• Comically Missing the Point: In "Tuvix", he believes it's Neelix's influence that causes Tuvix to understand the order to "Remain still" instead to mean;

  Chuck: Gesticulate and turn around as much as possible. Then get up out of the chair and walk around.

• Content Warnings: Opens the review of "Elogim" (VOY):
  Chuck: Warning: Opinionated Voyager Episode Guide is normally recorded at a level of decency found in a low-end PG-13 film. However, the episode being reviewed, "Elogim", is an episode with three plots: Sex, sex, and sex. As a result, any discussion of this episode requires discussion of sex. Therefore, this review contains adult themes.
  [Caption: "WARNING: Contains adult themes"]
  Chuck: It has also resulted in this review containing adult language...
  [Caption: "WARNING: Contains adult language"]
  Chuck:...not only because of the theme, but because this is one SHITTY episode!
  [Caption: "WARNING: This episode is crap"]
  Chuck: You have been warned! If only someone had had the decency to warn me before I watched this episode!
  [Caption: "WARNING: Why God? Why?!!"]
• Continuity Lockout: In "The End of Time" review, he notes that one of the problems with the episode is the sheer volume of references to past episodes being thrown in, meaning that casual viewers would be completely lost to understand what's going on.
• Continuity Nod: Gives DS9's "Defiant" props that a Maquis character from TNG's "Preemptive Strike", where Ro Laren joined the Maquis cause, was probably the same person that recruited Tom Riker into the Maquis.
• Continuity Snarl: Invoked when the Doctor claims Seven had her first dream in "Unimatrix Zero".
  Seven: What about that those aliens who made us all have that collective dream?
  Doctor: That doesn't count, because that was an alien influence.
  Seven: Ok, what about when everyone was in stasis and I dreamed I was all alone, with no alien influence whatsoever?
  Doctor: That doesn't count either, because that would be continuity...
  • When the crew is stranded on the planet in "Basics", Chuck mentions how absurd their one hope of getting off is (the idea that Tom and his shuttle didn't actually blow up, which was all but confirmed for them). He says that another farflung hope is that this has some hidden tech from the aliens who kidnapped Amelia Earhart, and even that's relying on...continuity.
  • "Continuity" is a major point for Chuck that either makes or breaks an episode.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Pointed out in "Basics", where he jokes that Chakotay must be using some kind of "Indian magic firewalking trick" to protect himself from the super-heated steam and poisonous gas that should have instantly killed him.
  • Also notes in "The Thing" that the usage of flamethrowers should have some visible effect on the people using them due to the amount of heat.
  • Praises The Boiling Rock when reviewing Avatar: The Last Airbender for averting this trope, he's really impressed that somebody on the production realised that a hot air balloon would cease functioning if the air outside was equally hot. He did have to retroactively dock The Day Of Black Sun points though, for playing the trope straight when Aang used his glider to get over molten lava.
• Cool vs. Awesome: Chuck speculates that the Telepathic Pitcher Plant in "Bliss," didn't always eat starships- it's over two hundred thousand years old, after all- but instead consumed other large spacegoing life forms (which have been seen multiple times in Trek before). He then asks for a fight between the Telepathic Pitcher Plant and the Crystaline Entity.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: In "The Visitor", Jake looks to the Captain's Room for help in disproving his father's death. Bad idea.
  Archer: (raving) Me, too! He was killed by the Vulcans! They crept out from under his bed and choked him to death with a heart attack!
  Janeway: My father died, too, and I totally had an alibi and everything.
• *Cough* Snark *Cough*: Subverted in the review for "Repentance" (VOY), when discussing the death penalty:
  Chuck: If you rule out countries where executions of political enemies take place, in despotic areas like China, or just leaders who are willing to execute people outside of the law... *cough*Putin*cough*Putin*cough*. Sorry, I've got a little cold. I was trying to say Putin.
• Country Matters: This is the only word that Chuck censors, usually with a Last-Second Word Swap and even a bleep in "In A Mirror Darkly."
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Invoked by name in the Cowboy Bebop review. (He was just kidding)
  • The SFDebris title card depicts our sun when viewed through a certain spectrum. Giving the subject matter of Chuck's reviews, it's only natural that people confuse it for Sha Ka Ree, the luminous blue planet in Star Trek V.
• Crack Pairing: invokedWhen Deckard has the "unicorn vision" in the director's cut of Blade Runner, Chuck says that Deckard has a thing for Rarity.
  • Invoked in his review of "One Small Step" where Seven and Chakotay are continually at loggerheads over his stupid command decisions and his irritation at her attitude.
    Chuck: Seven's extremely upset that this idiotic human showed such disregard for their lives for a piece of obsolete junk... and obviously she's considering one day humping his brains out.
  • Suggests one in "A Look at Reg Barclay" which came out the same day as his review of "Human Error", noting several plausible reasons why, out of everyone in Star Trek, Reg Barclay is the person Seven would probably be the most compatible with.
    Chuck: Both are creative, intelligent, problem solvers, take pleasure in solitude, are interested in self-aware holograms and by alien influence, had experiences, though different, of a larger kind of consciousness integrated with technology, that they eventually had to give up. I think they'd gel quite well.
• Crazy-Prepared: Given what happens in The Walking Dead, Chuck jokingly wonders if some of Donald Trump's weird choices as president (attempts to build a wall, form a space force, buy Greenland) are because he's from a future where the alien-induced zombie apocalypse happened.
• Creator's Pet: invoked Discussed when he points out the multiple reasons why it's obvious that Wesley Crusher and Janeway were created to serve as an Author Avatar for Gene Roddenberry and Jeri Taylor, hence why they were always presented as infallible geniuses who were beloved by the crew.
  • Also discussed with Neelix, especially in "The Gift" when the show has to drop a character and Neelix stays despite being hated by the viewers, he doesn't just take it as a sign that the show's creators don't care what the viewers think, he takes it as a sign that they hate the viewers.
  • In "Fair Haven", he brings up the point that Janeway allowing Tom to run the titular program in all of the holodecks, all of the time, smacks heavily of this in-universe. Hope the Voyager crew didn't have anything else they wanted to do with their holodeck time!
  • He also discusses it with Doctor Who's "Face the Raven" episode. Previously, he just found Clara rather bland as a character; as he puts it: "she's okay, but not [his] favorite." But the prominent focus the finale trilogy of the season places on her, makes the character become rather annoying in his eyes.
    Chuck: Few things turn my stomach like everyone obsessing over how undeniably "wonderful" someone is, who seems to me like they are not that great.
• Credits Gag: Swapping out the usual Opinionated Next Gen Review intro song, "99 Red Balloons", for its original German version ("99 Luftballoons") for his review of "Darmok", which is an episode about language.
  • Done again in his review of "In A Mirror, Darkly" where the opening "Kryptonite" is played in reverse.
• Creepy Souvenir: There is a severed head for some lucky fan! From "Winter Is Coming" of Game of Thrones.
• Cure Your Gays: Mentions how the thing that stuck out most in L. Ron Hubbard's book, Mission Earth, was how the viewpoint alien got a new and improved penis, which he used to rape two lesbians who had previously tortured him straight.
• Curse Cut Short / Country Matters: The introduction of Dr. Pulaski. "YOU'RE A COMPLETE CUN—!! ..temptible person."
  • Does it again with the Space Amish leader in "Paradise" (DS9). "The most important resource we have is ingenuity."
    "GABLUH??? The application of human ingenuity is called technology! YOU STUPID CUN—!! ..try doctor.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: A Real Life example, courtesy a Loony Fan (or a Fan Hater, take your pick): According to Chuck, one lunatic Trek fan threatened him with a toy bat'leth. He refuses to mention other incidents for fear of people trying to one-up them.
  • In "Unimatrix Zero", Janeway offers to detach Borg Queen's head to make her ass easier to kiss. She later threatens Chakotay with "a jar of centipedes and a funnel." ("Shattered")

D

• Damned by Faint Praise: ST: Insurrection does have one distinct advantage over the other TNG films.
  "It's the shortest."
  • "Human Error" proved an improvement over "Unimatrix Zero." ("But then, so's a test pattern.")
  • "Granted (Phlox) is not Dr. McCoy, or Dr. Bashir, or Dr. Crusher....well, he's not Dr. Seuss! Probably." ("A Night in Sickbay")
  • Did you know that "Haven" was nominated for Outstanding Hair Styling?
  • From the video description for "Family": Plus, Wesley's backstory is fleshed out to the utter joy of his fan.
  • "Non Sequitur", possible the most apt-titled episode in the history of TV.
  • "Tsunkatse" is definitely the most successful Trek adaptation of a Simon & Garfunkel song.
  • "Our Man Bashir", featuring the kind of high-caliber acting you expect from adult films.
  • Re: Riker and Troi's Hostile Show Takeover of "These Are the Voyages..." Chuck does concede that — in B&B's defense — there were probably many times on ENT when having some other, more interesting people strolling onto the set would have been welcome.
• Deadpan Snarker: Anyone who can say 'blowing up the ship with Janeway Pie' without even a hint of laughter has to be a master at this.
  • Namedropped directly in his review of VOY: Bride of Chaotica, as he states he is one and he respects a way Robert Duncan McNeill delivered a line as one.
• Death Is Cheap: In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, regarding Optimus Prime's many deaths and resurrections: "Jason Voorhees is shaking his head at this guy!"
• Debate and Switch: Chuck can see this coming a mile away, and he repeatedly states this is a regular feature of Voyager. Taking the easy way out of a moral dilemma either due to chance or technobabble is something he finds irksome, so he tends to praise its absence, such as in The Thaw, where the crew has to decide whether or not it's okay to prioritize the lives of some victims over the sentient simulation watching over them that will be destroyed when they're freed. They of course decide to save the hostages, but weaker Voyager episodes would probably have Janeway try to save the evil clown too.
  • He commends the Voyager episode "Equinox" for providing a moral dilemma with only two bad solutions and no third happy way out, even if it may have been unintended by the writers: Do you commit mass murder of potentially intelligent lifeforms to gain fuel for your fancy supertech engine which would allow you to get home quickly, or uphold your principles while consigning your crew and yourself to living hell for the rest of their lives, limping home through hostile territory?
• Deconstructor Fleet: Chuck loves unpacking Roddenberry's utopia to expose the inherent problems therein. This makes for a more serious mood. On the lighter side of things, he will frequently take the fundamental tropes of serialized sci-fi and turns it against franchise. Examples: Protagonist-Centered Morality as proof that the Federation is based on xenophobic attitudes; The Main Characters Do Everything as signs of rampant bureaucracy and mismanagement; and its Stock Aesops as the dogmas of an Orwellian state.
• Department of Redundancy Department: According to Chuck, Jeri Taylor scripts have two purposes: "To prove how awesome Janeway is, and to prove how awesome Janeway is".
• Description Cut: From the review of Farscape's "Crackers Don't Matter":
  Chuck: The point though is that they're past the pulsars and they're all still acting nuts. Well, of course, all of them but T'raltixx.
  T'raltixx: I AM MAAAAAGNIIIIFICEEEENT!!!
  Chuck: ...relatively speaking.
• Designated Hero: invoked In the Wonder Woman review, he comments about his incompetent RPG superhero whose powers set included immunity to bad press. He could violate safety protocols, destroy a factory, horribly mutate someone in the process, declare this poor soul a supervillain, and beat the crap out of this guy, and the media would laud him for dealing with the unsafe factory and the newly-created supervillain. He contrasts this character with Wonder Woman, who unlike him, isn't supposed to be a comic relief character. He also pointed out that the villain broke fewer laws than Wonder Woman did.
• Did Not Think This Through: Notes this about Damon Tog in "Menage a Trois", since in his infinite wisdom, he decides to that instead of kidnapping just Lwaxana, an older woman, who's known for frivolous flights of fancy and is so annoying no-one is going to miss her; Tog will kidnap Deanna and Riker as well... two Starfleet officers who's disappearance will be quickly noticed.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Or at least it's inferior to real piracy, due to how great they look in puffy shirts.
• Diminishing Villain Threat: One of his big complaints about the Borg in "Unimatrix Zero," which shows two much smaller and weaker ships attacking an upgraded Borg Cube.
  "Now let me put this in perspective. This is a souped-up version of the ship that nearly assimilated the entire Federation. In straight-up combat, that ship, a regular cube, was only defeated thanks to an armada, and unique insight into its vulnerabilities on a moment-by-moment basis. Now THIS ship (shows picture of Super Cube), is the one that the Borg deploys when they decide that This Shit Just Got Real. THIS is when the Borg get deadly serious about fighting. (Janeway says that they're going to infiltrate the ship) Oh for god's sakes."
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Kirk's mind meld in Star Trek III. ...And Captain Pike's fantasies in "The Menagerie." ...And Dr. Bashir's coma in "Distant Voices." Seems that what the future really needs is a nice sex dungeon.
  "You're a findom, trapped in a system where money doesn't exist! Tragic."
• Disney Villain Death: In his "City of Stone" review, Chuck accuses gravity of being the real villain of the story, given how commonly this trope is used.
• Disobey This Message: Discussed thoroughly in "The Neutral Zone" (TNG), where Picard extolls on the virtues of the Federation's money-free economy... while anyone wanting to buy a DVD containing this episode would need to pay through the nose for it.
  • Similarly invoked in "Dark Frontier", where the enlightened Federation crew of Voyager willingly embrace the virtues of piracy... while the DVD the episode comes on features a digital piracy warning label.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Happens to Chuck while he reviews "A Night in Sickbay" as Archer is talking with T'Pol as she jogs on a treadmill in a skimpy tank-top.
  "Archer, I'm a human, and all I can understand about you is that you're an idiot, insane, or both, and why do I have a sudden craving for milkshakes?!"
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Speculates that Worf actually has named his balls "Honour" and his dick "Courage", which other Klingons then copied. Cue one hilarious montage...
  • A cyclops in a pinstriped suit with waggling face-dicks, "like it was ripped from the nightmares of Betty Friedan." ("Daleks of Manhattan")
  • In "Remember Me", Chuck puts the audio of the Traveler instructing Wesley on how to save his mother over a still shot of a shuttlecraft. Suddenly, everything the Traveler says comes off a lot creepier:
    The Traveler: There's your warp bubble, Wesley.
• Don't Explain the Joke: You wouldn't think Whoopi Goldberg would need this advice. But then, "The Outrageous Okona", an episode where Data attempts to learn humor, "is where jokes go to die".
  • A Real Life example: Chuck referred to Twilight Sparkle as "Sparkle, Twilight" throughout his My Little Pony review, but failed to indicate that this was a reference to Film Noir protagonists (he had to insert subtitles explaining this, even admitting that the joke was lame). It didn't help that the 'comma' was silent, making it sound like he was calling her 'Sparkle Twilight', instead of 'Sparkle, Twilight'. Needless to say, especially given the show's notoriously passionate fanbase, it all went over like a lead balloon.
• Double Entendre: An absolute master of this, often utilizing either Star Trek jargon, Catchphrases, or Call Backs.
  He needs to, oh, find the nearest Chief Engineer and "tap her warp core".
  That time every seven years when Tuvok needs to... "taste his wife's false rice".
  Picard bending Beverly over his desk to "make it so".
  He wants to, y'know, "service the Collective".
  Incidentally, we see Dukat playing more and more with Sisko's ball. (ahem)
  If you feel Rainbow Dash likes other girls to....y'know, 'taste the rainbow?' Knock yourselves out.
  Riker blissfully watching a hologram of two women playing with their harps.
  We see Crichton with Aeryn, and figure that he really, really wants to bond with her naturally.
  Keiko offering Miles his favorite thing to eat! ....Favorite meal!
  Climb on that exam table, 'cause Bajor's getting occupied again tonight! (*bow chicka wow wow*)
  Riker "kissing Brenna's blarney stone."
  Sha're has never "kissed the Staff of Ra."
  Probe the collective. (ahem)
  As Geordi would put it - "tickle her nacelles"
  "Well, Beverly, it's time to....engage. And make it so." (cue mood music)
  "There's your warp bubble Wesley!"
  DON'T SPARE THE WHIP!
  "I'll have to put this in your mouth, I call it a tongue impressor."
  Torres demanding that Paris "give her a diagnostic."
  • Neelix just can't stop talking about Seven's curtains. ("Human Error")
    Neelix: But we have to make sure they match the carpet!
    Chuck: A dozen ways to phrase that, and you had to go with that one.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male/Black Comedy Rape: When Enterprises "Unexpected" pulls these two tropes with the 'Trip Tucker is now pregnant' routine, this is probably the only time so far in which Chuck loses his usual sang froid.
  • Invoked in DS9 after the characters cite the Eugenics War, and gets the date wrong by two centuries.
    Sisko: Yes, the Admiral has a speech impediment. He says "two" whenever he means "four."
    Daddy Bashir: [crestfallen] So, my prison sentence is four years?
    Sisko: ...Yes. And "minimum security" means "pound me in the ass."
• Draco in Leather Pants: A Discussed Trope in his Avatar: The Last Airbender review. where Chuck argues that Azula doesn’t deserve the level of sympathy that many fans give her. He feels that although her upbringing explains some of her violent and anti-social tendencies, it doesn't excuse them either. Unlike other characters with similar or worse upbringings who work to overcome their flaws, she does nothing to get over hers.
• Drinking Game: "Severed head! Take a drink."
  • Also from Game of Thrones, "Naked girl! Take a drink."
  • He suggests one in his review of "Spock's Brain": Drink for every Title Drop. He is even courteous enough to inform us how many times it happens.^note (Fifteen, if you were wondering.)
  • Takes a drink every time Brannon Braga deems something "ancient." ("The 37s")
    "It's not a drinking game, though, it's a.... coping mechanism."
• Driven To Phaser The Warp Core:
  • Suggests that given the treatment the Maquis crewmen receive in "Learning Curve" for not following Starfleet rules, considering they never wanted to be part of Starfleet in the first place, would drive anyone to pull a phaser and shoot the Warp Core in frustration. Particularly given how Dolby noticed a problem with the gel-packs, went to fix it and was disciplined for not getting proper authorisation first. Then when the rest of the crew realise the problem has spread to more gel-packs (possibly because Dolby was stopped from trying to find the problem), Dolby is then immediately ordered to go fix them.
  • In "Timeless", during a hypothetical Deal with the Devil scene with the Borg Queen, Harry agrees to change history after the Queen tells him that doing so will Ret-Gone him.
• Drives Like Crazy: Invoked in his review of Star Trek: Nemesis as a reason Troi is kept around;
  Picard: Well what exactly are you capable of doing?
  Troi: I know how smash the ship into things...
  Picard: Yeah, I figured that when they were pulling a pine-tree off the Enterprise-D bridge. Still, if there's ever a time when your sole ability, smacking my ship into something else, is needed, I'll let you know!
  • Not that Picard is any better, considering his love of callously violating the Prime Directive whilst driving a Dune-Buggy.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • His reaction to the Enterprise episode "Unexpected", where Tucker became impregnated by an alien who told him that her species reproductive process was a game. He's completely pissed off at the episode and Berman and Braga for playing this up as comedy because they seem to think Double Standard Rape: Female on Male/Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi.
  • This was also his reaction to the Stargate Atlantis episode "Duet", in which McKay winds up with a female soldier's mind (Cadman) in his head and Hilarity Ensues. Or at least... that's what the writers intended to happen, but as he points out, the Puppeteer Parasite trope (which Cadman had become, though admittedly not by her own choice) has always been played as a Fate Worse than Death in Stargate, and yet now the writers seemed to be trying to make a comedy out of that situation, which he felt crossed a line. He is aware that many fans found that episode genuinely hilarious and that he is in the minority opinion on this.
  • In another Atlantis episode, "Irresistible", a character named Lucius has pheromones that make everyone like him. Harmless enough and food for comedy right? Except that among the things Lucius has done with this pheromone is get married to six different women, who were explicitly said to have hated him beforehand. Chuck is anything but amused that they are playing the fact that Lucius has raped six women using mind control for laughs (with every intention of Weir being next).
• Dull Surprise: Chuck jokes often that you can tell that Chakotay has been taken over/influenced by an alien or is a simulation by the fact that he's too lifelike and is being played by an actor who gives a shit.
• Dumbass Has a Point: As much as he generally despises Neelix, he is quick to point out when Neelix has a point. In the cold open of "The Cloud", Neelix accuses Janeway of not caring about her crew. Chuck quickly agrees with this assessment.
• Dying Dream: Invoked as an alternative to the fan hypothesis that Picard never leaves the Nexus in Star Trek: Generations, and all the remaining TNG films are his fantasies. It's pointed out that if you want to go down that route, it would actually make far more sense for the ending of Generations (and the subsequent three films) to be hallucinations induced by a mixture of sunstroke and concussion, which Picard experiences during the fifteen minutes it would actually take until Veridian III is obliterated by the explosion of its sun. Though, as he points out elsewhere, neither theory makes any real sense because it would mean the Enterprise-D crew died in that film, making Worf's joining of the DS9 crew along with Troi and Barclay's Voyager appearances impossible.
  • Brings this up in Battlefield Earth. Midway through the film, Johnny loses his breathing tube and is left to die in the Psychlo dome. Chuck says that the rest of the film can be interpreted as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which would completely eliminate all the stupidity and plot holes.
• Dysfunction Junction: His interpretation of the Voyager crew.

E

• End of an Era: With the "Hunters" review of Voyager on December 25th, 2022, all of the Voyager episodes have been reviewed. To cap off this final review Chuck closed out the episode with Riders in The Sky, Voyager's original intro song before he used an all-encompassing intro for anything Star Trek.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In-universe, Robert Picardo as the Doctor.
  • Also Tom Paris, the most competent man on Voyager.
  • Reed, practically the Only Sane Man aboard the NX-01, inventor of the forcefield, supercharging phase-cannons, and possibly the original "Reed-Alert"... (though the name needs work).
  • Harrin from Voyager's episode "Good Shepherd", a one-shot Lower Decks character, who is unafraid to tell Janeway what a goddamn idiot she's been half the time, especially that it's taken seven years to notice, "On a ship meant to explore the wonders of the universe, you've put Carl Sagan in charge of shoveling coal".
  • Reg Barclay. His imagination, personality flaws and fallibility set him apart from most characters in Trek who often are presented as perfect, enlightened individuals. Chuck posits this as one of the reasons why he became a recurring character in TNG, was so easily transplanted to Voyager and even showed up in Star Trek: First Contact, as well as have his work even mentioned in "The Best of Both Worlds", in which he didn't actually appear.
• The Everyman: Lister from Red Dwarf. Chuck points out that over time Lister's progression from someone who's concerned with his own imminent horror in the early episodes, to eventually stepping up and actually giving a damn, is actually a more hopeful version of Star Trek's message that anyone in such a difficult circumstance could rise to become a better person.
• Even Evil Has Standards: "The Killing Game Pt.1"
  Hirogen: (gruffly) Y'know, I might kill for no reason other than someone's in killing distance, but at least I'm not a Nazi.
  • While reviewing "Latent Image," Chuck keeps track of how his parody Janeway would act in every situation compared to how Janeway actually acts in the episode...and is shocked to discover that canon Janeway actually has a more evil way of dealing with the episode's central conflict.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: A few reviews, like the "QPid" episode. There, he mispronounces Mxyzptlk's name, but then says "Okay, before anyone gets ready to correct my pronunciation, I'd like to point out, this is a YouTube review of a Star Trek episode, based on Robin Hood, that is now referring to a Superman villain. Let's just leave Mr. Mxyzptlk's name alone, before we hit nerd critical mass and blow up the internet, okay? Sometimes you gotta ratchet down the dork for the sake of the straights."
  • "Wes, I gave a fifteen minute lecture on the nuances of the Prime Directive, and even I think you're a spaz..."
    • "...S-P-A-3, spaz."
  • Looking up how self-replicating mines work from the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, he says he offset the nerdiness by challenging a bear to a knife fight.
  • "Speaking as a professional Star Trek critic, Milo is a dork."
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He's not a feminist, and still gets offended as extremely sexist parts of some episodes. He is also not a hypocrite. So he cannot just dismiss people who have an argument against his own view. He will give it a fair weighing and measure.
  • He's not fond of Rei, Asuka, and Mari, who are 14, being used for fanservice in the Rebuild of Evangelion films and is disturbed by Shikijo's fantasies in Mahoromatic. Destiny of the Shrine Maiden also offended him.
  • He's mentioned that he uses himself as a litmus test because of this. The theory being, if he thinks that something is racist or sexist, the problem must have reached truly intolerable levels.
• Eviler than Thou: His take on the Janeway and Borg Queen dynamic in a nutshell.
• Evil Is Cool: Invoked in his review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the sight of the Mumakil, humorously bringing up that the trilogy's villains get all the cool stuff.
• Evil Laugh: When the stars align with the Moon, it allows Nightmare Moon to usurp and take over, and well, do what all villains must do — give an evil laugh. It's good for the blood pressure.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: While discussing the trademark issues surrounding James Cameron's Avatar and Avatar: The Last Airbender in his review of Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise:
  "I'd ask a lawyer, but I don't feel like drawing another pentagram in my basement."
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Chuck notes in his review of "The Swarm" that season 3 Voyager titles are extremely direct. "The Chute" is about a chute, "Flashback" is about a flashback, "Sacred Ground" is about some sacred ground and "Warlord" is about a warlord.
  • "Twisted", too, but it's a different sort of honesty.
    "I'm looking forward to more future episodes like this, like uh, "More Shit", "We've Long Stopped Caring", and "Of COURSE We Don't Respect You"!"
  • "Fury" refers to the mood of the audience after peeing all over Kes' touching sendoff.
  • invoked "Persistence of Vision", which, despite having nothing to do with the episode, is nevertheless an accurate description of what awaits us: a series of rapid images giving the illusion of movement.
  • He also calls Non-Sequiter the most honest episode title in Voyager.
• Exact Words: The audience's sentiment that "Kirk should die on The Bridge!" is met with a hearty "No problem!"
• invoked Executive Meddling: He's made fun of Executive Meddling many times, but in Insurrection's review, he points out that the executives actually sent a memo pointing out the many plot holes in the script and wondering why they weren't better addressed.
  Executive Memo: We would like to better establish why the future of six hundred Ba'ku is so important. Currently it is unclear why Picard is so passionate about the future of this particular race. The "blood feud" between a few hundred Son'a and six hundred Ba'ku seems like nothing more than a gang fight. Numerous civilisations have been eliminated by previous Star Trek megalomaniacs, so what makes the Ba'ku so special? To be blunt, with only six hundred people in the gene pool, the Ba'ku would inbreed themselves into extinction within a few generations.
• Expecting Someone Taller: "The Thaw": Janeway comes into confrontation with the embodiment of fear, and it is fear who is terrified.
  Clown: How are you? I'm fear incarnate, the living embodiment of terror stretching back over a billion years, the most base of all emotions!
  Janeway: Heh! I thought you'd be taller.

F

• Face Palm: Picard's 'reaction' to Archer addressing T'Pol ("I'm doing the breast—best!— I can.") Riker joins in when the joke drags on for too long.
  • "Yeah...sorry, I couldn't find a Farscape facepalm, so you'll just have to settle for another Henson employee."
• The Faceless: As Chuck mentioned in his Atop the Fourth Wall cameo, the reason he doesn't show his face is because cameras steal your soul.
• Failsafe Failure: Really tore into this in "Learning Curve", when a manual override was still shut out by broken systems, which would defeat the purpose of being a manual override.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Has this with regards to Star Trek V and even notes that in the overarching story of the movies from 2,3, 4, and 6, that the plot holes it creates mean it makes the most sense to pretend that it didn't happen.invoked
  • Chuck insists that "All Our Yesterdays" is the actual climax to Star Trek: The Original Series, and not "Turnabout Intruder", which Chuck feels is best forgotten anyway.
  • invoked Jokes that Enterprise only maintains continuity with the rest of the series if you imagine that the later generations of Starfleet were so ashamed of Archer and his crew, they created a blanket-ban forbidding anyone from referring to them.
• Fantastic Slur: Discussed in "Empok Nor". He argued that "Cardy" wasn't a slur, just military jargon, like how the Germans were called "Jerries" in World War II. Spoon-head, on the other hand, is a slur because it's only ever used in a derogatory manner.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: In reviewing Star Trek VI he calls TNG-era Klingons space vikings, while the klingons in the film come across more like space samurai: intelligent, cultured, but no less dangerous.
• Fatal Attractor: Chuck points out that whenever Harry does have a relationship, it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Plus we've seen at least once that actually making out with Seven is something that causes him to have screaming nightmares.
• Fate Worse than Death: In his review of The Day After, Chuck noted that one of the characters should have just "sat on the hole in the ground and gotten it over with," rather than the slow, painful death of radiation sickness.
• Faux Horrific: Eating red meat is a Vulcan's worst nightmare, according to "Carbon Creek". Returns as a Brick Joke when the crew becomes stranded in "The Void"; when considering worst case scenarios, the first one that springs to Tuvok's mind is the possibly of killing a deer.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Janeway preparing to pistol whip Harry for the crimes of being both within sight...and being Harry Kim.
  • He dislikes Neelix so much that even the mere sight of him is annoying, culminating in this Stupid Neelix Moment:
    "Neelix walked into a room and handed the Doctor a pad. This offended me."
  • This culminated in an incident where he acknowledged that 7 of 9 had been the annoying character in a scene, yet still gave the award to Neelix because, by standing next to her in a ridiculous shirt, the blame arced into him like lightning traveling between two clouds.
  • Okana was voted Most Annoying Character in "The Game", an episode which neither featured nor even mentioned him. However, Wesley was introduced as, "Wesley Wesley Crusher" and the memories just came flooding back.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: In the "Chain Of Command" review, Chuck points out that the "Space Geneva Convention" doesn't protect Picard when he's disavowed by Starfleet.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: in his review of "Second Chances," he shows how it doesn't necessarily have to take an absurdly long time for someone to fall into this, like Riker and Thomas Riker. Thomas was only on the planet for eight years, out of circulation from the rest of the Federation. Chuck points out that eight years before he aired the episode, Bush was president, the Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn't started yet, and Chuck was still agonizing about reviewing things that weren't Voyager episodes.
• Flanderization: A few character traits for running jokes, like Picard's dislike of children, Troi's bad driving, Janeway's recklessness and love of coffee, Sisko's anger management issues, etc.
  • This applies not just to canon Janeway, but Chuck's own alternate take, as well. As the reviews go on Janeway becomes more and more maniacal, culminating in the Nemesis review where she reveals her master plan to take over the Alpha Quadrant, which will result in the deaths of about half of its inhabitants. But oh well, eggs and omelets.
  • Taken to even more extreme heights now that he is redoing the old reviews. Whole sections of former jokes have been completely rewritten to accommodate an "Evil Janeway" or (even more pronounced) a "Picard Can't Fight" gag.
    Janeway, Captain Janeway! / I'm the best Captain in history! / Stranding all my people / Their lives are filled with grief and misery! ♪
  • This has since spread to other Trek reviews as well. Kirk and Sisko used to be the most down-to-earth, practical Captains in Starfleet. While still a force to be reckoned with, Kirk has devolved into an oversexed jock who belittles his crewmen and bangs all their girlfriends; meanwhile, Sisko considers the station's battleship to be his "real" son.
  • Chuck's improvied lines for Picard's brother Robert in "Family" ("Where you going? I was getting my best curse words ready, ya baldy skidmark!"), directly comparing him to both the Banjo kid from Deliverance and Jason Voorhees in terms of people skills ("I had an orgasm once. I didn't care for it").
    "I think Robert missed his true calling running an orphanage in a Charles Dickens novel."
  • Colonel Tigh is constantly shitfaced drunk in his reviews.
• Follow the Leader: Linkara's "History of Power Rangers" series has a very similar tone, with the montage in "Power Rangers in Space" almost exactly like SF's in "All Good Things" (which Linkara did get permission).
  • Averted that Chuck won't be doing the Star Wars prequels, following in the vein of Confused Matthew or RedLetterMedia, simply because of the redundancy. "Its been done, there's nothing left to be said".
  • Diamanda Hagan says that her Twatty Who reviews follows SF Debris' style in her review of "Fear Her", albeit more caustic.
• Follow-Up Failure: "Unimatrix Zero" is accused of being a pretty major example of this next to the show's first two Borg two-parters, "Scorpion" and "Dark Frontier." Those two stories are both given the top score of 10, while "Unimatrix Zero" ends up with just 1.invoked
• Flat Character: He refers to Chang Lee in "The TV Movie" as a pure cardboard character.
• Foreshadowing: In his re-release of the "Caretaker" review, he mentions that rumors are that Janeway was on Earth for other reasons that just recruiting Tom, mentioning a computer virus and tampered replicators. Cut to his Star Trek: Nemesis review, and as part of an Evil Janeway comedic segment he reveals how those are part of Janeway's plan to take over the Federation and the Romulan empire through masterminding the events of Nemesis.
  • Chuck's response to the Doctor's "But I don't exist in your world!" line? "That's... a line I'm going to leave alone for today."
  • In his review of the third episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Chuck keeps making comments concerning losing one's head.
  • Chuck names the player character in Knights of the Old Republic as "Traevan Rhad."
• For the Evulz: He alludes in his Stargate review that Ra suffers from this, attacking the villagers at seemingly random.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: Always calls out Star Trek for completely forgetting about the ship's shuttles if the transporter goes down. On the other hand, there's this, from the review of the Firefly episode "Out of Gas":
  Chuck: [as Mal is talking to the crew outside the infirmary about their situation] ...and of course, they're going to completely forget about the shuttles.
  Mal: So instead of talking about what we don't got, let's talk about what we do, and what we got are two shuttles. Both short-range, won't go far, but they each got heat, and they each got air. Last longer than what's left on Serenity.
  Chuck: [pauses the clip] They cancel this, and let Enterprise run for four seasons?
• Formula-Breaking Episode: His review of Mass Effect 2. The first time he ever reviewed a video game (it was actually a full-length annotated playthrough, followed by his usual detailed analysis).
• Four-Point Scale: Utterly averted. Rather than using an arbitrary rating system, he gives every episode a grade from 1-10 relative to all other episodes in the same series, and not in any other. He'll give a "10" to the best the series had to offer; due to the bell-curve rating system, there are only a few per series (when giving a "9", he'll often lament that, while it was very good, it just wasn't the best of the best). He gives out one "0" per series, always to the episode that is most damaging to the reputation of the franchise as a whole, not just the particular series, and deserves the Canon Discontinuity treatment. (This actually did happen to "Threshold"). He does have opinions about the relative quality of each series to all the others, and they become obvious if you watch enough reviews: An Enterprise "5", for example, is clearly an inferior episode to a Deep Space Nine "5", as the Enterprise "5" is generic schlock, while the Deep Space Nine "5" may be a simple but enjoyable episode.
  • Chuck himself admits he was indulging in this trope a bit with his early Deep Space Nine reviews, pegging "7" instead of "5" as an average (using the 7.5 he originally gave "Our Man Bashir" as a specific example, downgrading it to a "4" when he re-uploaded it). Without a doubt, his more recent DS9 reviews, such as "Indiscretion" and "Return to Grace", strongly avert this trope; he praises them profusely and offers no substantial criticism, but still only gives them a "5" and a "6" respectively because, as noted above, the bar for DS9 is set so high.
  • For his non-Star Trek reviews, he gives descriptive recommendations instead of numerical ratings; he might rate a Doctor Who episode as "Watchable" or "Must-See". This not only covers how good the episode is, but also (for arc-heavy series like Babylon 5) how important it is to understanding the overall story of the series.
• Franchise Zombie: On Star Trek: Enterprise during the infamous "A Night In Sickbay," Chuck temporarily loses it and says "And yet it's still coming! It won't stop! How do you kill a Star Trek show that's already dead?!"
  • "Profit and Lace" is compared to a heroic boxer who's down for the count. Those final twitches could be the final moments of defiance, or the throes of the dying. We'll never know.
  "ACTING grand Nagus Brunt!"
  Chuck: Oh God, no! We forgot to shoot it in the head!!
• Franken-X: Chuck uses the X-Stein variant in his Dark City review. He tells the story of Daniel Schreber, a German writer who suffered mental illness and was hospitalized at an asylum called "Sonnenstein".
  Chuck: Sonnenstein also being the name of the monster I brought to life in a lightning storm.
• Freudian Excuse: Deconstructed at length in his discussion of Azula, with Chuck ultimately concluding that "there is no reason the straightforward explanation the show provides isn't the truth: that her gifts made her arrogant to the point of being a monster."
  • Ironically, Word of God in a supplementary interview confirmed that the straightforward explanation wasn't the full truth, and that while that explanation is the basic gist of it, the actual issue with Azula's psyche runs deeper than that.
  • Much hay is made of Janeway's comically abusive childhood, from being hunted down by her rifle-wielding dad on Father's Day, to dodging thrown beer bottles until he finally passed out drunk, to being thrown into a pit on her birthday (with a birthday gift offered as reward for climbing out alive). Admiral Janeway got his just desserts though, as hinted by Katheryn who offhandedly mentions murdering him (and smothering her stepmom for good measure). Yet again, Word of Saint Paul says this has a kernel of truth: Kate Mulgrew rationalized her schizo characterization by playing her as a bipolar, nervous wreck.
  • (And yes, Garrett Wang was an early proponent of the "Harry's a closet gay" theory, chasing after unattainable women to avoid his love for Tom.)
• Freudian Slippery Slope: "Catherine Tit-- Tate!" "Donna Nipple— Noble!" "Substantial shift in boobies!—dynamic."
  • Repeatedly tries to avoid this (without success) in a scene with Tom and Harry from "Parturition":
    "Tom's impressed, quickly taking hold of Harry's instrument - er, I mean, complimenting Harry on his...showing his appreciation of...Tom has a clarinet. Tom gives it back and wants to hear something. Harry's a little hesitant, but Tom insists that Harry slip that instrument between his lips— (beat) ...Use proper tongue technique— (beat)... supplemented by careful finger manipulation along the long shaft of hard wood— (beat) ...to make beautiful music— (beat) ...I give up. I award this scene the Congressional Medal of Gay".
  • Repeated with relish in "Non Sequitur". Sure, Harry's left his hot horny fiancée behind to go grab a stick and play with Tom, "but dammit there's nothing gay about it!"
    "A-and sure, there was that one episode where women were beating him large phallic objects, but there's nothing gay about it. And yeah, we went into Harry's mind and saw a log cut in half by a large pink guillotine while a man dressed all in leather with a bare chest stood nearby and— okay, that's kind of gay, I'll grant you that. But, look, that's not what it's about, okay? Harry's just trying to convince Tom to come back with him to San Francisc—! (beat) ...Harry wants Tom in the pilot's sea—! (beat) Harry knows that Tom is good with his han—! shit."
• Freud Was Right: Invoked very much in his review of Alien:
  "Rest assured that every elongated object in this film has been called a penis and every opening was called a vagina by someone, somewhere."
• From Bad to Worse: Optimus Primal seeing that the aliens they were so concerned about all season turning out to be Unicron is like being prepared to receive news that you have cancer, only to find out it's a strain of an infectious form of super cancer. The only saving grace is that the aliens use A Form You Are Familiar With, so it's not Unicron, it's just destructive super-aliens who will destroy the entire planet to get rid of the guys mucking up their experiments.
• Fun T-Shirt: Wolf 359 was an inside job ("The Killing Game" Pt. 1)
• Fun with Subtitles: "Threshold" story and concept CRAPPED OUT BY Brannon Braga
  • The "translations" of the whale songs in his review of Star Trek IV are by far his funniest use of this trope.
  • His coda to "Tuvix" gives us this gem:
    Janeway: Make it so, dickhead!
  • Astromech Spy subtitles R2-D2's dialogue from A New Hope.
  • See also Translation Train Wreck.
  • When Seth MacFarlane appears in the opening credits of "The Forgotten": "Yes, that Seth MacFarlane."