The TV and Streaming thread Series 3

[HoonDing]

That thumbnail looks like Rowan Atkinson with a whig.

[Gorth]

Doing something I haven't done in many years... watching 3 entire seasons on streaming tv (SBS on Demand). It's called Dark Matter. Only finished season 1 as of now. Absolutely love it. Also saw that SyFy cancelled it before doing the last 2 seasons (the overall story arch was written for 5 seasons before shooting began). It was probably too good for them, can't have shows that raises expectations or something, so better screw it up for the viewers halfway through.

 

[uuuhhii]

19 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Doing something I haven't done in many years... watching 3 entire seasons on streaming tv (SBS on Demand). It's called Dark Matter. Only finished season 1 as of now. Absolutely love it. Also saw that SyFy cancelled it before doing the last 2 seasons (the overall story arch was written for 5 seasons before shooting began). It was probably too good for them, can't have shows that raises expectations or something, so better screw it up for the viewers halfway through.

 

season 1 might be the best

season 3 have some really good and wild episode

[uuuhhii]

watched s14 of always sunny  in philadelphia

didn't watch any older season

character seems all just generic awful and stupid

most other horrible person does horrible things show often have characters be horrible in slightly different ways

[Amentep]

I have a mea culpa. A few months ago I blamed the 80s Star Trek for changing Vulcans to make them humans with control issues.

Turns out its actually an episode of The Animated series, "Yesteryear", where its explicitly stated all Vulcans train to suppress their emotions for sociological reasons. Been awhile since I'd seen TAS, and had forgotten this point.

Still think it was a bad move for Vulcans in ST as it seems to have made loosing control the only story you can tell with them (something originally unique to Spock), but I can't blame Sybok and TNG's portrayal of Sarek any longer.

Meanwhile, just got into the Ro Lauren story on TNG.

[Hurlshort]

3 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

watched s14 of always sunny  in philadelphia

didn't watch any older season

character seems all just generic awful and stupid

most other horrible person does horrible things show often have characters be horrible in slightly different ways

Yeah, you missed 13 seasons of stuff, so I'm not sure what you would expect. Pretty strange that you watched the whole thing, really. I mean, the season 13 finale ended with this:

So...it isn't exactly just a horrible people being horrible show.

[kanisatha]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

Doing something I haven't done in many years... watching 3 entire seasons on streaming tv (SBS on Demand). It's called Dark Matter. Only finished season 1 as of now. Absolutely love it. Also saw that SyFy cancelled it before doing the last 2 seasons (the overall story arch was written for 5 seasons before shooting began). It was probably too good for them, can't have shows that raises expectations or something, so better screw it up for the viewers halfway through.

Dark Matter was my all-time favorite show on Syfy. When they walked away from that show, I walked away from them.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

Dark Matter was my all-time favorite show on Syfy. When they walked away from that show, I walked away from them.

Dark Matter might be the best trash sci-fi show ever made, and I say that intending it as nothing but a compliment. It certainly scratched the itch left by the more fun Stargate shows or maybe Andromeda. I might be one of the few people who actually liked Universe but for pure, silly sci-fi fun you can't beat SG1 or Atlantis.

[LadyCrimson]

I absolutely loved Season 1 of Dark Matter, told hubby about it etc.
Then they did something and I stopped watching.  Hubby finished it tho. 

[majestic]

Anyway, sorry if this turns out to be a double post, but usually posting one of these takes time and there might be a reply or two in the meantime.

Discovery S03E03. Again, unmarked spoilers. If anyone actually cares then simply scroll by.

The beginning of this episode sums up the entire absurdity of both the show as a whole and the premise of the third season so far in two neat sentences in a dialogue between Beka Valentine, Tyr Anasazi and yeah wait, that falls flat because Stamets isn't really Harper... uhm. So yeah, anyway, Burnham, Stamets and Georgiou have the following exact conversation right after the episode begins.

This is not a paraphrase by the way, I'm transcribing verbatim from the episode that's running in my Netflix tab right now. Just for the sake of being entirely accurate.

Quote

 

Burnham: "Nobody knows... if The Burn was an accident or a natural disaster, but it appears that devastation flashed in an instant across all known space."

Stamets: "That's impossible. Nothing could affect all dilithium all at once."

Georgiou: "Says the man who jumps a starship through mushroom-space."

 

So, yes, well, there you have it. Even the people writing this trash know it is trash and make fun of it. At least I hope that was what it was, because if that wasn't intentional lampshade hanging on the writer's part then they should all be fired. No, scratch that, they should all be fired anyway.

As for the rest of the episode, well, the writers exercise their complete inability to gauge distances in space yet again. Discovery flies to Earth because an Admiral Tal sent a message twelve years ago inviting all Federation starships to join him. Discovery jumps to Saturn which is "outside" of Earth's "scanning range" to pretend to have hobbled home after The Burn at sublight speed.

So there you have it. Saturn is a planet that's visible from Earth with nothing but the naked eye. A starship appearing in an instant near it would alert Earth immediately (well with an 80 minutes delay) even today, let alone in a future where people have FTL scanners.

But nah, Earth's scanning range is so limited that they don't even know that the space pirates they're fighting with launch from Titan and they're all surprised when they find out that Hallig/Todd (actually his character's name in Discovery is Wen), their leader, is human too. Not that I mind, I really enjoy seeing Christopher Heyerdahl no matter where he shows up.

Anyway, following The Burn Earth by the looks of it turned into... I don't know. Whatever the Federation turned into in Star Trek Picard, just only with one planet.

Oh, and there's a new Wesley on Discovery now. Her* name is Adira and even though she's 16 she's part of an United Earth Defense something task force that's inspecting Discovery. She immediately knows that Stamet's spore drive thing is not what he claims to be and even sabotages Discovery without being noticed. Tilly is positively wired about an engineering wunderkind like that showing up, upstaging her, coz she's super nerdy but boy oh boy is she better than her.

In a funny "twist" she's simply a human with a Trill symbiont. Phew. So no, sorry, no wunderkind, just a medical marvel. Well I guess it's a good thing Trill symbionts learned to deal with human hosts in the past one thousand years.

Oh, and right, and she's actually human. For a moment I thought she could be J'naii, but that would require some sort of continuity beyond knowing that Trills sometimes have symbionts and that they carry all their previous memories with them and casting a non-binary actor in a (somewhat enforced) unigender species role would probably cause a crapstorm these days. Assuming anyone on Twatter who participates in manurestorms remembers a Star Trek TNG episode from almost two decades ago.

*I know that the actor considers themself (theirself?) simply non-binary, but Adira is referred to as her by other Discovery characters. So I'm going ot use that when referring to Adira. On a more funny note I think if Luzianus were still around he'd rejoice, Blu del Barrio looks a bit like his pictures of DA:I's Cassandra.

However, this is time at least Discovery tried to be Star Trek in some ways. The setting is ludicrous and the fact that Earth can't scan past Saturn is moronic beyond belief but at least they made peace between the United Earth Directorate Defense and the outpost on Titan. You know, like they're supposed to in a Trek show. Even if Georgiou beats up Hallig and says "diplomacy is so slow" just for some giggles.

Actually I'm surprised to be somewhat pleased with how that episode turned out. Surprising. I'm sure they come up with something really stupid next week to alleviate me of that feeling. Because I don't want it.

Edited October 31, 2020 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

6 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Dark Matter was my all-time favorite show on Syfy. When they walked away from that show, I walked away from them.

Yes, f*** them. And they also cancelled The Expanse.

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Yes, f*** them. And they also cancelled The Expanse.

That might have been the best case scenario, as Amazon has the deepest of pockets.

[InsaneCommander]

46 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

That might have been the best case scenario, as Amazon has the deepest of pockets.

Now we know it was for the better. Not back then.

[Gfted1]

The Mandalorian S1E1-6

Dig it so far. Baby Yoda makes me laugh more than I should.

[Lexx]

16 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

That might have been the best case scenario, as Amazon has the deepest of pockets.

At the same time they reduced the amount of episodes per season, though.

[Gfted1]

Tremors: Shrieker Island

Oh my god, they killed Burt! You bastards!

 [/spioler] 

[Raithe]

Found myself re-watching an old cancelled show while I was eating dinner.

Kings.  Damn, reminded me how out of its time that show was when it premiered back in 2009. Only 13 episodes of that first season, a modern day retelling of the story of David from the bible. An impeccable cast, and almost shakespearean dialogue.

Ian McShane, Susanna Thompson, Eamonn Walker, Dylan Baker providing the extreme gravitas, while Christopher Egan, a fairly young Sebastian Stan, and Allison Miller were the younger members of the cast, with Macaulay Culkin turning up for the last few episodes.

One of those ones I'll always feel a shame they cancelled it before working out the rest of the story.

***

King Silas Benjamin came to power in a mythical battle against the rival neighbor republic of Gath, capitalizing brilliantly and ruthlessly on his near-godly image. Farm-boy David Shepherd performs as well, saving Silas's crown prince in another epic battle, but is too noble and naive to aspire personal benefit rather then devoutly serve king and country. Nevertheless, after Silas decides to abuse David's legend, the hero is drawn into palace intrigues culminating into coup plans against Silas

***

 

 

Edited November 2, 2020 by Raithe

[Lexx]

Watched s1 and 2 of Mindhunter over the past few days. Really good show. Ofc Netflix had to cancel it.

[Raithe]

[LadyCrimson]

12 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Tremors: Shrieker Island

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh my god, they killed Burt! You bastards!

 [/spioler] 

Yeah when I saw it was on Netflix we watched it last night.  Or rather, I watched half of it and hubby watched all of it (this seems to be becoming a common occurrence for us...).  Now I'm glad I stopped. 

It wasn't terri-bad tho, what I saw. Better than some other films in the Tremor series.  Just not good enough for me to not want to do ... something else.

[Gfted1]

It was you mentioning it earlier that made me realize it even existed! I loves me the Tremors series warts and all. A guilty pleasure, like my personal Sharknado.

It wont be the same now.  

[majestic]

10 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

It was you mentioning it earlier that made me realize it even existed! I loves me the Tremors series warts and all. A guilty pleasure, like my personal Sharknado.

It wont be the same now.  

What? The first Tremors at least is a really good, well crafted film. It might be considered a guilty pleasure but it's nowhere in the same ballpark as trash like Sharknado.

[Lexx]

Yeah, the first one is the best. Everything after is kinda watchable, but for me it lost a bit of its flair later.

[rjshae]

On 10/31/2020 at 8:36 AM, kanisatha said:

Dark Matter was my all-time favorite show on Syfy. When they walked away from that show, I walked away from them.

What blew my mind is that they kept Killjoys instead. 

[LadyCrimson]

To the Lake, via Netflix  (Russian with subtitles, altho if you insist on dubious quality dubbing, there's that option)

After the first 10-15 minutes, the first episode will likely grab ya pretty quick. 
I turned this one on because I recognized the lead - Kirill Käro - from another series ("Sniffer" crime procedural) that I liked a fair bit.  This one is a thriller/dark drama I guess, post-apoc in the process, fast acting disease epidemic, a couple families trying to get to safety etc.  No zombies, just "humans can be the worst enemies". Originally aired more than a year ago so filmed before the real-world pandemic, and is based on a novel. 

Anyhoo, 2 episodes in (of 8, so not very long) and it's pretty gripping. Sometimes the fairly narrow focus camerawork bothers me just a tad, personally, but otherwise - if it's your type of story premise, worth a try!

Edited November 5, 2020 by LadyCrimson