The TV and Streaming Thread: Where is Ricky Gervais when you need him???

[Amentep]

 

[LadyCrimson]

On 2/17/2022 at 10:03 PM, Lexx said:

That said, the tv app doesn't seem to have some sort of "save this for later"-function, only a "like", which would put it on my list ... but how can I "like" something that I haven't even started watching yet.

Not sure which app you're using, but on my PS4 and Samsun/android tablet, (and webbrowser), they both have one of those "continue watching" category lines, often inserted under your Watchlist line, but it can vary in placement depending on Netflix's mood. So anything I click on and watch 10-20 minutes of usually gets socked into there. If you finish the entire thing (as in, credits roll on a last episode" with no episodes considered unfinished) it tends to auto-remove from that line, or you can manually "remove from row" before then, if you want. Although I notice it's slightly more annoying to do it in the browser vs. the apps..

Have never used a smart-TV app  tho, so dunno how different they are.

Edited February 23, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[InsaneCommander]

On 2/18/2022 at 9:22 PM, majestic said:

Let's see what else is in the recommendations then. Steins;Gate 0. Nope.

[Hurlshort]

I am binging Inventing Anna with my wife. It is a fascinating story.

[Hurlshort]

Peacemaker had a pretty good cameo by the heavy hitters at the end.

[majestic]

Yikes, I forgot to write my weekly Discovery diatribe. I'm not going to do that in as much detail as usual, but let is suffice to say that it was, once again, patently dumb and bad. Season four, episode 10. Don't really care what the title is.

A few key things:

Spoiler

• Discovery has huge issues moving through the galactic barrier because of <reason> while no other ship in the franchise had troubles to leave the galaxy. The Enterprise didn't, only troubles with the crew afterwards, and the Enterprise-D certainly didn't either in the first season. Never mind.
• I said before that President Rillak read the script in advance, and now that was confirmed. The DMA is now headed to Earth, with Vulcan and Titan (yes, the moon) along it's projected path. 71 hours left on the count down to destruction. We've upped the stakes a wittle bit.
• Discovery gets hit by a gamma ray burst - again, I might add - that's going through the shields, but everyone is strangely fine.
• Eh... some hackneyed teary eye flashback for McKay while he's searching with Book for programmable antimatter to reinforce their shields with. Sounds like a plan.
• Michael keeps handing off the conn whenver she leaves the bridge.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Discovery gets hit by a gamma ray burst - again, I might add - that's going through the shields, but everyone is strangely fine.

Isn't that the thing where, if one were to ever strike Earth, would directly destroy a good amount of life on Earth...and indirectly finish off the rest? Seems like an inappropriate usage of it to use it so willy-nilly...I guess that's the least of that show's crimes, though.

[majestic]

36 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Isn't that the thing where, if one were to ever strike Earth, would directly destroy a good amount of life on Earth...and indirectly finish off the rest? Seems like an inappropriate usage of it to use it so willy-nilly...I guess that's the least of that show's crimes, though.

It's a good indicator of how much the show cares for getting the little details right. It's fine if a gamma ray burst doesn't kill everyone, that's why these ships all have fictional shielding technology, but once it's past the shields and is like a light flash on the bridge, it's everyone melts into goo time.

And yeah, Earth getting hit by a gamma ray burst is a potential extinction event.

Edited February 28, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, majestic said:

It's a good indicator of how much the show cares for getting the little details right. It's fine if a gamma ray burst doesn't kill everyone, that's why these ships all have fictional shielding technology, but once it's past the shields and is like a light flash on the bridge, it's everyone melts into goo time.

And yeah, Earth getting hit by a gamma ray burst is a potential extinction event.

Or we all turn into Hulks. That at least would be more entertaining than whatever the hell this hypothetical show from the anti-universe is doing.

[Amentep]

TNG: Lower Decks.

A good episode.  Sito Jaxa we hardly knew ye.  I remember the episode pretty well from first run, but had forgotten the character types (mostly remembering snips of scenes and the overall thrust of the plot) so it ws interesting to see how closely the characters here mirror the characters in Lower Decks the animated series, though, which was something I didn't remember.

Discovery, Season 2 Episodes 1, 2, 3

So far not awful by my standards (which would mostly be to become boring, but I do keep waiting for the other shoe to drop).  I don't find this Pike to be particularly like any Pike that has gone before, but he makes an effective leader character which I guess is good enough for the needs of the story.

Spoiler

They killed a blue shirt! HOW DARE THEY?  Seriously though, the kind of "i'm going to defy the captains orders because I'm a hotshot and need to show up others and then immediately pilots into a meteor and dies" is what SHOULD have happened to Paris in Voyager.  It would have made that show's first season 100% better, in my opinion.

Characters are suffering from what I like to call "LOST-itis".  You know, where things could easily be solved if they actually talked to one another like normal people, but instead they keep secrets for no real reason other than to prolong the plot (the worst of the bunch is Tilly who keeps her secret for...like half an episode and for no real reason).

Sadly Stamets is missed a lot in the early episodes; nice to see him come back at the end of Episode 3 as the slightly jerky character we all like.  Saru gets a few good lines.  Jett Reno was a fun character in the one sequence she was in.  Tilly has been wildly all over the place.  Some of the other bridge crew get a bit more face time (and names said on screen).  Liked the gag about Lorka's ready room.

Speaking of Tilly...

Spoiler

I've seen a lot of flap online about Tilly winning the marathon which I'm assuming is this one and not some future marathon because the show becomes STAR TREK: RUNNING MAN or something - it seems to me regardless of everything else, it might be quite legitimate to take May Aehern/fungal parasite at her word that she helped Tilly win.  Unless something later contradicts that possibility.  Particularly given that she is able to catch up to them after arguing with Aehern which seems like a superhuman feat that only makes sense if Aehern is right.

The Klingon stuff...I kinda don't care.  Its nice to see some follow-up on the storyline, but the Klingon based story arcs were the weakest aspect of the first season, and nothing here has changed my mind.

Now to the big elephant in the room...

Spoiler

Spock.  None of the back story really fits with the backstory for Spock from the original series and the Animated series (at least as I recall it).  That was to be expected since Burnham was being retroactively added, but the arc for Spock, being so profoundly mentally effected by the appearance of the Red Angel almost feels like it'd make more sense as Sybok's story arc (a character they haven't even bothered to namecheck despite the obvious reasons why namechecking him would make sense).  An experience like seeing the Red Angel could have easily been established as something that would - after the events of this story - sets him on his eventual path to rejecting logic and seeking out forbidden texts and eventually Sha-ka-re - the Galactic light. 

As such, using Sybok instead of Spock would have been a nice way to develop further the oddities of Sarek's family, to develop a character who goes on to be an important tragic villain in a movie and who is mostly an unexplored character whose relationship with Sarek, Amanda, Spock and now Burnham hasn't really been explored.  Plus you could have still had Spock essentially out of the picture for these episodes as he could have left on his vacation to search for Sybok (instead of the 'check himself into a mental health facility' aspect of the story) so structurally nothing so far would have been changed by this. 

Anyhow, it seems a bit of a waste, to me, and something that might have made for a richer story, since so much of Burnham's back story so far has been dealing with the awkward family dynamics she was raised in and Sybok is so awkward they haven't even mentioned him once in the show.  It might have worked more for fandom, too (more so than heavily altering Spock's backstory*).

*there has always been the oddity with "The Cage" that Spock was shown to be clearly emotional; an alternative path with this Red Angel visitation story, I suppose, would have been to argue that Spock's emotionality seen there was part of his 'breakdown' regarding seeing the Red Angel which in turn could have explained a long standing continuity issue that came from revising the show for the second pilot - except that the description that we get that Spock became more withdrawn doesn't fit what we see in "The Cage" either.  That said, I'm not 100% sure if this is supposed to be before or after The Cage, but I think before, hence why I mentioned it.

 

[Guard Dog]

Started watching "From" on Epix. Four episodes in and I am intrigued. 

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, Amentep said:

Seriously though, the kind of "i'm going to defy the captains orders because I'm a hotshot and need to show up others and then immediately pilots into a meteor and dies" is what SHOULD have happened to Paris in Voyager

Seriously can't even begin to imagine what B'Elana saw in that moron - guess it was her Klingon side telling her to fall for the closest angsty human version of a Klingon substitute possible.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

18 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Seriously can't even begin to imagine what B'Elana saw in that moron - guess it was her Klingon side telling her to fall for the closest angsty human version of a Klingon substitute possible.

The same thing Chakotay suddenly saw in Seven of Nine, out of nowhere. Lines of a script, written by hacks. A-koo-chee-moya.

I shouldn't be too hard on Voyager. Voyager is pretty watchable compared to the other stuff that came afterwards. Like One Night in Sickbay, which was probably the worst Star Trek episode until These Are The Voyages... which was the worst until every other Discovery episode became the worst until the androids in Picard summoned Mecha-Cthulhu from Dark Space (tm).

Oh how I wish I'd be exaggerating just how breathtakingly stupid this was...

  edit:

10 hours ago, Amentep said:

Discovery, Season 2 Episodes 1, 2, 3

So far not awful by my standards (which would mostly be to become boring, but I do keep waiting for the other shoe to drop).  I don't find this Pike to be particularly like any Pike that has gone before, but he makes an effective leader character which I guess is good enough for the needs of the story.

  Reveal hidden contents

They killed a blue shirt! HOW DARE THEY?  Seriously though, the kind of "i'm going to defy the captains orders because I'm a hotshot and need to show up others and then immediately pilots into a meteor and dies" is what SHOULD have happened to Paris in Voyager.  It would have made that show's first season 100% better, in my opinion.

Characters are suffering from what I like to call "LOST-itis".  You know, where things could easily be solved if they actually talked to one another like normal people, but instead they keep secrets for no real reason other than to prolong the plot (the worst of the bunch is Tilly who keeps her secret for...like half an episode and for no real reason).

Sadly Stamets is missed a lot in the early episodes; nice to see him come back at the end of Episode 3 as the slightly jerky character we all like.  Saru gets a few good lines.  Jett Reno was a fun character in the one sequence she was in.  Tilly has been wildly all over the place.  Some of the other bridge crew get a bit more face time (and names said on screen).  Liked the gag about Lorka's ready room.

Speaking of Tilly...

  Reveal hidden contents

I've seen a lot of flap online about Tilly winning the marathon which I'm assuming is this one and not some future marathon because the show becomes STAR TREK: RUNNING MAN or something - it seems to me regardless of everything else, it might be quite legitimate to take May Aehern/fungal parasite at her word that she helped Tilly win.  Unless something later contradicts that possibility.  Particularly given that she is able to catch up to them after arguing with Aehern which seems like a superhuman feat that only makes sense if Aehern is right.

The Klingon stuff...I kinda don't care.  Its nice to see some follow-up on the storyline, but the Klingon based story arcs were the weakest aspect of the first season, and nothing here has changed my mind.

Now to the big elephant in the room...

  Reveal hidden contents

Spock.  None of the back story really fits with the backstory for Spock from the original series and the Animated series (at least as I recall it).  That was to be expected since Burnham was being retroactively added, but the arc for Spock, being so profoundly mentally effected by the appearance of the Red Angel almost feels like it'd make more sense as Sybok's story arc (a character they haven't even bothered to namecheck despite the obvious reasons why namechecking him would make sense).  An experience like seeing the Red Angel could have easily been established as something that would - after the events of this story - sets him on his eventual path to rejecting logic and seeking out forbidden texts and eventually Sha-ka-re - the Galactic light. 

As such, using Sybok instead of Spock would have been a nice way to develop further the oddities of Sarek's family, to develop a character who goes on to be an important tragic villain in a movie and who is mostly an unexplored character whose relationship with Sarek, Amanda, Spock and now Burnham hasn't really been explored.  Plus you could have still had Spock essentially out of the picture for these episodes as he could have left on his vacation to search for Sybok (instead of the 'check himself into a mental health facility' aspect of the story) so structurally nothing so far would have been changed by this. 

Anyhow, it seems a bit of a waste, to me, and something that might have made for a richer story, since so much of Burnham's back story so far has been dealing with the awkward family dynamics she was raised in and Sybok is so awkward they haven't even mentioned him once in the show.  It might have worked more for fandom, too (more so than heavily altering Spock's backstory*).

*there has always been the oddity with "The Cage" that Spock was shown to be clearly emotional; an alternative path with this Red Angel visitation story, I suppose, would have been to argue that Spock's emotionality seen there was part of his 'breakdown' regarding seeing the Red Angel which in turn could have explained a long standing continuity issue that came from revising the show for the second pilot - except that the description that we get that Spock became more withdrawn doesn't fit what we see in "The Cage" either.  That said, I'm not 100% sure if this is supposed to be before or after The Cage, but I think before, hence why I mentioned it.

 

Ah, minor tip here, I don't think it'll help, but try not to think about anything that happens in Discovery going forward. It'll just break your brain if you try to make sense of it. Just "enjoy" the ride. You'll get to watch Skynet ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL at some point. That'll probably make no sense yet, but unfortunately it will soon enough...

Edited March 1, 2022 by majestic

[Amentep]

I'm not sure whether to give that the 'laugh' or 'gasp' icon...

[kirottu]

On 2/28/2022 at 2:01 AM, majestic said:

  Hide contents

• I said before that President Rillak read the script in advance, and now that was confirmed. The DMA is now headed to Earth, with Vulcan and Titan (yes, the moon) along it's projected path. 71 hours left on the count down to destruction. We've upped the stakes a wittle bit.

I don't quite understand. You said DMA is multiple light years in size. How can just one of the moons of Saturn be in it's way when it's coming towards earth?

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

The same thing Chakotay suddenly saw in Seven of Nine, out of nowhere. Lines of a script, written by hacks. A-koo-chee-moya.

Poor Chakotay - the most boring and lame character possible compounded by writers who clearly did not give a crap about said character. Didn't know they tried to do that, though.

[majestic]

8 hours ago, kirottu said:

I don't quite understand. You said DMA is multiple light years in size. How can just one of the moons of Saturn be in it's way when it's coming towards earth?

There's two answers, or rather, one answer with two components. First, the writers all have no concept of astronomical scales, but that's probably something Alex Kurtzman got from Jar Jar Abrams, or maybe it was the other way around. Han could watch the "Republic" die from Angkor Wat in The Force Awakens and Spock watched Vulcan disappear in a red-matter black hole too. The other is that since we barely have established any locations, Vulcan, Earth and Titan are the entire sum of the places the viewer is supposed to care about from the last season.

In the third season, Discovery could jump to Titan because it was outside of Earth's sensor range, and the outpost on Titan was capable of launching raids on Earth without being discovered. All from a moon of a planet that's visible from Earth with the naked eye.

Combine that and what does it matter that the DMA is large enough to encompass the entire Solar System and it's closest neighbours.

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Poor Chakotay - the most boring and lame character possible compounded by writers who clearly did not give a crap about said character. Didn't know they tried to do that, though.

Last minute addon to the series. Like, literally. Chakotay and Seven are seen having a date in the very last episode, with an undertone of "this has been going on for a while" while nothing of the sort ever happened in the series. After on and off teasing a potential romance between Mr. Boring and Ms. Bipolar.

Edited March 1, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

18 hours ago, majestic said:

I shouldn't be too hard on Voyager. Voyager is pretty watchable compared to the other stuff that came afterwards. Like One Night in Sickbay, which was probably the worst Star Trek episode until These Are The Voyages... which was the worst until every other Discovery episode became the worst until the androids in Picard summoned Mecha-Cthulhu from Dark Space (tm).

Oh how I wish I'd be exaggerating just how breathtakingly stupid this was...

[Keyrock]

Time to revisit an old friend I haven't seen in almost 30 years:

My buddy and I watched this show religiously when it was on TV. He was a HUGE fan of Wild Wild West (the TV show), we both loved Bruce Campbell (who doesn't?), this was completely up our alleys. I remember absolutely loving this show then being horribly crushed when it got canned after season 1. That cancellation hurt worse than Firefly getting yanked.

Will it hold up? I'll report back.

[Amentep]

When rewatching Brisco County, just remember

Spoiler

that NOBODY touches Pete's piece!

 

[majestic]

St... St... Discovery, thing. Episode something, season whatever.

"We're in orbit around a former gas giant. The gas was burnt off by meterorite impacts."

 

Spoiler

You'd think they're walking towards a space shuttle that'll bring them and some nukes to an incoming asteroid, like in a certain Michael Bay film ca. 1998.

Michael leaves for an archeological expedition hoping to find something to help them communicate with the creators of the negative space wedgie that's en route to destroying Earth, Vulcan AND Titan at the same time. Yep. The black leather hyper cool walk moment is for... visiting a dead world hoping to find some ruins. Episode is called Rosetta, so that probably means they'll find something, at least.

Fun fact, Rosette, which is pretty similar to Rosetta, is a German colloqualism for the anal sphincter. This has more to do with the sphincter than the Rosetta stone, really. Cool and the Gang land on the gas giant's solid core and just step outside willy nilly. Yeah, almost. They ARE wearing space suits, for all the good that would do them. For reference, Jupiter's core is in the ballpark of ten to fourteen times as massive as Earth. Even if all the gas went away for some reason, you... ah to hell with it, never mind any of that.

They find some ancient ruins, Saru has premonitions of DEATH and a mass grave of what's presumably species TEN-C, giant fossilized bone structures from creatures "floating" in the gaseous layers of the former, ah, gas giant.

No, this is not a screenshot from Mass Effect, although it may as well be.

Book and McKay infiltrate Discovery to install a sensor hack so Book's ship can piggyback on Discovery. It's a really riveting, interesting and fun subplot that's about as fun, riveting and interesting as it sounds. McKay runs into Reno, and we cut away from the scene, yay, tension. Michael finds the TEN-C Rosetta stone: A group of 16 pheromones presumably used to communicate. Progress, progress...

Book finds Reno on his shuttle, apparently McKay took her hostage. Well, why not.

Except for the beginning, the episode was fine, actually. Not good, but in the context of the endless sea of stupid this is, it was passable.

 

[InsaneCommander]

34 minutes ago, majestic said:

"We're in orbit around a former gas giant. The gas was burnt off by meterorite impacts."

[Raithe]

Oh Boy! New Quantum Leap Pilot Has Cast Raymond Lee in Lead Role | Tor.com

[uuuhhii]

appearance on youtube keep switching to light for some reason

anyone know what is going on?

boys presents diabolical

trying far too hard with all the blood and gore

each episode are independent and parody some trope or genre

episode 6 might be the best one

those news short are far more entertaining

[Zoraptor]

I saw the Adventures of Brisco County Jr a few years ago and it held up really well for the most part. The sci fi elements were always a bit silly* but all the Bowler/ Socrates/ Brisco/ Dixie interactions were good as ever.

As an aside, I'm not sure if we got the post orb episodes shown here first time around as I couldn't remember them at all. I actually checked if they'd made a 2nd season they were part of.

*they at least made more sense than meteorites burning the gas off a gas giant though.