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

[Keyrock]

Brisco County - EP1 Pilot

Chinese railroad workers discover the orb. The Bly Gang escapes captivity via a gag straight out of Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote. Brisco inadvertently infiltrates Big Smith's gang then touches Pete's piece. 

Pilot episodes are notorious for being bad, but this was pretty solid. It was mainly an introduction to the cast and a first glimpse of the orb's powers. Pete was the star of the show, he was wonderfully goofy. John Bly was also delightful, but he wasn't in the episode that much.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

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."

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

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.

 

 

[Keyrock]

Brisco County - EP 2 Socrates' Sister

Brisco captures Jack Randolph, a member of the Bly Gang. Jack hires Socrates' sister Iphigenia (their parents get top marks in the baby naming category) as his defense lawyer.

This is a completely self-contained episode, it doesn't tie into the overarching plot with the orb at all. Pete is inexplicably back in this episode and no worse for the wear after getting shot and presumably killed in the pilot. No explanation is given, I guess it was just a flesh wound. I'm willing to overlook it since Pete is the greatest.

This episode mainly focuses on Socrates, his sister, Brisco, and Professor Wickwire. Lord Bowler is in full-on comedy mode. Dixie doesn't appear in this episode, neither does John Bly. Overall it was a fun little adventure and better paced and structured than the pilot, even if if did nothing to advance the overarching plot (which will never be resolved anyway).

[LadyCrimson]

I'm so used to using the PS4 netflix app and getting actual "4k" resolution/higher bitrate video that I forgot using Firefox they limit you to 720/lower bitrates. I think with Chrome it might go up to 1080 but ...you can tell the quality difference hugely on a larger TV. I've heard it's a combo of drm (since web browsers have less control over/it's super easy to record higher quality copies) and bandwidth saving. Annoying.

...anyway, watching the 3rd season of Two Sentence Horror Stories. Seems as decent as the first two seasons and I still like the 20 min. format. The 2nd episode Plant Life had me totally thinking Little Shop of Horrors but then it went in a different direction...

@Keyrock I was really excited for Brisco back then too. I liked the first episode or two ok but then I think I never really watched the rest, or only caught bits and pieces of it years later on YT. I think the humor fell slightly flat for me and/or too many other things in my life at the time, but I don't really remember. I'll always love Bruce tho.

Edited March 6, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Amentep]

TNG - "Thine Own Self"

Okay, not the worst story, but why would Starfleet allow an away mission on a planet that would be covered by the prime directive that wasn't disguised? Just because you think there isn't going to be contact doesn't mean there won't be. And what sense does it make to send a solo away mission anyhow?  

This season must be the 'Gothic horror' season. Haunted house earlier in the season and now Frankenstein's Monster!

[Keyrock]

Brisco County - EP 3 The Orb Scholar

Brisco gets a lead on John Bly's whereabouts that has him crossing paths with an old acquaintance. Along the way he meets an old man who has been studying the orb.

This is a main story arc episode that heavily features Lord Bowler and John Bly. Bowler is great here and comes off as much more of a friend than a rival to Brisco. Bly is deliciously evil, Billy Drago really shines in this role. There's a great contrast between the bumbling comedy of Pete (who is sadly not in this episode) and the smooth talking devious evil of Bly as the show's 2 main reoccurring villains. We also get a pre-medical hologram guest appearance from the always delightful Robert Picardo as a corrupt deputy.

It's been nearly 30 years, but if I recall correctly, the main story focused episodes tended to be more serious in tone, supernatural shenanigans aside, while the self-contained side quest episodes tended to be more comedic. 

[majestic]

Star Trek Picard, season 2, episode 1: "The Star Gazer"

Spoiler

This... opens in medias res with an unknown assailant with tentacles boring into the bridge of a new starship, later revealed to be a newly constructed Stargazer. The assailant is taking over the ship, and Picard orders the computer to activate the self destruct, there's a tend second count down and a hard cut to a 48 hours earlier absolutely fantastic scene of his vineyard, leaving you to wonder what just went on and how they'll get out of the mess they were in.

We don't get a clear view of this, I suppose, in order to create some tension. What could this possibly be? Borg green energy blasts flying, Borg green shield around the assailant, strange design, tenatcles, tries to take over the ship. It calls to Picard in a strange, multilayered voice sounding a whole lot like hundreds of voices at once: PICARD! This is *so* exciting!

Or more likely, not really, because that action scene in the beginning was about as interesting as watching paint dry. The scene at the vinyard happens to be during grape harvest, and Picard is sampling his grapes while 24th century hover-tractors zip over the landscape, beaming grapes into buckets. Wait, what? Why?

Amazon Prime's video quality over the browser stinks. Why the hell are they warning me this "best quality" setting will transmit roughly 7GB of data per hour?

So why does that matter? Because it's not thought out. As per usual with these shows, nothing is actually thought out. Why are there vehicles zipping about when they collect the grapes via transporter? Just beam all of them to the storage area AT ONCE for crying out loud. Why am I nitpicking this early into the show? Let me answer that with a question. Why the hell not, because that's about the only fun I'm going to have with this.

You know, there could be actual people harvesting the grapes, and someone could ask Picard why he's insisting on doing this the hard way, and he could be like: Young man, I spent my life zipping about the modern world, always on the edge, it's a good idea to go back to the roots every now and then. Plus, I find it relaxing. Or you could bring in the harvest all at once, not have a scene with flying tractors teleporting grapes into buckets, and people carrying grapes in wooden boxes in the next.

Because they can get beamed into the bucket, but heaven forbid if they went someplace else in the transporter, right?

There's a scene with Picard and his housekeeper, the former Tal Shiar operative that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. This is going to be a trend, because outside of Picard and everyone they brought back from the old shows, I don't recall a single character name. Not one. That's quite an achievement. I could tell you right now what I had for lunch and dinner for the last two weeks, or what my teachers said 20 years ago.

Luckily Picard calls her Laris, and for everyone that doesn't get a name drop, Amazon's X-Ray is really helpful for a change. Laris was apparently told to come on to Picard really strong and make her best "I WANT YOU NOW!" face.

Oh captain, my captain. I have a plumbing problem downstairs, everything's drippy, can you fix it? -- Random porn dialogue popping up when looking at this scene.

They almost kiss, then Picard makes this face:

Ah, Laris, I either have constipation or I'm supposed to tell you I'm 81 and can't perform as well as I'd like any more. The director was really vague and there's nothing else in the script!

Laris is seriously annoyed that Picard can't get it up forgot his viagra and she tells him that he should go to bed, he has a speech tomorrow after all. I'm at a bit of a loss why were subjected to this scene. Picard didn't have much romance in his life, something that comes with the job for many officers, but there really is no reason why this wouldn't work. I mean, performance issues aside. On the other hand, he does have an android body now, I'm sure it does have a... never mind, never mind.

The writers realized that it makes no sense and hastily insert a flashback to a very young Picard being distraught over their parents fighting all the time, and some insinuated or potentially shown domestic violence from his father. The scene is not really clear, only that Picard suffered some TRAUAMA in his past that prevents him from forming an actual romantic bond with someone else. Picard looks at the sky in a scene underlaid with dramatic orchestral string music. The pathos is unbelievable, even for Star Trek.

Which would be fine, if he hadn't done that in prior episodes or movies. It's hard to remember Anij because the movie sucked, but hey:

I too like bald men, and I was much more successful than Laris... at least before Worf fired the purple space bazooka.

The scene zooms out and reveals this negative space wedgie:

This is Borg green too, I wonder if that means something? I don't really know... hmm...

Picard is giving a speech at the Acedemy and the cadets are off to their new assignments. Wait, before this continues, it must be said that Laris and Picard talked about how it's been a year and a half since Laris' better half Zhaban died. I'm not sure about the timeframes here, because Zhaban had an off-screen death, but this is going to be important for later, because the scene at the academy reveals that Legolas is now a Starfleet Cadet, and he's assigned to Commander Whatsherface's (the drug addict) ship!

That's quite a fast track there. Like one and a half years at the Academy and already assigned to a ship, that's the second fastest after The Wesley, and The Wesley was a gifted youngster who eventually turned out to be able to bend time and space through his will alone. Or whatever the hell that was back in TNG with that hilarious native American episode.

Girl on the left: They said we'd get to meet Legolas if we slept with the producers, but this isn't Orlando Bloom. I feel cheated. Girl on the right: I'm so going to sue their asses over this.

The negative space wedgy transmits something a hundred different languages at once that says: Help us, Picard!

Yeah, no, that's so totally not the Borg guys, please, don't even begin to think about it. Oh look, they don't. Picard goes to visit Guinan and they have a drink, reminisce about the olden days and Guinan tries to find out why Picard is so ready to risk his life, but not his heart. Picard doesn't answer, of course, but we know. Painful memories of his mother. Little Picard has an Oedipus complex he isn't over yet. Gee.

A pirate attack on Seven of Nine makes sure that there's enough galactic contrivance for everyone in the cast of Star Trek Picard to meet at the negative space wedgie. Picard because he was called and immediately left to avoid having an awkward talk with Laris, who looks very disappointed about having to call someone else to fix her plumbing problem. Captain Latino because he now commands the Stargazer and Blonde Whatsherface, the unwitting Romulan spy who for some reason isn't just at large, but was attending some diplomatic shindig with Soji, the android, who is the only other one left out because she's is too busy spouting the worst platitudes you could possibly imagine.

I'm smashed Soji, but Imma leave. Like, you ok? You look like you forgot your bra there. Are those jelly boobs? Who the hell gave you those pants?

For trust, words need to come from the heart, not from an interpreter. Since when in Star Trek history did anyone need an interpreter? Hello, universal translator. Why... what... forget it.

Now that everyone is helpfully together, it's time for the reveal. Whover the race is that opened the mysterious negative space wedgie (imagine, they still haven't figured it out, the morons!) quoted Article 15 of the Federation. They want to join. Everyone is positively tingly with anticipation of perhaps getting a powerful new Federation member. Captain Latino off-handedly says that the new Stargazer has been fitted out with lots of cool Borg tech from the Borg Cube research project. Nobody thinks anything about approaching what's clearly a Borg transwarp conduit with a ship full of newly installed Borg tech.

I wonder what happened to the armor and torpedo tech Voyager brought home from the future? Ah, screw continuity, who cares about that.

Fast foward to the negative space wedgie spitting out a Borg ship, to the surprise of everyone. Seven of Nine immediately suggests opening fire. Better to be safe, than sorry. Picard can't pass up the chance for a decimated Borg collective to join the Federation and wants to talk. More and more Federation ships arrive, and the Borg send the Borg Queen over for negotiations, and she starts draining power from the Stargazer and taking over the ship. The crew begins firing on her and she shoots back, but Seven notes that she's only stunning them. Captain Lationo repeatedly calls for his screw to stop firing, but they all kinda ignore his order and keep shooting at the Queen to absolutely no effect.

The Borg tech in the other Federation starships turns out to be a bad idea as the Queen is taking control over them too, through the Stargazer. Picard orders the self-destruct, the Borg queen talks to him in his mother's voice and we fade to white and Picard is suddenly back at his mansion. A robot servant doesn't understand what he wants from him after he inquires where Laris went. John de Lancie appears on screen.

Dude, what's wrong with your faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace?

He looks at Patrick Stewart and is like: Yo brah, you got mighty old, let me catch up. *snip*

That's much better, don't you think? Should I use a cat filter the next time? Something else? How about an Aldebaran rat-snake?

Picard is super annoyed, but Q reminds him of his parting words and says:

Welcome to the very end of the road not taken.

So... time travel Q alternate reality plot aside, this wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. At the very least I didn't feel like gouging my eyes out and piercing my eardrums to make it stop, which is a big improvement over all the other episodes of this show, even though it still took an awful lot of stupid contrivances to get everyone back in action and everyone is quite frankly at their dumbest, not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Let's see how disappointing it will get.

Edited March 6, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

42 minutes ago, majestic said:

There's a scene with Picard and his housekeeper, the former Tal Shiar operative that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. This is going to be a trend, because outside of Picard and everyone they brought back from the old shows, I don't recall a single character name. Not one. That's quite an achievement. I could tell you right now what I had for lunch and dinner for the last two weeks, or what my teachers said 20 years ago.

Yep, of all the flaws in nuTrek imo the biggest is the complete lack of memorable characters, even worse than the awful inconsistent plotting. At least people remember Neelix or Harry Kim, though they may wish they didn't. To be honest there's a pretty big lack of memerable characters too.

Number of novel Discovery names I can remember after 3 seasons: Michael, Lorca, Tilly, Saru. I could probably remember the names of the engineer and his boyfriend, if put to the coals.

Number of novel Picard names I can remember after 1 season: none.

Number of random Blake's 7/ Farscape/ BSG/ old Trek/ random SW EU I browsed at the library/ computer game characters I can remember after 10+ years... multiple times more for each.

[Sarex]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Farscape

I've been itching to rewatch that series.

[Zoraptor]

Farscape was streaming on Prime when I had the sub for WoT/ The Expanse a couple of months ago. Couldn't be sure if it's the same for Europe/ Serbia though.

I got a water damaged DVD set for next to nothing years ago, one of the best deals I've had.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Zoraptor

[majestic]

54 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Farscape was streaming on Prime when I had the sub for WoT/ The Expanse a couple of months ago. Couldn't be sure if it's the same for Europe/ Serbia though.

I got a water damaged DVD set for next to nothing years ago, one of the best deals I've had.

It is for Germany and Austria, but that doesn't mean it's available in Serbia. Distribution licencing is a mess, streaming services are springing up left and right making everything even worse and the executives then wonder why everyone's turning to easier alternatives. Yeah, wonder why. No idea, really. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by majestic

[kirottu]

16 hours ago, majestic said:

Star Trek Picard, season 2, episode 1: "The Star Gazer"

So... time travel Q alternate reality plot aside, this wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. At the very least I didn't feel like gouging my eyes out and piercing my eardrums to make it stop, which is a big improvement over all the other episodes of this show, even though it still took an awful lot of stupid contrivances to get everyone back in action and everyone is quite frankly at their dumbest, not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Let's see how disappointing it will get.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by Picard. I wasn't aggressively bad. Sure, some stuff felt off and writing could have been better, but compared to other Star Trek stuff out there it wasn't half bad.

[InsaneCommander]

You guys convinced me to watch the second season of Picard. I hope I don't regret it.

[kirottu]

4 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

You guys convinced me to watch the second season of Picard. I hope I don't regret it.

I refuse to take any responsibility over your actions. 

[bugarup]

Halfway into second season of "Stranger things". More Stephen King references than you can shake a roque mallet at, which is a good thing, but too much soap opera otherwise. Perpetually heightened emotions, people being oblivious, blase or just plain careless about cryptic sh†t happening, so much high school teen drama, bleh. The kids are alright though. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by bugarup

[majestic]

8 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

You guys convinced me to watch the second season of Picard. I hope I don't regret it.

I have no idea how anyone can take my post as recommendation, just because it's not painful enough to stab yourself over doesn't really mean it's worth watching.

Also:

3 hours ago, kirottu said:

I refuse to take any responsibility over your actions. 

^ Very much this.

17 hours ago, kirottu said:

I was actually pleasantly surprised by Picard. I wasn't aggressively bad. Sure, some stuff felt off and writing could have been better, but compared to other Star Trek stuff out there it wasn't half bad.

I hated every second of the first season of Picard, so the first episode of the second season being sort of all right - outside of making up a family trauma for a long established character to explain something that needs no explanation for the sole sake of having romance drama in your show - was indeed a pleasant surprise. I'm pretty sure it won't last. It never does with nuTrek.

[Lexx]

I still remember the one scene in s1 where Picard is standing in his office and out of nowhere comes a wild camera shot of his old clock with 110% lens flares etc. For me, this is exactly what this show is. Totally random and lots of lens flares that nobody asked for.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Lexx

[BruceVC]

@Gfted1

The latest season of AHS is out in SA and I have started watching it, 2 episodes in and so far so good. Its all about a drug that enhances creativity but means you become a Vampire like creature. Its much better than some of the last few seasons 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Horror_Story:_Double_Feature

 

[Gfted1]

Thanks for the recommendation. I threw in the towel after the season about the travelling carnival (S3?) and my wife maybe made it another season. For me, it could never recapture the awesomeness of S1 Murder House. The same thing happened to us with True Detective, the first season was gonzo fantastic and every season thereafter was diminished.

[BruceVC]

33 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Thanks for the recommendation. I threw in the towel after the season about the travelling carnival (S3?) and my wife maybe made it another season. For me, it could never recapture the awesomeness of S1 Murder House. The same thing happened to us with True Detective, the first season was gonzo fantastic and every season thereafter was diminished.

Yes I remember because we have discussed AHS in the past and you said you lost interest. I watched until season 6 and also lost interest. But this new season is interesting 

And I agree S1 was brilliant 

I have just rewatched  the whole of True Detective and I loved them, S1 was the best for me  but only because most of the " good guys " died in S2 

[InsaneCommander]

13 hours ago, majestic said:

I have no idea how anyone can take my post as recommendation, just because it's not painful enough to stab yourself over doesn't really mean it's worth watching.

I know, but it looked better than what they have been making and calling Star Trek so I decided to check it. Notice I haven't read the spoilers in your post yet.

It is reasonably good (at least in comparison with the first season), however, there is still lots of things that keep telling me this is not Star Trek. I can't even identify all of them. The beginning was really boring and the entire episode was full of forced things like Picard suddenly having a serious issue that he has never discussed with Guinan and every character from the first season showing up at the same time (I was genuinely surprised when the crew from TNG didn't show up).

My bet is that it will get worse and if I continue to watch it will be like Discovery S1 and TWoT all over again. Well, in that case I'll deserve it.

[majestic]

5 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I know, but it looked better than what they have been making and calling Star Trek so I decided to check it. Notice I haven't read the spoilers in your post yet.

It is reasonably good (at least in comparison with the first season), however, there is still lots of things that keep telling me this is not Star Trek. I can't even identify all of them. The beginning was really boring and the entire episode was full of forced things like Picard suddenly having a serious issue that he has never discussed with Guinan and every character from the first season showing up at the same time (I was genuinely surprised when the crew from TNG didn't show up).

My bet is that it will get worse and if I continue to watch it will be like Discovery S1 and TWoT all over again. Well, in that case I'll deserve it.

Pretty much my impression as well.

[ShadySands]

I'll wait til the whole season is out before I'll consider watching it. If madness hasn't overtaken you and it remains at least not terrible then maybe I'll check it out 

We're rewatching TNG on Netflix before it leaves because I've been refusing to watch Trek on Paramount+ even though I got a 10 year sub for an old Iraqi dinar.

Edited March 8, 2022 by ShadySands

[InsaneCommander]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:43 PM, majestic said:

Star Trek Picard, season 2, episode 1: "The Star Gazer"

Man, this was even worse than I thought. The nonsensical use of transporter and translator technologies, lack of continuity, everyone getting postions in Starfleet despite the problems... And it is only the beginning of the season.

Edit: guess who else didn't hate the first episode

"Its the same team, it can't go right"

Edited March 9, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Lexx]

Nice, I thought they didn't want to talk about Star Trek anymore. I'd rather watch their videos about it than the actual tv show.