The TV and Streaming Thread: Pilot Week

[InsaneCommander]

Great episode of The Orville.

Spoiler

I guess this is their version of the Borg.

 

Strange New Worlds was good too.

Spoiler

So Alora's people would literally fall from the sky without the child.

 

Interesting how both episodes had this in common:

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sometimes what appears to be nonsensical religious beliefs can be exactly (or almost) the truth.

 

[ShadySands]

3 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Great episode of The Orville.

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I guess this is their version of the Borg.

 

I also really enjoyed though I couldn't help but think of some Voyager episodes while watching, specifically the one with the Kobali and the one with void space.

It also shows one of my biggest nitpicks with space exploration in these shows,

Spoiler

they rarely explore a new and potentially dangerous environment in a sealed suit. You know, just in case you encounter something that didn't show up on a scan. I was afraid they were going to be suitless when they came back for the follow-up but was relieved that they had that much sense.

 

[Malcador]

On 6/8/2022 at 11:20 AM, Amentep said:

I'm assuming you're making a joke.  But I'll leave this here, anyhow...

 

 

[InsaneCommander]

3 hours ago, ShadySands said:

It also shows one of my biggest nitpicks with space exploration in these shows,

  Reveal hidden contents

they rarely explore a new and potentially dangerous environment in a sealed suit. You know, just in case you encounter something that didn't show up on a scan. I was afraid they were going to be suitless when they came back for the follow-up but was relieved that they had that much sense.

 

That is exactly how I felt. Including the relief the second time.

Edited June 9, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Zoraptor]

Orville Episode 2

To be honest, not a favourite, or even close. Bit too formulaic and contrived for my tastes.

Spoiler

Not wearing space suits to explore a semi derelict space station is exactly the sort of thing people would- rightly- pillory Trek for doing and they sent the top three ranking officers off there unprotected as well. Also, while the CGI was and has been good enough that you don't 'notice' it was CGI it was outright and jarringly awful in the fight scenes like they were rendered at 10fps while using Deus Ex Invisible War era ragdoll physics; far better to have avoided the hth fights at least if they could not be done better than that. Guess the positive is no end of episode reset, which we'd likely have got if it were Trek (or maybe not, since all the characters lost were eminently disposable red shirt equivalents).

At this point I'm convinced that every scifi tv writer reads these forums and is determined to troll majestic by giving random bridge crew the conn every other episode.

 

[LadyCrimson]

K-drama's: current actor crush - Lee Soo Hyuk  

Via Viki website:
Lucky Romance - rom-com, predictable and often preposterous but quite cute, although the main couple gets together with maybe 4 episodes still left and I grew bored of the filler. Up to that point it was mostly adorable/ridiculous fun.

Born Again - oh lord, this was tragic-triangle-murder-reincarnation melodrama terrible. Although the first couple episodes showing the past were ok. After that it went all crazy/stupid and the female lead made the wrong choice, darnit! Heh. FFWD'd through most of it.

On Netflix:
Tomorrow - well, I liked this one a fair amount. It has a main story arc and then episodic cases. Supernatural/fantasy, with a group of reapers who try to prevent suicides. Yeah don't ask. Some of the stories, while very melodrama, can be hard to watch, and a few made me sniffle. Don't watch if you're in a bad mood maybe. A little inconsistent but largely binge-worthy. One male lead chr. was kind of annoying - whiny and immature - but he did get more tolerable later. Female lead was awesome. But, despite being billed as a lead, not enough Lee Soo Hyuk until near the end. Ha.

[Zoraptor]

Strange New Worlds ep6. 2nd episode in a row I outright liked.
 

Spoiler

Which is kind of weird*, because it felt really derivative, as if it was a remake of an episode from an earlier series (though the most similar thing that springs immediately to mind is Dr Who's 'Rings of Akhaten', which isn't that similar) and the scenario is very contrived in order to get the Enterprise involved and to get Pike capital I Involved. But it's carried off well and there's a bit more heft to it with the kid not getting rescued. The only plot hole is why on earth they thought bringing Pike along to the ceremony itself was a good idea. There's literally nothing about him or the Fed which suggests they'd be OK with what is, effectively, child sacrifice. Answer being, of course, that they need the viewer to see it... Still, that sort of thing is a lot easier to take when it's self contained to a single episode rather than making a season long plot look increasingly silly.

*Got to give a lot of credit for that to the cast I think, including the guests and especially the child actor. If he'd been bad the whole thing would have turned out very poorly, and it would have been very easy to veer into melodrama. And to be fair, got to give the writer(s) credit for not crossing that line too.

 

[Chilloutman]

15 hours ago, Malcador said:

 

There were billion Noir movies done, how they can't get it right now is beyond me

[Chilloutman]

On 6/7/2022 at 12:54 AM, Amentep said:

 

they could just use her at least, if they are going to copy it

 

 

 

[InsaneCommander]

For All Mankind 3.1 and 3.2

 

This season is making me feel depressed. It is 1992 and they already have many things we only saw later or have yet to see in real life. Space Turism, James Webb telescope (with another name but looking exactly like JWST), fusion power* (which is causing a reduction of global warming) and three competing missions to Mars it seems. They also have their own negationists, who claim helium is a scam and want “oil over helium”.

 

* Are they going full sci-fi? What is more unrealistic?

 

Spoiler

Fusion in the late 80s, an astronaut hanging from a rotation station at 4 G on one hand or the Republicans having a lesbian running for the nomination for President? Well, I guess that last one is still a secret.

 

[uuuhhii]

 

hope new season come out soon

and with 20 episode instead of 10

[Lexx]

Finished watching Raised by Wolves. Really sucks that it was canceled, but at the same time I can also see why ... What's worse, though, is that season 2 ends with a cliffhanger ...

[Amentep]

 

[InsaneCommander]

8 hours ago, Lexx said:

Finished watching Raised by Wolves. Really sucks that it was canceled, but at the same time I can also see why ... What's worse, though, is that season 2 ends with a cliffhanger ...

How was the second season compared to the first? I only watched the first one.

[Lexx]

Same quality I would say. However, the way the 2nd season ends and a 3rd season not happening ... you might want to consider to just not watch it and imagine the ending of s1 to be "it".

[Sarex]

Didn't even know the boys s3 started. Giving it a go but after s2 not much hope that it will go in a interesting direction.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

16 hours ago, Sarex said:

Didn't even know the boys s3 started. Giving it a go but after s2 not much hope that it will go in a interesting direction.

There's some changes that I think work (like the focus on the VCU instead of comic books) and Stormfront but...

I wish we had Vic the Veep instead of Victoria Neuman. Nothing against the actress, but a big part of the comic series was Vought's political machinations and that's been sidelined for a more generic evil corporation. Also seeing the G-Men or some of the more depraved supes instead of the Seven would be cool. And really I think the Frenchman is a big down grade from the crazy dude in the comics, when he jousts using a baguette I will change my mind

[Sarex]

2 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

There's some changes that I think work (like the focus on the VCU instead of comic books) and Stormfront but...

 

  Hide contents

I wish we had Vic the Veep instead of Victoria Neuman. Nothing against the actress, but a big part of the comic series was Vought's political machinations and that's been sidelined for a more generic evil corporation. Also seeing the G-Men or some of the more depraved supes instead of the Seven would be cool. And really I think the Frenchman is a big down grade from the crazy dude in the comics, when he jousts using a baguette I will change my mind

 

The fish is still twitching, not dead yet.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

The fish is still twitching, not dead yet.

The Deep would like a word.

[majestic]

Catching up on last week's Strange New Worlds episode. 20 minutes in... yeah, just one word: Nope.

edit: To elaborate, this episode was, next to being somewhat comedic, almost entirely crew interactions and a really weak "A"-plot about negotiations. It's barely there so calling it an A-plot is a bit of a stretch, but nothing in the crew interactions is worthy of being called a plot (let alone A-plot) either, so that's about the measure of it. I noticed I don't care about any of the crew members enough to watch their interactions and be satisfied with them.

Things this episode was about:

• How Nurse Chapel fell in love with Mr. Spock, I question I asked myself every time Majel Barrett-Roddenberry mooned at Spock in TOS. Not.
• Doctor goes fishing, wears a funny hat. Ha ha ha.
• First Officer and Security Officer, both very unfun and serious people play "Enterprise bingo" to learn how to lighten up.
• Spock dreaming about fighting himself, literally, so we can have an action scene.
• Spock switching bodies with his fiancee.
• Aliens of the week negotiating by trying to make the other party understand their positions in the stupidest way possible.

It was all so rote, and nothing was good enough to actually be fun. Body switching two Vulcans, come on. The comedy of body switching episodes is based on actors playing each other's roles (characters need to be different enough for the comedy to work), and that only works for well established characters that are likeable, not Spock and his guest starring fiancee*.

I feel about this episode like Lindsay Ellis felt about the new The Beauty and the Beast film:

 

*Arguably the body swap wasn't about the comedic effect but for character growth, but that should have been handled differently.

Edited June 15, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

The body swap definitely wasn't for comedic effect. They pretty much broke the 4th wall outright saying that it wasn't ("that sounds too much like hijinks" or similar). Indeed, the episode was crafted masterfully to illustrate the central conflict between emotion and logic without pontificating about it, with the two logical humans trying to lighten up a bit, Spock between listening to a vulcan and a human to mirror his heritage, and the alien of the week using empathy in a non standard but logical way to get people to show they actually understand their reservations.

Well ok, it wasn't masterful, but it's Trek, not Shakespeare (having said that, and in the spirit of the summary below: "haha imma drive my girlfriend to madness and suicide after murdering her father because I'm paranoid about my mother boffing my uncle after murdering my father; ps everyone except Horatio dies in finale which is a trope that gets drilled out of 10 year old writers"; days of out lives tier plotting there Will and you reused the 'everyone dies in contrived circumstances' ending multiple times too)

2 hours ago, majestic said:

• Aliens of the week negotiating by trying to make the other party understand their positions in the stupidest way possible

 

Y'know, I'm pretty sure I can think of a dumber one.

"Get frustrated at lack of progress, kidnap Pike and send him and their negotiator down to a hostile planet to fight an Invisible Enemy in the hope that Understanding Ensues and they don't end up at war when either the Enterprise tries to reclaim their captain or the negotiator, amazingly, dies fighting said Invisible Enemy and they think it's Picar^H^H^H Pike's fault".

Which is, of course, the actual plot to a top 10 episode of TNG.

[majestic]

I will preface this reply by making my bias known. Objectively, I know that I'm being unfair to the episode. I just can't help it. This is a combination of Strange New World's setup and my personal frustration with all things Star Trek that has been with me since 2009, and it is clearly bleeding into what is the best Star Trek series in, well, might even say 20 years. I'm not yet willing to commit to saying Strange New Worlds (almost typed Brave New Worlds, figures) is better than the first two seasons of Enterprise, but I also consider it to be nuTrek's special hallmark to not even be capable of passing the very, very low bar that Enterprise set. Even for a Star Trek show, Enterprise's first two seasons were an excercise in frustration.

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

The body swap definitely wasn't for comedic effect. They pretty much broke the 4th wall outright saying that it wasn't ("that sounds too much like hijinks" or similar). Indeed, the episode was crafted masterfully to illustrate the central conflict between emotion and logic without pontificating about it, with the two logical humans trying to lighten up a bit, Spock between listening to a vulcan and a human to mirror his heritage, and the alien of the week using empathy in a non standard but logical way to get people to show they actually understand their reservations.

Now, to the point, there is nothing logical about this non-standard way to get people to show they understand their reservations. It is, first and foremost, silly to assume the other party you're negotiating with is going to understand exactly what you want without expressing it. We humans do that too, who here wasn't frustrated by someone else not saying what they want and playing games around it? It even ends with Pike playing a hunch, and that is probably the most Un-Vulcan thing there is.

In fact, this would have worked a lot better if Spock would have played the hunch, just like Data went to pursue an untamed ornithoid in TNG, or Kirk asking Spock to make a guess. It would also have said something about Spock's otherwise absolutely uninteresting internal conflict with his nature. Of course if they did that, I'd sit here complaining that it was derivative, which just goes to reiterate my bias. I am unable (and unwilling, too) to give the creative team the benefit of the doubt - but I already said as much in an earlier post where I was tilting at Montana's windmills wind turbines.

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Y'know, I'm pretty sure I can think of a dumber one.

"Get frustrated at lack of progress, kidnap Pike and send him and their negotiator down to a hostile planet to fight an Invisible Enemy in the hope that Understanding Ensues and they don't end up at war when either the Enterprise tries to reclaim their captain or the negotiator, amazingly, dies fighting said Invisible Enemy and they think it's Picar^H^H^H Pike's fault".

Which is, of course, the actual plot to a top 10 episode of TNG.

One was a way to conclude an episode, the other was a way to begin an episode. One is about an unreasonable approach in terms of expectations, the other about the inability to communicate in spite of a technologically created shared vocabulary. The differences between the setups alone is enough, but yes, the premise of Darmok and the way the episode begins is certainly silly too. The difference is, then: one silly premise lead to a top 10 episode in one case, and the silly conclusion of the other simply ended an otherwise already forgettable episode on a silly note before we make a flyover with a solar sail ship because REMEMBER THAT EPISODE WITH SISKO IN DS9?, although I'm honestly surprised anyone of the hack frauds on the team watched DS9 - still not sure if that wasn't just coincidence. That said, I also didn't like the solar sails starship setup in DS9, but it was in service of Jake and Ben spending some alone time.

I am not saying it could not have worked, but it would have needed to be in a different episode, with a different focus, and I am also not someone who is opposed to episodes that are about nothing much but character development and interactions. In fact, some of my favorite series are almost exclusively about that, and I do not consider Deep Space Nine to be the best 'Trek series just because it has AWESOME AKSHUN AND WAR AND STUFF! after all.

My reaction when the body swap happened was a Picard facepalm, and Una and La'An finding that bucket list of things to do was a groan. Not that it is the actor's fault, but nothing what La'An does in the series will ever remove the taint of the writers having the absolutely ridiculous idea to make her last name Noonien-Singh and give her some tragic backstory involving the Gorn.

Is that an unfair judgement? Yes, it is. I'm not even sure why I'm arguing right now. The episode was probably better than I make it out to be, and I don't begrudge anyone who enjoyed it. It was quite clearly not for me, and I would have rather had an episode focussing on Pike and Uhura. What I got instead, here, was an episode focusing somewhat on Nurse Chapel (who cares), Spock (who cares), T'Pring (super dooper who cares about Spock's soon to be dissolved marriage) and the unfun duo who learns to lighten up (yeah, well, guess what).

Not sure if that will embed here, probably not, but my overall reaction to the character development in this episode:

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/b5b22479-0c3a-4d42-a85a-b1efbf9a52ed

Edited June 16, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

It isn't really an unreasonable approach in terms of expectations though. Part of the art of genuinely negotiating is seeing things from the perspective of the other side, and that is what they were doing (and expected in return). You also got the hints of what they wanted from them before they went all matey mcmatey impersonating Pike's style, and you could even infer it from them flying the flag of those they made agreements with.

(If it had been a TNG S1 episode it would have been a Troi centric one, they'd probably have been made outright empaths and she'd have solved the problem in 5 times the time she should have taken. After a pep talk from Wesley gave her the vital clue...)

[majestic]

23 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

(If it had been a TNG S1 episode it would have been a Troi centric one, they'd probably have been made outright empaths and she'd have solved the problem in 5 times the time she should have taken. After a pep talk from Wesley gave her the vital clue...)

Yeah, that I can agree with.

[InsaneCommander]

The Orville 3.3

Spoiler

Once again, when I think the episode will not be good they shake things up and everything changes.