I shouldn’t be surprised when I look back at the year overall, but in
terms of sci-fi movies and TV there was a lot going on. Some things
weren’t good, but an awful lot were, or at least they were interesting. I
keep thinking back to years ago when we’d be lucky to have one or two
interesting sci-fi movies a year and a handful of TV shows. Nowadays
there seems to be a sci-fi movie coming out once every few weeks, and
that’s not including superhero things since while I think they’re sci-fi
I’m not counting them here, and there are loads of sci-fi series on TV.
Random thoughts…
BBC America really killed it in 2018 as being the home for all things Doctor Who, The X-Files and classic Star Trek TV.
And let’s give props to TNT/TBS as well for airing marathons of Star Wars every few weeks. Have I see every episode of Star Wars many, many times before? Yep! Do I watch them again every time they show up on TNT/TBS? You bet’cha!
Along those lines… We now live in a world where there is a brand new Star Wars movie being released each and every year, this year was Star Wars: A Solo Story, which is always something to be happy about.
While BBC America was the home for sci-fi in 2018, Syfy, the old
SCI-FI Channel, was not. That network which barely airs any sci-fi
anymore actually cancelled the one great sci-fi show they had The Expanse.
That being said Amazon Prime picked up The Expanse where it will air a fourth season in alongside The Man in the High Castle, another sci-fi show on that platform.
Netflix released a whole bunch of sci-fi movies in 2018 including good ones like The Cloverfield Paradox and not so good ones like Mute. Hey, they can’t all be winners.
The sci-fi/horror film A Quiet Place did what not a lot of
sci-fi/horror movies have done in the past; it was very successful as
well as gained lots of critical acclaim.
That being said not everything sci-fi at the box office worked, both Pacific Rim: Uprising and Overlord underperformed here in the US, though Uprising did great business overseas.
While I absolutely did not understand the ending of the second season of Westworld, I have to say that the ride getting there was a lot of fun.
I mentioned that BBC America was the home for all things classic Star Trek, but there’s also new episodes being added to the Trek canon every year with Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access.
Okay, okay, okay, I like to rag on Syfy a lot, but I do have to give
them props for taking a big chance on the decent ten episode limited
sci-fi/horror series Nightflyers a few weeks back. It wasn’t great, but at least it was science fiction.
Syfy has been heavily promoting their new series Nightflyers for months now and I think they have quite a bit riding on the show,
especially since there’s not too much real sci-fi on Syfy right now.
These days genre series like horror and sci-fi are king and Nightflyers,
based on the George R.R. Martin novel of the same name, is a way for
Syfy to capitalize on both since it’s a horror series that takes place
aboard a spaceship in the future. And if Nightflyers is a hit Syfy might have something akin to HBO’s Game of Thrones on their hands, another Martin creation, in a series that gets huge ratings as well as critical acclaim.
While I thought Nightflyers was good, I don’t think it’s going to be the next Game of Thrones.
Here’s what I could gather about the first episode of this ten
episode series Syfy is running every night until Thursday since the
first one is kind’a confusing. It’s the future and a deadly virus is
beginning to take its toll on mankind. There is a plan to escape the
disease by colonizing the galaxy, but it relies on us getting ahold of
advanced alien technology, the catch being that we haven’t been able to
communicate with them yet. Enter the ship the Nightflyer on a mission to
go out and say “hi” to ET before it’s too late. Aboard are several
scientists along with a powerful psychic who might be our one chance at
communication with the extra terrestrials. Except this psychic is
dangerous, he’s spent his life locked away in isolation since he can
hurt people with his mind. And when things start happening around the
ship like engines failing and one of the scientists almost drowning in a
recovery bath, naturally all suspicions point to him.
Gretchen Mol
And that’s pretty much the first episode. Like I said the first Nightflyers is good, if a bit confusing. Things aren’t quite spelled out and I
spent much of the first episode trying to keep up and follow the story.
Like they’re going to meet these aliens but we get nothing on the
history of mankind and the aliens other than they are out there in some
ship simply waiting, and also we have these huge ships like the
Nightflyer but apparently that’s not good enough to send out on a
colonizing mission. Though maybe this will be explained later? While I
usually like keeping up with stories like this in Nightflyers it bordered on confusion.
In many ways the series feels like a cross between Babylon 5 (psychics in space!), the busted Ronald D. Moore TV pilot that aired as a movie-of-the-week Virtuality (a colonizing trip to the stars presented somewhat realistically) and Event Horizon (evil things happen on a ship in deep space). But I’m not sure if it
feels that way because it was in fact those movies and TV series took
from the original Nightflyers novella Martin wrote 38 years ago
rather than the other way around? It doesn’t help matters that the
first episode is sloooooow. So much so that I kept wondering if perhaps
the series should’ve been a six episode series rather than a ten?
The first Nightflyers is interesting and watching the promo
that aired after the first episode about future ones has me intrigued. I
love sci-fi and horror so I should be loving Nightflyers to death, I just don’t think I’m there quite yet.
One critically acclaimed comic series that I’ve never read is Animal Man,
especially the Grant Morrison run from the late 1980s to the early
1990s. That’s why I’m planning on picking up this new 30th anniversary
edition of that material out this week.
Meet Buddy Baker: husband, father, animal rights activist and
superhero. In these classic stories from ANIMAL MAN #1–13 and SECRET
ORIGINS #39, Buddy is called by S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate a break-in
related to an AIDS vaccine, only to learn what inhumane acts are going
on. Then, Animal Man is invited to join the Justice League of
America…but does he have what it takes?
One comic series that I am familiar with are the nearly 30 year old Dark Horse Predator comics that are still running today. While the material in this new edition has been printed many, many times before, it’s always nice to see Dark Horse giving the Predator some love.
Before the film Predator 2, there were these comics–a four-color
sequel to one of the greatest action films of all time. Written by Mark
Verheiden and illustrated by comics mainstays Chris Warner and Ron
Randall. Collects Predator: Concrete Jungle TPB, Predator: Cold War TPB,
and Predator: Dark River TPB.
Movies
Brightburn trailer
Avengers Endgame trailer
Once Upon a Deadpool promo
Captain Marvel trailer
What To Watch This Week
Mortal Engines
Sunday
The second season of the Starz spies from alternate dimensions series Counterpart begins tonight.
Tuesday
The surprise superhero hit movie of the fall Venom is available on digital download this week.
Wednesday
A re-release of the hit of the summer Deadpool 2 entitled Once Upon a Deadpool, reconfigured from its original R-rating to PG–13 and including 20 minutes of new footage, hits theaters today.
Friday
The classic 1932 action-adventure flick The Most Dangerous Game airs on TCM today. This movie about a guy who lures people to his
private island to hunt them was filmed at night on the same stages that
were being used to film King Kong during the day.
Two new movies are released today, the first is the odd-looking Mortal Engines about a post-apocalyptic world where cities are mobile and eat each other, and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse about all sorts of different version of Spider-Man being forced together after some inter dimensional shenanigans.
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: The exploitation classic Rappin’ from 1985 is set to air very early Saturday morning on TCM.
It’s not quite the end of the year and I’ve already been working on
material that will see the light of day in 2019. Actually, I wrote the
first thing that will be published in 2019 a few weeks ago. That’s
partly because I like to write an article, sit on it for a few weeks and
then come back and edit it with fresh eyes and partly because whenever
I’m at home and bored I tend to work on my site. And since we’ve, so
far, had an early winter where I live it means I’m inside a lot, bored
with nothing to do.
So far for 2019 I’ve written my annual “Best of the rest” column as well as one on the upcoming movie Glass. I’m planning on also writing columns on movies like Captain Marvel, Shazam! and Avengers 4 at some point too. And also 2019 will mark the 20th anniversary of such movies as The Matrix and Star Wars: Episode I which I’ll probably write about too since they were things I was
writing about here 20 years ago so I might as well keep writing about
them today. 😉
Generally, I map out all of the dates I have columns due over the
course of a year and as movie release dates are announced will “pencil”
in things I’m planning to write about. But over the last few years this
has become more and more difficult. Before if a big-budget movie was
scheduled to come out on a certain date that big-budget movie was going
to come out on that date. Period. But that isn’t necessarily the case
anymore. Lately, lots of movies have had their release dates pushed
around. I think the next X-Men movie has had three release dates so far,
and the upcoming New Mutants was pushed back nearly two years from when it was originally set to be released.
So there’s been quite a few times this year when I’ve scheduled
something to write about only to have to push it down the line when
release dates change.
That’s not a huge deal, what is a bigger deal is when release dates
change just a few months before the movie is set to hit theaters. That
happened a few times this year with movies like Alita: Battle Angel that was supposed to be out last summer before being pushed to the
winter and now isn’t due out until mid-February. I think with that one I
had actually started to write my summer movie preview column that
featured that movie last spring when that announcement was made.
And that’s not even including the TV series I write about.
Those are much harder to plan ahead for since TV series aren’t
announced as far in advance as movies. While I know there’ll be
interesting series to write about in 2019 I won’t know when they’ll be
out until well into next year.
While I can tell you that next September I’m looking forward to seeing and probably writing about IT: Chapter 2 on September 6, in many cases new TV series that will be airing that
same time period won’t even be filming their pilot episodes until early
next year, and it won’t be until next May that we learn about the new
series that will be airing in 2018–2019.
With returning series I know I’ll be writing about things like Better Call Saul I just don’t know when that will return — will it be the spring like
two years ago or fall like this year? Or maybe even next winter?
DC is set to release a new version of the seminal Frank Miller Batman story The Dark Knight Returns this week. Well, “new” as in this edition is hardcover and retails for
$50. If you’re looking to pick up a copy of this story, I’d recommend
purchasing the $20 softcover version instead of this $50 version, since
to me $30 seems a lot to pay for a hardcover.
DC introduces DC Modern Classics, collecting groundbreaking,
genre-defining works in new hardcover editions, presented in a
beautifully designed slipcase.
In these tales from THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #1–4, it is 10 years
after an aging Batman retired, and Gotham City has sunk deeper into
decadence and lawlessness. Now, as his city needs him most, the Dark
Knight returns in a blaze of glory. Joined by the new Robin, Carrie
Kelly, Batman takes to the streets to face the mutant gangs that have
overrun his city.
What To Watch This Week
Nightflyers
Sunday
The ten episode Nightflyers mini-series is set to begin airing today on Syfy, and then every single night until Thursday, December 13.
When I was growing up in the 1980s, Disney wasn’t very popular with
the kids I knew. I don’t mean we didn’t see Disney movies, even if many
of them were released under the Touchstone Pictures brand, nor did we
not watch Disney on TV since there were quite a few cool TV movies
released then under the Disney brand then too. But as for what people
think of as Disney with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto and the rest, I don’t
remember them being around at the movies or on TV growing up.
The kids I hung out with were much more into characters from Looney Tunes than Mickey Mouse. In fact, for a time in the 1990s Looney Tunes characters like the Tasmanian Devil and Marvin the Martin were
everywhere, on t-shirts, cars and body parts with tattoos. But not so
much with the mouse.
And I think I know the reason why.
While in the 1980s episodes of Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry running after-school were ubiquitous across the TV dial, during that
time period Mickey Mouse was nowhere to be found. The reason was back
then all things Disney related were moved from regular TV to the new
Disney Channel, and back then the Disney Channel was a premium channel
you had to pay extra for like HBO. So if your parents didn’t pay up
you’d never see any Mickey Mouse cartoons. I knew of exactly one person
back then who had the Disney Channel as a kid, the rest of my friends
and family did not.
And because there was a whole generation of kids who grew up without a
way to easily see Disney cartoons we never had too much fondness for
them or their characters.
Which is why the whole idea of these new streaming services popping
up all over with that have their own series you can see no where else
frightens me a little.
If you want to see new episodes of Star Trek you can only do that on CBS All Access. If you want to see new episodes of the upcoming Star Wars TV show, and eventually any of the Star Wars movies outside of the theater, you’ll have to do that on Disney streaming.
Star Wars TV series
All of which is fine, except I wonder how this will affect those brands in the future?
Part of the reason I love all things Star Wars was growing
up the original trilogy of movies would turn up on broadcast TV from
time to time. And even when it eventually moved to cable it wasn’t on
the premium channels and was easy to see. I remember watching marathons
of Star Wars many a Thanksgiving.
The same goes for Star Trek. I only really started watching that series when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered. And when that show hooked me I went back and watched all of The Next Generation since it aired in syndication and was pretty easy to see.
And since I’m a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek I’ve spent many hours and more money than I’d like to think about on
them, collecting everything from the films to posters to toys and
everything in between.
I don’t think I’d be as infatuated with them if the only place to see
them would’ve been two outlets that my parents would have had to pay
extra to get. I might have bee into Star Wars because of the
films, but I’m not sure how into them I would’ve been if it wasn’t as
easy as it was to see them after the theater?
Right now it makes perfect financial sense to move Star Trek and Star Wars to these streaming services. They have this incredibly dedicated
fan-base who’ll follow those franchises to the ends of the Earth and
don’t mind paying $10 a month to do so.
My question is in 20 or 30 years when there’s a generation of kids
who grew up knowing about shows that only appeared on streaming they
might not have gotten, will they care as much as we do today? I think
not, I think they’ll be like my generation and Disney. We’re aware of it
but we’re not invested in it.
Ironically, right after my generation came of age Disney began
getting its act back together and in the 1990s the Disney Channel became
part of basic cable. Even more importantly they started releasing a
popular series of movies and syndicated TV shows that really connected
with the next generation of kids. To them Disney and Aladdin and Rescue Rangers and The Little Mermaid are their childhood touchstones where Looney Tunes and Transformers and G.I. Joe are part of mine.
It will be interesting to see if in a decade or so places like Paramount who owns Star Trek and Disney Star Wars will look back at what they’re doing now as some great mistake? That
instead of tapping into a well of fandom they’ve actually capped that
well and have taken short-term gains but setup a long-term collapse.
DC Entertainment is set to release the seminal Mark Waid/Alex Ross comic mini-series Kingdom Come in one of their gorgeous “Absolute” collected editions. The downside is this runs about $100 retail.
In the not-so-distant future, the DC Universe is spinning inexorably
out of control. The new generation of heroes has lost their moral
compass, becoming as reckless and violent as the villains they fight.
The previous regime of heroes—the Justice League—returns under the most
dire of circumstances, which sets up a battle of the old guard against
these uncompromising protectors in a conflict that will define what
heroism truly is. Collects KINGDOM COME #1–4.
Overlord movie trailer
Aquaman extended look
What To Watch This Week
Teen Titans! Go to the Movies
Sunday
The latest animated Star Wars series Star Wars Resistance premiers this week on Disney HD.
TCM begins gearing up for Halloween and will be airing a whole bunch of movies featuring mummies including The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse Sunday evening.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC for it’s 1,790th season.
Tuesday
The surprisingly underperforming Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is released on digital this week.
TCM will air the 1992 Stephen Hawking documentary A Brief History of Time today.
Wednesday
After “Mummy Sunday” TCM will air a “Christopher Lee Wednesday” with a
bunch of horror movies that featured the iconic actor with the likes of The Devil’s Bride, Horror of Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Horror Hotel, The Face of Fu Manchu and Rasputin, the Mad Monk.
Friday
Netflix will release its horror series The Haunting of Hill House Friday.
Matt Weiner’s first new series since Mad Men entitled The Romanoffs debuts on Amazon Prime.
First Man about astronaut Neil Armstrong starring Ryan Gosling premieres in theaters this week.
It’s going to be a long fall. Usually, when the weather starts
changing and the nights start getting longer I look forward to staying
in and checking out the new series on TV. But this fall isn’t looking
too good. Sure, there’s a few things to watch, but not enough for my
taste and only a handful of series on network TV. The template the
networks have taken for the 2018–2019 season is to debut a lot of
lame-looking sitcoms and tired cop/hospital/lawyer procedural dramas
that all seem to have been done before.
The good news is it isn’t all bad, there are quite a few new
series on cable and streaming services to look forward to. The bad news
is that most of these series don’t start airing until much later in the
year and even then quite a few not until 2019. Oh well, there’s always
horror movies marathons come Halloween to fill the gap.
New series
The Passage
On FOX the vampire thriller The Passage starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar is set to put a lot of stakes into the
hearts of the undead ghouls in the one network show I want to check out
in January. While the novel the series is based on took place mostly in a
future overrun with the blood-suckers, this new TV show looks to moved
things back a bit to the pre-apocalypse when these vampires were just
being created in the lab.
Manifest on NBC about a plane that takes
off one day but lands five years later with everyone on board not
realizing the time-jump departs September 24. I think I’d be more
looking forward to this show if it didn’t look like a clone of many
other series before it, especially Lost.
Matt Weiner’s follow-up series to his uber-successful Mad Man entitled The Romanoffs is set to debut on Amazon Prime October 12. I’m not totally sure how
this one’s going to go, but reportedly this anthology series will focus
on characters who think they’re related to the Russian royal family the
Romanoffs.
After the animated Star Wars: Rebels series on Disney ended earlier this year comes the new series Star Wars Resistance also on Disney October 13. This one is set to take place around the time of the current film series but before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Nightflyers
SYFY is once again trying their hand at traditional sci-fi series with Nightflyers,
based on the George R.R. Martin book of the same name. Not at all
looking to cash in on Martin’s name and the fact that he wrote Game of Thrones and therefore SYFY can promote Nightflyers as such, here, it’s the near-future and as the ship of the same name
explores the solar system it uncovers something that threatens everyone
abroad the ship. Nightflyers does sound a bit derivative of things like Event Horizon (1997), except that the novel the series is based on was written way back in 1980.
The Netflix series Another Life has an
astronaut (Katie Sackhoff) leading a mission to find the origins of an
alien artifact, but this artifact might be deadly and the mission
one-way. Maybe the cast of Another Life and Nightflyers can team-up since their two shows sure sound a lot alike.
The iconic comic book mini-series then film Watchmen will become an HBO TV series of the same name sometime next year.
There’s not a whole lot that is known about this one, other than
apparently it doesn’t totally follow the story of the comics but instead
takes place in the same comic universe.
And as for new shows this season, that’s about it. I’m sure I’ll
checkout some of those lame-looking sitcoms hoping to be surprised with
something interesting, but I’m not holding my breath.
Returning series
Fortunately, there are a few returning shows this year to look forward to.
The Good Place
Returning network shows that will premiere this year include The Good Place,
the sitcom about a group of people lead by Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen
Bell) stuck between heaven and hell returns to NBC on Thursday,
September 27 and The Orville on FOX that is Seth MacFarlane’s love-letter to the classic series Star Trek squeaks into 2018 with its second season debut on Sunday, December 30.
Two Netflix superhero series return this year too. First up is the second season of Iron Fist which drops September 7. Then, sometime later in the year, comes a third season of Daredevil who appear last season on The Defenders. I honestly don’t really remember what happened in the second season of Daredevil since it aired more than a year and a half ago at this point. Weren’t there lots of ninjas?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who returns for its 11th season of
the modern incarnation of the character October on BBC America here in
the US. The big news with Doctor Who is that after 55 years and
more than a dozen versions of the character, this time the lead will be
played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker. Personally, I still like Peter
Davison’s version of the character the best, no matter how many Matt
Smith fans out there I have to go all “Sharks and Jets” with.
The Sundance series Deutschland 86 will
return for its second season October 25. The first season was about an
East German spy played by Jonas Nay infiltrating West Germany in order
to steal military secrets and had tinges of The Americans to it. The third season looks to pick up three years from there and just a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The British sci-fi series Black Mirror will
serve up more creepy goodness sometime this winter on Netflix. Even
after four seasons I still really dig this show and I think it’s
partially because even though there’s already been those four seasons, Black Mirror is an anthology series so each episode is a story unto itself. And to
date there’s been just 20 episodes of it produced in total, which is
less than how many episodes of a modern network series are produced in
just one year, so the show is still fresh.
Star Trek: Discovery
A second season of Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access this January. The first season of Discovery got good enough reviews from Trek fans, if those were the only people seemingly watching it, and the
second season looks to bring in the big guns to the show, namely the USS
Enterprise along with its Captain Kir… errr… I mean Captain Pike (Anson
Mount).
The Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things will
return for its third season summer of 2019. Last time we left the
plucky kids of Hawkins, Indiana seemingly having beaten the evil forces
that had emerged from the “upside down,” but if other sci-fi shows have
taught me anything it’s that every victory against evil is just
temporary. Until the final episode of the series, that is.
My favorite superhero series The Punisher also returns to Netflix sometime next year. The first season ended with
Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) having totally accepted the mantel of the
skull wearing vigilante by blasting all the baddies to smithereens with
the second season looking to pick up from there.
The Terror
A surprise to me this spring was just how much I dug the first season of the AMC series The Terror about an ill-fated expedition to the Arctic the 19th century. The
second season will reportedly have a new story and focus on Japanese
Americans during the second world war since the first season ended with
pretty much the entire cast dead. That’s not a spoiler since the first
season was based on a real-life expedition that ended in tragedy and I’m
not sure you can consider a historical fact a “spoiler.”
A third season of the critical darling then critically derided True Detective will debut on HBO sometime next year four years after the second. The
third season looks to “one-up” the first since that told a story over
two time periods by telling a story over three.
Shows that I think will premiere sometime in 2019
Mindhunter
My favorite series of the 2017–2018 season , Mindhunter is set to begin its second season on Netflix next year. This show about
the creation of a serial killer hunting unit within the FBI in the
1970s was one of the most well-written and acted shows on TV in recent
memory. Plus the series is co-produced and had a few episodes directed
by David Fincher which is always a good thing.
The sci-fi drama The Expanse will leave its
home of three seasons on SYFY and move over to the Amazon Prime service
next year. The third season ended on a high note, so I’m extremely
excited to see where the show will go from here.
Another sci-fi drama, this time Westworld,
is set to debut its third season on HBO. Now, I won’t even pretend to
say that I understood what all happened in the second season finale of Westworld, I don’t think it was quite on the level of the final episode of Lost or anything, but I suppose time will tell.
