2018 Sci-Fi Report

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.