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.
Over the decades the series The X-Files has had many endings. The first of which was its ending in the 1998 theatrical film, then there was an ending to the series when that finished in 2002, there was also an ending to the 2008 “I want to believe” film and the ending to the series again when it returned to FOX for a short run in 2016, all of which could easily have stood as a series ending but didn’t. So this new ending to the current crop of The X-Files episodes on FOX next Wednesday is nothing new, if this time it feels more permanent than before.
The X-FIles
What started this season as a little confusing with the first episode evolved into a strong season of The X-Files with some standout-episodes like the hilarious “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” the nearly dialog free “Rm9sbG93ZXJz,” the creepy “Familiar”and brilliant/gross “Nothing Lasts Forever.” For the most part, the episodes that worked this season were ones not tied to the overall conspiracy mythos. The conspiracy episodes were odd and really didn’t fit well with the stand-alone ones, but still, even a halfway decent episode of The X-Flies is better that most other series episodes out there these days.
Why does this ending to The X-Files feel different then before? It’s because this time Gillian Anderson has said she’s done with the show. Now this has happened in the past with co-star David Duchovny in the early 2000s when he effectively left the series after its seventh season. This time, though, with Duchovny pushing 60 and Gillian Anderson finding success in other shows, I could see this season of The X-Files being the last.
Well, last to a certain extent. Though I’d love to see Duchovny and Anderson return to The X-Files at some point in the future, even Darren McGavin famously kind’a sort’a reprised his role as Kolchak at age 76 in an episode of The X-Files, I think it’s more likely than not that at some point in the near future FOX will reboot the series with a brand new Mulder and Scully or with new characters replacing the old like has been done in the Star Trek and Star Wars films.
Still, to me Mulder and Scully will always be Duchovny and Anderson.
The Expanse season 3 TV spot
Comics
Infinity Gauntlet Box Set Slipcase Hardcover
This nearly 5,000 page edition, that’s no type-o folks, will retail for $450 and is out this week just in time for the release of Avengers: Infinity War.
The Mad Titan Thanos has gathered the Infinity Gems – and he plans to transform our universe into a nightmarish tribute to his true love, Death! Adam Warlock and the Silver Surfer unite Earth’s heroes and the universe’s cosmic powers to stand against Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet…but when the dust settles, Adam Warlock’s good and evil sides – the Goddess and the Magus – may prove to be even bigger threats! Witness the birth of the Infinity Watch, as the universe must deal with infinite war and a cosmic crusade! But through all the chaos, what is Thanos’ secret agenda? Jim Starlin’s cosmic masterpiece, the 1990s’ “Infinity Trilogy,” is collected in full in this titanic box set, including every chapter, crossover and tie-in – plus an entire volume of bonus stories and behind-the scenes extras! It doesn’t get more Infinite than this!
Movies
Avengers: Infinity War trailer
The Movie Chain: #99: The Bourne Identity (2002)
Last week: The Martian
The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.
I remember how excited I got when The Bourne Identity was released. In 2002 the spy movie genera was waning with the stalwart James Bond franchise experiencing its last gasps before being rebooted in 2006. But otherwise there wasn’t much else out there spy-guy-wise. Enter The Bourne Identity.
Part of the reason I was excited about this one was that it seemed like it was a spy movie meant for my generation. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon of last week’s The Martian) was a young guy at the time and the movie was being directed by Doug Liman who’s previous film Go was, and still probably is, one of my all-time favorite films. Differentiating itself from the Bond franchise, in The Bourne Identity Jason Bourne is a man who’s lost his memory and is in a journey across Europe with Marie (Franka Potente) to find his origins. Along the way he finds that when backed into a corner or threatened he can kick almost anyone’s butt on “autopilot,” can fight his way out of any situation or get out of any building when things look bleak.
Watching The Bourne Identity today I’m surprised as to just how small this movie is when compared to the other films that would come. The big action sequence here is Bourne and Marie in a car chase, except they’re driving an old, beat-up Mini Cooper rather than some flashy car like in the Bond films. Of course, all this would come later and this “smallness” that was a feature of The Bourne Identity was chipped away in subsequent films until now there’s not much difference between Bourne and Bond.
One interesting thing — The Bourne Identity didn’t do that well at the box office when it was released. It certainly made money for the studio, but it wasn’t a smash movie that year. I think what saved the franchise from doom was word of mouth and strong DVD sales. Let’s put it this way — in 2002 The Bourne Identity wasn’t even a top 20 movie in terms of box office. In 2004 The Bourne Supremacy was in the top ten.
Next week: Dance the night away!
Rumor Control
I’ve been overdosing on sci-fi lately. It’s easy to do. These days sci-fi is the most popular type of genera programming so it seems as if every week or two there’s some new sci-fi movie or TV series to come along that demands attention. Be it a series like Black Mirror or movie like Mute, more and more is available every month.
Mute
And that’s not taking into account all the classic sci-fi series and movies out there too. In the last few weeks I’ve bought films like 2010, Outland and Akira and series like Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica as well. Some weeks, especially when the Olympics were on and there weren’t too many things to watch, I was sci-fi all the time. If I wasn’t working through series like Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams then I was sampling shows like Altered Carbon while also catching movies like Alien Resurrection on TV. It’s almost like TV programmers have finally figured out that more people than just the geeks like me are into sci-fi and have started adjusting their programming accordingly.
One Sunday I was flipping back and forth between Mad Max: Fury Road and Alien: Covenant with The Martian airing a little later on. I was in heaven.
What’s really cool are things like the two original Netflix movies that debuted the last few months. First was The Cloverfield Paradox and then Mute. While I didn’t think that either of these movies were great, I still dug both of them a lot and thought they were each a lot of fun.
And all these shows and movies seem to be just the tip of the iceberg as it were in 2018 sci-fi wise. There’s also the upcoming new ABC show The Crossing, Krypton on Syfy and Netflix series Lost in Space to look forward to as well as returning shows like The Expanse and Westworld too. And that’s just what’s coming out in the next few months. If the flood of sci-fi that’s been coming out for some time now continues into 2018 I can only imagine what wonders we’ll be brought.
I’ve been watching so much sci-fi the last few weeks/months I had to ask myself the question, is it too much? On the one hand how can “too much” sci-fi be a bad thing? On the other hand there’s so much of it coming out, and so much is good, is the flood of it diluting sci-fi in general? Like will people one day look back on 2018 at some point in the future where sci-fi has returned to its traditional levels, a few series on TV and a few movies a year, and see this year as an aberration?
I’d suppose so. I think we’re living in this weird time when there’s so many outlets for TV be it cable, broadcast, streaming, on demand, online, digital download… and all these outlets want their own original programming means that programmers are willing to take chances on things they might not have a few years ago. So instead of just getting clones of CSI and Grey’s Anatomy we get a lot of interesting shows too like The Orville and Counterpart and what sounds like interesting series like Fahrenheit 451.
I always seem to be able to find interesting things to watch, even in times like in the early 2000s when it was very hard to do so. But these days when there’s so much TV out there and so much of it is great I think it’s now possible to find great things I want to watch just in my favorite niche of sci-fi. My concern is that I’ll get lost in my little pop-culture bubble, will become so immersed in sci-fi that I’ll forget to pop my head out and take a look around at what else is out there. I love sci-fi and I can’t get enough of it, but there’s more out there TV and movie-wise than just sci-fi. Am I right, or am I crazy and should I just enjoy all my sci-fi programs while they last?
Undoubtedly The X-Files is one of the most successful TV franchise in the last 25 years. “Wait,” you say, “25 years? That’s impossible!” But it’s not, this series which debuted back in the fall of 1993 has been around so long that as of right now most people alive have never lived in a world without The X-Files. To them this series has always been around in one for or another be it via the two feature The X-Files films or the 211 episode series which kind’a wrapped up in 2002. I say “kind’a” since a six episode continuation series appeared on FOX back in 2016 and now two years later a ten episode season is currently airing there too.
The 2016 season divided viewers of the series. On the one hand, some wanted The X-Files to be setup like more modern series with a strong season-long story. On the other were people, myself included, who thought that the six-episode continuation of The X-Files was just that, a “continuation,” so why mess with success?
That being said, I thought the first episode of this latest season of The X-Files was a bit of a mess. I’m a fan of the show, watched the old series along with the new and even I was confused as to what was going on here. It seemed like the cliffhanger in the final episode last season, which had most of the planet being overcome by a sickness meant to wipe out humanity with Scully (Gillian Anderson) being abducted by aliens in the final moments of the show were a dream. Or maybe really a vision of the future that our heroes might be able to stop since Scully’s having seizures? Or were they in fact visions sent by Scully and Mulder’s (David Duchovny) son? And maybe the kid really isn’t Mulder’s son like he thinks? But maybe he is. And the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) makes a return after seemingly being killed decades ago in the series and is out to murder Mulder and Scully. Or maybe he’s really trying to protect them? Or maybe it’s all a double cross and he’s really out to murder them after all?
At the end of “My Struggle III” I was more confused as to what was all going on than when I started the episode and found myself hoping later ones, especially the “monster of the week” episodes that were so good last season, will be the ones to see.
LA to Vegas**/****
LA to Vegas is a new FOX sitcom about the lives of the crew of an airline that makes flights from LA to Las Vegas each weekend. The crew intermingles with passengers who make weekly flights with them and others who are going to Vegas for the first time. The series has an interesting mix of characters from Ronnie (Kim Matula), a flight attendant who wants out of her boring airline route and routine, pilot Dave (Dylan McDermott) who’s a bit too laid back at his job and weekly passenger Artem (Peter Stormare) who goes to Vegas to gamble and will gamble on anything that’s going on in the plane.
I think the concept of *LA to Vegas is a strong one where each episode stars the crew of the plane, the regular passengers and new passengers who cycle in and out as well. The first episode’s new passengers were a couple who’d set off to Vegas to elope, but where the boyfriend ends up coming home alone and unmarried in the end.
I enjoyed LA to Vegas but thought that the first episode, humorously the pilot episode which could be the actual title of the episode, was a little flat since every funny moment in it was already played out on the constant stream of TV spots FOX has been airing promoting this show the last few months. Also, I’m not sure if the tone of the series is quite there yet. In some cases LA to Vegas was a raunchy FX-like show, in others it wanted to be a sweet sitcom.
Still, I’m interested to see where this goes and am planning on adding LA to Vegas to my weekly TV watching schedule.
Movies
The Movie Chain #1: The Hunt for Red October (1990)
The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way. Since this is the first part I randomly decided to start with the movie The Hunt For Red October since it happened to be on TV when I thought of this idea.
The Hunt for Red October is one of my favorite movies of the 1990s. Based on the book of the same name by writer Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October became the prototypical “techno-thriller” that was very popular in that time period where the technology of the movie, here a submarine that is silent and undetectable and therefor could nuke the US without warning, is as important as the characters or story. Most of The Hunt for Red October deals with the captain of said Soviet submarine (Sean Connery). Trying to help is CIA agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) who has to figure out how to help him pull the defection off without a) getting everyone aboard the sub killed in the process, b) not letting the Soviets know what’s happened and, most importantly, c) not accidentally starting WWIII.
The Hunt for Red October is a movie that once it gets going never lets up right to the end. Directed by John McTiernan who was in the middle of one of the hottest streaks any director could have, coming off of Predator and then Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October was really a harbinger of movies to come that were also based on best-selling books and would be turned into hit films like Jurassic Park and The Silence of the Lambs.
There are so many superhero series debuting this TV season there’s almost too many to cover here. In fact, there are at least eight new live-action superhero shows debuting this season which will bring the number currently airing to more than 25 based on comic books.
Inhumans
Inhumans
What was originally set to be a series of Marvel films has now become a TV series with Inhumans on ABC. I never really collected any Inhumans comics so I don’t really know the core Inhumans story. I do know that the show will be the third Marvel series to debut on ABC with Agents of SHIELD entering its fifth season and Agent Carter being cancelled after two. I wasn’t a fan of Agents of SHIELD nor of Agent Carter but will still checkout Inhumans, if with a bit of trepidation.
What I do know about The Inhumans, and what I could glean from ABC’s marketing materials, has them as a race of super-powered people living in a hidden city on the Moon with the likes of Black Bolt who’s voice is so powerful it can destroy entire cities and Medusa with living hair. In the series, a coup on the Moon forces this ruling family down to the Earth to face life among us mere mortals and the rest of the Marvel universe characters.
The Gifted
The Gifted
The Gifted on FOX looks to take the X-Men franchise TV screens with a series about a family on the run after they learn that two of their kids are mutants with super-powers. Some X-Men characters are set to appear in the series but don’t expect Wolverine, Cyclops or Jean Grey to show up in The Gifted. Instead the likes of Polaris, Thunderbird and Blink will be the muties helping the family on the run.
Krypton
Syfy enters the superhero TV game with their series Krypton about life on Superman’s alien home-world decades before his birth. But like with The Gifted don’t expect the Man of Steel to swoop in during sweeps week to boost ratings on the show as Krypton follows Superman’s granddad Seg-El as a spry 20-something living and working on Krypton before the planet went and got all explody.
The Punisher
The Punisher
The Punisher, on Netflix, follows the character of the same name who originally began as an ally/antagonist on the series Daredevil before being spun-off onto his own show. Not much is known about The Punisher other than to expect to see him eliminating as many bad-guys as he can in 13 episodes.
Runaways
The Hulu series Runaways sounds interesting, but reports from the creators of the show make me wonder if it’ll be as interesting as I first thought? The comic series Runaways is about a group of teens who discover that a) they all have superpowers because b) their parents are all major super-villains who run a west coast crime empire. But the creators of the Hulu version have said that the series will be “the O.C. of the Marvel Universe” and that just because the parents are super-villains who quite literally sacrifice people, “that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all that bad.” Ugh, ugh, and double ugh.
Black Lightning
Black Lightning will join the CW stable of established DC characters like Arrow, Supergirl and The Flash this season with the title character who can harness electricity and must return to the superhero fold years after retiring.
Freeform, the old ABC Family, is set to debut two new superhero series next season with New Warriors and Cloak and Dagger.
New Warriors
Cloak and Dagger
When I was a teen New Warriors, a comic about a team a sort of teenaged X-Men, was one of my favorites. But this TV New Warriors isn’t an action series, it’s reportedly a half-hour comedy starring a character named Squirrel Girl, who’s, admittedly, really popular with the younger set these days.
Cloak and Dagger
In the comic Cloak and Dagger Cloak was a character of darkness and Dagger of light who were a team called, you guessed it, Cloak and Dagger. From the looks of it, the TV version retains the characters and their powers, but looks to be more Twilight, “they’re from two different worlds but are in love,” than X-Men “let’s kick Magneto’s butt” in tone.
Non-comic book series
I can’t tell you how weird it feels to write that. Literally a few years ago there weren’t any series based on comic books, now there’s so many I can’t even keep track. But even though there’s quite a few new superhero TV series to look forward to this season, there are a few non-superpowered shows debuting 2017–18 as well.
The Crossing
The Crossing
The Crossing on ABC has a small town becoming inundated when hundreds of bodies begin washing ashore from some disaster. But this disaster is something that’s going to happen in the future and these people are really refugees escaping to their past, our present, to find safety. The Crossing is a show I’m interested in as long as it doesn’t turn out to be another Lost where the goal is to spread the mystery of it out over as many seasons and episodes as possible rather than telling a coherent story.
Even The Crossing seems to have somewhat of a superhero element to it with some of the characters from the future possessing strange abilities far beyond that of mere mortal men.
There are a few interesting looking non-superhero series on FOX this season, the first of which is The Orville.
The Orville
The Orville
The Orville created by and starring Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame is a live action comedic take on Star Trek. From the looks of things, The Orville is a sort of TV version of Galaxy Quest if the characters on Galaxy Quest were really the bumbling crew of a starship and not Hollywood actors playing them. I think The Orville is a great idea for a series, if I don’t think I laughed once at the promo that was released for the show a few months back.
Ghosted
If The Orville is a take on the movie Galaxy Quest then Ghosted also on FOX seems to be a take on the movie Ghostbusters. This time, instead of four scientists working together to bust ghosts, it’s, according to FOX, a skeptic (Craig Robinson) and true believer (Adam Scott) who’re the ones having to go around and do the busting as it were.
LA > Vegas
LA > Vegas
LA > Vegas has the most unique sitcom setting I can think of over the last few years. The show takes place aboard an airliner that makes a weekly round-trip between LA and Las Vegas with there being some regular characters of LA > Vegas including jet’s crew and people who travel to Vegas every week as well as new passengers each episode on a trip to lose money in the desert.
S.W.A.T.
The S.W.A.T. franchise has had a surprisingly long history. The original TV series of the same name debuted in 1975 with a feature film version in 2003 and a low-budget sequel released in 2011. And now comes a new S.W.A.T. TV series on CBS that’s set to premiere later this fall. CBS dramas aren’t known for their subtly and the promo for S.W.A.T. isn’t subtle with S.W.A.T police officers having gun battles in the streets one minute, smooching with their wives in the shower the next to dodging bazooka blasts a later that evening.
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Discovery also on CBS has the most interesting path to series of any show in memory. This series has been around so long that I originally wrote about it in my 2016 TV preview. Star Trek: Discovery was supposed to premiere January 2017 but was then pushed back to May after execs realized that there was no way the series would be ready to air last winter. Then, a few months into 2017, they also realized that a May debut wasn’t going to happen either so the series was once again pushed back to September 24. Which looks like it’s going to happen since there’s been quite a bit of marketing released on the series including things like posters and online promos for the show.
But wait, there’s more.
Only one episode of Star Trek: Discovery will be shown on CBS with the remainder of the episodes then debuting over the next few weeks on the CBS All Access streaming service for residents in the US and Netflix for most of the rest of the world. Which seems like a bit of a misstep to me. I think CBS is eying fans of Star Trek and are just assuming they’re going to shell out $6 a month to watch Star Trek: Discovery because it’s Star Trek and fans of Star Trek will pay any amount of money to see anything labelled Star Trek. Now, I’m a fan of the Star Trek but I think most of what CBS offers is pure mung and can’t imagine shelling out $6 a month just to watch Star Trek: Discovery when there’s so many other things to watch on TV, especially around the time Star Trek: Discovery is premiering.
Here’s what I could see doing, though.
Star Trek: Discovery
If that first episode of Star Trek: Discovery that airs on CBS is good, if it’s intriguing enough for me to want to checkout the rest of the episodes — all of which is debatable since though I consider myself a fan of Star Trek none-the-less I really haven’t liked anything Star Trek since the late 1990s. If Star Trek: Discovery is interesting enough what I may do is wait until all the episodes are available on CBS All Access since they’re not all being released at once but instead over the course of a few months. And when they’re all available get CBS All Access for a month, binge them and then cancel my subscription.
But like I said that’s debatable. Star Trek: Discovery will have to be really good for me to want to do that and everything I’ve read about the show, from original series helmer Bryan Fuller exiting the series to CBS changing the look of Star Trek: Discovery from retro-Trek to something more futuristic makes me doubt that I’ll be in a big rush to checkout the rest of the series after it debuts in September.
Returning series
Because of the weird nature of TV I’m not quite sure what all current series are returning and when? Like both the series Legion and Westworld aired episodes in early 2017, but are only scheduled to return “sometime” in 2018, which might mean they’ll return in a few months or in more than a year. While there might not be a load of returning shows I’m interested in this season, those that are returning are really good and I don’t think I could be more excited about new episodes if I tried.
The Good Place
The Good Place
One show that is scheduled to return fairly soon is The Good Place on September 20. This NBC comedy about a woman (Kristen Bell) who dies and wakes in “the good place” but really was supposed to go to the bad one was the one new network show from last season that I liked that’s still around for a season two. I was surprised as to just how much a slow-burn The Good Place was, with each episode acting as a single chapter in a season-long story. My initial thoughts on the show was that it might be the most disturbing thing on TV since in the universe of the The Good Place 99.999% of everyone who dies goes to “the bad place,” and it’s only the supremely good among us that end up in “the good place.” So even the best of us are doomed. And in the show if Bell’s character is ever found out what happens to her? Does she get a one-way ticked to hell? I liked The Good Place enough to stick with it until the end, when a twist I saw coming from the very first episode hit that I was still surprised by made me change The Good Place from a show I liked to one I adored.
Stranger Things
Stranger Things
The 2016 breakout TV series that I think surprised everyone, including myself, as to how good it was Stranger Things returns to Netflix for a second season October 27. Stranger Things is a show about the 1980s but isn’t about the 1980s, it just so happens to take place there and is this weird, cool mesh of horror and sci-fi I really wasn’t expecting when I first started watching it last summer. Stranger Things stars a mostly pre-teen/teen cast of actors who, after one of the group goes missing and a girl mysteriously appears out of nowhere, must go on a quest to rescue their friend. But be it starring kids and teens or not, the danger and violence of the first season of Stranger Things was palpable with characters being shot, consumed by monsters and cocooned alive to wait out a fate worse than death. I don’t want to say that the first season of Stranger Things was a perfect show, but it might be about the most perfect show fans of horror/sci-fi these days can hope for.
Black Mirror
This surprisingly long-lasting British anthology horror/sci-fi series returns for a fourth season on Netflix this year. It’s easiest to describe this series as a modern day The Twilight Zone, but it’s really its own thing. Generally, episodes of Black Mirror take place in a few years time and deal with our everyday technology gone amok. Be it a society that runs on social media “likes” or soldiers with computers in their heads doing battle with mutant people who turn out to be a little less “mutant” and a lot more “people.” Where Black Mirror excels is at this everyday horror aspect to our lives, it’s the answer to the question, “Do we control our technology, or does it control us?”
And now for the ones that return sometime in 2018.
The Expanse
The Expanse
The Expanse on SyFy channel remains the lone holdout on a network that’s supposed to be for fans of sci-fi that actually is a quality sci-fi show. Two seasons in and I’m surprised as to just how well The Expanse has progressed. What started as a sort’a conspiracy thriller set in deep space with the search for a missing woman has grown exponentially into a war spanning the entire solar system with a group of characters spread out between the Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter and now Venus. I think what I like most about The Expanse is that while the show has grown in scope, the focus has remained on most of the same characters from the first season with a few additions here and there. So while a similar series like Game of Thrones has grown to the point of being unable to contain its story in a single episode, The Expanse has remained grounded and feels much like the same show when it started while the bounds of the story had been let to expand.
Legion
Legion
Legion might be the most trippy series on TV — and one of the best. It’s a superhero show but is nothing like a traditional superhero show since the focus of Legion is on character’s mental states rather than who can punch the villain hardest. I’m not sure the construction of the first season of Legion is like any other series out there. Legion starts out with David Haller (Dan Stevens) living his life inside a mental institution who has these weird memories of his childhood. It seems like David can do these strange things, or maybe he just imagines that he can. As the series progresses we go in and out of David’s, as well as other character’s minds, to the point where we’re really not sure what’s real and what’s not. But in the universe that is Legion what’s real and what is not is not as important as what the characters believe is real or not.
Westworld
Westworld
To me at least, this year wasn’t a great one for original series on HBO. I’m not sure if I’m just aging out of the core HBO demographic, but in 2017 the only show I really cared about there was Westworld, and much like with The Good Place I didn’t think it was going to be very good when I first heard about it. I mean, how could it be? Westworld was delayed ages because of “script problems” and was based on a decades old movie about rich people who visit a theme park where they can do whatever they want to the robotic inhabitants there. And I mean whatever they want. But instead of simply following the model of the movie, the creators of the Westworld TV show also made its focus on the robotic characters of the park in addition to the wealthy visitors. These robots are doomed to unknowingly live the same day over and over again, on a loop with the park’s patrons treating them like toys to be shot or raped or murdered. The question of the Westworld series is, what happens if these robots start realizing their lives aren’t their own and want to claim them back?
The X-Files
The X-FIles
An eleventh season of The X-Files is slated to debut in 2018 on Fox even with the 2016 tenth season having the fans divided. Some thought that because episodes of the new The X-Files were essentially a continuation of the old, and were told in the same anachronistic 1990s fashion, the new episodes were no good when put up against other modern series. While others, myself included, thought that when people were screaming that they wanted more The X-Files, and when more episodes of The X-Files arrived on their TV screens, what did they think they were exactly going to get?
Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul
The AMC series that started off as just a prequel to the hit series Breaking Bad but over the years has evolved into something so much more Better Call Saul usually returns in the first quarter of the year. The last two years I’ve called Better Call Saul the best series on TV and so far in 2017 it’s still the best. This series has some of the best characters out there, be it sack-sack Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) who in the third season is well on his way to becoming Saul Goodman, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), Jimmy’s not yet right hand man who turned to the dark side last season and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a woman who’d seemingly have it all together and a great life as a lawyer except she’s fallen into Jimmy’s orbit and ends up literally crashing and burning this season.
I remember how excited I got when The Bourne Identity was released. In 2002 the spy movie genera was waning with the stalwart James Bond franchise experiencing its last gasps before being rebooted in 2006. But otherwise there wasn’t much else out there spy-guy-wise. Enter The Bourne Identity.
I’ve been watching so much sci-fi the last few weeks/months I had to ask myself the question, is it too much? On the one hand how can “too much” sci-fi be a bad thing? On the other hand there’s so much of it coming out, and so much is good, is the flood of it diluting sci-fi in general? Like will people one day look back on 2018 at some point in the future where sci-fi has returned to its traditional levels, a few series on TV and a few movies a year, and see this year as an aberration?
The 2016 season divided viewers of the series. On the one hand, some wanted The X-Files to be setup like more modern series with a strong season-long story. On the other were people, myself included, who thought that the six-episode continuation of The X-Files was just that, a “continuation,” so why mess with success?
I think the concept of *LA to Vegas is a strong one where each episode stars the crew of the plane, the regular passengers and new passengers who cycle in and out as well. The first episode’s new passengers were a couple who’d set off to Vegas to elope, but where the boyfriend ends up coming home alone and unmarried in the end.
The Hunt for Red October is one of my favorite movies of the 1990s. Based on the book of the same name by writer Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October became the prototypical “techno-thriller” that was very popular in that time period where the technology of the movie, here a submarine that is silent and undetectable and therefor could nuke the US without warning, is as important as the characters or story. Most of The Hunt for Red October deals with the captain of said Soviet submarine (Sean Connery). Trying to help is CIA agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) who has to figure out how to help him pull the defection off without a) getting everyone aboard the sub killed in the process, b) not letting the Soviets know what’s happened and, most importantly, c) not accidentally starting WWIII.
