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The Capture (2019)
Cross John le Carre with Person of Interest
As user npjy83 already mentioned, this show shares a lot of themes with "Person of Interest", "Enemy of the State", and "Eagle Eye". I'd add "The Conversation" (the 1974 movie with Gene Hackman) to that list.
What starts out as a simple police procedural grows larger as the investigators learn of potential evidence tampering, and a coverup. The deeper the investigation goes, the higher up it goes. The show becomes less about the actual crime, and more about the dividing line between security and freedom, and how much we can, and should, trust our governments to draw that line properly.
As with Person of Interest, the show changes significantly between the first and second season. In Person of Interest, the first few seasons were a standard police procedural with a simple macguffin that was used as a gimmick to interest viewers. In later seasons, the implications of that macguffin were explored, and it became a single narrative about the morality of using such tools.
In The Capture, the first season is very much like a John le Carre story, about a single operative investigating the shadowy world of conspiracies. The second is a completely different show, with everything in the open, and instead of trying to uncover what's going on, they are trying to understand it, navigate it, and come to terms with it.
Strongly recommended.
Alex Rider (2020)
Not awesome but better than expected
I am not the target audience for this show. Many of my niblings are, and some co-workers recommended it, so I gave it a shot. I really wasn't expecting much. It sounded like Spy Kids, Young James Bond, or that old "Beans Baxter" TV series from the 1980s. All of those were aimed at 8-12 year olds, which I am not one of. Fortunately, this is nothing like those.
If you're expecting George Smiley, or even Jack Ryan, you're going to be disappointed. This is nothing like MI5. On the other hand, if you compare it to shows like Alias or 24, it's actually more believable.
The first two episodes were surprisingly credible, with Alex's introduction to the world of espionage being the result of reasonable and intelligent actions. And more importantly, they were believable coming from a 16 year old. He's not a super genius who out thinks adults, he's not a ninja fighter, and he can't build a laser scope out of bubble gum and tin foil. He can pick locks, he knows how to use a cell phone, and he's determined to find the truth. And when he does, the agency's reason for wanting him isn't because he's a genius, but because there are suspicious activities taking place inside a high school for troubled teenagers, and they need a teenager to do it.
The morality of sending in an untrained agent, effectively a spy, is questioned, as well it should be.
So far, it's avoided most of the tropes of the genre, and made for an entertaining show. As long as you accept it for what it is, it's quite enjoyable.
American Fiction (2023)
The Sokal Affair mixed with racial politics
This is the story of a man who wants to do the right thing, but is punished for every right decision he makes, and rewarded for ever wrong one he makes. Everyone around him tells him to just accept it, and take the path of least resistance, but he can't accept the hypocrisy that everyone else does.
In 1996, Alan Sokal was sick of academia publishing nonsense simply because it agreed with the political views of the editors. He submitted a ludicrous article which claimed that quantum gravity supported Democrats over Republicans, just to see if it would be published. Despite being incoherent rubbish, it successfully passed peer review. When it was published, he went public with it, showing the bankruptcy of the peer review process. Rather than reflecting as to why they'd been so gullible, the easily fooled publishers held themselves blameless and said it was Sokal's dishonesty that was the real issue.
That's basically the story here, except with the publishing and entertainment industry rather than academia.
Instead of narcissistic liberal academics, it mocks narcissistic liberal entertainment figures. I'd say that the publishers are depicted as unrealistic stereotypes, except I've actually met people like this. The stereotype exists for a reason, sadly.
The schism between Monk's personal life and his professional one does slow the movie down in parts, but it's necessary. A movie that was solely about Monk's trials in getting his book published could easily come across as a rant, and be dismissed as such. By humanizing Monk, and showing the real impacts of why he makes the decisions he does, we can see some of the real world implications of his book.
Babylon 5: The Road Home (2023)
You can't go home again
Being a natural cynic, I wasn't expecting much from this. B5 is my favourite show of all time, but it's had three sequels (Crusade, Legends of the Rangers, Lost Tales) and none have been successful. It's been 16 years since the last aired B5 story, and a huge number of the cast members have passed away.
B5's strength was a strongly plotted, well thought out story arc that was closed off with no loose ends, so what story is there to tell? There are numerous sagas that have been referred to but never seen, such as the Dilgar War and the Telepath War. There are also many novels written from jms' outlines that would make for a great series, such as the story of Bester and the history of the Psi-Corps, the rise and fall of the Centuari, and the story of the Techno Mages.
Any of them would be wonderful to see, but those aren't going to fit in a 78 minute run time any more than Lord of the Rings would. So what story did we actually get?
Indulgent fan fiction made by the actual creator (jms), that's what.
This is to B5 what the "What If?" television show is to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A cute afterthought, but not essential viewing.
If you treat this as being a fan project (like Star Trek Continues), made with decent production values for showing at a convention to nostalgic fans, it's fantastic. Every surviving cast member has at least a cameo role. Those who have passed away have been recast with voice actors, so all characters (except for Vir) are present. And for good or bad, the fanservice is off the charts (it makes Picard season 3 tame in comparison).
But as a standalone movie, or a B5 installment, it adds nothing to the series, and actually undermines some of the established narrative of the original show.
The good:
- Animation quality (outside of certain character designs)
- Voice acting and direction
The okay:
- The music was not up to B5's historical lofty standards, but was serviceable
- The pacing felt neither rushed nor overly plodding
The bad:
- While Sheridan and Londo were recognizable, many of the cast were not. Ivanova, Lochley, Marcus and Sinclair looked unlike their respective actors. G'Kar and Garibaldi get a pass as the only Narn and the only bald character, so they were identifiable by default.
- Although the replacement voice actors did good work, few sounded like the actors that they were replacing. There were a few times G'Kar sounded like G'Kar, and Garibaldi sounded like Garibaldi, but for the most part, they were clearly different actors.
- There are a few fourth wall breaks that are simply distracting.
- A Minbari tachyon-based power station? That's ridiculous on the face of it.
- Sheridan trips through alternate universes are dictated by his desires and emotions. He is god.
- The Jiminy Cricket ending where Sheridan and Delenn love each other real hard and save the universe.
- The Shadows in B5 were able to go one on one with the Vorlons (two of them were able to murder Kosh), and a single Vorlon nearly destroyed B5 on his own. But in this movie, the Shadows use Zerg rush tactics, and one is killed by Sheridan with a simple PPG.
Secret Invasion (2023)
Neither secret nor an invasion
The comics that this takes its' name from was created in order to clean up continuity errors that had built up over time in Marvel's superhero comics. The idea was that shapeshifting Skrulls had replaced many characters and heroes over the years, and that was used to explain the inconsistencies, and excise unpopular storylines.
This series does none of that. The one character who does act out of character is Fury himself. Instead of the dynamic leader previously seen in the MCU, this Fury is a broken down old man. He not only has almost no resources, he allows himself to be pushed around and bullied by, well, pretty much everyone. He's reduced to being almost a background character in his own story. He's ineffective, weak, and indecisive.
Unlike the comics, the MCU doesn't have hundreds of stories that need to be reconciled. The Skrull's motivation isn't realistic. The Kree destroyed the Skrull homeworld and made them refugees who took shelter on Earth. Fury didn't find them a new homeworld like he promised (which is itself ludicrous), so they decide to murder the human race and take over Earth for themselves.
As others have mentioned, it's bad writing, bad pacing, and for a show that supposedly cost $200M to make, it looks incredibly cheap.
I made it thought one and a half episodes before I quit out of boredom.
Silo (2023)
Imagine Logan's Run written by James Joyce
Both show a post-apocalyptic society in a tightly controlled environment, where leaving to go into the outside world is presumed to be a death sentence. Both have protagonists in law enforcement who discover that their society is built on a lie, and that the powers running the environment will do anything to prevent the truth from getting out. And both have populations with no history of times before the city/silo were created; their cultures are not only static, they are stagnant, by design.
But where Logan's Run (the movie, not the books or TV show) showed a seemingly idyllic city that enforced population control by killing anyone over 30 (21 in the books), the distinctly non-idyllic Silo solves the problem by strictly limiting how many children can be born.
And while Logan's city convinced its' citizens not to be curious about the outside world by fulfilling their every desire so they had no reason to want to go outside, the Silo uses fear and intimidation to keep people inside.
There are some decisions about the Silo are not only not explained, but that seem utterly daft. In a silo 144 levels deep, why are elevators forbidden? Why is knowledge of microscopes a criminal offence? Neither makes logical sense, and neither is explained in the series.
Despite that, the show is well written, well paced, and well acted. The villains of the piece may be unsympathetic, but their reasoning is well explained. Ultimately, the villains are pragmatic, while the protagonists are idealistic.
The show ends on a cliffhanger, and there are many unresolved questions. The number "18" is significant, and only the Mayor seems to know why. In the finale, we see the hero walking outside from the Silo which is in a huge crater formation, and we pan back to see dozens of similar craters. It's possible that there are many silos, and that this is silo 18.
If that's true, then there are questions about whether the silos are aware of each other, if they all follow the same pattern, and whether they are all partners, or competitors, or even enemies. There could be factions of silos, and "the pact" is a set of rules agreed to designed to prevent inter-silo conflicts.
While the show is well done, like Severance (another Apple+ series), ending on an unresolved cliffhanger means the story is incomplete, so it's really still a work in progress, not a complete narrative.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Season 3 is a return to form
Like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Picard, as of season 3 is bucking the trend of the newer Treks (Discovery and the first two seasons of Picard) that showed a violent, fascist Federation that was filled with bitter and broken people, and has returned to the more optimistic tone of the original Trek series (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise)
Unlike Discovery, the Starfleet officers act like trained military people, rather than children, and there is no shouting, screaming, or tantrums on the bridge. The characters act like adults. They may not particularly like each other, but they trust each other to be professionals.
Is the show perfect? Not by a long shot. Is it outstanding, like so many people are claiming? I'd say no to that, as well.
I think a lot of people have been so disappointed with the JJ Abrams Trek movies, Discovery, and the first seasons of Picard that they're overcompensating by praising Strange New Worlds and now Picard far more than they deserve.
Picard season 3, like SNW, is definitely a return to the original formula. The characterizations are good, the acting is good, and the stories are intriguing. But the key element is that both shows are filled will likeable characters and an optimistic world (or galaxy)view.
After the unlikable characters and nihilistic stories of Discovery and Picard before it, the newer series.are being praised just for being different. That doesn't automatically make them brilliant, though.
Is Picard season 3 good? Yes, it's good to very good. And it's certainly worth watching, which I wouldn't say about the previous seasons. But it's not perfect, and don't watch it expecting to be blown away by the series.
Night Court (2023)
Night Court TNG
I watched the original series first run in the 1980s. I loved it, but I'm not blind to its' faults.
The first season was very uneven, and the iconic ensemble cast associated with the show actually didn't come together until the third season. Characters like Roz, Mack, and Christine didn't appear at first. The original cast was pretty rocky. Who remembers Sheila as the public defender, or Lana as the court clerk?
Like the original, this new show looks pretty rocky to start, with a mixture of good ideas and some misfires as well. If it's not cancelled, I think that it could grow into a decent series, but it's not there yet.
The good:
- Fairly interesting characters that for the most part, are likeable and potentially interesting.
- While the new DA comes off as arrogant and unlikable, she's no worse than Dan Fielding when he first appeared. She could make a good foil for Dan, both as an opponent, and as a reminder of himself in his younger days.
- John Laroquette is great as always, and brings an air of legitimacy to the project.
- It's avoided the trap of many modern sequels and reboots, and avoided identity politics
- It's respectful of the original material.
The bad:
- The cast doesn't display much chemistry yet. Outside of the judge/Dan dynamic, not much has been established, but it's early days.
- There's a little *too* much reverence to the last Harry Stone. That's appropriate for the first few episodes, but the show will have to move on.
- The laugh track is annoying. One of the strengths of the original show was the live studio audience, and their reactions.
- The bailiff is hamming it up a little too much.
Overall, it's not bad. It's certainly no worse than the first few episodes of the 1984 series were when it aired.
People expecting it to be the mature, ensemble comedy trouble that the original series was in the third season are going to be disappointed. It's rough around the edges, but I think with time, those will be smoothed out. In 1984, NBC gave the series time to do that; in fact, it gave it two years to find its' footing. In 2023, I'm not sure that Peacock will be willing to sustain the show long enough for it to develop.
Babylon 5 (1993)
The best SF show of the 1990s
My favourite show of all time.
I'm a child of the 1960s. I grew up on Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, the original Star Trek, and others. The 1970 had a lot of good, experimental science fiction, as did the 1980s. But by the late 1980s, a lot of things were becoming formulaic. Star Trek was now an institution, and most space-based shows were seen as little more than copies, usually poorly done, of the "real" space show.
Babylon 5 was different.
For one thing, it wasn't a mission about exploration, it was a diplomatic outpost, where the stories were more likely to be political than technical. The first season was more about the cultural differences between different races and empires, and over time, we saw the series story arc (which actually started in the pilot movie) start to develop.
Unlike Trek, the characters were credible, and there were consequences to their actions. If a character broke a rule in one episode, several episodes later he could find himself in front of a board of inquiry justifying his actions.
Characters left the show, and new ones were added. Alliances changed. Characters that were deadly enemies in the first season were allies of necessity in later seasons, and vice versa. The characters and situations were complex. Instead of just being good or evil, characters had their own agendas which would both align with, and be completely opposed to, the Babylon 5 station at any given point. Bester and the Psycorp showed a perfect example of a shadowy, amoral organization that was both enemy and ally to B5 during the series, depending on circumstance.
Jms, the showrunner, said in the beginning that B5 was a "novel for television", and it was. The five seasons follow the format of a novel. That's commonplace today, but in the 1990s, it was unheard of.
The show isn't perfect, but it's close. There are some dud episodes, especially in the first season, and executive interference also hurt the show in the beginning. But as a whole, the series was arguably the most complex, and longest running story ever seen in a science fiction series at the time. Star Trek DS9 followed suit (there's a huge argument about how much of DS9 was copied from B5), and shows today like the Expanse come close, but B5 was the first, and to me, still the best, to do it.
Velma (2023)
Not a show as much as therapy for spiteful writers working out their resentments
This ranks up (or rather down) with shows like Another Life and movies like Liquid Sky.
The creator is extremely angry and bitter, and blames other people for his (or this case her) problems, and has made a show about the people (s)he despises.
The show is filled with nothing more than caricatures and self-congratulatory back-patting. It's pretty clear that we're supposed to hate everyone in the show except the main character, because they're all so miserable to her. However, the main character is even nastier and more unpleasant as the other characters, but the author isn't self aware enough to realize it.
The Devil's Hour (2022)
Well done and worth watching, but not really that innovative
Spoilers galore.
One line summary: Cross Doctor Who with Agatha Christie.
When Steven Moffat was the showrunner for Doctor Who, he didn't merely use time travel as a means to kickstart the plot the way most showrunners before him had. He frequently wrote stories where causality and the side effects of time travel *were* the plot.
This series reads like a Doctor Who concept that wouldn't work in the Doctor Who setting. Anyone who has read Ken Greenwood's book "Replay" will realize what's going on very early on.
While Replay was told in the first person from someone (the Replayer, as per the title) trying to understand what was happening to him, this series is seen from the perspective of outsiders who are impacted by the choices made by the Replayer.
It's very well executed, and definitely worth seeing. It's not perfect, however. As is usual with Moffat, it's a little indulgent with the number of twists to drive the point home, and the pacing of the first two episodes is a little slow,
The marketing is also a bit misleading, which might put some people off. From the trailer, you'd think that Peter Capaldi was the lead, but he's barely in the first half of the episodes. He is a key character, and he is the focus of the last two episodes, but he's not the lead character in the series.
This is definitely a show where viewers have to play close attention, as there are numerous plot threads opened in the early episodes that appear to be neglected or forgotten, which are later resolved (or at least addressed) in the later episodes.
It's a slow burn, but a good one.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
Not perfect, but not bad
Viewed objectively, there are a lot of problems with the show. It predates Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and yet this Enterprise is incredibly advanced in comparison to that "later" NCC-1701. A major character here is descended directly from Khan Noonian Singh, and even has the same last name. Yet in a few years, this will be arcane knowledge that Kirk and Spock will have to research. "Nurse" Chapel is an Action Girl, who in a few years will become little more a nursing assistant to McCoy, etc.
There's also the fact that except for Pike and Spock, there is not a single male bridge officer. In a few years, that will be completely reversed and Uhura will be the only female. That, ironically, shows a female majority as being a problem that Starfleet felt the need to address in the future, which is probably not at all what the showrunners intended.
With that said, the show does embrace the title card, and is an optimistic look at exploring the galaxy. Where Picard and Discovery were filled with miserable, irritable and unpleasant people and a fascist Federation, SNW is the first Trek show since DS9 to have sympathetic characters that the viewer can actually care about.
A lot of people are rating the show 9/10 or 10/10 largely in comparison to Picard/Discovery. Just as Star Wars fans felt that TFA "redeemed" the series after the dislike prequel series, the same is true here. After the unpleasant Picard and the unlikeable Discovery series, a return to the original formula makes the show seem better than it actually is. If there hadn't been a Picard or Discover, a lot of those 9s and 10s would be 6s and 7s.
And that's fine. The show stands on its' own. It's not fantastic, but it is consistent, and optimistic. And unlike the most recent Trek series, it's not stewing in its' own resentments, so it very well may grow into something better over time.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Great cast, good acting and effects, laughable screenplay
No plot details are spoiled here, but I do talk about a couple of tropes that are invoked. Fair warning.
This is one of those "oh, come on now" movies where the premise is so ridiculous that you just have to shut your brain off and not take it seriously. That's a shame, because for the most part, the family-oriented story aspects are well told, and the actors range from good to top notch (J. K Simmons in particular).
Of course, there are all the tropes. The disowned father just happens to have the skills and resources needed at the end of the movie to force a reconciliation. The team trying to save the world from a future apocalypse, which includes people that the government knows are from the future, can't get scientists to research their theory, but the lead character is a science teacher, and one of the kids in his class just happens to be OCD about volcanoes, and has the answer they need.
But for the most part, they skip over that silly stuff. Even the obnoxious comic relief character gets little screen time until after he's redeemed, fortunately.
But the elephant in the room is the stupidity of the basic premise. The world is going to be destroyed by aliens, so they need to take people from the current time into the future as soldiers. It's like the John Varley book (and movie) Millenium, except without the logic or internal consistency.
If the world was going to be attacked by aliens, instead of just taking cannon fodder from the past, and doing research work in the future, why not send all of the research data back to the past and have the productivity of a world NOT under siege work on weapons and defences in preparation?
Which is what a core group of about 10 people do at the end, but of course, they're doing it without government approval.
If you can ignore the stunning flaws in logic, it's a well-acted and presented action movie, but it's hard to take seriously.
Chris Claremont's X-Men (2018)
Good general documentary that will appeal to fans of Claremont
If you don't know who Chris Claremont is, then this documentary will give you an overview of why his work was so important to the X-Men characters that became a phenomenal comics success, and later cartoons, movies, and TV shows.
If you do, you'll be happy to see the first person accounts of the stories of why and how the Phoenix Saga ending was changed on Jim Shooter's demand, both from Shooter and Claremont.
There are some serious omissions, however. Dave Cockrum has passed away, so obviously he could not be contacted, but John Byrne, whose contributions were just as important (and arguably more so) as Louis Simonson's does not appear, and it mentioned mostly in passing. The documentary gives the impression that Claremont, Nocenti, and Simonson did the series, with some of the artists making contributions, which is a slight to Byrne's essential role in the early years.
Bob Harris, who shifted the direction of the book to the corporate mandated direction, is also only mentioned in passing and never seen.
Those lapses notwithstanding, this movie gives a good and fairly honest accounting of the early years of Claremont's career on the X-Men, and how it turned into a cultural juggernaut. Claremont didn't do it alone, but he was certainly a (if not the) driving force behind it all.
But it's less a documentary than an evening with friends. Most of the movie is just Chris, Anne, and Louise on a couch reminiscing about the good old days with someone filming them. There are other pieces with Shooter, Liefeld, and some others, but for the most part, it's just the kind of after dinner conversation you'd have with friends.
If you know who these people are from the books, you'll find it very interesting; I'm not sure how much general appeal it has.
As a documentary, there's not much to it. It could be a film school project; mostly it's just a static camera filming people telling their story to the camera (like Jim Shooter), or with each other (Claremont sitting on a couch with Anne Nocenti and Louise Simonson).
There aren't any revelations here; everything mentioned has appeared in print, been told at conventions, or otherwise over the years. But for those unfamiliar with it, it's a concise summary of the creation of the X-Men phenomenon, told by (most of) the people most responsible for it.
The Orville (2017)
Uneven, but a good show
The show bounces around a lot, tonally, and it can be quite jarring at time. There will be a riff with crewmen making fart jokes and adolescent humour, followed by a discussion of forced sterilizations and genocide.
The politics are very reminiscent of the original Trek (ST:TOS). The show raises serious issues, and talks about them, but unlike most shows, it doesn't resolve them, or turn into a finger-wagging lecture. When the Union discovers that the planet that provides the majority of their weapons is oppressing (or exterminating) their female population, they have choose between their principles, and the reality that without those weapons, they will quite likely lose a genocidal war they are facing. All sides are represented, there are no easy answers, and unlike most current SF series (like the current Trek series), no side is *obviously* correct, with the other side being clearly wrong, and immoral.
And this in a a show that's mostly a comedy.
One other criticism is that they milk the comedy scenes for too long, sometimes far too long. Okay, ha ha, we got the joke, can we just move on now?
But pacing and tonal issues aside, the show is thoughtful, interesting, generally intelligent, well acted, and well written. The characters are all well developed (in the case of Bortas, possibly overdeveloped), and their actions are always consistent with their characters.
Given that most current SF shows range from dark to borderline psychotic, with characters that are miserable and angry, a show that's optimistic (even in the face of genocide) is a welcome change, and well worth watching.
Recommended.
Another Life (2019)
Absolute drek
I wrote a long detailed review, but it was rejected as being badly formatted.
Since there was no hint as to what in the review triggered it, I'll just post that this show is a waste of time for numerous reasons.