A great check with my co-host, Carolyn Hinds.
Check out the recording here: https://x.com/BaronDestructo/status/1942750590171504883
Discover more from Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A great check with my co-host, Carolyn Hinds.
Check out the recording here: https://x.com/BaronDestructo/status/1942750590171504883
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You didn’t do a post for Sunday’s discussion so I’ll put my comments for all five shows here. Buckle up!
—
Blake’s 7 – Star One
I don’t know why, but I’ve never seen much of Blake’s 7. I can’t explain it and it’s not for want of trying. It was on TV on a Saturday night when I was growing up. I was in the right demographic and a nut for anything sci-fi. I loved Doctor Who which was of a similar vintage and budget (although Blake’s 7 is much more serious). And yet, I never watched it. And now, when I try to watch it, I struggle to get into it.
Perhaps it takes itself too seriously? I definitely prefer my shows to be a bit more tongue in cheek. I did enjoy watching this episode and I’m kind of tempted to give Blake’s 7 another go. It mostly worked as a standalone episode. The sets were cheap and flimsy, the acting was terrible but there was some nostalgia triggered. The classic English quarry standing in for 1970s alien planets makes an appearance. The BBC Radiophonics Workshop incidental music. Maybe I should stop rewatching stuff I’ve already seen and try something new?
—
Dark Matter – Isn’t That A Paradox?
Ooohh, a time travel episode! I’m in! I haven’t watched this episode since it first aired. I’d forgotten how good Zoie Palmer is as the Android. She gets all the best lines in this episode.
Dark Matter was quite serialised so it was good to have a standalone episode (other than some hooks for the main season plot tacked onto the end of the episode to keep people coming back).
The crew trying to blend into small town life was hilarious. Although, I think TWO was probably tempted to stay. And I could see FIVE going to high school and later becoming a genius inventor. I’d totally watch a whole series about this crew being stuck in the past.
As with every time travel story, we must analyse to death whether the depiction of time travel is scientifically accurate, or at least internally consistent. In the Dark Matter universe it appears that time is fixed and unchangeable. If you travel back in time then whatever you do there had already happened in the past so your present is a direct result of those events. This is borne out by FIVE’s actions by travelling back to rig the shuttle to knock out the cops, thus triggering the proximity alert that we’d heard about earlier in the episode. Likewise when they return to their present time they look up what happened to the residents of the town and everything is consistent with their memories of how history happened. This is good and how I believe time travel would really work. It removes the jeopardy of potentially changing the timeline which is why most writers prefer a changeable timeline a la Back To The Future but I find it satisfying finding out how events of the past led to the future we already know, rather than changing those past events to modify the future.
—
Doctor Who – Blink
The irony with Blink is that it’s regarded as one of the best Doctor Who episodes ever and it has almost zero Doctor in it. Plus, it’s one of the few episodes of Doctor Who where time travel is integral to the plot. In most episodes time travel is simply a device to get somewhere so the non-time travel story can happen. But in Blink the whole plot revolves around wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff and I love it!
One of my favourite things to happen in TV shows is to start the episode and have no clue what is going on. Star Trek would do it regularly and it’s not usually until the end of the first or second acts that an explanation is forthcoming. And Blink is like that as well. We learn things as Sally Sparrow learns things. We’re as perplexed as Sally is. We’re invested in the story.
When Sally goes to the hospital and old Billy mentions that it was raining on the day he met her and Sally says “It’s the same rain.” it’s heartbreaking! Time is such a cruel mistress and getting old sucks!
This episode is what earned Steven Moffat (for better or worse) the job of showrunner in a few years’ time.
After seeing this episode for the first time I was desperate for a spinoff show where Sally and Larry team up to investigate strange happenings around London. “Sparrow and Nightingale Investigations” run out of their video and bookstore. I don’t know if there was any serious talk about doing something like that. With Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures all on the go at this time I don’t think the BBC would have entertained another Doctor Who show but I think it would have been fantastic.
—
Eureka – Founder’s Day
I loved Eureka when it first aired. After watching this episode I’m beginning to question why. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good episode. More time travel (of the changeable type). But I’d somehow forgotten about all the dreadfully dull relationship stuff that went on during this show. Perhaps I was more invested in the relationships as they had developed over time but being thrown into the middle of it by just watching this episode out of context it was jarring.
I also had almost zero memory of this episode! I was beginning to question if I’d even seen it during its first run until James Callis appeared as Dr Grant.
Not much else to say about this, really. I liked Colin Ferguson. He seems like a nice guy in real life and his character was likeable.
I really miss the quirky dramedies of the 2000s. Eureka, Warehouse 13, Dead Like Me, Chuck, Haven, etc. Whatever happened to that genre? Do they still make things like that?
—
The Expanse – Home
This was the turning point in The Expanse. This is the episode where all the separate players and factions we’d been following for one and a half seasons finally converge on a single event that changes the course of the solar system forever. This is the episode where we switch from mostly “politics in space” to actual sci-fi with aliens and stuff.
There’s nothing I can say about The Expanse that hasn’t already been said. Its depiction of spin and thrust to simulate gravity is top notch. Space battles that take place over millions of kilometres and hours, if not days, and still manages to ramp up the tension.
One of the best depictions of space opera on TV I’ve ever seen. A must watch. I really hope it gets picked up again one day so they can finish the story from the books.
Blake’s 7: Of all of the shows on this list of 32 Top Sci-fi Series, this one is admittedly the toughest watch if you do not have the benefit of the nostalgia factor.
Dark Matter: Of all the versions of time travel, this is the one I prefer, one in which apparent changes to the timeline end up being baked into the timeline after all.
Dr. Who: It IS ironic that there is very little Doctor in an episode considered the show’s best.
Eureka: Yes, I have to admit that, as someone who never watched an episode of Eureka, this episode did little to convince me to start watching.
The Expanse: This episode served its purpose and has got me genuinely interested in checking out the series.
Of the entire list of 32 sci-fi shows, I think you’ll be very happy with these,
Battlestar Galactica
Black Mirror (though once it gets picked up by Netflix, the quality becomes a very mixed bag…)
The Expanse
Farscape
Firefly
The Twilight Zone (original)
The X-Files
Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9
Those are all my favorite sci-fi shows in addition to Stargate and Dark Matter, but I can’t count those as a recommendation as you’ve already watched them and created/and or worked on them lol.
I’ve never seen Babylon 5, I don’t care about Star Wars, Red Dwarf was ok, The Orville was ok but I don’t really like Seth Macfarlane’s writing or acting for that matter, and the rest I either haven’t seen or didn’t care for.
A couple sci-fi shows not on your list that I would highly recommend are Pluribus (brand new show from Vince Gilligan who worked on X-Files, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) and Severance. I know you’re hesitant to watch Severance because you pitched a show with a similar premise years before it, and the name Ben Stiller gives you lots of caution which it did for me as well, but boy oh boy is that show incredibly good. The way Season 1 builds and builds… and then that magnificent masterpiece of a season finale… it reminded me of the emotional and suspenseful highs I would get from shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos. It is THAT good.
Some shows take 2 or 3 episodes before I get hooked. Severance is a show that managed to immediately hook me with the very first scene. For me, character is king and extremely crucial to my enjoyment of any TV series, and strong acting is especially important. Severance excels at both incredibly rich characters and captivating performances. I couldn’t recommend it enough, and this is coming from someone who is very hard to please and who values their time too much to waste it on mediocre TV. It feels like taking the best parts of Black Mirror and making a full series out of it. Also if it helps, Ben Stiller is NOT the creative force behind the show who came up with the idea. It was some guy named Dan Erickson, and Ben Stiller’s creative involvement amounts to bringing Erickson’s scripts to life on screen with surprisingly great direction mimicking a Kubrickian style of filmmaking. From what I recall, Erickson’s scripts kept getting rejected by different networks and then Ben Stiller’s production company got a hold of them and Stiller was so fascinated that he decided to pick it up and make a show out of it. I hope you give it a chance when you have time!
Had already watched Farscape, Firefly, Twilight Zone and the cited Star Treks (except TOS).
I’ll put Severance on my watch list.