TV
The Orville: meh
A couple weeks back, Brickmuppet mentioned the new Trek-ish series The Orville, “tentatively optimistic” after watching the first two episodes.
I was… less enthusiastic, and the only thing I really liked was seeing Adrianne Palicki out of uniform. Still, not every SF show can hit the ground running like SG-1, so I set my DVR to record it, which it promptly failed to do.
Fortunately, Hulu has it, so I was able to watch episode 3. Well, about half of it, until the stupid was too thick to scrape off the screen. There was one honest-to-gosh funny line out of the captain’s mouth, but I’ve already forgotten what it was about.
Fundamentally, the problem was that I had no investment in the setup (I hesitate to call it a “plot”) or the characters, and it was written like a bad ABC Afterschool Special.
Bortus was introduced as a member of a single-gender species, but this episode changes that to “all-male species capable of sexual reproduction without the help of females, who are quite rare but play no part in reproduction since they’re given sex-change operations at birth, because females are smaller and weaker, exactly like humans.” (which raises the question of how precisely they’re “female” to begin with…)
So, first they created a species that’s Not Like Us (which has all sorts of story potential), and then immediately made them Exactly Like Us But Gendercidal (which is a Women’s Studies dissertation). I stopped watching when Kelly tried to make her case in court based on applying a universal concept of “female” across species in a way that doesn’t even make sense for Earth, much less an SFnal universe.
Also, Alara Kitan is a terrible character, mostly because the concept is so poorly thought out that Halston Sage could be a terrific actress and still end up buried to her neck in manure. They might as well have named her One Trick Pony.
So, it’s not good SF, and it’s not good comedy. I don’t see any reason to watch the rest of the season.
The Tick, season 1
“Slow-paced”, “low-key”, and “restrained” are not words I expected to use to describe The Tick, but there we are. I marathoned episodes 2-6 when I got home last night, and it feels like they’re planning on ~20 episodes to resolve the main story arc with The Terror.
Not bad, but not at all what I expected based on the pilot.
Dear Hulu,
The one-time-only conversion option for my watchlist and history when I launch the new version of the app the first time is not only poorly explained, but user-hostile. I now have to manually convert my watchlist, show by show, and give up any history of what I’ve watched in any series.
Or just cancel. Tempting.
Dark Matter catchup
I don’t have a lot to say about how the story is going, except that this week’s episode had a nice flashback to when Four wasn’t King Of The Assholes, but I want to praise Zoie Palmer for making Android the most reliably entertaining character in the show, and Anthony Lemke for making Three the most believable.
Bonus points for Palmer’s dual role this week.
Fight Pad, Elfless, Bill's Star, Demi surprise!
DanSora 12
Ok, I was wrong about how the last two episodes would play out, because there was only one. And yet somehow they ran out of story and padded it out with multiple exposition scenes that explained all the details and implications of what just happened. At least Aiz’s seiyū finally got to show emotion for more than a split-second, even if it was limited to rage.
Seriously, even Finn is jacking off to Bell’s heroic spirit now?
Eromanga-sensei
I didn’t realize last week was the finale, because it didn’t end so much as just stop. Fun little series, but I guess the source material didn’t have an obvious spot to end the season. I presume fistfulls of cash have been waved around for a continuation, so they didn’t really think it was necessary.
Doctor Who 10.12
I have no words. No, that’s not true. I have a lot of words, but they’re not very nice, and I don’t want to clean spittle off my screen. On the bright side, at least I got my wish; she was dry and showed emotion.
In the middle of the episode, my Amazon Echo thought it heard the Doctor ask it to tell a joke. This turned out to be more entertaining than the actual dialogue. Perhaps next time he should ask for a decent storyline.
I think the best way to understand this season is as a metaphor for suicide. The trailer for season 8 boasted, “I’m the Doctor. I’ve lived for over 2,000 years. I’ve made many mistakes, and it’s about time that I did something about that”, but he never does. Instead, he becomes more and more self-destructive, even trying to throw away all of his future regenerations by jumping into a rift to hold back a trivial threat.
It’s a chronicle of hesitation marks and cries for help. He’s torn between wanting to end it all and wanting someone, anyone, to save him. Which is Missy’s role, the frenemy he calls in the middle of the night after swallowing a bottle of pills and slitting his wrists (“across is for attention…”).
So maybe I did have a few things to say without spitting. Much. 😄
Demi-chan 13
This more than made up for the weak end to DanSora, the possibility of several seasons without Elf, and the cut-and-paste DW climax that had the emotional impact of a cheese dip recipe. Demi-chans are always welcome. More, please.
Dragon Crush, Cock Twister, Heartless Regen, and Groundhog Day
DanSora 11
Good Lefiya: well, that certainly qualifies as “casting while moving”.
Bad Lefiya: just beg for a piece already, sheesh.
Bonus Lefiya: congrats, you finally ended up sleeping with somebody.
More and more, I wish they’d made Tiona the focus character. She’s the most interesting of Aiz’s gal-pals. There’s a novel in this series that’s focused on the Amazon twins, but we’re not going to get anywhere near it this season.
Eromanga-sensei 12
In which sinister dom Sagiri abuses Elf and Dere-Dere-Dere Muramasa in the service of her muse, leaves her subs to suffer as she discovers The Secret Rival, then finds a new ecchi hobby that she doesn’t know dick about. In the aftermath, Megumin provides definitive proof that she is both a virgin and a total noob, and Muramasa demonstrates that she pays attention in art class. Even with her help, though, Sagiri still has a hard problem to solve before she can really nail this new style. Maybe Elf can swipe some videos from her brother, although that might lead to other problems.
Also, bookstore-chan tries the just-kidding-only-serious method, which Our Hero is naturally oblivious to.
If this ends next episode, I’m guessing the big finale will be Sagiri setting foot in the front yard. By the way, if that’s the Aunt in the OP, she’s running out of time to show up.
Slight change to the ED this week, revealing more about Our Hero.
Doctor Who 10.11
The beginning of the end, with terrible Zathras impression. Also, more third-rate meta.
Could they have found a less-convincing way to stage Bill’s death? “Okay, I need you to stand right here so the Doctor can get into position to not help you, while we flashback and flashforward to complicate this very simple setup for turning you into a crude Cyberman. Now, be sure to keep standing for a long time after the blue guy blows a giant hole in your chest, because we really need to pad this out to make it a three-part finale.”
Dark Matter 3.4
I guess every writer and director has a Groundhog Day episode they need to get out of their system. While nothing can live up to the ones done by Xena and SG-1, this wasn’t bad, and made good use of Three’s character development and Anthony Lemke’s talents.
Quote saved to use on Rory:
“No. You can’t just make up your own words. You have to actually repeat the words that I say.”
$10 says Old Five’s future-spoilers turn out to be 90% nonsense that they threw out just to sound cool, and the other 10% are cribbed from the upcoming scripts for this season. Aside from that, since the time clock is lit up in the future, Android obviously didn’t destroy it when she shut it off.
Dark Matter (the series, that is)
I’m not sure why I’ve never mentioned watching the SciFi Channel’s series Dark Matter. I just caught up on the start of the third season, and I can’t really say anything to praise it, but somehow I keep watching. It’s shallow and clichéd and cheesy and Canadian, …and just as good as it needs to be.
Three, Five, and Six have plenty of sf-ghetto cred, and of course series regular Truffault goes all the way back to Forever Knight, making her time in service longer than Five’s life. Three did the best job of selling his character at first, but I’d say he and Six hit parity about halfway through the first season. Five is fun, but she suffers from having to be the genius teen who can do amazing things with technology (perhaps it’s no coincidence that Wil Wheaton has been a guest star…).
Two is a newcomer to the SF ghetto, moving from Canadian Idol and Broadway Éponine to “mildly-psychotic semi-superpowered space mercenary captain”, but she’s doing a solid job, and quickly grew out of the “badass eye candy” they wrote her as initially. Android is an acquired taste, but the actress has been able to have fun with the role.
If you’re counting, you’ll note that I’ve left out One and Four. While Four’s been driving the plot recently, so much of it revolves around him being King Of The Assholes that I kind of wish it was over (“dear writers, pleasepleaseplease kill off Misaki before her dialog and delivery kills me”); the more central his story has become, the less interesting he is as a character. One was Captain Whitebread from the Planet of Sensitive New Age Guys, so I can’t say that I object to his story being wrapped up abruptly.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the show is that the original pilot graphic novel had Two as the only female, which would have made things a lot less interesting. And a lot less decorative, even though Android rarely lets her hair down, and Five’s awesome bosom is generally concealed to pretend she looks like a teenager.
In the end, maybe I like it because most of the actors have managed to make their characters work. It’s no SG-1, where the entire cast hit the ground running, but it works.
[Side note: the gang’s handler Calchek hasn’t showed up nearly as much as Truffault, but not only was he a villain in Forever Knight, he goes all the way back to Friday The 13th: The Series.]
