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Over the course of several months, I gradually re-watched the entire original run of Star Trek, wrapping it up maybe in August. Having since watched episodes of Enterprise, Next Generation, and now Deep Space Nine, I have to say that the original Star Trek holds up really well. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had a lot of personality compared to most bridge crew in subsequent shows. The writing was usually pretty good, and Shatner was less hammy and so much more charismatic than people remember.
Raised by Wolves - Started out great and slowly descended into not-so-great by the end. Still a lot to like, but its a mystery box show that adds more questions than it answers. I liked the seemingly straight-forward plot at the beginning of atheists and Sol-worshippers trying to survive and build a colony on this strange alien world and wish they'd stuck with that minimal framework. I don't really have any faith that the creators 6 season plan will not get cancelled after season 3. That being said there is enough good stuff that I'll probably return for season 2. I just can't help feel its a big waste of potential though and the characters and dialog all went downhill as the season progressed solely to make the plot more complicated.
I'm scared to dive back in to ST:TOS. I remember them fondly, but when I read 1-2 sentence synopses of all the shows, there were a lot of them that seemed to be pretty dumb. Like when they went to a Nazi planet. Or a Chicago mobster planet. Or a Roman Empire planet. Or the Gunfight at the OK Corral planet. Or the space hippies. &c, &c.
I guess if I wanted to, I could just watch the good ones on Amazon Prime, and take a pass on the space hippies.
As for what I'm watching, I need to dig my feet in and make the missus watch something besides Game of Thrones for the 3rd (4th?) time. We're in S4, and that is about where I should stop. 5 and 6 are okay, and 7 and 8 are fuckin' horrible.
I had the exact same doubts about TOS, though I have long suspected that those various episodes with planets simulating various Earth cultures had more to do with budgetary issues than a complete lack of creativity. The only thing that I remembered about the space hippie episode was the Chekov love story subplot and the head hippie with the freaky ears, and I had completely forgotten the very likeable hippie and his musical duet with Spock. If you're still wary, try the first episode that ever aired, The Man Trap. The acting is good right away, which is a step up from every Star Trek series that didn't have Patrick Stewart. The writing is tight, and the story moves along at a brisk pace without any of the usual padding in sci-fi where characters are too slow to recognize the obvious. At least half of the first season episodes are that good. By contrast, most Star Trek shows seem to need at least a season or two to get okay or even good, especially Next Generation.
I’m on episode 6 (I think?) of Raised By Wolves and I’m still not sure if I like it. I’m intrigued on where it’s going to go, but I’ll have no problem giving up on it after the season finale if it doesn’t give me a compelling reason to continue after that.
I think shows got so focused on being bingable and serialized that they forgot to have a core dynamic with relatable characters. Utopia is a good example. It moves the plot along but most of the characters (maybe Deil girl and the orphan little girl aside) are just so damned unpleasant or stupid it is hard to want them to succeed. I find this in a lot of shows, like Umbrella Academy or that God aweful October Faction. Compare those shows to Farscape or X-files, hell even b tier stuff like Xena or Firefly. They had CHARACTERS you liked, so the hijinks and adventures were somewhat secondary. A super plot heavy show has gotta NAIL that world building and suspense or else it just falls flat IMHO.
Well, despite bemoaning the state of current tv, I started The Haunting of Bly Manor on netflix. Followup to the generally excellent Haunting of Hill House. Looks to be a rough adaptation of Turn of the Screw. Pretty creepy so far, hope they can maintain it and stick the landing. Everyone is doing a very dodgy old english accent though (it is set in relatively modern times) which is distracting.
And good grief, how did folks live in those giant ass estate homes? I'm assuming there were just people everywhere all the time cause damn, those places are just unsettling by their very nature.
Finished up Haunting of Bly Manor. I liked it quite a bit but it is significantly less scary than the predecessor show. Focused much more on character relationships, love, and loss, to the point where the ghost aspect is almost completely absent in some episodes. But it is very compelling, with over all very good performances, especially the little girl. The accents are still distracting because some actors really seem to be struggling but it still works. The plot, such as it is, is mostly nonsense and a lot of it gets dropped along the way but it doesn't really matter because the show finds 3-4 relationships and really hones in on them with mostly tragic results but that still leave you satisfied.
They missed an opportunity to have a final "gotcha" but instead went for a very melancholy ending. IIRC Hill House did something similar, with no real vanquishing of any evil, restoring loved ones, or really anything other than just moving on as best as you can.
Just note that the last 20 seconds of EVERY episode is a shocking cliffhanger, making it very hard to turn the damn show off and go to bed
Halfway through season one of Deep Space Nine, and it's okay. Not good enough for a serious binge, but not bad enough to make me bail. To an extent, every Star Trek show since the original series has tended to play it pretty safe, and that often translates into mediocrity.
I briefly attempted to watch the original Batman & Robin tv show from a single season in 1959. I had no idea that this show existed, though I enjoyed the Batman show of the late '60s when I was a kid. Anyway, Batman '59 was unenjoyable. Bunch of random white guys going through the motions, with this Batman looking downright pudgy compared to even Adam West. I gave up when the solution to the mystery of the first episode was made obvious less than 10 minutes in. Btw, the '59 Batmobile was just a generic black sedan, and the Wayne Manor looked pretty similar to the house from Leave It To Beaver, and I'm not kidding.
Instead, I decided to finally try Deadwood. I've heard good things about it for a long time, but I'm not usually into westerns. Probably because my dad was a big fan of westerns and I often felt the need to be different from him. Anyway, Timothy Olyphant is alright, Ricky Schroeder is tolerable, and Ian McShane is great. And a lot of folks that I don't recognize did a fine job as well. Deadwood is dark, gritty, realistic, and a couple of times it was slightly too subtle for me to catch on to the implications of things. And I wish I knew more about the significance and possible symbolism of various types of hats of that setting. The first episode was good, and I look forward to continuing.
Shellhead wrote: Halfway through season one of Deep Space Nine, and it's okay. Not good enough for a serious binge, but not bad enough to make me bail. To an extent, every Star Trek show since the original series has tended to play it pretty safe, and that often translates into mediocrity.
I briefly attempted to watch the original Batman & Robin tv show from a single season in 1959. I had no idea that this show existed, though I enjoyed the Batman show of the late '60s when I was a kid. Anyway, Batman '59 was unenjoyable. Bunch of random white guys going through the motions, with this Batman looking downright pudgy compared to even Adam West. I gave up when the solution to the mystery of the first episode was made obvious less than 10 minutes in. Btw, the '59 Batmobile was just a generic black sedan, and the Wayne Manor looked pretty similar to the house from Leave It To Beaver, and I'm not kidding.
Instead, I decided to finally try Deadwood. I've heard good things about it for a long time, but I'm not usually into westerns. Probably because my dad was a big fan of westerns and I often felt the need to be different from him. Anyway, Timothy Olyphant is alright, Ricky Schroeder is tolerable, and Ian McShane is great. And a lot of folks that I don't recognize did a fine job as well. Deadwood is dark, gritty, realistic, and a couple of times it was slightly too subtle for me to catch on to the implications of things. And I wish I knew more about the significance and possible symbolism of various types of hats of that setting. The first episode was good, and I look forward to continuing.
Ricky Schroeder isn’t in DEADWOOD. The series is one of my all time favorites.
jason10mm wrote: I think you should just watch the first season of Deadwood and then switch to Justified and pretend it is in universe.
I was not a fan of all the Hurst stuff.
Hurst grew on me. I wasn't a fan of the theater people. I get its to show the progression of the town towards civilization but their character scenes never amounted to much.