Star Trek

Star Trek: Discovery
Streaming TV

Review: Star Trek: Discovery 1×1-1×2 (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix)

25 September 2017 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

In the US: CBS All Access. New episodes Sundays
In the UK: Netflix. New episodes Mondays

One of the most controversial aspects of the recent Star Trek movie reboot was Admiral Pike’s statement that Starfleet is a humanitarian and peacekeeping ‘armada’. It wasn’t an organisation dedicated to discovery but to war, it seemed.

Which cut straight to the heart of what many fans though Star Trek should be. Was it a marvellously liberal show about war being bad and tolerance being good, or not? The official line is that Star Trek is a show all about peace and love – and discovery. ST:TNG – discovery in a spaceship. ST:DS9 – discovery by having everyone come to a space station… and then in a spaceship. Star Trek: Voyager – attempt to be edgy and full of conflict for three episodes before it’s discovery in a spaceship. Star Trek: Enterprise – discovery in a spaceship.

Star Trek: Discovery

Ironically, we now have Star Trek: Discovery, the first Star Trek show to be about full on warfare from the outset and which therefore has people questioning if it’s proper Star Trek.

Well, maybe in retrospect Gene Roddenberry decided that Star Trek was totally anti-war, but you only have to look closely at that original series for a few minutes before you notice that there’s a lot of mentions of war and of the Federation having fought wars in the past. How many Neutral Zones are there, for example, to stop various empires coming into conflict with the Federation again? Why exactly are people training hard in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan to fight Klingons as part of their academy training? Hell, Captain Kirk even says in Errand of Mercy “I’m a soldier, not a diplomat”, which should tell you something.

So, it’s fair to say that Star Trek: Discovery is as much Star Trek as any of its predecessors. It also wants you to know it, too. Set ’10 years’ before the USS Enterprise goes off on its five year mission, Discovery sees Sonequa Martin-Green playing a girl orphaned by Klingon raids as a kid and who’s brought up on Vulcan by Spock’s dad Sarek (James Frain). Subsequently, well versed in the art of logic, she ends up as first officer on Michelle Yeoh’s slightly clapped out old starship. Seven years later, they’re off investigating a damaged space-thingy on the edge of the Federation’s border with the Klingon Empire when you guessed it, the Klingons pop up for the first time in a century. Anyone reckon they’re interested in peace?

Queue the start of the next great Klingon War.

Continue reading “Review: Star Trek: Discovery 1×1-1×2 (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix)”

The Orville
US TV

Third-episode verdict: The Orville (US: Fox; UK: Fox UK)

25 September 2017 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Acquired by Fox UK to air in Autumn

As I discovered while watching the first episode of Seth McFarlane’s new ‘pastiche’ of the Star Trek universe, it’s not actually a pastiche at all. In fact, it’s basically just Star Trek again, but with a few lewder jokes, a bit more workplace comedy and enough changes to names, places, species and Federations to make it ineligible for format-infringement lawsuits. Go into it expecting a slightly duller Star Trek, rather than a new Galaxy Quest, and you might even find something to enjoy.

Indeed, McFarlane himself says that he intends this to be something other than straight pastiche, swapping between outright comedy one episode to straight drama the next. Hopefully, the characters and their interplay will be what keeps us watching, he reckons.

So I went into the next two episodes with an open mind. Is it going to be a comedy this week? A romance? What?

Nope. It’s more Star Trek. As of episode two, we get a new title sequence and a theme tune that’s possibly even duller than Star Trek: Voyager‘s, despite the obvious attempts to emulate it and the fact it wasn’t thought humanly possible to have a duller title sequence than Star Trek: Voyager‘s. We also got what was more or less, bar a couple of changes, Star Trek‘s pilot episode, The Menagerie.

Episode three – directed by the show’s exec producer Brannon Braga (exec producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise) – started out more promisingly with some jokes at the expense of the Star Trek holodecks. Said jokes were even funny for a change.

We then get… another old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I’m not sure exactly which one – any of the many trial episodes, such as The Measure of a Man, crossed with any of the “what line must we draw in accepting other people’s cultures?” episodes (eg The Host, Half a Life). For a bit of relevancy, the question under debate was “Should we perform sex-reassignment surgery on babies?”, although the waters were so muddied philosophically and the general intellectual tone of the debate was so low that by the end, the question was more “Can women make a contribution to society?” Still, that’s the state we’re living in right now, so maybe that discussion is as topical as trans rights is.

BUT IT WAS STILL STAR TREK AND NOT VERY GOOD STAR TREK AT THAT.

To be fair, in terms of scripting it’s at least as good as Star Trek: Voyager and most of the first couple of seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise. That’s not saying much, but it is a step up at least.

It’s equally fair to say that The Orville is the best acted, best written, unlicensed Star Trek cosplay with the best production values and special effects you’ll ever see. Like most cosplay, it adds little (here, a replicator that makes cannabis brownies), just remains in thrall to the original.

So if you want to watch Seth McFarlane in his own Star Trek, imagining he was once married to Adrianne Palicki, The Orville might be the show for you. Otherwise, Google “Star Trek funny episodes” and you’ll be bound to turn up something from the original shows that’s much much better.

Barrometer rating: 3

The Barrometer for TheOrville

Professor T
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Professor T, Lethal Weapon and כפולים (False Flag)

19 September 2017 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you each week what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching. TMINE recommends has all the reviews of all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended, but for a complete list of TMINE’s reviews of (good, bad and insipid) TV shows and movies, there’s the definitive TV Reviews A-Z and Film Reviews A-Z. But it’s what you have you been watching? I bet it’s better than what I’ve been watching.

I’ve been both lazy and hard-working this past week. On the one hand, despite knowing every year that the US is going to start launching all its new shows around now, I’ve not actually bothered looking at the schedules. I just assumed it would all be chocka by now, so I cleared the decks accordingly.

Except it’s not been chocka at all, so I’ve ended up watching a whole load of extra TV in the gaps I’ve left. That means that this week, as well as previews of new US shows The Good Doctor (US: ABC; UK: Sky Living) and The Mayor (US: ABC), I watched all the first season of Tin Star (UK: Sky Atlantic) and all the second season of Glitch (Australia: ABC; UK: Netflix) for TMINE’s newly inaugurated ‘Boxset Monday’.

Impressive, huh? What will I do next Monday, hey? Probably nothing as I’m going to be busy on Monday, so take Glitch as a downpayment.

On top of all those shows, I’ve been trying to watch an awful lot of other new shows and movies – to somewhat limited success, I have to admit.

The rubbish

I tried to watch the second episode of Dear Murderer (New Zealand: TVNZ), but my hopes of a nice spy trial episode were dashed once it became apparent that the trial was going to be thinly spread across the entire season, with our ‘hero’ instead mostly losing lots of cases using the same attempt to inject reasonable doubt into proceedings every time. So I gave up on that.

I also tried to watch Netflix’s pastiche of true crime documentaries, American Vandal. That lasted about 10 minutes before I realised it was basically about a US high school kid accused of spray-painting penises on people’s cars. So I gave up on that.

I also tried to give The Edge of the Bush (Australia: ABC) a whirl. That’s a short-form character comedy in which a small cast play a large number of very stupid, related people: “What happened on The Edge of the Bush? Something so powerful it will bring the Watts family calisthenics dynasty to its knees.” I got through about five minutes of that before I decided the jokes were so bad, I couldn’t even.

For reasons unclear to me, Netflix, Amazon and iTunes have simultaneously decided to carry a movie that was actually a recent failed attempt to resurrect ‘The Saint’ as a TV series. Since it was free on Netflix, I decided to give The Saint a whirl, but it only took me about 10 minutes and a very bad humorous fight scene before I understood why it had failed and gave up. Even though Eliza Dushku and Ian Ogilvy are in it.

Lots of failures then. But I did have greater success elsewhere. Although I didn’t quite have time to watch the second episode of Bang today as I’d planned, there were of course the usual regulars: Get Krack!n, Halt and Catch Fire and The Last Ship as well as the series finale of כפולים (False Flag). I also watched the first episode of returning regular Lethal Weapon and the second episode of The Orville.

But since I still had a moment or two spare over the weekend, I tried the first two episodes of Belgium’s Professor T. And together with my lovely wife, I also gave two movies a try: The Lobster and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. All that after the jump.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Professor T, Lethal Weapon and כפולים (False Flag)”

Thor: Ragnarok
Streaming TV

All the best trailers from SDCC – Justice League, Marvel’s The Defenders, Star Trek: Discovery, Stranger Things, Thor: Ragnarok and Westworld

24 July 2017 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

SDCC – aka San Diego Comic-Con – had turned into one of the most important events of the year, not just for comics but for movies and TV shows. At least of the nerdier and more US variety, since it’s not like there’s a great Poldark presence there every year.

But it’s where all the latest news is revealed and you get to see the new trailers, and this year, we’ve had a bevy. I’m not going to go through the whole lot, as that way madness lies, but you can find most of them in today’s news.

On top of that, unfortunately, a few of the best trailers that got shown haven’t yet been fed into YouTube (eg Netflix’s Marvel’s The Punisher and Black Panther). But at the very least, after the jump, you’ll be able to feast your eyes on trailers for the likes of Justice League, Thor: Ragnarok, Ready Player One, Netflix’s Marvel’s The Defenders, CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, HBO’s Westworld, and Netflix’s  Stranger Things (season 2). Oh yes, and The CW’s DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Continue reading “All the best trailers from SDCC – Justice League, Marvel’s The Defenders, Star Trek: Discovery, Stranger Things, Thor: Ragnarok and Westworld”

When’s that show you mentioned starting again, TMINE? Including Atypical and Star Trek: Discovery

23 June 2017 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Every Friday, I let you know the latest announcements about when new, imported TV shows will finally be arriving on UK screens

Acquisitions this week haven’t been huge, but we have:

Otherwise, all the new premiere dates are for new shows that haven’t aired anywhere yet, so I can’t tell you if they’re any good or not. Soz.

Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later (Netflix)
Friday, August 4

Atypical (Netflix)
Friday, August 11

Star Trek: Discovery (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix)
Monday, September 25